cancel2 2022
Canceled
I found this article from 2001, it is just hilarious unfortunately it's also true.
There was a time when the very title of this article could have gotten me arrested. Unfortunately those days have long gone. Now, in the nobrow culture which is so prevalent today, it has become necessary for me to exploit profanity simply to attract your attention, you fucking bunch of moronic retards. This '2 by 4' effect was first documented by David Shenk in his excellent book Data Smog.
...in a society where we are overloaded with stimuli, whether in the form of entertainment, advertisements and information, we attempt to block this inundation and bring it down to a psychologically manageable level. This results in, inevitably, more effort by those attempting to get their message across. In effect, they are trying to hit those who the message is directed at with a two-by-four.
Like it or not, 2-by-4 effect is now part of our daily reality.
Excuse me while I take a piss in my shoe, and then drink it. In my father's day, an artist was judged by his or her skill in painting and drawing, or by the ability to make a lifelike marble sculpture. Aesthetics was the watchword. One went to an Art exhibition, and came out refreshed, having seen the results of painstaking skill and artistic talent. This was true Art. It required artistic talent, and technical skill.
Excuse me while I smear fresh moose and elk droppings over my erect nipples. These days everything has changed. The very meaning of the word Art has become compromised. Today Art is only valued for its ability to shock. And if it isn't shocking - it isn't art.
A man drops a headless bull carcass stuffed with fireworks from a helicopter whilst hanging naked and bleeding from a crane
Gunther Von Hagen uses real human corpses as sculpture.
Andreas Serrano pours urine on a crucifix in a bottle
Chris Ofili paints the Virgin Mary using elephant dung
Damien Hirst presents us with animal corpses in formaldehyde
A public library has 21 ceramic penises hanging from a rope
Michael Ray Charles thrusts racist imagery in our faces
Ron Athey cuts himself with knives and other bladed instruments
Artist Karen Finley smears canned yams on her bare ass in a work entitled 'Yams Up My Granny's Ass'
Art students fake a seaside vacation
Various individuals publicly suspend themselves from metal hooks embedded in their own flesh.
So common are these pathetic attempts to shock, they have become the subject of parody and ridicule in the mainstream media. As an adequacy reader, you might be expected to enjoy such controversy. After all, that's why you enjoy reading the most controversial site on the Internet. But I expect that like me, you are really too sophisticated for all this juvenile posturing and have grown bored with the sheer predictability of it all. It has got to the point where we are seeing 'controversy by numbers'. After all, one dung-smeared canvas is very much like another.
Excuse me while I take a dump in a polystyrene cup and throw it from the 20th storey of a tower block onto the rotten decaying corpse of a horse.
Anyone can have a Turner prize worthy piece of art these days . It just has to have some of the right standard ingredients. Pick any three from the following list and become a well paid 'artist' overnight; Semen, blood, urine, faeces, the Holy Bible, cadavers (human or animal), genitalia, racism, curse words, self mutilation, anything it would seem, apart from any actual drawing or painting ability.
Excuse me for just one moment while I slash my arms with a razor blade, while urinating on a holy bible, and shouting racist abuse as passers-by in an 'ironic' style. One can imagine it won't be long before we see a Microsoft package, "performance artist" with a 'semen wizard' and a 'cliched blashphemey shortcuts' menu option.
Its clear that the controversy cannot go on forever. The public can only take so much semen, urine and faeces before it grow tired of the same old same old. They begin to suffer from 'controversy fatigue', failing to be outraged by anything at all, no matter how obscene, blasphemous or simply distasteful. Thus it becomes harder and harder for the artist to communicate anything of value. Excuse me while I fill a swimming pool with pigs urine and proceed to swim around it, completely naked, shouting obscenities, and whipping myself with a cat and ninetails.
The controversy arms race means that the bar has been raised to such a height that it is impossible for a struggling artist to gain recognition without falling back on the old standbys that never fail to get media attention. What can we the public do to stem this flood of fake controversy, to dam the tide of tedious cliche masquerading as controversy ? Not much it would seem. Even childrens pop music has now fallen prey to the 'controversy for controversy's sake' brigade, with the band Slipknot leading the charge. It seems we are doomed. Doomed to a world of semen-encrusted bibles, corpses daubed with faeces, 'ironic' racial insults, multitudinous erect penises, rivers of urine, buckets of blood and yam-smeared buttocks.
A sobering prospect, I think you will agree.
I know that adequacy has a number of artists amongst its readership, so what do you think ? Am I off base here ? Or should I simply break out the elephant dung, scrape up the roadkill and start masturbating myself to riches ?
There was a time when the very title of this article could have gotten me arrested. Unfortunately those days have long gone. Now, in the nobrow culture which is so prevalent today, it has become necessary for me to exploit profanity simply to attract your attention, you fucking bunch of moronic retards. This '2 by 4' effect was first documented by David Shenk in his excellent book Data Smog.
...in a society where we are overloaded with stimuli, whether in the form of entertainment, advertisements and information, we attempt to block this inundation and bring it down to a psychologically manageable level. This results in, inevitably, more effort by those attempting to get their message across. In effect, they are trying to hit those who the message is directed at with a two-by-four.
Like it or not, 2-by-4 effect is now part of our daily reality.
Excuse me while I take a piss in my shoe, and then drink it. In my father's day, an artist was judged by his or her skill in painting and drawing, or by the ability to make a lifelike marble sculpture. Aesthetics was the watchword. One went to an Art exhibition, and came out refreshed, having seen the results of painstaking skill and artistic talent. This was true Art. It required artistic talent, and technical skill.
Excuse me while I smear fresh moose and elk droppings over my erect nipples. These days everything has changed. The very meaning of the word Art has become compromised. Today Art is only valued for its ability to shock. And if it isn't shocking - it isn't art.
A man drops a headless bull carcass stuffed with fireworks from a helicopter whilst hanging naked and bleeding from a crane
Gunther Von Hagen uses real human corpses as sculpture.
Andreas Serrano pours urine on a crucifix in a bottle
Chris Ofili paints the Virgin Mary using elephant dung
Damien Hirst presents us with animal corpses in formaldehyde
A public library has 21 ceramic penises hanging from a rope
Michael Ray Charles thrusts racist imagery in our faces
Ron Athey cuts himself with knives and other bladed instruments
Artist Karen Finley smears canned yams on her bare ass in a work entitled 'Yams Up My Granny's Ass'
Art students fake a seaside vacation
Various individuals publicly suspend themselves from metal hooks embedded in their own flesh.
So common are these pathetic attempts to shock, they have become the subject of parody and ridicule in the mainstream media. As an adequacy reader, you might be expected to enjoy such controversy. After all, that's why you enjoy reading the most controversial site on the Internet. But I expect that like me, you are really too sophisticated for all this juvenile posturing and have grown bored with the sheer predictability of it all. It has got to the point where we are seeing 'controversy by numbers'. After all, one dung-smeared canvas is very much like another.
Excuse me while I take a dump in a polystyrene cup and throw it from the 20th storey of a tower block onto the rotten decaying corpse of a horse.
Anyone can have a Turner prize worthy piece of art these days . It just has to have some of the right standard ingredients. Pick any three from the following list and become a well paid 'artist' overnight; Semen, blood, urine, faeces, the Holy Bible, cadavers (human or animal), genitalia, racism, curse words, self mutilation, anything it would seem, apart from any actual drawing or painting ability.
Excuse me for just one moment while I slash my arms with a razor blade, while urinating on a holy bible, and shouting racist abuse as passers-by in an 'ironic' style. One can imagine it won't be long before we see a Microsoft package, "performance artist" with a 'semen wizard' and a 'cliched blashphemey shortcuts' menu option.
Its clear that the controversy cannot go on forever. The public can only take so much semen, urine and faeces before it grow tired of the same old same old. They begin to suffer from 'controversy fatigue', failing to be outraged by anything at all, no matter how obscene, blasphemous or simply distasteful. Thus it becomes harder and harder for the artist to communicate anything of value. Excuse me while I fill a swimming pool with pigs urine and proceed to swim around it, completely naked, shouting obscenities, and whipping myself with a cat and ninetails.
The controversy arms race means that the bar has been raised to such a height that it is impossible for a struggling artist to gain recognition without falling back on the old standbys that never fail to get media attention. What can we the public do to stem this flood of fake controversy, to dam the tide of tedious cliche masquerading as controversy ? Not much it would seem. Even childrens pop music has now fallen prey to the 'controversy for controversy's sake' brigade, with the band Slipknot leading the charge. It seems we are doomed. Doomed to a world of semen-encrusted bibles, corpses daubed with faeces, 'ironic' racial insults, multitudinous erect penises, rivers of urine, buckets of blood and yam-smeared buttocks.
A sobering prospect, I think you will agree.
I know that adequacy has a number of artists amongst its readership, so what do you think ? Am I off base here ? Or should I simply break out the elephant dung, scrape up the roadkill and start masturbating myself to riches ?
