80sNot80s

80s Not 80s

One strange aftereffect of Cultural Ground Zero has been the rise of the retrowave musical aesthetic. Like the PulpRev in fiction, this movement doesn't so much embrace a genre as an earlier state of the art - in retrowave's case, the 1980s. To a member of Generation Y, the phenomenon…
Fall of Bablyon

The Fall

Spend any length of time in dissident circles online, and you'll soon be introduced to the concept of the Collapse. Though formulated by philosophers of history a hundred years ago, the idea that civilization now faces a great decline is popular with ex-Trump supporters discouraged by the MAGA program's failure.…
Fr Chad

Fr. Chad Is Back

Yesterday's post on the decline of Liberal Catholicism gave rise to a lot of comment. Hats off to my Twitter mutual @catholic_dan7 for posting this follow up from Fr. Chad Ripperger. Watch the celebrated chad exorcist here: A wealth of great stuff here Some highlights: Modernism has stooped to a…
Life Teen Mass

Hopeful LibCath Listicle

Way back in the mists of time before the Trump years, #GamerGate, and even the Sad Puppies days, Fr. Dwight Longenecker's blog was on my regular rotation. Fr. D. is a former Anglican priest, Catholic convert, and indie author whose balanced commentary proved quite helpful in the early days of…
modern_art

Not for Beauty

It's all too evident that Millennials and Zoomers suffer from general aesthetic destitution. Unlike past generations, many of them seem unable to engage with artistic works on anything but a subjective level. A Big Brand X viewer from Generation Y or earlier would say: "I want to be devoted like…
Batman Moonwalker

Speculation on VHS

Loyal readers will recall the summer of 2021, when we delved into the seedy world of video game speculation. For newcomers, what was alleged to have happened was unscrupulous grading services were colluding with auction houses to drive up prices on vintage video games. So you had carts with millions…
Anime by Decade

Anime Ground Zero

You knew it was coming sooner or later. In another blow to the meme of Based Japan, I regret to inform you that anime did not escape the blast wave of Cultural Ground Zero. H/t to author JD Cowan, whose post last week inspired this one. To give an example…
Christmas Toy

A Gen Y Christmas

A reader writes, Brian, My wife and I re-watched a handful of Christmas movies while wrapping presents for my side of the family last night. One section of our DVD library is just Christmas movies, most of which are now decades old, which I realize now is almost a physical…
A.I. Art 4

Anti-A.I. Astroturf

As I mentioned last time, the upsurge in anti-A.I. art sentiment doesn't seem entirely organic to me. People had been talking about art algorithms like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion for a while. My friend, author David V. Stewart, even did some videos on A.I. book cover design. Sure, these algos…
zombies

Sociological Zombies

If you were around in the mid-to-late-aughts, you were aware of the zombie apocalypse fad. Much like the shambling undead hordes it depicted, the trend was inescapable. As with most pop phenomena, a lot of ink has been spilled on why the zombie horror subgenre became so dominant when it…