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Comment by navjack27 | Hacker News Reader

To everyone commenting on this using the phrases:

  Seems bizarre

  Is bizarre

  Disturbing

  Seems concerning

  Fishy

  If someone shows you who they are believe them

  Shame

  Disgusting

  Literal demons

  Very unsettling

Congratulations! You took the bait! Now you are participating in something called moral outrage. All you are doing is exactly what they want you to do. They being Balenciaga. You are free marketing.

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Okay but when does a joke stop being a joke and become serious? If they were little Jewish kids tied up getting gassed and whipped, would you be willing to take the same tone?

I agree that marketing companies are well aware of shock value and use it from time to time but I would also assert that there's a large gray area where shock value becomes actual advocacy. I assert that that Balenciaga is within or past that gray area here.

>Okay but when does a joke stop being a joke and become serious?

When people are hurt or crimes are committed.

>If they were little Jewish kids tied up getting gassed and whipped, would you be willing to take the same tone?

That is is in bad taste, but not, in fact, the Holocaust? Yes.

>I would also assert...

And I assert that I am the most handsome and witty person in the HN comment section. (That's the thing with assertions--we can make as many as we want, but unless the are in our particular area of expertise, they are of little value.)

I don't disagree with anything you're saying. The original poster claimed that we were all stupid for being angry with Balenciaga over this because Balenciaga was just joking. My claim was that you can't still claim you're joking when you cross a certain threshold. At some point, you're just unironically into the thing you're joking about. I wasn't talking about any legal implications with my post.

Looked for the photos, yikes. There's a reason people look at this stuff and get morally outraged. It is absolutely outrageous. I guess this is what they set out to do. Mission accomplished. Great. Fooled me again! They got free marketing and I've lost a little more faith in humanity.

If you've experienced this kind of abuse, this kind of stuff is beyond "triggering". "Feels" are supposed to matter, right? I guess who cares when you're pushing the boundaries of art and making money? At least the artist had the decency to set her profile to private.

Strangest thing is everyone defending this stuff as merely edgy/effective marketing. Suggesting COVID came from a lab gets you banned, but this stuff gets a collective shrug. And the left wonders what the right is angry about.

Where's cancel culture when you need it? /s

edit: To be clear, I have no problem with art, even edgy art. Context (and intent) is key. This was merely a cash grab with no artistic value. Unless the cynical cash grab is the artistic statement. Welcome to post-postmodern. Great tool, nothing matters. Next thing you know SBF will claim FTX was intended to be "performance art".

/rant

Nah, I went to an old slaughterhouse turned temporary art gallery when I was like ten (and my brother 8), I saw more disturbing art than that.

I also was into the 'danses macabres' at some point and went in four different museum to appreciate the art, in three different countries. I kinda like those photographies, they're not great art, but one or two could have their place in a museum (art show called 'danses macabres et capitalisme' could probably be done. Film/tv show extracts could be added)

I've seen disturbing stuff too... I can see the artistic value in the proper context... and 100% it's the context that matters. What's the message here?

When you go to an art show like the one you describe, you're prepared ahead of time for this stuff. You have some idea of what you're getting into. COUM Transmissions in the 70's comes to mind, shock was a part of the point of it all. Or if you're into death metal, a disturbing album cover is sort of par for the course. Its part of the overall artistic message.

To have this stuff mixed in with commercial fashion, or whatever you want to call that nonsense, is much stranger. And the kiddie bondage stuff... in a commercial space? It's just too far for something targeting mass awareness and consumption. We're not all open minded people with an artistic bent who want to contemplate these kinds of things. This is stuff that belongs in the fringes, and I don't see how any normalization of this stuff has a net upside to society at large.

If they tried to show this stuff to schoolkids I'd be in the long line of people asking what the heck the administration was thinking. Anyone who has had kids knows what I'm talking about.

Also, to be clear I'm talking about the Lotta Volkova pictures, not so much the BDSM bear stuff which is in poor taste but not nearly as outrageous. The relationship between Volkova and Balenciaga isn't clear, but that's what I found first when I went down this particular rabbit hole. Examples here [1]. The kid taped to a chair and the bedroom full of blood stand out as particularly disturbing, the message of child abuse is clear.

[1] https://www.sportskeeda.com/pop-culture/who-lotta-volkova-ba...

Pretty much all high fashion is bizarre by the standards of average people who don't deal in it.

Grouping people who call it that in with people going whole hog on the moral panic serves no productive purpose other than to lend legitimacy to the moral panic.

You will eventually reap what you sow with this "everyone who has a criticism is an extremist" rhetoric.

And, unfortunately, the very dumb in the USA will use this as justification for shooting up LGBTQ nightclubs...or pizza parlors.

Exactly! (Btw I've just been going through all of the comments of this and upping everything you post lol. You seem to have your head on right about all of this )

>the very dumb in the USA will use this as justification for shooting up LGBTQ nightclubs

Did you mean the Colorado shooting, which was done by a non-binary person whose father was a porn actor? Or the Orlando shooting, which killed 49 and was the product of a muslim immigrant who self declared as a supporter of ISIS?

>or pizza parlors.

You mean, the one shooting in which nobody was actually shot?

You know, some things are worth being morally outraged at.

It’s called having standards.

Yeah, I'm no crank, I'll let a lot of things fly. But a random piece of paper containing a printout of a Wikipedia page about a court ruling in the periphery of a photo is where I draw the line. It's called having standards.

Yes, things where actual harm is being perpetrated.

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