According to my screen, @SmashMartian’s post is #500.
Unless someone else deletes a post above y’all, then I’ll be 500.
Cool. Gonna edit. Got just the gif…
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Ooo, it’s so sparkly!
This is as good of anyplace to share.
That feeling when I almost just sent my boss and my boss’s boss the this URL.
Deleted before sending. Probability of later experiencing regret for not pressing send in the 48% to 52% range.
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FTFY
Edited to make it on topic
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What @smashmartian said… What is really different from other rock stars? How is promoting her work “attention seeking”? And if people like her music and find comfort and connection in it, is that really so bad?
That is the best .GIF I have seen on here in I don’t know how long. @Mindysan33, time to up your game.
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I go by what shows up on the link:
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So there are two different numbering systems, eh?
Then the link is a permanent number and the little numbering thingie on the side changes if someone deletes a post, yes? Do I have that right?
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Yup. You can use the difference to see how many posts have been deleted. And which topics have been trolley bait!
I am happy to have made peace with the dragon. When I signed up I think I was flagged as a concern trolley for a few weeks, since about half of my posts were deleted. I very nearly bailed, it bothered me so.
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The fireworks really make that gif.
When Ozzy writes a poem about a bomber who just bombed like that week, except the poem is really just about him (again), call me.
I mean, you’re right, there are other people in the public eye who are as awful as her. No question about it. If I had to spend half an hour with either her or Danny Dyer I’d probably rather tear my ulnar artery out with my teeth rather than make a decision. For entirely different reasons.
I just wish she could be a bit less grabastic. There are plenty of people doing that kooky thing without being so manipulative of their demographic. Take for instance that chick out of the Dresden Dolls.
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Axelmania’s runnin’ wild. 
There’s just something about the exaggerated stupidity of pro-wrestling that makes for awesome gifs.
When AFP pisses on a cenotaph, call me back. 
Personally, I can’t stand her music. It’s really not my bag at all. And as far as rock stars go, I reckon she’s pretty mild when it comes to outrageous publicity seeking manipulative behaviour. This is just a criticism of style, though. IMO, she’s not nearly shocking enough but I was a huge Plasmatics fan back in the day. Rock stars these days just seem so fucking polite…
But she does her job well enough to sell plenty of records so someone must be happy to buy them. I just don’t understand the internet hate she attracts. Be interesting to see a demographic breakdown of her haters.
Fair enough. But if the people who buy her records still buy them, they probably don’t feel that way. Manipulation of demographics is what it’s about. Just ask One Direction. Target a demographic, market the fuck out of it.
And it’s really interesting to see how good she is at publicity. I don’t like her music, have never bought anything of hers and never will. Couldn’t even name any of her songs. And yet, here I am, kicking a couple of thoughts around about her. I suppose the best way to thwart her attention-seeking would be to simply ignore it. Perhaps we’re both being trolled here.
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That was a funny story. I seem to remember the Alamo. either way, it’s not really true, just a rock myth. I always loved the fictional conversation that took place:
POLICE OFFICER: Hey! How would you like it if I went to Enger-land and did that on Bucking-Ham Palace?
OZZY: I’d fuckin’ hold it for you, mate.
If Ozzy encouraged a bunch of teenage girls with low self-esteem to go out and piss on the sacred monuments of authority, more power too him. Doubt he did though. A pity that Rock Bitch restricted themselves to themes of sexual politics.
Sure, and to be honest I hate that kind of faux-open ‘I understand and validate you, self-harming child’ trope wherever it appears. Some musicians have carved entire careers out of it. Eddy Vedder comes across the same way sometimes, winds me up too. Self-destructiveness is obviously a legitimate theme to write about but there’s a line the skilled writer can walk in order to explore and express the theme without that sense of pandering to troubled people. Really, marketing to self-harmers for money? to return to the theme of self-harm itself, it’s interesting that my original interlocutor and AFP are presenting it as a positive act (rhetorically at least, in the first instance) in the way that I meant positive. It isn’t - it’s in fact the extreme end of the negative act. To be so overwhelmed by the obstacles or opposition you face that you decide to ally your actions with your antagonists? If you can’t beat them…
As long as we’re being slightly less trolled than the people who go for it, I’m content.
Anyway, I table the motion that the nationalisation of the music recording and distribution to be of paramount importance to the successful foundation of a truly anti-bourgeois republic of workers, internet trollies, and peasants. What? No, no particular reason…
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I think most controversies of “self harm” tend to be rather superficial. What is likely to have longer-lasting implications? Cutting your outer flesh? Or poor diet/nutrition? Or wack voting habits? Or just general impulsiveness?
What many bourgeois gringos don’t understand is that body modification can be a way of trying to get control over one’s life and person. When a kid feels forced into having their time and efforts consumed by some educational institution, so that they can in turn sell themselves to some business institution so that they can accumulate symbols so they are deemed worthy to survive, and do this for the rest of their lives - it is easy to feel that their life is not their own. Deciding to make a real relationship with your body and claim it as yours, and make it unique can be quite powerful. Coincidentally, this often happens around people’s teen years, when they might be ready for some kind of initiation into adulthood. Such events are some of the best uses of body modification techniques.
Obviously, safety and hygiene are concerns, and for good reasons. But when people cluelessly intervene because they assume it’s “not normal” they can easily make the problem worse, further reenforcing the youngster’s feelings of entrapment and lack of agency.
I think that you’re conflating two different things, though I guess many old people or conservatives might lump self-harmers in with body-modders.
I agree that insensitive intervention risks harmful outcomes - however, insensitive positions can be both pro or con.
The same way you “lump” conflators with old people and conservatives? It’s subjective, because there are situational and cultural categories of both “harm” and “modification”, and not much consensus about them. Getting tattoos or piercings can be perceived as less “harmful” to some because such practices have been partly commodified. Whereas practices such as cutting, branding, and scarification can be perceived as “harmful” based upon being defined as non-normative behaviors, regardless of empirical evidence.
Cultures strive to control and regulate their ritual technologies. So an individual might benefit from asking themselves: “Does what I am doing represent my culture? Or that of others?”
Some might argue that any intervention in such personal decisions is insensitive. Are interveners being sensitive to others rights to choose? Or to what they want for such people? Even sacrificing one’s own life for the good of the community is still enshrined as one of the most powerful, positive gestures a person can make. In one culture, a kid might do a back flip into a volcano. In another, they might join the military. It seems to me to be an overwhelmingly culturally relative standard, even (especially?) when those in any given culture assert it’s absolute, universal nature.
wow. Okay.
I have a name you know. And yes, because just ignoring the reason young women hurt themselves is peachy keen - we should just accept the master narrative about teengirls and carry on.
Look, people like to see themselves and their struggles reflected in the culture - it helps them to feel a sense of agency - which can lead to the development of actually agency in the real world. AFP talking about cutting does not cause cutting, young women are doing that anyway and have been. It’s nice to see a reflection of that in the culture.
Just because someone talks about these issues, through art–and by the way, she has never presented herself as anything other than an artist, and when was it the role of an artist to do anything other than to engage with the world around them, and make art that speaks to people–doesn’t mean endorsing. Understanding and describing is not endorsing.
I should point out that any number of old school punk bands often wrote about issues that were considered dangerous in regards to teenagers and often refused to clarify what they meant - Black Flag, Minor Threat, Dead Kennedys, Suburban Lawns, X, the Germs, Sex Pistols, etc. I’m sure lots of people here could add to this list of bands that dealt with weighty issues in their music.
As for the song I posted, it was less about cutting being an act to be encouraged, rather than an act to be understood. Can you think of another song on that theme, that happens to address the reasons why people might do that? And why is that more problematic than some Taylor Swift song that only imagines young women in relation to their love lives (to be fair, I think she’s moved away from that somewhat).
Seriously, have you heard half the music out there aimed at teenaged girls? Although it’s getting better, it’s usually disney-backed, corporate, “I’m an object for men” that gets the most sales and push. How is that better than writing songs that address issues young women might face in the real world - body image, rape, abortion, sexuality, having your family home sold, being bullied, dealing with the possible death of a close friend, cutting, childhood heroes, creating your own sense of agency… As opposed to being conformed into a mindless, consuming, sexpot for the edification of men.
who says that’s what it’s about? How would you know? Stop talking down to young women, please.
I dont’ really care if you like AFP or not. but stop pretending she is somehow worse than the rest of the industry she works in and FFS, please stop using gendered language to denigrate her and her (younger) fans. I mean, “attention whore” is, again straight up gendered talk.
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You’re just jumping at shadows. I was agreeing that from some perspectives there is little differentiation. You read the lumping in into that yourself, though what with your crack about bourgeois gringos, I’m not surprised. Initiatory and ritual practices are intrinsically differentiated from harm by their ritualisation and the cultural context of their practice, rather than any transactional element. They have symbolic attributes which are commonly understood between members of the society. Or should we consider something like pro-ana and ritual fasting as basically the same?
More to the point, if self-tattooing was practised in the same way as self-cutting, it would undoubtedly be identifiable as a form of self harm sometimes. Take Ozzy tattooing smileys onto his knees whilst in a jail cell and depressed.
Regarding intervention, are you saying that we should stand aside from people when they are struggling to cope? As self-harm (as identified as outside of ritual behaviour) is often seen as and used as an indirect way of communicating a request for aid which is too difficult to express directly, I think it would be daft to not at least ask.
Why do you assume this? I merely commented that the process is the same.
Why? What does that signify?
I agree. But I think the problem people struggle with is that with “globalism” can come a lack of shared cultural context. People used to need to actually travel to experience culture shock. But now, so much information is available from diverse times and places, that a person may actually not be a member of the same society as their parents, or workmates. It has less to do with geography than, as you said, cultural context. Factors of cultural imperialism seem to be frequent motivations for deciding to intervene and prescribe to people, and this again serves to coerce actors rather than recognize their agency. If I have an indigenous ritual expert testify in court, versus some state “social service”, the court tends to recognize only those from their own culture and conceptual paradigm. To someone inside that culture, it might be “obvious”. To those inside another culture - even in the same geographical space - this might be “bullying”, “coercion”, or “imperialism”.
I think it’s obvious that anyone who cares should ask! But it would be a self-serving token of phony compassion to not be willing to work with their interpretation of their situation, and instead impose one upon them. Who is to say whether or not they may be “struggling to cope”? Mental/emotional/behavioral help is often framed in terms of normative models, so there is always a very real risk of people using the troubles of an impressionable youngster to “help them” to fit into society as they view it, rather than help them to be themselves and choose their own path.
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