[brvsft]

I remember getting a subscription and canceling it immediately after getting my first issue, somewhere around 2015. It was about how Detroit is actually a very cool city and had photos and interviews of cool young people with tattoos.

Simply not what I remembered of the magazine as a child. And I have no problem with tattoos, just the strange political agenda that had nothing to do with the environment or animals.

I know they also covered peoples in past issues as well (e.g. iconic photo of woman from Afghanistan with striking eyes). This was clearly quite different from that.

[thisGuyFlicks]

I'm failing to see the political agenda in an article about Detroit that features pictures of people that may or may not have tattoos.

Edit: I'm assuming this is the article and I still don't see the agenda here. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/taking-back-detroit/see-d...

[brvsft]

Thanks for finding it.

Style over substance. The people "rebuilding" the city aren't construction workers, they're cool kids with tattoos. The "See Detroit" article (which for whatever reason, Meet Detroit is redirected to as well) is even titled Tough, Cheap, and Real, Detroit Is Cool Again. As I replied to your sibling comment, cool means not Republican.

And that's not to say it's not okay for a majority not Republican city to be the obvious, not Republican. I live in such a city myself, probably publicly derided just about as much as Detroit.

> FROM HIS STUDIO a few blocks from MyLocker, Antonio “Shades” Agee, the graffiti artist who’s painting it, isn’t surprised that Hake only recently discovered Detroit’s gloom. It’s easiest to stay on the city’s bright side.

> Agee grew up in Detroit. His Hispanic mother still lives in his childhood home, now one of the few on the block, in a neighborhood he doesn’t like to visit. It’s not “the new Detroit.” Nor was Black Bottom, Detroit’s vibrant Harlem, where his father played jazz. It was bulldozed in the 1950s for redevelopment and a freeway.

> At 44, he is trim from biking; he rarely drives. His right arm—“my painting arm”—is densely tattooed. From the multi-tinted panes of his loft in a former paintbrush factory, Agee has watched Corktown change. He’s a regular at the Detroit Institute of Bagels, just below his window, built for a cool half million dollars. “It still blows my mind to see a girl running down the street and she’s not being chased,” he says.

> “You can’t save Detroit. You gotta be Detroit.”

Wow, very cool.

The underlying case being made is something about what makes a city worth living in. Some people think it's safety. Some people think it's roads (yuck). Walkability. Small businesses. Good schools. Etc. Etc. Etc. And all of these things are argued over and over again by citizens. This National Geographic article stakes a claim that the single most noteworthy aspect of a city is its coolness. The city has to be cool. Your neighbor should be a "graffiti artist." And, I'll admit, there could be a point here. Culture and community are important to a lot of, perhaps even most, people.

You may not see this as political, but I do. I don't hate it, but I wouldn't pay for it as it wasn't at all what I remember from poring over National Geographic magazines in my childhood. I wanted a window into parts of the natural world that I cannot see myself, not Detroit. The frame itself is a political statement: Detroit is a city worth discussing.

[for1nner]

How is "Detroit is actually cool" and "cool young people with tattoos" a political agenda?

[brvsft]

The idea presented in the article conveys to people that being cool is important and good. Cool is also code for Democrat or, at least, absolutely not Republican.

[kjellsbells]

That seems a stretch. I mean, cowboys were cool to 8 year old me and are still pretty cool to 48 year old me, and I'm pretty sure they would be Republicans. Ditto racecar drivers, fighter pilots etc.

Interpreting cool as "absolutely not Republican" seems like a tacit acknowledgement that the Republicans have severely damaged their brand. Perhaps by their embrace of MAGA.

[Fauntleroy]

This sounds like an internalized problem that you have, and not something the magazine did themselves.

[brvsft]

The literal title of the article mentions coolness.

This appears to be a form of projection, where you think you can internet bully me into liking an article about cool tattooed people by telling me it's an "internalized" problem.

But I moved on from it. I canceled my subscription. I'll never give NG money, and you're just going to have to deal with that. Sorry. Maybe you can give them your money.

[Fauntleroy]

You're clearly more emotional about the subject than anyone else in this thread. For what it's worth, the "internalized" problem I was referring to was suggesting that National Geographic was some kind of propadanga that pushed "democrat = cool".

[brvsft]

Yeah, some people take offense when a stranger attempts an unsolicited psychoanalysis over the internet.