QUESTION ASKED: What’s so ‘cruel’ about dressing up and having a good time?

A group of young, attractive, well-dressed men and women. Smiling. Laughing. Drinking. Talking. Stark light exaggerating every detail. It feels like some kind of paparazzi photo. It’s an evocative shot, and there has been no shortage of commentary on it.
Online left-wingers claim the photo is ugly. The bright flash, blown-out faces, high contrast, and excited laughter are unflattering and make the individuals look menacing. If conservatives don’t realize this, it’s because they don’t understand aesthetics.

Conservatives, on the other hand, just see a bunch of well-dressed young people having fun.

Anti-aesthetics

For the left, the best kind of aesthetics are those that make people look vulnerable or fatalistically defiant. And if vulnerable or fatalistically defiant isn’t possible because the individual is just too attractive and confident, wonky will have to do.
Weirdly slouching posture. Slightly depressed face. A rough, brutalist scene will be fine. Or a cutesy one can work too. Something that feels jarring and disorienting, weird and wacky. If pity is impossible, hidden irony is the next best thing. These are some aesthetic values of left-wingers today.

Confident happiness, without any ironic subtext, is just not something in their aesthetic lexicon.

Earlier, from Matt Walsh: This New York Magazine Cover Goes Viral For All The Right Reasons (Video).