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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3365 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 1, 2023

Happy New Year!

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I don't see this as a fundamental lack of positivity and retreat to nihilism or misanthropy.

I think it certainly is in some cases. The dominant lyrical theme of drill music is "I am going to kill my rival drug dealers", while the dominant lyrical theme of cloud rap/emo rap/sadboi rap etc. is "I am abusing drugs because I am so miserable and depressed" (something which is acknowledged to be a stage persona in some instances, namely the late Lil Peep). Maybe these aren't nihilistic or misanthropic stances, but they're anything but "positive".

Hard disagree on Pete Davidson, I watched one of his recent Netflix specials and found him surprisingly candid and unpretentious. Perhaps a thick veneer of irony coated his earlier work but he seems to have grown out of it. Agree that, in the Anglosphere, ironic detachment is the air that we breathe (as a genre, the aforementioned hyperpop could not function without it).

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