Absolutely I do! Fear. That’s all I am explaining on that point.

I do not understand the slogan, the article, or the joke. Could you please explain them?

yes, yes, and yes.

The slogan pokes fun at institutions. Anything from table manners to the UN. All are useful in context, but nothing is obviously useful 100% of the time, or out of context. Functional fixedness is not a shortcoming in a person, but it is a shortcoming in a society.

The article was a very efficient exchange where seriousness turned to levity, and both sides got what they wanted. (Rob made his point, and the writer got heard, agreement to disagree and move on = good life skill for good world)

The joke is that anyone who wishes to be offended, can be. I find that awesome. You might not. That does not mean you are the butt of the joke, unles you make it so.

“It takes all kinds to fill the freeway. I walk. Enjoy the very serious freeway.”

What do you mean by this?

I mean slow down, enjoy the scenery, enjoy the company, and let the company enjoy your company. I’ve enjoyed this, but I’ll bet not everyone has. I hope you have too. Find a place for a little levity, and everything becomes less heavy, man.

Sure it’s a “riposte lacking in content”. But that’s the thing: if seriousness cracks as soon as it’s faced with having to explain itself to a fool, what is its purpose?

I never said that you did. I’m saying it about me. Because I seem not to be able to understand anything in this thread.

“But it’s hard to see serious questions, with so few question marks being used.”

Fine.

Can you tell me what *you* think this slogan means, and what Rob was saying?

Do you have any idea why people are so offended by this shirt?

I do not understand the slogan, the article, or the joke. Could you please explain them?

“It takes all kinds to fill the freeway. I walk. Enjoy the very serious freeway.”

What do you mean by this?

See also: BoingBoing on any given day

That is, in the past, t-shirt slogans were generally accessible to anyone at a glance. “Recognizability” (mentioned in another comment) was understood to be important, so they were generally pop-culture references.

But now, you don’t have to restrict yourself to references that are meaningful to any reasonable proportion of viewers: not to stuff that makes immediate sense, nor to the domain of general knowledge.

So long as context can be found in a simple web search on a smart phone, you’re OK making a reference to it.

I guess that’s a good thing. It’s a way of introducing people to things that aren’t part of popular culture or general knowledge.

Trouble with this approach is: the thing you are delighted by may not be introduced well by the web.

For example, the Wiki page on Flynt suggests he’s a really boring guy who epitomizes everything pretentious and unpleasant about serious formal art. He apparently coined the term “concept art”; he uses pretentious phrases like “cognitive nihilism”, “meta-technology”, “personhood theory”, and so on. Even on his own website, he comes across as the kind of pretentiously shallow person that Greg Egan so delightfully mocked in Teranesia, who, while wallowing in high art, gets himself points from the artistas by claiming to hate it – Google image search shows him beside signs saying “demolish lincoln centre” and “no more art!” – hardly concepts I think many here would get behind.

In short, Google paints him as a douchey artist/philosopher. Might it be better to post a thread or two on those of his works that inspire delight?

Compare Mark Pawson: while his wiki page has been deleted, Google shows him to be a definite source of unadulterated, unpretentious delight and desiderata, with a sense of fun that’s impossible to miss.

I mean, seriously – he did a whole book of nothing but UK mains plug die-cuts! I WANT THAT BOOK SO MUCH!

Hopefully Antinous doesn’t blast this comment to kingdom come…

Although as Mark says earlier in a lot of mediums it’s not quite as relevant nowadays due to the democratisation of the internet.

As for being told to be less serious, I’m generally thinking of people who assume that I must love being silly but I’m too shy to do it. So they encourage me to “come out of my shell.” No thanks. No interest in dancing. Not saying you shouldn’t like it, just that I don’t. And then I get the derisive sneer. They don’t seem to accept that I have a different idea of fun than they do, so they get offended. Story of my life.

I suppose I just knee-jerk at even the slightest indication that I should “lighten up” at this point. That this article seems to suggest that unserious people are preferable to serious ones (Why make a serious person unserious if it isn’t better? Why demolish serious culture if unserious culture isn’t better?), so I’m knee-jerking.

Which is why I’m trying so hard to understand what the slogan – and what Rob – are saying. Because I’d like to eventually form an opinion, and I’d rather it be an informed one instead of one based on a potentially wrong knee-jerk reaction.

Maybe I’m reading *way* too much into a three word slogan on a shirt, but as I said, I’m a serious person by disposition. Over-thinking is what I *do*.

I suppose I fail the litmus test, eh?

There’s no such implication, only an invitation that was immediately and wonderfully accepted.

and

It’s an invitation to make the serious intellectual argument that presumably girds the initial complaint. But it doesn’t happen. Instead,
Matthew …

Maybe its the brit in me (and maybe in you too) but I’d say that anyone with a familiarity of your posting style on BB would have interpreted “But what you said carries no intellectual weight”in precisely the way Matthew did – a humorous, self-referential riposte that is nearly lacking in content.

Things have changed since Flynt coined the slogan in 1963. (e.g., Instagram, YouTube, Deviant Art). Amateurs are enjoying the personal reward of being creative more now than they were back then. The shirt has a lot of nostalgic value for me (it was on the cover of Boing Boing #6, and I like Mark Pawson’s work very much).

I’m glad it is stimulating a lively discussion!

take my money….i simply must have it