𝙙𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙚 🌹 @videodante@mastodon.social

stop talking about kanye west!! stop it!!!! shut up about kanye west and whatever headass shit he's doing now

what you need to know about lord of the rings is that the hobbits are like little guys, the humans are like regular guys, and the elves are basically tall guys

"Drink Talk"

i be like "i know a spot" but i don't. i'm new here

All of this is to say: I totally get why you'd phrase it as "not political" in order to win over center/right individuals. It's a decent strategy. But to be clear- the politics of leftism are explicitly *about* mass safety & care. The politics of the center/right are not.

The push to wear masks also very easily illustrates how badly our healthcare system has been handling this pandemic, another strike against center/right politics. Opposing a system of healthcare-for-profit, or pointing out its inherent flaws, is a political stance.

Masks exemplify a very small part of what the center/right politics in America oppose, as they sacrifice a small individual choice (face coverage) in favor of mass safety. This is a political stance- wearing a mask says that you value the community over the individual.

The center/right in the USA is deeply involved in projects (read: companies, think tanks, NGOs, astroturfed movements) that are explicitly against universal healthcare, & its associated public health mandates, in this country. Masks *are* political.

I understand the tactical decision, when talking to center/right folks, to say that "wearing a mask to stop COVID-19 transmission is a public health issue and not a political one".

I just hope you also know, personally, that it is a political issue. Public health is politics!

If you want a good artform, if you want good artistic practice, you invest in and interrogate it- you do criticism. You support good criticism, you recognize what good criticism "is" and you cultivate it around your work and the work that you admire. You learn to critique well.

The grander problem is that in America, at least, we have a mythos around "creation" that we don't have around criticism. Criticism is the lesser art, the realm of Do-Nots. It's demeaned, because it's not "risky" (lol). This is pervasive & damaging to basically all artforms.

To me, criticism is a form of maintenance, of poking around the borders of creation. Inspecting it, prodding it, seeing what it stands on and where it goes. It is deeply important to have good criticism in the same way it is deeply important to have a good gardener for a garden.

Criticism is a work in the same way that creation is a work. It takes time, practice, and skill. It's not the same work as creation, but it's just as "legitimate" of a practice, in the same way that the act of gardening & the act of building a house are both legitimate.

If you are in a creative field and are resistant to criticism, you are stagnating your own art. That's really it.

fajita husband didn't even think to provide his beloved with a handful of shavings from his ceremonial cheese bag lmaooooooo who even goes to a restaurant without their cheese bag these days

i know every online oldhead says this every month or so but we're all correct is the thing

i hate watching tutorial videos online. why did anyone ever think that a twenty minute video is more useful than a well-written instructional article with pictures

We must seek more than just to discard offensive artifacts of culture, but to ensure that no more can be created.

The bigger issue is that unless media grapples with their own complicity in (and in many cases encouragement of) systemic oppressions, this is going to be little more than a one-time disavowal of certain objects.

That said, I also think it should be the right of creators to decide when they are done with a work. If enough on Community (for example) decided they'd rather not have the episode up, sure. I get it.