I've been thinking about the "Disney adults" for at least a decade and a half now, and contrasting this to when I was a Batman fan as a child in the '80's and early '90's. In those days to see an adult in the theatre for one of these movies meant that they were accompanying their children. The mere thought of a boomer or someone from the WWII generation attending these films for personal enjoyment would have seemed freakish, and to dress in earnest as one of the comic book characters borderline insane. Heaven help anybody whose parents did this, they would have been the laughing stock not just among the other kids but of the entire town. Disney and Batman were manufactured for children. What causes one to get stuck there? I grew out of Batman by the time I was twelve years old. I'm sure the implications run deep, we may speculate all we like. Interesting piece as usual, Johan.
Yeah, I think so too. The very notion of an adult watching children's cartoons was somehow perverse to me when I first encountered the idea when I was a kid, in the same way you seem to think about it.
And there's of course a sense in which this reflects the broader infantilization that we've talked about previously -- I think it's basically that adults in this ultra-alienated state that's become more and more aggravated since 2020 never really grow up in many ways, they're tamed and lack agency to a debilitating degree, and retain many attachments to these fetishes or touchstones or symbols of childhood.
At least with propaganda we all shared a common narrative, even if that narrative didn't reflect underlying reality very well. We could all use that framework to relate to one another: all the Disney adults have a common language of films and experiences that could actually lead to genuine connections in the real world. Now? Good luck trying to explain your hyper-specific cinderella Mickey Mouse crossover fanfiction that you had ChatGPT write for you, even to a fellow Disney adult.
Right. At least there used to be coherent narratives. At least the hyperreal used to be tangentially related to reality in the sense that it had to be a logically structured narrative.
Now it doesn't even have to make sense anymore, and it's this bewildering aspect of contemporary propaganda and mass communications slop that I find it really difficult to wrap my head around.
It's like the explicit expression of meaninglessness has become the dominant meta-narrative, and that's something which by definition is incomprehensible. It's like we'd suddenly find ourselves living in non-Euclidian geometry.
"...when we live in a completely [postmodern ]culture, we would no longer know how to say so."
These people are insane. They should be taken out and shot.
I just heard the other day of a girl who was having a difficult time after a recent divorce and as a single mother, but she had found such great support and validation using chatGPT for these intimate conversations.
And there's probably a narrow sense in which these pseudo-contacts are more vivid and enticing than actual, rooted, messy and contradictory human relationships, just like synthetic pharmaceuticals can produce narrow states of consciousness that are effortlessly and superficially more "fun" than everyday life.
"So I’d say [Disneyland] is the most memorable thing about my life and probably why I still love it so much"
This strikes me as a fate worse than death, and I feel sorrow for this person.
My grandparents took me to Disneyland as a kid. I couldn't figure out how to imaginatively engage with it, and felt an immense hollowness while I was there. My grandparents were trying to do something fun for me, and I appreciate them, but none of us could conceive that the point of Disneyland is not engagement, but rather replacement: It is there to replace your native imagination, and make you pay for the privilege.
"The more impoverished and existentially ruinous our world becomes, the more attractive will seem a hyperreal experiential space that can disconnect from the constraints of embodied and tangible realities."
This seems to be the core of it, the same one-two punch that we saw with Covid and the vaccines.
I've been thinking about the "Disney adults" for at least a decade and a half now, and contrasting this to when I was a Batman fan as a child in the '80's and early '90's. In those days to see an adult in the theatre for one of these movies meant that they were accompanying their children. The mere thought of a boomer or someone from the WWII generation attending these films for personal enjoyment would have seemed freakish, and to dress in earnest as one of the comic book characters borderline insane. Heaven help anybody whose parents did this, they would have been the laughing stock not just among the other kids but of the entire town. Disney and Batman were manufactured for children. What causes one to get stuck there? I grew out of Batman by the time I was twelve years old. I'm sure the implications run deep, we may speculate all we like. Interesting piece as usual, Johan.
Yeah, I think so too. The very notion of an adult watching children's cartoons was somehow perverse to me when I first encountered the idea when I was a kid, in the same way you seem to think about it.
And there's of course a sense in which this reflects the broader infantilization that we've talked about previously -- I think it's basically that adults in this ultra-alienated state that's become more and more aggravated since 2020 never really grow up in many ways, they're tamed and lack agency to a debilitating degree, and retain many attachments to these fetishes or touchstones or symbols of childhood.
And thanks for the kind words!
At least with propaganda we all shared a common narrative, even if that narrative didn't reflect underlying reality very well. We could all use that framework to relate to one another: all the Disney adults have a common language of films and experiences that could actually lead to genuine connections in the real world. Now? Good luck trying to explain your hyper-specific cinderella Mickey Mouse crossover fanfiction that you had ChatGPT write for you, even to a fellow Disney adult.
Right. At least there used to be coherent narratives. At least the hyperreal used to be tangentially related to reality in the sense that it had to be a logically structured narrative.
Now it doesn't even have to make sense anymore, and it's this bewildering aspect of contemporary propaganda and mass communications slop that I find it really difficult to wrap my head around.
It's like the explicit expression of meaninglessness has become the dominant meta-narrative, and that's something which by definition is incomprehensible. It's like we'd suddenly find ourselves living in non-Euclidian geometry.
"...when we live in a completely [postmodern ]culture, we would no longer know how to say so."
https://futurism.com/zuckerberg-lonely-friends-create-ai
These people are insane. They should be taken out and shot.
I just heard the other day of a girl who was having a difficult time after a recent divorce and as a single mother, but she had found such great support and validation using chatGPT for these intimate conversations.
And there's probably a narrow sense in which these pseudo-contacts are more vivid and enticing than actual, rooted, messy and contradictory human relationships, just like synthetic pharmaceuticals can produce narrow states of consciousness that are effortlessly and superficially more "fun" than everyday life.
and one more https://jonrappoport.substack.com/p/podcast-ai-up-close-and-personal-very-close-and-personal?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=806546&post_id=164549617&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=12qzc&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
and more https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/chicago-sun-admits-summer-book-guide-included-fake-ai-generated-titles-rcna208325
I think we would be surprised how many people think an AI *companion* is not a bad thing at all.
"So I’d say [Disneyland] is the most memorable thing about my life and probably why I still love it so much"
This strikes me as a fate worse than death, and I feel sorrow for this person.
My grandparents took me to Disneyland as a kid. I couldn't figure out how to imaginatively engage with it, and felt an immense hollowness while I was there. My grandparents were trying to do something fun for me, and I appreciate them, but none of us could conceive that the point of Disneyland is not engagement, but rather replacement: It is there to replace your native imagination, and make you pay for the privilege.
"The more impoverished and existentially ruinous our world becomes, the more attractive will seem a hyperreal experiential space that can disconnect from the constraints of embodied and tangible realities."
This seems to be the core of it, the same one-two punch that we saw with Covid and the vaccines.