Too Much to Consume, Too Little Time

In dvd vs. vhs - are there some films that just look better on video?, scott wrote:

i wanted to start a thread asking the people 20-ish and under if they ever get overwhelmed by the amount of stuff there is out there that they can consume. is it all too much. when i was a kid i would go to the library and read about movies for YEARS before i ever actually got to see them. i would think about these movies and look at every picture i could find in books. it might be 20 years in some cases until i found a copy to watch.

um, a bit off-topic.

― scott seward, Wednesday, May 26, 2010 4:25 PM

So: "overwhelmed by the amount of stuff there is out there that [you] can consume"? Do you feel overwhelmed? By what, exactly? Why? Thoughts?

(Hope it's not a big deal that I just went ahead and started this thread, but ppl, myself included, are really interested in this topic and I wanted to get the discussion off the ground.)

Credit to Mr. Scott Seward, obviously, for coming up with the idea to start this thread.

is it ok to post if you're over 20?

i can *remember* being 20, and yes, there was an overwhelming amount of stuff *and* it was harder to get

and the older you get, the more you find interesting

Yeah, I should've specified: if you're here, you're probably overwhelmed no matter what your age is, so let's all post itt. Although I guess you can specify whether you're over/under 20 if you want to.

Not enough hours in the day to consume all this stuff.

when i was a kid i would go to the library and read about movies for YEARS before i ever actually got to see them. i would think about these movies and look at every picture i could find in books. it might be 20 years in some cases until i found a copy to watch.

And music, Jesus! Like the 3rd Flying Burrito Bros. LP, to name but one of many, I have still never seen an actual copy of it but now I know what it sounds like, thx internet.

i would go to the library

Can't really put into words how important libraries were to me, as a young 'un

A constant deluge of new things to read via RSS, new books, and new music, and I never feel caught up.

I feel like the internet and ILX have exacerbated this for me. I hear about so much awesome-sounding stuff and never have the time to get round to most of it, how do people do it while maintaining a job and a life at the same time?

I'd nearly consider it a blessing that I find so much stuff uninteresting for this very reason.

I think the big problem, which is kind of obvious, is that the internet surfaces so much more information about every topic, so if you're the kind of nerd who's seriously into more than one thing and you have an impulse to get as deep into all of those subjects as you can, you're going to always feel behind because you are -- you can never "catch up." What it comes down to, then, is accepting that you'll never know everything about everything and, crucially, filtering.

See: Clay Shirky on information overload vs. filter failure (http://web2expo.blip.tv/file/1277460/) and Kathy Sierra on "The myth of 'keeping up'" (http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/04/the_myth_of_kee.html)

I'm 26, and for me "realising that I'm probably going to die" has been 100% contemporary and parallel with "basically stopping consuming books, films and music at all"? I have a sort of file of stuff marked "to get around to immediately if I ever become immortal" - pleasingly it is 100% okay for this file to grow to any finite size.

when i was a kid i would go to the library and read about movies for YEARS before i ever actually got to see them. i would think about these movies and look at every picture i could find in books.

I do miss the days of reading and re-reading 100s of multi-graf reviews of records I'd probably never hear, each compared to another 5 bands I might never hear, with puns on record titles I was unaware of = an enticing puzzle to piece together tiny corners of in spare mental moments and by serendipitous moments w/evening radio

whereas now you read the 40-word mp3 blog blurb once as you download the zip, each unheard reference point makes you think "oh crap, something else I'm obliged to spend at least an hour of my life on", and close the browser window

but, I'm old

I do miss the days of reading and re-reading 100s of multi-graf reviews of records I'd probably never hear, each compared to another 5 bands I might never hear, with puns on record titles I was unaware of

ehhh i don't

kind of amazed how much young music fans 'know' these days. the obscurest shit i used to like seems really mnstrm now, but so much just wasn't available. otoh, i listened to stuff 'more', ie more frequently

i've always felt oppressed by the amount of books i want to read but won't. at least you can basically get stuff for free now -- there are loads of canonical records i would never have paid for (because i wasn't that into what i'd heard), but am glad to be able to hear them on the internet.

Listening to a canonical novel requires slightly less effort than reading a book though.

I'm 23 - I think the idea that this could even be a problem requires a 40yo's mindset, sorta - if you grow up sitting in front of a machine that can connect you to billions of webpages and millions of people, you very quickly realize that there is an opportunity cost to your time and you're not going to see/hear/know everything - I mean, you don't even 'realize' it, it's basically inherent. whereas, I dunno, if you hung out in a small book or record store in the 70s, it would be easier to see the world in the "I'm gonna consume ALL of this" sense. for a kid in 2010, wanting to read every good book or see every good movie is the equivalent of wanting to meet every person in america - it's not an overwhelming concept, it's an absurd one.

kind of amazed how much young music fans 'know' these days

yeah - kind of amazed when teenagers are not just familiar with the hot new bands that I am too old to tell apart, and The Canon which I rejected as a teenager partly out of stroppiness and partly just to cut down on "obligations" and concentrate on the stuff I felt I could actually own and have new ideas about, but then bring up some little obscure nugget from the 90s (i.e. my own period of voracious music-houndery)

though I am pretty easily amazed by people just knowing song titles, something my memory has been no good for ever since I first had more than 20 CDs

i dont really care about knowing a lot but being alive on the internet has made me a lot less willing to read/watch/listen to stuff in isolation it always feels lonely now not to be able to talk about smthn

yeah it's weird. i know what scott means. i used to - i shit you not cuz this sounds like i'm a fuckin grandpa - but like i used to make 1 hour each way trips just to go to a town that was big enough to have rolling stone magazine and spin magazine and guitar player magazine

then in HS we used to travel the same hour cuz an "indie rock" store finally opened up....we'd take a whole day just to go buy stuff

i had this rolling stone greatest 100 albums issue and i read it over and over and over...like about marquee moon and never mind the bollocks and loaded and the first modern lovers record

i imagined them so many times.

sometimes i honestly feel like my life would be better if they shut the internet off.

I've been wondering about this for a while, usually with a feeling of 'MAN I can't even imagine what it must be like to get a grounding on so much out there if I was twenty years younger' -- but then again, it's precisely *because* I'm not twenty years younger that I'm probably thinking about it all wrong. Ultimately I don't know if there's a correct or right way to do things when the levels of expectation and accessibility have been so radically shifted, assuming one has the financial means or luck for such easy access -- still the biggest element in the room. Combine that with the motivation on what to take in or not and there are endless variables...

I thought we'd had a similar thread a while back that you'd started ned but I tried to search - man, you've made a lot of threads! ;)

Hahaha. Ten years of random thread questions as of this August!

for a kid in 2010 non-OCD person, wanting to read every good book or see every good movie is the equivalent of wanting to meet every person in america - it's not an overwhelming concept, it's an absurd one.

I go into ilx threads w/ the assumption that every person reading it is an OCD person

I can clearly recall, in about 1980, when some lackey came to my door asking if I was interested in getting me some cable tv. I said "no". She asked me why not, because she was obliged to track this information for her company. I said I was already entertained enough. This choice, sadly, was not allowed on the form she was required to fill out, so we agreed to have her fake it.

The production of more and more art, books, music, movies, television programs and consumer goods is out of my hands. I don't ask for this stuff. It just gets blurted out at a dizzying pace and there it is, bouncing around in the world, begging for attention.

The only sane response is to just live your life and not try to keep up with all of it. No one could. And far too much of it is a small variation on something that's been done a thousand times before, and often done better, too.

I feel like an old coot when I look at all the singles and eps I spent time and effort hunting down and now the kids these days can basically get whatever they want in seconds, and for free!

Music is absurdly overwhelming. I just don't have enough time to keep up with the niche genres and labels that interest me. I find music by chance these days and I'm always behind the curve. Found Best Coast and found out their singles had been blogged about for nine months already. Whoa. (this is also an effect of working away from a computer during the day - I don't have the ability to do any listening or surfing when I work)(unless I sneak away with this iPhone)

Film is less so because I realized it isn't really my medium. I can't get into movies on DVD, so my exposure to cinema is still primarily via mainstream chains and the local Angelika/Landmarks, where programming gets weaker over time.

Literature, I've always been hopeless. I don't plow through books very quickly.

Doing stuff is the hardest thing. There's not enough time in my adulthood to become proficient at the things I want to try. I want to learn to skydive, kayak, run a marathon, compete in a Strongman, etc. I end up paralyzed by choice and lack of funds/free time.

yes, doing stuff, and also going places. i get said when i think about how, realistically, i'll only get to visit a small fraction of all the places i really want to see.

I've realised I can only become 'master of my own domain'...completely on top of a passionate interest if I choose to devote my life to it. Hypothetically, I feel the only way to devote myself to literature in the way I desire is to continue on at university and do MAs/PHDs. As for music/film, I could only get a handle on *everything* if I consumed the art the way I imagine someone like Matos does; freelancing, being free to explore and broaden your interest in modes that attract and pitch articles accordingly.

I find the amount of (probably) incredible stuff out there just awe-inspiring, and I know there are so many epiphanies left to happen, from 19 years old at the the moment. It's like trying to count those white streams of light when the Millennium Falcon goes into hyperdrive. Wild.

Perhaps I could fit so much more in if I actually consumed, in all the time spent on places like here, allmusic, IMDB, the library.

Doing stuff is the hardest thing. There's not enough time in my adulthood to become proficient at the things I want to try.

Does anyone else see this zest for "doing" as an American thing? I'm not really a relaxer, I get antsy sitting down unless I'm extremely tired or I really feel like I've been productive enough to earn it. And I get up in the morning (on my days off) with a mental of list of desired achievements, and I like to get right to them.

Is this a Northern thing, and did Southerners of both USA and Eur learn to slow down b/c of their weather? Is it a part of the American optimist/Puritan/Calvinist legacy? Am I just mental?

xp Eh, I feel like I have fewer epiphanies from art as I get older. There's still stuff I really like, but nothing gobsmacks me like it used to.

xpost lol way to curb my enthusaiasm!

I don't miss driving hours to find a record store that might possibly have a copy of something I had read about a bunch in some book I checked out from the library. doing that shit was a pain in the ass.

or wishing I knew someone else that had heard of Can, or Funkadelic

or having to wait years and years to even hear what "One Nation Under A Groove" sounded like, or to find a copy of Spacemen 3's "Taking Drugs to Make Music To", or having to rely on write-ups in Spin and Rolling Stone to even piece together what an artist's catalog was like.

fuckin lame.

i read this book recently and its a bit dated and probably out of print but it had some good stuff in it. about americans and their inability to ever be sated. how we have to keep moving and consuming cuz, duh, that is how our country was set up. its in our blood.

http://www.redskybooks.net/redsky/images/items/200x1000/025827.jpg

x-post somewhere up there...

xp to Laurel- I don't think it's limited regionally in the US, or necessarily to the US. After all, the south is the home of Git R Done and the bored 4 hours of TV a night middle-class is nationwide.

Recent argument with gf was about my need to do stuff. I felt like she wouldn't give me leads on things she wanted to do together (go see this museum or that game or whatever) and she said she was happy just sitting on the couch watching a DVD with me. I had to explain that I'm usually not. Cuddling with TV should be a change of pace to me, not the standard plan for Saturday afternoon. I've only got 12 years 'til 40, I want to make the most of (probable) good health and physical ability.

I'm not an ambitious person in the traditional American sense, but I'm starting to feel like a sense of drive (the need to just be doing something, even if it's an active waste of time) will always be an obstacle for us.

I see Shakey's point about isolation - my era of teendom/young adulthood was lucky. We had the Internet to learn about stuff and communicate, but still had the opportunity to hit the cool record stores to try to find stuff. And when I didn't find X, I might chance upon Y instead.

I'm into doing stuff! Making music and being outside = best use of my spare time. TV's mostly garbage anyway, usually only in front of it for an hour or so a day

oddly an hour was the limit my parents set on my TV viewing as a child lol

milo, you're speaking my language. I think I'm driving the partner crazy because I can't zone out for a whole day, and frankly I don't see why I SHOULD zone out for a whole day, apart from the occasional massive hangover or whatever. Feels like a criminal waste of time that I could be fixing or making or learning something. Have slowed myself way WAY down these past months and it's really showing in my interest in life.

but yeah growing up in the 'burbs pre-internet was PAINFUL. there was lots of stuff I was interested in that literally nobody I knew had ever even heard of, much less been curious about. (lone exception being my brother, but he was in the same boat I was for the most part). It was near impossible to find things, to find people to share them with, and to learn about them - sure the chase was fun on some level, and anticipation always makes the reward that much sweeter, but in general ugh I would've survived my prison sentence in rightwing suburban hellhole a lot better if I had had access to all the subcultural/underground stuff that I desperately wanted to connect with.

x-post

Also if I get bored and unmotivated I will basically just read until I fall asleep so now he's mad that I sleep too much. I mean this is not going to work like this.

Is yr gf actively resentful of your other time commitments?

I thank god for internet radio. If you find a good dj or five, you don't have to spend as much time "auditioning" mp3s. The problem is that I don't make enough time for radio.

i know this kind of betrays my west coach beach kid roots, but is anyone itt okay with just getting around to te things you end up getting around to? you certainly won't get to everything, but if you've got a good enough perpheral sense for things happening around you, you'll probably find more than enough of interest, offline or on.

oh definitely. I'm never going to digitize all my LPs before I die, or hear everything I want to.

as far as keeping up I am pretty happy with where I am, and glad that I can keep up better than the pre-internet days (although back then it helped that I was an avid tape trader, which performed a lot of the pre-internet try-before-you-buy function and should be noted here). I have more than I can listen to now, but the point is to be able to listen to whatever strikes your mood, not to plow through everything like a chore. Some records (or MP3 zips) sit around for years until the right moment comes.

that's how I feel for the most part. I've often been behind the curve on various things, but keeping up with the zeitgeist or whatever just seems silly. at this point I know what I like and have a fair grasp of what's still out there so I'm not in any hurry

but is anyone itt okay with just getting around to te things you end up getting around to?

just sayin, with a somewhat curious mind and awareness of the culture, you'll find plenty to get into w/o ocd torrenting 15 chillwave (or whatever, sorry chillwave strawman) recs a day. worrying about not getting around to ALL of it seems foreign to me. the idea of actually needing to just strikes me as gross.

i am increasingly ok with just doing what i can get done because stressing about stuff to do makes me do less

To use music as an example: There's a useful, albeit somewhat arbitrary, distinction to be made between people who like to seek out music just to have some new tunes to listen to and music nerds who listen to as much music as possible. It's clear what the former are doing. The latter, however, are doing one or more of the following, depending: (1) feeding an insatiable desire to hear as much new music as possible; (b) accumulating knowledge about the current state of whatever genre(s) they're interested in; and (c) keeping up with a peer ground in order to "be a part of the conversation" or to just not be left behind. This is just a sketch of some stuff I think is going on and it could be fleshed out more, but there you go.

So, if you fall into the former group, you're probably okay with doing your own thing. If you fall into the latter group, you're probably going to feel a need to keep up. Perhaps.

i kinda feel like what's ever left of indie rock is just propped up by market forces now

like honestly idk how ppl can be excited about whatever latest crop of lite indie rock crap, i just mark it down to the fact that there's a lot of blogs and websites that just need new bands to be excited about...a lot of what whiney said in his rant was OTM

it's just new bands for the sake of new bands...new bands that sound almost like the other bands from 2 years ago that aren't cool to like anymore

^^^
and i think maybe the only way those folks are getting by is on the graces of ksh's "c" group above, which is a drag

i wonder if some years down the line the fact that people with broadband can now choose to have whatever influences they please will have a noticeable impact on the music, films, etc being made. not that there aren't still arbiters and tastemakers of course -- fear being that sh@kedown's diagnosis will just carry on and on and on due to the way that's structured now. i don't think it's a forgone conclusion though.

i'm 26 and can be overwhelmed just sitting there deciding what to click next on my netflix instant queue, feeling angst that yea pretty much anything i pick may be worth watching given infinite life like someone said upthread, but am i making the best selections for my limited lifespan, whatever that may mean? it's hard to settle on a specialization, or even determine if that's the way to go.

if a person really considers this a problem, they have too much time on their hands. is this a smartphone users thing?

w/ you M@tt on the whole indie rock thing -- i haven't found much indie rock to be excited about this year

then again, i haven't been trying too hard to find any

when was the last time anyone just sat down (without a laptop or iphone on their lap) and listened to an album all the way through

not so sure what's wrong with new bands for the sake of new bands

The "too much to consume, too little time" thing is only really a problem for people who either want to keep up or feel the need to keep up. Many of us here, I'd assume, feel both ways: we want to keep up because it's inherently enjoyable and because it lets us continue to be a voice in a community of people who enjoy similar cultural products. Ultimately, though, that drive to "keep up" can be exhausting.

today, yesterday xp

Also, this piece by ILX's own S1ck M0uthy touches on some of this stuff: http://bit.ly/cweWCc

yeah no shit I listen to 2-3 albums all the way through most days of the week

xxxp

I like having options. I love consuming. Give me more.

i feel this way about baseball, actually. i never followed it closely as a kid besides the local team. now i feel like it's just unmanageable to keep up with who's hot, who's not, etc

"when was the last time anyone just sat down (without a laptop or iphone on their lap) and listened to an album all the way through"

yeah like every day. but i'm old.

my take on this is that "keeping up" is an easy-to-accomplish project these days that can be totally meaningful and worthwhile. i do it because i feel engaged with new music, whether i like it or not, and because i strongly reject ppl's tendency as they get older to retreat into the past. that being said, were someone to find themselves stressed or overwhelmed by the amount of stuff out there, the only solution is to chill the fuck out imo.

it can be worthwhile but i do not think keeping up would make me happier because i am ok listening to older stuff or what other people play. i do feel weird around people my own age who are mega serious about it because it is still normal to keep up when you are 25 and now i'm not cool anymore.

but my sorting method with most things (including books & movies) is to wait around to see if people still think it's good x years later

by the way, and this may be challenging or not, but for people in their 20s who are worried about this:

keeping up with a peer ground in order to "be a part of the conversation" or to just not be left behind.

it's a whole hell of a lot easier to just start repping canonical shit from the 70s--you look smart and learned and no one can really argue with you. as compared to being like hey check out random new band x and taking the risk that that band never actually goes anywhere or that people don't like them.

i listen to prolly 3ish albums a day all the way thru

call all destroyer,

there's something more though...i'm hella excited about music, and even lots of rock music, but to me the sorta Captial-I Indie Rock pro scene is just weird...like ppl will be like Wilco haha grampa, but then stump for...Band of Horses? or what happened to Tapes and Tapes, they were just as solidly mediocre as lots of stuff that's "hot" now

like put it this way

to me the whole blogs, pitchfork, SXSW fest, etc etc needs grist for the mill

yeah sure obviously a lot of that stuff sucks but that's not an indie thing, that's an every genre of music thing. i mean i listened to some band of horses and was like wow this is boring but that same process resulted in me listening to, let's say, shearwater, who i think are really great.

when i thought of this i wasn't thinking about keeping up so much as just OMG there is so much stuff at people's fingertips these days. what does this do? i spent a lot of time as a kid staring at the ceiling. i don't want to get too old fogey *in my day we had to walk ten miles in the snow for velvet underground bootlegs* but but but there was some limit on what i could get my hands on. there was sure as hell a limit on what i could BUY. does having 50 million songs on your computer and ipod DO something to you? or is everyone basically the same.

cad's right--it's more of a, uh, cultural product thing than something specific to one scene

scott the limit today is not what you can get but what you can listen to--still only so many hours in the day. i mean i guess ppl probably don't play records dozens and dozens of times at the same rate they used to--not really a "loss" to me

"everyone is basically the same"--i guess, if what music you listen to is supposed to define you somehow?

when i thought of this i wasn't thinking about keeping up so much as just OMG there is so much stuff at people's fingertips these days. what does this do? i spent a lot of time as a kid staring at the ceiling. i don't want to get too old fogey *in my day we had to walk ten miles in the snow for velvet underground bootlegs* but but but there was some limit on what i could get my hands on. there was sure as hell a limit on what i could BUY. does having 50 million songs on your computer and ipod DO something to you? or is everyone basically the same.

― scott seward, Thursday, 27 May 2010 23:52 (3 minutes ago)

I was just looking to buy some sun ra singles box that's sold out right now and it is INFURIATING that no one has thrown it on a blog

With access to a seemingly infinite supply of music, you more or less get to define what path you take. If you wanted to go really deep into black metal for a year and ignore everything else, you could. If you wanted to just listen to hip-hop, say, chart pop, you could. But because, as cad pointed out, time is limited, you have to make decisions and partition your attention out accordingly. Whether you become a black metal expert, a genre-hopping dilettante, an indie kid with a taste for dubstep, whatever--to a degree at least, it's really up to you.

you mean the 2CD Singles Comp on Evidence? PM me (xp)

not just music. all art. is out there for anyone with a computer. or a good library. in ways that it wasn't before. are young people hyper-advanced half-cyborgs by now or what?

xpost ksh - basically what i was trying to get at, and that the jury's still out on how this will play out in terms of what is being made, with some maybe worrying signs so far re: sh@kedown's posts. i really want it to work though -- for hyper cyborgs to make awesome shit no one could have before!

thx for the offer sleeve, it was this tho http://www.jazzmanrecords.co.uk/v2/prodtype.asp?strParents=&CAT_ID=45&numRecordPosition=1

no, they're basically the same. actually imo, the biggest difference is wikipedia - back in the day the only people who rattled off trivia were ilxor-types, now basically everyone does.

xp

another al3x: you're right when you say "it's hard to settle on a specialization, or even determine if that's the way to go"

it's all up to the individual -- you more or less decide whether you're going to be a genre expert or a genre-hopping music fan or whatever. which, yeah, is freeing and overwhelming

Ksh, since you already linked Nick S.'s inaugural Soulseeking piece, here's one I wrote that touches on some of the issues discussed in this thread.

(I have to say, though: four years later, I feel a little less sanguine about the fact that so much of the music I consume is filtered through predictable channels. Maybe because I've been living with the Internet-as-bazaar model for longer now and it's less exciting. Maybe, too, because I don't have as much time or energy to constantly seek out new music these days and so I use even fewer channels than before.)

I spent so much of my time as a kid/teenage bored out of my mind. Maybe I'm over compensating now, but it is glorious.

to offer a positive opinion, I think the internet-at-your-fingertips has had a clarifying effect on me & my tastes. like, when you realize that it is, literally in the literalizing literal sense, that it is impossible to keep up w/ everyone, that kind of sets you free in the way. like 4-5 years ago I was this kid who had, you know, 25 blogs in his bloglines and f5'd constantly to download the latest fader-repped track or w/e, and I gotta admit that the reason I started lurking on ILM on the first place was to keep a finger on the pulse of what's trending in the music community & to be first about everything.

but nowadays I just listen to stuff I like & who cares about keeping current. I find it's much more satisfying now to play the dumb, 'oh, what's this band? I've never heard of them before, can you tell me why they're good'? side of the conversation than the 'dude this band will change your life' side. I don't check any music blogs anymore, my filters for new music are top 40 radio and ILM.

I guess where I feel the thrust of this question the most is when I visit my school's DVD library. we have a pretty big collection, filled with a lot of the classics, and it would probably take me a year to make it from 0-Z. I often think that cinema is the easiest of the mediums to 'get caught up' in and how graet would it be if I spent the time I spend on ILX on watching movies instead, but jeez I can't ever get the urge to watch anything other than comedies and action movies these days.

feelin you on that

it was great to get over feeling obligated to watch/listen to things because they were "classics"

unopened boxsets haunt me

scott the limit today is not what you can get but what you can listen to--still only so many hours in the day. i mean i guess ppl probably don't play records dozens and dozens of times at the same rate they used to--not really a "loss" to me

I don't know, I kinda miss that part. Playing things dozens and dozens of times. Like (lame example, sry), OK Computer was one of my very first CDs, and we didn't have the internet (and mp3s weren't really widespread at that time anyway in 1997/98), and I was in one of those towns where the nearest non-Wal-Mart CD store was 90 minutes away. So I just played it over and over and over again. Probably hundreds of times, maybe even a thousand. I mean, a lot. And to this day, even though I haven't played it in several years, I can still recreate the entire thing in my head, every little noise and harmony, no problem.

Whereas, these days, if I was 14 and listening to it for the first time, I'd probably read something about it and get curious about all the references to U2 and Pink Floyd, and start digging into that stuff after listening to OKC 7-8 times. Which is fine (I guess, I still hate U2), but for better or worse, you miss out on the experience of being really knowing an album front and back, having it be tied to a year in your life, no matter how good or bad it is. I don't know if the drifting away from that is good or bad. But yeah, it's a change, at least for me.

(I'm fighting the urge to not post this because it's stupid, but I'm making an effort to try to actually post 1/4 of the stuff I write on ILX this year)

that's not stupid! this is an interesting point:

if I was 14 and listening to it for the first time, I'd probably read something about it and get curious about all the references to U2 and Pink Floyd, and start digging into that stuff after listening to OKC 7-8 times.

and I think that speaks to the kind of paradigm shift this thread addresses.

But, you know, that's just a guess at 14-year-old me would act in 2010. My real 15-year-old cousin just listens to Green Day, nothing but, despite having access to everything in the world via internet.

The strange part of thinking about this is balancing the realization that every generation from the beginning of the 20th century on has experiences big changes in the way they experience/consume media vs. the idea that we're probably on the steep part of the J-curve as far as the exponential growth in the ease of obtaining media. In other words, I'm sure every generation for the last century has thought that "things have really changed" in the same way we are now. I mean, when 78s started to get popular I'm sure the oldtimers thought "back in the day we'd all meet at the pavilion to hear music, not listen to it in our durn living room, durn in, durn!"

does having 50 million songs on your computer and ipod DO something to you? or is everyone basically the same.

I think it creates consuming habits (whether they're good or bad is up for debate) where you dip into a lot of stuff but very rarely do you saturate yourself in it and really stay with one thing for too long. Like with Z S's post about listening to OKComputer a million times. I heard that album and gave Radiohead a chance to win me over back in 2004, when I was 16, and after digging that album I listened to their other albums, checked out what influenced them and what they had influenced, and then moved on (I think I got really into Creation's roster circa the late 80s/early 90s the next month).

but for better or worse, you miss out on the experience of being really knowing an album front and back, having it be tied to a year in your life, no matter how good or bad it is.

This. There's a lot to say on the subject matter of the thread, but I think that with all the information that's out there it's harder than ever for people to imagine how to filter and construct a story out of what is going on with entertainment, art, pop-culture etc. Critics have always had to play the role of self-appointed gate keepers, but it's at the point where so much is going through the gate so quickly that it's hard to pinpoint what exactly should be pointed out and exalted at the exclusion of so much else.

the way I feel toward consuming new media is kinda like marge simpson when she says 'I know they say you should drink a glass of red wine every day but I can only manage half'

But, you know, that's just a guess at 14-year-old me would act in 2010. My real 15-year-old cousin just listens to Green Day, nothing but, despite having access to everything in the world via internet

for long stretches of time i still listen to the same four or five records over & over - i think its down to personality more than anything. like ppl talking about devouring record guides or magazines or w/e pre-internet that style of consumption is abetted and greatly magnified by technology but i & think lots of ppl never really approached music that way in the 1st place

milo, you're speaking my language. I think I'm driving the partner crazy because I can't zone out for a whole day, and frankly I don't see why I SHOULD zone out for a whole day, apart from the occasional massive hangover or whatever. Feels like a criminal waste of time that I could be fixing or making or learning something. Have slowed myself way WAY down these past months and it's really showing in my interest in life.
[...]
Is yr gf actively resentful of your other time commitments?

Not exactly actively resentful - but she gets really angry when I phrase our time together (which is lovely) as an exchange in time that could be spent doing something else. She doesn't understand that when I say I'm making a sacrifice to spend nights with her that I'm saying I enjoy doing so. All she hears is that there are other things I could conceivably be doing.

tbh, I'm really going to have to start actively being myself and accomplishing the things I want do in the near future, or I'm just going to get angry and resentful at myself (and her by proxy). If the relationship doesn't survive me spending more time on my life, then it wasn't ever going to work.

This is all pretty new in my life, too - not the urge to do something, but having goals and hope. I always thought I was the free spirit who didn't need to plan or brainstorm (for life, for schoolwork, whatever) - in reality, I function way way better under self-imposed structures. When I give in to the urge to veg or spend too much of my life cuddling on the couch, I get depressed and uninterested in anything.

But, you know, that's just a guess at 14-year-old me would act in 2010. My real 15-year-old cousin just listens to Green Day, nothing but, despite having access to everything in the world via internet.

I'm not sure adventurous music exploration (bouncing from genre to genre or band to band) is common even in proto-music nerd teenagers of any era.

I find that I kinda use blanket dismissals of or personal prejudices against huge swathes of culture as a defense mechanism of sorts in order to keep the enormous tide of stuff out there at bay, so to speak. Telling myself, for example, that the greater part of a particular genre is probably worth ignoring subsequently allows me to concentrate on enjoying a manageable number of things. Somehow this strategy seems to work out for me; I feel like my radar is pretty good at picking up on or somehow leading me to whatever it is that I "need" to hear or read or what have you along the way.

Anyhow, I'm glad that this thread was started, b/c I think about this sort of stuff often, and it's interesting to learn how other people approach this aspect of contemp-ery layfe.

I was oddly more into and listening to a wide range of weird shit when I had *less* access to it, than I do now. Or did; I'm getting back into things again now but went for years with all the internet access i could want and remarkably little interest in new (or old!) music.

But in the 80s my exposure was via Uni community radio, and friends sending mixtapes. We did have one alternative record store in my city, and finding overseas indie rarities was like fuckin Holy Grail shit, man.

Just doesnt seem so anymore, cept maybe finding old rare vinyl.

Youtube has been another interesting diversion for me though: for nostalgia-trawling. Sesame St ffs!

for long stretches of time i still listen to the same four or five records over & over - i think its down to personality more than anything. like ppl talking about devouring record guides or magazines or w/e pre-internet that style of consumption is abetted and greatly magnified by technology but i & think lots of ppl never really approached music that way in the 1st place

Yeah, I definitely think that people's listening habits are more eclectic when contrasted with how they were in the pre-internet age, but I think some incorrect assumptions are being made in this thread as far as projecting the average ilxor's ravenous appetite for consuming cultural artifacts onto the public at large. I don't think most people feel compelled to take in as much stuff or be conversant with as much stuff as people here seem to be. So yeah, maybe every ilxor is ocd or kinda manic or something, I guess! (OR JUST HUGE NEEEERDS!)

i feel like my listening habits were built for this age. as a young fellah i always listened to music with a short attention span, swapping out 45s halfway through the song, listening to only mixtapes, always in search of a new tune. i don't think i ever sat down and listened to an album in full until i was well into my 20s.

when i was a kid, i read music magazines and fanzines obsessively - along with movie & art mags and whatever the hell else i could get my hands on. as a result, i had the sense that i was surrounded by a an infinite and not-quite-tangible world of potentially interesting art-things. i carried with me, mentally or scrawled on scraps & in margins, a constantly-shifting list of things of immediate, near-desperate interest that i felt i HAD to seek out, things that would complete me somehow. but my desire to experience these things was cruelly limited by the relatively small cultural world that i actually had immediate access to. as a result, i often carried these unsatisfied curiosities around for years (or even decades). so the OP's question makes a certain kind of sense. these days, i can quickly & easily find most any artistic/cultural product i might be interested in, along with tons of background info, and in that sense, the world has changed dramatically.

but the fundamental condition of the curious culture consumer hasn't changed all that much. though i used to chafe at the physical constraints that prevented me from hearing or seeing this or that thing, i was nonetheless surrounded by and engaged with more than i could ever hope to properly experience, much less fully process. i remember this sense i used to have that i HAD to listed to every record i bought often enough at least to reliably decide what my favorite tracks were, and then to make tape compilations as a way of keeping things in some kind of reasonable order. and these supposedly fun tasks eventually came to feel like a kind of sisyphean burden. which speaks more to my own pathologies, i suppose, than to the condition of the consumer in general, but we've all been drowning in excess cultural product for a lot longer than the last couple decades.

Does anyone else see this zest for "doing" as an American thing? I'm not really a relaxer, I get antsy sitting down unless I'm extremely tired or I really feel like I've been productive enough to earn it. And I get up in the morning (on my days off) with a mental of list of desired achievements, and I like to get right to them.

Is this a Northern thing, and did Southerners of both USA and Eur learn to slow down b/c of their weather? Is it a part of the American optimist/Puritan/Calvinist legacy? Am I just mental?

Sure, I think that's an American/northeast thing to some degree, but I also think much of it is simply attributable to individual temperament. I'm completely the opposite; the idea of feeling a push to "do" a bunch of stuff seems almost depressing to me, like almost as if it reduces human life to a sequence of task completion. I guess I admire people who are disciplined in that regard, and I recognize that it can feel satisfying to be productive and to feel like things are being accomplished, but I really, really enjoy doing next to nothing.

as a young fellah i always listened to music with a short attention span, swapping out 45s halfway through the song

Hahah I still do this with albums, much to some peoples annoyance.

i respect dedication, ambition and the zeal that drives some to follow their whims through to completion - but am more or less bereft of these qualities, myself. i feel the guilt of irresponsible inactivity and self-indulgent frittering described by del, but do not rise to its urgings. i see this more as an expression of my own temperament than a regional thing. i was born in washington dc and raised by hardworking northeastern wasps, and find myself surrounded by many equally industrious types here in the pacific northwest.

jaymc -- almost sure i read your piece a few years ago when i was still in college :-D

http://alexbalk.tumblr.com/post/674237458/i-figured-it-out

meh

I have the opposite thing going right now, where I consumed so much good shit over such a short period, and with live music. I haven't really felt the need to reach out to anything that interesting in the last 48 hours and am still digesting what I did see and hear.

Music festivals, pretty good some times.

I'm feeling really overwhelmed with the amount of information that's available right now. no matter how I tweak my mode of consuming information/art/whatever, I always, always, always feel like I'm not doing a good enough job of keeping up, which is kinda why I was so interested in starting this thread in the first place. I know that there's always going to be more out there than anyone can sanely deal with, but I'm still definitely doing something wrong here--I'm either trying to follow too much, not doing a good job efficiently dealing with the amount of stuff I choose to follow, or something else

like many people, there are a handful of subjects I want to really engage with. but even in the realm of, like, indie rock, there are so many records that are coming out and gaining some sort of traction, so that if you want to even know a little bit about all of the hyped bands, it's going to take a *lot* of time. and then there's the critical conversation, which also moves insanely quickly and is spread out across so many publications, blogs, and Twitter accounts that it's really, really difficult to keep up with. and if you're interested in being really knowledgable about more than just indie rock, which I am, then you're going to have to follow multiple conversations from multiple domains. I mean, I'm also interested in technology, and the sheer amount of *critical* stuff written about just Apple is totally overwhelming; if you want to "keep up" with even the Apple world, it's like a full time job. trying to keep on top of a bunch of areas feels totally impossible

so: what do you do? do you prioritize some of your interests over others? do you follow fifty sources/commentators on every topic you're really interested in, or do you follow fewer and still feel fine? is one of the topics you follow your core concern, so that you maybe pay very close attention to it and then less attention to the rest? if you've read this far, you probably know what I'm getting at. in any case, I'd be really interested to hear anyone's thoughts, whether you feel like you have a handle on stuff or if you feel like you don't. I imagine I'm not the only one here who feels like this

tl;dr

I am prioritizing. Selling all my DVDs but a couple of TV shows I love - I'm tired of feeling like I need to keep them so that I may experience them at some undefined point in time. If I have time and the urge, I'll Netflix. If Netflix doesn't have it, it will probably not be an earthshaking tragedy that I missed <x>. That goes for everything except books (which I'm not getting rid of because they aren't worth anything) - I'm fighting the fear I've always held onto that if I overlook something it will be a big loss.

Selling most of my cameras and gear - I want to spend a year with one body and one lens if I can get away with it.
Selling my guitars and amp - maybe I'll pick it up again down the road, but even a basic proficiency with the guitar is down the list of things I want to focus on.

i have a handle

so: what do you do? do you prioritize some of your interests over others? do you follow fifty sources/commentators on every topic you're really interested in, or do you follow fewer and still feel fine? is one of the topics you follow your core concern, so that you maybe pay very close attention to it and then less attention to the rest? if you've read this far, you probably know what I'm getting at. in any case, I'd be really interested to hear anyone's thoughts, whether you feel like you have a handle on stuff or if you feel like you don't. I imagine I'm not the only one here who feels like this

tl;dr

― markers, Thursday, July 22, 2010 5:41 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

i have no handle. i flit from shiny object to shiny object without any real concern with "nailing it down" or understanding any of it in what's said to be it's proper context. i feel like a bat in a hurricane. at the moment, i'm downloading d'angelo and M.O.P. cuz they got talked up on the year 2000 thread and i've always loved "ante up". and listening to boris. and a comp of african electropop. i'll mix those things in with the thousand thousand other things i'm paying vague attention to at present (michael hurley, omar khorshid, nerve city, young jeezy, south & central american film, brandon graham, roberto bolano) and something will come of it, i'm sure.

i'm a fan, not an expert. and not even an obsessed, "serious" fan, just a person who likes and is curious about stuff. and i'm cool with that. it's kind of liberating, really.

i use lists (amazon wishlist, netflix queue, instapaper, notepad docs, etc) to keep track of stuff i don't have time for that way i have the option of checking it out in the future.

whenever i feel really good i tend to be inspired by lots of stuff and want to experience it all. i feel as if there is just so much awesome stuff out there that i'll just never have time for it, but i'm too busy feeling good about the things that i'm excited about to worry about not getting to everything possible. whenever i feel bad, there is nothing out there worth my time and i loathe myself for reasons that have nothing to due with not hearing every album or reading every book i would normally find interesting. that's why i can't relate to the anxiety-over-not-keeping-up feeling.

the idea of "keeping up" just isn't even an object, i'm much more concerned with processing my experiences and doing something with them that is satisfying and interesting to me.

i feel as if there is just so much awesome stuff out there that i'll just never have time for it, but i'm too busy feeling good about the things that i'm excited about to worry about not getting to everything possible. whenever i feel bad, there is nothing out there worth my time and i loathe myself for reasons that have nothing to due with not hearing every album or reading every book i would normally find interesting. that's why i can't relate to the anxiety-over-not-keeping-up feeling.

the idea of "keeping up" just isn't even an object, i'm much more concerned with processing my experiences and doing something with them that is satisfying and interesting to me.

― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Friday, July 23, 2010 12:05 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

^^^ so so so otm

also to highlight: i'm too busy feeling good about the things that i'm excited about to worry about not getting to everything possible.

damn straight

I have adopted an approach similar to milo's method of downsizing & prioritizing. As I've been doing this for about five years or so at this point, I've found that several of the interests and activities that I set aside in the interest of "removing clutter" have resurfaced almost unconsciously, within the context of "primary" interests and activities.

^ mostly concerns "creative" endeavors (making stuff). I don't know how applicable such would be to academic/critical pursuits, which, for me, have mostly been relegated to "reading about shit on the internet & occasionally posting about it on ilx"

http://www.thestripcult.com/Join_files/shapeimage_1.png

I'm 33, and at the moment I'm getting much more out of repeated consumption of the mainstream grown-up canon - Shakespeare, Dylan, Prince, Scorsese, learning classical guitar pieces - than obsessively hunting and sampling more and more new stuff. Part of it, I think, is that we had kids relatively early - my eldest is nearly 12 - and a fair bit of new stuff (music in particular) feels like it belongs to their generation rather than mine.

i just don't get that. music doesn't belong to anybody.

it's not hard to keep up with what one is interested in. if you're wigged out about being "in touch" and "on top"... don't worry about it.

That's fine if your interests are narrow. If you think everything is potentially interesting, then you don't have enough time on this planet to check it all out, much less have any kind of deeper relationship with it.

xp re music doesn't belong to anybody - jeez getting on to questionable ground here, but I disagree, most (all?) music is culturally and temporally situated.

I mean, I can appreciate Miley Cyrus to some extent - she can sing and there are some half-decent tunes - but no matter how open I am, I'd never have the same OMG!♥♥♥♥! reaction that my daughters do. resonance, marketing, whatever - it's their music

yeah, that makes sense, but you're still allowed to cross the barricades if you wanna. like, am i supposed to listen only to music made by 40-something str8 wite guys?

it's the desperation that i don't understand. there is so much music available for anyone to check out, regardless of genre. it's all so accessible.. complaining about "keeping up" seems to be related more to some whole "being on top"/"knowing the best of the best" mentality. i understand wanting to hear all the newest freshest stuff, but it isn't as if the volume of brilliant music has increased this decade to the point where it's unmanageable to keep track of. anyway, i still think markers/ksh is a troll/sock so why the hell am i responding? oh yeah, that bottle o gin :/

xp re music doesn't belong to anybody - jeez getting on to questionable ground here, but I disagree, most (all?) music is culturally and temporally situated

lol wut

man, turns out that d'angelo record is really good

it isn't as if the volume of brilliant music has increased this decade to the point where it's unmanageable to keep track of.

fucking hell, yes it has. or at least, potentially brilliant music that you'd need to check out at least once to know if it were brilliant or not. do you have more hours in a day than anyone else here?

INTERNET

FREE ONLINE MAGAZINES

more like one's ability to hear about and get exposure to all the potentially brilliant shit that's ALWAYS been out there has suddenly increased 1000fold. e.g. d'angelo, for instance, not that i'm saying

Much as i like to think I'm on level pegging with floyd appreciation as my dad, whenever i see old photos of him and his hippy floyd dudes in the 70's i can't help think he has one up on me.

IF IT'S ALWAYS BEEN OUT THERE

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM

THE CAPS IS OUT THERE

i mean, sound clips at music store websites, that's pretty much all i need when it comes to seeking out new music.

eat my caps

Hobbes, can you recommend any of these FREE ONLINE MAGAZINES for me?

erh sorry tomofthenest that was a INTERNET = FREE ONLINE MAGAZINES that got truncated.

VIBE

oh I know really, was just being disingenuous in a half-hearted attempt to zing hobbes.

hobbes kinda otm tbh

mainly this

there is so much music available for anyone to check out, regardless of genre. it's all so accessible.. complaining about "keeping up" seems to be related more to some whole "being on top"/"knowing the best of the best" mentality. i understand wanting to hear all the newest freshest stuff, but it isn't as if the volume of brilliant music has increased this decade to the point where it's unmanageable to keep track of.

Searching numerous different sites and magazines on the internet to try and stay on top of things just seems to me like making unnecessary work for yourself. I think I probably get the majority of my music news from ILX. If something if really exceptional and worth hearing I have no doubt that somebody else will discover it and repost it here.

Also if I don't know that I'm missing something, I can't spend time thinking that I might want to try and find out more about it.

It's amazing how easily you can absorb a lot of things now by cultural osmosis.

yeah, you guys are probably right -- it is kinda a self-created problem. expertise in a bunch of fields is probably impossible right now. but it's hard to even feel competent in one thing when there's always someone else out there who put more time into that thing than you have and can understand/explain things better than you can. not that this is a contest, but if you even want to have a seat at the table for a critical discussion of something with other really knowledgeable people, you at least need to know what you're talking about

which seems to take increasingly more time/effort to be able to do, because there's more stuff in one single domain, like indie rock, than there's ever been before to know about, and to have a real solid grasp of what's going on you need to have some sort of an understanding of all of that **more**

Markers, do you aspire to be a music writer?

if you're not concerned with really getting some sort of expertise or deep knowledge of a bunch of subjects though, then the problem I'm describing doesn't really exist for you. if you're just pursuing your own idiosyncratic interests and not pursuing expertise, then you're probably fine and, yeah, feeling pretty good, because as people have said itt there's so much great stuff coming out all the time. you can kind of get more than you need easily. which really is fantastic

xpost

at one time I thought I might want to be a music writer, but I'm increasingly less sure. probably not. but there are a bunch of subjects, music included, that I want to at least be knowledgeable enough about that I can talk intelligently about them

You already know enough to talk intelligently. Researching more trivia is just going to add noise to the signal.

http://thecprogrammer.com/wp-content/woo_custom/29-blog-tour-overload.gif

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/04/twitters-big-challenge-too-much-twitter/

also, if you have anything to contribute to this thread that has nothing to do with this article, please do

I just consumed too much by wasting my time to skim that article.

'Too much to consume...too little time' ... this only became true for me when I realized how easy it is to get pretty much anything in digital format for free on the internet and promptly took advantage of the fact. These days I am restricting myself to media I actually pay for, which cuts down significantly on the supply aspect.

That's got an element of otm about it, i've been trying to make time to actually watch all the movies/boxsets i've been storing up. Reading, i've just given up on tbh

In the last few years I've felt a sense of diminishing returns with new music and films, like there's more of it available to me than ever, but most of it is more likely to seem familiar, to not set off any new bells and whistles in my head, etc.

I think we had a p good thread about that, discussing the merits of the new vs that which has been idk time-filtered for quality- 'if you had the choice btwn no new music or no old music t/s' kind of thing

too many movies to watch, articles to read, books to skim, albums to hear, games to play...

I think we had a p good thread about that, discussing the merits of the new vs that which has been idk time-filtered for quality- 'if you had the choice btwn no new music or no old music t/s' kind of thing

― privilege as 'me me me' (darraghmac), Friday, April 12, 2013 10:40 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, there's that, but even with older music, I feel like I'm running out of frontiers.

haz you tried opera, pre-war country music, or getting deep into schlager?

1) yeah and I don't like it
2) yeah
3) ?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=schlager

tbh i feel this way with books more and more.
i want to read ~everything~ all at once.

Too often I find myself reading a book and enjoying it but I still feel like I'm always in a hurry to finish it and get to the next one rather than fully appreciating what I am reading right now.

I spend too much time checking how many pages I still have to read / how much time is left in the movie / how many years I still have to live

haz you tried opera, pre-war country music, or getting deep into schlager?

this thread was mentioned on 77 (don't hit me with a 60). it's still relevant to me right now.