Anonymous
7/26/2025, 3:17:02 AM No.12431392
You can label him as mentally ill and a criminal as well, but I'm specifically trying to address whether he was an artist or not. It's mainly because I can relate and comprehend what he was trying to do and I find it incredibly relevant to male angst online today with insecurities over being perceived as gay fully. You tend to find guys say "it's not gay if I'm not a bottom." and "there's nothing worse than being a bottom." Anons even on s4s get in rhetorical reply-matches trying to come out as the linguistic dominant in the end, fearing losing and being perceived as a bottom.
With Jeffrey Dahmer he wanted to exude complete control over his victims, but still personally loved them. He wanted to preserve images of his victims at their last moments and preserve their remains turning them into a shrine of dedication. I take it as being self-reflective of his own homosexuality and the existential quandary of it in general. To take a religious view, he loved the sinner but not the sin to an extreme, transgressive degree. The murder of his victims could be perceived as some type of punishment but memorialization in the afterlife as a type of contradictory celebration of the individuals he hurt. His acts also deal with male egoism, that they were done as acts of complete, obsessive control, demonstrating the imbalance of gender dynamics and relationships in the postmodern age.
I asked ChatGPT this question and it soberly said that Jeffrey can't be considered an artist because there was no audience or intentional communication because the artifacts he made, no consent with victims, and no transformation through self-critique.
But I say the intentions of communication are pointless when museums collect all types of ancient artifacts that aren't embodied with any purposeful communication behind just aesthetic expressions of a culture. That Dahmer was willfully engaging in the acts he committed, doesn't that just make his art more involved (activity-as-expression)?
With Jeffrey Dahmer he wanted to exude complete control over his victims, but still personally loved them. He wanted to preserve images of his victims at their last moments and preserve their remains turning them into a shrine of dedication. I take it as being self-reflective of his own homosexuality and the existential quandary of it in general. To take a religious view, he loved the sinner but not the sin to an extreme, transgressive degree. The murder of his victims could be perceived as some type of punishment but memorialization in the afterlife as a type of contradictory celebration of the individuals he hurt. His acts also deal with male egoism, that they were done as acts of complete, obsessive control, demonstrating the imbalance of gender dynamics and relationships in the postmodern age.
I asked ChatGPT this question and it soberly said that Jeffrey can't be considered an artist because there was no audience or intentional communication because the artifacts he made, no consent with victims, and no transformation through self-critique.
But I say the intentions of communication are pointless when museums collect all types of ancient artifacts that aren't embodied with any purposeful communication behind just aesthetic expressions of a culture. That Dahmer was willfully engaging in the acts he committed, doesn't that just make his art more involved (activity-as-expression)?
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