Censorship Now!! Quotes

“The record collection or magazine or newspaper might reveal some clue to a social movement or trend or fashion or sensibility which defies their moronic stranglehold on consciousness. A burp of resistance. A clue to a way out. A signal that life doesn’t actually depend on high-speed Internet access. And the physicality of the item infers that things meant something once, that everything wasn’t always a meaningless, equivocal post on Tumblr.”
― Ian F. Svenonius, Censorship Now!!

“Every year or so, due to forgetfulness, one may wander into a theater, lured by a hysterical advertising barrage, convinced that seeing a particular film is indispensable to one's continued cultural literacy. Then, emerging sullied, degraded, insulted, and twenty dollars poorer, one swears never to be tricked again.”
― Ian F. Svenonius, Censorship Now!!

“Like a new nation, Wikipedia inspires not only fanatic loyalty but also moral and civic dogmatism. Just as the U.S. uses its "Peace Corps" to rehabilitate imperial depredation with a bushy-tailed front group who teach ancient cultures how to take a dump, Wikipedia gives the radio-active bacteria mound of the Internet a fresh coat of paint.”
― Ian F. Svenonius, Censorship Now!!

“The absolute success of these two movements is such that at this stage, "indie" and "yuppie" are meaningless designators. The yuppie aesthetic of connoisseurship has infiltrated everywhere and now there is only--for many of us--either luxury gelato or food made of chemical waste. Ikea, Martha Stewart, and Whole Foods make yuppiedom no longer a chic and extravagant choice but an enforced mode. It's either that or eat at a toxic toilet such as McDonald's. The indie aesthetic is likewise de rigueur. H&M, Urban Outfitters, and American Apparel sell the floppy "Brit on a holiday" look to all Americans. Radiohead and Arcade Fire music is blasted from speakers at stadiums. For many poor souls, there is no alternative to the alternative.”
― Ian F. Svenonius, Censorship Now!!

“An artist who is ‘anti-censorship’ is essentially waving a white flag; declaring their work to be inconsequential; a smudge; a scribble, a doddle, or a polka dot.”
― Ian F. Svenonius, Censorship Now!!

“Records blurt out trapped moments of rapture, fear, love, anguish, despair, excitement, and insanity. When an album plays, it is a ghost wailing, imprisoned in the moment, rattling its chains.”
― Ian F. Svenonius, Censorship Now!!

“He beseeches us pitiably for funds, donations, alms, and oblations so as to grow and nourish his noble monolith. Called "Wikipedia," it's a publicly built superencyclopedia. It is our obligation to bankroll it, he says: without Wikipedia we would just revert to our former status of cave-men, larvae, algae, and scum.”
― Ian F. Svenonius, Censorship Now!!

“Wiki also has a pseudoreligious aspect: it helps Internet users to give penance. For the droves of web addicts seeking to mortify their flesh after another sticky bout of D-listing, Perez Hilton, "12 Things to Do Before You're 25," "8 Reasons to Have a One-Night Stand," bath-salt hysteria, pressing "Like" buttons, or some other such nitwit distraction, Wikipedia is a Sunday-morning salve—for the lies, betrayals, and self-defeating debauchery which implicate each and every user of a computer, and for which we all feel shame, contempt, disgust, and chagrin.”
― Ian F. Svenonius, Censorship Now!!

“...the juvenile delinquent or JD being a conflation of race and age into a condition which gave those so afflicted a magic air of special danger.”
― Ian F. Svenonius, Censorship Now!!

“...capitalism demands not only constructed enemies and constructed desires, but also real impending crisis which threatens the human race itself with extinction.”
― Ian F. Svenonius, Censorship Now!!

“Stylistically, indie was usually "shambolic" guitar music which looked for the same amateurish spontaneity as punk but omitted the punk rocker's expressions of anger and their commitment to being unloved.”
― Ian F. Svenonius, Censorship Now!!

“The yuppie was an adult version of the privileged campus longhair who had outgrown the juvenile provocations and naive politics of his youth and now had a "pragmatic" approach to changing the world. This mostly consisted of buying things that were sensible, bourgeois, and decorous, such as Volvo station wagons and imported Italian olive oil.”
― Ian F. Svenonius, Censorship Now!!

“Apple actively encourages the population to lose their possessions. Music? Store it on the Cloud. Books? Store them on the Cloud. Film, magazines, newspapers, TV are all safely stored in the ether and not underfoot or stuffed in a closet. It's a modernist monastery where the religion is Apple itself.”
― Ian F. Svenonius, Censorship Now!!

“The room of the modern man is stark, but in its simplicity exudes wealth and sophistication. There is just a bed or futon and an iPad. None of the old-time accoutrements which signified intelligence, artistic interest, or a curiosity about the world are evident.”
― Ian F. Svenonius, Censorship Now!!

“Hairlessness is an aggressive stance, and implies a lack of vanity and disdain for luxury. It implies a state of war. A French-style waxing job or pubic 'landing strip' is like the so-called mohawk haircut favored by the Pawnee tribe and used in times of war by Cossacks, airborne troops, and the like. The 'Brazilian' wax job is the full skinhead.”
― Ian F. Svenonius, Censorship Now!!

“...the shaved pubic area is meant to look preadolescent. It denotes a preadolescent disregard for the potency of sex in regard to emotionalism, romanticism, etc. Pubic hair paradoxically doesn't protect the sex organ but extends it; it is a quite sensitive part of it.”
― Ian F. Svenonius, Censorship Now!!

“Our sexual ideas are also borrowed not from the sophisticate cultures who created the Kama Sutra, but from kindred brutalists, the Romans.”
― Ian F. Svenonius, Censorship Now!!

“By 1969, dancing was all but forbidden by rock bands who insisted that their audiences sit obediently and consume drugs en masse whilst trapped in enormous arenas, raceways, pastures, and superdomes. The rebellion of narcotics had the appeal of being hermetic, secretive, and illegal, but their real purpose was escape from rock itself, which had become intolerable.”
― Ian F. Svenonius, Censorship Now!!

“The people's degenerate taste--sick and twisted to be sure--is a product of their disaffection from art, top-down programming, and the power of commercial psyop mind control. They can be guided out of the toilet just as they were guided in.”
― Ian F. Svenonius, Censorship Now!!

“The music on the radio--pop, rock, rap, and country songs which promote class war and celebrate idiocy, sociopathy, immoral wealth accumulation, discrimination, and stultifying social roles--is the thrown voice of Wall Street. All of the broker's values are exemplified in this music. ...The elite seek to program, dupe, hypnotize, control you--who they regard as their property, their 'bitch'--through these proxy singers. ...Don't let them talk to you that way.”
― Ian F. Svenonius, Censorship Now!!