{"id":67789,"date":"2024-11-13T01:00:20","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T06:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=67789"},"modified":"2024-11-12T08:56:09","modified_gmt":"2024-11-12T13:56:09","slug":"qotd-the-1990s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/11\/13\/qotd-the-1990s\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The 1990s"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 25px 10px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>Remember <em>The Matrix<\/em>? It spawned a zillion pop-academic books with titles like <em>The Matrix and Philosophy<\/em>, and for once it wasn&#8217;t just a marketing gimmick. I doubt the filmmakers intended this \u2014 given that at least one of the Wachowski Brothers is now a trannie, I suppose their intended message was &#8220;let your freak flag fly, because that makes you Secret Jesus&#8221; \u2014 but all that Baudrillard stuff that inevitably attaches itself to a movie about virtual reality was actually kinda true.<\/p>\n<p>Consider that if we really <em>do<\/em> live in a computer simulation, then everything the #wokesters are always going on about is actually true. Everything really IS a &#8220;social construction&#8221;, because &#8220;society&#8221; was literally constructed. All that stuff about &#8220;systemic racism&#8221; is true, too, because again, we&#8217;re dealing with a <em>design<\/em>. Nothing evolves organically inside <em>The Matrix<\/em>, because there&#8217;s nothing <em>organic<\/em> in there at all. It&#8217;s ALL on purpose &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230; and you, #wokester, are the only one who can see it. Unlike Karl Marx, who was able to see beyond his class situation enough to say that no one can see beyond his class situation, because reasons, <em>you<\/em>, #wokester, can do it because you&#8217;re Neo. That, too, is built into the system. It&#8217;s an endless recursion &#8230; but one that entails that you, and you alone, are special, <em>on purpose<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>That, <em>kameraden<\/em>, was the 1990s. Even those movies our author mentioned \u2014 <em>Beverly Hills Cop III<\/em>, <em>Lethal Weapons 3<\/em> and <em>4<\/em> \u2014 weren&#8217;t just copies of copies, they were ironic, snarky commentaries on copies of copies. See also <em>Scream<\/em>, which was a &#8220;deconstruction&#8221; of every slasher picture ever made. If you can&#8217;t beat &#8217;em, join &#8217;em &#8230; but since both beating &#8217;em and joining &#8217;em entail making a sincere effort and sincerity is forbidden, all you can do is mock &#8217;em. That&#8217;s what &#8220;deconstruction&#8221; is, one long polysyllabic mockery of the very idea of excellence. It&#8217;s the perfect philosophy for people who know themselves to be mediocre but have been told from day one that they&#8217;re special.<\/p>\n<p>See also the tv show <em>Friends<\/em>, where five ludicrously attractive people and David Schwimmer all pretend to be just normal folks (who happen to live in 3,000 square foot apartments in Manhattan) \u2014 each episode is &#8220;the one that&#8217;s just like <em>The Brady Bunch<\/em>, but snarky&#8221;. Or <em>Seinfeld<\/em>, which was deliberately designed to be a grating mockery of stuff like <em>The Odd Couple<\/em>. All snarky mockeries of the very concept of sincerity.<\/p>\n<p>See what I mean? That&#8217;s normal now, which is why the 90s must be dragged into an alley and shot, for Western Civ&#8217;s sake.<\/p>\n<p>Severian, <!--<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rottenchestnuts.com\/why-the-90s-was-the-worst-decade-ever\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">-->&#8220;Why the 90s Was the Worst Decade Ever&#8221;, <em>Rotten Chestnuts<\/em>, 2021-07-04.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Remember The Matrix? It spawned a zillion pop-academic books with titles like The Matrix and Philosophy, and for once it wasn&#8217;t just a marketing gimmick. I doubt the filmmakers intended this \u2014 given that at least one of the Wachowski Brothers is now a trannie, I suppose their intended message was &#8220;let your freak flag [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,28,41,13],"tags":[1403,262,37,122,1462,101],"class_list":["post-67789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-media","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-1990s","tag-culture","tag-matrix","tag-movies","tag-severian","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-hDn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67789"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92375,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67789\/revisions\/92375"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}