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Justin Anderson's avatar

To be honest, I have a lot of nostalgia for when pretty much the only buds easily available to my young stoner lungs were mids. It made the rare instances where me and my friends could acquire fire loud that much more special. Copping some white widow back in the day was a cause for celebration. Now primo cannabis is readily accessible in any dispensary for the low.

What's more, the strength of weed nowadays is, in my opinion, too powerful, so much so that it's hard to even find mids anymore, at least where I live. When the only strains available are 25% THC or more, it takes a much higher physical toll on the mind and body to be a full time stoner. The sheer potency of the gas can be too much for many people to handle in large quantities. Mids actually were good, in that it kept us satisfied and grounded with a lack of quality that was somehow endearing.

Maybe this is an old man yelling at cloud situation where "back in my day" things were far simpler, quaint and respiratorically tolerable. But ultimately, the fact that weed is so ubiquitously strong makes the act of burning one down paradoxically mid itself!

The same sort of thinking could be applied to luxury goods across the board, in fashion, cars, movies, TV or any other cultural item. I liken it to the fact that Hollywood doesn't make good BAD movies anymore. I think of a mid 90s flick like Point Break, which is an objectively stupid movie about surfing bankrobbers, where Keanu Reeves (love the guy) struggles to deliver anything approaching a good performance as a lawyer turned FBI agent. However, the movie’s inherent badness is what makes it so great. It both takes itself seriously, but at the same time doesn’t. This is the quintessential essence of mid-ness.

There used to be hundreds of good bad movies. Nowadays Hollywood flicks are either lowest common denominator billion dollar Marvel superhero flicks or boring Oscar bait. There is no longer room for the true mid-budget movie, especially dumb comedy or tacky 80s and 90s action flicks.

While there is plenty of "mid" (i.e. mediocre) television and film content available on Netflix and the like, I would consider these mids separate from what we considered mids of the past. Before the term mid became the derogatory term it is today, it seemed to once denote a pleasurable synthesis of both good and bad. Its not a coincidence that true mids have disappeared simultaneously alongside the erosion of the American middle class.

I miss when things were pleasantly mid. We didn’t know what we had until it was gone. Bring back mids.

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Adam's avatar

On the surface this can appear to be another vibes shift kinda piece, but really it’s an astute observational analysis--bravo. To me, it aligns well with the late-theorist Mark Fisher’s incredibly insightful discussions about how late-capitalism (what he calls Capitalist Realism) is so thoroughly embodied in us that mainstream culture has dropped away to a confused jumbled mess of aesthetic chaos to suit Capital over originality. We are not easily able to conceptualize truly new or original things because we are in an era of neoliberal market fundamentalism where the commodification of culture has been hyper realized. Where in the modern world we used to have a sense of the future rushing toward us, in the post-modern world our futures have been canceled. Fisher calls this a slow cancellation of the future.

There’s more from him about subjective time and time periods I won’t belabor here in a comment section, but his points are worth knowing by any cultural critics as well as anyone who hasn’t dipped themselves into this bleak outlook.

The Mids surrounding us is not just a consequence of post-modernism we can will away, but something that comes from within all of us because of the way we’ve been subjugated by Capital. Our internal being purely evolves around Capitalism—what he deems a “business ontology.” We are too tired so we seek out the familiar. Artists don’t have a safe space to just create without Capital pushing down on them with debt and the need for profit. Like I think you point out briefly here, it’s not to say progress is completely gone, but it’s only for those who can afford it. We may enjoy some new culture but we can’t help but think it’s a reflection of something before rather than a catalyst into new ideas.

Fisher’s first book ‘Capitalist Realism’ launches his theories on this, and he goes deeper in ‘Ghosts of My Life.’ There are some great lectures he gives up on YouTube too, of course. Highly recommend some digging if this piece creates a critical theory itch in you.

https://americanjitters.substack.com/

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