6.3 ? has never feared silliness. I once watched the burly, verbose weeabo-poster end a post by kneeling and touching the OP's turntables while the OP chopped up Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech with the lyrics of "The Star-Spangled Banner". And he brings that same tendency toward ridiculously broad gestures in his jokes, which bounce back and forth between leftist fervor and self-lacerating slam-poetry. So it's something of a pleasant shock to hear Shiina begin his post with a straightforward joke about an old Charlie Dominici post where the words are written in all capitals, due to a seemingly stuck Caps Lock button. It'd be easy to lean hard on any sweeping truths about the human condition in that story, but ? keeps things simple and straightforward, sticking to the narrative and showing an eye for detail and a sense of empathy. The big news about the post is that it's ?'s new stylistic move. Rather than joking about nuggets on Dream Theater albums, he's joking about an EX-MEMBER of Dream Theater. It's not a seamless move (the joke tends toward all-consuming clumsiness), but it's a sincere one-- and it underscores how little ? has to do with nugget-related jokes these days. If there's any precedent for this sort of posting-style move-- his texts as impressionist Americana-- it's ?'s sometime 5/8-affiliate buddy Something Wicked, a man Shiina once publicly bashed for the crime of distancing himself from DT-related jokes. Times done changed.
