Ethel Cain expands on "irony culture" comments
Last week, Hayden Anhedönia (who releases music as "Ethel Cain") divided the Internet when she took to Tumblr to rant about what she termed the "irony epidemic," where "there is a loss of sincerity and everything has to be a joke at all times."
On Monday night, the 26-year-old singer-songwriter returned to the platform to expand on her comments, which she referred to as a poorly structured, "drunk rant."
"I just feel as though there's a lack of sincerity in the world these days," Anhedönia begins in her post. Below, five key excerpts.
• "I love to laugh. I love a good joke, and I love lightheartedness as much as the next person. But I saw someone put it very succinctly in response to my rant, something along the lines of, 'Don't let the joke about it overtake the source material.' It feels as though it's a common occurrence these days to take a pinch of something with a lot more weight to it, often a humorous bit, and then run with it. Context is immediately lost, the legacy of that body of work becomes its own caricature, and anyone discovering that body of work via said caricature may forgo a piece of art they would otherwise love because 'there's nothing there.'"
• "Artists have fled the public and all their outlets for personality and expression outside the medium because they feel ridiculed. It's not even just their art. [Drag queen] Katya comes to mind, speaking on how she went on YouTube Live a few years back in literal tears talking about police brutality and the injustices marginalized communities were facing at the hands of the government. Meanwhile, the entire comment section 'yas' and 'mother'ed her in barrages, not paying attention to anything she had to say. I get asked about when I'm dropping [my debut album] Preacher's Daughter vinyl en masse in response to my Palestine fundraiser links. It's everywhere and it's inescapable."
• "I miss genuine passion. As an autistic individual, when I'm alone, sometimes I cannot contain myself with how things make me feel. The music I listen to, the video games I play, the books I read. I almost feel the need to run through the house and scream in everyone's face how I'm feeling. It feels good to love intensely. Now, I won't pretend like autistic people haven't been bullied for this since the dawn of time, but there is surely a noticeable lack of passion in everything these days. Everyone can feel it, everyone is talking about it. Everything now is "cringe", or "doing too much," or "not that serious." Actually, it is that serious. Insecurity in one's own deeper feelings may not be a new thing, but a culture that seems to promote this eschewing of them does seem to be a new evil."
• "I spent most of my time [on Tumblr] when I first discovered it a little over a decade ago... talking about how much I loved whatever fandom I was in at the time and having genuine and memorable interactions with like-minded individuals who felt the same way I do. Now, you have two options: if you hate media, you rip it to shreds, and if you love it, you word-salad it to death and parrot a joke about it that someone else said."
• "I am very grateful for my career, grateful to anyone who has ever given me and my art the time of day, grateful to anyone who has ever come up to me and connected with me over my work, and grateful for a life where someone making too many jokes is the worst part of my day. I do not think I am better nor smarter than anyone on or off the Internet. I am simply a girl with big feelings and I enjoy talking about them with other people with big feelings, and it makes me sad when something avoidable or unnecessary gets in the way of that."
You can read the full post at the source.