#Rhetorical Analysis

[rezakiofficial]

Mann I love this game so much im writing one of my essays on it. 💀💀

[beelzebubsbois]

You ever find a post so weird you want to do a rhetorical Analysis of it??

[cuhcuhcuhcory]

The Cool Economy- An Analysis of Cosplaying as Poor

I wrote an essay about this concept and it got 100% My teacher gave me the ultimate compliment by asking if she could use it as an example paper in future classes. Sooo I've never posted any of my own lengthier writings on fb before but here goes! I'd love to hear what any of yall think!

TLDR is that these are the new major trends in aesthetics and advertisements. We are a culture that is bombarded with advertisements and this compass presents a sort of new visual shorthand. FFO fashion, pop culture, cultural analysis, media literacy, celebrity culture, etc

I wrote an essay about this concept and it got 100% My teacher gave me the ultimate compliment by asking if she could use it as an example paper in future classes. Sooo I've never posted any of my own lengthier writings on fb before but here goes! I'd love to hear what any of yall think!

TLDR is that these are the new major trends in aesthetics and advertisements. We are a culture that is bombarded with advertisements and this compass presents a sort of new visual shorthand. FFO fashion, pop culture, cultural analysis, media literacy, celebrity culture, etc

When celebrity figures do something noteworthy, not only are there tens of thousands of recreation looks and how-to videos that sweep across social media, but there are also tens of thousands of commentary videos picking apart the content with the kind of scalpel sociologists would approve of. One of my favorite TikTok creators in this genre goes by the name of CozyAkili aka Akili Moree. His videos center around concepts of fashion and design that exist along an axis from high to low cost and discuss where they intersect with the concepts of private pleasure versus public display. Within this framework, he evaluates celebrity culture through social media with a special focus on what facets of the celebrity lifestyle they are selling back to us at any given moment and how that lands on this scale. This is important to understand because since we are integrated and inundated we are with visual messages as a society, having a quick metric to make sense of what we are seeing has never been more crucial. This evaluation system is a tool to dissect the subliminal so that we can continue to maintain a watchful eye on the ever growing discrepancy between the wealthy and the working class, or more specifically, how the wealthy use symbols from the working class to blur the line between performing wealth and performing poverty.

The four quadrants of this evaluation system pull from a variety of sources, both cultural and sociological and are each named to encapsulate the spirit of the intersections. On the low cost side of things, we have the concept of Domestic Cozy, reminiscent of the Danish concept of Hygge. Domestic Cozy rejects discomfort, danger, ceremony and deprivation and embraces things soft, luxurious and effortless. This concept was coined by writer Venkatesh Rao alongside its sister concept of Premium Mediocre in his blog RibbonFarm in 2019. Rao writes that these phrases are stylistic fingerprints of the world that act as a sort of instant classification system– a combination of visual symbols where a simple glance tells you how much something is trying to fit in with or eschew the norm (Rao). Within this dichotomy, Premium Mediocre is like bedazzling the norms, whereas Domestic Cozy is indifferent to the norms altogether. Premium Mediocre is the finest bottle of wine at Olive Garden whereas Domestic Cozy is more like a hot cup of tea in your favorite mug. At its heart, the former style is mediocre with a superfluous touch of premium but not enough to ruin the delicious essential mediocrity (Rao). Because these two concepts are rooted in the medium, the remaining quadrants represent the extremes.

High Peasant and Thrift Store Realness both exemplify the other end of this stylistic spectrum. Thrift Store Realness is at the intersection of public display and low cost, covering the bulk of people living to look hot and get by without pretense of fanciness, just casual and classic at low cost. In terms of larger social themes, Thrift Store Realness makes practicality look good but not so flashy that it takes away from its functionality. Things can even be cluttered and a little grimy aesthetically but not in a way that inhibits its undeniable edge– it's the spirit of finding (or being) a diamond in the rough. Think Macklemore’s 2012 hit– “I wear your GrandDad’s clothes. I look incredible.” High Peasant, on the other hand takes a more direct style over substance approach, but one that intentionally grounds itself by marrying the fantastical to the established in an attempt to blur the lines between wealthy and working people.

High Peasant is maximalist and artistic in a way that appears more original than Premium Mediocre but equally lofty. For instance, if Domestic Cozy is a grocery store bag salad eaten out of the bag and Premium Mediocre is eating salads from the “fresh” menu at fast food place in between side hustles, High Peasant is doing a pop up, high concept, high fashion photoshoot inside a McDonalds and salad is the concept. It visually ties the trappings of the working class with the access and privilege of the wealthy. This puts emphasis on the grunge amidst the pastoral to act as a shared language between class lines. Though I am a fan of fashion, there are things about this aesthetic concept specifically that are worthwhile to examine.

High Peasant presentations are ultimately still a fiction. The artistry of this aesthetic lies in making recognizable symbols feel alien and otherworldly in levels of cool but outside of that constructed reality, it also touches on the bitter truth that an ultra wealthy life for most of us is truly an alien concept. Otherworldly is also apt because the wealthy play with visual cues that don’t exist in their world. By playing with trappings of normalcy, in some cases they actually reinforce their otherworldliness– cementing their celebrity in this extremely visual and social world with almost nostalgia-like bait. This explains why some attempts at High Peasant as an aesthetic fall flat to their audiences because their artistic rendering highlights the differences between us instead of unifying us through intention.

While celebrities use aspects of working class culture to make themselves seem approachable, it is crucial to remember that they are not and do not want to be working class– and though the fiction they construct might look similar to something you lived through, at the end of the day your compassion and recognition of these shared symbols is really a way to make you forget how large the inequality gap has grown– to feel familiar and forget the debt that separates us. There is a supreme irony to me in the idea that the best way for brands and celebrities to see and sell themselves or package products to appeal to the masses is by looking poor or by taking ideas from people who are poor or exist within the Thrift Store Realness category.

The contradiction of new things manufactured to look old and articles of clothing priced out of the range of the people who it's modeled after comes off darkly comedic because as Akili points out, “instead of wealthy people lifting other people out of poverty, wealthy people try to make themselves feel better about being so wealthy by acting like they’re poor” (Moree). For wealthy people, the reality of being poor does not exist and maybe hasn’t existed for generations in your family due to the prevalence of nepotism in celebrity culture. Therefore it is a novelty to eat cup noodles when you’ve never had to wonder where your next meal would come from. It is boundary pushing to pose in a dingy house with a busted couch and 70s brown vertical paneling if you are worth $2.1 Billion dollars (Forbes). Moree calls High Peasant cosplaying as poor– cosplay, as in fantasy characters, comic book conventions or some other halloween-esque costume that one can put on and play or act as the character they're dressed as. In these scenarios, their positive gain is the freedom that comes with donning a costume and the spirit of camaraderie that grows naturally between avid fans of the same thing.

Translating this to wealthy celebrities, the gain is similar but often pointed in the direction of commerce. The end result differs on what the purpose of the post is– as so much marketing happens via brand endorsements on social media. The concepts explored by Akili Moree and Venkatesh Rao and other theorists represent the newest pop culture metric to evaluate how social media is used to evoke responses from its audience and what symbols it uses. This evolving framework of media literacy is an important step in being cognizant of the world around us as we become increasingly digital. The commerce piece of the puzzle is one of our current economy’s most obvious ticking time bombs and social media makes it possible to not only see this happen but also to track how its sold back to us.

We are in an era unlike any before. The interconnectedness of the internet and the growing reliance/addiction to social media has opened up a game of uncertainty. In this world, all interested players take advantage of aesthetics to drive participation and compete for our attention– all tracked and monetized down to the millisecond. Shadow marketing practices have existed since the 1980s, where the creators of the advertisement try to sell you something all while making it a secret that you are being sold something at all (Barbaro). Substantial deregulation of advertising that took place in the Reagan Era, as well as the rise of product placement as an overall film trend, and commercialization of two of the primary social media platforms (facebook adding the marketplace feature in 2016 and instagram replacing the home button with the shop button in 2020) has led us to this moment– the ultimate fusion between being marketed to and being entertained (Barbaro). This is the beauty of the chart at this moment in time and the wisdom in listening to those who are young enough to see the veil as it grows alongside them.

With supreme wealth inequality growing exponentially each year it is important every day, every hour, every flick of the thumb to be aware of what you’re being sold and who is doing the selling. The gen-Z/tiktok generation and creators like Akilli Moree are especially unique and valuable to listen to about matters like these because they are the test generation of interconnectedness in society on the level that we live now. They are the first truly cradle to grave internet generation, as they were coming up after most of the large technological advances had already been made. In addition to the technology, they grew up after all the deregulation of advertising practices in the 80s led to the full commercialization and study of child spending habits as a system to control spending habits of Americans on a larger scale (Barbaro). The children, who grew up in the 24 hr ad cycle have grown into young adults unphased by the prevalence of advertisements and sponsored posts in their hunt for authenticity. They came up in it so they are less fooled by it.

If Premium Mediocre is extended legroom on an airplane and Domestic Cozy is bringing your own pillow and blanket to the flight, High Peasant would be buying out your whole row or section but maybe not your whole flight. Thrift Store Realness represents road tripping or communal transit such as bus or train. These concepts can function bigger theoretically than the world of celebrity culture but they are the easiest examples to see since they tend to range into the cartoonish. Some try for art and land amongst the tacky. Some embrace tacky to the point of camp and it feels effortlessly cool, while others try to be effortlessly cool and it just doesn’t land at all. In all scenarios, this compass of private pleasure to public display vs the money factor helps us evaluate how this game of aesthetics is being used to market people and trends to the masses. This is important to think about because these are the new major trends in aesthetics and advertisements. Being a culture that is bombarded with advertisements has major downsides, so adapting a new shorthand to categorize will help individuals have an easier time navigating authenticity in this new economy of cool.

/////end pls clap//////

Works Cited

Barbaro, Adriana. “Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood.” Jeremy Earp. 2008. Uploaded to Youtube in 2017. youtube.com/watch?v=tMaRsR7orTk

Facebook Business. “Reach People Where They’re Already Shopping with Ads in Marketplace.” June 4, 2018. facebook.com/business/news/reach-people-where-theyre-already-shopping-with-ads-in-marketplace

Forbes. “Inside the 21 billion dollar Kim Kardashian-Kanye West Divorce.” Stories. 2022. www.forbes.com/stories/billionaires/inside-the-21-billion-kim-kardashiankanye-west-divorce/

Jennings, Rebecca. “Why Are So Many Brands Pivoting To Coziness?” Vox.com. Jan 15, 2020. www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/1/15/21063670/hygge-self-care-domestic-cozy-marketing-brands-haus

Lorenz, Taylor. “The Instagram Aesthetic is Over.” The Atlantic. April 2019. www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/04/influencers-are-abandoning-instagram-look/587803/

Macklemore. “Thrift Shop.” Ryan Lewis. The Heist. 2012. Lyrics accessed via genius.com. /genius.com/Macklemore-and-ryan-lewis-thrift-shop-lyrics

Mahamba, Joy Anelisiwe. “Aesthetics of Today: ‘High Peasant’ Fashion and What it Means.” Bubblegum Club. February 2022. bubblegumclub.co.za/discourse/aesthetics-of-today-high-peasant-fashion-and-what-it-means/

Moree, Akili. “Cosplaying as Poor” Tik Tok. 2/14/2022. www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR53Fm54/

Moree, Akili. “Kim Kardashian’s Sink” Tik Tok. 10/8/2021 tiktok.com/t/ZTR53BtEn/ 

Rao, Venkatesh. “Domestic Cozy.” RibbonFarm Blog. Volumes 1-7. 2019. ribbonfarm.com/series/domestic-cozy/

Rao, Venkatesh. “The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millennial.” RibbonFarm Blog. August 2017. ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/17/the-premium-mediocre-life-of-maya-millennial/

Stanton, Liz. “Instagram is phasing out the Shop tab” Hootsuite Blog. September 2022. blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-updates/instagram/instagram-is-phasing-out-the-shop-tab

Stanton, Liz. “Instagram Reels in 2022: A Simple Guide for Businesses” Hootsuite Blog. August 2022.

[khalidistan]

I'm being mildly facetious but I also just have been thinking abt this so I'm gonna ramble, this is also gonna mostly be abt drake's verse bc (stares at a wall)

who told you badman don't dance? / who told you gangsters don't dance? even with a weap on my hip, I dance

this lyric is saying how men who are typically viewed as "tough" are still able to indulge in lightness and joy. when hus says "even with a weap on my hip, I dance" he's contrasting the image of the violent, fighting man with the levity of dancing

touch my forehead, chest, left shoulder, then right side / praying my brothers are good outside / I know the vibes, I know the vibes

aside from the fact that drake is jewish and will more often than not don islamic aesthetics (affectionate. literally he should do it more. I want him to say wallahi on the next album) yet is doing the holy cross prayer (? what is the term for this), this part could (in my analogy) relate to praying your comrades are still safe through the revolutionary struggle

you're the one, girl, stop rolling eyes / I find love and it slowly dies

this is like. I really like songs that have this sharp lyrical contrast between love/pursuit/romance and the internal/existential dread, anik does this a lot in his music too. like through all the pain they're still trying to find love and flirt and impress but this little voice in the back of their minds says "I find love and it slowly dies" this also relates to the fact that during armed struggle your lover could literally die. like killed by the colonizer.

trouble is there, trouble is there / trouble been right there, trouble is there / trouble gon' find me anywhere, trouble gon' find me, bubble and wine-y

this part is so resigned, like accepting one's circumstances (see next pull-quote too) and yet drake switches it with "yeah anyways, bubble and winey" I could connect this to constant/hyper-surveillance, deliberate targeting by the state, or just plain bad luck no matter what you do to resist it, but also this is an afrobeats song with drake

they want me dead, but, don't remind me / both hands around you, it's not tiny

we've gone from accepting one's suboptimal/grim circumstances to accepting one's mortality, potentially premature mortality. and yet he pushes it to the back of his brain to focus on the present and his lover. like is that not revolutionary or what (my internet disconnects

if you read to the end of this post I am so sorry for subjecting you to my psychic damage. hope you enjoyed. this is what happens when you let leftists listen to drake

[think-and-write]

Rhetorical Analysis of Gettysburg Address.

[millimatter]

Ok I’m an English major, right?

Can someone PLEASE explain to my why I just now as a 20 year old was told the difference between critical and rhetorical analysis. I feel like this is something I should have learned in high school.

Critical- going purely off of the text

Rhetorical- not only the text but also knowing about the author’s life, historical context, who the intended audience was, and how I as someone in 2023 have biases for or against the text.

BUT, not only that, I have never written or actively used critical analysis in the classroom before. It has only ever been rhetorical analysis in the sense that my teachers will bring in outside information along with the text for us students to use in our essays and broader discussions.

I would even argue that I’ve never used critical analysis other than when analyzing movies for fun because I’m simply too lazy to search out the broader contexts such as director’s intent, historical context, or maybe missed symbolism. Movies are the only analysis that I will purely go off of what’s shown to me.

And I feel like I’ve heard of critical reading SO much but never critical analysis. Idk it just felt like after todays lecture I’ve missed an important baby step that I missed in high school because of dual-credit courses.

[localfaecryptid]

Nothing About Us Without Us

I recently had to do a rhetorical analysis essay for my composition class and I chose Alison Kafer's amazing essay "Imagined Futures". I liked it so much that I decided to publish it to my Substack. The formatting had to be weird due to the assignment requirements so I might post a more polished version where those clunkier bits are taken out, but I also think it's a good template for how to write your first rhetorical essay if you want to dip your toes into the water.

[popcorn-plots]

I'm learning rhetorical analysis :)

Send me fics to rhetorically analyze so I can practiceee

[womynson]

Nurture Versus Nature

Only love is real. And we sure get a taste of that from Bell Hooks. In her essay, “Love as the Practice of Freedom,” Hooks asserts that a strong love ethic will expand our capacity for care and expand our concerns for the oppressed to create order in the United States of America. Hooks supports her assertion by developing a claim supported by historical evidence and addressing the voices of visionary black leaders. Her purpose is to generate a growing consciousness, so we may succeed in achieving an elevated global frequency in fields from politics to ethics and everything in between.  Hooks writes in a strong formal tone for a progressively open-minded audience.

With much of her younger years spent performing famous poetic works from Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning–Hooks took to studying–earning a BA from Stanford University, an MA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a PhD from the University of California-Santa Cruz. Bell Hooks had written just over 30 books in dedication to her life-long journey exposing racism as an internalized suffrage; a support system aimed to create better systemic habits of human behavior. As she once put it: “to think of certain ways of writing as activism is crucial. What does it matter if we write eloquently about decolonization if it’s just white privileged kids reading our eloquent theory about it? Masses of black people suffer from internalized racism, our intellectual work will never impact on their lives if we do not move it out of the academy. That’s why I think mass media is so important” (Poetry Foundation, par. 3). Consequently, her work still carries through years after her death at the age of 69 in 2021 through the books she has written to leave an everlasting impression on young Black and colored philosophers, writers, and literary artists; And of all the accomplishments to have achieved it seems to have been such a privilege “to be named one of our nation’s leading public intellectuals” (Poetry Foundation, par. 4) by the Atlantic. Surely as something so noble of a cause love is, Hooks had to have had plenty for her students and acolytes. My hopes for Bell Hooks are that she holds an immense quality of credibility in the life she became such an addition to, even in her afterlife.

While it is safe to say the United States of America is in quite a transcendental space for progressive movements such as Black Lives Matter to take up space; it has never been easier to reach across communities for support–and away from pain. Well before a rough period of transition out of segregation, “the absence of public spaces where that pain could be articulated, expressed, shared meant that it was held in—festering, suppressing the possibility that this collective grief would be reconciled in community even as ways to move beyond it and continue resistance struggle would be envisioned” (Hooks, par. 6). For some time, the nation would all know this pain and grief all too well. Gratefully, there was one among the many strong black voices we would soon come to remember who had left as a legacy, Martin Luther King, Jr. What King, Jr. knew when he spoke over the crowds, was love–despite the opposing voices harboring ill will against him. That there was success beyond internalized war and above all, “King believed that love is "ultimately the only answer" to the problems facing this nation and the entire planet” (Hooks, par. 9). The key to this success was founded in the choice to love.

Love is arguably the only real concept describing someone who is purely aligned with the soul. On the contrary, acts of evil committed by individuals who plague our planet with materialism are described as soulless. To better examine love, Bell Hooks introduces one Thomas Merton who argues that, “this concept of love assumes that the machinery of buying and selling of needs is what makes everything run. It regards life as a market and love as a variation on free enterprise" (Hooks, par. 8). As a result, emotional connection is lost in the human by the valorizing materialistic natures that be. We can understand historically those who have lived through the civil rights movement “had the power to transform society because the individuals who struggle alone and in community for freedom and justice wanted these gifts to be for all, not just the suffering and the oppressed” (Hooks, par. 15). Visionary black leaders of this “New Age” saw that justice would serve the community, rightfully. Perhaps, it rings true we really do accept the love we think we deserve.

It is at the core of our experience where we witness our own choice in how we relate to and empathize with our own circumstances as emotional beings. Bell Hooks, a feminist theorist who speaks on contemporary issues of race, gender, and media representation in America, presents a compelling and moving argument that addresses a collective effort living moment to moment out of necessity to make this happen. Hooks in her essay “Love as the Practice of Freedom” asserts that a strong love ethic will expand our capacity for such empathy and in doing so resolve our concerns for the oppressed to create national order. She shares that, “often not knowing how to love or even what love is, many people feel emotionally lost; others search for definitions, for ways to sustain a love ethic in a culture that negates human value and valorizes materialism” (Hooks, par. 5). Finding common values and understanding individual ethical parameters can be a great start to this kind of inner work. As such, "Working within community, whether it be sharing a project with another person, or with a larger group, we are able to experience joy in struggle” (Hooks, par. 15). We can also further explore these ideas in our own perception by reviewing historical evidence and readdressing the voices of visionary Black leaders.

Love knows no bounds as it reaches across the technology we use every day, batteries included. Keep in mind the largest marketing segment is mobile gaming with up to 2.5 billion gamers online in the world; And as a credible source of news in technology, Quartz notes: “that 57% of video game players in the U.S. between the ages of 6 and 29 will be people of color in less than 10 years” (Confronting Racial Bias in Video Games, par. 3). Escaping–even for just a moment–into the world of fantasy then has never felt more exclusive for black and colored players as their underrepresentation devalues sense of self to these gamers. I can only begin to imagine how the lack of choice in skin color and hair styles can bring about racism as the majority of gaming platforms here face risk of losing business due to opportunistic cyberbullying. To go as far as to say where even standing up to racist jokes and slurs becomes problematic, a solution presents itself in which gamers should be given the choice to report complaints of racist behavior against another user to practice love as freedom. One professor at the University of Illinois–Chicago, Kishonna Gray, explains,” Many games have added the ability to mark a complaint as being due to gender discrimination, she notes, but the lack of a similar option for racism permits game studios to remain ignorant about how often racism occurs on their platform” (Confronting Racial Bias in Video Games, par. 21). Therein lies reason of which the responsibility unto gaming executives must carry conversation matters on the diversity of female gamers and Black and Latinx founders with an empathetic demeanor.

For something so seemingly simple as purchasing foods representing cultures of colorful backgrounds, racial imagery can also pose a danger in the contribution of ongoing racism. Long since the global uprising of George Floyd’s murder that sparked the Black Lives Matter movement there have been numerous accounts of which the official announcements our favorite packaged foods would replace outdated and stereotypically profiled images such as Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, even the Land O’Lakes very own Native American Mia the “butter maiden” to set right the harm that has been done. The Pearl Milling Company, formerly known as Quaker Oats–and subsidiary of Aunt Jemima–states that: “The journey for racial equality is one that calls for big, structural changes, and ... we have the resources, reach, and responsibility to our people, businesses, and communities to be agents of progress” (Nittle, par. 7). With such progress underway within an ongoing social revolution, The Pearl Milling company didn’t just stop at rebranding. They granted $1 million to nonprofits empowering Black women and young girls; then in 2020 had announced a generous “$400 million five-year commitment to uplift Black businesses and communities” (Nittle, par. 6). Following for rebrand, Ben’s Original’s Denis Yarotskiy, the regional president for Mars Food North America, told Civil Eats: “While never our intent, the picture of the man on the Uncle Ben’s packaging elicits images of servitude for some, and, in the U.S., the word ‘uncle’ was at times a pejorative title for Black men” (Nittle, par. 5). So, however cautiously optimistic surrounding the powerful impact rebranding and financially pledged have had on these companies–to think, it all started with Land O’Lakes as they clued in before the BLM with whatever little right having used a Native American woman “butter maiden” image in the first place. A plot twist if ever there was.

In retrospect of conversation surrounding “Love as the Practice of Freedom,” we can gather Bell Hooks has demonstrated her cause for always pushing to eradicate racism by elevating the planet’s frequency using the love ethic. By examining the nuances of internalized racism between consumerism in the colored gaming community and packaged food branding there lies consistency in working to disassemble racial profiling, or racial bias. Through a solutions-based mentality operating through the destruction from outdated treatment of the Black and Latinx communities voicing truth in support of love never seemed more possible. Hooks supports her demonstration of a just cause by reviewing historical evidence to amplify voices from Black visionaries and leaders. She then continued this work by participating in her underserved communities via love and dedication. And because of the warm imprint Hooks has left in our hearts, the greater goal to reach global awareness on the matter is practical. It certainly leaves you wondering about the potential of human creation.

Works Cited

“Bell Hooks.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/bell-hooks. Accessed 8 Aug. 2024.

Cohen-Peckham, Eric. “Confronting Racial Bias in Video Games.” TechCrunch, 22 June 2020, techcrunch.com/2020/06/21/confronting-racial-bias-in-video-games/.

“Love as the Practice of Freedom,” uucsj.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/bell-hooks-Love-as-the-Practice-of-Freedom.pdf. Accessed 9 Aug. 2024.

Nittle, Nadra. “Exorcising Aunt Jemima.” Eater, 25 May 2021, www.eater.com/22450623/racist-brand-mascot-logo-changes-aunt-jemima-uncle-bens-land-o-lakes.

[dapperpawn]

For fun and giggles, I went to this guy's Twitter so you don't have to (it's as weird as you might think—a lot of stuff about Machiavelli and Napoleon). Here's the whole image:

Look at how utterly incoherent these criteria are. "Directional changes: Sets off an upward spiral/Sets off a downward spiral." "Values: Hints at forgotten values/Mocks the concept of values." "Good GPS, Bad GPS: A good map/A malevolently bad map." This is vibes-based, an irony when compared to the claim that this is an "objective difference" between good and bad art.

I want to look at the rhetorical and ideological moves employed here. I don't know if this guy is a fascist, so I'm not saying that; I only want to look at how this particular tweet fits in to the broader context of fascist ideology and rhetoric (whether that's intentional or not, I don't really care enough about the guy to figure out).

I'm not an expert on art history or theory; it would be silly of me to try to explain these subjects and some of the major problems with fascist ideas about art when other people have already done such a better job of it than I could. If you haven't seen them, here are a couple of great videos on the topics of what counts as good art:

My commentary about the rhetorical moves of this guy's "masterlist" of differences between good and bad art below the cut:

Our intrepid tweetster gives the game away when he says "Instinct Knows". This is a foundational core of how fascist ideology works. You are not supposed to think, only react. These ideas about art relate to Umberto Eco's[1] characteristics 2–5 (bold mine, italics original):

2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism. Both Fascists and Nazis worshiped technology, while traditionalist thinkers usually reject it as a negation of traditional spiritual values. However, even though Nazism was proud of its industrial achievements, its praise of modernism was only the surface of an ideology based upon Blood and Earth (Blut und Boden). The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life, but it mainly concerned the rejection of the Spirit of 1789 (and of 1776, of course). The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism. 3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering’s alleged statement (“When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun”) to the frequent use of such expressions as “degenerate intellectuals,” ���eggheads,” “effete snobs,” “universities are a nest of reds.” The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.

In this guy's conception of art, you're supposed to react to art on an instinctual level. "Good" and "bad" art is defined as "art that makes you feel comfortable" and "art that makes you feel uncomfortable"—that is, good art is familiar, easy to understand, visually stable, aesthetically orthodox, and so on. Discomfort or confusion, which is often the point of a piece of art, is re-framed as an instinctual recognition of "objectively bad" art.

4. No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason. 5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.

Also consider Laurence W. Britt's[2] 11th characteristic of fascism:

11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts. Intellectuals and the inherent freedom of ideas and expression associated with them were anathema to these regimes. Intellectual and academic freedom were considered subversive to national security and the patriotic ideal. Universities were tightly controlled; politically unreliable faculty harassed or eliminated. Unorthodox ideas or expressions of dissent were strongly attacked, silenced, or crushed. To these regimes, art and literature should serve the national interest or they had no right to exist.

A lot of art is a commentary of other art, or an intentional subversion or disregard for "rules" of what art can or should be. Fascism requires total submission to the ruling hegemony, so any form of criticism or opposition is a dangerous skill for people to have.

While we can see how the above characteristics relate to this attitude about art, rhetorically here's another move hidden in all this. From Umberto Eco again:

14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in 1984, as the official language of Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning. But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show.

Did you catch it? "The most annoying people in the world love to say [that] there is no objective difference between good art and bad art." And yet, nothing in this "Masterlist of 15 Differences" is, actually, objective. Every single category is subjective, the very choices of category are subjective, and the "good" and "bad" definitions of the categories are not only subjective in the sense of what definitions he went with, but also subjective in their interpretation (what counts, for example, as art that "boosts" vs. "saps" energy from the viewer? I'll bet that it depends a lot on the viewer, don't you think?).

None of the categories even deal with, you know, properties of art, such as composition, contrast, color, form, depictions, etc., which may be the only objective things that you can say about art*. The closest might be "essential nature" because "good" art (apparently) is "structured and rhythmic" while "bad" art is "unstructured and obsessively anti-rhythm", so there's a case that what he's (poorly) trying to describe is composition of a piece, but even here there's a subjective attitude: what counts, objectively, as being "obsessively anti-rhythm"? Do you have to know the artist's personal obsessions of intent, or is it a property of the work regardless of the artist's intent?

These are the wrong questions to ask, of course, because the whole point is that THIS IS ABOUT VIBES. You're not supposed to understand them; the vagueness and incoherence of the claims serve to make it hard to rebut them. You get lost in the weeds trying to layout a complex argument, while your interlocutor can just make claims based on intuition and unexamined bias that feel true. By claiming that these subjective, and indeed, explicitly instinctual, reactions to art are objective, objectivity is redefined as instinctual reaction.

Asserting that instinctual reactions to art are actually objective serves to limit our (if we accept these premises) ability to critically and complexly reason about art. In this form of argument, "objectivity" functions as a get-out-of-jail-for-free card, only in this case "jail" is "defending your positions". "This is bad because I don't like it" can be contested; "this is objectively bad" can't be because objectivity, in this view, can't be contested.**

To understand the entirety of this "masterlist" of differences between "good" and "bad" art, just look at difference 8: "Instinct Knows: Instinctively recognized as art/Instinctively recognized as a scam". That's his thesis; everything else is post-hoc justification.

* You can say objectively, for instance, that the color red is or isn't present in a painting - or at least, you can say objectively that the painting reflects light within a certain range of the visible spectrum. You can say that the painting does or does not contain a depiction of a centaur that closely resembles classical Greek depictions and descriptions of centaurs (although it may be subjective to say that the painting is about centaurs; maybe the centaur is really a metaphor for the relationship between a horse and a rider, so a centaur is depicted, but is not the subject of the painting). And so forth.

**This is a form of mote-and-bailey argument. If you try to argue that art is subjective, or you try to argue the particulars about the categories or definitions, your interlocutor can retreat to making you argue against objective reality; any time you contest what is or is not objective, or whether objectivity can be applied or appealed to in a given situation, or whether objectivity is even possible from within a subjective experience, they can claim that you're denying simple reality... Sort of like those "the transes(TM) don't want to accept simple biology" folks.

----

Eco, Umberto. "Ur-Fascism". The New York Review of Books, June 22, 1995. nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism (or theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism)

Britt, Laurence W. "Fascism Anyone?". Free Inquiry 23, no. 2 (Spring 2003). secularhumanism.org/2003/03/fascism-anyone

Tag yourself as this list of “bad art” features, according to a twitter fascist

[think-and-write]

Undoubtedly, Martin Luther King had an innate talent for oratory, but without constant work on himself, without training and developing his abilities, there would not have been that King, whom the whole world knows.

King repeatedly emphasized the importance of getting an education. He took courses in theology every semester for 3 years at the Crozer Theological Seminary.

[teachanarchy]

Watch "Rhetorical Analysis and Transfer | Rhetoric & Composition | Study Hall" on YouTube

[howdoresourcesworkforus]

An analysis of BENEFITS.GOV's webpage titled "Find Resources to Improve your Living Conditions"

Link: https://www.benefits.gov/news/article/364

This is a website that outlines various resources that are available to people in poverty in the United States. Particularly, it discusses particular programs of government assistance that American citizens can sign up for and benefit from.

This website is functioning both as a guide and a repository that links out to other resources. It is clear and concise and mostly comes in the form of writing and links. There is a photo on the top of the article that shows a family who is supposed to be browsing the website I am assuming but the photo doesn’t include any information about the content of the website. It is a nice addition in order to add some level of personability to a website that is otherwise quite simple.

The audience for this website is American citizens that are in need of federal assistance and don’t know where to start. This guide provides links along with brief information about what each link will be able to provide a potential user. The site is very interactive and necessitates a sort of browsing by the user. 

There is no central author of the article itself since it is a government website. This means that it was presumably written by a group of people and vetted before being published publicly to represent the US government.

The site features relatively small text but the text is concise and purposeful. There are different sections of the site that are divided by what sort of information they provide. There are also lots of hyperlinks that provide easy access to the resources being mentioned in the article. This makes the article itself much more of a functional resource and makes it much more useful to users. The site is also tagged with keywords that make finding it easier while browsing for resources like these.

[thomasenglishclass]

(via ELECTION SEASON SPECIAL: a rhetorical analysis of Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s president-elect speeches – The Hyperbolit School)

[benschiff]

stressin

[imyelling]

I really love the Big Think episodes on YouTube where an expert talks to 5 people with varying degrees of difficulty because it captures the transition to the “less confident” answers of an expert. They start with an elementary school student and work their way up to talking with another expert in their field.

Ok now do NYT columnists