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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2729 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 7, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Disagree there.

There are vanishingly few producers of culture in the world; and many many hobbyists. If you are after that set you better be lucky or good.

What you call "culture"? There are heaps of books written every year. There are hundreds of movies made. Thousands of musicians perform old and new music daily, thousands of bands and individual singers perform and release albums. Painters paint and sculptors sculpt, all the time. I don't think there is a person in existence who even knows about single percents of all culture produced, let alone trying to consume and appreciate all of it. Can we really define this enormous torrent of information as "vanishingly few"? Or do we only include a tiny sliver of it into "culture" - and if so, what exactly is included?

Depends how broad you are being.

Definitionally, we all contribute the greater culture; but in this context I would say an audience is required and specifically that that audience influence what culture is produced in the future.

Eg, GRRM? Producing Culture. Christopher Rowley? Not producing culture. Osamu Tezuka? Culture. Deen? No culture.

Audience measuring is a tricky business. Justin Bieber probably has much bigger audience than Marcel Proust. But if we measure by audience, there are millions upon millions of people spending billions of dollars on cultural products made by thousands upon thousands of producers. Again, "vanishingly few" does not agree with that.

I don't really care if you're a professional or a hobbyist, hobbyist frequently have more interesting things to say anyway.

I don't really care if what you're producing is culture either. I prefer to hear about your new sales plan to what it was like at the Met. Consumption is uninteresting, people who define themselves by consumption are uninteresting, people who define themselves by consumption they engage in for (mostly) performative reasons are the epitome of uninteresting.

Disagree again then.

If the most interesting thing about you is a 'sales plan', you aren't interesting. Most work is brain dead easy because most people aren't in the top percent, by definition. There is usually nothing there of interest or of value; unless you are in the arts or the sciences. I'd much rather talk about something other than the rote and routine drudgery people have to do to not die. Almost anything other than that, really.

He said "producers" not "the top 1% of producers", so I don't see why hobbyists shouldn't count.

And if for whatever reason you want to stand by the distinction, his point that they're more interesting still stands.

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