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The government threw money at the arts in the mid-20th-century to show up the USSR and people are reading too much into it. If classicism had been the thing in
by api 3y ago
The government threw money at the arts in the mid-20th-century to show up the USSR and people are reading too much into it. If classicism had been the thing in the middle of the 20th century they would have funded that instead.
Is the popularity of reactive programming a Facebook psy-op? They certainly popularized it via React, but does that mean there was some deep agenda inside Facebook to popularize reactive programming to accomplish some mysterious occult goal? Or was it just that Facebook is big, happened to employ some good devs who liked reactive programming, and dumped a lot of money into it?
When big companies and governments throw money around they distort the market and whatever happens to be in the right place at the right time to grab that cash tends to get favored. That's usually all there is to it unless you can find concrete evidence that (for example) someone with authority in the CIA wanted to promote that specific type of art to achieve a specific societal outcome.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago> The government threw money at the arts in the mid-20th-century to show up the USSR and people are reading too much into it. If classicism had been the thing in the middle of the 20th century they would have funded that instead. I'm not so sure. Call it a conspiracy theory, but there is at least some evidence that modern art is a fantastic tool for money laundering. Now, this is also true of classical art and patents, but imagine if you are trying to send money with a stupid cover story. Make a piece of modern art in 15 minutes, have other person send $50,000 to "purchase" it...
- api 3y agoAny high priced asset that's easy to move with few questions asked is a great tool for money laundering. One of the largest tools is real estate, which may be one reason you see a lot of unoccupied houses and condos in certain expensive cities. The art doesn't have to be modern to work this way. It just has to be fungible art with an inflated price tag on it. Any style will do. Other popular money laundering vehicles include: "investments" in totally hollow shell companies, fake customers to shell or cutout businesses (like the car wash in Breaking Bad), manipulating penny stocks (you basically run a pump and dump against yourself using dirty money to pump and extracting clean money on the other side), cryptocurrency and related things, other big assets like airplanes and boats, etc.
- reillyse 3y agoReal estate is traditionally quite difficult to move, that’s actually one of its core selling points.
- phonescreen_man 3y agoAnd you can buy high end real estate with dirty money and then get clean money by taking loans out on the value of the property
- neilv 3y agoLike NFTs, it could be money laundering, pumping, or both?
- krapp 3y agoI don't think the CIA needs to clandestinely fund an entire art movement as a cover for money laundering, though. That seems a bit outlandish. I'm as paranoid as the next guy but in this case I think the premise that the CIA funded artistic expression as a form of propaganda in its own right makes the most sense.
- briantakita 3y ago> I don't think the CIA needs to clandestinely fund an entire art movement as a cover for money laundering, though. That seems a bit outlandish. Besides...the CIA makes more money running illegal drugs.
- caoilte 3y agoIt's more like it's one way to funnel money to an asset or network without raising suspicions. But you're right, it was mostly about the propaganda. And not even particularly covert. The bit that did it has since been carved out into other agencies (eg National Endowment for Democracy).
- jvanderbot 3y agoIs this where I put Betteridge's law? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines#:~:text=Betteridge's%20law%20of%20headlines%20is,the%20principle%20is%20much%20older https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline.... Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." It is named after Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist who wrote about it in 2009, although the principle is much older. "If the headline asks a question, try answering 'no'. Is This the True Face of Britain's Young? (Sensible reader: No.) Have We Found the Cure for AIDS? (No; or you wouldn't have put the question mark in.) Does This Map Provide the Key for Peace? (Probably not.) A headline with a question mark at the end means, in the vast majority of cases, that the story is tendentious or over-sold. It is often a scare story, or an attempt to elevate some run-of-the-mill piece of reporting into a national controversy and, preferably, a national panic. To a busy journalist hunting for real information a question mark means 'don't bother reading this bit'."
- tonymillion 3y agoI came into the comments thinking about Betteridges law and hoping to see it near the top and I wasn’t disappointed. Pretty much any article posted to HN with a “?” At the end that’s not a AskHN prefix should get that response.
- samstave 3y agoASK HN: Should I post an ephemeral of ideas as platitude questions to ASK HN?
- ak_111 3y agoThe React analogy doesn’t work, React is used because developers find it more productive to use. On the other hand people’s initial reaction to much modern art is “what the hell? you call this art?” so it is interesting to explore why it became very expensive and popular with elites despite the popular reaction. Put another way, react would have probably gained a huge following without FB’s marketing (imagine if it was just a few hackers launching it as an open source project). Can we say that much modern art would have gained much fame if it wasn’t for certain critics promoting them or if they gained favourable attention from elites?
- jimbob45 3y agoAnd also HTMX, Angular, or Vue could take over and erase React tomorrow and no one here would be especially surprised.
- emodendroket 3y agoI don’t think it is much to do with some nefarious plan to defeat social realism so much as they funded talented artists and talented artists happened to be bored with old forms/find them irrelevant and they wanted to experiment with something new.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y agoThey funded splashy but tame talented artists with no political leanings, and destroyed or starved artists who were more overtly political. There was a lot more happening in art than AbEx. But only AbEx received official approval as an acceptable political metaphor for bold individualism. Approval included canonisation by museums and galleries and think pieces by art critics. https://www.artforum.com/print/197406/abstract-expressionism-weapon-of-the-cold-war-38017 https://www.artforum.com/print/197406/abstract-expressionism...
- emodendroket 3y agoThis seems more plausible than the more maximalist version of the claim where they were essentially shoving abstract expressionism down everyone's throats because of its uniquely counterrevolutionary nature.
- pookha 3y agoGovernment wasn't just throwing money at art...Could be the other way around. Back then what was stopping the CIA from covertly laundering money through art? They've cleaned money with worse.
- tgv 3y agoIt's not just that modern art started well before the CIA existed, but the article also conveniently forgets to mention how modern art subverted communism. It even can't explain how "Jackson Pollock’s gestural style [...] drew an effective counterpoint to Nazi [...] oppression," because by the time Pollock got anywhere near famous, WWII was over. Perhaps that sentence doesn't even mean anything. It's just fancy words, because a counterpoint is not an opposition, but a harmonically fitting independent voice. Style over substance, as usual.
- emodendroket 3y agoThe conspiratorial view is that people were numbed by meaningless abstract art when they could have been engaging with didactic social realist works that would have convinced them to become communist. Hard to falsify but I’m not sure how credible it is.
- jasonfarnon 3y agoIf it is generally agreed that soviets, fascists, nazis used modern art to pursue their ends (new objectivity etc) I find it implausible that US intelligence wouldn't respond in kind. Of course that doesn't mean that the manner of response detailed by this article is accurate.
- itronitron 3y agoThe fact that you're calling it reactive programming, instead of MVC, shows that Facebook's psyop was at least partially successful.
- lmm 3y agoWTF? It's very different from MVC.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoIt's not a mysterious occult goal. The web is now broken with JavaScript disabled, and Facebook has cemented a place in your browser to run their tracking code. It's pretty hard to believe that that was an intended consequence.
- hnuser847 3y agoReact was released back in 2012/2013. The web was already broken without JavaScript back then, and had been for quite some time. Remember jQuery? And FB placing tracking codes in cookies has nothing to do with React.
- pyuser583 3y agoI don’t know if it’s that simple. The Nazis and USSR had eerily similar art. There’s a thesis that “totalitarian art” is a genre, if not a species, of art. Most dictators don’t like people thinking for themselves. A bunch of pain blotches on canvas can mean “Stalin is terrible” as “Stalin is great.” The vague “what does it mean” style of art asks the question “what does it mean?” Which is not a question dictators like having asked.