Summary of Dale Beran's It Came from Something Awful

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 I went to an anime convention in Baltimore thirteen years ago. I didn’t like anime, and I felt too old for the event, but I went out of curiosity. What I saw was the same kids in costumes.
#2 4chan. org, the website that Poole founded, was used to trade pictures of anime girls with his friends. It was eventually used by millions of people to trade pictures of anime girls with their friends.
#3 4chan, a post-cultural garbage heap, transformed into the post-cultural garbage heap upon which the events of our age stood. It was a place to post content and talk to people online, but it also became the birthplace of the alt-right.
#4 Media reports, Trump, fake news, late-night TV, and talking head pundits on 24-hour cable news all tangled up into the heap of social media are the source of confusion. The book attempts to explain how this all came to be.

Sujets

• Political opportunity

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669376316
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Dale Beran's It Came from Something Awful
Contents Insights from Chapter 1
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I went to an anime convention in Baltimore thirteen years ago. I didn’t like anime, and I felt too old for the event, but I went out of curiosity. What I saw was the same kids in costumes.

#2

4chan. org, the website that Poole founded, was used to trade pictures of anime girls with his friends. It was eventually used by millions of people to trade pictures of anime girls with their friends.

#3

4chan, a post-cultural garbage heap, transformed into the post-cultural garbage heap upon which the events of our age stood. It was a place to post content and talk to people online, but it also became the birthplace of the alt-right.

#4

Media reports, Trump, fake news, late-night TV, and talking head pundits on 24-hour cable news all tangled up into the heap of social media are the source of confusion. The book attempts to explain how this all came to be.

#5

From the 70s to the 90s, countercultures would emerge to combat the forces of materialism and marketing, only to be swallowed whole by marketing campaigns that adored selling transcendence and rebellion. By the 80s, counterculture had been defeated and co-opted.

#6

4chan, a site that was originally created to allow its users to share images and jokes, was eventually converted into an alt-right platform. Its users were so far removed from society that they began to obsess over it, and they clung to race as a means of self-definition.

#7

When I was young, I spent most of my time unemployed or unemployable. I drifted from gig to gig in the service economy, quitting jobs that somehow paid less from sitting at home selling virtual items on the internet. I always ended the story proudly, saying that the pieces were probably still there, rusting away at the bottom of the lake.

#8

My father crossed the border into the West from Czechoslovakia with a friend, and he was never able to explain who helped him or how he got the Nazi gun. He kept our passports up to date and bought many new guns to replace the one rusting in the lake.

#9

I had to throw away my father’s collection of American consumerist junk when he died. The house was full of purchases, and I was in the process of throwing it all away.

#10

The American countercultural revolution, the spirit of ’68 that swept the globe, intended to remake the world into a more equitable and human-centered place. But what happened was that more stores were built, and people seemed unhappy with this development.

#11

The hippie counterculture was opposed to consumerist society, and they were equally interested in transcendence. They created novels, paintings, and music that celebrated the infinite worlds contained within the self. However, society responded in a novel way: mainstream capitalist culture began to surf on the hippie movement.

#12

Marcuse argued that the system of commodification and permission is not limited to sex or even enjoyment, but expands to what he called the conquest of transcendence, in which all that is sublime is circumscribed and applied as rewards for conforming to society.

#13

The hippies’ demands for a new power structure and a new way of existing in society were not met, but the smaller items on their list, those that concerned individual lifestyle pleasures, were quickly granted. The counterculture was co-opted and transformed into a mainstream consumer culture.

#14

Punk died in the 80s, and was replaced by L. A. glam rock, which was then destroyed by the surprise counterattack of grunge in the early 90s. By the late 80s, counterculture had fallen into a deep confusion. Who was friend and foe.

#15

The 90s were a time of nihilism for youth culture, as they were constantly being sold products that they didn’t want or need. As a result, they became listlessly dead to all desires and trends.

#16

By the early 1980s, technology had produced a new element that only exacerbated this hyper-saturation of marketing and indifference: television channels. Between the failures of counterculture and the multiplication of screens, by the time my generation reached adolescence, everything felt slightly unreal or illegitimate.

#17

The hippies’ goal of using new technology to radically alter the structure of postwar capitalist society was never realized. They produced cultural victories like long hair and casual office environments, but their larger goal of using technology to radically change society was never realized.

#18

The end of history, according to the Theory of Post-history, is the end of the dustbins of history. It means that history no longer has the energy to move us, and so we run on like a silent film for which we bear collective irresponsibility.

#19

Gen X and millennials entered a society dominated by vast, immortal institutions, but they lacked the stability of serving these institutions. Instead, they were thrust into an economy of networking that emerged in the 90s.

#20

The start of the 2016 U. S. presidential election marked a turning point for youth culture. The two main candidates were Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, both of whom were establishment figures. Yet no one seemed to care anymore.

#21

Youth counterculture, which had always leaned left, broke catastrophically in two after the 2016 election. The majority jumped to the right to support Trump’s wrecking ball-style change.

#22

The conflict between the far-right and far-left protesters that occurred on inauguration day led to the Battles of Berkeley, which quickly became a internet phenomenon. The conflict continued to spread throughout the country, and into real life.

#23

The Matrix was inspired by the works of Jean Baudrillard. But Baudrillard condemned the film, saying it exploited the longing of a generation to escape from the paralysis of screen addiction to sell yet another escapist screen illusion.

#24

The odious machine was the university and by extension society. But it was also the computer. The students noticed how corporate-built computers were sorting them for their use value, just as they had sorted soldiers, car parts, and scenarios for nuclear annihilation.

#25

The idea of a world set free was first expressed in the late eighteenth century by inventors like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, who tried to refashion a society with these ideals. However, most civilizations believed their societies were static and eternal.