Inktober :: Mindless

I touched on this in my paper that discusses how the changing social media landscape will effect disaster management, but one of the biggest changes as we move forward is that we are not seeing the embracing of the changing landscape on a wide scale.

And what I mean by that is many websites still have a Twitter button or a place to put your Twitter link in your profile. You're damn lucky if you can find an icon set that has Bluesky, forget it if you want Threads or Mastodon. Want to add some links to your other profiles? Well half the built in options are dead now.

Social media sites are no longer integrated with the rest of the web, they are isolated pockets. It used to be each site had it's Thing but then they all decided they need to have All The Things, and that, I think, is when the break really started to happen. The internet stopped being "build your own experience" and became "take the experience we give you." The lack of anyone bothering to try and integrate things across the board shows that.

During yet another quick research dip into Wikipedia, I stumbled across Macaroni fashion in the 1700s.

As in "Stuck a feather in his hat / and called it Macaroni"

I was aware before now that Macaroni referred to the Macaroni Club-- though I had been told that it was an actual fashionable club in Italy, whereas Wikipedia claims that it's a ribbing term for men who took a Grand Tour in Europe and became Worldly and Cosmopolitan as a consequence-- a club that's entered by doing a thing, rather than a specific group of people who know each other (the way we use the Mile High Club in the modern day). The name itself references the fact that people who'd spent time in Italy would come back with a taste for pasta.

Macaroni gentlemen were fashionable. Very fashionable. Kinda extremely so. Which leads us to caricatures like these of such people:

But what really struck me was a contemporary description of members of the Macaroni Club:

"There is indeed a kind of animal, neither male nor female, a thing of the neuter gender, lately started up among us. It is called a macaroni. It talks without meaning, it smiles without pleasantry, it eats without appetite, it rides without exercise, it wenches without passion." -- The Oxford Magazine, 1770

Now take the above caricature and compare it to this one:

Because when you look at the Fashionable Gentleman in this (yes, racially insensitive) cartoon, he's got big hair, sure, but nowhere near as big of hair as either of the Macaronis were portrayed as having. And for all his fashion sense, he's missing the Macaroni ruffles. His lady friend, however, is not.

Another quote from the Wikipedia page:

Design historian Peter McNeil links macaroni fashion to the crossdressing of the earlier molly subculture, and says "some macaronis may have utilized aspects of high fashion in order to affect new class identities, but others may have asserted what we would now label a queer identity".

And the thing that really gets me is that not too long ago, I noticed another bit of queer history from this rough time period, specifically the Italian cisibeo-- often an openly gay man who'd act as a woman's companion at social events in place of her husband.

And I wonder how many young people went on their Grand Tour, stopped in Italy to see all these openly gay people in parties, and came back having learned a thing or two about themselves. And meanwhile the folks back home are all going "seriously, what's going on in Italy that's making all our boys turn androgynous? Is it the pasta? Must be the pasta."

Can i also point out how freaking funny is that Telemachus went on a "diplomatic" mission, only to return cosplaying as Athena to kill the suitors?

Telemachus: "im going to kill those bastards"

Athena: "no not dressed like that"

Telemachus: "ok better?"

Athena: "yes bitch slay"

this is my part of an egos tarot cards project that my babies @/ rednbluelights and @/ artifichedgy (on twitter) organized 👀 many more cool cards coming soon to you !🐍

Climate denialism in the netherlands is so fucking funny like. Bro the floods. They’re coming

bonding moment: achieved

Jack confirmed that he won’t be uploading daily anymore, maybe every second day or so! Not sticking to a rigid schedule anymore- He wants to manage his time better and appreciate the good things going on in his life now! ☺️ good for you dude! We support ya! ✨

Climate denialism in the netherlands is so fucking funny like. Bro the floods. They’re coming

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