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Curious George and the case of the unconscious culture
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- euroderf 2y agoPut human collectives on autopilot. Reap the rewards. It's bananas.
- brudgers 2y agoI’m certainly aware that, depending on political orientation, some might say “It’s actually because of late capitalism” or “It’s actually because of offshoring jobs,” and maybe both those are true. But it seems to me the more fundamental shift is that, at every economic and social scale, the workings of our conscious minds play less of a role. I'd bet on SEO. If you are selling a sticker of a monkey, with #curiousgeorge metadata your product is more likely to surface than without the sticker. If you are selling monkey stickers from China, you probably don't have a childhood cultural attachment to the Curious George brand (and if you aren't particularly fluent in English "curious george" might just be pretty much some impenetrable squiggles). For me, this was a perfect example of a creeping high strangeness I’ve noticed in the 21st century. A strangeness I don’t remember from my youth, the world of the 90s and early 2000s. Funnily inappropriate Curious George stickers are merely one instance, a symptom of something larger. It's a symptom of being influenced by the larger world. I'm not pretending that it isn't without costs. For some people it will be worse. For some it will be better. Curious George stickers and Chase credit cards are rounding error.