The Agony of Fads

An Assemblage of Internet Randomness

4.4.2022

<Technolalia> focuses on Philosophy, Culture, and Tech and how those three categories interact. The content stems from original pieces to curated links and the occasional podcast.

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Thanks for being a subscriber to <Technolalia> Newsletter. Here are some of the things I’ve been reading lately:

“On Angelicism” by Justin Murphy

“Angelicism seems to suggest that the present cultural crisis is a crisis of legibility. That we are overly inclined to be clear, to make sense, to prey on each other with the Queen’s English—all the better to pretend and to surveil and control each other. There is some truth to this, but it’s more symptom than cause. It’s not the most terrifying and profound layer of the problem, so neither is it the most promising place to look. It’s not the supreme danger, so neither will it be the saving power.”

On Difficult Beauty

“The Concept of Non-Photography” By Francois Laruelle

“A rigorous new thinking of the photograph in its relation to science, philosophy, and art, so as to discover an essence of photography that precedes its historical, technological, and aesthetic conditions.

If philosophy has always understood its relation to the world according to the model of the instantaneous flash of a photographic shot, how can there be a “philosophy of photography” that is not viciously self-reflexive?”

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The Agony of Fads

Notes on Milady, Angelisism01, The Vibe Shift, and Justin Murphy

Justin Murphy @jmrphy

The ghost lemurs of Madagascar are really here.

Depending on which online circles and niches you tend to gravitate towards, you may have looked at one of these cute “neo-chibi” Milady Nfts. Its currently niche online Twitter groups are raving about, given that they are much better to look at than the Bored Ape collection. On top of that, most of the “spokes-people” involved with Milady are also involved with another online phenomenon known as Agelicism.

Before I continue to this post’s central point, I want to put a brief disclaimer. I am acquainted with the Individual(s) that call themselves Angelicism01. What this post is not is a critique of their work; these are my thoughts on certain events everyone is coalescing around.

Additionally, Justin Murphy had come out with a post and accompanying live stream where he dives into some of the “criticisms” he has of Angelicism.

I was already working on releasing something about all this before Justin’s posts, as was alluded to here.

On Angelicism

Now some of you may be asking, “WTF is Angelicism?” This is a tricky question to tackle but ill condense it to a few points. Angeliscism itself can be connected to a recent online phenomenon attributed to or coined as “God Posting,” now, some of those involved with the project may disagree, but in essence, “God Posting” is a niche online aesthetic/meme usually focusing around pixilated deep-fried pictures of biblically accurate angels, heavenly scenes, and traditional iconography subverted in some way. A clear example of this would be the website for Forever Magazines website, introducing you to the site via its heavenly gates a la, early blogosphere/My Space components, and post - Tumblr aesthetics.

Angelicism itself has its Geneology in Y2k blogging and advertising trends. What makes Angelicism unique is what Murphy concisely points out,

“Angelicism is affecting rather than confusing because the signifiers that Angelicism scrambles—namely, the signifiers of academic literary theory—impress.

One appreciates this writing not because it improves one's command of reality, or because it advances a living research agenda, but because a competently trained practitioner of academic Theory is saying: It's OK to let go.” -Justin Murphy

Angelicism, one could say, is at the forefront of current online cultural trends and is also able to flex by name-dropping figures like Simone Weil, but simultaneously able to make a concise and clear point on how this is all connected via some crypto-Gnosticism.

Somebody Please Columbine The Entire Drunken Canal Editorial Staff

The Milady Dilemma and Fads

The thing that I found most salient in Justin's blog post, which has some points of solid resonance with my own, is that these movements are indicative of is what the average person calls a fad.

In short, Justin’s main criticism is that in the long run, Angelicism may or may not be the precursor for cultural change but that it could very well die off as just another fad; you can decide for yourself by reading Justin’s piece.

I tend to side with this, but I wanted to add that this is true also of many crypto projects.

I’m a big fan of the Milady aesthetic; it resonates well with the current alt-internet trends regarding god posting, angelicism, and schizo-posting. The problem with a lot of these things is that they move at warp speed, often having a life cycle of just a couple of weeks. The term “vibe shift” has been used to conceptualize this constant materialization and dematerialization of online posting trends. Essentially what it breaks down to is who can out-schizz the algorithm.

Essentially, Miladys, Angelicism, Financepunk, and these new Neo-Y2k post-Tumblr movements have the same bloodline. An article on Spike Art Mag by Satya Paul goes into more refined detail about all of this.

My point of divergence with a lot of these movements is in regards to cultural acceleration and fads. I don’t think these movements are intrinsically bad or problematic, but they are riding the current technological strata situated by techno-capital; by their own internal crypto gnostic world view, they aren’t so much as captured by the techno-capital singularity, but they are an exercise of potlach in it.

I write about this, the piece linked above, in the same “vibe” of schizzo posting, the use of God and its language in the writing while simultaneously using theory to add a sense of crunchiness. The thing is that art itself exists to defy Philosophy; art is oblique and escapes capture; philosophy is always behind trying to box it in with concept formation, at least that’s how the relationship has existed traditionally, but as cultural acceleration increases and the vibe shifts become more frequent that separation between philosophy and Art is rapidly disintegrating if it hasn’t already happened.

If Christianity has taught us anything is that the true agony of Fads is that all fads either die fast or become iconic.

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~Links~

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“If sleep represents the high point of bodily relaxation, deep boredom is the peak of mental relaxation.”
― Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society

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-C.N.

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