I recently read the following in Radar Magazine's "The Hype Report" (Sept. 2007):
"Blogging is vanity. Like loving the smell of your own farts. Like not only tasting your menstrual blood, but making bloody thumbprints and buying gold-leafed frames in which to display them."
This is from a magazine that insists it is anti-mainstream, while still presuming to tell its readers what they should like, and still containing the same pile of commercial ads as every other magazine. A nose-thumbing joke on the advertisers who pay for this abuse, or a whiny emo bitch of a magazine who damns the man but then skulks back to daddy for his allowance? No matter. What is more, the only difference between a magazine and a blog these days is dead trees. But I digress. But maybe not. More on that below.
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I was going to name this article “The Self-Loathing Post-Modernist,” but then it occurred to me, is there any other kind of Post-Modernist? Plus, too many hyphens. And we all know that hyphens are gateway punctuation. Next come slashes, and no one wants/needs that.
I recently came to the crashing realization that post-modernism has crept up on me like a mongoose on a garter snake. Swiftly and salivating with its teeth bared in readiness. I realize that previous sentence was an absurdly overdramatic vilification of the mongoose, but absurdity is perhaps the first pillar of Post-Modernism. In any case, I’ve been bitten by the PoMo bug, to put it another way. Post-Modernism bites.
Post-Modernism makes me want to eat tacks. Or so says the name of one of my Facebook groups. In my many group purging sessions (that is, the purging of Facebook groups, not a communal vomit fest), I have always held onto “Post-Modernism Makes Me Want to Eat Tacks.” Facebook groups essentially function as bumper stickers, and I’ve never had the heart to scrape this one off. But, I’m also the woman who writes in her epic Facebook profile how much she loathes Facebook. Now that’s "Post." Plus, the Post-Modernist knows that the fact that something makes one want to eat tacks is a good indication of how much one loves it. Thus, my constant search for emotionally abusive assholes to lust after. (On television.) (And pretty much any form of entertainment.) (And, let’s not kid ourselves, in life.)
I once argued to a fellow PoMo that the only thing that could save us from being Post-Modernists would be to acknowledge the absurdity of Post-Modernism and the absurdity of our being Post-Modernists, which would make us post-Post-Modernists, which, I postulated, would move us into the realm of Meta. Yes, Meta is now a noun. Which is Meta. Or maybe it’s not. Which is Meta.
If Post-Modernism is a reference to the ludicrousness of the Modernist medium, Meta is a reference to the ludicrousness of the Post-Modernist medium. So, let’s say Facebook equals Modernism. Writing in my Facebook profile how much I hate Facebook is Post-Modern. Writing an article (this one) about how ludicrous it is for me to use a particular medium to undermine that same medium, well, that’s Meta. Furthermore, posting said article on said medium (which I did) is yet another level of Meta. A post about a Post-Modern post is a Post-Post-Modern post, which is a Meta post. This post is a Post-Meta post, which is a Meta^2 post. I got Meta up the wazoo.
As far as Radar Magazine is concerned, they have the cynicism and sarcasm to be PoMo (which is stilly highly entertaining), but they lack the directed sense of humor and cheerful self-denigration that it takes to be Meta. Don't misunderstand, I'm not judging from some Meta pedestal (Metastal?), or even insisting that I myself have somehow transcended most of the world to become a Meta guru. It's just that when it comes to Post-Modernism, I'm trying my damnedest to get the fuck outta Dodge.
Let’s try another one. If the Matrix (the thing) is a 3-dimensional Modernism (Keanu x Keanu x Keanu?), then The Matrix (the movie) is a 4-dimensional Post-Modernism (Keanu x Keanu x Keanu x Time). So, acknowledging that The Matrix was created in and by the Matrix would be Meta (Keanu x Keanu x Keanu x Time x Tessering).
The 5th dimension, as we all learned from A Wrinkle in Time, is tessering, which is demonstrated by holding two parts of a cloth and bringing them together, thereby proving that a straight line is not always the shortest way between two points. Thus, the 5th dimension is the act, and the acknowledgement of the act, of holding 3-dimensional space against time to prove that the study of a universe can only be constructed when one can conceive of being outside of the rules of that universe. In the unlimited number of dimensions, one can only recognize a dimension when one is situated in the next dimension. We can only conceive of 2 dimensional drawings because we live in 3 dimensional space. We can only conceive of those 3 dimensions because of movement in time (the 4th dimension), which, in essence, proves to us our vantage point. You can only know where you are if you know where you’re not, which requires having been somewhere else at another time. Thus, each dimension is an acknowledgement or awareness of the previous one, and of the fact that something is missing from the previous one. So, to be Meta, we must acknowledge and be aware of Post-Modernism, and of the fact that there is more beyond it.
You might think me smug, but the joke’s on me, because no matter how many permutations of Meta I congratulate myself for having discovered, no matter how many rings on my tree of pretension, something will always be missing.
Q.E.D., bitch.
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