Having opinions slash I guess the reason I made a blog

 Good evening. I just got out of the shower after being blessed by a 'shower thought' which feels worthy of putting pen to paper to dissect.

Question of the night: where did this opinion I have come from?

    While I was in the shower I happened to be thinking about what group could be called "The best band of all time," and Radiohead crossed my mind. Now I know think this is not my real answer to this question, so why on earth would I even consider it. Obviously Thom and the gang are highly talented and have put out a lot of great (dare I say excellent) music, but I don't think they are the best band of all time. Besides... I didn't even lay out a criteria by which to consider the various contenders' merits. How confusing.

    Well now that I'm out of the shower I've had a revelation, which is that I read an article that addresses this scenario identically the other day titled Negative Criticism. I probably only thought of the 'head and even that question at all because I read that article, but I digress. It's a great piece of writing so feast your eyes after you and I try to flesh out my perspective. 

    So I've oft found that in being terminally online, a person develops a sort of hollowed out cultural cache. That is to say, they've heard about nearly every piece of relevant media, yet have critically consumed (or even mindlessly consumed) nothing. I think that this condition is what has lead to a sort of dumbed down or summary based consumption culture, where the weight of taking the time to watch every movie, book, or television show you want to reference feels so impossible that shortcuts are required. See the numerous tier lists which instruct a person which things are better than others, or the massive quantities of movie, book, and television summarizing content that exists on platforms like TikTok and YouTube. Unfortunately, a fifteen minute analysis of the themes from "The Stranger," is just not going to be the same as turning the pages by hand.

When the Spark Notes for the Old Testament don't make me closer to god... :(

    In my opinion, this phenomenon is a significant contributor to the rapid cycle by which aesthetics come and go. If you do not feel that you have to understand something to have an opinion on it slash embrace it and add it to your personality, then claiming a band or a fashion designer as a part of your image is as simple as posting a video with their song or buying the logo tee off TheRealReal. At that point, since you developed no real connection to this point of fascination, once it vanishes you're left with the same hollow cache that you began with! Of course we're all gonna cycle through different interests in our life, but the value is derived from what we keep with us when we move on. If you aren't adding anything to your basket while you're climbing trees at the orchard, either your pie is gonna be bland as shit or you're gonna have to steal someone else's basket. 

    My proposed alternative then, is that we should be sinking our teeth into stuff that we think we like. What good is knowing and liking one song from every band in the world if you can't tell me what makes those songs and bands so distinctly good? Why don't we all think about a single thing for a while before we let anything else in. Let's all dialogue about stuff we like!!!! 

    Of course, surface level enjoyment is to be permitted and expected. It's unreasonable to expect a person to have all the information about something that they claim to like as if I'm some sort of oh-you-like-Nirvana-name-five-songs style douchebag. I just think it's validating and fulfilling to do a bit of research from time to time.

    Important to note here that I too am plagued by the vary disease I'm ranting about here, and that part of the idea behind this blog is to force myself to get in the weeds and actually think things through and spend time with them so that I'm not just regurgitating information I heard in a video essay or wearing a logo I saw Bella Hadid wear. 

    Well. That's all for now. I want to go to sleep so I can wake up at 7:30AM and have coffee. To conclude here's a list of three things I want to consume, think about, and then write about here:

• Joan Didion's The White Album - I am reading this now and will hopefully have thoughts on it when I finish
• Lil B's 6 Kiss - I really like Birth of Rap and I think The Based God is pretty revolutionary, but I want to be able to present more evidence than just saying it. 
• The various artworks of painter Issy Wood - I really like Issy's paintings but I don't know why and I don't really know what to make of them thematically.

Oops and now a bonus fourth thing that I've liked for a long time but never written about:

• Gucci SS20 - Despite the controversy associated with this show, it is my favorite ever and I think Alessandro Michele's best work. 

P.S. Sorry for not having that many pictures or links in this one and also it definitely did not stay on topic, but that's just the risk you take when you're blogging this hardcore-ly 

Bye!