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daggerzine · 4 years

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Other Music documentary (2019- directed by Puloma Basu and Rob Hatch-Miller) review by Dina Hornreich

“It is harder to put together than to take apart.” A plain and not-so simple comment coming from the former Other Music Record Store co-owners, Josh Madell and Chris Vanderloo, who are prominently featured in the film, as these words underscore a scene in which their crew is dismantling their once hallowed CD sales racks in preparation for the store’s reluctant closure. OM used to herald as a beacon of hope in NYC’s bustling offbeat East Village neighborhood, a cultural hub known as St. Marks Place – not far from New York University. (If you asked any New Yorker for directions, they would enthusiastically tell you to simply “get off at the stop for Astor Place Station from the #6 or #4 [subway] train: you will see the gigantic cube immediately after exiting the station...can’t miss it!”)

The OM store opened its doors in 1996, and officially closed in 2016. Twenty years is a very good run for any kind of establishment such as this one, especially in the Big Apple – a fact that was not taken lightly by the two makers of this film who each were an employee and a regular customer at the establishment themselves! And like the store itself: the film is an endeavor for music nerds by music nerds. (And, obviously, this Dagger Zine review is no different.)

For creatively inclined weirdos like us, OM was a place of refuge. It was a major meta-musical mecca that happened to take the form of a retail outlet which is a very bold endeavor to consider: an unusual existence as a cultural outlet that strove to challenge our knowledge, expand our awareness, and promote the discovery of completely unknown (even uncomfortable) expressions. This mentality was not conducive whatsoever to the slick sales-driven experience one might come to expect upon shopping for any traditional kind of consumable commodities. And we certainly did not receive that kind of treatment while shopping there anyway!

OM’s purpose was contrary to basic principles of economics because it was run by artistic types who believed in a much higher purpose behind what they were selling: it was a community focused approach. In doing so, they completely confounded the basic notion that we were purchasing mere commercial products to be unloaded for profit (like toothpaste). The store’s very existence was a subversive act of culture jamming in and of itself. This information in conjunction with a solid awareness of the cut-throat and risky nature involved with doing any kind of enterprising endeavors in NYC is extremely pertinent. (I was once told that any restaurant in NYC would be far more successful if it were in another location simply because the competition alone would be considerably less stiff.)

Instead, they were offering something very unusual to their customers by incorporating some kind of pseudo-quasi-intellectual discourse using extraordinarily inventively stylistic fusions and/or varied often inconceivable sonic experiments to create such astute, pithy, and massively passionate descriptions that would be entirely ineffective as a sales strategy to the less tolerant/picky shoppers at the overpowering Tower Records across the street. The store had a unique energy that was entirely its own manifestation. Bin categories had mysterious names such as: in, then, decadanse, etc. that baffled even the artists whose own work was often filed underneath them, as evidenced by the hesitant testimony provided by indie rock luminary Dean Wareham (of the bands Galaxie 500 and Luna). In fact, these idiosyncratically descriptive insider taxonomies were typically used as a rite of passage upon orienting new store employees to OM’s unique aesthetic.

The delectably raw live in-store performance footage of more acquired tastes, but definitely well-loved by those “in the know,” included bands who simply could not have thrived in the same ways at more conventional outlets: The Apples in Stereo, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Rapture, etc. The most delightfully peculiar act might have been delivered by a performer named Gary Wilson whose legendary appearance began with him surreptitiously entering the store while beneath a blanket and then (from behind the scenes, presumably) covering himself in talcum powder prior to seizing the stage with unabashedly alarming flamboyance – with only the playful tunes that would we expect to appropriately match that indelible image so gloriously!

And that was precisely the point: they were unequivocally rebelling against more conventional music consumption habits by offering an entirely different kind of taste-making experience that was kind of less palatable overall – and, in doing so, they even helped launch the careers of some important figures: Vampire Weekend, Animal Collective, and Interpol. The description of the “consignment” process for emerging artists who managed to attain a place on their sanctified shelves seemed extraordinarily modest considering the scope and nature of the impact it offered. There was a lot of social currency behind the OM brand.

The inclusion of a parody skit starring Aziz Anzari and Andy Blitz (available here as well https://youtu.be/YN1mKiQbi4g), followed by the various customer testimonials (including actor and musician Jason Schwartzman), indicated that they may have exuded more than a hint of an unflatteringly, even off-putting, air of NYC hipster pretentiousness akin to that portrayed in the Nick Hornby book, Stephen Frears movie, and/or the new Hulu series (involving both Hornby and Frears): High Fidelity. However, there were clearly very good reasons for them to do this: They represented an extreme mishmash of strange characters who collectively embodied all the historically marginalized shapes, sizes, colors among other attributes that would not have been celebrated (or considered marketable) elsewhere. If they weren’t a little snooty, they probably would have been mocked entirely – as evidenced by an astute and pithy comment by a long-time store employee describing Animal Collective as appearing like a “sinister Fraggle Rock on acid.”

These artists never aspired to becoming real “rock stars” anyway – on the contrary, they embodied the antithesis of that concept. (A point made abundantly clear as they bookended the film with footage of ordinary musicians simply marching through the streets of NYC.) Literally, OM offered shelter to those of us who are able to truly appreciate the anthemic idea behind the phrase: “songs in the key of Z.” It was a place for gathering the outsiders among outsiders, in other words.

It is impossible to ignore various impressive personalities who made appearances throughout the film, in both large and small roles. This includes but is not limited to major NYC scene contributors such as Lizzy Goodman, author of the equally compelling and similarly themed book: Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock’n Roll in New York City 2001-2011. Footage in the film included key figures in influential bands including: TV on the Radio, Le Tigre, The National, Vampire Weekend, Yeah Yeah Yeahs (all of whom are also featured in Goodman’s book). You can also see glimpses of varied lesser known, yet supremely compelling figures of that era, including writers Kandia Krazy Horse and Geeta Dayal, and former store employees such as Lisa Garrett and Gerald Hammill.

These conversations take place until we eventually witness the demise of Tower across the street (and its many ilk of like-minded big box stores) which clearly signaled the ever-looming end for Vanderloo and Madell’s opus-like enterprise. A point that musician Stephin Merritt, best known for so many stellar masterpieces with his longest-running outfit, The Magnetic Fields, emphasizes upon casually observing the degrading presence of a fitness studio franchise that has since taken up residence in the spot that used to house Tower’s second floor. (I failed to try and restrain myself from recalling a new sense of irony from the lyrical lines that Merritt himself had written and recorded around 1991: “Why do we still live here.. In this repulsive town? All our friends are in New York.”)

There is also a bit of an underlying insinuation only apparent from random customer shots throughout the store regarding a possible impact from the Rough Trade Records shop that had recently opened in Brooklyn around the time of OM’s closing. This is exceedingly apparent to this biased writer herself who personally ventured out to that Williamsburg location last year for an in-store performance with NYU Punk Professor, Vivien Goldman, who had just published her own book Revenge of the She Punks. An event whose audience clearly included some members of the OM community featured in this film as I recall the store had heavily lauded her Resolutionary compilation album release prior to its official closing.

As the film successfully affirms the significance behind record store culture (especially in a global hub like NYC) which has long been hailed as a sacred gathering space for various misfits and weirdos who might find significantly less understanding and/or productive social outlets in other circumstances; its unavoidable bittersweet conclusion dramatically asserts how disappointing it is for us to witness the complete loss in their consistently tenuous financial viability as we are well into the digital information age – if not for the simple fact that paying for music (or any kind of intellectual property) is more commonly perceived as an anachronistic practice which is a clear and painful affront to all the prescient creative geniuses who are struggling to make an honest living off their work.

The film highlights the many multifaceted aspects that we fondly and endearingly associate with the appreciation of music that lies at the heart of the irrational fervor behind record collecting culture: the smell of the vinyl itself, the enormous visual impact around the artists’ choices for cover art, the substantial weight it possesses when we remove it from the sleeve, the delicacy necessary to handle vinyl so as to minimize any potential damage, its often very limited quantities as it is not cost-efficient to produce (the obscurity is intrinsically part of the exhilaration surrounding this “hunt”) among other substantial inconveniences that more or less confirm this as an unproductive – if not entirely illogical – endeavor overall!

Of course, it has always been very apparent to us that we were engaged in some insanely addictive bizarre kinds of quests that kept leading us to this absurd little locale in the first place – desperately trying to pacify some nebulous and insatiable deep cravings that we couldn’t always articulate… yet it always kept us coming back for more! As Mac McCaughan from the bands Superchunk and Portastic, as well as co-owner of Merge Records, astutely concludes: “They knew what you wanted before you knew.” (Of course, they did!)

The overarching and staunch message of this film is most apparent during the final closing scenes when we are eavesdropping on a conversation that the former co-owner, Josh Madell, is having with his young daughter about simply streaming the Hamilton Soundtrack on Spotify because the vinyl copy would have cost her $90 in the store. Perhaps even more ironic, of course, might be suggested by the very relevant context in which we find ourselves today: the annual Record Store Day celebratory event with which the film’s re-release was planned to coincide obviously could not happen. As a result, I was reluctantly watching it, albeit self-consciously, on my 13” laptop screen in my home office during the self-quarantine of COVID-19. Half the proceeds for the “tickets” were to be used to support one of my favorite local record shops here in Denver, CO, Twist and Shout, who may or may not be able to reopen as this pandemic situation evolves.

There are bigger questions to contemplate as the tide of change has only just begun in ways that only a tragedy, such as a worldwide pandemic, can facilitate for even the most obstinate luddites who have no choice but to incorporate regular use of digital formats in their daily habits – and we totally have, of course! This documentary remains as unequivocal evidence of the viability behind OM as it stood as an historic cultural hub that transcended the fundamental premise behind a commercial retail outlet. (Even though retail was once considered the only aspect of the industry where substantial money could be made. In fact, a measure of an artists’ success was often the number of albums they actually sold.) As its impact clearly exceeds its impressive years as a store-front operated business, it may also indicate a shortcoming in mainstream outlets who tend to ignore, silence, dismiss, and otherwise relegate the disempowered voices in our community – which, of course, are the major reasons that forced us to seek out these alternate forums in the first place.

The role of arts and culture for society is in fact to provide the very same opportunities that OM offered to us, which is (to reiterate that point from above) to provide an opportunity for discourse that challenges our knowledge, expands our awareness, and promotes the discovery of the completely unknown (even uncomfortable) expressions. These conversations give our lives meaning and force us to continually improve ourselves on many levels. While such commentaries could be considered an acquired taste or even an entirely esoteric endeavor, the crucial sensibilities they offer hold enormous potential for a world that honestly seems to need to hear from us… now more than ever!

If only we could find a better way to invite the integration of our perspectives into the bigger conversations? So that we can participate in the innovations for the changed world that will be waiting for us – and to ensure that it will be a more inclusive place for all of us. Which is perhaps what we ultimately (and so desperately) need, want, and deserve. The alternatives seem frighteningly Orwellian… at the risk of seeming a bit histrionic.

http://www.factorytwentyfive.com/other-music/?fbclid=IwAR3wtvtOKKC46YmfwjB6zv0wp5GMh4YBHFuWk0aLOti5m2NSs8PFChjrK4M

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freshpoppedculture · 5 years

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10 Years After The Debut In Question, This Is A Ranked List of The 10 Best Episodes of Parks and Recreation, Arranged In Descending Order From The Number 10, To The Number 1

Editor’s Note: Hey, did you realize that today was the 10th anniversary of the day that Parks and Recreation first premiered on NBC? Yeah, neither did I! But after the realization, and the two hours of crying that went with me staring straight into the anxious void of aging and death, I decided it would be as good a time as any to resurrect this one from the ol’ Geek Binge archives. Basically,…

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#Adam Scott #Amy Poehler #Aubrey Plaza #Aziz Anzari #Chris Pratt #NBC #Nick Offerman #Parks and Recreation #Ranked #Rashida Jones #Rob Lowe

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citasyquotes · 8 years

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Aziz Anzari

Modern Romance

Penguin press books

#aziz anzari #modern romance #penguin press books

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shenannikans · 6 years

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My 2018 in Books, Films, and TV Series

To most, 2018 was one hell of a year, to the point that they’d say that it was bad. To me, it almost seemed like a heightened version of 2017. For me, 2017 was a transitional year. 2017 was like the ‘neutral’ option on the Likert scale. 2018 felt like it tipped the scale, so to speak. It just depended if you were a glass half-full or glass half-empty kind of person.

2018 was an improvement for me in terms of allowing myself to consume more media, because consuming media is something that I love to do, be it in the form of novels, books, films, series, fanfiction, what-have-you. I wanted to devour it all. (Not really all of it. I’m still a bit picky.)

Books were something that I aspired to read a lot of this 2018, so I did in the first three months of the year. I even had a goal on Goodreads that said I would read 50 books by the end of the year. In between classes and everything else, it kind of got hard for me to keep up. Especially since I didn’t haul my Kindle around regularly for fear that it might meet the same fate as all my deceased Kindles. So, alas, I didn’t reach the goal. But what I really got into was fanfiction. Specifically, Taekook fanfiction.

Taekook is a ship that consists of two of the youngest BTS band members, Taehyung and Jeongguk. I really got into the ship because they were always flirting with each other. They really make a cute pair. I have yet to find out if they really mean something more to each other in real life, but for now, I make do with fictional works that are so impressive that sometimes I mistake them for the real thing. This is what I’ve been reading for the past few months. I even have a Google Drive folder of all of the fanfiction I’ve read. I am so deep into it.

In terms of film, I consumed more from the comedy genre than I had anticipated. I saw Bo Burnham’s Make Happy, Ali Wong’s A Hard Knock Wife, and John Mulaney’s stand-up comedy. I think I also saw a few of Aziz Anzari’s before he was cancelled. I saw The Lure and The Space Between Us. The former more impressive than the latter (I had a lot of high expectations for The Space Between Us, and it was never met). At home, my brother and I saw The Garden of Words, Maquia: When The Promised Flower Blooms, Summer Wars, Nausicaa and The Valley of The Wind, and Whisper of the Heart. The last two from Ghibli.

I saw a lot of films in the cinemas as well. I saw the less-than-impressive adaptation of A Wrinkle In Time with my brother, which was important to us because A Wrinkle In Time is one of our childhood books. My brother and I saw Incredibles 2, as well as Black Panther (How DARE I even forget?!). We saw Deadpool 2, Solo, Annihilation, Aquaman, and Avengers: Infinity War. And let us not forget, the creme de la creme of all of films--Spiderman: Into The Spiderverse.

I watched a lot more TV series this year, five to be exact, which is impressive since I don’t think I watched any TV series last 2017. They were the following:

Brooklyn Nine Nine

Hilda

A Discovery of Witches

While You Were Sleeping

SKAM Italia

All in all, this has been a really good yet challenging year for me. It was challenging because there were a lot of stuff that happened that would send me into a spiral of despair if I dare to even remember, and it was good because I finally allowed myself to see, watch, read all of this.

#posts

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dailypapernews · 3 years

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Master of None season 3 coming to Netflix in May

Aziz Anzari is back. Netflix After four years, Master of None is returning to Netflix. The streaming giant revealed in a tweet Wednesday that Master of None’s third season would drop in May, wedging the news among a crammed release schedule for the month that also includes Lucifer Season 5 Part 2, The Kominsky Method and all three Back to the Future movies. Co-created by and starring Aziz…

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mercerislandbooks · 4 years

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Girls With Bright Futures: A Conversation

You’ll be seeing a book on the Island Books new paperback fiction table February 2nd, if you haven’t already spied it on several most anticipated releases of 2021 lists, including Newsweek, Refinery29 and Popsugar. With an eye catching cover, a local setting and an instantly intriguing premise, Girls With Bright Futures is the book everyone is going to be talking about. Taking place in Seattle at the fictional Elliott Bay Academy, and told from three alternating points of view, we get an inside look into the cutthroat world of college admissions and the unrelenting pressure on both the kids applying for college and the parents trying to ensure their success.

I was hooked from the very first page, plunged into the high stakes of vying for the last early admission spot at Stanford, and thankful that my college application days are now in the distant past! Seattle residents and co-authors, Tracy Dobmeier and Wendy Katzman, were kind enough to answer a few of my questions about their book and the writing process. And be sure to check out the details for their book launch at Island Books at the end of the blog!

Welcome Tracy and Wendy! How did you two decide to write a book together?

We’ve been friends for more than 20 years. In fact, Wendy’s husband and Tracy first met when they were right out of college living in Washington, DC. We all ended up in Seattle in the mid-1990s and connected when our oldest kids were toddlers, and the two of us became instant friends. Over the years, we’ve supported each other through careers, motherhood, community volunteer work, and many life events—some wonderful, others terrifying. Throughout it all, we bonded over our deep reliance on humor and our tremendous mutual respect. It’s not an exaggeration to say that we always felt a collaboration on something was inevitable. But for years, the perfect idea eluded us. On long, angsty walks, we batted around book ideas (always non-fiction in those early days), business ideas, and even an idea for a board game. But at the bottom of it all was a desire to better understand the culture of motherhood today—all its rewards and privileges, and on the flip side, the judgment and toxic self-doubt that plague so many of us.

Finally, just when we were starting to launch our kids from the nest, we read two books that really set us off on this path, but for very different reasons. The first was Modern Romance which was a collaboration between the comedian Aziz Anzari and Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist from Columbia, in which they looked at how romance and courtship rituals have evolved over the last 100 years or so. Something about that the way that book took on a culturally relevant topic, combining humor and research really resonated with us and got us thinking about whether we could do something similar with modern motherhood and friendship. But we quickly realized we were neither stand-up comedians nor sociologists, so we were still casting about for an idea.

And then we read another amazing book—Daring Greatly by Brene Brown. We were so inspired. For years, we’d been telling our kids that it’s OK to try new stuff even if it means failing sometimes, and yet we’d been unwilling to take that kind of risk ourselves. And so we thought: If we were going to “go big” and really risk being vulnerable, what would we do? All of the sudden we realized we wanted to write fiction (and please believe us: writing a novel and sharing it with the world is an excruciating exercise in vulnerability!). We wanted to create something, to be free to dream up characters and stories and worlds. The only flaw in this plan was that neither of us had ever written a word of fiction. If only we could figure out how to write a novel, we believed our work ethic and willingness to hold ourselves accountable to each other would get us the rest of the way there. So what did we do? We kid you not...we pulled out our computers and googled: “How do you write a novel?” That was at the end of February, 2016—and the rest is history!

What was the inspiration for Girls With Bright Futures?

Because our book is launching in the wake of the Operation Varsity Blues college admissions scandal, most people assume that salacious news story was our inspiration, but that’s actually not the case. In fact, prior to Girls with Bright Futures, we had already written an entire manuscript featuring college admissions mania as a major theme, but that manuscript was submitted to publishers in 2018 without success. Forced to go back to the drawing board, we ultimately conceived of Girls with Bright Futures in late 2018 and had not only plotted out the entire book but had nearly completed our first draft when the scandal first broke in March 2019!

As far as why we chose this topic in particular, it's kind of a long story! But in a nutshell, when our older boys were in the midst of the college admissions process, each of our husbands suffered a life-threatening health crisis. Thankfully (knock on wood), our guys are alright, but it was such a bizarre coincidence that we both experienced such intense brushes with mortality during the high anxiety of the college admissions process—it felt like a sign we couldn’t ignore. Initially, our writing was more therapy than anything, enabling us to try to make sense of all our feelings. At the same time, we became fascinated by what seemed to be an increasingly competitive and anxiety provoking college admissions process for our kids. We wanted to explore the impacts of all this on families, friendships, students, and school communities.

The pacing is so good in your narrative, what was your writing process like to make that happen?

Well first, thank you for saying that! We’re staring at each other over Zoom right now trying to remember how it all came together! Before we start writing, we work out every scene—e.g., whose point of view, where the scene starts and ends, and what we need to accomplish. Every scene has a specific purpose to keep the plot unfolding. In addition, we really wanted our story to illustrate and mirror the real-life phenomenon of how an anxiety-fueled action by one character can provoke escalating responses in others. Some of our pacing derives from this tension. Finally, we intentionally juxtaposed humorous or satirical scenes against more serious ones, and dialogue-heavy scenes with more expository-laden scenes. After all, variety is the spice of life (ugh—and cliches are the bane of a writer’s existence!).

How did you decide what kind of representation you wanted in your characters?

Our overarching goal was to write a compelling (even shocking!) fictional depiction of the toxicity of the college admissions process for parents, families, friendships, and communities. There were many different approaches we could have taken and we considered all of these, including race, ethnicity, and income/class. As two white women, we were conscious of not wanting to misappropriate any stories, but we did want to find a way to show how racism rears its head in this setting. We decided to make our three main characters white women of varying socioeconomic levels while incorporating plot twists (no spoilers here) and a whole roster of women whose races and ethnicities are intentionally ambiguous to expose some common racist assumptions in many high school communities. Telling this story through a lens of extreme income inequality allowed us to shine a light on the role of that particular trend as a major driver of anxiety and bad behavior in many school communities. Our hope is that we’ve constructed a story that will stimulate discussion on a range of social justice issues.

What was surprising to you about writing your first book?

Writing and publishing a book are two totally different endeavors. On the writing front, we had no idea how little time we’d spend actually writing our book versus planning it on the front end and revising/editing it on the back end. In terms of publishing, we were initially surprised to learn how much marketing is involved and that the majority of that marketing involves social media (even more so now because we’re launching in a pandemic). As neither of us were remotely active on social media before our publishing journey, we had to push ourselves to overcome our discomfort and there has also been a (very) steep learning curve (like what the heck is an Instagram story for and why do we have to do it?). We’ve been fortunate to have digital natives (i.e., our children) who owe us big-time for all the years we spent raising them. Check out our social media game on Instagram @katzndobs.

What are you working on now?

While we can no longer sit side-by-side at Tracy’s house, we’ve continued working together over Zoom. Our next novel isn’t a sequel to Girls with Bright Futures, but it’s set in a similar world with more parents behaving badly. That’s about all we can say right now!!

And last but not least, at Island Books the staff is always asked about what we’re reading. What are the two of you reading and recommending now?

Tracy: My favorite read over the holidays was The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, and I am currently reading Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour.

Wendy: Eliza Starts a Rumor by Jane Rosen was my favorite read over the holidays, and His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie is my current read.

Photo by @KristenSycamorePhotography

Tracy and Wendy will be at Island Books on Saturday, February 6th from 10am to 2:30 pm for a Covid-era signing of Girls With Bright Futures. A free custom Hello Robin cookie is their special gift to you with purchase of their book, while supplies last! So put on your mask and stop by to support these lovely debut authors and their fantastic book. Hope to see you there!

-- Lori

#island books #lori robinson #girlswithbrightfutures #katzndobs #2021debuts #bookclub #debutauthors #tracy dobmeier #wendy katzman

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mizalok · 7 years

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that aziz anzari article really hits close home. it reminds me of times i’ve also been uncomfortable on dates with men- and how i also didn’t react the way i should have, i was young after all

my heart goes to that girl and to all women who have to face this type of behavior

#/mt

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mattress-on-the-floor · 5 years

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Tinder pages, Exhaustion and More Self-Reflection

@gracelevinsondesign

Grace Levinson’s webcomic provides a satirical look into the world those of us participating in 2019’s dating scene know all-too-well: the tinder page.

(retrieved from @gracelevinsondesign)

tinder is sort of the phonebook of millennial culture, and it’s especially prevalent within Indie skate subcultures as the relied-on method for meeting people to bring to DIY Avant Garden shows or message at 1am for a lazy hookup request.

the exhaustion around dating apps as a whole seems to be becoming ubiquitous, with many conversations around the topic beginning with tired sighs or hesitant venturing into the details of the experience as a whole. As Aziz Ansari (2016) outlines, we seem to have reached a level of jadedness and disillusionment with the whole process that we’re getting lazy, creating bad habits with the apps (therefore real, human interaction), and perhaps even noticing the same disappointing patterns over and over within a culture of abundance (p.92-3).

Grace’s art takes the classic tinder profile format and satirizes some of the key players you see all the times, going the extra mile to also outline the probable outcomes of the date (if there even is one in the first place). A reliance on niche, yet often extremely predictable personas within these cultures allows for a sense of satire that along with @tinyhat_skatelife and @theboyandhisdickies, calls out the shitty behaviour and eye-roll worthy presentations of self that pop up all the time when you tap into the digital public sphere of subcultures.

(retrieved from @gracelevinsondesign)

while Grace mostly takes her aim at male skaters, it’s also important to note that everyone who participates in these cultural practices is fair game. like all of the other female-run feminist meme and comic accounts I’ve highlighted so far, the authors of these pieces have no issue calling out the contradictory behaviour in other women and most importantly, themselves.

(retrieved from @gracelevinsondesign)

the ability to turn the microscope on oneself and laugh about how ridiculous we can all be seems to be a pattern that is primarily deployed in female meme culture. perhaps as individuals who may sit with varying degrees of privilege at varying intersections, the tendency to self-reflect is more inherent as it often necessary to understand the patriarchal system that is stacked against us, in varying degrees of severity (as the concept of intersectionality explains). In her article, Ging (2017) touches on the anti-feminist, alt-right and incel movements emerging (in the primarily white, straight cis male demographics) online, where social media platforms and meme culture provided catalysts for these movements to catch on (p.2). often within these realms, the messages of the memes are littered in hate and violent rhetoric towards women and POC (as well as Jewish and often LGBTQ+ folks), however rarely would we ever see an alt-right pepe meme author that self-reflects on the outrageousness of his own behaviour.

the ability to laugh at yourself, in my opinion, gives you a little more footing to be able to call out the ridiculousness of others in a lighthearted way, much like all of these accounts do such an amazing job of.

Sources:

Anzari, Aziz (2016) “Online Dating”, Modern Romance, Penguin Books,

Ging, D. (2017) Alphas, betas and incels: Theorizing the masculinities of the manosphere. Men and Masculinities. 1-20.

Hasinoff, Amy (2012) “Sexting as Media Production: Rethinking Social Media and Sexuality.” New Media and Society 15.4

Pepe the Frog. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/pepe-the-frog.

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