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Jesse Thorn on "the New Sincerity"
For years I've been writing about, and running an annual conference about, "authentic good experience"... but what makes something authentic?
Young radio host Jesse Thorn answered for the twentysomething generation in a Gothamist interview awhile back.
[Gothamist]: What is The New Sincerity?
[Jesse Thorn]: At its core, it’s a rejection of what we called The Old Irony, which ruled the cultural roost, or at least the hipster part of the cultural roost, for the past fifteen years or so. It's not the same as the Old Sincerity in the sense that it is bigger and better. ... Part of what the New Sincerity is is being larger than life and the acknowledgment that the coolest stuff comes from being completely unafraid of being seen as uncool. It encompasses everything from small things like high-fiving and flying a kite to bigger things like being Evil Knievel. ... It's entirely possible to intend to create something that's New Sincerity and it's possible to create something that's New Sincerity through the Old Sincerity.
Seems complicated. Back in my day, sonny, we were authentic - without all the post-ironic cultural baggage... and we liked it!
Thank god irony is dead!
I'm so tired of people thinking it makes them cool or relevant just because they're detached enough to be removed from experiencing life. All it is is fear coated with more education than guts.
Step in to the mess of living and then be brave enough to sincerely claim it as your own.
Ha!
If I may quote Harry G. Frankfurt's excellent book, "On Bullshit": "Facts about ourselves are not peculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical dissolution. Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial–notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. An insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit."
I live by the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and I suffer daily from post-ironic stress disorder. Care-Bear backpacks, anyone?