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My friend used to climb massive pine trees late at night in a park across his street, and place traffic cones on top. No one knew who was doing it or why. Many people thought it was the local council marking the trees to be cut down which upset residents. He started noticing police regularly patrolling the area, but he kept doing it and never got caught. It made the local paper, explaining how much confusion and disruption it was causing the police and local council. He hung the article on his wall.
Went on to become a stuntman https://imdb.com/name/nm3068647/
Dude did you just reveal his identity and ruin his secret streak?
Plot twist: saltesc is the real tree cone fugitive and they just pinned their crimes on a rival stuntman
Their comment has been posted before. Either they ruined it ages ago, or it has become copy-pasta, protecting the identity of the climber.
Haha. I’m sure the police knew. He had been arrested a few times for climbing bridges and construction sites around the city. Then get dropped home right by a massive pine tree with a cone on top.
Look at this fuckin snitch, dropping imdb links.
I’m glad to hear the tree was able to find a job in stunts
Surrealism is always antifascist. Cruelty and absurdity are two sides of the same coin, or perhaps the same side of two coins.
Your metaphor is not working. Cruelty and absurdity are Ying and Yang?
It’s a surrealist metaphor
I’m going to use this in the future.
“What? Your calculations don’t make any sense.”
“It’s surrealist math.”
“…”
“Pfft I knew you wouldn’t get it”
When you write a declaration of peace with the blood of your enemies.
“Sir this is a rescue for puppies, why did you make a flag out of their pelt?”
There’s absurdity in cruelty… there’s cruelty in absurdity… kinda works… like a dark yin yang.
You don’t find it so? Maybe I read too much Vonnegut as a kid, it seems clear to me.
I actually think I see a little of what you’re getting at, but maybe it’s just my willful interpretation.
The absurd is the gap between what we expect to happen, and what actually happens. We expect to go to work today, it’ll be mundane and boring, and then an asteroid hits the road and we can’t go in today. How absurd.
Cruelty is often a tool people use to gain control. The absurd by definition is outside of our control. I can see how these could be related in some way
You say surrealism is anti-fascist. Then you say cruelty and absurdity are the same thing (two sides of the same coin). Then you try to clarify by saying they are two separate things but have a commonality (two coins same side). I think ying/yang is more fitting, and quicker to the punch, in that there can be a little cruelty in absurdity and vise versa, which you were dancing around with your ill fitting metaphor. So, yes, I don’t think so. Clarity is in the eye of the beer holder.
The expression “two sides of the same coin” does not mean two things that are the same. It means two things with the same base and opposite expressions.
As such, the same side of two different coins indicates two different bases with the same expression
The metaphor works better and acknowledges more nuance than the Yin Yang.
Absurdity is like seeing your cat go “mrwn! mrwn!” at the passing plane, then suddenly flying and catching it. Then cruelty is what your cat does with the passengers.
Surrealism is always antifascist.
I dunno. Doublethink is pretty surreal, but it supports fascism. If you’re just talking about art, I think you could make the case that the Italian Futurists were at least Surrealist-adjacent, and some of them supported fascism.
I’d argue semantically that surrealism is that which lies under reality whereas Doublethink (and other Orwellian language) lies over reality
You may be thinking of 'Pataphysics:
the science of that which is superinduced upon metaphysics, whether within or beyond the latter’s limitations, extending as far beyond metaphysics as the latter extends beyond physics
'pataphysics is an extension of metaphysics - both of which extend the concept of “that which is beyond”
although connected - surrealism from the French for “under reality” is more about incongruity with what is real, but meta- and 'pata-physics are looking at what is beyond the physical.
Dream-like things like a star with a face are surreal, something like an actual sentient star would be 'pataphysical
Suspicousmaxxing to gaslight the authorities and waste their time is a very wholesome thing to do
This reminded me of a glass artist named Josh Simpson who is known for his glass spheres he calls “planets” that have amazingly complex scenes in them. For over two decades he’s had what he calls the “Infinity Project” where he encourages people to hide them out in the open where folks are unlikely to find one. If you submit a proposal to him that he likes then he’ll send you two of his smaller planets, one for you to hide and one to keep for yourself.
That’s so beautiful and amazing! Love it. I’ll have to think of a proposal to send him
This is a great illustration of Chaotic Neutral
I’m gonna bring a purple stone to the Fusion Festival next year in your honor.
They really just pulled an uno reverse on the Stasi lmao
Now THIS is art of a very high caliber, indeed!
It was just a public visual detail that elicited a stupid response from the very stupid people, and probably some delight from the rest of the population.If I was one of the chief stassi goons in town, my response would have been “counter-intelligence art” or “counter-art”, painting MORE stones purple and even other colors, so that whatever secret message the original ones were conveying would be confused, drowned out.
After many years the stasi suddenly realise they have created the worlds largest pride celebration.
Mission accomplished.
Can’t all visual art and performance art be boiled down to “just a public visual detail that elicited a stupid response from the very stupid people, and probably some delight from the rest of the population”?
deleted by creator
This story is about Stasi in East Germany. You may have thought about Gestapo in NS-Germany. Or maybe you are from the US and just read Germany (just kidding)
Yeah, my brain went on a bit of a detour between reading the story and posting.
now what got fascists to do with the story?
An embarrassing brain fart.
Some people just want to watch the world scratch its head in bewilderment.
Metafilter: some people just want to watch the world scratch its head in bewilderment
Link to the original post (on Fesshole’s official Mastodon because fuck Twitter) - https://mastodon.social/@fesshole/113069359291052427
Let me introduce you to the Nappy Man
That’s really cool but in German so no idea what I just watched
Click “CC” in top right for closed captions, then click gear, ask it to change the captions to auto translate to English. Basically she’s saying there’s a guy dressed in a silly outfit (in video) walking around and no one knows why. Some people are scared.
denn was?
.
Okay, but where are Yakko and Wakko?
That’s a neat story. The Nazis did some terrible things and it actually makes me happy to know that somewhere there was a Nazis official who was baffled
Edit: wrong side and time
The Stasi was the secret police of communist East Germany, not the Nazis.
Oh, you are right. I suppose I should learn my history
it was socialist, not communist.
No. It was communist.
The society itself was not communist, but It was definitely ruled by communists. Even Marx called himself and the people who followed his ideas communists, not “socialists seeking communism.” When people say a country was/is “communist,” they mean it’s being ruled by Marxist-Leninists, not that it’s achieved the hypothetical level of society that usually only Marxists are familiar with.
When people say a country was/is “communist,” they mean it’s being ruled by Marxist-Leninists, not that it’s achieved the hypothetical level of society that usually only Marxists are familiar with.
This is a great line
No one actually cared, but at least they felt good about painting rocks.
So, you know more about this. Great! Can you please tell me about that story?
Sure! Like they said, it just felt good to do something that they felt the police couldn’t control or understand. From OP’s perspective, they needed to be able to exercise control over those that were controlling OP. Easy to understand.
That said, the police and Stasi are (given the time) tasked with prosecuting and attacking far more than what OP could have known about, and given the relatively playful nature of children in even some of the most dire circumstances, the police and Stasi didn’t have limitless resources to chase down something that, over time, produced no significant threat.
Both the police and the Stasi were wary and paranoid, but even they have their limits, and they weren’t completely stupid. They knew they had to devote their resources to far likelier threats.
As OP said, she wanted to feel in control, and no one can really blame them. OP felt good, and that’s what matters.
Thanks for your answer. Sorry, I really don’t want to come across like a duchebag asshole. But this sounds more like a general guess of what has happened or how the Stasi might have operated in your opinion (plus some armchair psychology that kinda rubs me the wrong way).
I literally just woke up and thought you might have some actual insight on this particular case?
As an armchair this also rubs me the wrong way
Can you rub me the right way? Armchair?
JD Vance?
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
This is like what you get when you ask chat gpt to summarize something 😂
Well I was there, and I can tell you the Stasi were confused af. Got a nice giggle out of it
You are not criticizing the OP, I guess, because you acknowledge their point, that it was meaningless, but it was entertaining to distract the Stasi. But you are criticizing the OP, because you think the Stasi were so competent?
Surely the point is that the OP couldn’t possibly have known what the authority thought about their painted stones, unless:
- they had a personal contact, which is quite the omission
or
- the authorities were putting up posters around town, interviewing door-to-door etc
Cops going around and asking about purple rocks would cause a tiny stir. A kid would be aware of that and entertained. This is pre- internet and It’s Soviet culture. I’m not supporting the Soviets, but people talked to each other, which is generically quite positive.
Ok, I guess this is a matter of opinion, but ‘cops going around asking people about some purple rocks’ just doesn’t pass the sniff test for me
It’s fascinating that people have found your comment inherently negative when it is literally just the truth.
Is it fascinating i downvoted a comment that calls the post a lie without any evidence or even an attempt to make one besides vibes-based feelings? And those feelings boil down to ‘no one cared’? Do you find my distaste for that comment fascinating? I think my downvote of that comment is actually a pretty bog standard reaction to pedantry
- … bog-standard reaction to pedantry. /s
😡-😂
Yes, I do.
ok
