/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.21800816]

Why does nothing feel genuine anymore?

[Anonymous No.21800832]

Because most of it isn't.

[Anonymous No.21800836]

Hachiman moment

[Anonymous No.21800839]

>>21800816
Move to rural Papua New Guinea and get to experience genuine misery.

[Anonymous No.21800844]

>>21800816
stop thinking in words

[Anonymous No.21800845]

I miss Windows XP

[Anonymous No.21800849]

>>21800839
Why would I do that?

[Anonymous No.21800875]

>>21800816
Internet probably, if I'm guessing.
>nothing feels genuine anymore
I know what you mean OP, but it's really hard to put into words. I remember breaking down into tears on my 14th or 15th birthday while they were bringing the cake because of the feeling that none of the traditional birthday rituals they were doing were genuine. It's not that I thought that no one liked me or anything, it's just that I felt like everything being done was being done just because that's what you do. There was no real meaning behind the actions. It's really hard to put into words, and back then I couldn't put it into words, so when my mom asked me why I was crying, I just told her "we never do things together as a family" but that's not why I was sad.
People really felt things back then, but now, I just can't help but feeling like everything is fake, done simply because that's what you do. Maybe everyone has always felt this way throughout history and the genuineness we're looking for was never real, but if that were true, someone must have written about it and I've never read anything like that.
It has to be the internet. The internet changes the very way you think. All your thoughts become directed towards others and everything you think becomes for the sake of others. This is also really hard to properly put into words.
If the problem lies in the internet and its effects on cognition, maybe the solution lies in cognition, the way you think. I'm trying to practice mindfulness but it's pretty hard.

[Anonymous No.21800877]

>>21800844
Does this actually help? How does one go about making that change?

[Anonymous No.21800880]

The internet. Give it up for a week. If you can (99:1 you can't) you'll see a difference.

[Anonymousn No.21800909]

>>21800844
This is stupid and it's based on cliche ('language is scary abstract illusion') rather than actual thought. Words are little vehicles of will and reflection, loaded with the weight of history, so they are just as real as our willed, reflective, historical engagement with the world is.

You scroll through a feed of images, and your optic nerve crackles and the dopamine pulses, but at the end of it you feel like nothing more than a nervous membrane spread across the glassy screen. That's the unreality -- it's immediate and material and yet at the same time unreal.

But you sit in a quite room with a blank page and write 'I hate my phone' and you've made a little inky dwelling for yourself, an anchor point, that focuses your being and your feelings into objective shape as the same time as it connects you to a shared language of feelings and to a shared history of technology and to an ongoing history of the desire to bring the world closer to how it should be.

[Anonymous No.21800941]

>>21800816
You already know why.

[Anonymous No.21800942]

>>21800875
Thanks, this is exactly how I feel. I've wondered if it's because I'm older now but that can't be true because as you said this feeling hasn't been described by previous generations. It's not like lost innocence either, but more like
>everything being done was being done just because that's what you do. There was no real meaning behind the actions.
I feel this with everything. From watching a movie to eating at a restaurant. There's just no substance behind anything

[Anonymous No.21801276]

>>21800816
It's the spectacle.

[Anonymous No.21801710]

>>21800849
to experience something that is genuine

[Anonymous No.21801736]

>>21801276
Strange guy

Interesting and relevant I-III chapters. Everything starting from chapter VI is undiluted, debilitating, 60's style meaningless marxist adjective drivel garbage

His other book, "Comments on society of the spectacle", is one of the best reads out there today. I would even say essential.

[Anonymous No.21801747]

you're old

[Anonymous No.21801774]

>>21800875
Good post

[Anonymous No.21801787]

>>21800875
I think we al know what you're talking bout but it's impossible to truly explain

[Anonymous No.21801904]

>>21800875
Something happened to people, they aren't sensitive anymore, they aren't real. Everyone's chosen comfort over humanity and it shows in how insincere and meaningless the lives of the masses are.

[Anonymous No.21801912]

>>21801736
The Comments is better than the original?

[Anonymous No.21801917]

>>21800816
Simulation and Simulacra

[Anonymous No.21801925]

>>21800816
It's been that way for just over a century now. If you don't believe in something you can't believe in anything, and you can't believe in something unless you were raised that way or you get lucky. Thinking about it won't save you.

[Anonymous No.21801927]

>>21800816
because you're masturbating too much and have superiority complex

[Anonymous No.21801928]

>>21801904
I’ve recently watched the movie that won the Oscar and that not only such a movie is not a Netflix or even YouTube original but actually won an academy award is proves what you said.

[Anonymous No.21801960]

Realness can only come from God

[Anonymous No.21802018]

>>21801912
It's comments on society of the spectacle it self, not the previous book.

[Anonymous No.21802032]

>>21800941
Why does he wear that shit on his head that looks like he's just had a brain transplant?

[Anonymous No.21802065]

>>21800875
Probably not related but one time I was like three and I remember watching a movie about a kid who befriends a dinosaur or an alien or something, but in the end the new friend has to go away. They were saying goodbye to each other at the end and it was sad, and I started like full-on bawling. I was with my grandparents and they asked what was wrong and all I could say was "the movie" and they thought I was just being shitty because the movie was over.

Actually, there's a passage in Camp of the Saints that kinda addresses the feeling you're describing. The last remains of the French army are surrounded by military sent by a new immigrant-led government. As they prepare to be bombed into oblivion, they begin singing one of their military songs. The immigrants and teenage activists surrounding them begin mocking the song with comical lyrics, under the impression they must be, in the soldier's eyes, committing a highly offensive sacrilege of their most treasured ritual. But it doesn't actually affect them, because soldiers think their rituals are just as absurd as everyone else does, they chose to die singing that song because they thought it would be a funny thing to do. The emphasis that the military puts on the unflinching precision of their absurd rituals is basically a big inside joke that serves to enrich espirit d'corps. If anyone had ever been serious about it, the traditions would not have survived. In my experience, this is accurate. There are plenty of actual LT. Scheisskopfs in the military but they receive very little respect.

I think the Happy Birthday song and the emphasis put on birthdays in general is the same basic idea. An inside joke with no one on the outside.

[Anonymous No.21802248]

>>21800816
You're in a permanent state of semi-derealisation because of your chronic interest use, as such you've stopped 'living' so nothing you do feels real.

[Anonymous No.21802834]

wow, another pretentious thread. you niggas aren't special snowflakes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derealization

[Anonymous No.21802884]

>>21802834
You absolute retard, kek, they are saying in effect that nothing feels real because what’s being done is performative, for the sake of being shared on the internet for interaction and reaction, and that it is not being done out of proper sentimentality, the sort that is supposed to come with certain events. Birthdays, for example. It’s not a neurological disorder. The feeling isn’t restricted to one person. It is instead a direct result of having an entire society and generation live terminally online.

[Anonymous No.21802940]

>>21802032
Room humidity would radically increase and bystanders would start to drown in his sweat if he took it off.

[Anonymous No.21802950]

>>21800816
genuine? this world is not even real anon


"Will not life be a dream? Some people, called to wake up from a pleasant dream, are displeased. Others, freed by the awakening from a sad dream, rejoice. Both believed in the reality of the dream when they were dreaming. Upon awakening they said that it was only a vain dream. This also happens at the great awakening, the death, after which it is said that life has been nothing but a long dream. But among the living only few understand this. Almost everyone believes they are really awake. Indeed, some believe they are Kings, others servants. We all dream, you and me. I, who am telling you that you dream, dream my own dream."
(Zhuangzi)

[Anonymous No.21803024]

everyone observes themselves now. the internet has sublimated this feeling that you can be captured exhibiting your earnest vulnerable self and it be on public record

[Anonymous No.21803084]

>>21800839
How is living a traditional tribal lifestyle genuine misery? People in Papua New Guinea wear tribal outfits to their parliament, they obviously don't mind living that lifestyle. True misery is performing backbreaking agricultural labor to make a small minority of people rich, I.E. what civilization has been like for 90% of people.

[Anonymous No.21803967]

I also think the internet has a lot to do with it, but moreso because it enables an extremely fast style of communication between a massive amount of people all at once. Due to the efficiency and addictive nature of this communication, there is much more surface level chatter and a lot less deep reflection. This causes culture to become reflexive, basically just a long-running commentary that loops back onto itself.

This has, I suppose, always been the case to some degree, but the speed at which it moves in our era is completely unprecedented, along with the fact that smartphones have become basically prostheses through which we process and share our experiences. Just think about how restaurants and art galleries strive to be 'instagrammable'--it's not about the experience itself, but the representation of the experience, and commentary on that representation.

>>21802065 expressed the sentiment that traditions are silly little cultural or institutional habits that we all know to be silly, but we do them anyway because it's just what we do, and because we all know they're silly and not terribly serious, we go along with it and perpetuate them. It's just like when you start using some dumb new zoomer slang and unwittingly incorporate it into your vocabulary. I suppose you could say this is the evolutionary advantage of memes. In any case, I wonder if an information economy obsessed with commentary but which is also highly competitive is simply more likely to dissolve or subvert the way we experience the world, causing us to be more reactionary or reflexive toward our experiences.

Zizek talks in Sublime Object about how belief does not function as a rational choice which we intellectualize and then act on, but instead arises out of the practice of that belief, or acting as though the belief were already true. Perhaps there's something to the idea that it feels extremely difficult to engage in life in this way while living in a world where all things are subjected to an immense, probing, high-speed commentary that makes it difficult to know what to believe in. Irony becomes a convenient mask.

So I think this type of communication tends toward a cultural nihilism that's difficult to contend with. I even think it's why we are seeing so many multiverse-type movies and shows now. EEAAO winning best picture shows these ideas resonate with people. There's even a line in the movie about how the worst version of Evelyn feels somehow like the thread has been lost somewhere along the line, and wishes she knew how she could get back to a reality that made more sense. Where did it all go so wrong?

[Anonymous No.21803979]

>>21800816
the world stopped being real after 9/11
9/11 was an occult ritual to transport living souls from the original real world to the one we're currently living in

[Anonymous No.21804006]

>>21800816
What is genuine? It's both loving and selfish. Loving in the way a kiss is, selfish that the kiss has chosen you to have and only you. To not be genuine, not loving or selfish, begets that kiss being other than yours. It is not your kiss but everyone's kiss. The kiss chooses whomever with no love behind it. Your self is neglected.

Now, you can buy genuine for $4.99. Manufactured with a selfie stick and a phone cam. Travel to beautiful virtual places with a helmet in your living room. Ads or recommendations from issues you are talking about or places you been.

Genuine is a commodity traded by the marketing department for LinkedIn ad revenue. A tech startup trying to create you AI friend.

[Anonymous No.21804013]

>>21800845
I heard the opening jingle in my mind when I saw that

[Anonymous No.21804016]

>>21804013
Ah no what the fuck I heard the windows 95 one. That's my favorite. Genius work.

[Anonymous No.21804037]

>>21802065
>reading /pol/tard lit
You deserve to be miserable.

[Anonymous No.21804055]

>>21800839
I'm pretty sure the most genuine misery is unironically experienced by neurotic ESL 4channers masking autism IRL every day and struggling with masturbatory urges across myriad divergent disgusting fetishes every night.
This is why they age 1.5x faster and look like drug users and alcoholics, with or without the actual use of addictive drugs

[Anonymous No.21804061]

>>21804037
Not him, but I know for a fact you will stay miserable thanks to hordes of zoomers (like yours truly) shitting up threads you like
Get fucked retard on god, gonna go read some mishima before bed

[Anonymous No.21804071]

>>21800816
because everything's about epically pwning other team now

[Anonymous No.21804157]

low IQ posts ITT

[Anonymous No.21804324]

>>21804055

[Anonymous No.21804333]

>>21800909
>Words are little vehicles of will and reflection, loaded with the weight of history
Not for us younger generations. The context for this has been obliterated and words have been twisted into something ugly and evil. The fastest cure is to vomit all that out and empty our minds.
>>21800909
>You scroll through a feed of images, and your optic nerve crackles and the dopamine pulses, but at the end of it you feel like nothing more than a nervous membrane spread across the glassy screen.
Make your own images. Take a walk. Touch grass.
>But you sit in a quite room with a blank page and write 'I hate my phone' and you've made a little inky dwelling for yourself, an anchor point, that focuses your being and your feelings into objective shape as the same time as it connects you to a shared language of feelings and to a shared history of technology and to an ongoing history of the desire to bring the world closer to how it should be.
This is exactly what genuineness isn't. If you want to be genuine you have to B.E. entirely yourself. Any time you're engaging with other people, even abstractly through culture or historical context, some aspect of that individuality is lost. You think people like Joyce were reacting to how much they hate phone screens?