Talk:New sincerity

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Tyrenius 23:17, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sincere or[edit]

Some one should say something about "the sound of young america"

After doing an essay on this term and the movement itself, the earliest example I can find of it's use is in a 1999 issue of Film Comment magazine refering to Wes Anderson's 'Rushmore'. If anyone knows of an earlier use of the phrase please speak up!

Here: “If I Can Dream: The Everlasting Boyhoods of Wes Anderson” by Mark Olsen, January 1999, Film Comment Magazine

These pages may also be of use:

“The O Factor” by Field Maloney, 2005 Location: http://www.slate.com/id/2123292

“Sincere or Insincere?” by Virginia M. Heatter, 2005 Link dead, this is the article 

Sincere or Insincere?

Talk about the New Sincerity is all the rage in blogland these days. Small wonder then that Seth and I found ourselves discussing the matter over brunch this morning--or that now we've retreated to our separate computers to parse our thoughts in--what else?--writing.

I can't speak to the burgeoning(?) quasi-(?) destined to fail/succeed(?) movement as a whole, because I haven't kept on top of all the conversations. The mega-doses of irony in Joe Massey's manifestos, for instance, make my eyes glaze over and my head spin. I can, however, speak to what sincerity as a concept means to me, and why I am a fan.

First, some bullet-points on what sincerity, in my view, is and is not:

Sincerity is always emotionally honest, though it may play fast-and-loose with every other kind of truth. Sincerity is full of personality. That is, the human quotient always makes itself more palpably felt than the theoretical one. Even in poems whose primary subject is an Idea, one feels there is a flesh-and-blood consciousness at its core. Sincerity shuns sterility, and insofar as it is authentic, it cannot help but reveal the individual personality of its persona(s), character(s), and/or writer. Sincerity is not a catalog of suffering, written in the confessional style. No one wholly suffers, or if they do they owe it to themselves to seek help and try to heal. Life is as much about joy as it is about pain, and any poetics which deliberately excises the finer half of the human experience for the sake of art cannot properly be termed sincere. Sincerity understands the difference between joy and happiness and contentment and does not try to amplify cooler emotions for the sake of turning them into art. In other words, there are a very few things which actually make the heart leap, and the sincere writer will avoid turning mild gladness into an instance of the sublime. (Though this one may spark WWIII here at home) Sincerity does not employ myth unless Myth is itself the subject of the poem. Put another way, a sincere writer does not substitute heroes, gods, saints, or other archetypes in order to avoid looking directly at the people, emotions, or ideas they represent. Sincerity risks awkwardness rather than covering its ass with "I was only joking." Aside from the fact that my ribs are little sore from all the wink-wink, nudge-nudge, sincerity appeals to me because there is a glut of insincerity in the general culture. Politicians abuse language every day through the use of irony in its purest, dictionary sense--i.e. "The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning." Hollywood produces a celluloid world which bears little resemblance to real one. Television producers fabricate extraordinary environments, hand-select participants, then splice together dramatic moments, and call it "Reality TV." Magazines--even and especially women's magazines--proffer an idea of sex which is based on the fantasies of heterosexual, fourteen year-old boys. Advertisers...well, you get the point. All of which leaves me craving a little unguarded sincerity.

I may add to this list as new definitions occur to me, or I may not. Either way, I do think something in the notion of a New Sincerity, even if it began as a joke between friends, expresses a feeling in the air that irony, as a dominant feature of anything, may be long overdue for a hiatus.

Posted by Ginger Heatter at 02:17 PM

All good and well, but the main article is getting away from citeable references (if it ever was). In fact, the most recent addition (22:03, 5 April 2007) reads like a lengthy stretch of original speculation (not a good idea), and the article's going to be deleted if that's the direction it's heading in, plain and simple. --Enwilson 04:20, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No kidding--the latest addition is even further in this direction. At what point should the plug get pulled? --ND 01:02, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. I reverted it and the user reverted it back. I don't do edit wars, so I've posted below to get a response. Tyrenius 01:08, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hope I didn't overstep my bounds, but I did a rearrangement of the article tonight. It doesn't address the content issues (no edits past the Gen Y one), but hopefully it organizes the sprawl better. --Enwilson 05:28, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Policy[edit]

If you want this article to stay it has to meet WP:N per WP:V, WP:NOR and WP:NPOV. Tyrenius 23:14, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please explain the reinstatement of this edit [1] as it has not verifiable reliable sources to back it and material without them can be removed by any editor. Tyrenius 00:35, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why does this site not mention the main use of the term new Sincerity, as coined by Jim Collins in realtion to post-modern genre theory?! It is certainly NOT a post 9/11 term, having been in use since at least the mid 1990s! This page is hugely misleading! 128.250.6.243 07:21, 1 November 2007 (UTC)boshno[reply]

Gen Y?[edit]

The most recent addition (19:06, 23 April 2007, JeffreyAtW)just muddies things further. No other place in the article even mentions the Gen Ys, and the quotes aren't "criticism" of any form of New Sincerity. I'm deleting it and requesting that if the contributor reinstates it, he includes material addressing the relevance to the topic. --Enwilson 04:55, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Guide to referencing[edit]

Click on "show" to open contents.

AfD Notice Deleted[edit]

The AfD discussion (2d nomination) resulted in consensus to keep. AfD notice was removed but then restored. I have removed it again. There was no significant support for deletion, and in my view leaving the notice up may deter editors from investing the effort to make the substantial changes that this article clearly needs. If there is another opinion about this, perhaps it would be desirable to discuss this here.--Arxiloxos (talk) 04:01, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The AfD notice should definitely not be on the page, as there is no current AfD discussion. The judgement of the later one supercedes the earlier decision. Ty 02:08, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Repairing this article[edit]

Now that this article has dodged the AfD bullet it needs cleanup and improvement, as almost everyone agreed in the AfD discussion. I think the "Sound of Young America" section is in pretty good shape, but the section on "New Sincerity and performatism" needs citation and comprehensibility, or alternatively should be cut drastically. In addition, unless someone else gets there first (which would be fine with me!), I am planning to write a relatively short section on the "new sincerity" music groups now briefly mentioned in the article. Opinions/comments/suggestions?--Arxiloxos (talk) 18:14, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have now completely reorganized and rewritten this article, implementing the changes outlined above. I am reasonably satisfied that the material in the new version is now adequately sourced and sufficiently notable to justify its continuation.
The one possible exception is the small "philosophy" section that remains. As discussed earlier and during the AfD discussion for this page, the great majority of the long, hard to understand "performatism" section seemed to violate WP:NOR. After searching without success for outside materials to verify the content of that long section, I ended up deleting almost all of it. The portion that remains seems to qualify as "notable" since it refers to known authors and published works, but I am still not certain that it does not violate WP:NOR. Philosophy is not my field, however, so comments and revisions on this section (as well as the rest, of course) are especially welcome!--Arxiloxos (talk) 03:54, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Caps consensus[edit]

Is there a consensus on the capitalization of this term? The article title is in caps, the first (bolded) mention is partially capitalized, and there is a mix throughout. It appears to me that it shouldn't be capitalized at all, except the first "N" in "New" in the article title and when starting a sentence.

davewho2 21:07, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

In my edits I've tried to follow the sources. Many of the references are for uses of "New Sincerity" (capitalized) as the intended name for some form of a musical, literary, or philosophical "movement", others as a descriptive term (uncapitalized). I've tried to conform to their usages. The usages in quotations are inconsistent as well, but in those cases, of course, we should conform to the capitalization as used in the quotes.--Arxiloxos (talk) 21:59, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

David Foster Wallace[edit]

A new edit has added a quote from an essay by David Foster Wallace as evidence for his connection to new sincerity in criticism. The quote doesn't mention the concept by name and neither (as far as I can tell) does the rest of Wallace's essay, so this edit may fall under the category of original research. Googling turns up various blogs and message boards that identify Wallace as related to the concept. However, I haven't yet turned up any existing material that makes a clear connection and clearly qualifies as a reliable source, or even a statement by a notable critic making the explicit connection, but I do note a blog post that states that an article on exactly this topic will be included in a critical collection about Wallace to be published sometime this year.[2] --Arxiloxos (talk) 22:49, 3 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to remove section about My Little Ponies[edit]

I think it's very debatable that MLP Bronies are truly sincere. It seems like an attempt to make the fandom seem higher brow than what it actually is, which is memebase macros and long reddit threads made up of puns about pony sex acts. Neil Cicierega has some very clear, well-thought and sensitive arguments that this brony shoots down, in a very sincerely bigoted manner here: http://www.reddit.com/r/MLPLounge/comments/rzd57/this_is_basically_the_saddest_day_in_the_history/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.74.78.153 (talk) 20:28, 23 November 2012 (UTC) 24.74.78.153 (talk) 20:35, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The article only states that the phenomenon has been specifically discussed as an example of "new sincerity", not that all of its adherents are "truly sincere". (If that's not reflected by the sources, though, we should drop the section.) --McGeddon (talk) 20:40, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That's what the sources say, its only an example in a different context. It does not require the entire fandom to adhere to that mantra. --MASEM (t) 21:20, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
"Internet neo-sincerity" is not New Sincerity. Tombomp (talk/contribs) 19:00, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
First, the sources say "New Sincerity" not "internet neo-sincerity". But irregardless, what makes the fact that a large group of people have taken to liking (w/o irony) something that is completely counter to the intended purpose different here? It fits what lead says about New Sincerity, and while atypical of everything else on the page, isn't a far cry from it. --MASEM (t) 19:12, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The Wired article uses the phrase "internet neo-sincerity"[3] but links that phrase to another one of the same author's articles, where she uses both phrases interchangeably,[4] so I think it's reasonable to conclude that she's talking about new sincerity. On balance I think there's enough to justify a brief paragraph about bronies in this article. --Arxiloxos (talk) 02:35, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Passing mention should be enough. The Burdened (talk) 09:13, 5 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Given that this article has very little issue with size concerns, and that every other example has, at minimum, a few sentences to talk about the concept, making it a brief mention doesn't make sense, particularly when it doesn't fit into any of the above categories. --MASEM (t) 14:11, 5 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just to note that because the "Young America" concept is effectively the same thing as the brony fandoms (likely something unexpected but in an un-ironic manner), I combined these sections under the title "As a cultural movement" as to remove the undue weight calling out the brony section alone was having. --MASEM (t) 23:44, 13 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think this takes away from the validity of the article and makes it difficult to understand for those not familiar with New Sincerity. It's irrelevant to the philosophical and artistic interpretations of the term "New Sincerity". It should be removed. Bentleyrae (talk) 23:53, 19 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Given that outside of the MLP aspects, that there are other uses of New Sincerity that are not strictly philosophical or artistic, that doesn't seem like a reasonable argument. The term seems to be applied to a wide variety of situations in the sources. --MASEM (t) 01:19, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
As an alternative, if we move that section lower about its use in social movements, and then lede in how that the term has this secondary usage, so that the article highlights the philosophical aspects first, I think it might be better. Looking quickly at sources, there is a rise of the term as a reaction to events since post-9/11, appreciating things unironically (there's articles from Wired, Vanity Fair, and Salon), all predating MLP, but which the MLP aspect falls into. I think adding those might help. I will do this tomorrow. --MASEM (t) 01:30, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Political Movement[edit]

The New Yorker recently described the politics of Ben Carson, Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn as a kind of 'new authenticity', a return to principled and unashamedly and 'unspun' ideologisms. It is in a way, a reaction to 'third-way' politics in the same way that New Sincerity as an art movement is a reaction to post-modernity. Would this warrant a mention? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.88.244.168 (talk) 08:32, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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External links modified (February 2018)[edit]

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Criticism[edit]

  • Is there any reliable sources that has criticize New Sincerity? Espngeek (talk) 15:29, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"Wholesome"[edit]

I think that "wholesome" culture has a place in this article, but I'm not sure how to fit it in. Just posting this comment as a note to a future editor who might be able to properly source an cite a reference to it. Wholesome culture is a strong thread in Gen-Z online culture, exemplified by WholesomeMemes and spinoffs like WholesomeBPT and WholesomeGIFs on Reddit. There have been some articles about it on major publications, like the Guardian, Mashable, and the BBC. You could argue that wholesomeness and new sincerity are different terms for the same cultural movement, the former focussed on traditional media and art, and the latter on digital and social media. Precious Island (talk) 03:45, 5 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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