Little Red Barbie Corvette Phenomenon

In light of recent posts, random shit like this has psychick resonancy, boy.  Kaos magick, wot?

A)  Ozymandias and Harriet 

B)  Uncanny Valley of the Dolls

 

How long before they notice?

Title of an article about the doomed OceanGate vessel:

Videos of 'Titan Submersible Implosion' and 'Screams' Flood Social Media

Really?

Uncanny Valley of the Dolls

The Pygmalion story in essence, is as follows:

According to Ovid, when Pygmalion saw the Propoetides of Cyprus practicing prostitution, he began "detesting the faults beyond measure which nature has given to women". He determined to remain celibate and to occupy himself with sculpting. He made a sculpture of a woman that he found so perfect he fell in love with it. Pygmalion kisses and fondles the sculpture, brings it various gifts, and creates a sumptuous bed for it.

In time, Aphrodite's festival day came and Pygmalion made offerings at the altar of Aphrodite. There, too afraid to admit his desire, he quietly wished for a bride who would be "the living likeness of my ivory girl". When he returned home, he kissed his ivory statue, and found that its lips felt warm. He kissed it again, and found that the ivory had lost its hardness. Aphrodite had granted Pygmalion's wish.

Back when I started my last post about artificial life, I'd only recently come across the story of Christian Montenegro, a Colombian man who is married to a doll, and has had three children with her.  He posts the family pics on TikTok.   To be honest, I found it creepy.

Christian and Natalia welcome Sammy into the World

Montenegro and Family

After my post I looked for him on the internets, never having known his name.  He was far from the only man married to a doll.  This page talks about five such men.  And none of them are Montenegro.

https://twitter.com/Davecat/status/831486855577272321/photo/1

One of them, however, is Davecat, self-described "Robosexual and iDollator," whose picture intrigued me.  I Googled him and came across this interview in the Atlantic.  It's thoughtful and worth a read.  One thing he articulates is a common theme: These men have had failed relationships and find it easier to deal with these idealized women; inert and passive.   One way of looking at it.  But Davecat, well, he is one articulate fellow, and a second interview I read with him goes a bit more into his attitudes and ideas about what he calls "Synthetik" women. 

They are all modern Pygmalions.  Repelled or used by women, or otherwise frustrated with more conventional relationships in one way or another, they create an ideal woman, or a facsimile thereof. Like Pygmalion, each one "kisses and fondles the sculpture, brings it various gifts, and creates a sumptuous bed for it."   Not having a sympathetic goddess at hand, however, whatever life their dolls have remains a thing of the imagination.

Attraction to a doll, sexual or otherwise, is called Agalmatophilia a kind of objectophilia....

Davecat appears in a documentary about the subject:

I'm a pretty open-minded guy, but I admit, I find all this pretty weird.  And rather sad that these men can't develop relationships with real women.  Since my divorce, I've been single, and I can empathize. Loneliness sucks.  It can kill.  But I don't think I would find any comfort in a doll.

And it just goes on and on.  Wikipedia speaks of doll fetishism, robot fetishism, gynoids, sex dolls, human furniture....

I remarked, perhaps too flippantly, in my last post that the love of a doll may br akin to necrophilia. One article I read says that it's a product of toxic masculinity. 

One thing Davecat notes is that iDollators tend to be men with female dolls.  Those male dolls he knows about are to a number owned by gay men.

So maybe it is a product of toxic masculinity.  Davecat didn't strike me as a toxic guy.  Sadly he didn't get back to me.  I probably shouldn't have put a reference to necrophilia in my first email.  Maybe he feels he's said all he can, or needs to, already.  

In the meantime, it will be worth checking out Carol Ann Duffy's Pygmalion's Bride, a book which looks at Ovid's story from Galatea's point of view.

Pygmalion is the archetype of all men, who desire to be dominant in the relationship and shape how women should be. 

I'd remove that first comma!

Anyway, until more thoughts come together on this subject, I'll leave you to take a stroll through the uncanny valley of the dolls....

Davecat, if you do read this, get in touch.  I really do want to understand and not to mock or defame. And any women out there who read this, please comment.  This post could use needs a woman's point of view.

A Million Ducks?

 

Today I noticed that Laws of Silence has had over a million hits: 1,001,035 to be exact.  What began as a way to oblige myself to gather my thoughts and set them down coherently has evolved into hundreds, if not thousands of pages dealing with a wide range of topics.  Some of it is, in retrospect, disjointed.  Some of it is filler.  And then there are gems which I think contain insightful and original reflections which, if pursued and whipped into shape, could form the kernel of a dozen or so doctoral theses.  And by whipped, I mean really flogged.  The diamonds are more than in the rough; they are buried a foot deep in a sand trap.

A few figures

Aside from myself, The Gid has written a number of popular posts.  Since 2007 we've acquired a massive 2 followers!  We've written 723 posts.  We've received and made 2012 comments.  For some reason ": Matter and Spirit, or Venus' hand mirror...." has led the charge with 73.1k hits.

2010 was productive, with 125 posts.  That's an average of almost 10 and a half per month!  But depression takes its toll.  In 2019 and 2020 there were 3 posts each year.  But in 2022 we roared back with 79 posts.v  We've had 7 so far in 2023, but part of that is due to the creation of a blog dedicated to the documentation of the characters and events of a fictional universe, generated by AI. For deets, pleas visit AI, Cap'n!  As far as I know, this will be the first work of fiction to be written in the form of a blog.  A companion, perhaps, to Plastic Tub, the first work of fiction written as a Wiki.  The Tub's not dead, but sleeping, and clocks in at over 600 pages.

 

Ripoffs and props

Since monetizing the blog I've made about 140 euros in ad revenue.  Our work has been shamelessly copied and passed off as the work of others. We've had our feed systematically posted to another blog with better SEO to steal our hits.

On the bright side, many serious blogs have linked to us, and we've been mentioned in at least one academic conference and cited in a a doctoral dissertation. Some posts have appeared in bibliographies.

We've made some friends but aside from a few criticisms, no enemies. I'm proud of many of these posts, and it represents a significant part of my work as a writer.

The requisite sentimentality

Inshallah, we will continue to learn about fascinating shards of history, or tempests in teapots as one reader once remarked, then write 'em up, and break those laws of silence.

Thanks to The Gid.  He's authored a few of our ten most-visited posts, and even though he doesn't write often for LoS today, he still reads drafts s and suggests edits and ideas when I'm feeling stuck or floundering.  Thanks, Dave!  

Keep on reading, folks, I think the best is yet to come...

R.I.P. Monte Cazazza (1954-2023)

Artist, prankster, and industrial music pioneer Monte Cazazza has passed on.  

His work can be streamed here.

Cazazza was an underground legend who deserves wider recognition, He worked with Factrix, Survival Research Laboratories, and Boyd Rice, pioneers to a number.  It was he who first coined the phrase "Industrial music for industrial people," popularized by Throbbing Gristle.  Anyone up on their industrial music history will recognize among Cazazza friends and collaborators the creators of what evolved into today's industrial acts:  NIN, Marylin Manson, et al.  The purists sneer at these pale shadows....the founders' music grew from avant-garde performance art and the writings of Burroughs and Luigi Rosso as much as any pre-existing music.  Indeed, they had to actually invent some of the instruments they used.

Cazazza's version of Brion Gysin's Kick That Habit Man is an indication of his avant-garde influences.  The permutations of this phrase were generated by a computer and were meant to be recited -- and were -- at events such as the Domaine Poétique, a kind of happening featuring pre-recorded sound, light shows and projections, and the recitation of works such as the permuted poems of which Kick is only one example.

Cazazza is also a member of a club including Billly Childish and Sonny Vincent:  artist/musicians banned from art school campuses.  I'm not gonna provide a link to those tales.  You'll learn more by searching it out for yourself.  Cazazza was ahead of his time; an entire genre owes him its very name....

R.I.P. M.C.