Grimes/Claire Boucher thread

https://bylinetimes.com/2022/11/07/musks-twitter-buy-makes-no-sense-unless-its-part-of-something-bigger/

This is intriguing. I don’t know how seriously to take an outlet called “byline times” but I have long suspected that musk had some ulterior motive in acquiring twitter.

oof. thanks treeship

Paywalled - there’s ways around that - but here’s the Collins:

https://www.businessinsider.com/pronatalism-elon-musk-simone-malcolm-collins-underpopulation-breeding-tech-2022-11

Screen of the relevant Grimes part

https://preview.redd.it/wjbxqpoc6l0a1.png

Can’t quite find an explicit article about “the mission”, but yeah, Musk has tweeted “great replacement” theory tropes and was recently on Tucker Carlson talking about
“Birth rates” and “sustainable population” which looks a lot like a racist dog whistle to me.
https://medium.com/the-noösphere/why-wealthy-tech-elites-believe-its-their-mission-to-repopulate-earth-eb15b17ab2b6

I can't pretend I foresaw Grimes' personal political trajectory, but "largely non-political techno utopianism" was never largely non-political (how could it be?), and esp wrt the US computing/internet/etc industry the line between "techno-utopianism" and "techno-authoritarianism" was always very blurry.

Speaking of 2015: https://harpers.org/archive/2015/01/come-with-us-if-you-want-to-live/

It's been a long time since I read it, but this is probably worth revisiting too: https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/californian-ideology

And wrt to eugenics specifically, Malcolm Harris' new book looks p interesting: https://www.vox.com/podcasts/23604908/malcolm-harris-palo-alto-capitalism-interview

Azealia Banks was right about her.

Azealia Banks is good at pointing out racism, not so good at music

If she has truly gone fascist, whenever she releases new music--which could be soon? There was a cryptic FB post within the last hour--music journos should go at her hard and precisely about all this. Back it up with some facts and corner her on it. Don't just casually dismiss her due to Elon musk associations, don't express mild unease about the imagery and the AI obsession. that's too vague and too plausibly deniable. Gotta make it stick with the cold hard truth of the matter. As someone who has never not liked her music...well I'd have no trouble moving on from her in this case. Fever Ray is out there, better politics and great music and a better more inspiring romantic life.

not sure we can just dismiss this by saying she is “woo woo” … there’s obviously an elitist + fash adjacent strain in art and it’s been there for a minute, i mean look at warhols cultivated, effete nihilism

from pc music soundtracking alt right media, to oneohtrix teasing right-accelerationism, there’s a current in the arts that despises the boring and often cringe slog of care and community in favor of high end hedonism and hyper individualism. and this is of course not just the arts but the whole constellation of “dissident leftists” like Glenn greenwald making straightforwardly right wing arguments from supposedly leftist premises

insofar as “woo” is coded as anti-establishment it makes sense; there’s more than a bit of self satisfied decadence in liberalism which provides an opening for those types to go from “big pharma is evil” to “we should delete civilization and have an elect restart on Mars”

i am not trying to dismiss this and kind of hate that i posted anything at all. i just… you know, a lot of the coked-out scenesters in 2010s nyc turned out to be nazis and i don’t spend much time thinking about their moral arcs bc i don’t think they believed in much to begin with. same with grimey

xp I honestly don’t think Glenn Greenwald is part of this. This seems like a very specific radical political project rooted in elite disdain for the masses.

It’s not just “right wing” or whatever.

whenever she releases new music--which could be soon? There was a cryptic FB post within the last hour

i mean i'll cop to thinking about this too much and making possibly overly broad connections, and in no way am i trying to moralize about anyone here 'not taking things seriously enough' or w/e, if i came off like that, sorry

but the reality is tons of people who used to seem squarely progressive or left-leaning or at least just anodyne apolitical are now varying degrees of reactionary, from edgy contrarianism to all-out fash. i think that is notable, and also obviously overdetermined, in the sense one's reactionary turn must be a blend of individual susceptibility and historical phenomena.

but i think that woo-fash resonance is interesting, because it points to which historical phenomena might be playing into this trend. like, the anti-vax perspective is a blend of not unsympathetic latent distrust of big pharma, + propagandistic manipulation, and it's the former--the decadence of corporate society--that is interesting because that is formerly the left's turf in terms of critique, but is being picked up by the right. i'd say this is in part due to the little Thielian culture industry, but also because liberals really did sell us out post 2008!

as for how grimes fits into this, idk there's a sort of weird dialectic where the idea of becoming post-human and merging with the machines or w/e just becomes another way of underlining your own human specialness, and her project, even more so than most pop stars, is very invested in the idea of this sort of untouchable individuality

anyways i'll shut up now

I just want to say that none of this is particularly unique or noteworthy or even special. Grimes isn’t the first “oh this person is a reactionary racist fuckwit, not the sympathetic nice person I assumed them to be” in music and, sadly, she won’t be the last.

So, “elf tech”

On a bad note: the snippet for her new song has the most cringe lyrics ever and is specially annoying in context described in the previous posts.

On a good note: the “grimes ai” is very impressive, these cover of Paris Texas by Lana sounds great considering it’s not actually her:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7re3PEtFGIE

irregardless of everything else, this is kinda cool imho

I'll split 50% royalties on any successful AI generated song that uses my voice. Same deal as I would with any artist i collab with. Feel free to use my voice without penalty. I have no label and no legal bindings. pic.twitter.com/KIY60B5uqt

— 𝔊𝔯𝔦𝔪𝔢𝔰 (@Grimezsz) April 24, 2023

(more details & replies to questions about this on her Twitter)

How much money is there to be made in a cover of the Horst Wessel song?

just off to make a grimes version of "tomorrow belongs to me" then

irregardless of everything else, this is kinda cool imho

"everything else"

"irregardless"

sorry about that - I must have seen the word being used more than once, I didn't know it was wrong (or that there's discussion about it, at least) - I'm not an English speaker at home :(

all good!

jesus alfred

Lol “irregardless” was not the biggest problem with that post

AI voice thing is pretty clever since now anything she records that turns out too fashy she can say it's a deepfake

I don't think the public persona of Grimes is worth anything more than lazy dunks at this point. I've long held that it's kind of mortifying to be around adults who think quoting goofy lines and catchphrases that were burned into their minds from comedy bits and movies decades ago is a good idea. But what we're seeing here is a 35 year old tumblr teen and it's terrible

uptown churl with some good posts. there are definitely some historical currents directing this kind of trajectory right now. capitalist nihilism and fascism are kind of made for each other. also as we start to stretch global limits and elites want to hold on to / entrench capitalism, fascism makes an intuitive kind of sense. not directly related to grimes but the class of other i'm noticing it's ok for everyone to be hateful towards with like a genocidal flavor lately is the unhoused. maybe that's just my locality.

that ai splitting royalties thing is grimes version of elon throwing out an "egalitarian" move every once in a while, it's a total fake-out.

Her being 35 has fazed me a bit cause obv any adult should have outgrown this kind of thing but also it’s too young because this flavour of musk-adjacent cringe is so quintessentially gen x to me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ9VBMBS3qE

idk there's nothing wrong with having youthful interests and being kind of nerdy about a few things but the AI/SV/dork enlightenment/Thiel think tank axis is just a bunch of adults who congealed into this nonsensical "we need kings to rule us, but maybe the king is AI, so we need to throw a bunch of money at that and listen to the people who are funding it (aka Thiel and company)"

how to make a grimes thread immediately better: post a neneh cherry video xp

Haha speaking of quintessentialy gen x just read this post on reddit.

While every generation gets out of touch with age, and millennials are no exception (likewise, gen z will also one day find its ideas being seen as passé) Grimes is an example of a very sad and different phenomenon—a person who ignores their own generation (let alone keeping up with the younger ones’ ideas) and instead attempts to gain favor with the older ones, in this case, with gen x and boomers. These tired 1960s-1980s science fiction cliches she continues to reference, are the media of Elon Musk’s youth, not of her own.
Dune has been a longtime fave of course, but it was only one of a constellation of influences she used to have. Now, she has latched onto everything that came out of Musk’s childhood—from racist techno-orientalism, to dumbass and disproven “posthuman” and “singularity” stuff. This is a girl who grew up in the era of Gattaca and X-Files (media with lessons of how eugenics sucks), UK jungle and experimental dance music (Black led music genres with true innovation), If you look at other geeky millennials in the electronic, vaporwave, or even accelerationist hyperpop sphere, ‘00s, ‘90s or mid to late ‘80s works are their touchstones. So why are her references all, like, Star Wars and some dated novelists from the ‘60s and ‘70s? Because this is Elon Musk core, it’s a new persona she developed for herself to try to flatter her corny conservative gen x partner.
I can’t think of a single other millennial artist who is out of touch in this particular way. In fact Grimes’s blind techno utopian eugenic ideology was heavily criticized by fellow millennials such as Zola Jesus and Alice Glass, and even if you look at the more accelerationist-adjacent millennials like Caroline Polachek, Charli, Weeknd and Oneohtrix Point Never, none of them are talking the way Grimes talks.
Tldr: it’s a gen x/boomer thing not a millennial one.

I'm just gonna say there was SF critical of eugenics before Gattaca

That’s not what that post says.

xxp yeah it’s a simple aesthetic observation, not saying the fascism would be better if she were referencing dumbledore or other shite millennials like

Like she called her actual child X bazinga epsilon or whatever, that is not just embarrassing it’s a prev generation’s embarrassing

baz coombes

Grimes: I will share 50% of the royalties for any AI using my voice!

AI: No thanks.

To me Gen X Science Fiction is 80s stuff like Kim Stanley Robinson and cyberpunk. Musk feels like a throwback to Heinlein.

Definitely.

Musk totally sees himself as a Hari Seldon

xp charli xcx and the weeknd are "accelerationist adjacent"?

Grimes: I will share 50% of the royalties for any AI using my voice!

AI: No thanks.

― This machine bores fascism (PBKR)

AI responding in the voice of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5neabZ5pVQ

What I mean is that they’re adjacent (Weeknd aside, but he is connected with OPN) to the London leftist philosophical circles that originally developed the ideas of accelerationism, and they reference these ideas in their work. Most of them don’t have any clear ties to the creepy right wing form of accelerationism like Grimes. OPN did cite (right wing accelerationist) Nick Land as an influence on his work, but not necessarily in a positive way. Dasha Nekrasova (right wing posing as left podcaster) dated OPN and is friends with Charli, and Nekrasova’s pod Red Scare is funded by Peter Thiel, so there could be some fascist connections in there. None of those artists are openly right wing tho, they’re not going to like Nazi parties.

Grimes: I will share 50% of the royalties for any AI using my voice!

AI: No thanks.

― This machine bores fascism (PBKR)

username / post

This is a girl who grew up in the era of Gattaca and X-Files (media with lessons of how eugenics sucks), UK jungle and experimental dance music (Black led music genres with true innovation), If you look at other geeky millennials in the electronic, vaporwave, or even accelerationist hyperpop sphere, ‘00s, ‘90s or mid to late ‘80s works are their touchstones.

i don't really understand - gattaca, x-files, jungle, all of that was made by gen x and listened to by gen x

to dumbass and disproven “posthuman” and “singularity” stuff.

I'm not saying it's not dumb, but I think these ideas still come up all the time in tech-bro circles, so I'm not sure what "disproven" means in this context.

I think grimes' dorky boomer sci fi tastes predated Elon by awhile, she named an album giedi primes long before he was a thing, pre-visions.

everyone likes dune it's fine