Late night thought: “Don’t be tacky (unless you know why you’re doing it)” is a surprisingly powerful heuristic for me. Idk if anybody else will relate to it. It’s an aesthetic-grounded approach to peopling, related to “people are forgiving of most things if you’re classy”
It’s kind of circular reasoning though. How do you even begin to explain what tacky is? The dictionary is useless here.
It’s kind of like
“rule 1: be attractive
rule 2: don’t be unattractive”
But I find it to be a very refreshing way of reframing things. Let me try to explain, and I’m probably wrong, but hell:
Aesthetics (or something close to it) might the fundamental currency of social capital
Generally,
Good aesthetics = gain capital
Tacky = lose capital
Because different groups have different ideas of what good aesthetics are, what is aesthetic here is tacky there. That’s just how it is, you can’t escape this. But simply knowing this reality lets you play the game at a higher level than most people (who play by mimicking others)
Of course, at a meta level, all aesthetics are made up. Welcome to social reality!! The fact that money and laws and nations are all fictions does not change the fact that you can’t opt out; you will be evicted and jailed and pwned.
I think this is why I have always had a background fascination with fashion. Everything is fashion, everything is showbiz. You cannot opt out of this game so you might as well get good at it. 48 laws of fashion
Being fashionable does not guarantee you a fulfilling life; but it spares you the indignity of being ostracised by humans. IMO fashion is a vehicle of persuasion, it’s proof-of-work that you are sensitive to the interests and tastes of others
be fashionable, the world is not kind to those who are tacky.
To be clear, I am not at all gleeful that the world is this way. It is what it is.
Fashion is a great servant but a terrible master.
At this point you have to know yourself.
For some people a life yoked to a terrible master can be deeply fulfilling.
Just make sure that, if that’s you, that you chose that life for yourself and weren’t kicked around into it.
I haven’t yet gotten to the thought I actually wanted to share: When you see a take that you dislike, framing it as “that’s so tacky” is strangely liberating for me, anyway I think it has to do with the simplicity of it. Bad takes are tacky. You don’t really need to elaborate
Getting overly worked up by someone else’s tacky bad take is also tacky You see where I’m going with this? Which isn’t to say you should excuse cruelty or injustice But tackiness can be recognised & avoided while you focus on what matters you Ok night! May ur aesthetics shine
Additional closing thought: – when you deserve to get your ass kicked, accept it, defending yourself too much is tacky – when you need to kick someone’s ass, be swift (and kind if possible), overdoing it is tacky
And a thought to sleep on: Trump is soooo tacky in so many ways and yet he has gotten so far with it. Why is that? I suppose it’s because lots of people have really bad taste / maybe even resent good aesthetics in their opponents,,,?
Hillary was very tacky too though. Sexism definitely made things worse,,, and she was also tacky. It’s true that women get punished a lot worse for the crime of tackiness, which is unfair