Please stop doing "bits"

please

First of all, I don’t believe I can tell anyone else what to do. And if doing “bits” makes you happy, I don’t event necessarily want this post to stop you.

But ok. Let me make my case. Watch the music video for “Home”:

I was actually shocked when I realized this song came out in 2009. It is clearly trying to seem like a 60s song, in terms of aesthetics and stuff. Why do that? I just don’t get it.

“It kind of just seems like you don’t like aesthetics.”

Not so. Take the phrase “I listen to anything but country.” Do you though? I grew up in rural Michigan so I heard a lot of country music growing up. When I asked people what they listened to, I never heard anyone say “anything but EDM”. (Even though I’m pretty sure that would have been roughly accurate for most people I asked.) It kind of seems like people why say they listen to “anything but country” just want to take the opportunity to signal that they’re city slickers rather than country bumpkins. And because of that, I doubt they ever even had the chance to enjoy a country song. It seems like it would be hard to, when part of your identity is predicated on not liking country.

If you want to try, here’s my nomination of a country song you might enjoy.

Maybe it will do nothing for you. But if that’s the case, I hope it’s just because you genuinely don’t like it, and not because you see yourself as the type of person who doesn’t like country music.

Now, do I think that Kenny Chesney was not trying to put on an aesthetic with this song? It surely can’t be a coincidence that it combines acoustic guitar with nasal twang to make it “sound” country. They were obviously going for a country aesthetic. But unlike “Home”, it doesn’t feel like they spent 10 years in a hyperbolic time chamber coming up with every southern stereotype they could so they blast them at you in such quick succession that at the end you feel like you’re in some kind of nostalgic 70’s southern fugue state.

Let’s look at the lyrics of Home:

Alabama, Arkansas, I do love my Ma and Pa
Not the way that I do love you

Well, holy moly, me oh my, you're the apple of my eye
Girl, I never loved one like you

Man, oh, man, you're my best friend, I scream it to the nothingness
There ain't nothing that I need

Well, hot and heavy pumpkin pie
Chocolate candy, Jesus Christ
There ain't nothing please me more than you

“Jesus Christ” indeed.

Now let’s compare that to Somewhere With You:

If you're going out with someone new
I'm going out with someone too
I won't feel sorry for me, I'm getting drunk
But I'd much rather be somewhere with you

Laughing loud on a carnival ride, yeah
Driving around on a Saturday night
You made fun of me for singing my song
Got a hotel room just to turn you on

It’s totally different. It has an actual story and meaning. There’s something more to it than a bunch of clichés connected for no reason other than to evoke a vibe.

But also, don’t pull your punches

The show “Cyberpunk Edgerunners” can arguably be said to have this quality. The show’s plot is nearly incomprehensible, you get so little time with each character that it’s hard to care about most of them, and a lot of the appeal seems to be that there’s tons of references to the Cyberpunk game (which I haven’t played so it’s all lost on me).

Given that I don’t care about the plot or the characters, what’s left of the show for me to enjoy? Well, there is one thing. The vibe. One of my favorite scenes in the show is the “who’s ready for tomorrow” scene, and it commits the same sin I mentioned in the previous section. It’s just a bunch of vibe-establishing moments in quick succession with no rhyme or reason.

The redeeming quality to me is that it feels original. The premise is that they’re in a dystopian future where all the technology-caused problems in our modern society have gotten even worse. So the main character walks by some presumably-homeless dudes who are mostly naked except for devices that seem to be robotically jerking them off. While it’s true that that’s nothing more than a vibe-establishing device, I don’t really see it as a cliché.

And there’s something else different about it too. It feels like the only way you could make this scene is if you really loved the idea of “the cyberpunk vibe”. John Wick is clearly made by people who love the action movie vibe and went all in on that. Idk. I guess as long as it doesn’t feel fake I don’t have a problem with it.