Contemporary internet humor is commonly considered to have a very dada sensibility. However, a closer art comparison would be to fluxus. Meme culture and so-called shitposting resemble fluxus scores and performances, and fluxkits.
I was checking out fluxkits and scores in my school’s artists’ book collection and was struck by one in particular, Water Yam by George Brecht published in 1963. The resemblance of this kit to tumblr posts was striking to me, and I wanted to share some of my favorites:
This one reminds me of the nonsensical How To’s of the internet, the first one that comes to mind is the How To Spoon post.
This one may be the most “shit-post”y of them all.
Striking similarity to the gun meme:
I love this one so much because it sounds like someone inventing pop punk for the very first time.
Some of you will see the warning on q-tips saying “don’t insert into ear canal” and take it seriously like some kind of chump. They want your ears full up so you can’t hear the world around you. My shits so polished clean I can hear the constant shriek of the earth turning on its axis.
we have the technology to turn salt water into potable water and we don’t use it
we have the technology to have unlimited solar energy and we don’t use it
we have the technology to turn the Sahara desert into farm land and we don’t use it
capitalism get on my damn nerves
people always talk about how capitalism is so innovative, but conveniently leaves out that the innovation is only for the sake of profit they never mention that when the prosperity of the entire population isn’t profitable, everyone but the ruling class is left to die
We don’t have the technology to turn the sahara into farmland, and even if we did, we shouldn’t do it. Deserts are critical habitats, not vast empty waistlands.
Turning them into farmland would wipe out countless species. There’s also a reason little grows there. What we can do, is place solar farms out in deserts. A small fraction of the sahara could power the world. That is within our technological ability. This is where captialism strangles us.
Our food production is just fine. We produce too much. Our distribution system however, is not. It focuses on where the most money can be gained, to hell with everyone else. This is where capitalism strangles us.
We also don’t need to turn salt water into fresh water. We need to manage our fresh water better. Use that tech to clean it, and stop poluting it in the first place with fracking and dumping sewage and replacing lead pipes. And to stop letting one or two conglomarates monopolize them. This is where capitalists strangle us.
The problem is not a lack of resources. We have plenty. The problem is captitalism mismanaging and ruining the plentiful resources we have. By opening up new resources such as “turning the sahara into farmland” or turning salt water into fresh water, we are just giving capitalists more resources to destroy and throttle. And destroying more critical environments. We’re not actually fixing the problems.
so, i was exploring the map and i was pretty far away from my home base, basically using a boat to cross deep ocean biomes and investigating islands and smaller landmasses and such
one of the islands i came across had an ABSURD amount of wolves roaming about. “holy shit,” i thought, “this swamp biome is full of free dogs.”
so of course i go on a wolf-taming spree. i wasn’t paying attention to how many i was amassing. by the time i’d covered the island, i had a pack of about twenty dogs in my entourage.
i think, ok, perhaps it’s time to go home, at least so i can leave some of these pups in a safe place while i keep exploring.
problem: there’s a huge fucking ocean between Dog Island and the continent my home base is on.
my stubborn ass thinks, “ok. ok. dogs can swim. we’ll FORD this river ocean.”
this, obviously, did not go well. the dogs are v good swimmers, but also very slow, and if i get too far ahead of them, they don’t catch up, because they can’t teleport to the player if you’re not on land. it took forever to get to the nearest small island, and i’d lost about a third of my dogs.
“i need a better plan,” i think to myself. i mean, i could abandon this ridiculous ‘transport 20+ dogs at least 5000m across multiple deep ocean biomes to my home base’ idea and find some free dogs closer to home. i mean, they’re not really that hard to find. but these are my dogs. i gave them bones and now they love me. i must not abandon them.
…and that’s how dog water skiing was born:
ishouldhavejustdonethisinthefirstfuckingplace.jpg
anyway, by the time i got to the next landmass, i hadn’t lost any more dogs. success!
and not only had i not lost any more dogs, but this new landmass was ALSO full of free dogs. and i still had some stacks of bones, which obviously trumps my own sense of self-control.
fast forward ten minutes:
look at all these pups! and also a really rude spider.
still more pups!
…oh jeez.
this is basically Homeward Bound, but instead of two dogs and a cat, it’s just me and like thirty goddamn dogs. they were continuously teleporting in front of me, i was tripping all over them. it was chaos.
now, i should mention, this was a long-ass trek home.
at some point my sword AND my backup sword broke, because frankly i just was not expecting my expedition to last this long and i did not bring a backup backup sword, so i was flailing at creepers with an axe.
i definitely lost some good pups, especially since at least half that travel was at nighttime peak monster spawn time. AND i have the Mo’ Creatures mod installed, so not only do i have to worry about the standard monsters, but also lions, tigers, bears (which are usually pretty chill but apparently can become hostile when thirty dogs suddenly teleport on top of them), manticores, ogres, SPECIAL wolves that instead of being tamable are just Very Angry All The Time, etc.
but the thing is, i kept finding more free dogs. and, sometimes when i’m walking, two dogs will just breed out of nowhere, so occasionally i’d turn around and there’d be a puppy. who did this. we’re, like, climbing a mountain here. control yourselves
anyways, by the time i got back to my home base, i counted forty-eight doggos.
just look at these Good Dogs. i couldn’t get them all to fit in the frame.
i have nowhere to put them. i feel like Roger and Anita at the end of 101 Dalmatians.
Fuck society fuck capitalism I’m gonna go full feral and live in the woods
Ppl on tumbler LOVE talking about how they want to “go feral” and “live in the woods” and let me say first hand that NONE of y'all have the skill it takes to lone wolf it out in the wilderness for even a single day … . stop appropriating werewolf culture and get an office job….,
Oh you think I plan to survive? You think I’m gonna try and drink river water and eat squirrels out there? Fuck you im gonna rub dirt on my face and immediately die
