I too am absolutely pumped to live in a world where human artistry is all but confined to the wealthy, and we all get AI generated pseudo-art instead! Woot woot!
Isn’t that how it was for the majority of history? Minus the AI crap anyway.
Still, the average person has incredible opportunity to see some of the very best art, as long as they live in or near a big city. Admission to most galleries or museums is not expensive at all.
The problem is that the average working class person doesn't have a lot of time where they also have energy and don't have to do chores. In that state, most people aren't receptive for learning and enjoying culture. And it's very understandable.
I think that has more to do with technology and the attention economy than anything else. Working class people used to read books a lot more than they do now. Then along came TV (aka the idiot box) to soak up those free hours. Now it’s all Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Netflix.
I doubt working class people spent their evenings reading high-brow books. Magazines, cheaper novels, things that don't demand much mental investment after 8+ hours of work have drained your energy and left a little for chores.
Families that could live on a single income may have had more time, but if that has reduced, it may well because a single income often can't sustain a whole family any more.
TV didn't magically create a need for mindless entertainment. It may have supplanted other recreational activities, but it couldn't replace e.g. meeting up for a drink and a nice chat unless the convenience of it outweighed the loss of social activity.
They might not have read Joyce but I can guarantee they were reading Steinbeck, Hemingway, Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, Twain, Vonnegut, Lee, Salinger, Frost.
All the novels and poetry in the American canon, the stuff high school students groan about having to read today, were once bestsellers in their day. You don’t get to be a bestseller back then by selling only to millionaires.
Nightmare scenario
This person needs some humbling.
I do believe this is sarcasm.
Friends have told me before that I often miss sarcasm.
It happens to the best of us. :)
Haha, nice one
See, this right here, I'd have taken that as genuine. Why am I like this?
There are a lot of people like you, and it is why the use of /s is necessary, and in my opinion a good thing
Especially since we cannot hear tone out of our screens.
Yeah, it's frustrating that a lot of people don't seem to get that, they just assume that how they interpret it is how everyone must see it
It is genuine! Amg 😅🥲
I believe it was genuine and the person you responded to was messing with you or misunderstood. It does happen to the best of us, and the smiley face seems like a reassuring gesture.
Can someone explain the fries part ? I understand this is in reference to an order someone would make at a fast food restaurant, but what is the link ? what does it suggest ?
The comedy is created by subversion of your expectation that college degreed people would not be working at a fast food place. The interaction is meant to be read initially as a neutral status interaction and then slides into a upper to lower status interaction as the post reveals that the answer to the implied question from the customer is that the cashier has an art degree. The initial humor is at the expense of the cashier. The next part of the joke reveals that the customer is, in fact, of true lower status of the two because they don't understand the horror of a world that will result from devaluing those with art knowledge, exemplified in the joke as those with art degrees. The art degree here is a stand in for our capacity for human empathy and connection. What fools we would be without it. What greater fools could we become if we actively refused to cultivate it. We could become evil, and that fact, that true evil that can exist and we could have blindness to it or even become it, is the comedy here. The banality of the customer here, the interaction, the shittiness of it all, that is the comedy. How this helps, it was not generated in any way by AI and it's fuckin sad that I have to say that.
Now that's a sound meme interpretation. Do you have an art degree by any chance?
it suggests that art majors are not employable in their field of study and thus end up working in fast food
As a retired cold and mean hearted Toolmaker and ME, there is a need for Art Majors in this world. Just not as many of them as we produce perhaps. Kind of like Astrophysicists, we do need them, but truthfully there are only a handful of jobs available for those degrees. So the majority often need to figure out what they can do besides their degree training.
If you want to be an Art Major, you will most likely need to figure on finding a job that can tangentially make use of your artistic training. Because you probably won't become a famous painter or professor teaching art in a collage or work in an art museum.
But you can become an art teacher in a high school or perhaps work in web design or some kind of advertising. Not what the average art major might wish to be, but rather careers that can use those skills.
It suggests that art and literature are worthless, and if you have such a degree you’ll be working fast food, known as among the worst jobs (low paid and nobody has a lot of respect for fast food workers).
That all the arts degree will be good for is working in food service
Lmao I went to art school. Used to hang at the state tech school tailgates across town because I like college football. Would always get this razz from my STEM buddies there but was mostly just fun. I actually cooked at a restaurant in town to pay for rent/beer money too haha.
Got sous and almost stayed in the industry after college but decided to go for it. Currently work in my art degree field. I make more than my STEM friends. Not that it matters really to me. Everyone should be able to earn a wage doing something they enjoy.
Idiot.
Same
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
