worst fad of the 21st century so far. it's steampunk, right?

yeah, sincere ukulele covers of gangsta rap tunes only please xp

tim from ilx does AMAZING ukelele covers, full voiced chords n shit... but i think we are talking about something different. that slowed down white person trying to sing like billie holiday style of cover song thats on every commercial.

yeah i'm talking more like the duo I saw that performed a "hilarious" stodgy-white sendup of Khia's "My Neck, My Back" on uke at a show I was dragged to a while back

steampunk AND ukelele AND that voice i can't stand that is the female version of the old man hat voice. in one video. trifecta of bad fads!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX_weRr19sQ

#45 - Napping Baby Cosplay

http://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/sleeping-baby-cosplay-joey-marie-laura-izumikawa-choi-41-57be9498b300b__700.jpg

http://www.boredpanda.com/sleeping-baby-cosplay-joey-marie-laura-izumikawa-choi/

Tempted to say Cosplay in general...

Before cosplayers, genre coms were packed with unkempt socially maladapted guys. They're still maladapted, but more are taking showers now.

*coms = Cons = fan conventions

the internet

xp Cosplay has been around for longer than most of us have been alive. (Unlike most of the other things mentioned here, which only date back to when most of us were kids.

Forgot the ending bracket, here: )

Rickrolling coulda been a candidate but it fortunately died quickly

WHAT'S UP CHRISTINE ??

Loads of strange things. Very strange things. Will talk about it later.

cupcakes ffs

Cupcakes rule fuiud

kale haters : fine but do you even know about lambs quarters? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chenopodium_album you probaly throw it away

Archaeologists analysing carbonized plant remains found in storage pits and ovens at Iron Age, Viking Age, and Roman sites in Europe have found its seeds mixed with conventional grains and even inside the stomachs of Danish bog bodies.

danish bog bodies is a killer band name

Still think its autotune vocals.

that slowed down white person trying to sing like billie holiday style of cover song thats on every commercial.

arrrhghtgh, I go to a yoga class each week where the instructor insists on playing nothing but sad sack, white guy songs while we exercise. Last week, she one-upped herself by playing an entire mix of mopey acoustic covers of popular songs. In what universe is it preferable to listen to a sad cover of "Billie Jean" instead of the original?!?

agree in principle, but in practice i will rep for caetano's version

In the upthread post regarding early-1960s cosplay, blogger Belated Nerd is begging for any info as to what became of Sylvia Dees. I could fill him or her in if only all means of posting comments there or otherwise sending a message weren't blocked....

well, until we can get a hold of the belated nerd, don't leave the rest of us in undue suspense!

what became of Sylvia Dees?

Went nutz

Last post on that blog was in early 2012. I'm assuming it's been abandoned.

-Marketing people using "brand" as a noun

-marketingspeak leeching into normal conversations such that non-marketing people toss around "brand" or "brands" as nouns

lots of jargon leaking into normal conversation changing tense, but I don't think that one is at all new

Wait what? When was brand not used as a noun

Xp

"Brand x", &c. Literally been around my entire life

yeah, iirc it has to do with branding cattle, which was actually pressing a mark on to, say, a cow to show ownership

people buying cattle at market might refer to a "trusted brand" if they knew the animals coming from one farmer were good, so multiple sources would be "trusted brands"

"branding" as in defining some sort of nebulous value system around the idea of a company or name is newer, but it originally referred to the act of pressing said mark on a product

Yeah, I know the historical origins, I think the annoying aspect is just the marketing jargon getting tossed around. This I posit as a worse development than corporate officespeak permeating all aspects of 21st-C Western life.

not the worst, but I read the opinion that the conversational stance of gen x was of assuming knowledge, and the new trend is these pieces from complete supposed naivety

if someone spoke about a band or film director then, whether you knew anything or not, the stance is that you have to convey that you know about the topic and everyone is assumed to "know" things and their place in some historical or significant context. music and film reviews with necessary references to older work, how things fit in canon, what the producer also worked on, and so on

the new thinkpiece trend is those articles where some college kid has never heard de la soul or never seen some important work and writes from a completely naive standpoint and it becomes clickbait

imo the latter is better because it means late night television hosts can stop doing these man on the street bits where they ask concertgoers if they know about fake band names and then clown people for pretending to know about some shit the questioner just made up

my own least favorite corporatespeak is "visioning" which isn't new but has come to new heights
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=7&case_insensitive=on&content=visioning&direct_url=t4%3B%2Cvisioning%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bvisioning%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BVisioning%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BVISIONING%3B%2Cc0

Have definitely read those, and yeah, they seem designed as clickbait, specifically because they rankle people who have already invested in the idea that what they know about a particular topic is correct and accepted and right. Those pieces delight people who enjoy pissing off the elder know-it-alls, and infuriate the know-it-alls, and everyone clicks away

re: brand -- think I know what you're saying, as far as working on one's "brand", or "your social media presence speaks to the value of your brand" etc kind of stuff. But "Levi's is a brand of jeans" is super old, and probably the first form of "brand" I actually learned.

(xp)

personal brand is the commidification of what I used to naively think was cool, "cultivating an aesthetic", which mostly means defining yourself by listing your music, arts, fashion, influences in list-like form and presenting them in place of self

but really can people ever know u anyway

late night television hosts can stop doing these man on the street bits where they ask concertgoers if they know about fake band names and then clown people

Oh I don't think these are going to stop, or at least not until they mutate away from vox pop bits being the laziest shit way to generate minutes of video.

Have there been any suitably deranged responses to these type of bits done by Conan or Eric Andre or somebody?

Crut, I feel the roller derby/burlesque/women with tattoos nexus is somewhat redeemed by verbally inventive double-entendre naming of the Helena Handbasket / Anne of Cleaver type.

no, that's the worst part of it

Burning Man LLC is a thing

― Οὖτις, Friday, August 26, 2016 12:14 PM (three days ago)

a thing that was started in the mid-late 90s after someone died at the event and the organizers got sued. It's actually just the operating organization. The Burning Man intellectual property is owned by a separate company, and now they have a tax exempt art foundation.

imo burning man as a fun zone for moneyed types and burners as a tiring people are two different issues

the event as whole still isn't necessarily for moneyed people afaik and there's probably some "no true burner" arguments going on in that sphere

I am aware of how the Burning Man organization is structured.

this is prob the worst part
http://www.furtherfuture.com/

blurring the line between work and play

btw if ilx wants to crowdfund my trip to the further future thing for research purposes I will accept donations

they have exclusive mixes!!

http://www.furtherfuture.com/ff002-music

actually this doesn't look as bad as I expected and the musical lineup isn't too far from what I've seen live

please send me to the desert

I vow to wear an outfit similar to this
http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5692b3604bf1182ee60156fe/t/57292c6cb6aa60d43fc47aa9/1462316153868/Speaker-Lineup-Final-WEB.jpg?format=750w

Burning Man perpetually one of those things I am mildly curious about, and can imagine how it would be fun, but then think again about how I probably wouldn't be able to stand a single person I met there, and do I really want to waste my molly experience on EDM and "visuals" anyway?

dunno how the top would work for you, I'd reconsider.