I’ve never seen this before.’”
People in weird or absurdist
Twitter communities have latched
onto “locals” as both antithetical
to themselves and an additional
stream of content production.
“I think that’s a combination
of content lacking a specific
intensity or direction of nuance,
combined with either the ideals or
the personhood that represents,”
Triebwasser said.
Beyond the local/weird divide,
Western culture has always been
preoccupied with tests that create
hierarchies of knowledge. People
who know the most, who can
tick the most cultural boxes, are
positioned at the top. Then come
those who don’t know or don’t
know as much, and finally in last
place are the people who discover
the list only after it has lost its
novelty.
Ward points to Tom Wolfe’s
“Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.”
“It has a list of all the things that
can get you high, and I remember
people reading that and it being
like a checklist in sort of a similar
way,” Ward said. “There was this
play of: Do you know all of these?
Have you tried all of these? What
do they do?”
Meme culture operates in
similar ways, but its methods of
interactions and communication
are intrinsically tied to the
structure
of
platforms
like
Twitter and, to a lesser degree,
Instagram. So while comparisons
can be made to older forms of
culture — literature, art and music
— their power is tied to the way
these sites are constructed and
displayed.
“Most important for meme/
Twitter culture specifically, I
think, is the way of consumption,”
Triebwasser said. “Cell phones
have adapted our consumption
patterns to be basically unceasing,
and the content follows this
habituation.”
Even the act of scrolling
through a feed impacts the way
the information on the feed is
consumed and interpreted.
“The way of experiencing a
Twitter timeline as a stream of
consciousness really affects our
cognition,” Triebwasser said.
The
endless
stream
of
content pushes humor toward
the mundane. Not the blissful
mundane of “Local” Twitter, but
the ceaseless mundane tragedies
of modern existence — what
Triebwasser calls “the solidarity
of
day-to-day
experience.”
Accounts
like
sosadtoday
play on a sort of communal
existential dread, and rely on self-
deprecating jokes about the user’s
(or the user’s online persona’s)
own mental illness.
“It’s best exemplified by short
quips that become a vehicle for
communication.
‘Might
fuck
around and (blank)’ ‘(Morning
salutation),
(blank)
let’s
get
this
(blank),’”
Triebwasser
said.
“These
formats
for
communication
become
not
only a status for complexity and
popularity of humor, but then are
abstracted back into everyday
life.”
Like “we live in a society” or
“fellas is it gay,” these phrases
become memes on and offline.
But, this offline life is not limited
to text-based memes. Vines have
outlived their platform (uploads
to the short-form video app were
stopped in October 2016). Twitter
users have taken the audio from
these videos and turned them into
similarly memed phrases. “My
dick fell off” and “What the fuck
is up, Kyle” recall both the audio
and video of their original Vine
format.
Triebwasser points to Vine
as an integral platform in the
transition from Advice Animals
and other impact font meme
formats to the more absurdist
and abstract meme forms we see
today.
But is this new, post-Vine, post-
Impact font meme space Neo-
Dada? Not exactly, Triebwasser
says.
“I would say the comparison
to Dada is apt due to Dada’s
emphasis
on
irony,
anti-
capitalism, aestheticism, rejection
of logic and reason, et cetera,”
Triebwasser said. “But isn’t it
more culturally and artistically
accurate to conceive of it as its
own genre?”
The
main
reason
for
Triebwasser’s assertion is that the
internet is a “radial operator” with
a speed and reach which cannot
be matched in physical culture.
“If you conceptualize it as a
format for communication, you
see the way of communicating
changes or evolves with increased
interaction with it,” Triebwasser
said.
Increased interaction is also
colored by the way the platforms
filter content. News articles and
photos of friends are filtered
in-between memes and jokes.
“You read some horrible news
and there’s a joke after it and that
is why something that’s really
stupid on its own can make you
laugh or make you want to show
someone else,” Ward said.
While a great deal of the
content produced in this vein
is self-referential or, at least,
participates is an established
“canon” of images that make fun
or critique the way people use
and communicate on the internet,
sometimes purely novel memes
are developed.
Triebwasser is reminded of
“Dat Boi,” a pixelated cartoon frog
riding a unicycle that appeared
online, seemingly out of nowhere.
“There was no existing frog
emoji or play on the word boy
at that time,” Triebwasser said.
“That was notable enough.”
It was, Triebwasser recalls,
a purely non-referential meme
— alone among its kind to rise to
such viral levels. It proves this
niche is also a generating force,
a movement with the ability to
recognize and generate absurdism
and weirdness in the world.
While a majority of this culture
is visual, the main platform
through
which
participants
interact is Twitter, a primarily
text-based platform, Twitter’s
days could be numbered.
Triebwasser
sees
parallels
between the decline of Twitter
and the decline of platforms like
Facebook and Tumblr that used
to hold the top position in the
culture.
“The
way
that
Twitter’s
administration
is
handling
anything is not happy or fun.
Verifying Neo-Nazis, and recently
there was a purge of Leftist
Twitter accounts that all just
got deleted,” Triebwasser said.
“People I follow are on their third
or fourth account because they
keep getting deleted.”
Twitter users who are active in
meme and absurdist culture don’t
feel like the platform has room for
them anymore.
“There’s a small but noticeable
ideation on Twitter that we’re
being edged out,” Triebwasser
said.
Whatever’s
next
for
the
community, Triebwasser feels
confident they’ll find a way to
exist and thrive online.
“The culture as a social force
will always exist and we/they/it
will always find a way to exist,”
Triebwasser said.
So, it’s clear that absurdist
humor aims to generate a reaction.
It rejects traditional aesthetics
of beauty, logic and capitalism
in favor of a visual language that
reflects the darkness, absurdity
and unknowability of modern life.
Most of its content is referential
— stock images, internet trends
and visual culture in the Western
canon — but some is novel.
While it may bear some of
the skeletal work of the two,
it’s not Dada or Neo-Dada. This
thing, this Weird Twitter/Meme
Culture/Online Humor thing is
a beast of its own creation — an
artistic movement that, like all,
was born from what came before
it, but has quite rapidly become
something wholly its own.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
b-side
Thursday, September 13, 2018 — 3B
COURTESY OF MADELEINE GAUDIN
COURTSY OF MADELEINE GAUDIN
MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW: ‘REBEL HEART’
It’s no coincidence that the full
moon is red in First Aid Kit’s new
music video for “Rebel Heart.”
Red is the color of the passion
that drives rebellion, the color of
individuality, of love that rages
and dreadfully quells, of blood. It’s
the color of the heart itself.
“Rebel Heart” — a song from
Ruins, a stellar avalanche of an
album released back in Jan. — is
a tale of dread and insecurity, in
which the magnetic folk duo croon
lines like, “Why do I keep trying /
To be someone I’ll never be / I keep
seeing her in everyone / Everyone
but me.” The music video tells the
story of a séance. Sisters Klara and
Johanna Söderberg are dressed
in red, with the latter sporting a
necklace with a prominent heart-
shaped pendant, and surrounded
by several silent, blank-faced
women robed in white (think
“The Beguiled”).
The video is blurred with the
warm fuzz of an old movie, and
full of nods to the horror and
suspense genres: an eclipse, a TV
screen flickering Poltergeist-style
with static, dramatic shadows
framing each sister’s eyes as
she speaks into a lipstick-red
telephone, the women in white
lurching in unison on the wooden
floor in twitchy motions that evoke
“The Exorcist.” A group of girls
in a circle, holding hands while
another girl rises off the table and
floats, her red heart pulsing and
glowing beneath her white dress.
A creepy, sleepover-esque hair-
braiding circle — which, if it isn’t
already out of some horror movie,
certainly should be.
Beyond its aesthetics, though,
the video bears many of the
hallmarks
that
make
First
Aid Kit’s videos so great: The
nostalgic drama steeped in horror
recalls the haunting high school
prom from “Fireworks,” and
the maneuvering between the
two sisters echoes the narrative
duality of “It’s a Shame.” The
video reminds us of one of the
most alluring aspects of the band’s
music — that when they sing of
heartbreak and dread, they sing
of it together. When they enter a
creepy castle under a full, blood-
red moon, where the hallways are
dark and the safety of one’s heart
is called into question, they do it
together.
And later, when they leave the
castle and speed away down a dirt
road lit only by the moon and their
headlights, toward an obscure and
frightening red future, they do
that together, too.
— Laura Dzubay,
Daily Arts Writer
COLUMBIA RECORDS
ANnAPURNA PICTURES
There’s
a
sequence
late
in
Boots
Riley’s
breakout
summer hit “Sorry to Bother
You” when protagonist Cassius
Green (Lakeith Stanfield, “Get
Out”),
the
once
down-on-
his-luck telemarketer turned
rising company star, is faced
with a Faustian opportunity
from
international
super-
corporation C.E.O. Steve Lift
(Armie Hammer, “Call Me by
Your Name”). Given a taste of
the untold riches that follow
selling
one’s
soul,
Green
must decide to what extent
his values (versus his wallet)
will drive his decision. Now,
such an epic crucible could
be portrayed simply enough
— a check on the table and a
C.E.O.’s
outstretched
hand
— but in wonderful “Sorry to
Bother You” fashion, Riley
doesn’t make it that easy.
In a film built around a
telemarketer’s
supernatural
ability
to
perfectly
code-
switch into his “white voice”
(the movie magic of the scenes
supplied in a dubbed voiceover
from David Cross of “Arrested
Development”), the bar for
what is considered shocking
begins to climb. For Riley to
get his point across, to really
drive his message home, he
doesn’t hold his punches.
The absurdism of “Sorry
to Bother You” is a matter
of form following function.
Riley’s film is an extended
conceit on the financial divide
in our country, a cavernous
separation
that
has
only
grown in recent decades. The
absurd, real-life disparity in
resources between those who
have and those who do not is
represented
by
fantastical,
reality-bending sci-fi events
and societal developments in
the film’s alternate U.S. It’s
not a new idea to use blown-
out-of-proportion
analogies
when
working
towards
social change (see “A Modest
Proposal”), and while I doubt
Riley will ever be Jonathan
Swift, his methodology is true.
Creating space for dialogue by
expanding the conversation
past what is real and true
and
already
proposed
can
bring in new eyes and ears.
Shocking, absurdist pieces of
art can’t solve any problems
directly (probably), but they
no doubt can help to bring
the championed issues closer
to the forefront of people’s
minds.
Additionally,
Riley’s
absurdism has a unique effect
when carrying the weight
of such real-life absurdities.
In the film, without getting
into too many spoilers, Lift’s
idea for an army of workers
under lifetime contracts who
work and eat and sleep all in
the factory (for efficiency, of
course), sounds like a horrid
breach of everything humane
and
acceptable
in
modern
society. It’s the prospective
distance
between
what
is
shown on screen — the nasty,
unacceptable acts of a business
magnate who has freed himself
from all moral ties — and what
we see in our own world that
gives us the opportunity to ask
“How absurd is this, really?”
It’s those kinds of questions
that make “Sorry to Bother
You” a valuable piece of social
criticism.
The power of absurdism
in ‘Sorry to Bother You’
STEPHEN SATARINO
Daily Arts Writer
Riley’s film
is an extended
conceit on the
financial divide
in our country,
a cavernous
separation
that has only
grown in recent
decades
Increased
interaction is also
colored by the
way the platforms
filter content.
News articles
and photos of
friends are filtered
in-between
memes and jokes.
“Rebel Heart”
First Aid Kit
Columbia Records