The Real Bad Actors

Why Authentic Performances Matter When Life and Media Blur

Art critic/unlikely Internet microcelebrity Dean Kissick wrote The Rehearsal thinkpiece to end all Rehearsal thinkpieces. What I was most intrigued with, though, was his analysis of how, in a world where life and media are losing their boundaries, performances and appearances matter more than ever.

For a long time I felt I never had a satisfying explanation of why the neoreactionary Dimes Square scene is fascinating not only to me, but also to the press. Finally I feel I found the smoking gun, the bloody glove, the hair on the bed: after almost a whole century of artsy types en masse pretending to be progressive minded and tolerant, with increasingly preposterous and thinly convincing posturing, it is refreshing to see a bunch of NYC gentrifier rich kids rip off the mask and fully own their evil energy. It’s a more convincing performance than, say, Lin Manuel Miranda promising to “listen.”

This is the culmination of two Internets that have been dueling since the first modem screech: the cynical, message board Celine-level nihilism of chan culture and the legacy-media backed didactic neoliberals that became more and more peformative about their holy roller crusade.

After almost a whole century of artsy types en masse pretending to be progressive minded and tolerant, with increasingly preposterous and thinly convincing posturing, it is refreshing to see a bunch of NYC gentrifier rich kids rip off the mask and fully own their evil energy.

Yes, leftie art got a huge injection of steroids in the ‘60s, but the woke moralism that seems to animate both legacy media and the only new media that legacy media has acknowledged from the ‘90s till 2020, has its roots in late ‘70s sitcoms that dispensed with loveable bigots like Archie Bunker and brought in mustache-twirling bigots like Dabney Coleman for sitcom dads to spit on.