You will get the stupid version

I am an almost objectivist (the aesthetic kind) when it comes to great art and ideas. What I mean by that is I believe great art is more likely to break through than bad art, and will likely endure longer. I am also an objectivist (the Ayn Rand kind) when it comes to the role of the artist: that the perseverance of the artist guides the perseverance of the art. And most of all, I believe great art is done in small groups, with small audiences.

I love following emerging subcultures on the internet, and I love following their development of an aesthetic and the ideas they rally around. Some of these ideas even get adopted by the mainstream, and inevitably lose nuance during the adoption. Aka the mainstream gets the stupid version of the idea. There are countless examples: effective altruism and charity, therapy and boundary culture, and the worst offender of them all, agile software development.

On one hand, it’s depressing that the ideas we hear are usually a watered-down, stupid version. On the other hand, it’s invigorating that maybe we can dig a little deeper, that mainstream ideas are deeply underrated because there’s almost always a smarter insight, a greater artist behind it.