also i can't help but say "look. there's much worse things for the fucking yuppy kids to do than make art. they could go into real estate, or military advancements. every lucky baby ducky making art about how fucked the world is is a tiny victory. they should do more to make room for the rest of us, but they literally have so much privilege they don't know how. don't make hating them your top priority in this global system of violence"
this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2025
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We were all really jazzed about that healthcare CEO getting killed, and then when they arrested Luigi my coworker was like, "He was quite privileged, you know," like we aren't allowed to like the guy anymore.
Why would we like him less? Being privileged and throwing that away means he had more to lose and allegedly did it anyway.
They see it as hypocrisy to change your mind like that. No growth allowed I guess. We need more privileged people to realize their mistakes and use their extra power to fix it. People on the inside also know more about how to fix things in my opinion.
Crabs in a bucket mentality is why utopia will never be achieved.
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Yes, this. Had someone get on me about this once and said it was hypocritical and conveniently selective. The reality though is that that behavior is antithetical to organizing. It imposes pointless rules that potentially push people away from the collective that we need. People don’t get a choice of the environment they are born into.
The reality though is that that behavior is antithetical to organize
That's the point. It's meant to be conversation stopping. If he were poor, it's: he was envious of those who were successful.
If he's rich: somehow they try to make it hypocritical
Because they don't want the actual topic being discussed. That's the point of the ad hominem, they attack the messenger so they don't have to engage with the topic.
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don't make hating them your top priority
So much this. I grew up fairly less affluent than most. I was once accused of being secretly rich because “no one would dress that poor on purpose”. And I’ve had a few less than stellar altercations with kids from rich families. Suffice it to say, I resented the fuck out of people with money/privilege; I still do. It’s a toxic mindset, and it drags you down and through the mud with no benefit. That old adage of “comparison is the thief of joy” really is true. Don’t let anyone steal your joy; especially yourself.
they literally have so much privilege they don’t know how
I'll point you to Sam Reich, the quintessential liberal rich kid, who has been working overtime to platform dozens of shit kicker comedians and artists via Dropout.tv
I wouldn't say they don't know how. I'd say they try and most fail but a few don't. And we're all richer for the effort.
His dad’s one of the only mainstream democrats with consistently good takes (excluding previous support of Israel, but he’s at least stopped supporting them now), though. Not to take anything away from Sam Reich, but Robert Reich is literally a thought leader (worked in several presidential administrations including as secretary of labor under Clinton and was a professor for decades) in how to redistribute wealth. Sam could still have just been a shitty rich kid, and I’m glad he wasn’t (dropout is incredible), but he did have a much less awful example than most rich kids do.
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Yeah. From another angle, can't blame the kids. It's what most of us would do. If you have a child that you love, you want the world for them. Doesn't matter your own conditions as long as you give them the best. You don't want unbiased equality, you want them to be the priority. You make compromises and you make sacrifices because you must, for their sake. But you want to give them more and if you have the means, you will give them more, even if it makes you hypocritical.
I defy the system by making art anyway.
Never let them take it from you.
I try to sneak making music into the little time I have on weekends no matter how tired I am. Sometimes the feeling of just not doing it is strong, but I push through with it.
I have long thought that a UBI would generate a new renaissance.
In the early 90's, myself and every single computing geek I knew thought the Internet would usher in a Renaissance of intellect.
It was humbling to be so sure and so wrong. While I hope the same as you do, I am not so sure of anything anymore.
You weren't wrong across the board though. I know it's hard to focus on the positives these days, and we are constantly bombarded with depressing and inane content, but we can't lose sight of them.
It's hard to overstate how much the internet has made scientific research and collaboration easier for instance. The sheer amount of research being done has exploded, and it's far from being all slop. Publishers try their best to paywall the articles but they're still available nonetheless.
And what about all the art that is shared online by people who would never, in a million years, have been able to show their creations to the world before the internet. Not to mention the people who don't share it but can make it because of freely available information.
I know it's not as idyllic as you probably foresaw it (yeah, understatement of the century, I know), but it did happen, even though unfortunately it also led to a gigantic pile of shit. Both can be true simultaneously.
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Not me, I'm not good at art. I actually just really like building stuff. I guess I'm lucky that gets me paid well.
I think you can argue that building things is an art in itself.
My art tends to catch on fire when powered on instead of whatever I wanted it to do.
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It puts the "create" in "creative"
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If you didn't have to worry about paying the bills, you would have more freedom to spend a little more money or time on things that you are building. To me that crosses into the art category. There's plenty of architecture, furniture or cars that I call art just because those people had more funding and time.
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The correct terminology is people want to be able to express themselves and explore the world without being judged. Finding a purpose in what they want to do in and with their life. After all, no one was chosen to be born.
If Republicans actually gave a shit about small businesses, they would pass Medicare for All yesterday. Healthcare being tied to employment (with orgs that offer health insurance as part of compensation) is one of the biggest barriers to entrepreneurship in the United States.
Lack of healthcare is one of the biggest reasons I’ve never gone freelance for my programming work.
I'm a one person LLC. Health insurance is my biggest expense outside of my house payment. If you extrapolate over the last three years, those are the only two things that I've put more money in than retirement.
Seriously. Think of how many people would do something amazing if they could risk a gap in their employment without losing healthcare.
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An important parallel to this, especially for those of us who grew up in the US, is to remember that your hobbies and the things you build can be for your own enrichment. They do not need to be efficient or profitable. The effect of the process on your psyche is far more important than the new inanimate object you possess at the end. But that's not how our capitalist worker bee culture taught me to see it.
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I think what this alludes to is the reality that the time and resources to self-actualize are still largely the domain of the owner class.
And many to most still seem to just chase a bigger hoard rather than do that.
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I don't know if it's art or just creation. Like, if I had infinite money I'd spend time on leatherworking and making little machines/programs. Both a form of creation.
Have I shown you my assorted lengths of wire?
It is creation. Humans have a knack for creating things using the gifts given from nature, as long as said humans have their basic needs met.
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This was discovered in the US shortly after the COVID-19 lockdown thanks to The Great Resignation when furloughed workers took to hobbies during lockdown and some of them found ones lucrative enough they decided to quit their (often toxic) jobs.
In fact, there's been a strong effort by both principal political parties and the ownership class to memory-hole what happened 2020-2022 in which ordinary people were given enough material support to define for themselves their societal role, rather than having it defined for them by major commercial interests (who want them as cheap labor).
This is also how an unconditional socialized or community-centered system would work. (We might even call them socialism or communism if those were not the worst of all slurs in the United States). People can couch-potato and binge-watch TV for about two weeks before cabin fever sets in and they either start fixing and building. Those of us (like me) who can couch potato for longer than that suffer from mental illness (and in my case, have been diagnosed since my early twenties). I stayed in bed for nine months, often without the capacity to literally lift a finger thanks to my avolition. No one wants to be that lazy.
No, the current system is a grift, a scam to force people to engage in menial labor for super-cheap while they suffer abuse by their superiors, hence the RTO mandates, and how crunching development teams in AAA game development is still a thing.
Yes, I'm bitter, but Trump's autocratic movement may be the last gasp of neoliberalism, and either we're going to see steps towards a new New Deal or we're going to see our Tech-Bro oligarch masters try to fascism all of the US and the reprisal will be even more revolutionary (and more violent).
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"Hey, Moe, can I pay my rent with a picture?"
"Yeah, no. Nice try there, 12-step."
"Oh... Ok..."
My inability to draw definitely isn't related to my mortgage.
Everybody has an inability to draw until they learn how.
Not all art is drawing. Music is a big one. If you don't know how to play music you have electronic music.
If you still want something more plastic, there are forms of graphic art that do not rely on manual drawing abilities. You can do 3d renders for instance. But also several stiles that do not requiere much ability. You can even code a piece of art through a generative algorithm in something like p5.
There's also photography, and video.
Writing, from poetry to full novels.
Art is limitless.
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it's weird, i don't think i've had this urge. i have an urge but i don't know what it is.
I've never considered myself an artistic person, but many years ago I was laid off and had a few months of time to fill, and in a surprise to myself, I started making pixel art animations and absolutely loved it. It fulfilled some sort of latent creative need that I didn't realize was there until I had the time.
I think many of us would be surprised at what parts of our personalities come out when not suppressed by the daily grind.
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Art is just doing something for the pride of it. A carpenter or electrician can be an artist. People express art in countless ways. I think it would be very unlikely you aren't an artist in at least one aspect of your life.
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I'm an artist and rent is due. If I focus on one I end up homeless (again). If I focus on the other I'll want to kill myself because my life would have no more meaning.
Only thing I've been creating lately is chaos...
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