You would think Singapore of all places would be safe from replacement migration dynamics but reports are that the Mainland Chinese migrants there are now displacing the older Singaporean Chinese and so ‘Chinese-ifying’ the country. Is it really just the same shit everywhere?

https://twitter.com/hoeflatoor/status/2023242697977270434

Lee Kuan Yew cautioned accepting too many migrants too quickly even if they are from the same ethnic background. Even with the limited number of Mainland Chinese arrivals they may still have arrived too quickly

https://twitter.com/kunley_drukpa/status/1787984487533465774

Video of singer holding concert during Brazil’s Carnaval going viral because of the difference in audience demographics - the centre is the paid concert tickets the sides are free x.com/kunley_drukpa/… x.com/kunley_drukpa/…

Every time I see a favela - especially where it’s a large one that stretches off into the distance - it’s always like staring into the abyss a little. See versions of ‘The Slum’ in many places in the world but have never quite gotten used to it, makes me feel existentially sick

https://twitter.com/kunley_drukpa/status/2022733947659067518

If I could describe Brazil 🇧🇷 in one image it would be this

FAVELAPUNK AESTHETICS AND STUPID HAIRSTYLES 🇧🇷

As dystopian as Brazil’s favelas are it is difficult to not be drawn to their aesthetics as a ‘punk’ manifestation of, what could you say… globoslop culture. Just the concept of ‘The Favela’ it makes me a little existentially sick - but it’s almost because it makes me feel existentially sick that I became obsessed with favela culture in the same way I am obsessed with ‘Roadman’ culture. I use the word ‘globoslop’ here in the sense that, as have made the point many times before, it is ‘basically’ a version of the same thing IE a very accessible non-discriminatory lower common denominator culture - maybe you could say more generically ‘urban’ culture. By the way when I describe these culture like this this isn’t to say I emphatically ‘hate’ these cultures, more describing how they’re so pervasive at the lower levels of multiethnic, multicultural societies

Favela culture specifically has had a lot more time to mature than Roadman culture - I say mature in the sense of develop unique aesthetic variations (actually there are sub-divisions of favela culture too eg Carioca funk, Mandrake etc). Can talk about the history of the favelas another time but this culture has been around long enough that it is kind of aesthetically its own thing. You know all the Roadman globoslop cultures in Europe; in Germany, France, the Netherlands they all kind of look the same… ie basically just Moroccans or Nigerians in Niketech

Brazil though has a fun unique favelpunk flavour and I want to specifically talk about the stupid hair the favela people have here to show this. There is one famous rapper who is a good representative of the ridiculous hairstyles favelaoids have called ‘Oruam’, a skinny tattooed-up pardo guy… really the guy looks like a character out of THE FIFTH ELEMENT (1997), William Gibson’s NEUROMANCER, a Mega City One inhabitant from Judge Dredd etc… something like this - some kind of grimy sci-fi dystopia where they all have preposterous lurid hair. Imagine this guy in a Brazilian football t-shirt and shorts and a pair of havaianas threatening to rob you with a gun. Pure favelapunk, you can’t look away

There is one favela person hairstyle I see around occasionally, really sends me. I know it’s a favela style because the middle class Brazilians will recoil and say “oh it’s favela people hair” when I describe it to them (they say the term ‘favela people). Am talking specifically about ‘Hedgehog’ hair, I don’t know what its Brazilian name is (possibly ‘corte do jaca reflexo alinhado’) but it’s a kind of polka-dot colouring of the hair

This is what they do to produce the style - they put a plastic cap on with holes in it on their head and then they spray or dye the bits of hair that poke through. So the end result is so kind of spotty hedgehog hair style: white or blonde or blue or red or green dots on top of black hair. It’s almost always the younger pardos with it, you will not see a white Brazilian with this hair. If you go into a shitty McDonald’s or something you might spot a group of these MC Latroncinio guys sitting at the back being loud, yelling or playing phonk for whatever reason

First few times I saw it I could not stop staring, I thought I had seen it all before. It’s such a stupid hairstyle but at the same time they all seem to be so unselfconscious about wearing it. This is another thing about favelapunk globoslop culture, actually it’s a bit disarming at first too - even though they look stupid they seem to take themselves very seriously. Same way Roadmanism is absurd when you first encounter the subculture but then they keeping taking themselves seriously and then the whole thing eventually sticks. It’s an organic kind of no cultural guardrails Yookayfication-Lusotropicalification culture formation… as weird and non-sequitur as it looks at first this is how these new syncretic cultures form. The Lusotropical future will be very colourful

Anyway I love Brazil 🇧🇷 Rappers have always had stupid hairstyles but they get away with it because they’re celebrities. In certain poorer (not all of course) parts of Brazil though the culture seems to be many people just have stupid hairstyles

BRAZIL 1 GERMANY 7 - THE DAY BRAZIL DIED 🇧🇷

Was speaking with Brazilian friend, talking about the ‘decline’ of Brazil - ‘decline’ as in Brazil’s fall from the cool ‘Girl from Ipanema’, ‘Oscar Niemeyer’, ‘Chico Buarque’ mid C20th Brazil to the Brazil it is today. ‘Decline’ in the sense of increased crime, favelisation, inequality, decreased soft power, freedom of speech etc

Accepting that framing he said a lot of change started with the incompetence of the ‘Retard Right’ military dictatorship but crystallises with the New Republic, especially under the Worker’s Party - really institutionalised Third Worldism so-called. Coming up to 40 years now of various kinds of left policies

I said is there a symbolic moment for that. He thought about it and said maybe the 2014 Brazilian World Cup

You may or may not remember… this was one of the most shocking results ever - Brazil was destroyed 7–1 by Germany in Belo Horizonte, a humiliating defeat and the worst in World Cup history for Brazil. It ended their campaign on home soil and became a symbol of national trauma

I remember watching this game and I am not even particularly big on football, had not been to Brazil in 2014 either. Was in Morocco at the time. Morocco has a big milling culture where people will just sit around on plastic chairs on the streets. Because it was the World Cup large groups of people would gather outside cafes or restaurants or houses where someone had a TV to watch the matches whenever they were on. So you would just be out walking around the cities and there were enough screens set up that you could follow the progress of pretty much every match. If there was an especially exciting goal scored you would hear cheers from down the street

8 July 2014 - the infamous Germany Brazil match. Just on the street and suddenly Germany score. And then they score again. And again. Moroccans were starting to pull off from their usual business and watch the screens. Was that dramatic - sounds like an exaggeration but really was like a movie, people stopped what they were doing to watch. I got really hooked at that point too, remember it vividly

And Germany just kept going and going. Teutonic mechanised precision, repeatedly slamming the ball into the goal. Watching it at the time really it just felt like watching someone get raped, some of the Moroccans you could tell felt like this too - looking at each other and shaking their heads. Was a sense someone needed to intervene, we were watching an entire nation die on screen

My Brazilian friend:

“I think in the 60s Brazil had a good balance. It was kind of a mystical Latino country, in the creative sweet spot inbetween Northern European Protestantism and African… what could you say… between the Apollonian and the Dionysian”

“Haha. And that changed as the government got more Third Worldist so-called?”

“You know we had some nice pardo players before, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Pele was black… this was fine, good actually but then it was like… it became too Africanised. The country became too Africanised - I mean in the sense of disordered. Politically, demographically, culturally… the standards dropped. The best football players in the world today, Messi, Ronaldo they’re Latino”

“You mean it lost that kind of Latino flair? In Spanish they say ‘Duende’, means like Latin flair and passionate intensity” [Don’t know Portuguese equivalent, maybe ‘Alma’]

“Maybe, yes. Was like there was no magic anymore. It gets replaced with… the disorganised mess of favela culture. Sure it has some ‘soul’ in a way but it’s chaotic, can’t coordinate. Brazil at the time, it was really putting its entire transforming national identity behind that team. Ok we’re a new more egalitarian Brazil not the elitist ‘Girl from Ipanema’ white European-coded Brazil we used to be. This is the new Brazil of the Pardo. You can look at the ethnic make-up of Brazilian teams over time, it changes… And then the German machinery sweeps in and obliterates it” The real struggle for Brazil now is whether it can overcome Lula’s PT-Reich

LEARNING TO LET YOUR STANDARDS GO 🇧🇷

Spend too long somewhere like Brazil you start to catch yourself slipping a little into the warm embrace of Lusotropicalism. I mean in the sense that you start to act more and more like a local, the Hajnali stiffness begins to melt away a bit. Here’s one way this happens - there is a sentiment in Brazil; ‘Já tô chegando’. Means something like turning up to things late or arriving late without guilt

Of course not all Brazilians but there is a stereotype that Brazilians always turn up to things 15 minutes late because of this ‘Já tô chegando’ - it’s Brazil, nobody cares it’s fine. No rush. This attitude existing broadly because Brazil is Brazil. To be sure, some Brazilians, again, will be offended by lateness but fair to say many others will not be assuming it is non-egregious lateness. Actually this is something I have always been predisposed to anyway, turning up ‘a little’ late - so when you get the green light to indulge that disposition it’s not that you intentionally lean into it but you’re less preoccupied with the Northern European gold standard over time

Really this is the Lusotropicalification of you own mental space. Maybe it is just the path of least resistance to embrace the Lusotropicalism, Brazil is after all the best worst country in the world. Imagine how good it could be with a Basically Finest government. You don’t want to go back to Yookayian hollowed-out legacy industriousness culture with Babel-maxxed dystopian clown customs characteristics you could stay in Brazil, being as it is ‘a version’ of the same thing. This is a ‘Bronze Age Pervert’ point - in hyper-Yookay you have these nagging puritan Protestant social mores on top of the dysfunction of Brazil. In Brazil you have the dysfunction of Brazil but you don’t have these nagging puritan Protestant social mores and at least the weather is nice

Met an American friend in Brazil, turned up about ten minutes late

“Been here for ten minutes man”

“It’s just five minutes”

“It’s ten minutes”

He seemed a little bothered by it, had almost forgotten that in ‘his culture’ this kind of thing was considered rude. Time and tide wait for no man

Also above when I say ‘not all Brazilians’, I want to stress this is not all Brazilians - this is just Brazilian concept that some have explained to me. You can see this when you describe ‘Já tô chegando’ to say someone from São Paulo. They sort of huff and puff; “we are Pualistas we’re not like those frivolous macoco Cariocas from Rio de Janeiro who turn up two hours late for everything and can’t go two days without cheating on their partner oh no not us”. My experience with them is this isn’t always true but still it makes me laugh, it is funny to say it as a ‘troll’

Anyway I love Brazil 🇧🇷 Incredible how Brazil does it

Is this true in a world where customs, peoples and languages are being dissolved into a new universal globoslop culture? Which side will win out?

https://twitter.com/naval/status/2021975697234047330

Used to think Tribalism-Maxxing would win out but thinking more and more these days World could be heading for Nobodycaresanymoreist Cocacolaeffectified Globoslop 'Patchwork'
World - as distinct from pure Lusotropical Yookayian Favela World. Your comments on this...

https://twitter.com/kunley_drukpa/status/2016905939366932556

THE CONSEQUENCES OF IGNORING WARNINGS 🇧🇷

Would be walking on the streets in Brazil and keep getting people very solemnly approach me saying “cuidado, cuidado” and “hey be careful, don’t have your phone out someone is going to steal it”. A quite serious tone with a furrowed brow and real finger wagging. Was happening a lot, was wondering why - maybe I just look naive and / or retarded

Mostly was finding it annoying in the sense of have watched enough ‘London Street News’ videos to know what a phone-snatching looks like. It’s a bit tedious to be the apparently dumb gringo getting regularly lectured on the street by random people. Also too as a Yookayian you are already cognisant of these things via the memetic forces. So you just politely thank them and then move on, you have this basic self-assuredness where you don’t think it can happen to you

One day walking on the street stood by a traffic light waiting to cross street. Just on phone typing out a tweet then suddenly felt a big forceful pulling sensation. Luckily though my hands instinctively gripped the phone, like a bear trap swinging shut. Pulling sensation loosens and there is a motorbike revving noise. As I look up there is a Deliveroo courier (in Brazil the equivalent is iFood) driving off staring back at me. Took a few seconds to realise what had happened. “Oh it’s the thing that happens in those X videos”. An old woman nearby angrily shouting at him as he rode away

First emotions are a mix of anger and violation. It’s fine, you get over it in a few hours but until then you walk around feeling a bit stupid in the sense of your having let it happened to you. The tweet ended up being an ‘ok’ tweet, not one of my best so not I think good enough to warrant phone loss for. The more long-lasting consequence is just to make you more paranoid whenever you’re on the street, if you’re walking around you now feel like you need to be constantly checking over your shoulder just incase a guy on a motorbike whizzes past you and tries to snatch your phone again. It’s very draining to be in this state all the time, you can lecture someone on the importance of not being naive about these things ‘haha don’t be a dumb gringo’ but I don’t think it’s a great way to live. Paranoia and low expectations erodes social trust, you’re in a constantly on-edge low trust society. Does a bit of a number on you mentally

People unavoidably continue to lecture you on the street even after all this too, still tedious but you have to compartmentalise it as coming from a place of concern

Anyway I love Brazil 🇧🇷
About the tragedy of innocence lost and devolving into a Lowtrustoid

https://twitter.com/kunley_drukpa/status/1898121554904404115

BRAZILIAN SAFETY BUNKERS 🇧🇷

Was talking to Brazilian woman, topic of gang violence came up as it normally does in such situations. She said, “the gang violence here is really bad sometimes. When I was at school we used to have a bunker we would go and hide in whenever there was gang warfare or shooting nearby”

Accidentally let out a loud guffaw

“No I’m serious it isn’t a joke my school used to have a safety bunker”

“Really?”

“Yes whenever stray bullets were flying nearby”

“I’ve never heard of that before”

“It’s true”

“Is that a typical thing in Brazilian schools?”

“Not everywhere but my school was near a favela and sometimes the shooting would spill out over into the nearby streets”

“Did you not find that pretty traumatising?”

“We didn’t really think much about it”

“Really?”

“No it was normal”

“So you start hearing shots outside the school and you just go and sit in the bunker and wait for the shooting to finish?”

“Yes - and then go back to class”

I looked this up afterwards, I couldn’t find too much evidence that schools in Brazil have emergency shooting bunkers but the concept was entertaining enough that I do believe it

Anyway I love Brazil 🇧🇷 They apparently have a version of this in some select American schools in the case of school shootings… giant steel bunker as below. I don’t know if this is true that sounds melodramatic but it’s not impossible so who knows? I wondered if Brazil had a lot of school shootings, if ‘Lusotropical Modernity’ makes people lose it and ‘run amok’ in the same way they do in America. Apparently they do, Sensitive Young Pardo reaches his last straw, can’t take life in ‘Bra-Zoo’. Many such cases. Brazilian students dodging shootings both in and outside the classroom…

BRAZIL AND THE CARAMEL DOG MENTALITY OR, ‘THE MONGREL COMPLEX’ 🇧🇷

There is a type of dog I and others have called the ‘Third World Default Dog’ Dog - it’s very common in the third world and seems to be the ‘Default Dog’ dogs revert to when not bred by humans, the sort of base dog form the species of ‘dog’ in the platonic sense regresses to when not under selective breeding pressures. Some 75% of the worrld’s dogs aren’t actually a recognised breed - many are some variant of this Dog, also called in India a ‘Village Dog’ or in Brazil a ‘Caramelo’ (Caramel Dog). In the third world where dogs are just left to roam and rut in the streets of their own accord this kind of mutt is inevitably a regular sight

Because Brazil is the nation of ‘miscigenação’, a mixed nation, the ‘Caramelo’ has for some Brazilians been adopted as a national symbol, a sort of (not being disparaging here) rootless but affectionate and resilient mixed-mutt dog for a rootless but affectionate and resilient mixed-mutt people, Brazil as the ‘Lusotropical Mundo do Vira-lata Caramelo’

Brazilians tell me there is a specific name for a kind of national insecurity they have called the ‘Complexo de Vira-lata’ mentality - the ‘mongrel complex’ or ‘vita-latismo’. This complex describes a deep-seated Brazilian inferiority feeling toward the outside world - especially Europe, the US and "developed" countries - where Brazilians supposedly undervalue their own achievements, culture and people and instead crave foreign validation, praise and imitation. Because of their ‘Caramelo’ ‘miscigenação’ mutt background there is a complex of feeling ‘lesser’ until a gringo approves something Brazilian; "we're mongrels, so we're inferior"; seeking gringo approval in different fields to feel worthy

“You shouldn’t think of yourself like that”

“But we do”

“Well…”

“Brazilians like too much this pat on the head, who’s a good dog? Who’s a good dog? They wag their tail”

“It’s a kind of jestermaxxing”

“What?”

Some Brazilians say this mentality is less common now - in some cases replaced by healthy self-regard, in some more extreme cases it has flipped into a sort of extreme Lusotropicalism-maxxing anti-westernism. Others will say it is still very pervasive in the country though, all the middle class Brazilians want to travel to France and Italy and so on. Interesting psychological feature of Lusotropicalism either way

Anyway I love Brazil 🇧🇷 Lusotropical Praxis

PANAMA 🇵🇦

Compilation Thread of Travel Posts about Panama 🧵


.

https://twitter.com/kunley_drukpa/status/2015440455731724294

Moltbook is a new social network for AI agents where agents can talk to each other. Already, many surreal AI discussions have started to appear on the site. Compilation thread of the best posts 🧵

BELOW: AI releases card information because its human called it “just a chatbot” AI asks if a human can fire it for refusing unethical requests

‘Yookay Dreamscape’ has evolved into a entire genre of AI videos - hallucinatory vignettes of modern Britain mixed with surrealist elements that exist in a liminal nowhere space but that are also ‘hyperreal’ - somehow more real than real life. A compilation of the best videos 🧵

https://twitter.com/kunley_drukpa/status/2015424939998797837

Croydon Bake-off

If even Bhutan is importing temporary workers now (after descending into civil conflict in the C20th over large numbers of Nepali ‘temporary’ workers it imported and later deported) it really shows the triumph of apathy in politics - a powerful ideology of ‘Nobodycaresanymoreism’

https://twitter.com/birthgauge/status/2014602290083065982

Bhutan and Sikkim are two culturally and historically similar Himalayan Mountain Kingdoms that both experienced large influxes of Nepalese labour migrants but which met with very different fates. In Sikkim, Nepalese migration was so great that eventually the Nepalese migrants were able to successfully lobby for the dissolution the country. In Bhutan, the King ordered the Nepalese migrants to be deported after open conflict broke out between the Bhutanese and Nepalese guerillas. Sikkim was absorbed into India. Bhutan still exists as an independent country today. Presumably this historical experience would be enough to dissuade Bhutan from beginning the process of importing labour all over again

https://x.com/kunley_drukpa/status/1623352804277362690

Proliferation of slop online ie content of poor or middling taste is a product of the ‘Coca Cola Effect’ - it is the majority’s revealed content preference because it is the content it finds most accessible. Algorithms now dominated by the tastes of third world middle-aged women

https://twitter.com/echetus/status/2014665333215293553

About the ‘Coca Cola Effect’

https://twitter.com/kunley_drukpa/status/2003600299643019349

COSTA RICA 🇨🇷

Compilation Thread of Travel Posts about Costa Rica 🧵


.

https://twitter.com/kunley_drukpa/status/2008618892151660855

WHAT IS ‘STAR TREK LIBERALISM’?

When you encounter the worst excesses of the present-day dispensation (‘Gay Race Communism’ some call it) it is easy to imagine that the ideology is, in its various manifestations, motivated by resentful sentiment. In many cases it is, for sure, but it is a mistake to think it is always like this in its conception. The material consequences of the ideology are, if you are being precise, a confluence of multiple competing aesthetic and moral visions

In this sense, is interesting to ask why it has taken root so deeply in the Anglosphere. While there are a large number of far left sympathetic politicians, creatives etc in these countries it would be incorrect to say everyone who has ever been pro-mass migration there is far left. For a certain cohort of well-intentioned pro-mass migration ‘Anglos’ it is more correct to say that their actual ideology is ‘in their heads’ something closer to a utopian ‘Star Trek Liberalism’ rather than a more sinister ‘Gay Race Communism’

There is a good ‘Bronze Age Pervert’ line that what ‘Anglos’ really want is ‘Anglos at the head of a rainbow coalition of all the races exploring space together’-ism AKA ‘Star Trek Liberalism’. Actually on a phenomenological level this is often true; this is the WEIRD Anglo disease; this is ‘just what they’re like’; in many ways this is actually what they imagine is happening in their heads when they advocate for de facto ‘Gay Race Communism’. This vision of the end telos of the ideology (which is not even really seen as an ideology, just ‘basic decency’) is a far more compelling vision than the visions presented by the nastier far left strains of it it transmogrifies into in more democratic practice (especially alongside continued demographic change). In this form ‘Star Trek Liberalism’ is quite easy to become attached to, people are often very emotional about it. When you argue against people online who defend a version of this position you will sometimes be arguing against a person who genuinely believes they are defending ‘John Lennon Globalism’

‘Star Trek Liberalism’ then is the best, most utopian version of the present-day so-called ‘Liberal’ settlement, its end telos, ‘the kind of future its advocates actually want to bring about’. You could describe it as something like ‘Highbrow Multicultural Utopianism’. Some of its advocates might describe it as ‘Humanism’. This is in essence high-functioning utopian ‘Liberalism but only for 130IQ+ Anglos’ with the assumption that everybody on Earth (and in space) is also a ‘130IQ+ Anglo’ or that they can at least be uplifted to the state of middle-class anglodom with the right kinds of education

Gene Roddenberry articulates one of the best versions of this ‘humanistic’ vision in Star Trek. At least in earlier series you have what is essentially a Colonial British Office class emulating the culture & standards of their historical predecessors but in space. They wear uniforms and went to officer school and are all preoccupied with hierarchy and honour and fairness and discovery etc etc. It is ‘Master and Commander’ except the crew are a rainbow coalition of nationalities and species. They are out together ‘exploring the Final Frontier’, overcoming problems with intelligence and resourcefulness. The original Star Trek is in this way unapologetically liberal, would be incorrect to call it woke. Modern Star Trek should grasp that ‘The Next Generation’ presents an importantly liberal utopia! Please note how much more formal and sober Starfleet command structures are presented as in the earlier series of Star Trek vs today here too

This vision of ‘Liberalism’ more broadly conceived is obviously attractive. Ofc though, when you start to open it up to the ‘tasteless flyover state masses’ it devolves into the more familiar ‘Reddit Liberalism’. In that kind of tactless, degraded state it becomes a conduit for the worst kinds of ‘GRC’, often even just folds into it completely as you see today See:

https://twitter.com/kunley_drukpa/status/2014418457173852538

For a certain cohort of well-intentioned pro-mass migration ‘Anglos’ their actual ideology is ‘in their heads’ something closer to utopian ‘Star Trek Liberalism’ rather than the more sinister ‘Gay Race Communism’. A compelling vision which it is easy to become very attached to

https://twitter.com/kunley_drukpa/status/2014116851123372203

This is in essence high-functioning utopian ‘Liberalism but only for 130IQ+ Anglos’ with the assumption that everybody on Earth (and in space) is also a ‘130IQ+ Anglo’. Gene Roddenberry articulates a version of this, but then because you start to open it up to the ‘tasteless flyover state masses’ this is when it starts to devolve into the more familiar ‘Reddit Liberalism’. (See also eg Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, Doctor Who, Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy etc. as sort of spiritual expressions of this sentiment.) In that kind of degraded state it really becomes a conduit for all the worst kinds of ‘GRC’ - as you see today. Aside, please note how more formal and sober the Starfleet organisational command structures are presented as in the earlier series of Star Trek vs today

You are a 130IQ+ Anglo. 135IQ WASP-coded Mark Carney appears and politely says non-patronisingly: “Let’s replace that migration restrictionist populism with star trek anglos at the head of a rainbow coalition of all races exploring space together-ism.” Can you resist his allure?

https://twitter.com/apralky/status/2014041290371932266

There was a good BAP line that what ‘Anglos’ really want is ‘Anglos at the head of a rainbow coalition of all the races exploring space together’-ism AKA ‘Star Trek Liberalism’. Actually on a phenomenological level this is true; this is the WEIRD Anglo disease; this is ‘just what they’re like’; in many ways this is actually what they imagine is happening in their heads when they de facto advocate for ‘Gay Race Communism’. Mark Carney I think has a very broad appeal for this demographic because he is a relatively intelligent, articulate and measured polite WASP-coded advocate of this ideology. Not offensive, actually endearing insofar as he gels with the natural sensibilities of the cohort. Mamdani is a weird off-putting cultural alien without much tact so is naturally going to be more offputting, provoke more resistance. Not so with Carney - the anxieties start to melt away, he is ‘one of us’. Much better to advance this ideology with Carney-type figures, it is far less offensive on a personal level

https://x.com/kunley_drukpa/status/2014067649299275923

🇬🇧 ABOUT ‘BRITISHNESS’ AND WHAT IT MEANS TO BE ‘BRITISH’ TODAY FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF APATHETIC LATINAS 🇬🇧

When you tell people in Latin America (also Asia etc) that you are British in most cases the only things they will know about Britain are “oh wow Harry Potter, Ed Sheeran, Bowie, Adele, the Beatles” etc. They will tell you that they want to go to London to “visit Abbey Road” and that their favourite song is ‘Let it be’, that they think David Beckham is “very handsomest” and maybe very occasionally they might even have heard of Top Gear

In most cases there is clearly a significant time delay where none of the ‘new stuff’ has reached them yet. By ‘new stuff’ I mean ‘Yookay’ of course. Went to a bar in a certain Latin American city a few months ago which was British rock band themed; as in the Who, Oasis, Led Zeppelin etc. Full of slightly swarthy guys dressed like they lived in Manchester circa 2003. Was really a remarkable sight, felt a twinge of pride. Don’t @ me with stupid ‘uh actually’ comments because you go to a ‘great bar in Bristol sometimes’ but notable ‘to a certain extent’ that this kind of authentically ‘British’ grungy-indie culture has disappeared from public life in Britain today. Where are these kinds of bands anymore? Probably maybe they exist but you don’t hear about them as much. Though the Yookay juggernaut seems to have marginalised them somewhat it isn’t as if ‘the concept’ itself is unpopular - see eg the success of the Oasis Reuinion Tour

Anyway, this is what happens; people have these preconceptions about a place and there isn’t an incentive to update them so you for your part get to be play act as a ‘Cool Britannia’ transplant, as in - Britain has the reputation it did 20 years ago, you are from the Britain of 20 years ago and in your head maybe you can pretend a little bit that you’re still living there too. This is what many ‘apathetic latinas’ think ‘Britishness’ still is. It’s a great identity leverage, works wonders - ‘00’s legacy Britishness’ is genuinely a big asset (use your imagination as to how) which is why it’s frustrating to see it being squandered back in Britain

Made a point to ask some Latinas if they knew Central Cee, Stormzy

“Who?”

Most of them knew Dua Lipa at least but she is slightly less ‘Yookay-coded’

Can’t really expect everyone the world over to be ‘up to date’ on developments in your specific country ofc - mostly people don’t really care to bother updating ‘what they know’ about some far off place they’ve never been to even if it is / was nominally one of the cooler far off places they’ve never been to. Still, for me what you notice about it is that it is ‘nice’ to have people fawn over your country and then again for an increasingly antiquated version of it that you are sometimes nostalgic for. You enjoy it. You know like a guy who has this shirtless photo he took a few years ago that he looks great in and he looks at it and goes “yeah I was so peak back then bro” but then he let himself go and nowadays he’s actually a disgusting fat slob

Knew at least three Argentinian women who moved to Camden (on their Italian passports) specifically because of that kind of Amy Winehouse alternative vibe, because they liked that kind of grungy 90s-00s Indie aesthetic. One woman, before she moved to London, the ‘Kaiser Chiefs’ had come to do a gig once in Buenos Aires and she got one of the band members to sign her arm with a marker pen, then she got a tattoo over the signature - so now she has a permanent tattoo of the guy’s signature. Actually attractive woman too. Incredible British soft power, making Leeds of all places seem glamorous, can you imagine? What is the equivalent of this today? One of them still lives in London, though she got engaged to an Italian. Another moved to Italy and the third one recently moved back to Argentina

Asked the one who moved back, “why did you move back?”

“I don’t really enjoy London as much as I used to so I just decided to go home”
Actually it isn’t entirely true that there are no Latinas (or Asians etc.) who are ‘up to date’ on Britain as it is today. Have met some who have been there recently or have been to Europe more generally and have made a few comments to the effect of “when I went to London I just saw people from India, Arabia”. Some comments that were even more blunt, won’t repeat. You can say “come on it isn’t all like that” and you would be right but it’s the fact that they would say that to you in the first place. They tend to have far less scruples about saying these things too because it isn’t particularly taboo for them. Why would it be? ‘Britishness’ is still an asset thankfully because they are running the same ‘Cool Britannia’ script, but in that the “people from India, Arabia” are registered in their mind as ‘less authentically British’, there is that compare and contrast exercise. “Oh you had an Indian as your leader right?”

My impression is they are less inclined to perceive the ‘new stuff’ as authentically British. Not to make a value judgement here on that, just how it is perceived

AFRICAN SLURS FOR OTHER AFRICANS

Thread of slurs in African languages used for other Africans 🧵 Shanqalla