yall I fucking bled for this peice of trash pls like it
oh. I thought it was a photo.
Damn it took me 5 minutes to figure out why you wanted people to like a picture of soap. You did such a good job people think you are just posting random pics of soap.
this isn’t the fist time this has happened, I painted lube and everyone was confused that I posted a picture of lube
This is such a Monkey’s Paw kind of talent. Being so talented at hyperrealistic art that people just think they’re photos and don’t care.
You have triggered the rage within me, so now you will ALL be treated to an outside-the-readmore screed about SEWARD GODDAMN JOHNSON.
I don’t normally attack artists because a) it scares my friends who are artists (I love you all, you are beautiful, don’t be afraid) and b) honestly most artists don’t deserve the level of vitriol I’m about to employ. I want you all to remember that the seething hatred I feel for Seward Johnson is driven in large part by class consciousness.
But not entirely. So let’s begin.
First what you have to know is that Seward Johnson is a “sculptor”. If you google “seward johnson sculpture” you’ll get an idea of his work, most of which is terrible. I feel okay calling his work terrible because he is also the scion of the family that founded SC Johnson Johnson & Johnson (my bad), so he has all the money he needs and could step back, do his art for funsies, and let people with actual talent or two original thoughts in their heads exhibit their art, but he doesn’t, he forces his terrible art on all of us.
The reason I harbor such animosity towards Seward Johnson is that he has been exhibiting on Pioneer Plaza (that area north of the DuSable Bridge) for almost a decade now, and when I worked in the north loop I had to walk past his art every day. It was bad enough when the sculpture was American Gothic, rendered without talent or meaning into three dimensions and provided with luggage.
How very fucking dare you, you talentless hack
These things are sculpted out of what amounts basically to styrofoam painted in rubberized/weatherized paint, so they are fragile, and tourists were constantly climbing on Farmer’s shoes and falling into them when they found out it wasn’t the cheap but supple fiberglass you would expect of a tacky monstrosity more suited to a roadside motel than the business district of a major metropolitan city. (I would imagine this is why Abraham Lincoln And The Mayonnaise Sandwich has a little fence around it.)
But American Gothic Motel Attraction was mostly just annoying because it was meaningless, derivative, and CONSTANTLY covered in gawkers getting in everyone’s way.
Additionally, Seward Johnson’s sculptures on the Plaza are very popular photo spots for tourists, who carry lots of cash and are constantly distracted, which means beginning with The Assault On American Gothic it became a very popular spot for pickpockets. Which means members of our staff, who had nothing to do with this mess, got pickpocketed as collateral damage about once a week during the exhibition of….
Forever Marilyn.
SEWARD JOHNSON GO FUCK YOURSELF
This is a very famous image of Marilyn Monroe which is horrifying for the following reasons that Seward Johnson appears not to have understood nor cared about:
a) The day this was shot, on an open set with people leering at her all day, her husband, professional athlete and dirtbag Joe DiMaggio, found out about the filming. Rather than comfort his wife, who had been through some shit already that day, he became angry she’d been showing her panties in public and beat her so badly the neighbors called the police on him. Joe DiMaggio also go fuck yourself.
b) IT’S IN A MOVIE INFAMOUSLY SET IN NEW YORK. To quote a local newspaper, “Did Chicago lose a bet?”
c) Yes, you can look up and see her panties. While this is juvenile, it’s not nearly as juvenile as the literally thousand of photographs I angrily photobombed of some douchebro from Fuckville Middle America in a backwards baseball cap standing between her legs with his face tilted upwards and his tongue out.
Oh and btw before it was unveiled it looked like this:
For literal days, before it was installed, she had a bag over her head. (For more on this, though the pictures are now missing, you can read my reaction post here.)
In any just world, there would be a trap door between her legs and everyone who tried to do the upskirt shot would fall into a pit where they would be forced to give five dollars to women’s shelters before they were allowed to leave. THAT would have been interesting art.
Sidebar, both as contrast and because I love it: Marilyn left a few years ago and was briefly replaced by a refreshing and beautiful piece called The Watch, by Hebru Brantley. The Watch was playful and interesting and didn’t have a single upskirt. Hebru Brantley is a wonderful artist in his own right, but he was also a welcome breath of fresh air after Johnson’s mediocre tribute to sexual assault.
It is an unfortunate coincidence that Confused Closeted Republican there is wearing khakis and a white shirt, the new uniform of the alt right, and it’s also coincidence that this is facing Trump Tower, but it’s not exactly helping Seward Johnson’s cause that he chose the blandest outfit possible for Paean To Confused White Bread. The sculpture is meant to be Lincoln, the darling of Illinois, welcoming a visitor to our fair city, but it sure does look like fresh meat is about to get a free trip to Boys Town with the Sixteenth President of the United States.
This is what I mean when I say Seward Johnson lacks not only skill but also understanding: he clearly didn’t know that Lincoln’s sexuality is under enough debate to have its own wikipedia page, and he either didn’t know or didn’t care that Marilyn Monroe was nearly killed by her husband for shooting that scene. All he cares about is image and he’s bad at reproducing image. That is not a well-executed rendering of how human beings are, and dynamically speaking it’s boring. If he were good at visuals or if he had something meaningful to say I would be less angry, but he is mediocre at best and the statements his sculptures make are banal pap if they make any at all.
But he is rich, and I guess either he likes Chicago or he’s got blackmail on Sam Zell, owner of Pioneer Plaza, so he gets to spatter his hideous, meaningless masturbation in my city. And lest you think Seward Johnson got here on his own merits, Forever Marilyn, now on tour from coast to coast, is owned by The Sculpture Foundation, which is heavily subsidized by Seward Johnson. He basically founded a nonprofit to ensure his work gets toured around and publicized and to ensure that if no museum wants it, it has a place to go to die (Palm Springs, CA).
In short, I hope Abe and Sweater Man are happy, because at least then something good has come out of Seward Johnson’s astounding mediocrity. That said, if you are passing his latest work, spit on it for me. As performance art.
im sick of literally every trend teenage girls partake in being mocked like first its girls who take pics of their starbucks and wear ugg boots then its girls who like indie music and wear vintage clothing then girls who like pop punk and wear vans and a flannel around their waist and now people are mocking girls who wear mom jeans and mustard kanken backpacks and have moleskin journals like can we just let teenage girls LIVE and let them do shit they want to do like seriously
like obviously i hate buzzfeed and would never work at a place that has such a large hand in destroying serious journalism but i cannot deny that it would be literally the sweetest gig of all time. work in an office with a bunch of other hungover 29 year olds, screenshot posts made by 16 year olds on tumblr who are funnier and smarter than i am and call it an article complete with my own byline, and finish off my day by getting drunk on camera and being paid to do it. that’s the fucking life babey
Right.
I’ve been seeing this post on my dash all day and normally I’d let this nonsense pass but I’m sick so my ability to tolerate bullshit is at an all time low.
This is absolute crap – OP is equating BuzzFeed’s lifestyle section with its news section. Lifestyle focuses on listicles, quizzes and light entertainment. News focuses on exactly that. News.
How good are they at news you might ask?
I have a masters in digital journalism – I’ve worked for major news organisations across broadcast, print and digital. I was a producer for a major news show by the age of 24; I’ve been mentored by some of the best journalists in Australia – and do you know who everyone told me I should be paying attention to?
BuzzFeed.
“If you’re lucky, you’ll land a position at BuzzFeed,” my lecturer who holds MULTIPLE doctorates in media and journalism told my class after she took us to a tour of the BuzzFeed Australia office.
My expertise is in Australia media so you’ll have to excuse the focus on what I’m about to say.
BuzzFeed Australia was one of the first digital news organisations to become part of the Parliamentary press gallery. They were instrumental in shaking up the Australian Parliament, leading to dozens of by-elections and threatening to trigger a Federal election after they discovered a number of politicians were holding office whilst dual citizens – which is illegal in Australia. They have spent months pursuing Minister Michaelia Cash for her role in the death of an 18 year old boy in the controversial Work For The Dole scheme, and for her office tipping off the media ahead of police raids on a union office. Oh, and they were the first news organisation in the country to break the news that a major bank had lost the personal financial details of 12 million clients – every other news outlet lifted the coverage directly from BuzzFeed.
And that was in the last 12 months.
Oh and that Trump piss tape story that everyone here on Tumblr loves to crap on about? That was a BuzzFeed exclusive.
There’s a really stupid trend on tumblr to seem ‘edgy’ by mocking things that are popular or successful. Don’t shit on the hard work of dozens of journalists who report on incredibly important news and write it with our generation in mind, and then have nerve to turn around and complain that the mainstream media only focuses on older people.
You just look sad.
BuzzFeed has been bettering the media landscape for years, and they’ve been doing it while everyone is mocking them.
Rebooting for this great commentary.
Am a journalist, can confirm
The old way of journalism is dying, and through my work in the industry I’ve come to learn that it’s the industry’s own fault.
Old masters we praise refused to adapt to an evolving culture and changing landscape, and it’s biting them in the ass right now. Some are trying to make up for lost ground, but a lot of others are digging in their heels and falling victim to the confirmation bias they hate.
Buzzfeed was created in the new age. It has nothing to change because it was never intended to do things the old way. It’s spearheading digital journalism (i.e. the literal future of journalism).
Old masters are being bought out by digital media entertainment companies right now, and they’re freaking out. They’re going from writing investigative pieces about government waste to compiling lists of the 20 cutest ugly dogs. They’re watching their friends and coworkers get laid off as the big companies “trim the fat” to make the “paper” more profitable. They’re living a forced change at the hands of a big, scary “unknown” and they hate it.
Buzzfeed isn’t at risk of that, because Buzzfeed has been doing this shit all along.
They’re not facing the fire. They were born in it.
They’ve laid the groundwork for how journalism needs to adapt. They’ve figured out how to get ad revenue in the online world, which is what everyone else has failed to do.
You have someone write 3 bullshit lifestyle pieces a day.
“Ariana Grande’s ponytail evolution”
“30 times OS updates screwed over users”
“These birds had babies and we are LIVING for it”
You make sure you deliver on the headlines. Clickbait won’t work. People won’t trust you when you deliver harder news if you can’t even deliver bullshit.
Get those clicks. Get those views. Get that following. Get that ad revenue. Get those sponsorships. Get that funding.
Use the funding to support harder pieces.
“Report: Justice Kennedy refused to retire unless Kavanaugh replaced him”
“President Trump spent over $1 million of tax payer money on trips to his own resorts”
“Refugee women abused, miscarrying in Trump Camps”
This is how we have to do it now. This is what the digital era demands. Anyone with a ounce of knowledge in the area and a lick of sense could tell you that. The problem is: journalism is run by old masters, and old masters will never admit that they’re way is wrong until it’s too late.
Don’t turn your nose up at adaptation and evolution. It’s how survival works.
^^^ thank god someone finally said it…
“People won’t trust you when you deliver harder news if you can’t even deliver bullshit.”
I know this is about BuzzFeed but I really want some of my former colleagues to introduce this sentence into lectures on the value of Public Relations in a modern world.
I’m literally tearing up reading all this. Thank you, y’all get it.
she eventually got together with nightcrawler in that fic if that helps maybe – they have no basis in canon, but it was written so well so i liked that pairing for that story. maybe I’m lucky and someone remembers. you just keep being awesome and spread the polaris love!
This is a message in two parts from anon, but I wanted to put both parts in one post, so here it be!
Thanks for the love! /D.Va
There are plenty of Lorna fans with their own views on her, and their own expertise with it, and I don’t want to discount any of them. But at the same time, I’m happy to be noticed for my Lorna love. 💚
That sounds like an interesting fic, one I might wanna check out depending on what it’s like. I’m hoping someone that sees this post knows it and shares. If I see it first, I’ll make a post about it.
As far as the premise of the fic itself, I’ve got a couple separate thoughts.
I really like fans exploring things like that, going into details and dimensions Marvel never would. With how little Marvel does with Lorna, I often feel like fan works are more legit than what Marvel does, because fans actually take the time to think of things from her POV and what matters to her. Marvel seems to mostly see her as an extension of men.
At the same time, though I like the premise of this fic, it’s also one I wouldn’t wanna see in official work from Marvel right now. It’s all because of the context of what’s happened to Lorna at Marvel. After X-Men Blue, I feel she needs a full decade of stories that don’t involve Havok at all, which would include not going into the wedding.
But as I finish writing this, I also find myself thinking about how the fic itself shows the wedding as a notable Lorna-centric story for her. Many years from now, it could be a good starting point for how to write stories that consider Lorna’s POV when around Havok.
And now I feel like I’m rambling, so I’ll shut up. 🙂 Thanks again for the message!
Donald Trump is exactly the kind of person that Jesus would have thrown out of the temple and beaten with a stick, and the fact that so many self-identified Christians want to put him in office tells you pretty everything wrong with white American Christianity.
Because Jesus had authority at temples and beat people.
I 100% can’t tell if you’re joking here but he actually did chase people out of a temple at least once for using religion for their own selfish gains, complete with literal table flipping and improvised whips
So really it’s not that he would have trump thrown out as much as he would storm in and accuse him of turning his father’s house into a den of thieves before upending a table on his head
Dude, Jesus not only chased them out, he broke stuff they were selling, let loose all of their animals, and fucking flipped all the money-changing tables.
Jesus 100% would have been chasing Trump out with a table leg.
Canon Jesus 10000% better than fanon Jesus
Canon Jesus did some very weird shit. Like, just before throwing the market out of the temple, he stole a donkey, then cursed a fig tree because it didn’t have any fruit on it. The next day, or possibly immediately, everyone was amazed that the fig tree he had cursed was withered. He must’ve been in a fuckin weird mood. Going through a Dark Period. The Chaotic Mage of Light losing his shit just a little bit.
“So, what the fuck was that, Jesus?” someone asked as they’re all looking at the horribly withered corpse of the poor cursed tree.
“The power of prayer,” Jesus said absently.
“… wait, is cursing literally a form of prayer? Because some Wiccans are going to be really upset about that, like, they have a whole threefold law thing, is this… okay?”
“Listen,” said Jesus, “If I tell a mountain to get back in the sea? The mountain will get in the fucking sea. Do you want me to tell you to get in the sea?”
And they were all like, “Good demo, Jesus. Good lesson.”
Meanwhile, he was having the aforementioned public brawl in the temple.
Just keep that in mind during this election cycle – viable answers for What Would Jesus Do include flipping tables, stealing animals and striking down shrubbery with magic, all in one week.
Before Holy Week in the church calendar comes the lesser-known festival of Christ Doesn’t Give A Fuck Week
I now have a mental image of Jesus as Negan from the walking dead, dolling out justice on religious heathens with a table leg studded with nails.
The fig tree incident happened because he was hungry and couldn’t find any fruit on it. Anyone who’s experienced low blood sugar can relate to that tantrum.
Jesus was hangry.
I believe this is my favorite post ever.
My favorite part of the “flipping tables at the temple” story is that before any of that went down, Jesus went out and wove his own whip with which to drive these people out.
I like to imagine him being just so angry, muttering under his breath while he braided together the scourge.
salarta 