(no subject)
Followed a link tonight to a fascinating post from vassilissa: USA, in which she picks out a number of US-centric things that people from other countries are "expected" to know; some things made me blink, let me tell you.
And it made me think of this quote, from Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan, which is just fucking genius. Substitute Warren's fictional chains for anything you'd like, really...
We live in a monoculture.
What does that mean? Well, go out to your street corner. You'll probably see a Long Pig stand, SPKF on a screen somewhere, an Angry Boy Dylan's Gun Store. You'll go into a record store and see new recordings by the usual suspects, maybe a special Space Culture display rack.
Go out onto a streecorner in London and you'll see the same thing. Same in Prague. Same in Sao Paulo. Same in Osaka, and Grozny, and Tehran, and Jo'burg, and Hobart.
That's what a monoculture is. It's everywhere, and it's all the same. And it takes up alien cultures and digests them and shits them out in a homogenous building-block shape that fits seamlessly into the vast blank wall of the monoculture.
This is the future. This is what we built. This is what we wanted. It must have been. Because we all had the fucking choice, didn't we? It is only our money that allows commercial culture to flower. If we didnt want to live like this, we could have changed it any time, by not fucking paying for it.
So let's celebrate by all going out and buying the same burger.
In the meantime, I have Gone Fishin' until Tuesday; pride thread delayed again this week.
And it made me think of this quote, from Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan, which is just fucking genius. Substitute Warren's fictional chains for anything you'd like, really...
We live in a monoculture.
What does that mean? Well, go out to your street corner. You'll probably see a Long Pig stand, SPKF on a screen somewhere, an Angry Boy Dylan's Gun Store. You'll go into a record store and see new recordings by the usual suspects, maybe a special Space Culture display rack.
Go out onto a streecorner in London and you'll see the same thing. Same in Prague. Same in Sao Paulo. Same in Osaka, and Grozny, and Tehran, and Jo'burg, and Hobart.
That's what a monoculture is. It's everywhere, and it's all the same. And it takes up alien cultures and digests them and shits them out in a homogenous building-block shape that fits seamlessly into the vast blank wall of the monoculture.
This is the future. This is what we built. This is what we wanted. It must have been. Because we all had the fucking choice, didn't we? It is only our money that allows commercial culture to flower. If we didnt want to live like this, we could have changed it any time, by not fucking paying for it.
So let's celebrate by all going out and buying the same burger.
In the meantime, I have Gone Fishin' until Tuesday; pride thread delayed again this week.