aureliobuendia

I think everyone on this site either knows or is a scenester. By that, I mean that person in every group who likes shit before it's cool, and hates it at the precise moment when everyone thinks it's cool too.

If you havent noticed the scenesters, Ill point them out for you; theyre the ones who brag about smoking a j with Jack White at that gig in 99 where only 20 people showed up. They started wearing the Flashdance sweatshirts and white fuck-me boots from the '80s w/ electroclash haircuts before electroclash was even a word, and we're onto something else by the time somebody thought the word electroclash up. Theyre the same ones who shame you for not seeing Donnie Darko (the re-cut, not the original), who are appalled (APPALLED!) that you dont like Peaches, who go on at length about how Thin Lizzy will never be as influential as MC5. The scenester has partied with Jessica Alba, and thinks she's square.

The scenesters knew precisely when to starting hating on the Strokes and loving Franz Ferdinand, knew when to start hating on Franz and love Interpol, and can calculate to the hour and minute when it'll be cool to be hating on Interpol and start loving the Strokes again. They know this because they start to hate their new thang as soon as everyone love it. Scenesters are not populists. For them, the only cool shit is stuff that only they and few others know about. Its how they distinguish themselves, and its hard to distinguish yourself from everyone when everyone loves the same shit that you do. This is why scenesters rarely sustain interest in anything for very long, so you know youve bumped into a scenester when they tell you that REM never recorded anything worthwhile after they left IRS Records for Warner (which, come to think of it, isnt wrong, but their opnion is based mostly on the fact that even soccer moms now like REM).

Naturally, I hate these people. Theyre naturally hate-able. Their sad, shallow elitism is repugnant, but what I think irks me is, taste-wise, these smug assholes are usually right (about 80% of the time, at least), which, I guess, probably explains why they're smug assholes in the first place. Scenesters are the pop-cultural equivalent of the Navy Seals or Special Forces, going out to do the real wetwork so that regular army won't take too many casualties (and not that I've met any Seals or Rangers, but I hear they act like Big Swingin' Dicks too).

I suppose I'm just jealous of their prescience, or maybe the confidence they have in their own taste. Whatever. They may be doing us all a kind of favor. I just wish they wouldn't rub it in the way they do.

I have to confess now that this scenester-diatribe is really just a long-winded digression, but I had to get it off my chest. Sorry. The real reason I was writing is because I'm reading this book, one that all my scenester "friends" berated me for not reading. It's called Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. It's written by Chuck Klosterman, a guy who is either stupid or brave enough to try and make it as a writer. I suspect it's a combination of both (jokingIm joking).

Anyway, all the scenesters said I had to read this book, which made me resistant to getting it, mostly because I had a feeling I'd like it, and I didn't want to give the pricks the satisfaction of knowing they were right (again). Well, I finally picked it up, and yes, I like it. A lot. It's got the ring of truth to it (you know what I'm talking about).

Chuck has a chapter in the book on Internet porn, where he makes the astute observation that since the invention of the Internet, most people (well, guys, mostly) are obsessed with two kinds of women; celebrities, and regular people. I think he was right on the money as far as why guys want to see naked celebrities (he argues that it's kind of a democratic act, an equalizer whereby you steal power from the celebrity and prove that for all their money and beauty, they're as regular -read flawed- as regular folk), but he's a little vague about the obsession-with-regular-women part. He writes a few cleverly worded platitudes, but they never get to the heart of the matter. So naturally, I'm going to one-up Mr. Klosterman and go to the heart of the matter (or die trying).

I think the people who came to this website and love it do so for a very simple reason: plausibility. Regular porn has its merits, but its a little tiresome, with it's fixation on unnaturally large breasts and airbrushed complexions and idealized perfection. Therein lies the problem; it's idealized, it's not real. We have enough awareness to know that people that perfect never occur randomly in nature. Sure, there are many naturally beautiful people in the world, but the 'perfect' ones most likely got that way with help (be it surgery or Photoshop) and we all know this. And from a pure-fantasy point-of-view, their fantastic perfection wrecks the fantasy.

Before the Internet, the only place to find porn was in magazines or movies, and the taboo factor forced it into the shadows, making it less common, more remote. Seeing porn in the good old days was like looking on the face of God (forgive the hyperbole, that mightve been just me). But the Internet did in our ideals (in more ways than one, now that I think about it). Now, we could see porn whenever we want, and it became so pervasive that it lost its novelty. Moreover, the Internet helped pull back the curtain and reveal the wizard; we heard about boob implants, hair extensions, ass implants, and suddenly, our efforts to achieve perfect natural beauty made perfect natural beauty seemwell, artificial. As a result, the perfect woman started to bore us (as does anything that seems perfect...in porn, as with most things, it's often the imperfections, the idiosyncracies that intrigue us). It's the law of diminishing of returns; kissing is exciting, then its okay, and then it gets boring, and we want to move up to heavy petting. Same thing here.

Which brings me back to plausibility. Now that we've grown tired of perfect woman internet porn, we now salute the women we could reasonably expect to see in our everyday lives. Suddenly, the plausible woman has her own kind of mystery. What guy (or girl) hasn't walked down the street, seen an attractive woman, and not wondered what she might look like naked? Well, now, he/she can know for certain.

But the titillation of literally seeing the girl next door naked is only part of it. I suspect what we really want is plausible women to have plausible fantasies about. In the movie "High Fidelity" John Cusack says that guys gotta know when to "punch their weight", which is pretty much the same thing as saying know your place. If you're a reasonably smart, funny fellow and women don't vomit at the sight of you, chances you are you'll attract roughly the female equivalent. Sometimes you move up to heavyweight and date a rocket, but that can make you really insecure, because you'll constantly fear losing her to a real heavyweight. You can move down to welterweight, but then you'll be bored, because then, you dominate (call me an asshole, it's true). Its a subconscious sexual caste system, and it pretty much applies to everyone (except rawk stars....you can look like the Elephant Man and behave like a co-ed at a kegger and still date supermodels if you're a rawk star).

So, essentially, you stick with the people in your weight class, and you'll always be challenged w/o feeling out of your depth. The same logic holds for internet porn. A fantasy about a woman you see on the internet is better if you have a feeling that you could reasonably enact that fantasy in real life. It's more visceral...more plausible. A fantasy about a woman who won't immediately make you feel like shed reject you because you're not rich enough, good-looking enough, cut enough, hung enough, funny enough, or smart enough, and may even dig you if you she met you in real life...well, that makes you feel sexy, and everything (including internet porn fantasies) are better when you feel sexy.

Hence, the success of a website like Suicide Girls, the ultimate porn scenesters. Except, I don't hate them for being right.

Work starts up again tomorrow, so I think this will be the last long rant I do for a while...assuming, of course, that anyone other than me gives a shit.