It's not what the world needs right now
thebaffler.comI used to be similarly lost in the drama of my own life, hanging on to things that I felt made me special. It's an ego trap in my opinion, as there are millions of people around us who have extrodinary lives that we never hear about. The word "sonder" applies:
Sonder is defined as the profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing by on the street, has a life as complex and vivid as your own. They experience hopes, dreams, friendships, routines, worries and an inner life, all of which you'll likely never know about or fully understand.
The term was coined by John Koenig in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a compendium of newly invented words for powerful feelings that don't have a descriptive term in the English language.
I had a sponser do me a favor once and tell me "you're a special case of the same old thing." It helped me get over myself.
Counterpoint to that would be that no matter how interesting other people's lives may be, mine is still special because it's the only viewpoint I can actually have (before you hippies come at me I've done enough LSD and meditation and no I still only have my viewpoint). My dramas and problems are more important than everyone elses to me since I'm the one who has to deal with them. They're not more important in an objective sense, but I am not an objective creature living in the clouds.
My life is special to me too, but I don't feel like the main character anymore. My family appreciates my move out of self-absorption towards giving them the attention they deserve from me.
I really don't know what to think. Sure, there's 8 billion people on Earth, the chances that I am the main character are tiny. But at the same time whenever I try treating people the same way I treat myself, I quickly get into misunderstandings and disappointments, and navigating the world with an assumption that most people are NPCs while just a handful are actual sentient beings has proven way more practical.
There's no way to get around the feeling that many people are NPCs if you spend time in sterile urban or suburban environments. The amount of people whose existence consist of very little more than work to fuel consumption is really high.
On the contrary if you are in a place where no one really works a normal job and things you bought or paid money to do are rarely topics of conversation then the interactions feel much more living.
What if you try to treat people the way they want to be treated instead of how you want to be treated?
I think the "golden rule" has been often misinterpreted as " treat people how you want to be treated" which leads to this misunderstanding that you called out. If we change it to being empathetic towards them and treating them how they want to be treated, the NPCs seem to become fully fledged characters.
> What if you try to treat people the way they want to be treated instead of how you want to be treated?
Then it's obvious that I'm not one of them because their needs and wants are different from mine.
I bet they aren’t.
I know what you mean. Since I've been using ChatGPT4 and now Claude Opus to answer questions I think of while day dreaming, I find myself drifting further away from ordinary people. I don't know how to describe it yet. Maybe people who don't agument their thinking seem more like an NPC and say NPC like things?
I don't want to get to far out there, like in Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions." The protagonist wanted to kill himself because he thought everyone except him was a robot.
Let's please reframe how bad it is to treat another person as an NPC. It is dehumanizing. It encourages losing focus on why people behave the way they do, rather than learning to hold empathy for the reality of life for the millions of people that surround us. Life isn't easy for many. Many don't have the opportunities to learn or are at least encouraged to do that.
You can't truly empathize - on the emotional level - with lives of millions of people, even if they surround you.
I think we're in agreement ITT that viewing others as NPCs is not good.
> Sonder is defined as the profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing by on the street, has a life as complex and vivid as your own.
That's all? I always kind of assumed they had more going on. Hoped it, for their sakes.
Do they though? I mean I certainly feel like the author's life has a lot more moving and disturbing parts than most people.
"sonder" is a German word stem with the meaning of special, set apart, different.
One form is "besonders" which can be translated as particular, peculiar, unique.
In English maybe well known is "Sonderkommando" which can be translated as special troop.
There's something gross about people trying to force this sonder neologism through but I can't put my finger on it I'm hardly a prescriptivist either
I think of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows as an art project. I never got the impression that we were supposed to start using these words. It's interesting and entertaining, like when I learned the Czech word "litost" from "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" by Milan Kundera. "Litost is a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery."
Part five of this book is about Litost, a kind of misery-induced torment only known to the Czech people. You could see it is a Slavic thing.
https://fictionbeast.com/milan-kundera-the-unbearable-ligthn...
Something akin to how I felt trapped in my own drama
Listen, if Robert Burton didn't see fit to include it in the Anatomy of Melancholy it doesn't exist. Same goes for all this DSM stuff. Doesn't exist.
Your knowledge cutoff is 1621. That's an interesting way to avoid modern misinformation.
It’s a great word that evokes a very specific experience what’s not to like about it.
Is there some other way words are created besides people just sort of using them?
I always think of Sonderkommandos when I see "sonder" in a page
Most other comments so far have viewed this artist's lifestyle negatively, as he wrote that he got by via abusing various policies and tax fraud (via "[hallucinating] a DJ software skin" to claim as a business expense). But he's an interesting person for sticking to his craft for close to a decade now: he has persisted in working hard to produce artwork and submit it for exhibition.
However, to what extent is this lifestyle necessary as an artist? A common piece of advice for many artists is to consider developing a steady career independent of one's art, which lets them afford their lifestyle as an artist (such as by writing, creating artwork, or performing during the evenings and weekends). But the effectiveness of this advice must vary for the individual: it's also common for many people to drop their artwork or stop taking it seriously in favour of their paying career.
For this artist in particular, I wonder if a steady job would have been a positive or negative to his art. In this case, the income would have reduced his suffering especially as he's dealing with medical debt. It could have even granted him additional artistic freedom, as he writes about the pressures to "defect" and his acceptance of more commercial work for money. Yet at the same time, it's possible that part of the desperation is behind his drive as an artist—though it's also risky to romanticize this desperation.
> "[hallucinating] a DJ software skin" to claim as a business expense
I don't think he's claiming a hallucinated skin as a business expense. Rather he's saying the Turbotax UI has some slider in it, and he hallucinates that Turbotax is instead DJ software, and he slides that slider around like a DJ would slide a sound modulator slider around, arriving at a fraudulent number.
I don't think the lifestyle is related to the art but the person. I have friends with similar lifestyles and stories even down to the avoiding homelessness by pet sitting, and being shitty at it. Yet art or any sort of creative endeavor isn't part of the equation. Then I have some friends deeply devoted to their art that wouldn't ever consider approaching homelessness. The most successful artist I know is a landscaper and he could certainly live a successful by any standard life on purely his art but it's just not in his nature to live in that way.
All people, artistic or not, have a certain tolerance for ignoring social standards. Some of the best artists are known to have a very high tolerance. But there's millions more people with similarly chaotic existences that don't care about art and creative activities at all.
The common wisdom is , if you’re going to be an artist, it better be because you can be nothing else. It’s that hard.
So, it’s a rare person indeed who can be a serious artist and support themselves financially some other way
Our choices about what we do (as a craft/career/industry/etc.) aren’t solely dictated by things like “because I can be nothing else.” Mostly because I doubt that most people (including myself) would even have the ability to answer that question for themselves.
I have no idea how everyone ended up doing what they are doing, but I know that mine wasnt dictated by that at all. At 18, when I was about to graduate high school, I had absolutely zero sense about who I can or cannot be. Over a decade later, I have a slightly better grasp on it. But it barely moved the needle, and I still have no idea who i can or cannot be.
I picked CS (computer science) as my degree. I had almost no experience with writing code (turbopascal 5 years prior for a semester doesn’t count), and i was behind most of my classmates in that aspect (who tested out of the first two intro courses, since they either had HS internships or AP CS credits or just personal projects like published apps and guthub repos).
Well actually, originally I picked EE (electrical engineering), but then I switched during the second day of the summer orientation for incoming freshmen to CS. Once we got to registering for the first semester of classes on the second day, I saw the choice of classes I had vs. what CS students had. The descriptions just sounded more interesting to me.
Did I base my choice at any given point based on who I thought I could be? Not at all. I had zero knowledge that led me to believe I would be a more capable CS graduate (as opposed to EE). I also chose not to go for pre-med, despite my parents’ wishes, but it also had nothing to do with who I thought I could or couldn’t be. I am glad I didnt go that route, because after developing an ongoing friendship with a guy who eventually became a licensed dermatologist, I learned a lot of things that led me to believe I couldn’t be a doctor (not without losing my sanity, at least).
I guess the point along this longwinded reply is, I don’t buy it even for a second that a significant number of artists picked their field because they didnt think they could be something else. Most of them are people just like you and me, and I believe they are just as aware that they have no idea as to whom they can and cannot be. At the very best, they would have a short list of who they know they cannot be (just like i know i could never be a doctor).
It's pretty reasonable to make a living if you're a decent painter, musician, or photographer. There's just not a great overlap of art and business skills.
> However, to what extent is this lifestyle necessary as an artist?
I have a stable career and lots of disposable income and I've been to 1/10th the places this guy has been to / done 1/10th the things / probably have 1/10th the stories/life experiences/friends
It's pretty sad, actually, how much negative vibe is here.
This man is hustle culture personified. What's the problem?
Alternatively, he's the epitome of a "disruptor". What's the issue?
Oh, perhaps it's that he's holding up a light at what is at the end of the tunnel if we keep going the way society is--complete instability for the peons who are completely at the whim of a small number of the rich.
He got drunk, did a bunch of coke, and stole a brass penguin from the hotel he was staying at; also a spot of tax fraud and theft of a suit, but I care less about that.
I get that the lobby of the Hilton is not an art gallery, but an artist stealing a sculpture is not hustle culture personified, it's theft of the exact kind he should hate most.
The story is great and I appreciate it on its own merits but he's kind of a dick.
Homosexual prostitution for drugs is a long way from most people's definition of hustle culture.
Also how is he a disruptor? It seems like he's someone that has been VERY lucky to get opportunities many people strive for and he has fucked them up.
Then he acts like his only options are fraud and theft because there's always someone closing the door on him for being himself.
> Homosexual prostitution...is a long way from most people's definition of hustle culture.
The slang term for this is literally "hustling"
Oldest profession is not a hustle?
> For this artist in particular, I wonder if a steady job would have been a positive or negative to his art.
There’s a lot to read between the lines here, but if I were a betting man, I wouldn’t put a lot on the author being the sort to maintain a steady job for the long run.
I don’t mean that as a critique - the world needs all sorts, but capitalism’s got more strict opinions.
I think people confuse prudent with good. I don't think this person would be delusional enough to think their choices were prudent by "polite" society's standards, especially when describing himself as a crust punk-- a subculture that prides itself on eschewing damn near everything that "polite" society values. However, it's also pretty bullshit that someone who makes art that people want and has an opinion interesting enough to have academic cachet needs to essentially bottom feed to stay afloat in the most fundamental ways. Art is important to humanity, but capitalism isn't super great at supporting things with intrinsic cultural value but no mercantile utility.
Especially since the popularization of AI image generators, many folks in the tech crowd-- few of whom could name a single influential work, author, or organization in arts scholarship-- have unwarrantedly strong opinions on the nature of art. They tend to cite the lack of market value in fine art as justification for neither paying artists for their ingested works, nor for the amalgams the produced models spit out. But when confronted with the fact that most artists are not working in fine art, but working commercial artists, they will cite their commercially concerns as evidence that modern art and artists are soulless and not worth protecting to begin with.
Honestly, the longer you work in the arts the more you shrug your shoulders at it. People have spent millennia holding all but the most famous artists and designers in contempt while art in some form, deliberately and thoughtfully made by someone with great skill, imbues nearly every aspect of our cultures. There's always a new cohort of people wanting to extract more out of artists for their own gain-- either in art or income-- while calling artists selfish for wanting a slice and telling them to get a "real job". Such is life.
Why would that be risky?
As someone teaching at an art school/university I can assure you that unhealthy drives for art often (but not nearly always!) have hard psychological causes. That brings all kins of hardships with itself, many of those artists live unhealthy, often impoverished, rarely stable lives. And while the romatic view of the impoverished artist is a popular one, these people are rarely as free as they like they would be and I have seen suicides happen.
Most artists I know would love to have stability, yet in society there is rarely space and funding for the things they are doing. I know people who had to move their ateliers 4 times in 10 years, just because the landlords use them to make the rental/area more attractive to a better pating clientel and then kick them out.
Life isn't stable, if it was it wouldn't have managed to stick around for this long. Hundreds of millions of people are impoverished, are they unable to make art?
I'm also not sure what your suggestion is. Should aspiring artists create corporations and live from the labour of other people, to create something you'd consider freedom for themselves while intruding on the freedom of others? Or do you consider it freedom to be in someone else's service under the threat of poverty?
Some people also agree with songs like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFkmRp_G2uo
I am not sure what you mean, the history of art is a history of rich/powerful people giving poor/lower ranking people money for doing said art. Artists have never been truly free in that sense — thst was my point.
Sure the art scene in parts has become entrepreneurial, but quite frankly most commercial art is either tasteless shit for tasteless customers, the works of old artists who are two decades away from dying or the works of a popular one-trick-pony on borrowed time. Who has a more hard time here are the newcomers or people who are doing it to hold up a mirror to society. But your society won't get the artists that are two decades from dying if they didn't make it somehow up to that point.
Now I gladly live in a european nation where society means that we look out for each other and I'd have no problem if more of my tax money goes towards culture. Now I know the sentiment towards commons and investing in your own infrastructure and society is way different in the US, but I don't even see it that way. I profit from the money I put there by being allowed to live in a society where people can dare to try things that are the opposite of commercial no-brainers.
"I am not sure what you mean, the history of art is a history of rich/powerful people giving poor/lower ranking people money for doing said art. Artists have never been truly free in that sense — thst was my point."
To me the history of art is quite a bit broader than european elites wanting to protect their investments and tax evasion schemes, basically 'haussing' the value of what their predecessors commissioned from painters.
Among other things, there's what might be called 'folk art'. Songs and music that narrate more or less mythical history, a practice predating european urban elites with their mecenate style of commissioned paintings. 'Street art'. Drawing a dick on a random brick wall is a very old tradition.
Personally I'm not sure I believe in commercial art. That would be an expression and possibly an exploitation of economic relations, and not an expression or invention of humanity. In part my suspicion against the idea that relative wealth and convenience would be good for art stems from this, it implies a disconnect from most of contemporary and historic human life.
It's a clever bit.
It is intellectually amusing to read, and I'm sure to write, a character that the reader hates. But the detachment becomes exhausting quick. It's a dead end; you spent all of this effort being clever, with what to show for it? After reading it, I find myself questioning which side of the joke is real and which is false, and whether I'm in the real part of the joke or the false part. Which is ultimately a fruitless exercise, since the whole thing is intentionally set up to be pointless. Got me, I guess?
I do like the visuals though.
It just sounds like an artist who is trying really hard to be an artist and forgetting that real artists don't try, they just do what they like and someone else loves it.
But also the compulsive lying, the drugs, the weird lack of self awareness is cringe inducing here.
The question I have not yet seen in the comments here is whether or not this post is real or fiction. Is it the journal of a questionable character, or a deliberate attempt to push people's buttons?
And honestly, that is why I like it. I really hope it cannot be taken at face value - that would be disappointment.
All the true stories you actually bother to read are a little fictive.
That said, he said two specific relationships with real people that I know, by name, and you know what? He’s telling it like it was in those cases.
The least real thing about this is that, reading carefully, the only antagonists are the occasional grant committee members who reject him. To me, in real life, fine artists are quite opinionated and tend to beef with a lot of people; or have no opinions, and are pigeonholed into doing the same exact thing that once, long ago, got them an audience, over and over again. Andrew does not belong to this latter group.
I don't see anything about a movie called Interlaken being developed. On IMDB, I do see an Andrew Norman Wilson as the director of the short films he mentions in the article.
Who knows about the individual details in it. I'm sure it's sort of directionally true. It's believable at any rate.
Interlaken is a town in Switzerland, and he says the movie will be set there, not that it'll be the title.
> Is it the journal of a questionable character, or a deliberate attempt to push people's buttons?
Reminds me of some of Hunter S Thompson's writing (who always insisted his sordid semi-autobiographical tales were drawn directly from even more depraved true events).
It seems like some art student guy's journey leveling up from food coupon couch surfing to movie director. Dunno if real or not or what the point is. Feels like trolling to piss people off?
It was posted. It got attention. Someone may remember his name. Mission accomplished.
Kinda gives me Bukowski vibes, like if Hank Chinaski had gone to art school.
Chinaski was working for a living, this guy would rather cheat and steal, as he thinks labor is beneath him (he described a regular cleaner's job as "demeaning").
When I think Bukowski, I think a Pasadena residence punctuated by visits to the Queen Mary
> whether or not this post is real or fiction
Well, he has one other post on the same site that is explicitly marked fiction, where this one is not. That may be a clue.
Maybe - this is clearly someone who enjoys blurring the line between reality and fiction, so a their tagging of their own work might be equally blurry.
> whether or not this post is real or fiction
I suspect both, and I’d suspect the author’s the sort who wouldn’t stay in one category no matter the circumstances.
The fact that so many people on HN dislike this proves hacker culture died in programming..
I don’t think hacker culture is dead. Rather, computing entered its Eternal September; a career in software engineering, especially in the United States, now carries a similar cachet to being a doctor or lawyer, and the startup world has attracted those who want to make a fortune. The geeks, nerds, scholars, artists, and other varied misfits who once dominated the field have been outnumbered by those looking for money.
This is the price of computing’s success. It’s not all bad or all good, it just is a natural consequence of computing becoming an integral part of modern society.
It’s not just money they made so much money they actually dislodged and eliminated the conditions and opportunities that created hacker culture in the first place
That doesn't seem true to me. But say more about this.
from my pov, the autistics used to find each other in the STEM departments and then hang out.
then demand and programming platforms that take care of the heavy lifting opened the door for normies.
how can you tell an extrovert at MIT?
he looks at your shoes when you talk to him
As a researcher, I concur. I’m a 80s/90s kid who got into computing through seeing the technological changes around me and who got inspired by the stories of Steve Jobs, Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, Alan Kay, and other pioneers. I wanted to pursue a career where I was given the freedom to explore and to create technologies that made an impact.
Unfortunately what I’ve found in the past decade of working in the field is that we are no longer in the exploration era of computing. There is still much to explore, but the problem is that the metaphorical frontier has been largely bought up by large corporations and funding agencies, and thus exploration has been restricted. The days of unfettered research at places like Xerox PARC and Bell Labs are long-gone; it’s all about quickly delivering results in areas that promise to have a direct, immediate impact on the bottom line. Academia is no better with its “publish-or-perish” demands. Even working as a software engineer has less exploration today than it did in the past. The developed world is jeopardizing its future by relentlessly pursuing short-term gains at the expense of the long term.
It’s disappointing to see computing “colonized” by business interests who have no love for computing and who don’t understand that research and software engineering are creative endeavors that cannot be treated like an assembly line, but I’ve come to terms with this recently and started rethinking my career. I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to separate my passion for computing with making a living; trying to make money from research leads to pressure from funders. I need to pursue my true research callings the way an artist pursues art.
But a thought just occurred to me when typing all of this. In a way, though, hackers and artists are back to the days of the Homebrew Computer Club of the 1970s, where hobbyists pursued their craft and showed off their work without any expectation of monetary reward. These hackers were distinct from the stereotypical IBMer. The rise of Apple and Microsoft changed this, but something interesting happened in the past decade; working for Apple, Microsoft, and other Big Tech companies today is akin to working for IBM in 1974. What was once the counterculture has become “the man.”
It’s not a perfect analogy; AT&T and Xerox were definitely “the man” 50 years ago, yet they ran research labs that offer levels of freedom that cannot be found today. But I believe that us hacker/artist types should take inspiration from the hobbyist communities of old. I’m unqualified to take on modern capitalism and its effects on research and the software industry, but if I could make a lasting contribution to society by doing great “artistic” computing, then I could die satisfied.
Although at the same time, with the plateuing of computer hardware, you don't need to be a Bell Labs or PARC in order to do research. People are doing cutting-edge AI research on their gaming graphics cards. On a developer salary you can command a massive cluster on AWS (for a few minutes to run tests).
This is true; consumer hardware is crazy capable these days. Even less powerful hardware such as the Raspberry Pi enables various sorts of projects that can be done inexpensively. While it’s hard to find a Xerox PARC- or Bell Labs type of job these days, we have hardware that Dennis Ritchie could only dream of, not to mention a vast ecosystem of open source software to build off of that didn’t exist 50 years ago.
Thanks for giving a positive counterpoint; while there’s much to lament about modern computing, there’s also much to praise.
I read HN almost daily and comment here often, but I don't like the name. I wish they'd chosen to call it something more like "startup news" instead, as that feels like a more accurate representation of the site and its community and standards.
More like “capitalist porn.” Mostly seems to just be people salivating over how much wealth they can extract with the next big tech advancements.
I liked it. I also think he sounds like a dick and a tiring man to know, and I'm confused by the people who themselves confuse dislike for the person with dislike for the writing.
Oh he's definitely a bit of a dick, even if parts of the story are probably exaggerated. A pretty clever one though.
I don’t even understand what there is to dislike. This person lives in misery
There is a great deal to dislike. Primarily he is clearly from an affluent family and all his misery could be solved with a phone call.
What makes it seem like, from this piece anyway, that he is from an affluent family? (I don’t know the author/artist whatsoever.) Describe to me the phone call you think ought to take place.
"Hey mum, can I move back into your two-bedroom ranch house in North Carolina?"
"Oh honey, of course you can!"
Note that he did in fact move back in, so this conversation must have happened in some form.
That’s not particularly affluent.
He stole a $4k suit out of a store, for one thing.
The store will be fine.
Barney's new york is now closed, it was not fine.
How about he steals your suit next, you'll likely be fine as well.
Meh. I think it's just endemic of online gatherings of programmers that the discussions seep with a strong sense of intellectual and moral superiority. We are the type to feel like we have life and the world figured out.
If anything, the hacker culture equivalent would be someone who is desperately trying to project the "hacker vibe" without much to show for it.
This was a great read and reminiscent of Kerouac (to me). It also makes me think of a life a consciously decided I didn't want after I finished art academy. I've seen others who did and got out after decades of trying and failing. I was lucky to figure out that going to art school to become an artist is a pipe dream.
The essence and moral of this quite wonderful piece:
“No one wants to listen to an artist describe their work, but everyone wants to be told my rib story.”
artist fixes rib story = a how-to guide (expressed in the reciprocal "how-did" form) discussing the narrator's passage through a niche and mildly exotic experience. It answers a question the reader never asked, but potentially might have.
whereas artist recounting his struggles = a series of open-ended "why-did" vignettes with none offering escape from a cycle of precarity, except for the obvious solution to discontinue throwing oneself on the sword of Art. a solution which is intentionally and elaborately avoided by a narrator who does not supply a relatable (never mind satisfying) motivation or justification. I may be giving him too much credit, but there's a decent chance the vague sense of being stifled by this brief immersion in a world fundamentally unsuited to your own nature is an intended effect.
That’s interesting, I checked out around the rib story.
This man has lived a life many fantasise about, although perhaps not a very comfortable one. I think sometimes I lived a colourful, varied life but what a story for this piece.
I can't believe I have to do the reddit edit postscriptum but really, does everyone dislike the author? I certainly could never be this sort of person, but what a story, living life on the edge and making it up as they go along. Do commenters never daydream, like just imagine how life would be if things had turned out differently?
The reason why so many people dislike the author is because he's incessantly creating problems for other people. If he only did it for himself, the outlook would probably be more sympathetic.
I didn't read it super closely but it doesn't seem like he's blaming anyone but himself (and chance) for his various problems. For that, I can respect it. Even if I have a very hard time imagining what it would take for me to choose it.
I don’t think there’s a direct correlation between commercial and artistic value. But there has to come a point where people who create this kind of stuff realise they’re not Van Gogh. Top points for edginess though, I guess
Someone probably said the same thing to Van Gogh during his life.
Nearly everyone said the same thing to Van Gogh during his life. He was only recognized for his artwork after his death.
That’s not quite true. Yes people cared less about his art while he was alive, but that was because of his erratic behavior. There was no doubt that the people surrounding him found his art beautiful, especially In his later years when he was staying at the clinics
Well that was entirely my point, Van Gogh took a completely new approach to colour, use of light, painting en plein air etc.
People never appreciated him but at least Van Gogh could say he’s doing something groundbreaking and new.
Whereas the artist in question here, I can’t imagine they’ve ever legitimately thought that of their own art, it’s just not that groundbreaking or good.
Maybe they just realise that they’re unemployable elsewhere so they may as well carry on
Just because he beat the odds, doesn’t mean their advice was wrong.
Their advice wasn’t wrong. He never enjoyed any of the success or fame he has now. Not even a fraction of it.
The world was lucky to have Van Gogh, but Van Gogh was very unlucky to have this world.
Van Gogh wasn't Van Gogh. If by "Van Gogh" you mean "had the rare combination of skill and luck to be a successful artist within his lifetime".
Someone told Van Gogh that he wasn't Van Gogh? No wonder he went crazy, that's some hardcore gaslighting.
If tech had people like this I might actually enjoy my job
Tech had people kinda like this in the 90s. Some of them hackers. Couch surfing, partying, lan parties, skating/hiking/whatever.
This is one of the best, funniest pieces of writing I have read in months - The utter detachment and cynicism displayed around this borderline Hunter S Thompson acid trip is breath of fresh air.
Is this what it feels like to have a life without a purpose? Or is it a plot to a romcom movie about to be released?
Either way, interesting.
Some highlights reading through:
> I fly Spirit to Chicago, where all my friends are too busy buying property or accepting professorships to try the ketamine a guy gave me for letting him suck my dick.
> At the end of the shoot, I’m $40k in debt and severely constipated.
> There’s the explanation: Blaze broke Hollywood’s dick off, and now he’s dead.
> My therapist suggests I take a trip to see friends because I keep calling myself an incel. I have a feeling she’s sick of watching a grown man cry about how hard it is to poop and wants new material.
> I tell them God will use the bone to create a third gender.
> Even if it doesn’t work out between this new being and me, I’m able to autofellate. I now have half an hourglass figure and, naturally, am starting an OnlyFans.
I feel like I know so many people with 1/10th the spunk/pizzazz/personality/attitude of this author. How did one person luck out and get such a "concentration" of unique-ness?
Most people dial down this kind of "uniqueness" as they grow up because they don't want to be a constant source of headache for everyone surrounding them.
An essay of ‘you don’t ask, you don’t get’
It's not a lifestyle I'd want to emulate. The author/character does seem to have some kind of moral code, at least. From my reading, it seems like he's OK with harming the "haves" but I didn't notice him harming any "have nots". I'd guess he's Chaotic Neutral alignment. From easydamus.com: "People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others. Neutral people are committed to others by personal relationships... Chaotic characters follow their consciences, resent being told what to do, favor new ideas over tradition, and do what they promise if they feel like it."
You don’t have to like the protagonist to enjoy the story. Who said the protagonist had to be the “good guy”. And he makes no claims to be.
That's just... most people.
“I ask a model what they would get paid for a shoot and propose $2,000 to Barney’s. They reject my proposal and offer a $1,000 gift card.”
Probably asked a woman model not a male model. Women get double what men get for modeling.
Not necessarily. Depends on the woman, depends on the man, and often on their reps.
More likely because it was an advertorial, both for the brand and the “models”.
Fun read.
I'm impressed with the shear amount of cat-sitting
> A gallerist who wants to work with me says she can’t add a white man to her roster.
Pretty fucking disgusting that someone would openly say that to him.
LOL - people have said shit like this to my face my whole life, including some CS admissions guy at CMU but he had the nerve to throw in a derogatory remark about ADD too. Just normal shit that happened in the 90's I guess.
I know a man who manages a theatre and he is pretty honest about how difficult it is to work in that market as a straight white man these days.
As a black man, I'd appreciate the lawsuit-opener over my reality, which is just people seeing my alma mater and name and pretending I don't exist.
Is it that they don’t think you’re qualified to have gotten in there or it’s an HBCU so they denigrate it?
HBCU. I don't think I've ever heard of an application being binned because a recruiter didn't think someone was qualified to get into the school they listed. (But, for the record, I WAS qualified; the HBCU gave me more money.)
That would make me pretty mad as well. I'm sorry if that happens to you.
To be frank, I don't think you are.
And you know this… how? By psychically divining it?
By reading your post history and taking into your account that you're stalking me.
LMAO I didn’t even realize we were commenting on two different threads together until you pointed it out. You’re not that important buddy
LMAO
Embarrassing. And untrustworthy, to boot.
Several commenters here hate the writer, calling him "completely insufferable", "a character that the reader hates", or "a selfish, narcissistic jerk". But I didn't find him that bad? His worst crime was stealing a $4000 suit from Barneys New York.
so stealing is ok if it's from the wealthy and corporations..
I didn't say that. Stealing $4k is bad, but I can't say I hate the guy for it. It's not like he ran into the store with a machine gun and murdered the clerk to get the cash in the register. Also the suit anecdote could have been made up anyways.
is murder the only bad thing in your mind?
can things be bad without being the worst possible thing?
what i'm hearing: its bad but it's not bad because there are worse things that are bad and also I'm "looking the other way"
whether or not it was made up was irrelevant to your initial claim. the proposition is identical in either case.
It’s not, but two others have defended it. Reminds me of how people defend graffiti “artists” for “expressing themselves” despite the fact that it’s vandalism.
I believe this train of thought is called “entitled”
generally yea
there's also a big difference between "one guy supposedly stealing one thing as a part of a story" and "let's all go steal"
when you consider morality, do you think your rule only ever applies to one person or categorically?
It applies categorically. But the category isn't "all people", it's "all people whose wealth was obtained through fair means". Economic parasites - which describes all ultra-wealthy people ipso facto - do not qualify.
No one other than Kant (and really, kant's own delusions about himself) are deontological ethicists. Everyone has exceptions where they think the right thing is context dependent
Yes.
Aside from the essay, can somebody please explain to me the appeal of "art works" like the ones that Andrew produces? It's gotta be some kind of joke that I missed the memo on, right!?
They're pretty and or provacative. What else are you looking for?
Beauty is subjective and all that. I liked some of them and disliked others.
Could have been worse, could have had a second wife and gone William Tell.
The story about Hollywood was fun.
Imagine writing something with such honesty & the people reading don't stop to reflect on how this is just one facet of how the systems they prop up push people into operating to survive. They just judge the person, as though they live in a vacuum.
Honesty is not what the author is going for here. This is genre autofiction following a throughline of slumming, marginal artists that carries back through punk, beat, flapper, and la boheme writers.
It's entertainment, not true confession or activism, and it delights in getting under the skin of squares who can't tell.
No need to push back on the people reactively criticizing the character or writer -- that's the point.
I really enjoyed it and it didn't get under my skin in the slightest, but the gloating about squares and true hackers on HN is annoying the hell out of me. I don't think the work delights in getting under the skin of squares, I think you delight in being cooler than the largely fictional squares you believe are being gotten at.
Deliberately making art that people think sucks seems like kind of a low bar?
It don't think the aim was to write a piece that people think sucks, it was to write about a person who people think sucks. There is a difference, or at least there used to be: I feel like increasingly people are unable to separate the literary value of a piece from the moral value of its protagonist. This piece reminds me of Charles Bukowski's books about the "lowlife" Hank Chinaski. Another more extreme example of a good book with a shitty protagonist is Lolita, which IMO couldn't be published today or Nabokov would be shunned and ostracised as a paedophile.
(None of this is to say you need to like the blog post, you might hate it on its own merits, but I definitely think there are a lot of people here who think it's a bad piece because they disagree with the choices the protagonist makes, which I think is a very limiting view.)
> It don't think the aim was to write a piece that people think sucks, it was to write about a person who people think sucks.
You're right, and it's what edgy teenagers can do in their sleep, aka middle school math class. I would much prefer he created actual art (written or visual) I could care about.
Fair point. I think a lot depends on how "real" the protagonist is. I have read and enjoyed several works with protagonists who make choices that extremely different from my own. Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson comes to mind. Hardly any character in it is good or admirable, but it is written well enough to illuminate why they behave that way, and the rewards that offers. IMO, TFA doesn't pull that off.
Disgrace got published and it wasn’t much better from that standpoint
We're meant to judge the character in the story, but the story might suck for some as well. I personally did a double take and skimmed the unimportant bits because I loathed the character.
Imo the story could have easily been a piece of poetry and I would probably have enjoyed it more.
Yeah, unless you can get the cool kids to think you're cool for doing it. This kind of art is a social game, not an technical craft.
Did the system somehow forced this man to avoid working for a living?
He lives this way intentionally. He could get a job as a UX designer at Staples.com whenever he wants.
There’s currently a surplus of designers with software industry experience, résumés full of business objectives achieved, and a finely honed ability to speak the soothing jargon of absolution that managers really want from UX. (“Yes, we can make users love this pop-up that you want to add. It’s just a matter of applying design.”)
Why would a corporation deliberately hire a video artist and music video director instead?
TBF corporations don't know what's good for them. When XR was all the rage, it was current (2D) UX designers getting jobs, instead of the 3D artists, sculptors, game designers, animators, and industrial designers who actually had the skills to make compelling spatial interactions, smart objects, and experiences (which there was not a surplus of). Then, the hype collapsed, and they fired everyone who couldn't program, thereby making the issue incalculably worse.
This is excellent, worth reading all the way through.
The fact that his character is completely insufferable is, of course, the point.
The more I read this, the more I dislike the writer. Probably some mixture of disgust and jealousy, as a failed artist who can't bring myself to do/am incapable of doing the things he's done to see some measure of success. Is this what it takes (for an extroverted white dude)?
Yikes.
The world needs room temperature superconductors, yet here we are.
What are you blaming him for? How is this one starving artist holding the world back from room temperature superconductors?
What if some scientist has a breakthrough thought while reading this?
The world needs less. Of everything.
Less comments?
Fewer.
Indeed.
Fewer snarky comments like yours maybe.
I believe we won’t solve humanty’s pressing problems with more of the same.
We need more love and understanding for sure.
Well, your comment literally said, "less of everything"
" more love and understanding"
Was not mentioned.
So I am not sure how your first comment could help, to make the world a better place.
"we won’t solve humanty’s pressinge problems with more of the same."
And generic statements like these maybe neither.
Because when people are hungry(many are), yes they need more food. More of the same.
But your comment implies there are also maybe too many people anyway?
So rather less food and then eventually less people? But still more of love and understanding?
Or maybe it all just ain't that simple?
The world needs room temperature superconductors, yet here we are.
May I ask how room temperature superconductors make the world a better place or help fighting hunger?
And what do room temperature superconductors have to do with art?
Many many applications.
But cheap highspeed trains (floating on magnetic fields) come to mind as a means of easy transporation around the world.
Oh, and less food waste and global inequality definitely cures hunger better than room temparature superconductors.
But your comment implies there are also maybe too many people anyway? So rather less food and then eventually less people?
Those are your ideas, I never even meant to imply them.
If you include 100% less resistance in our conductors I might be in favor.