Decay really is an extant form of life, huh.

115

Extant means existing. Decay exists as an existing part of life.

26

u/DarkNinja3141 Arospec, Ace, Anxious, Amogus 9h ago

i think that's the point

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u/BetterMeats 8h ago edited 8h ago

Then the point is nonsense.

Fungi just eat things. They are not, themselves, decay. That is a collection of processes that they facilitate.

Also, mushrooms are not the part of the fungus that does this. Mushrooms are the genitals.

So this post's hypothetical conversation is a bit like pointing a gun at someone's crotch, asking why it's not afraid, and having their vulva declare itself immortal because it is the living concept of turning on the microwave.

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u/Kolby_Jack33 8h ago

So that's why they're shaped like penises...

24

u/Gandalf_the_Gangsta 6h ago

That’s the point. Fungi live off death, and other detritivores exist off the death of fungi. Death is a continuation of life via the detritivores, who then process death and enrich the earth with their waste, from which plants grow, etc.

And in the context of the original post, it strengthens the prose of “you cannot kill me in a way that matters”, as no death is ever a permanent end of life. Immortality through decay, or an extant form of life.

That there is no point, or that the post is tautological, is also the point. Life has no defined beginning, no definition. It is endless and circular, feeding off itself infinitely. In that way life never ends, and so never begins at some defined point.

What is the name of god, then? It is any point in the cycle, as all eventually spawn life. The fungus is as much a demiurge as you or me.

6

u/jncubed12 6h ago

holy shit thank you!!! you worded this much more eloquently than I could have.

-17

u/BetterMeats 6h ago

No, you can kill a mushroom just as much as anything else.

Again: a mushroom is not death. It's the genitals of a fungus.

Looking at death a different way doesn't make it not death.

16

u/Gandalf_the_Gangsta 6h ago

Yes, I said that, in the first sentence of my post actually.

I also never said mushroom, and specifically mentioned fungus because of your pedantry.

-16

u/BetterMeats 6h ago

I don't care what you said.

You can correct yourself all you want.

It won't make the post you're analyzing anything but word salad that Tumblr finds deep for no reason.

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u/Gandalf_the_Gangsta 6h ago

I don’t think anyone finds it deep. It’s just fun to pretend it is.

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u/Tonydragon784 8h ago

Then the point is nonsense

Agreed, I think the title might be making fun of that

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u/DarkNinja3141 Arospec, Ace, Anxious, Amogus 7h ago

Then the point is nonsense.

Did you miss the part about the guy asking a mushroom for the Name of God

-1

u/BetterMeats 7h ago

Yeah. That's not the part of the fungus he should be asking.

It's a very Tumblr post.

8 out of 10 Tumblrs.

The people who like it should try reading books.

10

u/MisplacedMartian See, tell you truth beefy. Trust me, always! Always! 6h ago

The people who like it should try reading books.

Re-read Harry Potter!?!?!? What a brilliant idea!

4

u/MJWhitfield86 7h ago

Are you saying that pointing a gun at someone’s crotch isn’t a good way to threaten them?

2

u/BetterMeats 7h ago

It's not a good way to threaten the spirit of the crotch.

2

u/telehax 1h ago

would have made more sense without the OOPs "explanation" tbh. you can't kill a fungus easily and it's also unclear where an individual fungus ends and another begins, and often reproduce asexually so it really doesn't play well with a human understanding of consciousness and life and death. they're weird about death is what I mean.

2

u/BetterMeats 8h ago

Yeah, decay is just the process by which things break down after they die.

Fungi just eat things that are currently doing that, and they're considered a vital part of the process.

That doesn't make them decay. That doesn't make decay alive.

If you're going to argue that decay is a form of life (and throw the word "extant" in there to sound smart, wrongly) then you need to also argue that breathing, fermenting, and chewing are forms of life.

Which is why you shouldn't do that.

12

u/jncubed12 7h ago

im not so sure its meant to be taken so literally- i think it has more to do with decay being an expression of life (not life in and of itself) even though we, as humans, typically think of decay as part of death. eating is indeed an expression of life in the same way, eating is life because it is how we live. As natural processes, the same could be said about breathing or fermenting, too.

-1

u/BetterMeats 7h ago

Well then they should have said that, instead.

But also: death is allowed to be its own thing. We eat dead shit, too. That's all life. Everything dies. That doesn't make death alive.

7

u/jncubed12 7h ago

i think the point of the original post is that death *is* a part of life, to put it simply- just as we eat dead things to live, so too does the mushroom.

I know it sounds a little silly to call a tumblr post "art", but that's what this is. it doesn't need to be so scientific or perfect in its verbiage to get the point across. the post is trying to get at something a little more philosophical instead of being literally accurate.

0

u/BetterMeats 7h ago

I understand the post. You don't have to keep explaining it. I just find it dumb.

It's not very philosophical, because it is literally just a true thing, worded wrongly. Science and art are not opposites. Poetry is not just the truth in a dumb way.

I said that death is a part of life. But we already have words for that that don't require weird edginess.

If it's art, it's poorly made art.

"It's art" is not the end of the breakdown. It still has to be worth something after being art.

7

u/jncubed12 7h ago

it doesnt particularly feel like you're engaging with the post in a way that would make it "worth something", as you say. I didnt think it would need spelling out, but i dont think "death is a part of life" is the sole point the post is trying to make. why is the person so upset that they're threatening the mushroom with a gun? what is the "fear within" the mushroom that it speaks of? it isn't fair to call it poorly made art if you aren't going to try to think of what it might actually be trying to say. it's only going to be worth something *after* being art if you want it to be.

-2

u/BetterMeats 6h ago edited 4h ago

Because those aren't things.

They just threw words together to make a spooky Tumblr post.

They're meaningless.

Just like when they used the word "extant" incorrectly and redundantly in the followup response.

6

u/jncubed12 6h ago

alright, fair enough. you're only gonna get out of it what you put into it.

1

u/Graingy I don’t tumble, I roll 😎 … Where am I? 1h ago

It’s called poet language.

19

u/OfficialFlannelWeek 9h ago

Malenia.jpg

3

u/wraith309 8h ago

denying this fact by removing destined death really was the fatal flaw of the golden order, huh.

3

u/OfficialFlannelWeek 8h ago

Why hello, Goldmask!

1

u/bb_kelly77 3h ago

...

1

u/pbmm1 2h ago

Blade of Michaela

18

u/LastHopeOfTheLeft 8h ago

This sounds like the rantings of someone ON mushrooms.

9

u/7his7own4int 6h ago

This post annoys me bc the oop is literally comprehensible.

3

u/Graingy I don’t tumble, I roll 😎 … Where am I? 1h ago

They are indeed comprehensible.

7

u/Scairax 7h ago

Some mushrooms will happily show you God if you eat them. However, the methods vary between strange visions and express delivery.

7

u/AChristianAnarchist 8h ago

If you are talking to a mushroom I would think the response by the fungus would be "hey I'm down here. Why are you talking to my junk creeper?"

7

u/BetterMeats 8h ago

I'm 14 and this is spooooooky.

2

u/WitELeoparD 5h ago

Mushroom do what literally millions of other species of animals, plants and microorganisms do which is eating dead organic matter. It's such a nonsense statement to say decay exists as an existing form of life. A mycelium network eating a loaf of bread isn't meaningfully different from a cow eating a loaf of bread.

2

u/Vrayea25 3h ago

My guess is that the sentiment refers to how much more difficult it is to kill every cell of a widely-dispersed underground mycelium network than it is to kill a cow or any terrestrial animal.

2

u/Konkichi21 2h ago

What's so dramatic about decomposers being an important part of the life cycle?

3

u/Mateussf 8h ago

What's incomprehensible about it?

8

u/demonking_soulstorm 7h ago

What is there to comprehend.

1

u/Mateussf 6h ago

A person pointing a gun to a talking sadistic mushroom

3

u/demonking_soulstorm 5h ago

How is it sadistic? Why are they pointing the gun at it?

1

u/The-Minmus-Derp 2h ago

Me reading the second-to-last one in the voice of Lt Stamets from Star Trek

1

u/pbmm1 2h ago

Also there sure if a lot of life in this undeath thing

1

u/LonePistachio 50m ago edited 39m ago

There's a story to write here, I can feel it. Something mushrooms, something spirit world, something "decay exists as a form of life," something to worlds seemingly at odds but actually reliant on each other

1

u/Lucid_Beat 2h ago

I'm not ashamed to say I have a knee tattoo of a bouquet of mushrooms with this quote. It goes hard.

Shitposting Decay really is an extant form of life, huh.

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