Longform Links – Facebook, Colonial Fruit, Spice Girls

Note: Del.icio.us changed some of their functions, and I haven’t been able to reach the inbox. Carmen and I are working to fix that, but as of right now we are not receiving del.icio.us links. -LDP

Stuff White People Like – Facebook

For a brief period of time, MySpace was the site where everyone kept their profile and managed their friendships. But soon, the service began to attract fake profiles, the wrong kind of white people, and struggling musicians. In real world terms, these three developments would be equivalent to a check cashing store, a TGIFridays, and a housing project. All which strike fear in the hearts of white people.

White people were nervous but had nowhere else to go. Then Facebook came along and offered advanced privacy settings, closed networks, and a clean interface. In respective real world terms, these features are analogous to an apartment or house with a security system/doorman, an alumni dinner, and a homeowners association that protects the aesthetics of the neighborhood. In spite of these advances, some white people still clung to their old MySpace accounts. That was until they learned that Facebook started, like so many things beloved by white people, at Harvard.

Within a matter of months, MySpace had gone from a virtual utopia to Digital Detroit, where only minorities and indie bands remain.

If you plan on befriending white people, it is essential that you join them in the digital suburbs and open a Facebook account immediately.

Vegans of Color – Colonial Fruits

It’s pretty convenient to be a vegan nowadays– I can’t gauge how hard it was years ago, I haven’t been buying my own food long enough, but it is really easy to be vegan right now. Part of that is the fact that in most of this country there is a huge variety of produce, and produce that is available year round.

[...]

And of course part of this variety is due to our ever globalizing world, which also means a world with a history (and present) of colonialism. I don’t know how much neo/colonial trade routes have to do with the production of my vegetables (at least during some parts of the year), but I know there is some major colonial undertones to the production of my fruit. Most of my favorite fruits are of the tropical variety, which of course means they come from the Global South.

See, in my ideal world, where these colonial relationships don’t exist, and capitalism is dead there is no way I could get my favorite fruits. So I’m wondering– how should I interpret my consumption of, what I now think of as colonial fruits.

Pop Feminist – Hi-C-Ya Hold Tight!

Riot Grrls were waging an overt warfare, but warfare is not what these girls need, or are even capable of. They are far too disempowered. Guerilla tactics are the art of the weak, and guerilla feminism is the sort of feminism The Spice Girls offered up– it creeped around in camouflage. The Spice Girls are not only a commodity but a resource for girls—a menu of possible meanings, to be chosen from by their fans whose choices include the group’s message of “girl power”, their wild behavior, their loud, gross, kiss-my-ass attitude, “girlfriends before boyfriends” ideology, and more all piling up in a cultural junk-drawer to piece together a personalized feminist-thought, the most subversive aspects of which are hidden in plain sight. [...]

The Wannabe video, after all, positions the Spice Girls as the carnivalesque “other”, infiltrating and desecrating the severe world of the bourgeois who are aghast but helpless before the destructive power of these crude girls. The above behavior is emblematic of the rock ‘n’ roll male disrespect for authority, which is seldom seen enacted by women in the mainstream. They align themselves with the liminal teenager– recognizing the impulse for rebellion in the teenage girl. [...]

I am not suggesting that the Spice Girls had revolutionary potential. They did not. But they had progressive potential, where girls like me could scavenge for scraps of validation and camaraderie in the otherwise unfriendly place this “world” was shaping up to be.