Grimes/Claire Boucher thread

I don't like the idea that she irl hangs mostly with the worst kind of online shitposters but maybe it's true idk. Her trajectory hasn't been inspiring from a distance.

she’s just like a complete woo-woo ass person who would align herself with whatever since whenever, idk what else to tell you

Art-pop Joe Rogan

Brad nailed it.

Earlier on it was easier to ignore the extra-curricular stuff though, for reasons too voluminous to recount

difference is she used to be embarrassing in a somewhat endearing way (the houseboat story, constantly saying ridiculous stuff in interviews etc.) and at least positioned herself as fairly progressive (despite the techno-libertarian thread that was always there - she was always the sort of idiot who'd be super into cryptocurrency). her trajectory isn't that surprising given the techno-libertarian stuff but it's still quite a shift to be hanging out with crypto-fascist rationalists, thiel-funded neo-nazis etc. now.

she seems to have largely lost interest in music though (lol at her releasing only two songs on columbia), i doubt she'll get around to actually finishing another album anytime soon

In December 2022, Grimes attended a holiday fundraising party for the San Francisco political think tank and magazine Palladium, which was founded by the Neo Nazi activist Jonah Bennett. Palladium receives much of its capital investment from Peter Thiel, whose Hereticon “free speech” conservative conference (a haven for hate speech) Grimes had also previously done a private DJ set for, in January 2022. Grimes publicly tweeted about her participation in both Hereticon and the Palladium party, so it has been confirmed from the horse’s mouth. Also, there were many pictures of her at the Palladium party shared by the editors of Palladium and then retweeted by Grimes. These pictures show Grimes together with her own friends who also attended, and some show the magazine’s current editors (not Bennett, but close associates of him, most notably Wolf Tivy) who she frequently interacted with on twitter in the weeks after the party (they were also mutuals). Jonah Bennett himself also appears to have attended the party, despite not being pictured together with Grimes, as he retweeted one of the other Palladium editors’ tweet celebrating the importance of Grimes attending the party and showing how far Palladium has come to gain such a prominent artist’s support.
One of Grimes’s tweets was also celebrating these guys as being part of what she tone deafly called a “schizzo (sic) posting” club, suggesting she was also a “schizzo poster” herself on her alt twitter accounts. On her main account, despite all the cringe, she rarely tweets anything directly inflammatory or redpilled, except that time she tweeted a “joke” about lebensraum on Holocaust Remembrance Day, but sometimes (accidentally?) she has used her public account to like others’ tweets of a hateful nature. One of the accounts whose tweets she liked most frequently is called The Hellenist, which she also follows. Hellenist is a straight up racist and fascist account, which tweets about the penis size of different races and how Ancient Rome met its downfall because it made the mistake of “following the Jews” in Hellenist’s eyes (ancient Greece, apparently, did not—whatever that even means). The identity of the account is unknown (if I had to take a guess, one of her irl close acquaintances, or possibly even Elon Musk or Jonah Bennett) but some of her out in the open friends, including the squad of besties she’s had over the past couple of years—Aella, Lan Dao and Liv Boeree—also tweet redpilled content and content promoting big business and conservative forms of religion, opposing Black rights and struggles, opposing LGBTQ rights and even opposing feminism and endorsing patriarchy, a total inversion of what used to be Grimes’ signature public issue.
Grimes has also been exploring eugenics. The celebrity eugenics couple from Connecticut, the Collinses, had an extensive interview with Business Insider last year. The piece painted an incredibly disturbing picture of what the Collinses are all about, but it stuck to facts and didn’t editorialize, earning the praise of the Collinses themselves, who called the article very accurate. This is relevant to Grimes because she receives a mention in the article—the Collinses tell the journalist that Grimes reached out to their group seeking to get involved in the cause of eugenics. Grimes nor the Collinses did not ever deny that this occurred. It also fits with some of her own public statements supporting “the Mission.” The Mission is a cult created by Elon Musk with a mission of breeding a superior race of humans on Mars. Grimes, although no longer involved romantically with Musk, recently said promoting the Mission is now her main purpose in life, describing music as a mere “side quest.”

This is a comment on the popheads subreddit. No receipts but some of these claims are easily googleable and true

https://www.reddit.com/r/popheads/comments/12yyuey/grimes_splits_with_columbia_records/

The nepo babies she’s friends with nowadays and who she interacts with both live and in twitter do seem to post some very questionable content in twitter.

If it walks like a duck…

She has proved time and time again that she’s super shallow and volatile when it comes to her views and unfortunately she loves expressing it. Good musician/producer but the more spotlight she gets the less likeable she becomes and that’s been true for over a decade. Hanging out with the shittiest, uncoolest elite doesn’t help her case.

Not mentioned on that post is that she continues to follow, hang out with and enable sexual abuser Nusi Quero, she never issued a response or apology about that whole ordeal… just a super insincere post about having to “reflex on the scandal” and promising an update which never came.

I feel ashamed of being a fan of her music nowadays. Her output pre-2015 was brilliant and it was easy to look beyond her often obnoxious, “quirky” personality because in the end it was a bit cringeworthy but mostly harmless.

No wonder Elon is so desperate to get her back

Her trajectory from largely non-political techno utopianism to harshly right wing, explicity anti-egalitarian techno authoritarianism — with “singularity” overtones — might be worth understanding. To me the way she was “woo woo” pre-2015 did not lead me to believe she would embrace anti-egalitarian, eugenicist, whatever ideas. But this is not a unique slope.

And it seems sort of different than the pipeline that is like hippy/“back to nature” to anti-vax reactionary thought. I’m familiar with that pipeline, this one feels more ominous, more authoritarian.

Also like musk is part of it. He wants to breed a race of supermen on mars.

The Mission is a cult created by Elon Musk with a mission of breeding a superior race of humans on Mars. Grimes, although no longer involved romantically with Musk, recently said promoting the Mission is now her main purpose in life, describing music as a mere “side quest.”

is there more info on this? googling is a bit difficult because "mission" and "mars" leads to stuff about spacex and "superior race" is not a a google i want to pursue

https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/the-far-right-eugenics-mindset-behind

This goes into it

They seem to speak euphemistically about their aims

https://bylinetimes.com/2022/11/07/musks-twitter-buy-makes-no-sense-unless-its-part-of-something-bigger/

This is intriguing. I don’t know how seriously to take an outlet called “byline times” but I have long suspected that musk had some ulterior motive in acquiring twitter.

oof. thanks treeship

Paywalled - there’s ways around that - but here’s the Collins:

https://www.businessinsider.com/pronatalism-elon-musk-simone-malcolm-collins-underpopulation-breeding-tech-2022-11

Screen of the relevant Grimes part

https://preview.redd.it/wjbxqpoc6l0a1.png

Can’t quite find an explicit article about “the mission”, but yeah, Musk has tweeted “great replacement” theory tropes and was recently on Tucker Carlson talking about
“Birth rates” and “sustainable population” which looks a lot like a racist dog whistle to me.
https://medium.com/the-noösphere/why-wealthy-tech-elites-believe-its-their-mission-to-repopulate-earth-eb15b17ab2b6

I can't pretend I foresaw Grimes' personal political trajectory, but "largely non-political techno utopianism" was never largely non-political (how could it be?), and esp wrt the US computing/internet/etc industry the line between "techno-utopianism" and "techno-authoritarianism" was always very blurry.

Speaking of 2015: https://harpers.org/archive/2015/01/come-with-us-if-you-want-to-live/

It's been a long time since I read it, but this is probably worth revisiting too: https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/californian-ideology

And wrt to eugenics specifically, Malcolm Harris' new book looks p interesting: https://www.vox.com/podcasts/23604908/malcolm-harris-palo-alto-capitalism-interview

Azealia Banks was right about her.

Azealia Banks is good at pointing out racism, not so good at music

If she has truly gone fascist, whenever she releases new music--which could be soon? There was a cryptic FB post within the last hour--music journos should go at her hard and precisely about all this. Back it up with some facts and corner her on it. Don't just casually dismiss her due to Elon musk associations, don't express mild unease about the imagery and the AI obsession. that's too vague and too plausibly deniable. Gotta make it stick with the cold hard truth of the matter. As someone who has never not liked her music...well I'd have no trouble moving on from her in this case. Fever Ray is out there, better politics and great music and a better more inspiring romantic life.

not sure we can just dismiss this by saying she is “woo woo” … there’s obviously an elitist + fash adjacent strain in art and it’s been there for a minute, i mean look at warhols cultivated, effete nihilism

from pc music soundtracking alt right media, to oneohtrix teasing right-accelerationism, there’s a current in the arts that despises the boring and often cringe slog of care and community in favor of high end hedonism and hyper individualism. and this is of course not just the arts but the whole constellation of “dissident leftists” like Glenn greenwald making straightforwardly right wing arguments from supposedly leftist premises

insofar as “woo” is coded as anti-establishment it makes sense; there’s more than a bit of self satisfied decadence in liberalism which provides an opening for those types to go from “big pharma is evil” to “we should delete civilization and have an elect restart on Mars”

i am not trying to dismiss this and kind of hate that i posted anything at all. i just… you know, a lot of the coked-out scenesters in 2010s nyc turned out to be nazis and i don’t spend much time thinking about their moral arcs bc i don’t think they believed in much to begin with. same with grimey

xp I honestly don’t think Glenn Greenwald is part of this. This seems like a very specific radical political project rooted in elite disdain for the masses.

It’s not just “right wing” or whatever.

whenever she releases new music--which could be soon? There was a cryptic FB post within the last hour

i mean i'll cop to thinking about this too much and making possibly overly broad connections, and in no way am i trying to moralize about anyone here 'not taking things seriously enough' or w/e, if i came off like that, sorry

but the reality is tons of people who used to seem squarely progressive or left-leaning or at least just anodyne apolitical are now varying degrees of reactionary, from edgy contrarianism to all-out fash. i think that is notable, and also obviously overdetermined, in the sense one's reactionary turn must be a blend of individual susceptibility and historical phenomena.

but i think that woo-fash resonance is interesting, because it points to which historical phenomena might be playing into this trend. like, the anti-vax perspective is a blend of not unsympathetic latent distrust of big pharma, + propagandistic manipulation, and it's the former--the decadence of corporate society--that is interesting because that is formerly the left's turf in terms of critique, but is being picked up by the right. i'd say this is in part due to the little Thielian culture industry, but also because liberals really did sell us out post 2008!

as for how grimes fits into this, idk there's a sort of weird dialectic where the idea of becoming post-human and merging with the machines or w/e just becomes another way of underlining your own human specialness, and her project, even more so than most pop stars, is very invested in the idea of this sort of untouchable individuality

anyways i'll shut up now

I just want to say that none of this is particularly unique or noteworthy or even special. Grimes isn’t the first “oh this person is a reactionary racist fuckwit, not the sympathetic nice person I assumed them to be” in music and, sadly, she won’t be the last.

So, “elf tech”

On a bad note: the snippet for her new song has the most cringe lyrics ever and is specially annoying in context described in the previous posts.

On a good note: the “grimes ai” is very impressive, these cover of Paris Texas by Lana sounds great considering it’s not actually her:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7re3PEtFGIE

irregardless of everything else, this is kinda cool imho

I'll split 50% royalties on any successful AI generated song that uses my voice. Same deal as I would with any artist i collab with. Feel free to use my voice without penalty. I have no label and no legal bindings. pic.twitter.com/KIY60B5uqt

— 𝔊𝔯𝔦𝔪𝔢𝔰 (@Grimezsz) April 24, 2023

(more details & replies to questions about this on her Twitter)

How much money is there to be made in a cover of the Horst Wessel song?

just off to make a grimes version of "tomorrow belongs to me" then

irregardless of everything else, this is kinda cool imho

"everything else"

"irregardless"

sorry about that - I must have seen the word being used more than once, I didn't know it was wrong (or that there's discussion about it, at least) - I'm not an English speaker at home :(

all good!

jesus alfred

Lol “irregardless” was not the biggest problem with that post

AI voice thing is pretty clever since now anything she records that turns out too fashy she can say it's a deepfake

I don't think the public persona of Grimes is worth anything more than lazy dunks at this point. I've long held that it's kind of mortifying to be around adults who think quoting goofy lines and catchphrases that were burned into their minds from comedy bits and movies decades ago is a good idea. But what we're seeing here is a 35 year old tumblr teen and it's terrible

uptown churl with some good posts. there are definitely some historical currents directing this kind of trajectory right now. capitalist nihilism and fascism are kind of made for each other. also as we start to stretch global limits and elites want to hold on to / entrench capitalism, fascism makes an intuitive kind of sense. not directly related to grimes but the class of other i'm noticing it's ok for everyone to be hateful towards with like a genocidal flavor lately is the unhoused. maybe that's just my locality.

that ai splitting royalties thing is grimes version of elon throwing out an "egalitarian" move every once in a while, it's a total fake-out.

Her being 35 has fazed me a bit cause obv any adult should have outgrown this kind of thing but also it’s too young because this flavour of musk-adjacent cringe is so quintessentially gen x to me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ9VBMBS3qE

idk there's nothing wrong with having youthful interests and being kind of nerdy about a few things but the AI/SV/dork enlightenment/Thiel think tank axis is just a bunch of adults who congealed into this nonsensical "we need kings to rule us, but maybe the king is AI, so we need to throw a bunch of money at that and listen to the people who are funding it (aka Thiel and company)"

how to make a grimes thread immediately better: post a neneh cherry video xp