Will the commercial culture always be subject to an endless churn of teenagers titillated by transgression? It's not just music. That's where streamer culture is at. That is their South Park and Eminem. Lil Wayne having face tattoos and wearing skinny jeans and picking up a guitar.

There will never be a shortage of naive and inexperienced young people whose lives are constrained by parents and school to the point they find "rule breaking" (edge) novel and exciting. Another teeny bopper pop star going from family friendly to hypersexual. Tedium. Cliche.

We say that stuff doesn't age well, but apparently it is timeless.

Yes but that doesn't make it always timeless

New Boyz and Soulja Boy are just as much of what you're saying as Wayne or Kurt Cobain and them niggas music kinda suck

There's also the part where you turn 20-24 years old, get the first taste of not being the Newest Youngest Freshest Wildest Mfs anymore, losing that angst/rebellion and actually developing your real taste

And when exactly do they grow out of Kanye West

i mean yeah this has been the meta for advertising since the freuds

The genius of his career MAGA Nazi era aside is that his music/energy of his brand is what is described in this thread, for "grownups" or at least people 20-40 years old

It’s cyclical for sure

UncToThe

Been thinking about this a lot lately and how impossible the prospect of properly integrating seems, versus endless compartmentalization

Transgression in art/culture/entertainment can function as permission or justification for our own aberrance to exist. And when we don't have transgression or taboo abstracted or fictionalized, we'll happily take the genuine article. I figure adolescence is when most folks start to notice or reckon with the "acutely felt tensions" caused by their own aberrant traits, so naturally that's when our appetites for edginess develop: "Damn, this guy killed a whole family; this puts my foot fetish in pleasant perspective. My dark secret is much lesser than theirs, and at the same time I'm able to use this shocking event to confirm that transgressive darkness exists in everyone; how thrilling!"

We tend to root those traits in moral or societal failings as opposed to something that occurs physiologically; and if we ascribe a psychological cause to anything, the damage is often framed as permanent. Much easier to develop the bifurcation of Outwardly Presenting Normal / Internally Fostering Unstoppable Transgressive Desires through this perspective; and fostering that bifurcation in paying customers is necessary for the Titillation Market to thrive

You should read Gary Indiana's Three Month Fever about the guy who killed Versace. Eviscerates the idea that our boring culture can mine anything significant out of such an act. Inane celebrity, boring scenes, and arbitrary human actions. "How might we ever know the searing truth behind this idiotic anecdote?" Loved it.

I also read an article about Leslie Fielder's literary critique and how he proposed the American novel was rooted in new beginnings generally speaking. The old world was old. So adolescent stories made sense here. And we haven't really escaped that! Arrested development in perpetuity.

Theyre falling for tired “OMG HE SO SUS” gimmicks with Nine Vicious and Plaqueboymax