21 August 2014

Motivational quotes

A while back I found out about a school of sharp satire: pairing “motivational” quotes — often about “fitness” — with images to suggest that they are about alcoholism.

This is several kinds of good, especially as a critique of how sick and hateful a lot of those “inspirational” mottos really are.

On Facebook, Rhett Aultman proposed that this implies a useful critical tool, which I'm dubbing “Rhett's Law”:

If it makes a funny “drunksperation” meme image, it's questionable motivational advice.

He unpacks why this is a useful test.


Update: Over at Weirdly Shaped And Well Photographed, some witty responses to “fitspiration” images.

Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels? Really?

Have you tried ...
  • Nutella!
  • Cupcakes!
  • Ice Cream!
  • Framboise!
  • Lamb chops!

Update: Via Aultman, an actual real life advertisement which fills the bill:

And the fact that it is easy to build a machine learning inspirational quote generator is instructive.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's apparently time for me to make another non sequitur.

Sometimes when I can't sleep I seek out your Twitter feed. I deleted myself from that virtual space even though I love the ideas that stream through it because I needed to eliminate my voice from that of the throng.

I seek the scroll of things you think and read because for a series of moments I find myself in a sparkling world of beautiful ideas in virtual spaces I do not know to visit in which I am not alone, I do not feel like I am committing thought crime, and I am, if only through a mercurial veil, connected to the ideas of other people like me out there, sensing how we are all longing for ways to build a nourishing human world. And I get it: us freaky people aren't as fragmented in our movements as we might seem to be. To coalesce takes time.

Thank you. It's a beautiful thing you offer, and a beautiful feeling to inhabit.

Sleep then becomes possible.