tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post7513675488427524607..comments2024-03-27T18:24:19.683-07:00Comments on Steve Sailer: iSteve: Are styles stagnating?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger109125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-7396710803233933502011-12-16T14:12:56.462-08:002011-12-16T14:12:56.462-08:00and like i said, in 2000, in the united states, no...<i>and like i said, in 2000, in the united states, nobody was texting. germany was just beginning to export that culture. today, the "german" way of communicating, has become the standard in the US. it's amazing how quickly texting took out email and telephone calls.</i><br /><br />How did Germany "export" that culture, Jody?<br /><br />If you're going to talk about the exportation of a <i>cultural practice</i> (ie ignoring whatever Germany have played in the technical development) it requires that people be aware of that practices cultural origins. For example, you could fairly describe ownership of katanas as a Japanese cultural export in this way. But who the hell ever takes up texting with even a hint of awareness that "this is what they do in Germany"?<br /><br />People take up texting because it's obviously fun and convenient. The unix command 'Write' is very similar to an SMS text message, the main difference being it's restricted to users sitting at a unix console. Messages are typically short (like SMS) and the receiver is alerted immediately by the message flashing across his screen, making the reception of the message as unavoidable as reading an SMS is irresistible (far more so than a telephone call, which can be easy to resist answering). 'Write' was a big hit among comp sci students when I attended university in the mid-90s. Awareness of it was all it took for students to take it up. No one had to "export" it to us. <br /><br /><i>last post i swear. LOL. but the tattoo and piercing culture was not mainstream 20 years ago. now it's normal for even women to show 3 tattoos and 3 piercings in public.</i><br /><br />This I can agree with. It's telling that even someone like me -- utterly disgusted by piercings and tattoos (<i>especially</i> on females) -- can no longer muster up the effort to express disdain and contempt. It's become totally mainstream. <br /><br />SilverAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-3992677891562069512011-12-15T18:30:32.188-08:002011-12-15T18:30:32.188-08:00"at some point around 2000 white music became..."at some point around 2000 white music became marginal. Someone at MTV made a decision to stop playing it."<br /><br />pop music on MTV you mean (there's lots of kinds of music that aren't pop music), and yes, this happened in 1997, as i've documented before on isteve. a conscious and deliberate decision among management to start removing pop music made by whites from MTV. taking their best selling products off the shelf and replacing them with stuff that didn't sell as well. i specifically remember in 2001, MTV refusing to play music by a rock band that debuted their new album at number <br />1 on the billboard 200 soundscan chart. essentially the ron paul treatment, before ron paul was getting the ron paul treatment. it's funny how much better selling stuff like nsync, backstreet boys, and britney spears were back then compared to the stuff they replaced it with.<br /><br />wrong idea about white pop music becoming marginal though. whites are as dominant in US pop music as they've always been, despite white men dropping out of it more and more all the time. in fact, they're probably more dominant now than they have been in decades, as black americans have retreated all the way down to just making either rap music or singing techno pop, auto tuned studio songs written by somebody else. techno pop itself is the dominant pop music form, and that's totally white. it comes from scandinavian, german, and british pop music. <br /><br />the billboard 200 end of year chart is white dominated. white woman dominated in fact, as steve noted in a previous post. there were maybe only 1 or 2 albums on the entire list from a mexican artist. they've had a near zero effect on US popular music.jodynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-74912613948541391682011-12-15T18:02:08.136-08:002011-12-15T18:02:08.136-08:00"People in Europe did. The texting henomenon ..."People in Europe did. The texting henomenon took off unexpectedly and teenagers were the vanguard. This must be the first time that design by committee produced a useful and popular inovation. 11,4 billion text messages were sent in the Germany of the year 2000. Today it's about 40 billion, so there has only been a fourfold increase."<br /><br />yes, i've talked about this before. texting comes from germany. i specifically posted about the german guy most directly responsible for texting. not unlike the german guy most directly responsible for MP3.<br /><br />and like i said, in 2000, in the united states, nobody was texting. germany was just beginning to export that culture. today, the "german" way of communicating, has become the standard in the US. it's amazing how quickly texting took out email and telephone calls.<br /><br />steve talks about "major" stuff never changing, but the germans changed human communication hugely in just 10 years. texting is akin to the telephone appearing.jodynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-1571560718006753282011-12-15T17:31:17.757-08:002011-12-15T17:31:17.757-08:00last post i swear. LOL. but the tattoo and piercin...last post i swear. LOL. but the tattoo and piercing culture was not mainstream 20 years ago. now it's normal for even women to show 3 tattoos and 3 piercings in public.<br /><br />not sure how much more common breast implants are now, but more. they're around and socially accepted. but that's sneaky, like the explosion in cosmetic plastic surgery among actors. it's hard to tell when they've had subtle surgery on their nose or jaw or skin. dentistry and orthodontics are de rigueur and now everybody has perfectly straight and aligned teeth that gleam from either tooth whitening treatments or veneers.<br /><br />i guess as hair restoration tech improves, less and less people will be bald over time - this is already happening but again, it's sneaky. you don't notice half the time, and that's on purpose. lots more 40 year old celebrities would be bald today, if this were 1981 and not 2011.jodynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-91509522154403596782011-12-15T17:23:28.770-08:002011-12-15T17:23:28.770-08:00as far as sports in the US goes, witness the decli...as far as sports in the US goes, witness the decline of american spectator interest in baseball, boxing, tennis, and track & field (the sports have not declined, just american attention to them). it's a dramatic change from 25 years ago, simply night and day.<br /><br />in the US, you take somebody off the street in 1982, and they could tell you which african from america was the heavyweight champ, would won the last 5 world series because they saw them, have no idea who won the last 5 NBA championships because nobody watched them and they were barely even on television. they would know roughly who was gonna do what at the 1984 summer games track & field meet, and who was the fastest american around. ask them who the best american tennis player was and they wouldn't hesitate.<br /><br />taking an american off the street in 2011 would produce decidedly different results. especially baseball and boxing, those were a SOLID one two in american sports for DECADES. not a few decades, for almost a century.jodynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-53403485621853996452011-12-15T16:47:17.628-08:002011-12-15T16:47:17.628-08:00I do not think that the advent of credit cards was...I do not think that the advent of credit cards was the reason for the decline in men's standard of dress. Rumors of the death of the suit and necktie are much exaggerated. I had lunch at my club today, and I did not see any man in the dining room that was without a necktie and either a suit or a sports coat and odd trousers. In the part of the country where I live, they are still standard business attire, at least above a certain level of rank and compensation. <br /><br />What you may be observing is that the level of rank and compensation at which this becomes the case has risen. The middle-management types who used to dress in coat and tie don't so often imitate their superiors in this way today. To begin with, there are fewer of them. Business consolidation has eliminated many such positions, and the ones that remain are no longer way-stations en route to the executive suite. Perhaps those that occupy them therefore see less reason to "dress for success" to impress their superiors, as the 1980s-era self-help book advised.<br /><br />I sometimes hear people expressing the opinion that suit and tie are uncomfortable - indeed, this is almost implicit in your description of yourself as "comfortably dressed in jeans, some kind of vaguely Hawaiian shirt, sneakers, and three days’ beard growth." For my part, I couldn't be physically or socially comfortable in such get-up. It is possible to be perfectly comfortable in a suit and tie. There is a reason, after all, that it is called a "lounge suit." <br /><br />The key is good tailoring. Of course, if you go to a department store and trust your wife to select your clothing, you will not get that. Far too many men buy shirts with collars that are too tight when buttoned, and expect to wear the waist of the suit's trousers not at the natural waistline, but below the overhang of a beer belly. This may be a consequence of having grown up wearing jeans. It is wrong, and looks it. Of course such clothing won't be comfortable. The wearer will feel the urge to get out of it as soon as he possibly can.<br /><br />If one wants to buy a comfortable suit, at least he should go to a good men's store (Brooks Brothers is reliable), or better, to a bespoke tailor, and let the staff there help him. Such people understand how the clothing should fit, and will steer the customer away from mistakes. This costs some money, but it will be well spent not only on superior comfort and fit, but also on appearance and durability.Crawfurdmuirnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-11379073687478256402011-12-15T16:37:41.426-08:002011-12-15T16:37:41.426-08:00Could there be a kind of cyber-paradox.
Internet ...Could there be a kind of cyber-paradox. <br />Internet in a closed society accelerates change, but internet in an open society can slow down change. <br /><br />Look at the Arab world with the introduction of internet and satellite communication(and smart phones). The whole region has been rocked, especially Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. It's still not over in Syria. Sudden introduction of new ways to communicate fueled change. <br /><br />But in America, already an open society, internet could be having an opposite effect. If Arabs went from little freedom to lots of freedom with the internet, Americans went from lots of freedom to lots-and-lots of freedom. <br />If you're allowed to paint with only one color but then allowed to paint with 20 more colors, that's exciting. <br />But if you're allowed to paint with 100 colors but then given the option to paint with 1000 more, it's kinda like... nothing's special anymore. In fact, the whole thing becomes kinda boring. You wanna read books from a medium sized library. But in a giant library with gazillions of books, you don't even know where to start. Also, you figure the knowledge is all there, so why should you bother? <br /><br />Also, it seems like many people in the past created their own thing cuz they felt isolated. British rockers of the late 50s and early 60s had limited access to American music. So, they fantasized about America and created their own. But suppose Lennon and McCartney and Jagger and Richard had the internet back in the late 50s and early 60s. Instead of making music, they might have been too busy downloading and burning music. They woulda been too busy sharing to be creating. Suppose Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Faulkner had internet back in the days. They might have been too busy communicating with others to sit down and write about their own lives, ideas, feelings--especially since internet allows ideas, lives, and feelings of many people to bleed into one. Faulkner, Hemingway, and Fitz were distinct in every day cuz they knew and experienced different realities. Though they went public with their works, their books were written in a deeply private sphere--even a lonely one. But creative people are now all part of a kind of shared communal think-bubble. They are almost interchangeable all over the world. <br /><br />There is also the problem of the chummy-chum-chum dynamic. There are MANY 'artists' and 'creative' people in the internet and they hook up with other 'artists' and 'creative' people--fans, amateur critics, other would-be artists. Now, 99% of them suck. But due to social networking, they hook up into a community. <br />If people have to choose between quality and chumminess, it's often the latter. Prior to stuff like myspace, people listened to the radio, attended concerts, and bought albums for music. Since the artists were not your friends, you could love it or hate it, and look for better stuff.<br />But with the internet, you hook up and communicate with various 'artists' and 'creative' types. They become your friends, and it feels good to have so many chums. But what if their music or ideas suck? <br />Because you value your friendship with all these 'creative' people, you never say their stuff sucks. INdeed, you pretend that it's good and even convince yourself that it's good to maintain the friendship. It may be good for 'niceness' but it's not good for art and creativity. This is why critics have been wary of being close friends with artists. But millions of creative people are now friends with other creative people and their fans are friends too. And so everyone pats others on the back--while anonymous commentators who speak the unpleasant truth is deleted as 'snarky' or 'trollish'. Creativity may have been Oprahized.granny gumbinoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-3923608371376568322011-12-15T16:04:46.460-08:002011-12-15T16:04:46.460-08:00It could be too many people are addicted to sittin...It could be too many people are addicted to sitting in front of the computer and social networking(or texting on cell phones)to do much else.<br /><br />Creative people spend less time really alone. They are too busy sharing to create something on their own.niece gumbinoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-3162571104652628432011-12-15T13:25:26.664-08:002011-12-15T13:25:26.664-08:00The point of baggy pants is to suggest that the ma...<i>The point of baggy pants is to suggest that the male wearing them has an enormous penis that cannot be contained in tighty-whitey jeans or slacks. </i><br /><br />In the `hood, the point of baggy pants is to conceal your nine.Paul Mendeznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-33857661265805951892011-12-15T13:02:33.978-08:002011-12-15T13:02:33.978-08:00The point of baggy pants is to suggest that the ma...<i>The point of baggy pants is to suggest that the male wearing them has an enormous penis that cannot be contained in tighty-whitey jeans or slacks.</i> <br /><br /><br />Is it? I've never had that thought come to mind while observing guys wearing pants with the crotch down at their knees.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-48031469438048807532011-12-15T12:28:45.932-08:002011-12-15T12:28:45.932-08:00>but many adjacent decades in the 1600, 1700, a...>but many adjacent decades in the 1600, 1700, and 1800 eras blend together seamlessly,<<br /><br />Dear me! That writer is insufferably ignorant. How COULD he be unable to discriminate the very great and material distinctions in place between 1632 and 1640?Beau Brummelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-41133637118480786162011-12-15T12:20:40.983-08:002011-12-15T12:20:40.983-08:00>As womens pants have become sausage-skin tight...>As womens pants have become sausage-skin tight, mens pants have become ever more shapeless and baggy. Men's "shorts" now come down to a point a couple of inches above the ankle. Men's clothing seems to be purpose built to make men look terrible.<<br /><br />The point of baggy pants is to suggest that the male wearing them has an enormous penis that cannot be contained in tighty-whitey jeans or slacks. A typical trope of project rats and the Scots-Irish merchandizers who corrupt/enable them, adopted soon enough by underclassers of all hues.<br /><br />An overall brutification is evident. Women trying to make themselves look like palace whores from ancient times, showing as much tatooed skin as feasible, and men opting for the bare-chest, pants-around-calves, baggy look. As society slides into the gutter of primitivism, with might-makes-right the ruling principle of business and government and "I'm ready for sex!" the sole communication among the dumbed-down masses, expect to see cruder and worse versions of things unless a new broom sweeps clean.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-33445593117940933892011-12-15T11:12:01.753-08:002011-12-15T11:12:01.753-08:00I'm staring into a microwave sized IBM CRT mon...I'm staring into a microwave sized IBM CRT monitor right now.<br /><br />I'm like a William Gibson character.Marlowenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-3353240569951040932011-12-15T07:23:47.562-08:002011-12-15T07:23:47.562-08:00"nobody, NOBODY, in the US was texting 30 mes...<i>"nobody, NOBODY, in the US was texting 30 messages a day, every day, all day, in 2000."</i><br /><br />People in Europe did. The texting phenomenon took off unexpectedly and teenagers were the vanguard. This must be the first time that design by committee produced a useful and popular inovation.<br /><br />11,4 billion text messages were sent in the Germany of the year 2000. Today it's about 40 billion, so there has only been a fourfold increase.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-40629247019345403322011-12-15T07:05:32.221-08:002011-12-15T07:05:32.221-08:00You ever notice that's just when someone says ...You ever notice that's just when someone says 'nothing changes anymore' that massive changes soon take place? <br /><br />The world seemed peaceful on the eve of WWI. <br /><br />In the early 60s, no one foresaw the wildness of late 60s. <br /><br />So, expect a wild ride.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-59788983324458143572011-12-15T07:04:03.390-08:002011-12-15T07:04:03.390-08:00Things stopped changing cuz there's not much a...Things stopped changing cuz there's not much after Z. <br /><br />There was generation x, which meant y and z were the lasts and didn't have much place to go.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-48323450121383948702011-12-15T07:03:10.388-08:002011-12-15T07:03:10.388-08:00Maybe nanotechnology will one day make gold as com...Maybe nanotechnology will one day make gold as common as lead, and lots of clothing will be golden. <br /><br />Or maybe there will be a line of computerized clothing.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-23639568181503633512011-12-15T06:59:03.274-08:002011-12-15T06:59:03.274-08:00What was Gaddafi's problem? Not changing with ...What was Gaddafi's problem? Not changing with times for too long and then suddenly changing too fast?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-18266147217702288652011-12-15T06:56:30.797-08:002011-12-15T06:56:30.797-08:00"You touched on men's fashion, but women&..."You touched on men's fashion, but women's fashion has also changed for the worse since 1992."<br /><br />Oh no. Generally young girls dress much smarter and sexier than girls of the 80s, a horror for fashion. <br />Btw, I'm not talking of Lady Gaga and extreme skankdom but of functionally sleek sexiness that now prevails.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-68387169104572253642011-12-15T06:52:46.798-08:002011-12-15T06:52:46.798-08:00"Because younger middle-class men are disempo..."Because younger middle-class men are disempowered in today's corporatist America, and because in many cases they have stopped even trying to advance themselves, there is no longer any powerful social force to drive style changes."<br /><br />But they were disempowered in Weimar Germany, but that period saw a greater flowering of new styles.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-74489806955403021412011-12-15T06:51:15.944-08:002011-12-15T06:51:15.944-08:00The guy uses the term 'devolution'.
If w...The guy uses the term 'devolution'. <br /><br />If we apply the theory of evolution to style...<br />we need to know that evolution works via mutation and adaptation. <br />Mutations keep happening but most of them are no good and are rejected or weeded out. But the rare mutation that is beneficial remains, especially the environment changes and favors that mutation. <br />In the past, social pressures were greater. So, most stylistic/artistic mutations were rejected as unfit for society/community. But some were so appealing that it was adopted and changed the culture. So, there was more ruthless weeding out of 'bad cultural mutations' and greater boosting of the rare mutation that was the new standard. <br />But in the new social order of greater freedom and tolerance, all sorts of mutations are allowed to express themselves. This was exciting in the Modernist period. But after awhile, mutations became a commonplace. So, there was a need to define what was worthy mutations and what was not. And worthy mutations became the new conservatism. Advanced guard stopped advancing. And then Pop art happened, and any notion of cultural elite kinda became moot. <br /><br />Also, in the past, society was culturally dominated by elites. Even if most people were not rich or bourgeois, they aspired to be respectable. Even poor people went to sports games in good suits or best they could find. So, social/stylistic adaptation meant adapting to the looks and manners of 'better people'. <br />But there is far less adaptational pressures cuz one can be slobby, different, or non-mainstream and still be accepted by society. Besides, even the 'mainstream' doesn't look and feel like mainstream but represent a part of community. <br />So, is the problem an excess of mutations and excess of adaptations(into whatever)? When all mutations are allowed, none become hungry and ruthless enough to survive via domination(the only way a mutation could thrive in the past). When there are all sorts of niches to adapt to, there is no pressure to adapt to one dominant style, and so there is no dominant style. The vanity fair writer seems to suggest something like this but not exactly. But whatever is happening, it's not 'devolution'. <br /><br />I wonder if politics will become more limp due to similar dynamic. In the past, many conservatives didn't feel represented by mainstream media. So, they organized and came together to form a counter-liberal movement. But now, every rightwing group has a 'world of its own' in the internet. Though they have little clout or influence on whole of society, their sense of their own community makes them feel represented, empowered, and relevant. So, they get to express their views more, but by doing so, they may be likely to act less. <br />Also, political niche-ism had led to crackup of the right. Prior to the internet, there was the sense that all elements of the right should unite against the left. Now, Ron Paulites and Romneyites on facebook cannot stand one another. Each has a full platform on the net and don't wanna compromise with the other side. Why should they since they feel so empowered as a community on the internet? <br /><br />Niche trumps Nietzsche. It's will to empower than will to power. Even those without real power can feel empowered, and that is the reality of the net. False sense of empowerment.aunt gumbinoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-68637892739356695182011-12-15T06:31:49.191-08:002011-12-15T06:31:49.191-08:00"I went to a mall with an older neighbor the ..."I went to a mall with an older neighbor the other day and he made a point of commenting on a guy with the baggy pants look... That made me think that why is this style still around?"<br /><br />Because it's part of thug culture and black males are alphas of mainstream culture. People are too afraid to laugh at black thugs, so black thugs never get the message that they look stupid. If some people to criticize rap style out of fear of black fist, others restrain cuz it might be 'racist' to put down black expressions. <br /><br />But disco was easier to attack cuz it was not thug music but gayish black music that even blacks came to see as dopey.father gumbinoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-88375273531668247912011-12-15T01:21:25.653-08:002011-12-15T01:21:25.653-08:00ah, i just thought of another one. flat screen dis...ah, i just thought of another one. flat screen display technology has completely replaced CRT televisions and monitors. nobody had them 10 years ago. now, if you have a CRT in your house, it's ancient obsolete crap. old televisions, old computer monitors, LCDs and plasmas replaced them almost everywhere by now. SD television is garbage and nearly unwatchable, it has to be HD everywhere now.<br /><br />especially in bars and restaurants and shops. LCD, plasmas, and LEDs hanging on the walls are ubiquitous today. in fact on audi vehicles there are prominent LED lights. actually many vehicles now employ LED brake lights. those HID xenons for headlights suck though.<br /><br />this dates movies very badly now, especially sci fi movies made before the CRT->LCD conversion. when i watch aliens, i LOL at the command center with it's clunky little 12 inch CRT monitors. in fact all their video tech sucks. you can see pinpoints of light causes streaking and ghosting iin their cameras, when they pan across light sources. that's directly caused by how crappy video cameras were in the early to mid 80s, when the movie was made. you can observe this effect by watching old tyson boxing matches from 1984 on youtube, or that segment of "boogie nights" where they first experiment with leaving film behind and moving to video. (hey, that's another thing, all porn is on video now, on your computer, in high resolution, and the porn theaters are gone.)<br /><br />welcome to 2005 gorman, the US marines have better better equipment than the colonial marines in outer space! even the matrix suffers from this, with CRT equipment in use in the future scenes on the hovership, dating "100 years in the future" to the late 90s.jodynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-63762915466605190672011-12-15T00:45:15.223-08:002011-12-15T00:45:15.223-08:00i mean, there's different stuff now. every lit...i mean, there's different stuff now. every little kid has those stupid shoes that have lights in them, or wheels. what's up with those? little kids on rollerskate shoes.<br /><br />nobody, NOBODY, in the US was texting 30 messages a day, every day, all day, in 2000. now those phones are surgically connected to every teenage girl's hand. who was updating their facebook every day in 2000?<br /><br />guys didn't wear faux hawks 10 years ago without doing it as a joke, if they even did it at all. they didn't wear tapout shirts like a total douchebag, without training a single day in their lives.<br /><br />i GUARANTEE digital photos from 2008will be looked back on and ridiculed for those two things alone.<br /><br />nobody was cruising around town in SUVs with 22 inch wheels and bumping dubstep tunes. just that alone, the total conversion of the US vehicle fleet to SUVs, can date a photo of an era. 1995, few SUVs. 2005, bumpin' down the road in the escalade all day, son.jodynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-16008634567162121582011-12-14T22:57:58.789-08:002011-12-14T22:57:58.789-08:00well, there are long stretches in previous centuri...well, there are long stretches in previous centuries, where you could not tell decades apart.<br /><br />maybe if you are a SERIOUS tech head like me, you can get lucky when you look at particular devices and objects a few of the people appear to be holding or using, and place a rough 20 year date range on a photograph or drawing from some time period.<br /><br />but many adjacent decades in the 1600, 1700, and 1800 eras blend together seamlessly, with not enough tech and culture change between any 30 year period to really nail anything down.jodynoreply@blogger.com