Failure Is Freedom

When authenticity is defined by its opposition to performativity, it ironically becomes a performance. And as much as we in the Generation X loved irony, we preferred to enjoy ironically rather than get caught up in it ourselves. But, when you're reduced to performing your authenticity by calling out phonies and sell-outs, you become an ironic caricature of whatever authenticity you think you...

I am continuing to try to develop the concept of an "authentic performance." My generation set up a false opposition between authenticity and performance, and the resulting failure didn't lead to freedom but to a regular-ass failure. I go on a not-to-be-missed rant about this failure to get free in this episode whose target is Generation X in general, but also me specifically. The g...

A much younger friend of mine told me about a social media phenomena called "Performative Male Competitions," which unfortunately I called "men's performative competitions" throughout the podcast. Apparently these are competitions held unbeknownst to the participants in which the most "performative" male wins. The joke of these events is that men are clandestinel...

How do I know what I like? This is the question at the center of this podcast. Do I like what I like because it's what others like, or do I like it because I like it. Another form of this central question is, is it even possible to be authentic? The language that you speak, the concepts that you think, and the desires of your heart, all came from outside of you. So, what can authenticity even...

The sorts of collage art that we in the Generation X made at school involved cutting up magazine pictures and gluing them in bizarre configurations on a piece of paper. Sometimes they were just random, but sometimes we tried to make a statement, like when we were supposed to make collages about "what it means to be an American," as I had to do multiple times in Social Studies Class. The...

Generation Jones may have been cynical because they came of age during the 70's economic downturn and after the failure of the Hippies to produce a revolution, but they weren't reactionaries. Their most enduring musical productions, Glam Rock, Punk, Disco, and Hip Hop were testaments to openness, inclusivity, and exuberance. It was the reactionary Boomers of the Love Generation who tried...

Generation X includes those folks born between 65 and 80. But the stage was set for the new forms of art and music that defined us in the 70's. Particularly by the "deterritorialization" of cities affected by the death of manufacturing jobs and "White Flight" to the suburbs. Punk, Disco, Hip Hop, and Electro were all birthed in the 70, and not by Generation X. It was the g...

Sometimes the things that don't work right, work perfectly. Artificiality used to be the measure of inauthenticity, but "synthetic" sounds became the currency of Generation X's triumphant failure to repeat the music of the past. Electronic equipment at the beginning of the 70s did not do well at replicating "real" musical instruments, and it cost a shit-ton of money,...

How did Generation X's obsession with authenticity turn us into a bunch of posers? The 50 year old dude who demands that a 20 year old wearing a Nirvana teeshirt name three songs is a poser, and he has been made such by his obsession with authenticity. The trick about "being-real" is that it can't be too intentional; otherwise, it looks like the "trying-too-much" of a...