I too am absolutely pumped to live in a world where human artistry is all but confined to the wealthy, and we all get AI generated pseudo-art instead! Woot woot!
Isn’t that how it was for the majority of history? Minus the AI crap anyway.
Still, the average person has incredible opportunity to see some of the very best art, as long as they live in or near a big city. Admission to most galleries or museums is not expensive at all.
No, (though depends on your definition of art) but there’s a reason that public buildings (Churches, for instance) were often the best decorated with murals, frescoes, and statues.
Also within local communities there would be musicians and artisans who were known for their work.
That said, art did become more privatised once the 17th century rolled around. Obviously varied by geographic regions, etc. (e.g. Artist items (amongst other items of worth) were deliberately shared out by many American Indian groups in potlatches as acts of redistribution.)
The problem is that the average working class person doesn’t have a lot of time where they also have energy and don’t have to do chores. In that state, most people aren’t receptive for learning and enjoying culture. And it’s very understandable.
I think that has more to do with technology and the attention economy than anything else. Working class people used to read books a lot more than they do now. Then along came TV (aka the idiot box) to soak up those free hours. Now it’s all Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Netflix.
Lmao I went to art school. Used to hang at the state tech school tailgates across town because I like college football. Would always get this razz from my STEM buddies there but was mostly just fun. I actually cooked at a restaurant in town to pay for rent/beer money too haha.
Got sous and almost stayed in the industry after college but decided to go for it. Currently work in my art degree field. I make more than my STEM friends. Not that it matters really to me. Everyone should be able to earn a wage doing something they enjoy.
Art won’t make line go up. PRAISE LINE 🙏 NOTHING MATTERS BUT LINE!
Can someone explain the fries part ? I understand this is in reference to an order someone would make at a fast food restaurant, but what is the link ? what does it suggest ?
The comedy is created by subversion of your expectation that college degreed people would not be working at a fast food place. The interaction is meant to be read initially as a neutral status interaction and then slides into a upper to lower status interaction as the post reveals that the answer to the implied question from the customer is that the cashier has an art degree. The initial humor is at the expense of the cashier. The next part of the joke reveals that the customer is, in fact, of true lower status of the two because they don’t understand the horror of a world that will result from devaluing those with art knowledge, exemplified in the joke as those with art degrees. The art degree here is a stand in for our capacity for human empathy and connection. What fools we would be without it. What greater fools could we become if we actively refused to cultivate it. We could become evil, and that fact, that true evil that can exist and we could have blindness to it or even become it, is the comedy here. The banality of the customer here, the interaction, the shittiness of it all, that is the comedy. How this helps, it was not generated in any way by AI and it’s fuckin sad that I have to say that.
it suggests that art majors are not employable in their field of study and thus end up working in fast food
As a retired cold and mean hearted Toolmaker and ME, there is a need for Art Majors in this world. Just not as many of them as we produce perhaps. Kind of like Astrophysicists, we do need them, but truthfully there are only a handful of jobs available for those degrees. So the majority often need to figure out what they can do besides their degree training.
If you want to be an Art Major, you will most likely need to figure on finding a job that can tangentially make use of your artistic training. Because you probably won’t become a famous painter or professor teaching art in a collage or work in an art museum.
But you can become an art teacher in a high school or perhaps work in web design or some kind of advertising. Not what the average art major might wish to be, but rather careers that can use those skills.
Idiot.
