#media philosophy

[codeandcanvas]

While I am loading up my handheld with music, I came across The Book of Ive talking about Solarpunk and how it relates to Cyberpunk.

At first I was passively listening to it, as you do while doing something more important but still need to occupy your inner gremlins, but then he mentioned a word I have not heard before: interpassivity, a word linked to Robert Pfaller’s philosophy of media, and also the title of his 2017 book, and I paused and took note.

And this is how the book and its topic is described on its page on De Gruyter:

“A radical criticism of current assumptions in the field of cultural theory today

Why do people record TV programmes instead of watching them? Why do some recovering alcoholics let others drink in their place? Why can ritual machines pray in place of believers?

Robert Pfaller advances the theory of ‘interpassivity’ as delegated consumption and enjoyment. Applicable to both art and everyday life, the concept allows him to tackle a vast range of phenomena: culture, art, sports and religion.

Pfaller criticises dominant assumptions, offers an escape from prevailing ideologies and exposes how cultural capitalism promotes commodities with the promise of happiness.”

Interesting take, right?

[hpmort]

In Defense of The Glass Princess

I didn’t properly appreciate the extent of “a million is a statistic” before today

When I was a little kid I watched a lot of nature documentaries

Because it was the new noughts and on-demand sucked

(I didn’t think so at the time

TiVo was a separate service that had just been invented

The ability to watch something that wasn’t live

That the cable box didn’t have to have watched live

That you didn’t have to go out and buy

On a disc or in a box

Was new and exciting)

A series of rectangles within rectangles

Boxes folding in

Silvery blue and blueish grey

In the upper right hand corner

A video on-loop played

A category

A subcategory

A channel

A show

An episode

I was a child with a clear sense of

RIGHT

and

WRONG

Which, of course

Was not necessarily the most reasonably

The boxes I limited myself to were

Kids

(Where I mostly play favorites

Not for moral reasons

Just brand loyalty)

Premium Channels

(Subcategory

Kids/Family)

and

Documentaries

(Or something like that

It was over a decade ago and I was probably younger than six)

Category

Subcategory

Channel

I took everything on the channels under

Documentary

(Or whatever it was)

As fact so

Yes I did find Ancient Aliens plausible

The thing about the not-for-kids channels I allowed myself

Is that they were genuinely

Not-for-kids

As in;

I watched graphic animal deaths

And other stuff with content warnings

Remember

It’s the noughnties

People didn’t give trigger warnings

It was “most extreme animal reproduction”

Or something

There were crappy cgi renderings of mites engaging in natal incest rape

Sharks eating eachother in the womb

And live footage of a hyena giving birth

(The last one is what had the content warning)

There was other graphic animal stuff

As I said earlier

Mostly violent death

There wasn’t really much interest in violent mating habits

Yeah the mantis eats her mate

Parasitoidism exists

But that was mainly it

Because it was more about death than sex

(Fair enough)

Anyways

When I was in second grade or whatever

I was getting disillusioned with My Little Pony

Because my only exposure had been G3

And G3 was fairly low conflict

(A complaint that led me to

later

after watching like three episodes

Give Friendship is Magic a one star review

On the website “Common Sense Media”

Under a cringy name I had derived

From an absurd escapist world I had created

That I later tried to theme my birthday party around

(?)

(My pre-teen years were not kind to me)

(One year later I became a fake brony

Because I liked their general energy and level of engagement

And was desperate for a sense of community))

My father

Perhaps concerned about internalized misogyny

Or just wanting to know what to buy me that wasn’t a video game

Or an anime

(The T rating of Super Smash Bros Melee

And the fact that anime was not necessarily kid friendly

And the anime that was was not necessarily in english

Surely made the certainty appealing)

Bought me

My Little Pony: The Complete First Season

(He did not buy the movie

Which made the whole thing even more confusing

Then it already was

But I was a small child

(An autistic one at that)

And so was used to being confused about most things

So it didn’t matter)

G1 My Little Pony was insane and enthralling

It was baffling

It was amazing

I experienced good autistic representation in the form of Best Pony Windwhistler

(I was still in denial at the time and convinced that my diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome was the mark of a conspiracy

That was against me

But only in the abstract sense

I thought that it was a conspiracy to artificially inflate standardized test scores

Where I was center

So while the conspiracy wasn’t specifically against me

My role in it meant that it was in opposition to me and my flourishment)

We got

The Quest of the Princess Ponies and Other Stories

Before the movie so I also managed to have a completely inaccurate understanding of what an orc looked like

For literal years

Because the titular

Quest of the Princess Ponies

Featured “orcs”

Who one would never in a hundred years think was an orc

If they had not already been told they were

It is commonly held

Among the fans of the first generation My Little Pony series

That Quest of the Princess Ponies

Is one of the best serials

And that

The Glass Princess

Is one of the worst

I disagree

The reasons given that

The Quest of the Princess Ponies

Is a particularly good serial

Are impressively shallow

And consist largely

Of the presence of orcs and demons

And the fact that the princesses fucking hate eachother

And are

“conspiring against eachother”

(This consists of being bitchy to eachother with some petty levels of normal sibling sabotage

And kidnapping Spike and making him choose who shall rule)

For the crown

(The powers that it entails being vague and perhaps nonexistent

Considering the ultimate resolution

Once they’re done running around in a cave with the orcs and demons

Is that they should take turns being queen)

Although the part I admit is charming is rarely mentioned;

The eternal blood war between orcs and demons is because they can never shake hands as friends

Literally

Because demons are fire elementals and orcs are ice elementals

So Spike brings peace by holding the hand

Of a fire demon

And an ice orc

At the same time

And shaking it for them

The main complaints about

The Glass Princess

(Aside from unusually bad animation

Which means little given how terrible it is on a good day;

The twinkle-eyed ponies have evidently forgotten to put their eyes in

Given how common it is to see them with just circles)

Are as follows

Shady is whiny

And

Princess Porcina is inconsistently written

I have always liked Shady

She is depressed

She is anxious

She is full of self-loathing

I honestly saw a lot of myself in her

And found her a complex and well-written character

Doing something right

Doesn’t make you feel good

You feel guilty and think that you could have

Should have

Done it right before

Because if you can do this

Why can’t you do that other thing?

The one everyone says is easier?

I also always thought that Princess Porcina was written well

I’ve noticed it a lot

People completely ignoring something terrible happening far away

But immediately helping someone in front of them

You can order a hundred deaths

But if you see someone dying

You feel the need to help them

And that’s what she does

When everyone is so far away

She feels nothing

Why not turn them to glass?

They’re not there

They don’t matter

But when she sees someone turn to glass in front of her

Sees their horror

The panic they feel

When they know that it’s coming

She can’t stand it

She’s forced to face what she’s done

And

She

Stops

That’s normal

I think

Today

Friday

The second of June

In the year two thousand and twenty three

Driving home with

(Being driven home by)

A friend

This evening

I saw six goslings with their mom

One was clearly

Cleanly dead

One was normal roadkill

One was injured but moving along

One was injured and struggling to move

(But I was sure

That if we stopped

We could have gotten it

To a veterinary hospital)

One was fine

And one was cleanly eviscerated

Its entrails torn across the road

Miraculously whole

The uninjured one

And the slightly hurt one

Were following their mother

Who seemed clearly distressed

(Obviously

She was

But I don’t know goose body language

And so what I took as one form of grief or trauma could have been shock or something else)

My friend was clearly shaken

I asked her why we didn’t stop to get the one that was down

But still moving

She was panicking

And didn’t really answer

She

At least

I could recognize distress in

(And yes

Some of it was shock)

She spoke with disgust and horror of the driver in front of us

I pointed out that the eviscerated one was in another lane

She hasn’t seen it

The very idea seemed to horrify her further

I tried to look on the “bright side”

(As she often does)

If we had stopped to bring the injured one to a veterinary hospital

She would have seen the eviscerated one

She looked sick enough as it was

And admitted that

Despite the prescription-strength anti acids she was on

That if she had see that gosling

With its organs torn out

She could have thrown up

(Which

While she didn’t mention it

Would probably have made things harder to help the badly injured one

I can’t imagine driving with a goose in a car with a windshield full of vomit)

I comforted her

Said I was fine

She was gentler

Softer

The Canada Goose has a conservation status of “Least Concern”

It’s not important

These things happen all the time

I know this

(My friend offers a prayer for the goslings

And tries to think of another

I offer to show her the Word Wildlife Foundation

So she can see what species she can symbolically adopt to honor the gosling

There are no waterfowl on that list

Boobies are seabirds)

I cannot fall asleep

I cannot shake my uncomfortable feelings

I am sad yet struggle to try

I feel guilty

I don’t think that anything I could have seen or read

Could have desensitized me

I wish it did

[prokopetz]

I fully understand why "character A is astounded at the sight of character B's penis" is a specific kink that gets tagged for, but the fact that some platforms choose to tag this kink as "penis awe" is unintentionally very funny. Now I'm picturing penis experience kink tags for all those other allegedly transcendent emotions in the glossary of your Philosophy 101 textbook. Penis faith. Penis Weltschmerz. Penis apprehension of the absurd.

[bellasfashiondiary18]

My philosophy on beauty

How does media influence the standard of beauty?

The media plays a significant role in shaping and influencing the standard of beauty in society. Through various forms of media, such as magazines, television, movies, and social media, certain ideals of beauty are often promoted and showcased. These ideals often include specific body types, facial features, and skin tones that are considered desirable and attractive. Media platforms often portray edited and airbrushed images of models and celebrities, creating an unrealistic and unattainable standard of beauty. This can lead to feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem among individuals who do not fit these narrow beauty standards. Moreover, the constant exposure to these images can create a distorted perception of what is considered beautiful, leading to a negative impact on body image and self-confidence. Media also influences beauty standards by promoting certain beauty products, fashion trends, and cosmetic procedures. Advertisements often suggest that using specific products or undergoing certain treatments will help individuals achieve the ideal standard of beauty. This can create a consumer culture where people feel pressured to conform to these standards by purchasing these products or seeking cosmetic enhancements. However, it is important to recognize that beauty is diverse and subjective. The media's influence on beauty standards is not reflective of the true diversity of human beauty. It is crucial for individuals to challenge and question these standards, embrace their unique features, and celebrate a more inclusive and realistic definition of beauty.

[sapphiccyranodebergerac]

web weaving: love felt wholly in the mundane. the kind of love that sometimes goes unnoticed

| fleabag s1 ep4 | the orange by wendy cope | circe by madeline miller | love should be about the mundane by lauren bravo | circe by madeline miller (again) | everything everywhere all at once | the happiest day by linda pastan | drops of jupiter by train | lady bird dir. by greta gerwig |

[doomdoomofdoom]

Apparently there's currently discussion in science (humanities in particular) about whether video essays could be accepted as academic writing on par with the academic papers we currently have

I think that's awesome as fuck tbh

[liberatingreality]

In 1976, Stephen King published a short story, “I Know What You Need,” about the courting of a young woman. Her suitor was a young man who could read her mind but did not tell her so. He simply appeared with what she wanted at the moment, beginning with strawberry ice cream for a study break. Step by step he changed her life, making her dependent upon him by giving her what she thought she wanted at a certain moment, before she herself had a chance to reflect. Her best friend realized that something disconcerting was happening, investigated, and learned the truth: “That is not love,” she warned. “That’s rape.”

The internet is a bit like this. It knows much about us, but interacts with us without revealing that this is so. It makes us unfree by arousing our worst tribal impulses and placing them at the service of unseen others.

Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom

[your-average-teenage-mess]

The first time I read discworld as a kid, I didn't really understand what the whole "if you are asked to find the real you in a maze of mirrors, ignore them all and look down, and that is you" thing was supposed to mean. I thought it was kinda weird and pretentious. Like, why are you avoiding the question?

But now that I've actually experienced some of the identity crises that you encounter when growing up, it makes so much more sense. It actually makes more sense now than it did back then, to people who grew up in a post-social-media world. You're constantly presented with esthetics and identities to give yourself a sense of meaning, you're supposed to place yourself on every imaginary scale someone made just because, and while that can be fun, there's this added expectation to assign your sense of self to an image someone else made, if you feel like it resonates with you. And... That's especially true with gender. Trans people online have this constant pressure on us to "find our truth" and care oh so deeply about it, but then algorithms start marketing curated pictures of our identities to us, to find pride in it. We're supposed to look at a list of tiktoks about our microlabel and think, "those are my people and I'm proud to be one of them". And don't even get me started on the concept of gender envy. Like, you're supposed to look at something that has nothing to do with you, and assign your identity to this thing, which surely doesn't help the fact that young people are now collectively paralyzed by a lack of sense of self. And I'm not saying any of those things are inherently bad or invalid- we all look at mirrors to examine ourselves, and that's FINE. But the person you ARE isn't gonna come to you in a dream, or an essay, or a post, or a reflection. It's in you. Your sense of self isn't a riddle to be solved, it's just who YOU are. This isn't to say you shouldn't do things that make you feel happy or authentic. But those things don't define you. Nothing that you do or experience would make you no longer you if changed, and that's okay. You're not your body, or your clothes, or your attitude, or your job, or your abilities, or your fandoms, or your diagnosis. You can love them, and hopefully you do, but they're not you. You're you. You're the perspective that experiences the world around you. You're the thing under your mind that feels. Please don't forget that.

[thirdity]

All the resources of our almost miraculous technology have been thrown into the current assault against silence. That most popular and influential of all recent inventions, the radio, is nothing but a conduit through which pre-fabricated din can flow into our homes. And this din goes far deeper, of course, than the ear-drums. It penetrates the mind, filling it with a babel of distractions — news items, mutually irrelevant bits of information, blasts of corybantic or sentimental music, continually repeated doses of drama that bring no catharsis, but merely create a craving for daily or even hourly emotional enemas.

Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy

[utilitycaster]

if a ship has under 10 fics and someone's read every single one they are valid. If it has under 50 fics and someone's read every single one it's a little intense but also pretty valid. when people are like "THIS SHIP HAS 2000 FICS AND I'VE READ EVERY SINGLE ONE" you KNOW you are dealing with someone with zero standards and whose comprehension of the characters is mostly a vague amalgam/projection of the ghosts of blorbos past. Which is like, a valid way to engage if that's what makes you happy, but you do not want to read their meta.

[philosophybits]

There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.

Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist

[volitioncheck]

nvm this is still on my brain. kim does not like to watch harry suffer… to say that kim takes satisfaction in harry’s pain is a huge misconstruing of his character.

the “getting thrashed like a schoolboy” line comes from a board game, lol. it’s a tease, not a cruelty. there’s never any line that implies that Kim enjoys seeing Harry taking actual morale damage.

he can be amused if you fail a check, but the check is always relatively inconsequential, and again, Harry isn’t taking damage in these.

Failing to pry the trash bin open:

Failing to shatter Ruby’s lorry window:

(also in both of these examples he only responds smugly if you choose for Harry to stubbornly dig in his heels. if Harry gets huffy, Kim teases. If Harry backs down right away Kim won’t rub it in, which feels significant to me! it reminds me of that recent post goin around about Kim meeting your energy!)

and here’s some reactions to failed checks where he does take damage.

Failing the jump to get your cloak:

Failing to break down Plaisance’s door:

he’s not laughing if Harry’s taking damage because he’s not a dick lol.

aaaaand here’s some other instances of morale/health damage and kim’s reactions.

alternate dialogue for failing the harbor jump:

after the call with precinct 41:

seeing bullet holes in the wall:

most significant examples to argue this point for me come when harry has done something to jeopardize the RCM’s image. which kim goes on and on about the importance of maintaining— and yet even here, he still extends worry and assurance.

telling Billie about her husband and handling it badly:

hardie authority check failure cock carousel:

aaaaand the car. this line is one of the most mask-off kim moments we get in the game in my opinion, honestly.

tying this back to the schoolboy line— that line doesn’t show up if you have a negative reputation with Kim. if you have <1 rep, it gets replaced with him calling it “about four hours of our lives that we'll never get back,” lol.

it’s affectionate ribbing!! twisting it into anything else is bizarre 2 me lmao!

anyways. kim is a foil to every other cop we meet in the game specifically because he doesn’t view harry as a punching bag or a lost cause. gottlieb does nothing but sling jabs and glib jokes about harry’s health. torson+mclaine and the others laugh at harry’s panic attack over the radio. in response to harry’s suicide-by-car attempt(!!!!) jean yells about RCM budget. all kim’s lines in response to harry’s check failures and health-damage are consistent, explicit textual contrast against the callousness of the rest of the RCM. twisting kim’s character here requires a bad faith interpretation of the whole game.

[linguist-breakaribecca]

“Socrates said, ‘The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.’ He wasn't talking about grammar.

To misuse language is to use it the way politicians and advertisers do, for profit, without taking responsibility for what the words mean.

Language used as a means to get power or make money goes wrong: it lies. Language used as an end in itself, to sing a poem or tell a story, goes right, goes towards the truth.

A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls.

Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.”

- Ursula K. Le Guin, A Few Words to a Young Writer

[prokopetz]

i was just thinking about how 90% of my obsession with Diogenes started with Tumblr memes. what if there were similar memes for other philosophers? like jean-paul Sartre or sun tzu?

There are in fact Tumblr memes about Sun Tzu, though you need to be part of fairly specific circles to get the really good ones. I'm not personally aware of any significant body of Tumblr memes about Sartre, but I won't swear on my life they don't exist.

[stowe]

i really kinda just want the gax teammates 2024 AU

[fruity-pontmercy]

Les Mis adaptations and apolitical appropriation

I think it's no secret on this blog that I love the original Les Mis 1980 concept album in French, and that I also love comparing different versions of the stage musical. I've noticed that Les Mis seems to get progressively more vaguely apolitical as time goes on, not only in the way it's viewed in our culture, but in the actual text as well.

It's natural for specifics to be lost in adaptation. It's easier to get people to care about 'the people vs. the king' in a relatively short musical rather than actually facing the audience with the absolute mess that were 19th century french politics (monarchist orleanists vs monarchist legitimists vs imperialist vs bonapartist democrats vs every flavour of republican imaginable). Still, I feel that as time goes on, as more revivals and adaptations of the stage musical come out, the more watered down its politics become. Like, Les Mis at it's core is just meant to be a fancily written, drawn out political essay, right?

In a way I feel that the 1980 concept album almost tried to modernise it with its symbols of progress. Yes, through Enjolras' infamous disco segment (and other similar allusions to the ideals of social change), but perhaps most interestingly to me, through one short line that threw me off when I first heard it, because it seems so insignificant, but might actually be the most explicitly leftist line of all of Les Mis.

"Son coeur vibrait à gauche et il le proclama" (roughly "His heart beat to the left and he proclaimed it" i.e: he was a leftist) Feuilly says, while speaking of the now dead général Lamarque in Les Amis de L'ABC.

What's that? An actual mention of leftism??? in MY vaguely progressive yet apolitical musical??? More seriously, this mention of leftism, clashing with the rest of the musical due to it's seeming anachronism, is interesting not because it's actually more political than anything else in Les Mis, rather, because it's not scared to explicitly name what it's trying to do.

But we've come a long way from the Concept Album days, it's been 43 years, and Les Misérables is now one of the most famous and beloved musicals in the entire world. It's been revived and reimagined and adapted in a million ways, in different mediums, in different languages and countries, and it's clear that it's changed along with it's audience.

On top of pointing out a cool line in my favourite version of the musical, I wanted to write this post to reflect on the perception of the political message of this work. We as a Les Mis fandom on Tumblr are very political, I don't need to tell you that, however, I feel that because this very left leaning space has sprung out of a work we all love so much, we oftentimes forget to revisit it from a more objective point of view.

Les Misérables has a history of being misrepresented, this has been true since it's publication, since american confederate soldiers became entranced with their censored translation Lee's Miserables. However, with it's musical adaptation, this misinterpretation has been made not only more accessible but also easier. As much as I love musical theatre and I think it is at it's best an incredible art form able to communicate complex themes visulally by the masses for the masses, I think it'd be idealistic to ignore the fact that the people who can afford to go see musicals regularly are, usually, not the common folk. Broadway and the West End are industries which, like most, need money to keep them afloat, and are loved people of all political backgrounds (and unfortunately, often older conservatives) not just communists on tumblr. We've seen the way Les Miz UK's social media team constantly misses the mark regarding different social issues, and the way Cameron Makintosh has used the musical to propagate his transphobia, and most of us can agree that these actions are in complete antithesis with the message of Les Misérables as a novel.

But I must ask, how does Les Mis ,as a West End musical in it's current form, actually drive a leftist message, and how are we as a community helping if every time someone relating to the musical messes up if we just claim they "don't get it"?

I'm thinking in particular of incidents like last october, where Just Stop Oil crashed Les Mis at the West End. Whether you think it's good activism or not is not the question I think, this instance is interesting particularly because it shows that, outside of Les Misérables analysis circles and fandom spaces, it is not recognised as an inherently leftist, political or activist work, and instead of just saying they completely missed the point of the musical, I think it'd be interesting to take a step back and look at what the musical as it stands actually represents in our culture today.

I don't pretend to have all the answers, so I won't try to give one, but I do hope we can reflect on this a bit.