23 Comments
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Rufio's avatar

Really made me think and feel, no other notes, still thinking 🐬

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Daniel Solow's avatar

So many beautiful women unable to muster a genuine smile.

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Katherine Dee's avatar

Why do you think that is?

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Daniel Solow's avatar

Lot of ways to answer that question.

1. They're not happy

2. They can fake a good smile on Instagram and think that's enough

3. They don't want to get wrinkles

4. They're afraid it will smudge their makeup

5. The spontaneity required for genuine smile requires vulnerability but they're afraid to be vulnerable

6. They're narcissistic

7. They think spontaneity is weakness that will be exploited

8. They have turned "fake it 'till you make it" into a totalizing ideology

9. They see everything in terms of power dynamics

10. They learned a lot about human interaction through social media and are unaware of the gross ways social media distorts reality

11. They see so many beautiful, fake-happy people on social media that some part of them deeply believes that beauty is happiness and they can see that they're beautiful so they never think to ask themselves why they're unhappy

12. They are resentful that they have been forced to make themselves so beautiful

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Rufio's avatar

Who died and made you genuine smile police?

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Katherine Dee's avatar

this comment thread is frying me

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Daniel Solow's avatar

Your self-esteem.

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Rufio's avatar
1hEdited

If it were my self esteem that was dead, then why are you the one belittling women and other people online. I think it is you who is unhappy and projecting this to others you don’t know

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Daniel Solow's avatar

I'm not belittling women, I'm concerned for them.

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Strabo's avatar

"the constant inventory of your privilege, the performance of allyship, the sense that you are always falling short of being good enough. The throughline is that you’re never done. There’s always another way you’ve failed."

Adding to the conversation this quote from (leftist) filmmaker and film critic Fred Camper from his essay Our Flattening Culture (wich I recomend):

"Encouraging everyone to enjoy the validity of their own existence has been a giant, if nowhere near completed, step forward. But steps can step too far, as is the case when our senses of our identities are located less in the facts of our origins, what we have accomplished in life, and what we hope to accomplish in the future, but rather in what we are feeling about ourselves at this very moment. We are encouraged to conceive of ourselves as natural, beautiful, and self-validating, but also not subject to self-questionings, criticisms, or needs to change. Should not celebrating who we are go alongside asking what we can become?"

I feel like the lack of self-reflection Camper talks about is tied to how someone might never feel like they're never good enough, wich I think it's also tied with the desire to not make any decisions wich is visible in some depressed people (and I speak from experience). Reviewing your allyship, checking your priveledge etc... only makes you check some very specific boxes in your life, and while it can lead to some unconfortable truths, you also sorta know what to expect and what you should do.

And therefore you never actually change or grow, you merely update yourself so your life "reflects" your current values, like a robot.

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Katherine Dee's avatar

And therefore you never actually change or grow, you merely update yourself so your life "reflects" your current values, like a robot. <-- absolutely ... which itself is a type of narcissism, as much as I hate that word!

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Matt's avatar

A couple of points:

- Skin lightening products have been common in India for decades. They were all over Hindi TV in the early 00s. This is partly aligned to class identities. If you work in the fields then you are darker and therefore lower class. Very similar to pre-industrial Europe and the status symbol of pale skin. Race comparisons also probably play a role (both North India vs South India as well as Indian vs European)

- The logic of Looksmaxxing is ultimately post human. The same destination as cosmetic surgery, extreme dieting, steroids, etc. The only way out of the flesh is through.

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Katherine Dee's avatar

Yes!

Good point re skin lightening, colorism is another dimension here.

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Patrick Kho's avatar

“endless self-optimization toward nothing, the performance of becoming” 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

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Katherine Dee's avatar

Me as hell btw

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Sleazy E's avatar

This is an excellent piece.

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Katherine Dee's avatar

FINALLY, some approval from you!

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Sheev Callahan's avatar

Is it all downstream of real economic competition, or the medium itself? The internet opens one up to unlimited competition (more so perceived competition, that Instagram model isn't going to rove up to your small town and steal your girlfriend, probably).

The medium, engagement weighted algorithms, incubate infinite competition in terms of what is consumed. The bar is always raising for what is in one's newsfeed, this eventually permeates through one's entire perspective and standards for everything from interior decoration, standard of living, to partnership.

I've seen a trend lately of performative loserdom too. That youtube microgenre where elder millennials lambast their past selves. For every new hypercompetitive niche that eats away the normal, there is an equal community of cope. Ironically, engagement algorithms will likely make this cope performative too. It takes talent to be a real loser, a Chris Chan.

Your average person can't just drop out, like a said being a broad-spectrum loser is too competitive now too. But they won't be able to make a normal "living" either. The only way to "drop out" of the mainstream is to drop into a hyper specific algorithmic niche that one is actually good at. The going gets weird, there is no normal anymore, the new normal is everyone maxxing something, anything, for a crumb of community and recognition. An age of winner takes all for every conceivable concept, thankfully we're discovering that the opportunities in which one can flourish are as endless as the competition itself. Specialization is for ants, though. Every man a jester.

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Katherine Dee's avatar

All great points. I think the loserdom, as you note, is a type of competition too. It is the inverse of optimization.

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Emily Veno's avatar

Pleeease start hosting events here! Love your blog and would love to meet you & fellow readers.

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Katherine Dee's avatar

Hmm... I need a venue and a good excuse!

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