The overwhelming anxiety of reality, and the belief that these absurdities are beyond our control, leave us—the cold children—emotionally vacant. To mask this existential, apathetic abyss, we trick ourselves through the illusions of instantaneous pleasures, into a façade of happiness. (upsidedown happyface) is a brand that both satirizes our dependence on this false joy yet acknowledges the necessity of fantasy as a tool to survive life's miseries. Through fauxshion, (upsidedown happyface) celebrates this trickster within us all, who for our own sake fools ourselves and allows us to be fooled as both the deceiver and deceived.
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The Trickster/Clown
The archetype of the trickster across cultures, presents a clever messenger. An agile shapeshifter, he is able to transcend boundaries between worlds, an agent of chaos. As an entertainer, he crafts illusions between the reality and surreality; his face another mask of false joy to hide his sadness, his emptiness. Carl Jung defined the trickster archetype as a schizophrenic, comedy of opposites: conscious and unconscious, obscurer and revealer, entertainer and deceiver, cunning and idiotic, magical and powerless. Yet his transcendence and subversion of the cosmological order only reveals that order to us. Am I as a designer not a trickster spinning my own illusions? Are we not all our own tricksters who take active roles in our own self-deception?
“If the clown [...] is this devil who by his very existence affirms the rule of the divine, then it follows that he must always change his face as the sacred order undergoes changes.”
Feelback Loops
Studies have shown that physiology has a direct effect on psychology. While we smile because we are happy (or frown because we are sad), research from Melinda Wenner published in The Scientific American shows that a lack of frowning results in less negative emotions: “This February psychologists at the University of Cardiff in Wales found that people whose ability to frown is compromised by cosmetic botox injections are happier, on average, than people who can frown...they did not report feeling any more attractive, which suggests that the emotional effects were not driven by a psychological boost that could come from the treatment’s cosmetic nature.” The physical act of smiling itself can cause feelings of happiness. If people can be fooled and fool themselves into happiness, is that happiness any less true, valid, or worthy?
“There are so many paths to contentment if you’re open to self-delusion”
In the age of alternative facts, (upsidedown happyface) introduces the worlds first wind-powered AR (alternative reality) device, the Micro Climate Changer 9000. Some consider that there is plausible deniability for the existence of climate change, but we assure you that micro-climate change is here for real. Guaranteed to lift your mood bigly and the city smog at the same time, the MCC9000 makes a perfect gift for those disillusioned with our current state of existence.
Introducing the Dicktaphone, (upsidown happyface)’s newest product that you grab by the balls to sound like a dick. An ode to dicktators everywhere, the gold-leafed Dicktaphone is the ultimate expression of narcassistsc, captialistic machismo. (UDHF) wants you to know that reality is an illsory constuction made by those with power. So grab your Dicktaphone, speak up, and seize control to start building your own fantasy today.
