southsamurai @ southsamurai @sh.itjust.works

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2 yr. ago

They are.

They're certainly not the kind of purely creative art most people think of as ART, and it's definitely a crossover kind of art. But if memes aren't art, then pretty much nothing Warhol did was either. Yeah, that's not only an argument people have made, it's also an interesting debate about the essence of art. But Warhol did memes. To an extent, Basquiat did too.

All visual art is a form of shared consciousness, and that's what memes are at the core.

I would even argue that making a good meme, one that actually becomes widely shared because it transmits an idea, is a very difficult form of art. There's skill involved, and thought. It's only partially about the format/template (in cases where that's the expression of the meme rather than it being less formalized). There's an element of writing to it, some design craft, and you have to find the right audience.

Memes are an art form with a low barrier to entry, but that doesn't invalidate the form any more than cheap digital cameras invalidate photography as an art form.

They're pretty heavy, but more important is how you'd have to carry them by yourself. Uncomfortable and awkward for the human and tortoise.

I've hefted similar sized snapping turtles before. They're definitely not too heavy, though it isn't exactly picking up an empty box either. But if you try to carry them by yourself, you've got their shell or their belly against you or you're kind of waddling along while you hold them by the sides.

One of those in the picture isn't as dangerous as a snapping turtle, but they can still bite hard. So a two man carry is safer for the people as well as the critter.

I genuinely enjoyed the hell out it the book. It's kind of over the top, but has a lot of neat ideas in it.

The movie? Well, I'm glad someone likes it.

A musical of the movie? My homie, if hell existed, I would cheerfully warm my toes on your burning soul because the entire place would have frozen over.

Brutal as fuck

Exactly! That's what I had popped in to say

The tyco one?

I loved that thing.

Yup. It's weird, but that's the way. When I first saw it in a book as a kid, I didn't connect it to the word as it's said for years.

The fuck is wrong with you?

Well, I can't believe fighting a bird has come up twice in a two day span.

But, how are you going to grab its neck?

You're in the water, with a big-ass set of wings pounding at you, a beak that is pounding at you, with their raucous calls disorienting you.

You aren't going to be seeing clearly. You'll be blinking, flinching, and maybe even keeping your eyes closed so they don't get injured.

And now you want to reach out and grab that moving neck.

I'm not saying it's impossible. But it isn't exactly as easy as people seem to think.

I've been attacked by geese while fishing. And it was on land, where I should have an advantage what with being able to stand firmly. I've fought humans and dogs before and come away with only minor injuries. Big birds are harder to manage.

But, nah, you aren't just precisely grabbing the neck of a big-ish bird when it comes at you. You think you're fast, and you may be. But you aren't enraged bird fast.

Those necks are also wiggly and feathered. So getting a grip if you manage to make the initial grab isn't a guarantee.

Then what are you going to do with it? Even on land, you aren't going to be able to 100% kill the bird just because you have its neck. You aren't going to be able to just throw it either.

In the water? Your footing is less stable to begin with, so all of the above is harder.

Also, killing or injuring the bird isn't necessarily desirable. You can get into trouble doing that, depending on where it happens. Even if you won't, swans and geese don't attack humans just because. There's always a reason because fighting is dangerous. Aggression definitely has a survival benefit, but not when it's random.

So now you're the asshole that went somewhere there were birds nesting, or eating, or resting and instead of backing off when they warned you (and they usually do), and you're trying to injure or kill it when all it wants is you to go away. That's a seriously douchey thing to do.

Think about it.

Hollow doesn't mean weaker, just lighter

It really does decrease the effect of the bit.

I upvoted this one, despite it technically being pretty popular overall. The roided look is disturbing to a lot of people.

However, it still makes bank for the people that follow the roid path, so I think that balances the dislike people have of the looks of it, despite the numbers seemingly being more on that side of things.

Now, I wouldn't go so far as to say gross, and I would only agree as far as roided body builders go. They do look disturbing for sure, and I used to do a lot of lifting. Did power lifting, not body building though, so the look is different to begin with. So I ran into a lot of roiders over the years. Saw way more of them in locker rooms and saunas and steam rooms than I wanted.

It's less disturbing when they're not prepping for a competition though. It's when they cut really crazy that it starts setting off my "holy fuck" alarm. In between, even some of the heavy steroid abusers don't stand out as much. It's still noticeable, but less severe.

Ngl, some of the fitness competition people look just as offputting when they're gearing up for competition, and most of those folks don't go heavy with steroids, if they use them regularly at all. That ultra low body fat level reads as someone sick rather than athletic, even though they have plenty of muscle.

But old school body builders that stay natural? Totally different thing, even when they cut weight. Everything stays proportional, so the visual effect is less unsettling

The fucking spray tan, though, that's not really on them. It's essentially about competition, for visibility, so even natural builders use the stuff. If you're competing, you want your definition to be easy to see from whatever stage or dais you're on by the judges, so the extra dark tan is damn near mandatory to show well. Even dark skinned people will use it to get a more even tone. It looks horrible, imo, but it's kinda like wearing a belt when power lifting, or goggles while swimming; it looks dumb, but it isn't permanent.

In that regard, even the serious competitors don't usually like the spray tan look

You give me time to glove up and grab a bottle of lube, and you will fill a bucket

I volunteer to be milked

In reality, nothing, that isn't my vibe.

But, when messing around with my wife? I'll tell a simple joke. Then I'll exaggerate the fuck out of it. Then I'll do a personalized version of it ala walking dad. Then I'll wait fifteen or twenty minutes and do it again. And again until she's almost ready to punch me.

Then I'll wait a day, and start a normal conversation, go with it and then segue right into the joke again. Then go through the whole cycle until she's ready to scream. Then stop and say I'm done. Only I'm not, and she knows I'm not after over a decade together. She knows it's going to come back, and she's waiting for it, only I'll wait longer, until she thinks I've forgotten and drop it out of nowhere in the middle of something else, sometimes while there's people around that I know have never heard the joke, and now she's glaring at me, but trying not to laugh while everyone else is laughing because it's new to them.

Eventually she accepts the absurdity of it all and gets that it's all about committing to the bit.

But the reason it works is that she can never tell which joke it's going to be. It isn't every joke, every day.

Like, why didn't the toilet paper cross the road?

Because it was stuck in the crack.

Simple, silly joke. Fucking hilarious though, it's utter genius joke construction (and I wish I had been the one to create it). But when you start exaggerating the way you tell it, doing the whole "do ya get it?" shtick, then switching over to "it got stuck in the crack Coral! Only with Coral replaced by her name, it starts building into this absurd snowball that grows with every repetition until it's bigger and more ridiculous than a simple bit like that can do on its own.

It's shorthand for "I love you enough to look like a jackass for days or weeks just to give you a laugh", and it's utterly annoying, it's groan inducing and sometimes "Jesus fucking Christ, South, how many times are you going to do this?!". But it always pays off in the end because once the ride is over, and the theater of the absurd plays out, all it takes is starting the joke, and she's laughing, and happy. That's because she knows damn good and well I wouldn't put the effort into it for just anyone. She knows it's going to build a shared joy in a way just telling a joke can't.

But it still annoys her during the process, which just makes it funnier.

Not universally, no.

People absorb different things in different ways.

Where filmed media excels is cutting the description into pieces and showing it on screen. That doesn't necessarily make it easier to understand for everyone, and certainly not for every book that get turned into a show or movie.

For folks that have issues with picturing things in their head (aphantasia or disphantasia), movies are going to be a major boost in understanding. For folks that don't have that issue, it comes down more to preference.

I can't say either is better, or even easier to understand, in and of itself. I actually run towards hyperphantasia; I can read a book and once I sink in, it's as vivid as it gets. Sometimes, it's a movie in my head and the words on the page are just there in the background (and that's despite dyslexia, if only a fairly minor expression of it).

There's book versions of movies as well, with the most interesting example being the E.T. novelization from way back when. The book changed things that were in the movie, to the extent that it was very noticeable. But both the movie and book had their own merits in terms of understanding the story. One example is the scenes with the plastic barriers and such while ET is being examined by the government. A deeper sense of dread and horror was possible in the book via descriptions. But the movie conveyed the claustrophobic, invasive feeling of it better because you could see all the alienness of what the government was doing, how all the lights and airlocks and such became more apart from the family than the family was from ET.

But, if the author fucks up the descriptions, no picture in the mind will come close to what film can do. So there's a lot more craft needed in writing visuals than there are in most video footage. The barrier between understandable images on screen and conveying information is lower. Conversely, film has to work harder to convey emotion via craft; you can just say that a character is scared in a book and get the basic idea down.

So it isn't cut and dried. There's a lot of factors between the mind of the creator/ and the audience's minds that make it complicated

Got dayum, ain't that the truth!

I mean, those are the important parts ;)

Awww yeeeeahhhh!

Dude, do you think I'm just driving around looking to fight geese? Why the hell would I be wearing gear like that to go fishing?

Also, you're talking hypotheticals. I'm talking about geese I've actually dealt with. I'm telling you, when a goose is up in your grill, flapping, kicking, and pecking, you aren't going to be landing precision punches. Your eyes will either be closed, or they'll be damaged to some degree, and if you do land a strike of some kind, it's a well feathered bird that's in the air.

You don't punch something like that and hurt it at all. What happens is you move it a little because it's got very flexible bones and joints. Now it's more scared and angry.

What works is taking a full arm swipe to knock it away, then leaving.

Ffs dude, I know this is a casual conversation here, but how many geese have you ever been attacked by?