this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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intoxicated or not, this is a very good overview of why corporations assimilate art and culture. musk has done this so many times — one of my earliest memories of white-hot rage towards musk was when he declared himself a socialist because he was also (claiming to be) a Culture fan. the first example I know of corporations butchering nerd culture was Google turning April Fools pranks into deeply unfunny corporatized marketing opportunities, but I’m sure it’s been happening much longer than that
what’s interesting, and you touched on this in your post, is the degree to which nerd culture itself interacts with a thin facade that substitutes for the artistic work it claims to exalt. in college I volunteered at a couple of conventions, and two things were obvious:
in short, fuck nerds
Perhaps the reason they fetishize AI so much is because they consume culture and art the way an AI would- purely as a stream of signifiers, tokens and easter eggs, with no cognition of the ideas living inside of it.
Absolutely. TLJ vs ROSk is a microcosm of this.
TLJ: “Forget the Jedi texts. What’s important is the present. Also, you aren’t from one of the magic families Lucas made up in the 70’s, but you don’t have to be someone special to be significant.”
ROSk: “Oh sorry we offended you last time because we dared to deviate from your nostalgia. Alright. So now it’s really important that everything is Skywalker or Palpatine related. We even put “Skywalker” in the title! And made a Palpatine cloning machine! Phew, ok. Now that we’ve placated you, here’s 5000 new funko-pop ready characters.”