My Thing Of Today

I get it.  We live in 'The Information Age'.  A time where every conceivable thing which grabs our interest, every minute detail, all the tedious minutia, is at our very finger tips.  This can cause a huge overload.  It would be inconceivable to read every book, play every game, watch every TV show or movie, so the rational behind reviewers is there.  You wind up asking other people you know about these things, if they liked them, why you might like them.  If you have an interest that none of your friends does, or they aren't around, you might check up on customer reviews, or professionally written ones.  These things make sense to do.  Its painful to waste time and money on something that turns out to be stupid and annoying for the general public, let alone personally.  You don't want to waste your time reading a book to find out the ending is trash, that's a huge investment of time for a small return.

My problem is with those people who will literally do nothing without the approval of an outside source.  The people who know them aren't good enough, they couldn't possibly be able to, with their years of experience dealing with them, be able to predict these things accuratly.  The must have the opinion of that outside source.  They're like a god, with premonitory abilities on your tastes and dislikes.  They have a plan for you and your money, and they are never wrong.  These types of people are horrid.

Whats the point of listening to one person for you needs on a specific topic.  You don't do it with medical professionals, lawyers, or your $500 an hour therapist.  But games, fashion, movies, books; no those people have their heads on right.  With four years at some college that teaches you how to critique and write compellingly, they are obviously qualified to tell you what to like, and it isn't as if its in their best interest, right?  And I'm not saying that getting an opinion on something is a terrible idea, its those individuals who only listen to that one other voice.  Sure, they may be right all the time about what is good, but they have no rational for not lying to you, or to tell you to branch out.  There is no telling how many opportunities you've missed by not exploring outside that box.  To be trapped by a couple of well written paragraphs that tell you everything you want to hear, that's not independent thinking, being avant garde, separatist, or a non-conformist.  Its doing exactly what that person is getting paid to do, give you an acceptable rational, which appeals to your sense of self and style, to buy something.

That's what baffles me about "Fashion".  The art of wearing clothing (in my head i spell it c-loathing).  Certainly a well dressed individual is ascetically pleasing, but by art we mean taking a base medium, canvas, marble, the human body, and turning it into a means to convey an important message or vision to as many people as possible for as long as possible.  If it were an art in that way, we would see every possible type of person at fashion shows, and designers would be scrambling to get their messages to everyone, not the few and proud.  Instead, we only find six foot tall slender behemoths who make up about 1% of the possible population, and the latest fashions are in and out every three months for ginormous prices.  Picasso, Monet, Pierre de Wiessant, Hitchcock, statues from the Roman Empire, those thing that have endured for decades, centuries, millennium, those are things we consider art.  We can still learn from them, feel something from them, teach using them.  Ask any person on the street about what is art, the last thing that comes from their mouths will be "fashion".  Fashion isn't an art, its a business, its prime motivation isn't to tell you something about the world, or share pain and joy with you.  It isn't even about the human condition.  It's about getting a bunch of people to feel better about themselves through manipulation and bilk them out of thousands of dollars by telling them their special.  No artist I've ever heard of (outside the fashion "industry") would every put those motives down on their portfolio.