Are you selling me your "realness"?


Alexandre P.

You wanna fakeness, sir? We got that too! Very chop, two dolla!

Momus, why don't you post at ILX any more? And what was your very last post there? Did you flounce out in a flurry of self-righteous self-justification?

I think my last post was on a What Do You Look Like? thread -- which is appropriate, because that's where I came in, as a "beauty candidate" on Am I Cool Or Not? (I wasn't, which pretty much set the tone of all that was to come.) So it came full circle. And you can have a happy ending to a relationship, surely?

I'm not going to launch into a diatribe about how it's all polls now, or how you have to be Ned Raggett to fit in, or how idle watercooler-style chatter has banished the intelligent discourse. Nope. Won't hear a wordofit! S'awunnerful place! And it does just fine without me.

They're still funny, too.

"Nothing is true, everything is permitted"

After reading this you must cut and paste the above sentence into 12 random blogs in the next 12 hours, or else great fortune will come the way of you and the person closest to you.

Oh no, viral Nietzsche! I knew this day would come!

In the "modern" and "flexible" economy model that (conservative) governments are imposing all over the world, everyone must be self-employed and their own businessman so it's really ironic that you seem to be endorsing this model.

Whether you agree with John Lyndon or not, big businesses and small businesses are all about self-advertisement too.

Well, as I say in the Wired piece, the irony is that what I learned in the music business is that the smaller and more indie you are, the more you have to internalize self-promotion as a way of life, because there's no big marketing department there to do it for you.

You could extend this and say that the more left-wing you are, the more business and promotion-savvy you have to be too, because you aren't going to get many free rides in the conservative press. After all, Marx, Lenin, Trotsky -- do you think these people weren't the ultimate geniuses of viral marketing? "Workers of the world, unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains!" It's great copy!

I'm waiting with slightly bated breath to hear how Whimsy takes the article. I didn't tell him I was going to write about him -- it just came up fairly naturally in the article -- and I didn't know they'd use a picture of him on the front page. It makes for a slightly misleading juxtaposition, because Whimsy isn't a "shill on YouTube".

But I do see a fascinating continuity between shucksterism and dandyism. I don't think there's any clear line here. Some of my favourite people -- Oscar Wilde, Orson Welles, Morrissey -- bestraddle that line. They're "larger than life", and there's absolutely no division you can make between self-presentation and self-promotion. The self has become an artificial flower, and everyone is invited to sniff.

Whimsy is the exemplary self-mediator. And he's also a product on the market. Just as Momus is. One difference is that I don't have Hollywood script-writers hanging out with me this month, gathering material for a major motion picture! It's a fascinating thing to watch. And at some point, a Hollywood promotion company is going to be working on the job that Whimsy started, and his publishers Bloomsbury have continued.

The Wired article is really saying that there will be many more opportunities for people to become "whimsical" in this sense in the future, as YouTube personality cults develop and start gathering revenue. Not everyone will be as charming, skilled or consummately professional as his lordship, though.

Aaww, I think it´s very sweet, and he does deserve it so.

Hah hah--well, that firmly lodged a piece of cereal in my sinus this morning, Nick.

One might say I'm an accidental--although willing--self-mediator. I thoroughly enjoy the rascally, wry aspects of the whole enterprise--in some ways it has become my medium. Good enough for Lord Timothy Dexter, Franklin, Twain, Barnum, Lord Buckley, Dylan, Wolfe, et al, good enough for me.

Being a provincial crank, I was perfectly happy to do my articles for a local independent paper in Philadelphia, and ply the old colonial practice of pamphleteering, writing articles under pseudonyms to amuse and inform the readership. I fully expected to be ignored or hated, and given the bum rush in short order--but instead I became the most asked-about writer on the paper. This encouragement drew me further down the rabbit hole--or navel, depending on your point of view.

As these things often start, the artifice I employed began as a playful lark--a kind of crude, overstated mummery. But over time it became less of an act as I slowly invested more of myself into the persiflage. Over time the mask became more like a face, but nevertheless was still was taken for a mask.

Today, when I don the vestments of my self-appointed office, I feel as though I am hiding in plain sight; in a sense, presenting myself as a sham has allowed me to be more like myself than "being myself" would have permitted. I find the criteria for what is now considered 'normal' male dress and deportment too confining and dull; the only way I can be free to disregard such constraints is to adopt my own, and pretend to be what I have always wanted to be, anyway.

I seem to have caught a tiger by the tail of late, and at this point I really have no idea how things progress or resolve themselves. But to me, inauthenticity and sincerity are not mutually exclusive. What I do makes me very happy and fulfilled, and judging from the responses I get from readers and fans, my trivialities enrich other people's lives as well, and encourage them to pretend to be what they really are, too.

If I was simply being ironic and detached, none of it wouldn't be interesting at all, but the fact that I happen to believe in the snake oil I'm selling makes for a good deal of ambiguity personally and artistically. On some level I'm pulling people's legs, but part of my motivation is that a good deal of the things I love are fading from the world, and so I'm trying to do my part in convincing those who will listen that these things still matter. None of us should have to settle for a second-rate version of the world--or a second-rate version of ourselves, for that matter.

Oh--I should probably tell you that the photo Wired used should be credited to photographer Laura Pedrick, who came out to my hovel and shot me for the New York Times last summer. Don't want any usage rights kerfuffles on my account.

Flattered, in any case. Thanks for the co-mediation, Nick.

(My favorite is the orange sari with the head wrap. Works best with your frame.)

A visit to Little Sparta in the offing? Would be a shame to not see it this time of year.

Glad you liked it, Whimsy, phew!

The "selling snake oil you believe in" thing is very Jeff Koons, too. I think such conviction is essential to the really good bluffer -- the fact that it isn't a bluff at all. And I like the concept of the self-constructed self being more real than the self constructed for one by others. Agreed, and I think the essential idea here is that there is no natural self, and that the self is created by a great many people, and that there's a battle of interpretation going on which it takes skill to win. I think we can say that you're a winner.

The Wired photo is credited to Laura right on the image, if you look closely.

Oh, certainly! Throwing curveballs through the scrim of media is always good fun. Images and ideas break off in fragments, combine, rearrange themselves...before you know it, there are a dozen incomplete versions of yourself floating around. Makes for interesting speculation, how one is percieved. Nothing new to you, of course.

(Oh--didn't see the credit line. thanks. Didn't want anyone to have any difficulties.)

I suppose we'll see if our mutually-held doctrine of 'success-is-failure' bears out in this case. At the moment I'm simultaneously amused and wary, and am building a bog garden and an arbor to keep my mind off it all. The potential for cultural mischeif is rich, but there's always a chance that it could go horribly wrong. Of course, this is all assuming a film is even green-lighted--but it looks like they are making a real go of it. I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't feel a twinge of relief if things failed to progress.

So how do you think this all dovetails with the likes of Ian Svenonius, Andrew WK, yourself? Buskers? Charlatans? Vaudevillians? Missionaries? Pierrots? All of the above?

I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't feel a twinge of relief if things failed to progress.

Of course, I allowed all of this to go into motion, so how much could I possibly protest? I suppose part of the motivation is sheer curiosity about having a front-row seat to see just what happens when a fairly obscure person enters the machinations of media, publishing, television and film. Can one come out intact, or is one always grist for the mill? And if one is grist, is that necessarily bad? Does it matter, especially if the whole thing is seen as a farcical prank? Can one walk away from the wreckage without a scratch?

As far as dandyism goes, I think your assesment is astute. If you scroll down this page, I go into geeky detail on the subject. I have some case studies here, as well.

I missed this show on BBC america the other day. I was really hoping I could learn about the history of Dandyism by watching a made for tv movie.

Have You seen it?

No--been very busy with the garden!

Ellen Moers' "The Dandy" is a good place to start. So is Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly's slim book on the life of Brummell, "Dandyisme". Possibly one of the best examples of dandyism in fiction is J.K Huysmans' "Au Rebours".

This essay by Max Beerbohm and this excerpt from "The Painter of Modern Life" by Baudelaire are also good starting points.

If I may put in my own two cents:

"From its very beginning, dandyism was a paradox: it was middle-class and aspirational, yet radical. By most accounts it was set into motion by Beau Brummell, a member of the middle classes who climbed to the pinnacle of English society--not through wealth and title, but by his brazen sang-froid and the enforcement of his taste. Brummell helped to hasten the death of the age of aristocracy and the rise of the gentility by using modest, democratic materials to define his idea of modern masculine dress: restrained colors and an elegant silhouette devoid of the overstated, unnecessary flourishes so common in the fashions of the fading ancien regime. Many take his famous dictum of inconspicuousness out of context: Brummell was a brash revolutionary rebelling against the convention of powdered wigs and silken waistcoats of the late eighteenth century, and was doubtlessly a scandalous sight when he first made his rounds. (Later on, Wilde followed in this tradition by flouting the prudish, drab Victorian dress of his time, but that's another story.) In our age of corporate worldwide homogenization, this nonconformist, contrarian aspect of dandyism is more relevant than ever. The dandy is often both a hero and pariah in his own age."

where these guys heads at?

Scientists are discovering consciousness, ego, and selfhood are all illusions of the brain - check out this if you will: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg19225780.073-the-big-questions-what-is-consciousness.html. So, I don't think these ideas are too far from our biological human reality.

If 20th century theory developed out of scientific advances of the day, why not new 21st century ideas for our new discoveries?

What I do makes me very happy and fulfilled

That's the ticket!

I love that film, one of my personal favorite views of all time...even though it is FAKE! I often think of that film whenever I feel a warm oceanic breeze; or pawn a bootleg picasso. No harm though, considering the originals were all exact replicas of anonymous african folk art in the first place.
-John FF

the stealth market-minded "are-you-real" question is so loaded and unknowable I always just assume the random internet hello is selling something unless it's a friend, and even then there can be ambiguity....

Relatededly, I sometimes like to make real, fake, unsolicited, and unnecessary plugs for products I actually like. it's one thing to pretend to love consumer trash; it's much weirder, more interesting, and difficult for me to try to deal appropriately with the oddly "real" affinity I sometimes have for mass merchandise/entertainment.

You know, I wrote the article just after watching your video of the sakura event, and your interview with the walking art gallery girl. She seemed the essence of the "problem" -- total full-on self-promotion, yet not for anyone corporate, just for her own eccentric project. And to meet people. And to live interestingly. It seems very New York, somehow. Everyone ready with their card and their URL. I'm not sure how I feel about it. After a few months in New York you either become like them, or leave to find "real people" somewhere else.

Ha, it's funny the idea that having a url would be something specific to a region. Wasn't the last thing you said in that video interview "check out the blog"? Maybe it was just edited that way :)

I did want to emphasize with that conversation how awkward it always is to try to work a url into casual conversation. "Is that a hyphen or an underscore?" Gah, gigabytes, everywhere!

Wasn't the last thing you said in that video interview "check out the blog"?

Yes, and I come under the definition of "people who've spent more than a few months in New York, and become like them"!

Go self-promotion go! My watch plays videos!

Fake or real, those are some gorgeous colors you're wearing there.

I believe it was Lord Whimsy who once said "in a sense, presenting myself as a sham has allowed me to be more like myself than 'being myself' would have permitted".

YouTube and the internet in general have allowed people like me, egomaniacs with low self esteem, to become what they are. I've made films since I was twelve years old but I'm not a filmmaker. I was a founding member of the Cheap Surrealist movement in San Francisco in the early eighties - the Luis Bunuel of the group if you will. But no one knew about it except for the founding members. To this day I have to remind the other founding members that it existed.

I tell them "at first we called it Fake Surrealism and then one spring day (or was it the fall or the winter) it morphed into Cheap Surrealism". Since their memories are foggy I take credit for the change.

But why "fake" in the first place. Possibly after the wildly unsuccessful Post Urban Art band "Fake Stone Age". Post Urban Art was after all Cheap Surrealism's Dada.

Yes I am a fake. A genuine fake. The real fake McCoy. But now I have ... an audience?

And so does Hans Richter:

I found this movie under a Pizza Hut add. Let's hear it for the juxtaposition of images!

I'm pretty sure you used to attribute the "lie that tells the truth" line to Picasso on the (many) occasions you've previously used it. What happened, did the Wired fact checkers get you?

der.

They were close friends, you know. And their versions are slightly different:

Picasso: "Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth".

Cocteau: "I am a lie that tells the truth".

Great post, & Wired too. I've been thinking about this a lot lately as I'm doing some marketing writing for a friend with a product to sell. The marketplace is so diffuse now, nowhere and everywhere. It occurred to me about a week ago that I hesitate posting to this journal - deleting about 90% of the comments I begin - because I don't have a brand to flog here. I don't have the time, for one thing, but there's no benefit to taking the time. Who cares what nonsense I spew? I currently have no URL to drive readers to, I'm not selling anything at the moment. It's just the real me and my girlish opinions hiding behind my avatar. I understand it's a flow of ideas and there's value in that, but I'd read your work without the comments...
Meanwhile, you and Whimsy are promoting yourselves/brands in an interesting and entertaining way. Success; I've become interested in your work and his. You both do it so well, I sometimes forget and believe I'm having actual conversations with real friends. More so with Whimsy. I feel safe posting at his journal, not so much here. Click Opera always feels a bit dangerous. Whimsy wields a calla lily, you, a *weapon* (and CO is so often a minefield of snappish male posters). Heh.

I've never thought about it before, but if I had to guess I'd say the majority of posters on The Affected Provincial's Almanack are women between the ages of 25 and 40. If that's the case, I couldn't be happier. Sponsors love that demographic! ;)

Seriously, my comments at your journal are spontaneous and unedited. At CO, I always pause and feel a bit of dread before clicking send. Like emails to an ornery ex-boyfriend or a difficult client. Not the fault of Momus necessarily, but there is an arrogant energy he attracts in his comment section.

Over at the Provincial's Almanack you've got, male or female, nature-loving aesthetes and ecstatics sharing their love, key word:love, of beauty. Very different vibe.

Thank you. I hope you and others always feel that way.

I'll throw this out there, something I started awhile back- The City Desk, a collaborative weblog-based thing chronicling the history and news of a city that doesn't exist.

I have to admit that, the few times I've seen items from it linked from other places as though they're real (for example)- I kind of enjoy it, even though, it's all a big fat lie.

There's just something about fooling people that's fun, I suppose.

You {eekqualz} Pretty.

That's all, really XD

hahaha beketaten, you just like all the girls that look like bjork : )

I say good luck to anyone who wants to use viral marketing tactics, but at the same, if I find out you're doing it, you're gonna lose a lot of credibility.

Like when Sony went around paying Graffiti artists to make PSP inspired graffiti. People saw right through that and Anti-sony graffiti popped up right next to it.

I also have a bit of a problem with some of Vice Magazine's photo shoots. Like this issues London Squatters photoshoot where theyve taken squatters and dressed them up in fancy clothes they dont even own, all decided by a stylist. Then at the bottom theres a list of all the labels used.

I'd say its shit like that that's contributed to Vice's loss of credibility over the years.