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This is a great read. I didn’t know this shift to alt comedy happened as an explicit cultural moment though I noticed the style shift as a consumer.
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A great piece on what to do when current practices are stale and new movements start. Go somewhere new and start your own thing. vulture.com/article/big-an
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This bit especially resonates. Feels like the entire world is in this state right now. Something analogous to “awash in cocaine and testosterone... point of putrescence.” 2021 calls for a similar sort of cultural reset. This is the true north of a post-covid reboot.
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Very good early Gen X energy to this piece. Also very middle-child energy. Lowkey contentment and a distaste for big, direct spotlights. I’m younger than this set by about 10 years, but this cohort basically set the tone for the rest of Gen X I think.
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I suspect one reason Seinfeld did so well is that it threaded the needle between 80s putrescence and alt reaction. Conventional enough to get big, alt enough to smell fresh. Sweet spot. I dislike what I’ve seen of late 80s dreck, but the alt stuff us a bit too snowflakey as well.
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Notable that Kathy Griffin, mentioned here as part of the alt set, played out a version of this story as a Seinfeld episode, where she gets famous off a set attacking Jerry. I wonder if they wrote that episode as a fictionalized version of what was happening in real life.
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I haven’t seen any of the Ben Stiller show. Should dig up and watch. Since I came to the US in 1997, I only caught the late parts of this whole 90s cultural arc live, and the rest through reruns and random archaeological expeditions. I only know Stiller from his later work.
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