Comments | sinsense: RANT: Twenty-first century shitheads.

sinsense

RANT: Twenty-first century shitheads.

Jun 22, 2010 17:47

I saw an advertisement a day or so ago, on the side of a city bus. It really stuck with me. I haven't been able to find an image of it online, and I wasn't able to photograph it when I saw it, but my recollection of it has been clarified by well-seasoned, well-aged irritation ( Read more... )

the weirdness of others disturbs me, hectoring harlot, raving lunatic

Comments 37

apiphile June 22 2010, 22:08:22 UTC

I reiterate: motherfucking hovercar.

BRB teaching this to everyone ever as our new battlecry.

sinsense June 23 2010, 12:31:52 UTC

I just envisioned a group of people marching on the Kyriarchy, fists raised, hollering, "MOTHERFUCKING HOVERCAR" as one.

And then a kid in the back piped up, "And a jet-pony!"

Jet-ponies! I don't know why that showed up in my visualization, but I'm keeping it.

PS: Your icon is amazing. I used "mansplaining" with MOSS the other day and he was like "OH MY GOD THAT'S HILARIOUS ALSO I HAVE DONE THAT FUCK." It was excellent.

apiphile June 23 2010, 14:08:21 UTC

In my head, the jet-pony is designed by Kate Beaton.

jet-pony apiphile July 4 2010, 01:01:41 UTC

Can't help myself - jet-pony:

http://wiki.rainbowbrite.co.uk/index.php5?title=Krys

harborshore June 22 2010, 22:27:14 UTC

Re footnote no. 2: I see a lot of those in Sweden too. Of course, it usually comes down to something like, "Look! We hired a woman to do this prestigious leadership job!" But it's not like the next one after her will be a woman. Women rarely succeed women in positions like those.

Regarding your actual point: yup. Yup yup yup. "21st century medicine since 1751" is really hilariously inaccurate, both in terms of racial equality and the science behind the medicine. Well, when I say hilarious I mean, you know. UGH.

sinsense June 23 2010, 12:29:19 UTC

It seems to be an international phenomenon among smug English-language news organizations, at least from my reading. A lot of the articles I've seen have also wrung their hands about how "men" are becoming "feminized" due to the TRIUMPH OF FEMINISM (where is my feminist hovercarrr). It's kind of fascinating to see that this interpretation of realities (the hiring of women, women allowed into various positions) as evidence of a trend (WOMEN SMASH) is taking place across national borders. Maybe evidence of the globalization of social narratives via the internet?

Also, yeah. Forgive me if I don't burn my Feminism Membership Card just yet, fellas!

I feel kind of bad about the bulk of my post because it just seems so obvious, like I'm picking on a tiny bird. I think it just massively irked me because -- like so many other stupid things -- a bunch of people saw that and were like, "YEAH! LET'S PUT THAT OUT THERE." What in the hey now, y'know? Hilariously ughtastic, indeed.

mrsquizzical June 22 2010, 22:42:13 UTC

just the slogan all on it's own is enough to make me roll my eyes so hard i hurt myself. and that's without my natural bias against medical propoganda and misinformation.

(heee! hovercars! awesome.)

sinsense June 23 2010, 12:23:42 UTC

I mean, it's not exactly the pinnacle of advertising slogans, even aside from the weird issues. I'm kind of picking on a weakling here.

Hovercarrrrs! That will be the emblem of female world domination: a hovercar rampant.

makesomelove June 22 2010, 22:53:53 UTC

LOOK, maybe Andy is a big queer. He was going to take his childhood cowboy to college to help him lose his virginity because he never had any friends when he was growing up. "Woody, help me find a man. You are my only friend."

sinsense June 23 2010, 12:22:09 UTC

I ENJOY YOUR INTERPRETATION AND HAVE SUBSCRIBED TO YOUR NEWSLETTER. I think Andy would have enjoyed success with that endeavor among a very select group of people, depending on his school of choice! Mostly because Andy is pretty cute, and there are always people willing to work with what they're given.

Although I personally would draw the line at letting Woody watch.

(The comment has been removed)

sinsense June 23 2010, 12:36:09 UTC

Those are all just signs of the equality we've been permitted to enjoy.
Seriously excellent concluding phrase -- that's exactly it, and said much better than I could. There's this tendency to treat the work of equality as finished, which weirdly evokes some of the "vanishing Indian" language of the 19th century (where the disappearance of the Native American was treated as a mournful fact, not as a horrific ongoing occurrence). There's a fascinatingly-titled book that recently came out, Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism's Work Is Done, that I'm really looking forward to reading.

It's interesting, as I said to harborshore, that this is a international occurrence. It might be evidence of the ways in which media sources share and adopt dominant narratives, because of the interconnection of nations through the internet? I can't say that for certain, though.

slashpile June 25 2010, 05:39:45 UTC

Hmm. The NY Times just ran a major piece on paternity leave and its results in Sweden (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/world/europe/10iht-sweden.html?scp=4&sq=sweden&st=cse). And every time it showed up in the "most popular" sidebar I'd do a quite seethe about the flood of women-are-winning paranoia stories.

But I didn't notice until I just went to grab the link now, that this is part of an International Herald Tribune series of stories all over the world -- and that the Swedish "daddy time" story ran in the paper edition, but the other international stories and one called "Awareness Rises, but Women Still Lag in Pay" did not. *sigh*