BRITTICISMS.: On youth and authenticity

(via alohanico)

This quote read differently to me inside and outside of its original context. I find that the people who spend the most time denouncing commodified coolness are the most narcissistic and egocentric, they don’t care about your music, your books, your adventures, put simply they’re “too cool for school,” as though they exist outside these matters of taste so that their ability to discern quality is never judged (or refuted) and they never fall prey to embarrassing fads.

And I’m not saying that Brit is such a person, rather that I agree with her, that these alt people are less concerned with a quantifiable whatever and more interested in the social currency of that thing. It’s very much in accord with my stance on art - like what you like, you can answer the “why” questions later if you need, but if something cannot [visually / aurally / viscerally ] engage you, you can’t make it happen (like fetch, “stop trying to make fetch happen! It’s not going to happen!”).

I have more Mylie Cyrus on my ipod than The Beatles and Animal Collective combined, I will watch Super Troopers before a Kurosawa film a hundred times out of a hundred and I think David Foster Wallace is part of the problem, not the solution. I love a lot of quixotic, inaccessible things, places, people, but I also believe that those who blindly hate Kanye or Gaga have just never been in the club grindin’ and felt their jams set it off. In this era of post-irony, being anti-mainstream is without question the greatest act of conformity.