April 18, 2021 - HELP!

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While the no-outlines look of this particular series is a departure from my usual drawing style, it wasn't for any particular meta-reason. However, the style of the social media coach is very deliberately an excuse to use that insipid corporate art style that everybody hates. Or at least my own version of it, which is an amalgamation of Corporate Memphis and the like, with an obsolete splash of so-called "CalArts Face" and "Tumblr Nose".

While it is fun to dunk on this style that's associated with boring ol' magazine editorials, nauseating targeted ads, and unreassuringly optimistic social media network PR videos, I have to say it's a little exciting to be aware of something for which this period of time will be remembered. Looking at previous decades, it's easier to find cultural touchstones because there were simply fewer avenues for media to spread and diversify throughout large populations so things were more uniform. Some people were saying that the 2010s might have been the last decade that can be characterized culturally and politically like other decades were. Granted, they said that before our ol' buddy Covid-19 set a rather uniform backdrop for a lot of the world, but they had a point.

So anyway, when people look back at the early 2020s they'll see a global pandemic and an art style that reeked of disingenuous superficiality from day 1. That sounds pretty bleak, but we who lived it will know that there was so much more to it - that we had our own subcultures and interests that went under the radar. They may not have been landscape-changing movements or societal monoliths, but nonetheless they gave us life during this time, in their own way.

Aaaaaanyway, I'd better stop this comment before it becomes an editorial that I'd be obligated to accompany with one of those soulless corporate illustrations.

-Sp0nge