Rap is more popular than ever, and as time goes on its influence will likely only continue to grow. On social media, fans of rap are blasted repeatedly with images of opulence and wealth, as rappers flaunt their jeweler, cars and shoes. On YouTube, videos of rappers buying tens of thousands of dollars worth of shoes gain millions of views. Popular perception among many is that rappers live the best kind of lifestyle their is.
When digging deeper into the lives of some of America’s most famous rap artists, a different story surfaces. Famous rappers like 50 Cent, MC Hammer and DMX regularly end up losing their fortunes after living unsustainable lifestyles. DMX was one of the most popular artists of the late 90’s, yet by 2013 he had only $53,000 in assets and was millions in debt. The growth of social media and the internet has made it easier than ever for rap artists to show their wealth and reach millions of fans.
The way rappers portray their finances and lifestyles on social media is a particularly harmful form of bullshit and lying. False images of wealth and success lead some rap fans to attempt to mimic the lifestyle of their favorite artists. These attempts to replicate the lifestyle of a rapper will likely lead fans down their own path of financial ruin. Philosopher Harry Frankfurt writes that “the most irreducibly bad thing about lies is that they contrive to interfere with, and to impair, our natural effort to apprehend the real state of affairs.” When rappers bullshit about their wealth and lifestyle, they impair their fans’ ability to apprehend the reality of those lifestyles. The reality is that spending more than one makes, especially on things like jewelry and cars, will lead to a life of poverty.
In his essay “On Truth, Lies and Bullshit,” Frankfurt writes about the essence of bullshit, claiming bullshit is represented by an indifference to reality. Rappers often are not purposely lying about their lifestyle and finances, but rather they simply do not care to know what the truth of their financial situation is. Instead of tracking their finances, they instead continue to use online technology to flex their supposed wealth and motivate their clueless fans to make poor decisions. Rap fans need to know the truth about their favorite musicians and learn from their mistakes.
This is a great blog. You explain a concept, give an example, and relate it back to the reading really well and you convey your point in an efficient way. You check off all the boxes. If I had to get picky, one thing that I would explore would be the structure or order in which you go about making your points. I think it may be effective if after your first paragraph, you then bring your points from the reason, then give your examples like 50 Cent/MC hammer at the end. It could be effective for the readers to take your original point, connect it to the reading, and then reflect on that by using the example you give in your second paragraph. Just a thought, but a really good blog even if you don’t change anything.
ReplyDeleteThis post is overall very insightful and connects well to the theme of bullshit. That being said, I think you spent a bit too much time focusing on explaining the background of your example when you instead could have provided a more in-depth discussion of Frankfurt and the related implications of ethics in rap. For instance, I'd say you could completely omit your very first sentence, as it's not fully relevant and we have a tight word budget. Then, you could condense the first few sentences of your third paragraph in order to bring up bullshit philosophy earlier.
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ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this blog post, one thing I noticed was that present from the start of your post all the way through the end; you kept the focus very consistent. Even in the paragraph that didn't directly state the focus, it was still subtly reflecting back on the original focus.
ReplyDeleteOnly criticism I have is that there were a couple of minor spelling errors in the first paragraph, otherwise it was really good!