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Culturegasm: Where's the weird gone?

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  1.  (8392.41)
    As others have said there is a whole combination of factors at play here - there is still plenty of weird stuff it's just simultaneously more mainstream and more hidden, the internet truly reaches everyone, I've talked about the Cern supercollider with an old indigenous bloke on san pedro in the Bolivian altiplano (I'm aware of how pretentious that sounds and I appologise).

    Science can do anything, millions if not billions of people believe 9-11 was an inside job, two apocolyptic cults (al-queada and the Christian fundies in the US) have the power to kill thousands at a time of imagined insults or the struggle for control of whats left of our oil, and can both rally hundreds of thousands to their causes.

    Thousands of people flock to see David Icke speak and buy his books and videos, in Britain we now have an MP from a party that until this year had strong policies on promoting homeopathy (and which might still as far as I know), not to mention the 900,000 people happy to vote for lying nazis.

    Conspiracy theories used to be for fringe nutcases and fringe geeks like us - now they are generally mainstream, christ even my brother and his mates (all in the British forces) believe the US never landed on the moon!

    What happened to the weird? It went viral and infected everything everywhere...
  2.  (8392.42)
    Is this why all the cool kids have gone back to knitting and making bloody cupcakes? Because there's just no point trying any more?


    Damn kids, with their music not loud enough and undisturbing hobbies!

    I'm actually enjoying seeing certain practical hobbies becoming slightly cool. It's good to know that anything is rebellion when done right. :)
  3.  (8392.43)
    And rebellion is practical when done right.
  4.  (8392.44)
    I'm having a time out until I can learn some manners.
    This is proper weird!

    Just now i was reading my Rough guide to unexplained phenomena, the section on coincidences has a photo of some bees that collected on a wall outside the bee keepers funeral in Ludlow shropshire so i look up the place on Google streetview (dunno why lol (I need gainful employment i guess)) . Meanwhile i'm listening to PJ Harvey 'Pocket Knife' and just as the picture of the location of the bees rezzes she sings

    'And the bees keep coming'
    • CommentAuthorOddcult
    • CommentTimeJun 11th 2010
     (8392.45)
    Thousands of people flock to see David Icke speak... ...Conspiracy theories used to be for fringe nutcases and fringe geeks like us - now they are generally mainstream, christ even my brother and his mates (all in the British forces) believe the US never landed on the moon!


    I wonder how many people who used to be your 'fringe geeks' are now out through the other side and, having looked at all this stuff, have a wide enough knowledge of it to be able to reject the rubbish and objectively criticise the claims that are being made.

    I get really pissed off with people I know, in real life, who are lovely folk, but not overly bright (and yes, I'm being a tad condescending here... okay...) paying for things like Reiki 'treatment' and when I try to discuss it with them, reply with things like 'well, that's just your opinion' and don't even want to hear about stuff like double-blind tests, or even have any kind of grasp on the reasons why it's a load of old toss, but they just accept it.

    Did 'weird' win?
  6.  (8392.46)
    I'm having a time out until I can learn some manners.
    <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXRJC8b8qEk"></a>

    @Oddcult

    well, I think you are being a tad more than condescending to those you consider you intellectual inferiors.

    I don't find alternative therapy to be useful to me but If it is of benefit to someone then that's justification enough? It doesn't need a scientific basis. People will put their faith in all kinds of things 'fringe' or otherwise. Be that political ideologies, hedonistic practice art, comics even . . .
    It is easy to scoff at anything that conflicts with your reality tunnel. You should do as Robert Anton Wilson suggests and embrace the Reiki and the whole lifestyle and world view for a while.

    Last year I was a communist, this year I am a right wing conspiracy nut. Knoworramean?
    •  
      CommentAuthoraike
    • CommentTimeJun 11th 2010
     (8392.47)
    The world is getting increasingly weird, so the weird is increasingly normal.

    Science is talking about things weirder than anything Sci Fi used to be able to come up with on a daily basis. Quantum entanglements, other dimensions, etc. Heck if you read sci headlines, you'd see they created a black hole the other day (of course the truth is slightly different, but that is not the point). It is not the realm of the learned elite, nah, you read about it on the Register or Science Daily, or whatever.

    People seem to be behaving in weirder and weirder ways, and even if they are only outliers, due to the intertubes, we actually hear about it all. It is hard to come up with things that are crazier than the shit people REALLY do. Browse through FARK for a few days and you might as well give up fiction, nothing beats the Florida tag.

    Music and art is everywhere. Again, somewhere, someone is making stuff that is crazy. But it is available. It is not whispered about in hushed voices in underground clubs, it is up for grabs at myspace.

    Weird is no longer hard to find, it is everywhere. The world watched two girls get off with scatplay. Fetish clubs are mainstream. Esoterica is fashionable. Hey you aren't hip if you dont have some kind of magic crystals or collection of alien buttplugs these days. It is virtually impossible to stay ahead of the weird curve now.

    So. I dont think fiction or art is any less weird than it was in the 80s or 90s, but it just doesnt have the edge anymore because we all talk about and look at pictures of things too bizarre for words on a daily basis. We are addicted to that edge, and like any self respecting junkie stereotype, we need bigger and bigger hits.
    • CommentAuthorOddcult
    • CommentTimeJun 11th 2010
     (8392.48)
    @BettyBoolean - I think that a belief in Reiki doing anything over and above placebo + mild psychoanalysis is a pretty good yardstick for measuring whether someone is an intellectual inferior or not, however, if you do want a discussion about stuff like that vs not stuff like that, maybe you could start another thread?

    However,
    You should do as Robert Anton Wilson suggests and embrace the Reiki and the whole lifestyle and world view for a while.


    I did. Nothing happened. Although, reiki specifically was the one thing out of all that lot which was the most flimsy. Anyway - to another thread with it, should you so wish!
  9.  (8392.49)
    I'm having a time out until I can learn some manners.
    @Oddcult

    Why would I start another thread when i can gawk at your weirdness here ?
    •  
      CommentAuthormacroscian
    • CommentTimeJun 11th 2010
     (8392.50)
    I can understand a longing for a bit of wierd proper. When someting crops up, a boring explanation is too readily available. Would be more fun with a few doomsayers.

    It's hard to invent anything worse than depleting oil reserves, increasingly aggressive religions and the realization that the future doesn't seem to hold any of the promised cool hovercrafts and trips to mars. Just not enough room for wierd.
    • CommentAuthorOddcult
    • CommentTimeJun 11th 2010
     (8392.51)
    @BettyBoolean - because if this turns into a Woo Vs Science debate, it'll get stomped on and the thread closed, as they always turn ugly.
  12.  (8392.52)
    I'm having a time out until I can learn some manners.
    @oddcult

    well I don't want a fight so I dont need a thread :)

    how about illuminati symbolism in the new Lady Gaga Vid? is that permissable weirdness?

    <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niqrrmev4mA"></a>
    •  
      CommentAuthortexture
    • CommentTimeJun 11th 2010
     (8392.53)
    Just a quick tuppence-worth from me: everyone on this thread is enmeshed with net culture, has spent years looking for the weird, so even if they are looking for it just to scoff at it and debunk it, it is a part of their discourse... However, many, many people I know (lovely people, intelligent people) just switch off at any mention of the weird. Not just occult / space alien weird, but bleeding-edge sci-weird. I've been in conversation with people who asked me to stop talking about the LHC because it made their brains hurt. I don't know if your average layperson is that acquainted with the weird, or that desensitized to it... many, many more people give more of a shit who's winning X Factor or whatever. I guess what I'm trying to say is... maybe we have all the weirdness we need right here? Maybe it's us? Because when I venture outside of Whitechapel and talk about the stuff I see and read here, people just tell me I should get out more.
    • CommentAuthorOddcult
    • CommentTimeJun 11th 2010
     (8392.54)
    See you and raise you:
    KLF - the Rites of Mu

    The 'Illuminati' is really just a convenient explanation for some weird memetic trigger images that some people just mildly upset by, so it's not really surprising that someone who's doing the whole art as pop culture thing is going to get accused of being in league with them. However, that just looks more Thin White Duke to me than Illuminati. All that Bowie and Iggy and Lou Reed Berlin era stuff.
  15.  (8392.55)
    I'm having a time out until I can learn some manners.
    @oddcult

    im big bill drummond fan :)

    see the light of illumination burn through lady gagas vid at the end?
  16.  (8392.56)
    I'm having a time out until I can learn some manners.
    @Oddcult

    I'm also playing poker at this moment HOW WEIRD IS THAT!! u make that joke

    and i was reading about coincidences just this morning (see my earlier post in this thread)

    see proper pure weirdness all over the shop
    • CommentAuthorOddcult
    • CommentTimeJun 11th 2010
     (8392.57)
    I think there's something weird round here, yeah...
    •  
      CommentAuthorFredG
    • CommentTimeJun 11th 2010
     (8392.58)
    @Rootfireember I didn't mean to get off topic with the bike comment, but State Representative Gary Aubuchon from swanky Cape Coral decided to solve a local "problem" of bicyclist using A1A (a beach highway for those of you not in Florida) and slowing down traffic. He inserted a rider into a recent bill that changes the state law allowing bikes full use of the road as any other vehicle, to using only bike path and side walks. It passed despite the protests. Cities like Orlando are not bike friendly to begin with. So as I commute through downtown with no bike path and sidewalk full of people I need to stop and walk my bike for 3 miles?

    If weird is all about WTF moments this is a big one for me.
  19.  (8392.59)
    I'm having a time out until I can learn some manners.
    @texture

    i think most people tune out the weird because they are goal oriented and subjects that might interest you and eye have no currency for them?
  20.  (8392.60)
    *chuckles*

    "Weird" was the last great marketable "cool" subculture to be flogged and it had a prime slot for the pre-millenium. Then some real fucking weirdos took charge of the worlds most heavily armed superpower and some other real fucking weirdos started flying planes into buildings and blowing themselves up. This real world weirdness devalued the manfuactured coopted "weirdness" and suddenly people who in their 20's/30's thought they were crazy and radical turned just to be people with too much metal in their face, shoddy haircuts and a lot of black clothing.

    There is weird out there. Salvia divinorium is utterly bizarre. The Camelot project's crazy assed aliens spirit guide 2012 horsehit videos are a scream as they try as everyone's story is increasingly elaborate.

    I guess that the last place people are going to here about any emergent "weird" subculture is on the web though. Outsiders tend to stay outside.

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