I have just discovered the Nenis phenomenon. I would have missed it completely if it wasn’t for Cristian Dragan – an inveterate online digger, Tik Toker, and Romanian urban weird studies collector supreme. I am a nuub whenever the Romanian scene is concerned. I feel all that is mostly because I am missing Tik Tok and may only plunge in that cyber dungeon when I will get a new phone that will allow me to change apps. Anyway Cristian shared this minimalist reptilian-themed video by Nenis – as a novel Lorin Fortuna urban metamorphosis. It is basically an animation with the head of some US state department during some conferences morphing on some bleak trap lyrics into a reptilian leader of the world. Nenis’s videos are full with alien and UFO references. Somehow this has to do with him embracing his outcast position (that he sings about in another video).
Being the weird one out, the “alien”, the only “extraterrestrial” in the hood means embracing the atypical, non-standard celeb status. This is an important part of the Nenis online persona even if I base my conclusions on some very general lines. Of course, there is heaps of post-irony, LULZ and also a lot of parody and sarcasm about the “normie” macho standards as well as the online universe being something else – having more to do with dime shows and the origins of entertainment as a questionable activity. Tik tok has maybe more to to with a modern-day online freakshow for me, a bizarre talent show where everyone can display a huge range of behaviours, bodies and attitudes. Displaying disabilities and the act of having biological being the main attraction at the midway, “an organized for-profit exhibition of people with physical, mental or behavioral rarities during the 18th, 19th and 20th century.”
At the same time as Robin James has pointed out in numerous articles social platforms work now by extracting value out of these behaviors and alignments. In many ways Nenis stands in the tradition of the vaudeville or amusement parks, and I do not mean this in a derogatory way, but as someone interested in the history of wonder shows, of the role in making leisure an important part of life and combining science and technology with amazement and wonder.
Of course that pseudo-sciences and racist fads were part of this tradition- and at the same time great institutions, natural history museums and human oddity collections can never extricate themselves from it completely since ‘specimens’ were often collected from these very shows. It was also work, and a tough and very exploitative way to earn a living for the performers themselves. At the same time since late 1960s pop stars have been using the UFO vernacular culture and pop idiom to pimp up their act and to use the otherworldliness of the alien to make “difference” and “the alternative” as a central part of the cultural mainstream. In this sense, the Romanian trap musician Nenis is in a tradition that stretches back to Space Oddity David Bowie. The underbelly of global culture is full of conspiracies, Area 51, Cold War memories and even a sort of supernaturalism or rather sub-naturalism that has to deal with the fact that we are all alone in an indifferent universe and on a planet that is teetering under multiple crisis.
In a strange way, I also link this with the fact that standards of beauty have been questioned on all platforms and body shaming has been successfully criticized online. This also works the other way around.
TimeSpace Warps 