cottagecore and other internet aesthetics

i just want a thread for it, i don't have anything to say. i imagine some visually-minded ilxors have thoughts on these "aesthetics" that aren't quite subcultures.

I used to live in a cabin and I like braided rugs, and if I came across, like, a set of blue cotton curtains with cows on them, I would probably hang them up and be pleased about it. I guess maybe that makes me cottagecore? Idk, it's weird that this is a thing.

What's a non-internet aesthetic in 2021?

i am personally above and beyond the internet and am an aesthetic onto myself

not everyone can accomplish this though. to them i recommend the "chaotic academia" aesthetic https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Chaotic_Academia

"use vandalism for help on an exam" - wait, what?

You have performed a chaotic action.

this wiki is very illuminating, especially if you go to the tab for aesthetics that include the "wave" suffix. i knew that "laborwave" was a thing but apparently there is also a non-ironic "fashwave," which is vaporwave music that promotes a fascist agenda. (i kinda knew there were alt righters into vaporwave, but i didn't know it was its own defined subgenre. everything, it seems, is its own defined subgenre).

chaotic academia is just... literally chaotic academia, how is that an aesthetic

how potentially fascist is cottagecore

D&D alignment-ing and political compass-ing the shit out of everything is extremely trendy these days. I guess structuralism is making a comeback.

Cottagecore probably ties to fascism most closely via tradwives, I'd guess.

um I would like to retract anything I may have said in this thread about liking cabins and braided rugs, please forget I ever said it.

i just want a thread for it, i don't have anything to say

board description!

I think the missing link is Mormons, actually: https://jewishcurrents.org/my-mommies-and-me/

It does get down to how specifically you define cottagecore, though :)

Cottagecore probably ties to fascism most closely via tradwives, I'd guess.

― vcrash,

So there is a trend among gen z of embracing traditional gender roles and cottagecore and the archetype of the “trad wife” are part of that. This is reactionary but I wouldn’t say fascist. But again, not at all politically neutral. I’d call it conservative.

A lot of these people seem to blame “millennials” and “boomers” for dismantling society in the name of individualism (the patrick deneen/why liberalism failed narrative, but given a generational kick).

I think they could find what they are looking to in socialism rather than conservatism. The longing for community they feel, the resentment of competition and the atomization it causes, is really a hatred of capitalism, not millennials. But then again I would say that.

Can't we just like innocuous things without constantly worrying about super-online dorks who like those things for stupid reasons, is my question

Only if you log off

i will log off only when they log off

It's good to think about how your taste mightn't be a random or neutral happening

I find this all quite new and fascinating. First time I came across one of these kinds of very specific, very much a product of the internet aesthetics was healthgoth - a small but perfectly defined fashion style that nevertheless got a lot of mainstream coverage.

But I guess the idea of aesthetic microgenres is nothing particularly new in the worlds of fashion and art. But the ongoing Spotification of everything means these microgenres can proliferate really easily, and become their own "things" in themselves: Essentially you can create a playlist/moodboard based on shit you find in your house or using a GIS. And I like how that can extend into other forms: "I found a bunch of old business text books and I'm going to make a playlist about them. I'm going to sew a jacket about them". Or "This week I'm feeling very Squirrelcore".
The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of internet aesthetics. I can't not love it.

A lot of this reminds me of the metal my friends and I would listen to in the 90s and 2000s. There'd be this constant chug and cycle of different subgenres with fascinating names and cover art styles: Tankcore, Sludge, Unblack, Funeral Doom etc... It was ridiculous and very silly. I couldn't really tell the difference between most of them, and the idea that one band's sound could be pretty much a whole genre unto itself seemed daft in a cool way.

It's good to think about how your taste mightn't be a random or neutral happening

Not exactly within the scope of this thread, but I never realised that *Corporate Memphis* was the name for the ubiquitous obnoxious online illustration style before reading this

https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/the-internet-is-turning-on-big-techs-colorful-corporate-mascots/

xpost Certainly not an appreciation for like hand-crafted wicker baskets or whatever, at any rate. Dipshits can attach whatever dipshit ethos they want to value-free objects and aesthetics, IDGAF, just don't actively ruin it for the rest of us.

The semiotics of this stuff is the only interesting thing about it

It's good to think about how your taste mightn't be a random or neutral happening

I agree but there's a balance and I think it often tips over into neurosis. Particularly the obsession with trying to create unproblematic taste and then assuming that's a sign of moral superiority.

The Corporate Memphis thing is so pervasive that it's become the default for almost all corporate design and it'll be seen as the prevailing aesthetic trend of the present day. I've noticed it in every workplace I've been to in the last ten years.

xp otm

I can understand why people might be neurotic or even wanna feel (morally) superior I just think it's interesting to pull at the webs of context between every piece of culture and ourselves and sometimes it's fun in a bad way to raise an eyebrow at our protestations that we didn't notice the webs

the interwebs

It's 2021 I'm not sure how much longer we can assert that the Internet is a foreign country

https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Aesthetics

Not just internet but a lot to go through here.

Don't really think you need the internet to connect the dots between cottagecore and reactionary impulses anyway. That being said, to appropriate one of my all-time least fave memes, let people enjoy baskets.

Cottagecore seems pretty strongly gendered--are there Men Online into cottagecore too? Idk

From my own observation, it seems like the other side of, like, ax-throwing or "off-grid prepping" or something. All the baskets, none of the starvation and freezing to death.

I feel like cottagecore could have a less malevolent root - a lot of people have housing instability, high rents, plus the general unease of life now... having a fantasy of retreating into a cozy, safe place seems like a natural instinct

I mean people could just want a home for themselves, a safe place, is that Nazi?

95% of the fantasy genre has been cottagecore if cottagecore exists

See also 'food porn'

It's good to think about how your taste mightn't be a random or neutral happening

― scamp til you're damp (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, March 17, 2021 9:47 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

A star turn from nv as usual.

I feel like cottagecore could have a less malevolent root - a lot of people have housing instability, high rents, plus the general unease of life now... having a fantasy of retreating into a cozy, safe place seems like a natural instinct

Yesssss I was keeping it short but yeah, lots of the homestead people are doing it because of housing shortage, financial insecurity, low-wage work, the desolation of two people working two jobs each to afford a "normal" middle-class life and never seeing each other or their kids.

I realize that's not the same phenomenon exactly as cottagecore but, I submit, not unrelated.

Tankcore, Sludge, Unblack, Funeral Doom etc... It was ridiculous and very silly.

Much as a language is a dialect with an army, sludge and funeral doom have been around for 3+ decades now. Their distinctive traits and staying power are such that I don't think it's fair to put them in the same basket as tankcore and unblack.

Also when my job was a nightmare, my deepest fantasy was to live alone in a moldering house and strip paint off woodwork with a toothbrush--a tiny, exacting, low-risk task that restored value to something was so much more appealing than my actual life.

A quick search for "cottagecore racism" gave me this excellent (imo) blog post + comments that says pretty much everything I would have said:

https://baixueagain.tumblr.com/post/189439029744/time-to-stop-tagging-cottagecore-alongside

Point 1:

Cottagecore romanticizes the legacy of settler colonialism and frontier living that relies on the stolen land of indigenous people. Solarpunk needs to be decolonial and pro-community, including urban communities, in order to flourish as a genre.

The history of the Homesteading Act, as well as modern white financial/land privileges, mean that Solarpunk needs to move away from cottagecore fantasies.

Comment:

Cottagecore does NOT, in fact, romanticize the legacy of colonial settlers. It does, however, romanticize: femininity, domesticity, and in some cases, rural life surrounded by vibrant, healing nature. It is wholesome by definition. It is safe. It is warm. It is peaceful. It is often unabashedly and unapologetically feminine. It is, for most, a fantasy.

Counter-comment:

white supremacist pastoral fantasies are all about recreating what they view as a natural ideal. domesticity and femininity are prized by white supremacists and every word of this fits exactly within their framework of gender roles. unapologetically feminine also stands out because this phrase is commonly used by anti-feminists who view feminism as an attack on womanhood that forces women to be unfeminine.

And more good points all around re settler colonialism, the manufactured urban vs rural divide, the gendered ideal...

I’m especially concerned by how you frame femininity, especially rural femininity. I don’t know if you’ve ever worked on a farm, or done a lot of outdoorsy things. I have. It’s not delicate and romantic, and it involves a lot more than sitting and knitting by the fire or foraging for berries. It is back-breaking, physically taxing work, and rural women often spend a whole lot of their time doing extremely “unfeminine” things, even if they’re “just” keeping house.

White supremacists refuse to acknowledge that. They work really hard to push the image of the rural housewife who does simple housekeeping tasks in peace as she waits for her big strong husband to get home. I’m half of a mind that this is because they know they can get unwitting urban or suburban women out into the middle of nowhere with this ideal, and by the time the woman comes to understand the extremely unpicturesque life she’s signed up for, it’s too late, because she’s out in buttfuck nowhere with no actual knowledge of how to survive on her own.

What's a non-internet aesthetic in 2021?

Anyway I'm susceptible to the appeal of a nice cottage garden and fiber arts and 6-hour braises myself but I also choose community & collective support over individualism and isolationism. Right after I finish looking at these 10-acre plots of land in Vermont.

It’s not delicate and romantic, and it involves a lot more than sitting and knitting by the fire or foraging for berries. It is back-breaking, physically taxing work, and rural women often spend a whole lot of their time doing extremely “unfeminine” things, even if they’re “just” keeping house.

if liking the countryside is fascist then i'm not sure there's any hope for us.

that said, is there much difference between cottagecore and ages-old romanticisation of Merrie England? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merry_England

It’s not “liking the countryside”, it’s the whole back-to-the-land aesthetic that is deliberately drawing on false and reactionary portrayals of rural life to romanticise a world where women and minorities knew their place.

I mean yeah my understanding

hang on, my *memory*

of what cottage culture might be deemed to be is obv not necessarily what any one other person or group thinks it is in their context

In our context we are the indigenous people pulling a living out of drying fish and pots under the leaks in the roof and mortar you can pull from between the rocks you can talk off with yr hand and draw with

Which as io’s posts say above, isn’t remotely representative of reality.

I mean my literal own memory there so

I mean its a nice B&B now but im talking sixteen ppl living in a small freehold falling apart in like the 80s!

xp that’s your context, their context is that that way of living is romantic and noble and so much better than living in the big shmoke with foreigners and women wandering around unsupervised

'When in doubt, assume fash' has become a tragically reasonable position over the past decade or so.

Here's an enjoyable article about how cottagecore as an online thing originally excluded Black people too! And--bonus!--it mentions a fave IG account of mine, Hill House Vintage (for your dose of Merrie Olde Engerland).

“Black history doesn’t only consist of the transatlantic slave trade,” Sérieux says. “We need to stop looking at our ancestors as just victims of that era and realize that Black people have lived all kinds of lives all over this planet long before and after these eras.” While cottagecore is reminiscent of settler colonization, its roots aren’t entirely shrouded in whiteness. Lifestyles such as this have always been with us throughout various eras around the world: Farming, gardening, and bread laced with herbs aren’t regulated representations of whiteness; in many Black and Indigenous cultures, this kind of lifestyle is a way to cultivate our own connection to the Earth that prioritizes protecting the land.

Black folks have always had a strong connection to rural spaces (check out Beyoncé’s 2016 album Lemonade or Prince’s love letter to the Midwest), and this is especially important at a time when many Black farmers are fighting to survive. “Cottagecore is a return to your roots, whether they’re in the Bronx, Haiti, Nigeria, or Alabama. If you look far enough, you’ll find that simple cottagecore lifestyle,” Sérieux says. “This aesthetic offers Black people an opportunity to see a life of harmony with themselves, their community, and their environment.” For Sérieux, and other Black cottagecore fanatics, the aesthetic is a reclamation that provides hope in the face of systemic racism.

darra, I'm a bit lost. Surely the suffix "core" is hint enough that what we're discussing has nowt to do with your experience, except within the context of it possibly being a yearning for a romanticized version of that?

lots of xposts

xp that’s your context, their context is that that way of living is romantic and noble and so much better than living in the big shmoke with foreigners and women wandering around unsupervised

― Scamp Granada (gyac), Wednesday, 17 March 2021 13:43 (forty-seven seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ah ok wasnt sure re xp or not

In which case yep we agree i think

Xp the suffix core seems to mean i dunno what tbh

Its working very hard here like but as i said context

xps of course. there's a whole problematic discourse tied up in this and it's worth discussing. same as "Merrie England" - it's unrealistic and ripe for propaganda.

I mean, if people find solace or inspiration in the idea of wearing gingham and living under a thatched roof, I can't really see that as intrinsically much different from being really into dark fantasy or cyberpunk, so long as people aren't swept away with rose-tinted ideas that "this is how things used to be for everybody and we were all the better for it".

On the other hand, saying "Yeah well you know who else liked wattle and daub? Hitler!" is pushing it to another extreme.

I mean you can have this conversation (and yknow, should, imo?) about just about anything rly

that’s what we were doing before you blundered-in going “what’s wrong with liking the countryside”

eh?

Don't be dense, dl--of course it's fine to like calico and campfires and sourdough bread or what the fuck ever, no one said you couldn't fantasize about living in a cottage where none of the doorframes are tall enough to walk through. But as an overall movement or whatever you call an aesthetic coalescing on the internet, it's kissing cousins with white supremacist conservative patriarchy-affirming communities and their propaganda.

sure

Is cottagecore synonymous with ecofascism, y/n, is how I break it down to an extent.

Is cottagecore synonymous with ecofascism, y/n, is how I break it down to an extent.

Ok. I know next to nothing about cottagecore so I appreciate the clarity.

I'm open to being convinced that they share elements tbh! I think the division on that blog post I shared is interesting--"cottagecore" vs "solarpunk" is framed as, individualism vs community or rural isolation/"independence" vs urban collective support networks.

Cottagecore is like...Mumford & Sons. Rural life without the actual hard labour and graft that characterises how it actually is to live and work on a farm, crucially tapping into traditional ideas of how men and women are (the latter mainly confined to baking bread/embroidering/popping out multiple children) and living an existence of isolation away from other people.

Survivalism presumably also looms in the background here.

Ecofascism also thinks cities are bad, but because they are all about aesthetics of trees and wildlife, which quickly segues into “we should protect the environment and stop destroying it to sate the teeming hordes” and they have very particular ideas of which hordes are teeming.

It struck me just now that my parents were part of the cottagecore of their time - politically radical hippies (though they loathed the term) who quit big city life to become farmers on an island in the middle of nowhere. The very fact that this was an ideological decision, and something that could be quit if you wanted to, makes it so far from the experience of indigenous people pulling a living out of drying fish as to make comparisons pointless. I suppose it's quite different in that they wouldn't have thought of themselves as traditionalists, certainly not with regards to gender roles, but quite a lot of them did end up eco-fascist anyway.

Survivalism presumably also looms in the background here.

Yeah I said homesteading up above but on reflection, that's a really loaded term considering what it meant in America--anyway there's a pot with "survivalism" and "homesteading" and "off-grid" and "prepper" all swirling around and idk where they end and begin.

xp ecofascism as I understand it also posits that the problem with life on earth is that there are too many people, rather than that very few people are using all the resources that should be supporting millions?

Ugh, the examples itt are exactly what I'm talking about. Here's a box, a sturdy + well-made corrugated cardboard box. Nothing to write home about but I appreciate it because something about its dull lack of flash speaks to me. Because I'm boring. Now as it turns out, a bunch of white supremacist cosplay dorks also have an appreciation for this box and have decided to attach their own dumbfuck ethos to it. I dunno, maybe some prominent fascist owned a box factory. So now everyone has to tiptoe around expressing any appreciation for the simple box just because a bunch of wads have also adopted the box? Feels a bit like cultural capitulation imo.

I feel like a skill we're going to have to learn to develop in the coming years/decades is how to appreciate a thing even while simultaneously acknowledging unsavory associations that thing may have. Like nothing is pure anymore. Nothing is untainted. So unless you're willing to engage in some zero sum act of throwing out the cultural baby with the shitty bathwater, it behooves us to take a more nuanced approach with this stuff. And I'm not speaking from on high here, I'm still figuring it out myself. It's an unquestionably good thing that we're increasingly willing as a society to call out shitty people and challenge troubling legacies and associations but I feel like there needs to be a concomitant shift in our perspective such that we don't paint ourselves all the way into a corner.

Again it bears no relationship to reality

Mos def, but since internet aesthetics are what led us to this discussion in the first place, it's safe to assume that a non-negligible amount of folks who fantasize about cottagecore on IG have never set foot in the country and likely never will.

So now everyone has to tiptoe around expressing any appreciation for the simple box just because a bunch of wads have also adopted the box?

This circles back to my point earlier: the past decade or so has trained us to parse ambiguity as fash camouflage. There are very good reasons for this but I'm not sure it's sustainable in the long run.

TBRR I wasn't even aware of the term 'cottagecore' before this thread. I just like pictures of rough-hewn stone fireplaces and overgrown flower gardens and shit like that.

the wokies will ban birdwatching next!!!!!!!

lol i am chill this thread is okay everyone otm

Literally the second I read tiptoe I rolled my eyes so hard I saw stars. There is context to this conversation, it’s not something people made up out of nowhere and it would be nice to have that acknowledged before people come in and post “but I like pictures of trees and I’m not a fascist!”

how to appreciate a thing even while simultaneously acknowledging unsavory associations that thing may have. Like nothing is pure anymore. Nothing is untainted.

Yeah this is absolutely correct! Leave no turn unstoned. I don't mean to be blithe but as a non-indigenous, non-descendant of enslaved people in America, the bare minimum is to be aware that all of our cultural myths and ideals are ultimately rotted at the root by our twin original sins of settler colonialism and chattel slavery.

There is context to this conversation

Indeed. Misunderstandings about which context we're talking about in the first place seem to be built into 99% of online debates, and ILX is no exception to this rule.

Old Lunch, feels a bit like you're creating a strawman here - think it's been kinda established on this thread that no one's saying you can't like the box, or that liking the box makes you a fash?

That being said, I do think a fascination for the old ways of the countryside has a specific history of association w/ reactionary and fascist movements that not "everything" does. This doesn't mean you can't like it - it just means that, as with liking I dunno black metal or something, it's worth being aware that there's some unsavoury fellow travellers.

xposts

like I agree that nothing is untainted but not everything has had actual fascist movements spring up in worship of it either, and I'm talking historically, not just some current alt right dorks

I think things can be reactionary, or “trad,” and not fascist. I don’t believe we need to be fanatical modernists in aesthetics, razing the old to make way for the new. That carries dangers of its own.

Sure, but to add to what Daniel said, if you're deliberately oblivious to the more disturbing facets of your aesthetic community, I will deem you at least somewhat suspicious.

lol what "dangers"??

the issue comes when everything nostalgic gets coded as "fash," as if the watercolors were the most important thing to know about hitler

The question for me is how far are these internet aesthetics supposed to reflect reality, along with specific ideologies and philosophies. How much real-life is supposed to be inferred by them? Is it their job to do this?

If primarily they're supposed to be treated on an ephemeral level, as a vibe or collage you can dip in-and-out of, be inspired by, like a multimedia playlist: "I wanna mash together Thomas Kinkade, Trumpton, Beethoven's 6th and The Kinks", then it's unlikely to be either a reflection of reality or a guiding philosophy; it's pure fantasy, pure aesthetics - artful inspiration to be pulled apart, recombined, messed-with etc.

That said, you can't get away from the social politics of a lot of these. From Babydoll to Laborwave, there's going to be some level of message wrapped up in them. You can't get away from that any more than you can get away from the problematic racism in classic Disney films.

actually thanks to Uline, most cardboard boxes are fascist

Mmmmmmm if fascists start promoting watercolor painting classes and propagandizing adherents with visions of a better world where watercolors are the best, most valid kind of painting and hinting that other arts are inferior and mmmmight be to blame for the non-primacy of watercolor specialists, your facile comparison would be more apt.

xp ums RIGHT ON BAN ULINE

where's the roland barthes emoji when you need it

hitler did try to destroy modernism

Sure, but to add to what Daniel said, if you're deliberately oblivious to the more disturbing facets of your aesthetic community, I will deem you at least somewhat suspicious.

trad aesthetics were part of nazism. but that doesn't mean all trad aesthetics are nazi.

i understand why people make the comparison between this stuff -- which *is* connected with a longing for "traditional" ways of life -- and fascism. but it's a step too far, using a firehose instead of scalpel.

https://i.imgur.com/bomet5e.gif

what are some "trad" aesthetics that are non-fascist? imo they are all nostalgic false narratives, what else are "traditional" ways of life other than a way of telling a romantic story that smooths out the oppression, racism, immiseration and feudalism that accompanied this way of life.

why did i ask idk

what traditional way of life does treeship long for

The bad NS had a piece a free years back about how this kind of thing had happened with architecture accounts on twitter. Might be useful for some people needing a bit more context to what some of us are saying.

is "fascist" a synonym for "reactionary" or "conservative"?

i'm not endorsing cottagecore or trad aesthetics or conservatism or being reactionary

oh yeah, see also "western civilization" lies that the right wing tells

Trad aesthetics flow from norms that were created to uphold trad values. Adopting them without queering or flexing or re-imagining them is being led down the garden path imo.

I mean, it really depends on your culture and where you are. I realize "trad" on the internet is probably coded very white (and honestly, this is all deeply unfamiliar to me because for all the time I spend on ilx I'm not very internet-connected in general), but I just spent a decade in Alaska, where when you talk about traditional ways of life you are generally talking about Alaska Native culture and rural subsistence living.

sorry Lily i can’t hear you i’m busy affixing these vintage farm implements to my wall - don’t even know what they do, really

I basically have no personal conception of an aesthetic community

Neither do I, strictly speaking, but I am aware that pagan black metal fandom, for example, is not something that occurs in a vacuum, as it loosely ties me to a community of folks with whom I have a great deal in common (we're into it for chiefly, yes, aesthetic reasons) and others who are very much unlike me, even unsettlingly so (i.e. actual ecofascists). You might retort that this concern holds true for all fandoms, and you'd be right, but I'd be lying if I said that the community of pagan black metal fans isn't generally likelier to espouse, say, remigrationist views that run counter to my very existence.

Yes Lily absolutely agree w that. I specifically said upthread that the critique of "back to the land-ism" excludes indigenous ppl who were displaced/massacred by white resettlement, whose ACTUAL practices are then adopted as roleplay in a gross erasure.

xpost I guess that's part of why I've historically tended to eschew fandoms in favor of appreciating things in my own little lonely bubble. But I recognize that I'm probably an outlier in that regard.

I think we're quibbling about semantics here. I am exactly like you, but to me that kind of relationship with art also intersects with looser conceptions of 'fandom' and 'community' (be it, to quote Bataille, 'the community of those who have no community'). Merely liking something draws you outside; it is enough to burst said lonely bubble imo.

leave me alone with my thomas kinkade paintings

In, say, the uk or ireland its possible for it to be a fairly legit trad way of life with continuous ties- thinking the islands and the west fairly specifically- a lifestyle that generations of people were forced into!

but also a bit that rich scions of mumford wealth roleplay at also in order to lecture everyone about how easy it is and how much better life would be if we all owned a cotswold listed building and got Trevor with a masters in agricultural science to do all the work for us on minimum wage

Shades of shades depending on the historical context for me anyway

nb where cores or aesthetics or fandoms come into it idk im a simple man of the islands me

I've historically tended to eschew fandoms in favor of appreciating things in my own little lonely bubble. But I recognize that I'm probably an outlier in that regard.

you're a prolific poster on a messageboard that discusses politics and pop culture so i'd say this is.... incorrect

Pfft, implying this place is endowed with even a modicum of reality.

lol, touché. To the extent that ILX counts as an aesthetic community, this would be my sole exception.

See deems the vibe in our context is less what you’re talking about and more na Sasanaigh in this infamous article, specifically

When my wife Nona and I first came here, we said west Cork is like England in the Fifties. We felt so at home here. It felt like old home, going back in time, to old England.

xpost Generally feeling pretty okay about the ethos of my fellow aesthetes in that regard, though.

How do you feel about their logos and pathos, though?

Honestly when ppl start on "the good old days" in any capacity I usually have to step out of the room on a pretext. They never mean the actual historical material conditions.

Yeah, I would think that ppl that are a part of the fairly legit trad way of life with continuous ties don't really spend much time celebrating it as an ~~internet aesthetic~~. At least the ones I know don't, they're online ofc and have instagram and etc. but don't tend to use it as a celebration of that.

Tbf rose-tinted left-wing nostalgia is also a thing.

xp

xp absolutely nailed on the people in that piece above voted Tory for their own selfish reasons, and didn’t like the results of their actions so it’s time to move back in time to somewhere they don’t have to think about any of that 🙃

what are some "trad" aesthetics that are non-fascist?

I think centering the idea of "neighborliness" e.g.

https://bedstuystrong.com/

or, similarly, fetishizing immigrant mutual aid societies or etc. is one version of this I've seen

xp this agrees with what pom said

When communities are well-knit and caring and working properly, they do mutual aid without calling it anything at all. I think about this a lot. Yes.

Yeah i hear that gyac- in specific contexts the cosplay of cottageplay feeds into a hundred things and patterns that id have thoughts on- definitely. West cork a fine example!

But also the underlying assumption on ilx isnt about the cottage lifestyles or w/e its maybe more like the attn or study or time ppl might presume everyone others would have to delve into semiotics around the culture and the language and angle that we each of us "should" have or the agreed line on these things? Thats a culture in itself imo

Tbh American settlers would never have survived without collective care/mutual aid/barn raisings/etc because mostly they were mostly not very good at farming and they were NOT highly trained frontier survivalists by and large. There's just a lot to be unpacked about this whole thing.

xp to Darragh--people posting to this thread pretending they aren't allowed to like cottages anymore certainly have time to read up.

Lol yes look im staving away from those takes too

;)

I'm also intrigued by the metonymic emphasis on 'cottage'.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it has an, um, broader semantic value in British English…

hee ive not been saying im behaving

Apologies for the extent to which I have contributed to facile 'not all cottages' discourse, I have entered my busy season @ work and am not able to contribute my usually super-high level of nuance and erudition to this convo at the mo

Again, my favorite anarchist farmer has a whole collection of twitter threads about watching the show "Doomsday Preppers" and pointing out the multiple omissions and idiocies that will certainly get ppl killed in an actual apocalypse. Cottagecore is the "wouldn't it be nice to stay at home and make soup and embrace this constructed role of femininity" and violent preppers are the "wouldn't it be nice to shoot people with impunity to embrace my constructed masculinity" and both are ill founded and fundamentally racist & patriarchal at least in the context of a settler cultural history. No reflection on people who are the actual indigenous people of their region, ofc.

#notallsoups obv

Holy shit you did not just reference the soup. Gyaaaaaccc

#soupcore

I want to move to the equivalent of the hamptons and cosplay as an idle rich tbph

lol chonaic méééé xp

I want to move to the equivalent of the hamptons and cosplay as an idle rich tbph

america, the great melting soup

so what are some of the other internet aesthetics? this cottagecore stuff feels very done to death ideological implications aside tbh

I want to move to the equivalent of the hamptons and cosplay as an idle rich tbph

― Marry and Neghim (darraghmac), Wednesday, March 17, 2021 3:26 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

I was under the impression you were already doing this tbh? What with all the country vistas and artful bouquets.

isn't instagram 75% idle rich cosplay?

so what are some of the other internet aesthetics?

Didn't vapourwave kick off the whole 'A E S T H E T I C' shtick?

Look thats actually fair io

So soon after a soup ref and she has nailed me ffs im done

Is QAnon an internet aesthetic?

this is what happens when your friends make friends with other Irish people

What is an aesthetic?

Is everything political, y/n?

time to log off, pom

pom spelling it 'vapourwave' is the most radical action anyone has taken on this thread so far

Daniel_RF https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Aesthetics

this is what happens when your friends make friends with other Irish people

― Scamp Granada (gyac), Wednesday, 17 March 2021 15:33 (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

*runs around in a green hat asking where the craic is*

pom spelling it 'vapourwave' is the most radical action anyone has taken on this thread so far

I'm glad you noticed. This is how you launch a revolution ppl.

#TeamCommonwealth

dog latin yeah I saw that list but it's about aesthetics through the ages, like modernism is in there. I may have been raised by hippie farmers but I know about that already.

was more curious about what other movements are currently fighting for space w/ cottagecore on the internet - like I'd never heard of Corporate Memphis before, for example

it's funny how dominant health goth used to be

i've very glad someone has named the thing 'corporate memphis' is signifying because it is very much a thing

now it has been named, kurzgesagt is doomed

ILX is hatecore in disguise.

dog latin yeah I saw that list but it's about aesthetics through the ages, like modernism is in there. I may have been raised by hippie farmers but I know about that already.

was more curious about what other movements are currently fighting for space w/ cottagecore on the internet - like I'd never heard of Corporate Memphis before, for example

― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, March 17, 2021 3:46 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Sure? I thought it was mostly a list of newish/internet age aesthetics?

i've very glad someone has named the thing 'corporate memphis' is signifying because it is very much a thing

I started a thread on this a year ago that went nowhere:
Examples of Corporate Memphis, the flat design aesthetic that humanizes corporate behemoths.

Okay now I can 100% get behind Corporate Memphis as being fash af

Ha, I didn't know that it had a name, but yeah, corporate memphis is so ubiquitous that you hardly see it.

I read a bit about the “dark academia” aesthetic recently, and like all of these it seemed to be a way of infusing shitty contemporary corporate drone life with some kind of romance and glamour - a little bit cosplay but also a way of imbuing mundane experiences with extra (private?) meaning and resonance - catching the bus in the rain, drinking coffee and reading poetry, whatever. Maybe I’m misreading it?

But it reminded me of my own experience of being a teen/young adult who would dip into certain “aesthetics” to enhance/comprehend experiences - hippy boho, Michael Mann, JG Ballard and Len Deighton downbeat protagonist were my go-tos.

These were pretty unexamined politically but I was definitely consciously adopting them as prisms through which to see the world.

ew fuck Memphis, for years I forgot what that shit was called and was convinced it was just from a dream I had about design history class

idk about “aesthetics” but the emotional aspects of stuff like the “after hours” or “dark naturalism” (lol) resonate with me idk

Mommy's on-the-phonecore refers to an aesthetic based around waiting for your mother to stop chatting in different crowded spaces, such as malls, parks and diners, as well as spaces that may seem to be popular

Some of these aesthetics seem not very versatile.

That's by far my favourite

I love how, like, Fluxus and De Stijl are on the same footing as fawncore and incels.

Aesthetics wiki > Aesthetics 101 > Philosophy > Relationship with Reality > This page is under construction

Had a lol but also p.keen to read it when it’s constructed!

It's interesting how some of these go beyond fashion, art, music etc by describing states of mind. Like the Cafe/Coffeeshop one says to be into this you should be either tired all the time or super energetic with no in between

In any event, merely scrolling through that list makes me feel fucking ancient.

i don't even know what we're talking about anymore

This: https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Aesthetics

…but neither do I.

It's interesting how some of these go beyond fashion, art, music etc by describing states of mind

Yeah! I mean that's kind of what I was trying to articulate before, that it seems to incorporate a kind of pick-n-mix approach to perception or modelling one's own inner self. Which I think happens/happened anyway but this is a very self-aware manifestation!

Reminds me a bit of the flash-forward at the end of Grant Morrison's Invisibles where the future Invisibles have a "cycling meme", that gives them access to multiple personas and self-images to help them push past the limits of perceiving the self as an atomised individual.

But I must also admit that I (clearly?) have no idea about any of this.

Muswell Hillbillies

(wrong thread?)

xps to emsworth: my thread may be relevant to your interests

I too am unsure what the hell is being discussed.

did you ever have a tea party with your stuffed animals?

congratulations, you're a Nazi

Ah, fuck.

I feel like one distinction being inconsistently drawn itt is that which exists between appreciation for an aesthetic and fetishization of an aesthetic.

isn't it the fetish that makes it an aesthetic at all

Perhaps. How would you define the fetish?

circularly, as the kind of relation that makes it an aesthetic

what is this about again

xxxp ha thanks gyac that looks great - will enjoy getting up to speed

absolutely didn’t know what to expect when I hit the link and was thinking it might be this one!

In a lot of contexts you just say "fetischization" to signify that a person's appreciation for an aesthetic is suspect.

These internet aesthetics seem to me like a reclamation of the idea of youth sub-cultures.
Gen X teens were especially concerned with tribal notions of fashion and music cliques and whether you were a punk, a skin, a metalhead, a mod etc. People wore their affiliations like a badge of pride and could get quite territorial about whether something was proper goth or not etc.

That seemed to fade out a bit for millennials who had a world of internet to draw from, and soon the idea of just listening to one style of music and dressing in a way that reflected it seemed quaint. Much cooler to be into everything, to treat yourself to helpings of pop AND metal AND hip hop AND indie. It wasn't always immediately apparent what kind of music someone was into just by looking at the clothes they wore. It became vogueish to fuck with people's expectations: US indie bands talking-up how much they appreciated Norwegian black metal; metal bands eschewing leather jackets for cardigans; and of course the critical reappraisal of commercial pop music throughout the late-90s/early-00s, meant the floodgates were open for people to embrace eclecticism, to pick and choose from everything art and culture had to offer.

So my guess is that these aesthetics are a best-of-both-worlds. It's about creating and drawing inspiration from these micro-subcultures which can be selected from on a day-to-day basis. A zoomer could dress as a harried university librarian one day, get a strange pang of nostalgia from a laundry basket the next, be fawning over adorable picturesque English cottages another day, getting inspired by unfashionable clothes from ten years ago, or getting really into a certain hue of magenta etc.

It's like choosing songs for a playlist or making a bespoke DJ mix that extends beyond music into a whole vibe: observing one's physical and emotional world and mixing and matching various elements so they fit together and make sense. But unlike the Gen X subcultures, it's ephemeral; it's a type of cosplay, and like emsworth says, there's a certain level of self-awareness going on here. There's no pressure to affiliate yourself to that particular mode for very long - "I'm feeling very cottagecore today" is something I could imagine someone saying with a smidge of self-deprecating irony.

I mean, I'm not saying this is entirely new. I can imagine fashion designers and other creative workers have been thinking about and analysing the world around them in this way for a very long time, but this feels very much more grassroots and youth-driven

Spotify made an official playlist inspired by the "Dark Academia" internet micro-aesthetic.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX17GkScaAekA

A study playlist! No less. Chopin, Satie, Tchaikovsky join the ranks of Caiio, cxlt. and all your other favorite psuedonymous crafters of vibes.

I do hate it when people their to damnedest to discourage you from enjoying good music!

try their damnedest even!

to them i recommend the "chaotic academia" aesthetic https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Chaotic_Academia

wait is this a joke?

once i was in a coffee shop and a very tall and handsome man sat down with a brand new copy of "anti-oedipus." he glanced at the back of the book, stood up, looked around, then sat back down. then he cracked it open, seemed to read it for like eight seconds and then closed it with a sort of shudder. he was tapping his foot at his point and his eyes were darting wildly, suspiciously around the coffee shop. this is chaotic academia in action it is rhizomic.

All vaporwave is fascist.

how did that happen? originally it was like a marxist/"hauntalogical" aesthetic.

here's an aesthetic for you

🤮

Are the manic street preachers "bibliopunk"?

Not sure if this has already been linked, but thought this was an excellent exploration of internet aesthetics and "vibe capitalism"

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/tiktok-and-the-vibes-revival

Anecdotally, I've found that instagram ads are much more persuasive in getting me to buy things than any other channel - I guess when yr vibescrolling through the grid, you're infinitely more suggestible to buying a houseplant subscription/new pair of yogis/a ridic expensive swedish raincoat/whateves? Since deleting the app and only accessing insta via firefox packed with adblockers, it's a notably different experience...

agreed - instagram seems to have me absolutely nailed and i hate it

Thirded. I have no need for some Japanese cat jogging pants but I still follow the Instagram link

once i was in a coffee shop and a very tall and handsome man sat down with a brand new copy of "anti-oedipus." he glanced at the back of the book, stood up, looked around, then sat back down. then he cracked it open, seemed to read it for like eight seconds and then closed it with a sort of shudder. he was tapping his foot at his point and his eyes were darting wildly, suspiciously around the coffee shop. this is chaotic academia in action it is rhizomic.

― treeship., Sunday, May 23, 2021 2:54 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

This man's thinking was too arborescent

What are some current aesthetics you enjoy?

I don't entirely mean this in the cottagecore/dark academia sense of the term, though it can be that, too. It's more that as I get older* I find it easy to pinpoint aesthetic trends I dislike - slowed down pop song trailer music, the way every cartoon show tends to look now, Corporate Memphis - but harder to find ones I enjoy.

This has also been brought home to me by how much I enjoyed films like The Souvenir, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and Licorice Pizza purely as fetishistic evocations of their periods, which tbf I didn't even grow up in. Which is a trend in and of itself ofc, but I don't want to start a discussion about nostalgia, it's more I would enjoy getting a similar aesthetic charge out of something looking entirely now, tho I understand that this will never happen as tidily for a time that you're actually in.

Important bit for me here is I'm looking for aesthetic trends rather than specific artists, works or even, in the case of music, genres.

* yes I get the irony of asking this on a forum where I'm probably in the younger half of posters

It's always in danger of being too retro for me but I very much like the revival of juicy colored lighting (pioneered by italian horror films) in Refn's films, Color Out Of Space, We Are The Flesh, Bliss, Mandy and many more. I'd like to see more experimentation and evolution of it though.

And I like the ragged messy style of some new-ish comic artists

Yeah I think bisexual lighting is an aesthetic I enjoy.

Which comic artists are you thinking of? I've been watching a lot of Cartoonist Kayfabe and getting more and more into the art of comics (as opposed to writing) and there as well all my fave aesthetics seem to be ancient.

I like to make playlists of mood music and they're very much centred around specific vibes or aesthetics. It all started when I was trying to make a playlist based on the video game Earthbound, and then it got more specifically about the beach level of that game, so I ended up mining what I'd call "16Bit Balearic".
I've done a playlist called that is numinous and wintry, a sort of implacable mix of soothing neo-classical music mixed with more tempestuous and upsetting stuff so it doesn't just become an Einaudi-fest. That one's called "Quiet & Falling".
Then there's one that has a slightly acoustic/Latin vibe but not exactly called STRING.
I also have one called "SEED" which is sort of rural-ambient-drone-folk-horror.

Which comic artists are you thinking of?

― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, February 24, 2022 11:03 AM

Kind of scribbly alternative stuff that seems more viable in mainstream now, I'm blanking a bit but I think Loic Locatelli and Muriel Bellini have a bit of it even if the latter is a lot more underground looking and they are very different, but I'm seeing more artists willing to make a total mess and it's cool. There's an artist I'm forgetting, she's in a punk band and everything is super wonky, I can't get on my instagram anymore so I can't name many names

Lale Westvind is great and I don't know if that new book is ever coming out. Forgot about how comics can delay forever

an aesthetic i'm really liking is dance music nights that de-emphasize starpower and treating people like cattle with wallets. man power is doing this in the uk, i saw some other night called 'fuck it, let's dance' that's also on this tip. also musical and lineup diversity.

not really an aesthetic but more of a way of balancing doing something for the joy of it with business i suppose.