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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024

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I think these things started as luxury behaviors of a certain class of elites wealthy enough to afford to buck the normal lifestyle rules. The tech bros could largely get away with their hoodies and jeans and openly admitting to loving Star Wars and Marvel because, especially at the time, being in tech was a pretty elite skill set, and they got away with it because you didn’t want to lose your best programmers because you tried to make them wear suits or something. And early on, the adoption of comic books and fandoms were driven by people seeing that this new class of elites in the tech industry were into comic books and other forms of fantasy science fiction stuff, so people started to see it as okay if not aspirational because tech guys like it and they’re rich.

In some sort of weird way, the let it all hang out ethos seems like the same thing. It’s saying “I’m so high on the social hierarchy that I no longer have to worry about pleasing other people.” People much lower on the scale have to live by the dictates of wider society and their boss’s expectations of their lifestyle and behavior and dress. They have to not be too weird or childish in their public opinions and interests as those things might make a boss think of you as immature. The mania for mental illnesses is a similar thing— I’m so high up the hierarchy that I can afford to have obvious mental illnesses without it negatively impacting me. Or striving in general. If you’re rich, you can let it slide and only try when you really want to because you can easily get a job through your social network.

That last one about mental illness has been around for a while. I remember the old saw about how if you have enough money, you are no longer “crazy” you’re “eccentric”

Speed is such a great movie, Dennis Hopper looked like he was having so much fun.