Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/29/new-age-bullshit-generator.html
…
6 Likes
There should be one of these for artists to use when talking about what their art symbolizes.
13 Likes
Now Mitch Horowitz will never run out of woo to promote!
27 Likes
This is just numerology for words. Random compilations will yield something that looks like it has meaning, and those that need that meaning will latch on. It’s the same function that tarot cards have, using images instead of a handful of new-age phrases.
6 Likes
UGG. There is plenty going around right now. Don’t need more!
1 Like
But does it write James Randi ‘obituaries’?
18 Likes
“The immense negative space represents the divine emptiness upon which we seed our transcendental modalities and reengage with the flora that bond us with universal truths.”
“And what does that black dot in the center mean?”
“That? That represents a taco.”
9 Likes
This debasement of language to the point where it is meaningless, so that words do not matter anymore, is of a piece with the Frank Luntz- driven Republican Party of the past 30 years or so. If words don’t matter, then rules don’t matter, then it’s a quick jump to the right to “I’ve got mine, fuck you.”
I’m a linguist by training, and this feels like being a buggy whip manufacturer in the age of automobiles.
7 Likes
can we please not confuse the image of the Buddha, founder of one of the biggest world religions, with new age babble? i know organized religion isn’t for everyone, but buddhism is a valid and helpful belief system for millions of people, and has been for roughly 2000 years.
23 Likes
Came here to say just that as well.
7 Likes
4 Likes
The Manifesto-Matic [patent pending].
3 Likes
There should be one of these for artists
That’s funny, and so true. I was at a glass art conference a while back and some artists were talking about exactly this. They wanted to be able to say “Glass is fun! You can make pretty things! I love blowing glass because… it’s really fun!” instead of yet another flaky “artists statement”.
5 Likes
Except the Tarot is not random. It is composed of archetypal images derived from the collective unconscious.
1 Like
I see your Camper Van Beethovan and raise you a Alex Chilton…
('Cos religion and bullshit and post punk and stuff)
4 Likes
Child. I love it when they call me child. Grasshopper, too.
1 Like
Just needs some stock images of thin white women drying laundry inefficiently by running through wildflowers with their sheets held up in the air.
4 Likes
Sure, but those archetypal images are bearing the same cognitive load as the phrases chosen for the aggregator. They’re not random words. “You may be ruled by bondage without realizing it” can be shuffled together with a number of other stock memetic sayings, and it has the same effect: seeing meaning in random articulation.
Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!
4 Likes
