Effort + Easy Answers = Try Hard

 A bit of a nostalgia post here. 

There used to be a pejorative that got slung around back in the mid-to-late-90s. And of course that's a period of history where yes there was internet, but not everyone had it, and those that did have it didn't necessarily have the patience to sit around waiting for jpgs to load. Yes it was a time when rich people got a second land line installed in their house dedicated to the internet so it didn't tie up their phone line.

So I always kind of assumed the pejorative 'try-hard' was a biproduct of grunge. And the speed of the internet is important because Kurt Cobain killed himself in '94, and grunge and Nirvana fandom were just making their way to regional victoria by '96-'97. 

Then something happened. Like a generational change or something. Perhaps best captured in the first day of school scene in 21 Jump Street:

Somewhere, in like a decade or decade and a half, the script flipped. 

What became cool was trying hard. 

If grunge is a likely candidate for generating the 'try-hard' pejorative of the 90s, or maybe grunge was simply a symptom expressing the same reactionary sentiment; then maybe just maybe Malcolm Gladwell's 'Outliers' or Steve Job's 'your life is limited, don't waste it living someone else's life.' something in there made it really cool to try hard. Or you know perhaps Outlier's success was just a symptom of the same reactionary sentiment out there, and Steve Job's dress sense will never be explained.

Anyhoo.

What bothers me, is that effort, hard work, determination, persistence, investment. These are contextual virtues. For around the exact same time Nirvana were big, Michael Jordan was winning 6 NBA championships and he didn't mumble his way to 6 titles. We all loved Kurt, we all loved Michael Jordan. I like athletes, for example, trying really hard. Artists too. Except when an artist tries hard to please their lecturer at art school or something.

There goes my conundrum. Because I think so much of societal dysfunction, or even local community dysfunction, has taken a shape that is only possible in the absence of the pejorative of "try hard".

Let's get a better picture of what has changed. A lot of people alive today, that can legally drink while operating a vehicle have no idea about Nirvana, Michael Jordan or the Macarena. 

Youtuber Todd in the Shadows describes Nirvana as something like the hardest (left/right?) turn in music history. He has a classification in Trainwreckords called "Nirvana Killed My Career" two examples being Billy Idol's Cyberpunk and Motley Crue's Generation Swine. 

So I feel "grunge" is important an important concept. I think like all music, Nirvana's music was successful because its content spoke to the human condition. The presentation of grunge though was the big idea and the reason grunge was a phenomena that more slipped past the keeper in a moment of confusion than an inevitability. 

My highly subjective experience being that whatever I think of the 90s as being it began sometime after September 10th '91 with the release of Nirvana's Nevermind and ended July 8th '96 not even half a decade with the release of Spice Girls' Wannabe. The 90s music scene wasn't just grunge, it was also hip-hop, trip-hop, alt-rock, alt-metal, indy-rock, techno etc. It was Indy movies Tarentino being the biggest name, but also you may be surprised to know, there was a time that Kevin Smith was considered cool and interesting, there was Trainspotting etc. 

I only know of one book that has attempted to analyse what happened in the music industry, a book I haven't read but it echoes a phenomena which was basically the treasury doors opened and money was given to struggling artists and their shit got distributed and people exposed to it, found something they liked. My lasting impression of this period was a panic and scramble by the money men.

Crucially, what was briefly impossible, was that one could not optimize. 

Now, let's talk about what Grunge isn't. Something well covered I feel by Todd's analysis of "Generation Swine" (Where "Cyberpunk" was more betting on the wrong horse). 

I think nobody struggled with the 90s (Sep '91-June '96) more than Mayor Quimby with his struggles with wacking day. Whatever Grunge was intended to be, whatever it specifically was, what it couldn't be was buying pre-whacked snakes in order to gain esteem/status. Quimby's struggle with whacking day was probably the majority of people's struggle with the disorienting nature of the 90s.

A bizarre lesson in what Grunge isn't was when Simon Cowell lambasted a contestant on World Idol for entering with Nirvana's Lithium. Simon Cowell it seems, understands his antithesis.

Another excellent example of what grunge isn't I found on Pinterest, a wonderful resource in posts titled Grunge Aesthetic Outfits:

what?

nope.

still nope

Now I should cop to recognizing the difference between "grunge" and "grunge aesthetic" one is a thing and the other I should recognize as a simulacra, a different game, kind of like the difference between Japanese Lolita fashion (simulacra) and Victorian women's clothing (the thing itself). Keep that in mind that I'm not shitting on this blog post (the world needs less tweets and more blog posts) for which in my opinion maybe 5 of some 60 images come close to a 90s Grunge aesthetic. 

The key point being, whatever grunge was in my opinion it was antithetical to how to guides. A "grunge" makeup tutorial is not a grunge make up tutorial. A magazine spread detailing the items to assemble a "grunge" look cannot be a grunge look. What you couldn't do, and be accepted or acclaimed grunge for the brief period where grunge rode high - was try.

This was something you could do in the 80s (Mar '80-Sep '91, Sep '98-Present) you could buy shit to gain esteem. There may be no single item less grunge than Air Jordan's. Ironically contemporary to Nirvana. 

Grunge presented us with a Zen Koan of sorts: "How do you be cool?" "There is no how, you simply must be." Or as Yoda said "Do or do not, there is no try." in other words, people were condemned to meritocracy for an oh so brief period of time in an oh so small demographic.

But I think I cracked it. How to split the difference between laudable effort, the kind exhibited by athletes and trying hard.

Michael Jordan, for example, worked hard. But he isn't and wasn't throughout the 90s, a 'try-hard' even though he'd win a NBA championship, and then be in the gym the next day working out. 

Jordan wasn't a try hard, because basketball doesn't have any easy answers. Being like Mike, it turned out, and turns out, does not involve simply buying a pair of air jordans. It took an incredible amount of work, in the meantime rivals are making trades, Shaq is getting drafted, the game constantly changes. 

It's easy answers that make the try hard.

What do I mean by that?

It's actually quite hard to be 'cool' it likely most comes down to character and composure, temperament. Likely also divergent thinking, and shit that comes from within and you're probably talking about interplay between genes and environment.

So, in the mid 90s, there were easy answers to how to be cool. Bleach your hair into a kind of Labrador yellow, gel it into spikes if you're a guy (or a girl). Buy Oakley sunglasses. Get an eyebrow ring. Wear DC or Globe skate shoes. Basically go buy a Blink-182 costume from the stores and hey presto "cool".

But it also didn't work, almost like nature had gifted society a defence against sheep in wolves clothing. In that brief window of the 90s, we had some traction, some footing that briefly enabled us to say "I thought Spud was a fucking dipshit yesterday, now Spud owns a pair of Oakley sunglasses and I still think he is a fucking dipshit." 

And that was I suspect, liberating for a tiny number of people. People I like. And for most people, devastating.

Michael Jordan made most of his money I believe, from a lie - (please note, I'm obviously being hyperbolic) - that if you buy the shoes Jordan wears, if you drink Gatorade, you can "be like Mike." which you can't. Paying particular attention to the prime contenders to be the next Michael Jordan, like Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, Vince Carter and T-Mac wore their own shoes.

Shoes and diets are easy answers. Some problems have easy answers like "I'm hungry" has an easy answer. Other problems like "I can't stop drinking" don't have easy answers.

Once I drove someone to tears in front of me. Seems to me, this should happen more often, I am fairly mean. I probably take too much credit, but whatever. People who know me might think "oh god were you drunk and running your mouth?" No. I was trying to teach someone how to set intelligible goals. I use a format downloaded, literally from manager-tools.com referred to as MT goals, which is taking the old acronym SMART goals that people educated in the 90s would have heard ad-nauseum and removing all the useless shit from that acronym. Leaving you with "measurable" and "time specific" or "what" and "when". And we were literally going through the projects this person was working on and trying to get them to articulate MT goals. For example (not an actual example) if we were trying to control all shipping lanes in the pacific, an MT goal might be: Only encounter our warships in the Pacific Ocean by January 2023. We know what accomplishment of the task looks like, and when it should look like that.

Anyway, my trainee broke down and implored me "just tell me what you want." Catching me entirely off guard because the whole purpose of the exercise was to learn how to set these goals for yourself.

I don't think my trainee is a good example of the kind of people that were devastated by Grunge. But that incident is a good articulation of that devastation. 

In contrast to Michael Jordan, Kurt Cobain made most of his money, I believe, from a truth. That truth being there's nothing you can do, to be like Kurt. Kurt Cobain effectively cornered the market, on being Kurt Cobain. So you can grow out your hair, wear a striped sweater with jeans and try your hardest to be like Kurt, and the harder you tried, the less like Kurt you were. In a beautiful symmetry of the people most like Kurt being Chris Cornell, Eddy Vedder, Dave Grohl in the same way the people most like MJ are KB, AI, VC and when KB became most like MJ was when he stopped trying at all to be like MJ. Something amazingly Simon Cowell gets.

...

I'm banking on you having met a try-hard couple in your life. Two people who both don't just believe in easy answers, but believe in the same easy answers. 

Maybe they both belong to the same gym, and wear the same brands. Or maybe they both prey to the same idols. Or are both in the same open relationship. Maybe they both lost half their net wealth on crypto this year. 

But they found eachother and they are going to be okay. It is the rest of us that have to suffer them.

But these people make the world go round. In economic terms. Of course the power of that saying is in the observation that no human activity actually makes the world go round. 

Kurt Cobain had a huge market of fans. And you could sell those fans Nevermind, In Utero, MTV Unplugged in New York. But you couldn't sell them Kurt Cobain signature shoes. You couldn't sell them Gatorade. You would probably struggle to sell them heroin. 

But say you did release Kurt Cobain signature Converse One-Star shoes. Spud the fucking dipshit buys them. He buys them expecting to walk them into school the next day and hear a deafening cacophony of "cool shoes Spud." but instead hears a deafening silence punctuated only be the occasional "what a try-hard."

That's not a commercial environment any maker of consumer products wants to be in. Brands and products ride atop a social contract. I can't help it, I'm going to divert into my favorite marketing term "prole-drift"

Burberry, specifically in the UK became a victim of prole-drift between 2001-05. Namely "Chavs" the then "white-trash" of Britain developed a taste for knockoff Burberry gear. To the point of Burberry the real brand becoming synonymous with the UKs lowest status people.

Many luxury brands face this problem, you sell a luxury car, you could also sell a bunch of hats with the brand of your luxury car on it, to people who could never afford one of your cars. This could bring in big money, but damage your core business. Prole-drift is a risk.

Introducing us to the more common paradox of status - if someone low status obtains a high status symbol, the status of the symbol is reduced rather than the status of the person increasing.

Prole-drift however is a much better problem to have, than Try-hard being a hurtful pejorative. So your wealthy long term customers abandon you as you rake in cash from the unwashed masses. Prole-drift can be quite profitable. But selling shoes, glasses, cars, hairstyles, dances, watches, clothes, cars and having your customers experience derision...

This is like selling bread, but suddenly, over night the customers that eat your bread get hungry instead of full.

For certain, a lot of money was made in the 90s (Sep '91-June '96) and Grunge never got 100% market penetration. There was an eclectic mix of products that consumers ravenously consumed: Nine Inch Nails, Tool, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, No Doubt, Garbage, Smashing Pumpkins, Tori Amos, Bjork...watch enough Todd In The Shadows you'll realise everything was viable, you just could make the wrong move and hey presto - Nirvana killed your career, and that wrong move was trying. But U2, Metallica, Faith No More and Jane's Addiction coasted through and I'm sure a bunch of other 80s acts and even older. 

It was a period though where easy answers were something people had to live without for almost 5 years, until "Wannabe" delivered relief (and subsequent Nu Metal) letting people know once again that there would be a set of easy answers one only had to dedicate their efforts towards and we've never looked back even though those easy answers changed, they would ever afterwards always exist, and they could exist because kids stopped calling people "try-hards". 

People could be as desperate for esteem as they could stomach and nobody would give them flack for it, they would even encourage them. We all got a little bit more North Korean, we know our speech wasn't that great, but we'll take the standing ovation. Nobody dies of embarrassment that they spoke at a TEDx event. We went from the tragedy of Kurt Cobain, to the train wreck of Trisha Paytas.

Before concluding, I should probably spend less time on what I am weakest at - anthropology/sociology, and maybe just fucking define easy answers. That seems important.

Easy answers have no learning curve. In film, they require no montage. They are generally off-the-shelf. Easy answers are also, in the sense I'm using it, not an answer at all. 

For example, Oakley's may feature polarised lenses, but wearing them does not display something clever or witty for Spud to say, they don't apply a red filter notifying Spud to not yell out the inane thing he was going to yell out in class, and it doesn't send electric shocks through him preventing him from groping Michelle's tits after someone accused her of stuffing her bra.

Oakley glasses have never fundamentally changed a person, though I'm not entirely dismissing the concept of a makeover. Certainly for example dying your hair electric pink may disabuse your fellow highschool students of the belief that your conservative parents wouldn't let you do it. Wearing Ray Ban (or any knock-off) aviators might make you feel cool in a way that makes you act with greater confidence in a way that makes you cooler. But it's entirely possible that behaviour learned, when you lose those glasses or sit on them or whatever, you don't lose your newfound confidence. It was in you all along.

There is likely a contradiction perceivable though between applying effort to easy answers. Something even try-hards understand. Oakley sunglasses weren't cheap. It's just doing something that might make you interesting like reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman and being able to articulate why you like or dislike it in 1995 was to someone like Spud incomprehensibly difficult. But working shifts stacking shelves in a grocery store, or flipping burgers at McDonalds for weeks on end all to channel that mindless suffering into a mindless purchase is the essence of being a try-hard.

And this may seem harsh, and selling that harshness is the marketing coup that ended the 90s in June of '96. Because calling someone a try-hard wasn't to diminish the effort and suffering of stacking super market shelves or smiling at bogans ordering Quarter pounders without pickles while other kids were playing Warcraft II but to express anguish that someone who suffered through that would spend it on something as trivial and vapid as Oakley's. And the even sadder phenomena of parents who had taken risks and worked hard to build up a profitable business so that their kid Spud never had to stack shelves, flip burgers or be polite to strangers in order to have a pair of Oakley sunglasses.

Perhaps the epitome of a try-hard, in my opinion, is also straight out of the 90s and has never escaped the cruelty and rejection of trying hard. 

I'm talking of course about Hillary Clinton. If you can't take the example of Hillary Clinton the most qualified person in history to ever lose to the other least popular candidate in history of US presidential elections, and understand what a try-hard is, I can't explain it to you...no matter how hard I try... there's just no easy answer: