There is value in your argument in that it brings up (and is itself) a kneejerk reaction for many people who encounter something they find unfamiliar or ugly, which is to promptly slap the label "art" on it and declare it pretentious frivolity. Is it a logically sound argument? No, I don't think so.estellia- wrote:
already missing the point, so many things have been brought up about this map and you're neglecting everything else
people have already time and time again stated the fact that monstrata contradicted himself by saying its a map he made for "lolz" and yet still has serious meaning behind it, and somehow that meaning is some shitty excuse of "philosophy". boi, if it were anyone who prompted the "artsy" argument first it'd be monstrata trying to be edgy and defending himself in the shittiest way possible lol. the fact that people are still defending monstrata is such a joke.
all i'm typing out here is an opinion. as much as i see no value in monstrata's map, perhaps you see no value in my argument. many things to mention about what you said about what i said but i'm seriously too lazy lol. typing out arguments is a pain in the ass, especially when it won't make sense to you anyways
You also have to understand that when Monstrata waxes poetic in his long posts that he is meming. He's invoking Horace (he literally said "yolo" in his post), he's posting huge walls of quotes from Woody Allen and Confucious, he linked Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful." He actually posted the actual god damn Tatoe song. All these posts are not "Philosophy," they are "Memes." I really don't know how any of you can think he's actually being serious when he says those things.
His map isn't a sternfaced, semantic composition on death and its meaning. That's what he's saying when he wants people to laugh at/with the map. It's kind of a silly map with silly sliders, and the song itself is pretty out there and wild. It's an interesting map for people to say, "haha wow this is kinda weird/cool." That's what he means when he says laugh. He's not hoping that people think it's utter crap and ridicule the living shit out of it.
It's not a complete mess of a map. He's already said that "there's already enough structure involved, both in the consistency of my rhythm choices, and the flow/movement choices between these patterns" and has chosen the sliders to be messy out of everything else. There's method and reasoning that has gone into the mapping, it's not a throwaway joke. Does this mean that the map is above criticism? Of course not. There are things I don't like about it and have brought up that he has seriously responded to, and other criticism that he is still now dealing with where he doesn't even once mention philosophy.
It's okay to criticize the map. But we should begin by viewing the map as what it simply is, which is "messy sliders for a messy song." There's a lot of ways you can go from there. Maybe the sliders are TOO messy, maybe the sliders are messy in the wrong way, maybe they come across as lazy instead of messy. Maybe you disagree with the rhythm choices, the flow, the bad blankets. That's where you should start when you begin to criticize the map, and if Monstrata doesn't respond to your satisfaction then that's fine. But you have to know that if your purpose in criticizing the map is to make it exactly how you want because you don't like so many things about the map and you want him to make the sliders all pretty and the map all neat, then short of him bending over and letting you backseat map for him, you are not going to get what you want.
If you notice the types of criticism he has been responding to and how he has responded to it, you'll notice a pattern. Any stupid, ideological qualms about the map, he has responded with in a way that he feels the response is deserving of: equally ideological, equally vague, equally unspecific. But if you actually get down and talk about, say, red nodes and white nodes, he will respond in the same terms. Same with actual mods.
And "it won't make sense to you anyway?" Seriously? What kind of puerile grade school jab is that? I suppose next you'll be just responding with a short post: "too long didnt read i kno im better then u anyway xd"
In conclusion, can we really all just stop screaming out "ART!! ART!! ART!!" and make some more productive arguments? Because there are more productive arguments to be made. And if Monstrata is uncompromising and doesn't get anywhere with his map, that's on him. But we first have to give the mapper a little room for himself and stop trying to enforce our arbitrary standards on him for every little thing.
