The 00’s: A Decade from Hell - TIME
Molly Lambert said this is “the Lost Generation” of bloggers and for what its worth i very much agree. i’ll be very glad for this decade to be over.
(via nedhepburn)
It is also the most creatively bankrupt decade in this century. There have been a few bright spots here and there, but the last ten years produced no “new movements” in the arts. 2000 was the dawn of America’s mind-boggling obsession with “celebrity” fueled by (or causing) the explosion of “celebrity” magazines, 24 hour “celebrity” channels, and ultimately a never-ending stream of “celebrity”-focused web-sites. These celebrities for the most part have no skills, no talents, nothing to offer society in the way of art, unless publicly conducting a cartoon version of a drama-laced life is considered “art” by anyone.
During this decade, the studios and networks saturated the market with reality shows and fell into a greed encouraged by the low cost of those productions. The public in turn committed themselves to not only watching the endless stream of shit that is “reality”, but to participating as contestants in any version of base and humiliating scenarios to achieve what most of them feel is the zenith of human existence: appearing on Television. At the same time, with our Government’s help, laws that insured independent production were relaxed and mergers of media giants took place destroying much of creative innovation on broadcast TV. Meanwhile, the studios dedicated themselves to filming sequel upon expensive sequel and movie versions of old TV shows while continuously lowering the total amount of films made.
Like I said, there have been a few bright spots, but overall, this decade will go down as the most creatively-depressed decade of the century.
(via tanya77)
Completely agreed, tanya77. American culture as it stands is dead. There is no more production, we are entirely a culture of consumption. We demand instant entertainment at our fingertips and we’re so satiated by it we’ve stopped producing new things. There is nothing new anymore because all we do is consume information and media. There has been little mainstream interaction with our media environment because everything we could possibly want is spoon-fed to us with no work required on our part. Just turn on the tube or look it up on the internet. Production of new and interesting media has stopped. We’re all just consumers of information now. It’s sickening to see the death of creativity. That being said, the internet community itself, with the rise of personal blogs and stuff, has both fostered personal creativity and interaction with media but at the same time made everyone even more narcissistic. The internet, with its ease and customisability to the user, is both a blessing and a curse—because it allows us to create whatever we want, but provides us with no outside impetus to create. And surrounded by all this information, we simply soak it all up like a sponge and produce little back. Culture is dead. Long live culture! I declare the 2000s as the death of culture, and likewise, the freedom from all prior constraints. Death in that way is refreshing. So now I feel more ultimately free and able to produce whatever I want myself. For example, this decade, I’ve written music, short stories, essays, I just started journaling this past week, artworks, etc. And I’m only 18. I promise myself never to stop producing art and creating and experiencing new ways to mold my environment and the world around me. And fuck everyone else, they’re dead, right?
