Douglas Coupland: Moody | Hacker News Reader

Douglas Coupland: Moody

ft.com

23 pointscentury1925 comments

"Douglas Coupland is currently artist in residence at the Google Cultural Institute in Paris"

Try explaining THAT to someone from past decades. Wow

The Medici's made a fortune in banking and politics and were great sponsors of art.

I think more-so what past decades may find unusual is that a Canadian, born in Germany, is an artist in residence position in France, at an American institution.

In all fairness, in the days of the Medicis, those who were both educated and well-off lived in as cosmopolitan a society as the one you describe.

> Until the mid-20th century, alcohol was it.

Not really. Cannabis, opium, mushrooms, etc. have been around forever and have been marginalized to a greater or lesser extent over time, and often much less than they were in the 20th century.

I've enjoyed some Coupland work, but I didn't get this piece at all.

>Not really. Cannabis, opium, mushrooms, etc. have been around forever

Not really. He's talking for the general population, and that didn't do opium or mushrooms, nor cannabis that much. And stories of heroine and opium in the 19th century or so are mostly exaggerated, the majority didn't touch those substances (not even in China). Thomas De Quincey or Coleridge etc were not representative of what was going on for the average person (nor was the luben underclass -- in the same way crack and meth addicts in existance today doesn't mean crack use is something people just do).

He's not talking what the 1% did. He talks about what the 30% - 70% did.

Besides, he also says just a little further down:

>Until Prozac came out in 1987, the only mood-altering options were mid-century: booze, pot and whatever MGM fed Judy Garland to keep her vibrating for three decades.

The majority (or the 30-70%) don't take Prozac either.

I'm with you - this is a noted (at least in Canada) author, who appears to be ignorant of history and especially of markers in his own craft. Sherlock Holmes/snuff, etc.

I remember reading this in uni too - lots of examples in the 1800s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_English_Opiu...

>Sherlock Holmes/snuff, etc.

Sherlock Holmes or Freyd etc, is not indicative of any trends in the general population. Might as well have used Mescalito indians as an example to rampant psychedelics use in the USA in the 19th century...

"It originated in the Americas and was in common use in Europe by the 17th century"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snuff_%28tobacco%29

In the same Wikipedia articles it mentions several times that it mostly spread among the elites.

Is “neural reconfiguration generated by extended internet usage” a real phenomenon, or is that just a clever turn-of-phrase for reading?

Neural reconfiguration generated by extended anything is probably real. This is the point of practicing or training.

It also happens with not practicing and not training, drug use, prolonger stress, brain-washing etc (in the negative way).

I usually like to read Coupland, but I disagree here. Seems to me there were always ways to experience different moods: simply by doing things. Watching a sun setting would evoke different moods than chopping wood or reading a book.

I get the impression, reading certain writers, that they live in some parallel universe very different from my own. Just about every paragraph here had me saying 'what?'.

Try reading Generation X [1] by the same guy, I'm still trying to make sense of the book after 2 weeks of finishing it :P

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X:_Tales_for_an_Acc...

20+ years later it's hard to have a context on Generation X and how perfectly it captured that moment in time. (American Psycho was published the same year - how's that for context!). Post-Regan, Post-yuppie (well, almost), Pre-grunge, mostly pre-internet...

Generation X, McJob etc are all parts of the lexicon now. Fight Club always felt to me like a kind of follow-up to Generation X.

It's the weakness in Couplands whole "capture the zeitgeist" storytelling. 150 years on, Great Expectations is still relateable. Generation X, not so much. I still love the book though :-)

Don't fret. Everything that comes out of DC's head makes most ppl say, 'what?'.

Not everything, surely. Microserfs?

Same. e.g. has there been a revolution in skin and dental care?

> Teenagers seem to no longer have acne or cavities

Any particular examples we can address?

``Nowadays, if you bump into someone you haven’t seen in a while and their behaviour is weird, you say hello, depart and think, “Well, they seemed a bit medsy, didn’t they?” And then you move on.''

What?

``Throw in Ritalin and concentration drugs such as Adderall and moods quickly become very, very niche: Wellbutrin + online binge shopping; Effexor + Facebook + three scotches; Adderall plus Celexa and sitting at your desk dispiritedly checking for new emails every two-and-a-half minutes. These all sound beyond mundane'' (italics mine)

What??

I don't exactly disagree with what he said, but what was the point of this article?

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