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

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.

lol "Beyond Vegas"

I have some canadian friends who went maybe three-ish years ago? and a coworker who is older and went somewhere five or six years ago

I've gotten the impression it's changed a lot, which would make sense considering the size and makeup of the attendees shifting. "Events" were a lot more ad hoc or arranged on the fly and now it's definitely a thing where people plan things to do while there.

the coworker who went is kind of an odd guy, in a good way, and he traveled with his brother who had some sort of (mutant) vehicle repair-and-construction rig. their other brother had recently died in a freak accident and they decided to spend time together at this thing. coworker is probably in his 50s and has kids in their teens/20s iirc

to burning man, that is. not this ff thing

do Paris Hilton and Grover Norquist party w poor people?

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Paris-Hilton-Burning-Man-2016-Twitter-braids-9192622.php

Steampunk, it's er neither steam nor punk. Burlesque is another dreadful development of the modern age.

would love a christopher guest burning man parody movie.

omg

no, Paris Hilton and Grover Norquist take private shuttle services or helicopters to air conditioned trailers with private security and have stage-side areas to hang out where others aren't allowed in

it's like asking "does Paris Hilton go to the same Drake concert that everyone else does?" and yeah, to an extent, the private seating w/unlimited food and drinks, table service, an unobstructed view of the stage (or even being on the stage) is the same concert but it's not the same

on the other hand, I guess Steven Tyler played the state fair and went to the midway to ride the ferris wheel and eat a corn dog after his performance, so yeah, I guess he does party w/poor people

imo the tiered experiences of music and cultural festivals is definitely something that has been refined in the last couple decades. there have always been guest lists, VIP access, whatever, but now it seems like any event with more than a handful of people has at least three ticket tiers with varying levels of access and amenities

depends on how you define "poor people," too. were there ever significant numbers of burners below the actual poverty level? idk

I guess I should just ask: Shakey, what's the premise you're snarking about here? That burning man is corporate and for rich people, and that it has always been that way, or is this some change? I snark about burners and that event all the time but I'm not getting what you're trying to imply about the whole enterprise.

what i don't understand is if you're going to do the luxury corporate weekend experience why do it at some shitty festival?

mh - upthread I was just otm' chaki's "burning man is also something you need to be wealthy to do" claim. That didn't used to be true, pre-2000 or so. I think it is def true now. that is all.

how wealthy

prob getting hung up on the terminology, I'm thinking $$$ and middle class is technically pretty wealthy

https://www.utilikilts.com/

The Utilikilts website helpfully informs people: "We will be closed for Burning Man from 9/3-9/5."

Maybe that only applies to their retail store. But maybe you should take that under advisement even if you planned to order online.

You know, if you should have an urgent man-kilt need during those TWO DAYS.

it takes money to buy a ticket (tickets are >$400 iirc?) and be there for more than a couple days. If you want to do an art project, the scale/cost of projects has increased exponentially over the years to the point where someone who's gonna do something that doesn't cost thousands of dollars + hours of labor probably shouldn't even bother. And over the years the number of wealthy celebrities and techbros has also increased exponentially. And the majority of the attendees as far as I know are, yes, middle class and $$$ ("technically wealthy").

This is pretty different from how it was in the 90s, when there were no tickets, no rules (for the most part), tons of relatively poor artist types and tons of low-tech projects/camps/exhibits. It isn't like that anymore.

xp

thanks!

what I was getting at is that the celebrity/moneyed types *do* think the majority of ppl there are poor and erect barriers to differentiate their experience, but the reality is it's only accessible to the middle class so the anger about class (rich people ruining it, "poor" people complaining about the rich) really misses the point. so we're on the same page

imo the middle class should be the ones to gut the super-rich anyway, genuinely poor ppl lack the time and resources