what next for Chris ott?

Me, I think he's gonna go to ninja school.

(Hey wait a minute, I'm writing a piece for PSF that was assigned by someone else, what's going on here?)

that's Brent D.

-- Dom Passantino (lifetimepilingu...), November 25th, 2003.

This is still the funniest thing I've ever posted on ILM.

-- hiphopster8 (hiphopster...), February 15th, 2005.

they're also one of the few teams to have beaten chelsea this year, a true indie-dork would cheer for like gateshead, or something...

this dude's fueds with ilx were lol.

he seems like one of those guys who when he was younger kinda wanted to be "in" and never got there, so he got a little misanthropic, and that caused people to push him aside more, which caused him to be more misanthropic, and on and on, and now his existence boils down to picking fights with the girlfriends of indie rockers.

that was pretty great tho

Yeah, I could finally cheer Ott on for the first time in my life during that ordeal.

no denying

theres a wry ott goin on
― ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Wednesday, March 1, 2006

http://vimeo.com/56603963

i hardly ever watch online videos for more than a couple minutes, and I watched that entire thing.

Yeah, I don't like his writing, but his videos are strangely compelling. He doesn't come across like the person I imagined him to be.

Really liked that video, and hope it goes on to more parts. The playlist associated with it is nice to have as well...

hope it goes on to more parts

It's continued in part 25. But yeah, I hope there are more parts beyond these two.

"I can say without a doubt that Ride were the best live band of the early 90s..."

*closes browser window*

He was gonna write for that web publication Uncool, but it failed to get enough kickstarter funding.

I've really enjoyed the videos. Seems like he found his format. More power to him.

Yeah, Im hooked on these videos.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/215323358/deep-sea-shallow-rewards

A former writer for Pitchfork and the Village Voice, and the author of both a self-published eBook and a 33 1/3 title on Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, Chris Ott now produces an online video series called Shallow Rewards, viewable at shallowrewards.com

With airfare to Miami, hotel stays on either side of the cruise, and an onboard junior suite to double as an artist interview room, $10,000 should cover all associated expenses.

This cruise is an opportunity to engage with a number of very successful artists from the last generation of musicians to profit from physical media and the pre-digital music industry. With personal and academic commentary from the author, as well as indeterminate contributions from the artists and organizers, the ensuing book should be a rich summary of the myriad sea changes (yessssss) brought about by the Internet.

blog/twitter gone

well, at their usual places at least

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCkrbrzDtNc#t=24

(h/t markers)

He seems so happy now

Peace, Ott.

love the new direction

keep it positive bro

That was a great night. How is everyone.

hey 90k whats up

ott, waterface here, wondering what u think of mac de marco

is it true that you take no prisoners

i don't know if i want to know how Ott's "one time....at band camp" story ends

ott you're wrong about the Lilys! Eccsame was unique.

it is true that i take no prisoners. mac de marco is a doofus and his music is terrible, 2013/14 = pitchperfect PR and life or death clients and then rest-of-world as far as indie ce-web-rity coverage.

it was unique and is not horrible but is also more post-rock than gaze should have sued mercury rev over deserter's songs.

it is good to be back i can feel the distant pangs of my ilxor persona returning.

i can hear you getting stronger

which ilx thread dedicated to you is better, this one or the other one?

ce-web-rity coverage

nice. i'm gonna steal this at a later date fyi

i am saddened to see the words "bruh" "brah" and "breh" used on ilxor.

Yes it wasn't shoegaze at all, but neither were any of the records after the first (save for some songs here and there). xp

how do u feel about "bro" though?

also is it OK for people from hawaii to say "brah"?

nah

didnt ask u breh

this is probably the one i'll stick with because it doesn't say pitchfork in the title although i have no idea what i've posted in either it's all terrible and funny.

glad we can agree on that

so... what's next?

ilx occupied such a weird place for me it was like the place i was most annoyed by but also wanted to be respected by. now i am too rich and famous to care.

who can say what's next when something worth writing about comes up i'll write something on medium when something worth ranting about comes up i'll do a video i just don't know. but i can say the day to day churn of bullshit on twitter / all of the music websites is reaching a critical butt mass where like i don't even know if i can bother.

like i see whiney in the cut and i'm like son how.

he spits out whines out of his butt

mass

ily ilx

what is ott listening to 2014

chris i went to a basement show last weekend and haven't told a soul about it

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51vB5KkMaEL._SY300_.jpg

my disciples i will never abandon u.

When I think about the summer I mowed lawns to "Where is My Mind?" knowing that nobody within ten square miles had heard it AND COULDN'T.

Beautiful times, breh.

there is a second tweet related to that and i maintain there are sad things about music not being distributed socially except as a pose (secret underground tapez).

hey chris how do we know this is really you?

can you verify by tweeting the word "breh" in the next hour?

apologies mr ott I don't own a tv, can you tell me what it is you're famous for?

nae brae

i am famous for having multiple ilxor threads with my name in the title.

this is how you get rich

As many threads as Momus? I don't think so. Nor Ned Raggett.

i am not quite as famous as those two.

http://pixelballads.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/over-the-top.jpg

When ott inevitably dies of a heart attack it will be because Vans slipped a few flyers into a 100-capacity venue in Brooklyn that he's never been to. I suppose there are worse ways to go.

Cognitive distortion is your friend.

starting a kickstarter to host a marc maron-style podcast about music writers, first episode chris ott, donate now

i'll do it for nuthin bregh

be sure to have some comedians on your music podcast and talk to them all about how you picked up gallagher on vinyl bc you are trying to 'get it'

did whiney get bank for prophets of rage u were great bae

Bae way worse than brah

oh noes"

Srsly so what is next for Chris Ott? He deleted his entire internet presence and Shallowrewards.com redirects to Pitchfork.

play him out, markers

Shallowrewards.com redirects to Pitchfork.

lol

What ws shallowrewards.com? Blog? Doesn't sound v joyful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1tAYmMjLdY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCkrbrzDtNc

lmao

Maybe word got back to his employer and his 90k + bennies were in peril?

maybe he realized that a social media presence was pointless when he had a family, 90k and bennies, access to an open field and more albums than he could hope to revisit over the rest of his lifetime. that all the internet had to offer him was aggravating intimations of what could have been, glimpses of roads not chosen, which kept him from appreciating what he had.

Maybe word got back to his employer and his 90k + bennies were in peril?

― 龜, Friday, August 15, 2014 1:05 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

does it make me a bad person that i kind of hope this happened?

I hope he got a promotion and has gone full gollum over his 100k + bennies

hope he got upgraded to shoobies

he has given himself over completely to the only true joy, watching children sleep

other people's children

he is the nightwatchman at an orphanage. it is really quite sweet.

no love lost between him and ilx clearly, but, idk, hope he's ok.

from other internet fracases i've seen, deletion of whole internet presence doesn't suggest good times.

yeah, I genuinely hope he is ok as well. I don't really know of him outside of the bennies boast

maybe your baby

― Peeking at Peak Petty (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, August 15, 2014 6:04 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

maybe he died

― Atp Fin (wins), Friday, August 15, 2014 6:01 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dead men don't delete internet presences

all I really know about this guy is that he's a homophobe. Hope he's doing alright though!

misogynist too. hope he's hanging in there.

Big ott

― Charlie Slothrop (wins), Monday, August 19, 2013 10:46 AM (11 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^classic post

I enjoyed the video series he'd been doing -- he got rid of all those, as well.

yeah honestly I hope dude is ok. I get scared for ppl when they delete everything.

The fact he's pushing his website to Pitchfork suggests maybe it's not super serious?

He was probably angry that he was providing all this content for free

He will be back when he has figured out how to monetize his brand

Before anyone ever cared where I would write, I was a writer at Pitchfork. It’s where I listened. It’s where I ranted. It’s where I cried. It’s where I bled. It holds a special place in my heart. People there have seen me grow up. I sometimes feel like I’m their son. Their passion can be overwhelming. But it drives me. I want to give them hope when I can. I want to inspire them when I can. My relationship with Pitchfork is bigger than bennies. I didn’t realize that years ago. I do now.

I remember when I left years ago. I was thinking, This is really tough. I could feel it. I was leaving something I had spent a long time helping create. If I had to do it all over again, I’d obviously do things differently, but I’d still have left. Shallow Rewards, for me, has been almost like college for other kids. These past few years helped raise me into who I am. I became a better writer and a better man.

^ nice work

http://noisey.vice.com/en_uk/blog/where-have-all-the-music-messageboards-gone?

In the case of I Love Music, a forum started by British critic Tom Ewing in 2000, those ideas are then, sometimes, brought into the mainstream by their boarders. I Love Music functioned informally as a talent pool for several major music publications around the world – some of the most formative critics from Pitchfork, the Guardian, the Village Voice, and the New York Times were active there before they’d made their names – and having that space to turn over ideas until they could take shape was undeniably valuable.

“ILM was an overtly UK/AU populated board, and so I gravitated to that as an anglophile, trying to prove myself with that crowd,” says Chris Ott, a former Pitchfork writer during its most formative years. “Had various posters there not attacked or mentioned me, I would probably have never had a presence there, but I wanted to contend with them, or learn from them, because they operated on such a higher plane, intellectually, than US boarders I was going back and forth with.”

so sad..

well

megalolz

Omfg

sums up my reaction too

I say!

i like that as a subtle hipinion burn

why does this guy get any attention at all? he seems like a million other macho indie-music blowhards.

i feel like the "end of messageboard" thing is kinda funny given that Reddit is basically just messageboards with an upvoting mechanism

big lolz

TOO OTT

OTT DAMN!

CALL THE POLICE AND THE FIREMAN

Stoked for the Lord Custos interview on Buzzfeed.

Can't beat "I predict a wry-Ott"

i'd say "don't start a wry ott" beats it

Quiet! Wry Ott

its most formative years

subsequent years slightly less formative

you might even call them in-formative

does this guy get any attention at all? he seems like a million other macho indie-music blowhards.

He does, for sure, but he WROTE FOR PITCHFORK.

― wizzz! (amateurist), Thursday, July 2, 2015 4:41 PM (Yesterday)Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Boy I fucked up that post.

this calls for a poll

wait, jaymc, are you mobilizing one of my old posts to respond to my new one? i'm confused.

Boy I fucked up that post.

PROFIT

http://s13.postimg.org/fhw9nl5p3/Screen_Shot_2015_10_14_at_10_30_07_AM.png

Good thing he waited until they had Conde Nast's legal team in place to sort that out.

*in Conde Nast's boardroom*

"So who is this orc guy? Some cosplayer?"

"guys he's saying if we keep his shit online he's going to sue the shit out of us"
"how long will it take to get his stuff offline until we figure out what we wanna do?"
"did that already, it took about thirty seconds"
"so if it's offline now how much of a case does he have?"
"none"
"can the site survive without his work?"
*blink*
*ten minutes of laughter*

I don't think they're gonna take down the year end lists, since those are clearly valued for longtail traffic, available via one hover and click from the current pitchfork homepage

let him have his empty boasting, dude obviously isn't going to sue anyone, saying nasty things about pitchfork is just his hobby

"empty threatening," i meant, don't know why i wrote boasting

"oh shit, what about the year-end lists"
"can one of the new kids rewrite any of his contributions?"
"by close of business, probably"
"...Ott on the line. says we also can't use the points he allocated to any albums he voted for in the polls, those count as speech and he wants to be paid for the point allocation"
*blink*
*fifteen minutes of lawyers falling all over each other laughing*

It's not about the money. He has that, and bennies.

can;t we consolidate the Chris Ott threads?

and then just call it 'itt ott'

itt ott orc

that means I love yoooou

fwiw ott apparently got what he wanted:

http://pitchfork.com/staff/chris-ott/

reviews appear to be taken down as well, for example:

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8969-slanted-enchanted-luxe-reduxe/

Amazing

And just like that, the fly buzzing at the window has been let out of the house.

written ott of history

the commottsar vanishes

dude is really mad about this latest development

written ott of history

― Why because she True and Interesting (President Keyes), Wednesday, October 14, 2015 8:15 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lolz

totally bullied them into erasing his written legacy, masterfully played

lol a true mastermind

http://media1.fdncms.com/portmerc/imager/mad-men-recap-cris-a-tunity/u/original/9280137/1367862477-oqnzqr3.gif

I know it looks like he's just one overconfident guy foolishly poking at a giant but let me remind you of the story of David. David vs the ATF.

musta otta gotta lotta

omg anthony

"reviews appear to be taken down as well"

removed by fi-ott

ott 1: spectre

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/webroot/animatedgifs/329121_o.gif

trottsky

He got a pitchfork
That made his ears burn

A+ negotiating skills

"Oh no! Unfortunately, we can't find the page you're looking for — believe us, we really tried."

First time the Pitchfork 404 message has seemed viciously sarcastic

itt ott orc

― Evan, Wednesday, October 14, 2015 11:24 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that means I love yoooou

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Wednesday, October 14, 2015 11:59 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

belly lol

This is genuinely wonderful. What a preposterous clown.

http://tktk.gawker.com/pitchfork-deletes-its-harshest-critic-1736804618

Pitchfork, the music website that was purchased by Condé Nast this week, has a tormenter. His name is Chris Ott, and he wrote for the site at an earlier point in its history, though you can’t read any of his reviews anymore because on Wednesday Pitchfork decided to completely erase him from its site.

Ott is a notorious crank who uses his Twitter feed to decry the commodification of the independent arts. At his best he can be a necessary check on the capitalist impulses of the music industry and the publications that cover it. At his worst he can be a straight-up asshole who uses his modest platform to hammer away at personal grudges, many of which seem to end up involving women who make and/or write about indie rock. To some he is an anti-hero, to others he is simply a verbal harasser.

Pitchfork (where I have previously written, and whose staff I am friendly with) often finds itself in Ott’s crosshairs. This is partly because the site has for some time been the foremost arbiter of indie music, in the process growing itself from a ragtag quasi-blog (in the days when Ott wrote for it) into a full-blown company that does big boy website things like packaging major features alongside brands such as Converse and Apple. But Ott also picks on Pitchfork because of his personal history with the site and its founder Ryan Schreiber.

so necessary, so anti-capitalist

his gripe w/Joanna Newsome, whose work I don't generally like past Milk-Eyed Mender, is kinda ridiculous insofar as he only addresses her at the level of her "brand" - like, she's an incredibly talented songwriter, I just don't groove to what she does, but nobody who pretends to engage the actual craft can really dispute that she's pretty good at it. I just don't dig, y'know, the content. but this guy, who pretends to care first and foremost about that very quality...doesn't seem to actually know shit from shinola on this q

love the gif on jord's piece

Jordan's piece is way fairer than anything I could manage, or than Ott deserves.

he said joanna newsome is the balsamic vinegar of music
but balsamic vinegar is really good idgi

it was sweet of jord to wait a couple paragraphs to acknowledge that pitchfork has deleted plenty of old reviews before

i'll miss this one the most

https://web.archive.org/web/20150926150655/http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/1589-shine-a-light

y'know, i had some interested in pointing out Ott being a shitbag when there were still plenty of people who just thought of him as a harmless and/or admirable rebel vlogger or whatever, but now that the word is out i don't really see much of a point in giving him more and more and more of the attention he craves

"the frigid, faggy dungeon"

Up until very recently I had no idea who Chris Ott was and didn't particularly give that much of a fuck, but after reading this thread out of curiosity I deeply suspect that there'll be more than a few folks out there adopting a similar position in a few years time. Basically, the guy sounds to me like an absolute bellend and I'm in full support of Pitchfork's decision, to be quite honest with you.

Does he write for anyone else? I feel like he left Pitchfork and then became a Twitter/ask.fm/Vimeo crank with no actual paying outlets for his thoughts on music. So with his body of work effectively disappeared (because come on, the Wayback Machine is for obsessives and no one else), isn't he pretty much out of sight, out of mind from here on?

I would guess so.

oh so Schreiber says "moving forward" in emails now. He's been bought by The Man.

i've never listened to the Constantines before what is wrong w/this guy? he sounds like the Gaslight Anthem dude had a stroke

tbf i quite like that album but i don't think there was any wresting of abandon from effeminate black-and-dayglo pretenders

like this is fine! actually this reminds me a lot of something i forgot about old school "classic" pitchfork, is they would take a solid indie rock band like this band, or wrens, or tapes and tapes, which i guess were all fine and good but you could have found like 3 bands just as good in any decent sized college town and suddenly make them out to be this total genius next big thing

like this is fine! actually this reminds me a lot of something i forgot about old school "classic" pitchfork, is they would take a solid indie rock band like this band, or wrens, or tapes and tapes, which i guess were all fine and good but you could have found like 3 bands just as good in any decent sized college town and suddenly make them out to be this total genius next big thing

gotta be honest w/u this is p much how I felt about the 'Mats at the time w/r/t how ppl would be goin off and I'd be like "oh, ok, they get drunk and rock out, cool I guess??"

yeah I mean I duno they were no Suicide Commandos

or Buzz Barker and the Atomic Bums

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57OgqHtVrBE

or NNB

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AWTGExPigI

I remember well bands such as clearlake, cyann and ben, and the russian futurists

(I like the Mats but living in MN it's hard not to get permanantly sick of them...and sadly Prince as well to a degree)

ban sh@kedown

erase all of his posts immediately

irl lols here

ums has repeatedly made us aware of his negative views about prince, and we’ve determined that it no longer makes sense to have any association with him or his posts moving forward. We wish him all the best.

never getting sick of classic Prince but when i was living in mpls it got pretty depressing having to listen to the Current try to get excited about a new Prince single that would inevitably be garbage.

wonder if anybody's ever been fired from the Current for failing to get sufficiently pumped about a mid-2000s Prince jam

never getting sick of classic Prince but when i was living in mpls it got pretty depressing having to listen to the Current try to get excited about a new Prince single that would inevitably be garbage.

― JoeStork, Friday, October 16, 2015 4:00 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yah this what i mean, it's not like i hate "pop life" or "when doves cry" all of a sudden it's just like this whole state has camped out on his purple nutsack for soooo fucking long it's just grating

why did i remind myself of the existence of "Cause and Effect"?

ums has repeatedly made us aware of his negative views about prince, and we’ve determined that it no longer makes sense to have any association with him or his posts moving forward. We wish him all the best.

― tylerw, Friday, October 16, 2015 3:57 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm "exploring other opportunities" like making "20 best archers of loaf songs on rate your music

oh yeah chris ott seems like a cool guy who definitely doesn't twirl himself around in an office chair with his fingers steepled.

'lowest part is free' or keep on moving xp

lowest part is free is a ill archers jawn mooks

the frigid, faggy dungeon currently overrun with a thousand self-obsessed, coke-snorting keyboard players.

this place sounds great!!

lol
who was he even talking about? thank god the constantines made us all forget

camped out on his purple nutsack

hello DN

the constantines ruled

http://static.flickr.com/28/61616528_dfb91ab302_o.jpg

Yeah I like the Constantines.

It's not their fault Ott wrote their album review.

Constantpeens

We wish him all the best.

was there a time when this phrase meant anything other than the exact opposite of what it would seem to mean?

never forget

www.web.archive.org/web/20040810055748/www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/c/coltrane_john/living-space.shtml

while "The Last Blues" (aptly titled, as it was the last blues number Coltrane ever recorded)

Ah, Coltrane...smooth as Crystal Pepsi, yall

The two untitled tracks, "90314" and "90320" are not just crazy- assed, rabid jazz tunes, but California zip codes, as well.

they are not.

that's like the watered- down, syrupy cola, ultra- caucasian smooth

man i hope this ryan schreiber guy grew up

anyone know what he's up to now?

the fact that Ryan took a fanzine from "shit, cat" to a $15m paycheck -- aka probably the most money ANY human being has made w indie rock and would wager that includes anyone involved with the Sub Pop/Geffen deal -- should actually be an inspiring story that you can do anything if you follow your passion

assuming your passion is building a brand and your goal is to make millions of dollars

in the selling of that brand

Really doubt Ryan sat in his mom's basement in 1996 saying "TIME TO BUILD A BRAND" but w/e

https:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9cINH9yob4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9cINH9yob4

xpost i didn't say he was. i was describing the scenario in which the million-dollar sale of a brand would be inspirational. david geffen selling his stake in asylum records for millions in the 70s was certainly impressive, but it's inspirational only if your goal is to build something and then sell it for a large amount of money.

but it's inspirational only if your goal is to build something and then sell it for a large amount of money.

who in the world would not want to do this?

for instance, someone may want to create an business and maintain independent control

...forever?

it's possible that some people would be more inspired by, say, epitaph records continuing and thriving independently after its 90s success, than by Mammoth Records selling to Disney in 1997 after the success of the Squirrel Nut Zippers.

to be clear, i'm not saying it's wrong to sell your company for a lot of money. i'm merely explaining why that "big paycheck" in and of itself may not be be inspiring to all trying to follow their passion

ian mackaye is worth $25 million

sometimes selling can just mean that you don't have to work as hard? i dunno, there are a million reasons to sell a business.

or it can give you more time to do other stuff. or start another business! or retire.

who are you responding to

i forget.

curious how whatever website came up with that 25m number for mackaye. I'd be surprised if his stake of the dischord catalogue is worth THAT much in 2015, and i think he makes most of his green through "ethical" investing anyway.

one thing i will say in conde nast's favor is that the websites for their print mags don't tend to suck. which is definitely not true of a lot of print mag sites. they are very readable for the most part. and not ugly. pitchfork is very readable as well. (i hate a lot of media/culture/music/arts website design...)

there are non-conde-nast print mags?

The New Yorker's website has sucked for years!

why? front page is a bit of a mess but the article pages are attractive, uncluttered imo

i don't mind the new yorker site. they're just trying to make it look like the new yorker. whate are ya gonna do?

that qn only for chris itt

to be clear, i'm not saying it's wrong to sell your company for a lot of money. i'm merely explaining why that "big paycheck" in and of itself may not be be inspiring to all trying to follow their passion

― da croupier, Saturday, October 17, 2015 4:57 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I followed my passion for maybe 17 years and love my profession and live comfortably enough, but now the only thing I want to do MORE than that is fart around and do NOTHING, and Ryan or Yancey or whoever never has to work another day in their life and that's really a dream that I'm sure I share with Brett Guerowitz and the Squirrel Nut Zippers and maybe 95% of the population

i think the people croups is saying wouldn't be inspired by that are like, idealistic young people. which is technically true i guess

i was young once

I can think of one not young person uninspired

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/47/I_Don%27t_Like_Shit%2C_I_Don%27t_Go_Outside_An_Album_by_Earl_Sweatshirt.jpg

yeah i was trying to find net work for brett gurewitz as another likely candidate for someone who got rich off of indie rock. dexter holland is worth $65 million fwiw but they jumped to the majors earlier than i remembered. liz phair is worth $3 million but who knows what the various pathways for that income stream are.

outside of america oasis are indie, how much of noel gallagher's $60 million are due to the states idk (beyond "too much").

I followed my passion for maybe 17 years and love my profession and live comfortably enough, but now the only thing I want to do MORE than that is fart around and do NOTHING, and Ryan or Yancey or whoever never has to work another day in their life and that's really a dream that I'm sure I share with Brett Guerowitz and the Squirrel Nut Zippers and maybe 95% of the population

that's cool and fine and i don't know why you'd think I need the urge to fart around and do nothing explained to me, but if that's really brett g's dream why does he still run epitaph and stand on stage with bad religion - i mean they have TWO other guitarists

confused if people really don't understand what i'm saying ("selling control of your indie venture for $$$ isn't necessarily the goal for all") or are just defensively leaping around to pretend i'm saying something else

honestly as far as necessary checks on capitalist impulses in the music industry go i think i'm taking a relatively diplomatic tack

following your passion < bennies

i was describing the scenario in which the million-dollar sale of a brand would be inspirational. david geffen selling his stake in asylum records for millions in the 70s was certainly impressive, but it's inspirational only if your goal is to build something and then sell it for a large amount of money.

this is a narrow view imo. it's inspirational in the sense that nobody in the whole world gave a shit about ryan's opinions when pitchfork was just some dude from MN spouting off about indie rock on the internet, and most of the stuff he cared about was lol forever to most people. using your comparison, only some insiders gave a shit about David Geffen's opinions when he worked at William Morris. (Geffen, by the time he started at Asylum, was in much better shape than Ryan when he started pitchfork, obviously.) But both of them built something that a whole lot of people cared a whole lot about after a while; so much so, in fact, that people ended up paying millions of dollars for it. it is at least a little inspirational to know that people can translate "I give a shit about this and believe it's worthy of people's attention" into loads of money, and it's a little puzzling that you'd be arguing "nah bullshit this is money, money can in no way be inspiring"

otm

and it's a little puzzling that you'd be arguing "nah bullshit this is money, money can in no way be inspiring"

ffs. i'll repeat.

confused if people really don't understand what i'm saying ("selling control of your indie venture for $$$ isn't necessarily the goal for all") or are just defensively leaping around to pretend i'm saying something else

seriously embarrassed by how hard it seems to be for some people not to dramatically overstate what i'm saying into some cartoonish "money bad, indie good" stance, esp when i've underlined that i'm not engaging in that kind of kneejerk haterade.

whiney said the fact that Ryan took a fanzine from "shit, cat" to a $15m paycheck -- aka probably the most money ANY human being has made w indie rock and would wager that includes anyone involved with the Sub Pop/Geffen deal -- should actually be an inspiring story that you can do anything if you follow your passion. I pointed out that Walking Away From Indie With The Most Moolah Ever is not inherently inspiring.

if you have to bend that into "OH SORRY MR FUGAZI SOME OF US HAVE TO EAT" or "WHAT ARE YOU SAYING? BEING APPRECIATED IS BAD?", all I can see is please don't put your bullshit on me and/or read more carefully.

all i can say, rather

since i'm gonna be treated like i've jumped on a high horse anyway, i'll note that when your indie venture has struggled with diversity and representation in content over the years, and the person who spearheaded your purchase outright says they did it to acquire you're "millennial male" audience, i can see that also diminishing the inspiration potentially caused by your payday.

his indie venture hasn't struggled w/ diversity and representation nearly as much as indie rock as a whole though. also not to defend some pr flack's tossed off release but pforks readership is between 80-90% male, if they didn't acquire pfork to target that demo then why the fuck would they buy it?

his indie venture hasn't struggled w/ diversity and representation nearly as much as indie rock as a whole though.

never said otherwise.

also not to defend some pr flack's tossed off release but pforks readership is between 80-90% male, if they didn't acquire pfork to target that demo then why the fuck would they buy it?

never even hated on conde nast's motivations. merely noted it's a factor in this potentially not being An Inspirational Tale For All.

considering all it takes is what $15 on squarespace to set up a website and non-white millenial males is apparently an underserved market for music crit as is insisted upon time and time again by professionals in the field seems like some random schmuck setting up a website for an overserved market and still managing to turn that into $$$$ or even just a steady living should be professional. i could be wrong though and there could be plenty of jobs (and bennies) in music criticism in which case potentially having to face that anguish filled dilemma of 'selling out' that their gen x parents might have faced once upon a time might indeed be more a nightmare than an inspiration. i think i smell the next noah baumbach movie!

lol should be inspirational instead of professional. or maybe not.

the only person who should have beef with what i'm saying is someone who thinks there is no reason why any soul would not be lifted by a guy creating the biggest indie music culture website and then selling it to a large publishing company whose goal is cornering the market on young male readers. if you dream of sitting on a pale of money, you dont have beef with me on this. if you think the pitchfork is neat, you dont have beef with me on this. if you think there are worse things in the world, you don't have beef with me on this.

lol i meant "pile of money" and "the pitchfork story is neat" - must confess frustration doesn't improve my proofreading

arguing about what is conceivably inspirational or not is maybe not interesting

rocky I, III, IV, VI - inspirational

rocky II, V - not inspirational

that would be awesome if people are defending pfork from straw arguments out of boredom with the actual one, easily the most sympathetic explanation i can imagine

"there plausibly exists someone in the world who believes rocky V is inspirational, you do not disagree with me" - da croupier

"siri - is tommy morrison still alive?"

no btw

I wouldn't be inspired too much by Schreiber! According to twitter.com/shallowrewards, this whole thing is going to be an incredible disaster!

so basically the past three hours of ilm has been a person saying "this event in someone's life that's representative of a much larger success is inspirational" and another responding "no that specific event is only inspirational if your goal is that specific event" three hours three of them

shit, better improve this thread quick, guys, qualx is unhappy with its quality

finally

i know you're trying to be mean but in all seriousness i expect more from an ott thread

xp It's not like it was Ishtar or something

I mean it's entertaining enough even if it is the weakest in the franchise

anybody arguing with croup here is either misreading or dead inside ffs

lol come on

alright as i can see how qualx could assume i'm just making some kind of philosophical argument that the sale of pitchfork to conde nast is only inspirational if your goal is exactly the same, i'll cop that i'm really saying that i can see how the sale would be uninspiring.

but if someone thinking its a bummer (or at the very least, actively not inspiring) to see the largest indie music culture coverage site being sold to a monolith overtly interested in cultivating the indiebro audience makes you say "hey the 90s are over, albini, get off your highhorse" all i can say is as the owner of a secondary degree in accounting i'm merely albini-sympathetic, not an active anti-capitalist. and selling your indie concern to a company that openly doesn't share your professed value system is in fact very 90s.

and in case happy days wants to go down this route again, i'm not saying the filthy lucre makes everything uninspirational, or that there's nothing cool about how ryan went from "i love 12 rods" to "i got 12 million" blah blah all that shit

da croup otm throughout this thread, not sure what the rest of y'all are reading. very easy imo to see how this could be both inspiring from one angle and a little depressing from another, or if depressing is too strong a word then I guess it is just easy to see how somebody could look at this whole thing and think "yea not for me"

also have to admit I think it is lame we are talking about this on the ott thread and not the p4k one for posterity tbh but also bc ott is a dick most of the time

alright as i can see how qualx could assume i'm just making some kind of philosophical argument that the sale of pitchfork to conde nast is only inspirational if your goal is exactly the same, i'll cop that i'm really saying that i can see how the sale would be uninspiring.

but if someone thinking its a bummer (or at the very least, actively not inspiring) to see the largest indie music culture coverage site being sold to a monolith overtly interested in cultivating the indiebro audience makes you say "hey the 90s are over, albini, get off your highhorse" all i can say is as the owner of a secondary degree in accounting i'm merely albini-sympathetic, not an active anti-capitalist. and selling your indie concern to a company that openly doesn't share your professed value system is in fact very 90s.

― da croupier, Saturday, October 17, 2015 9:29 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm an idealist millennial who hates money and i think you're just being -- i guess narrow-minded is really the best word. it's possible for two different things to be true at the same time. i don't follow this thread with an eagle eye but it doesn't look like whiney was specifically talking about capital? schreiber went from being an embarrassing twerp with a terrible website that appealed to a very niche audience and garnered hate from pretty much everyone else to a respected entrepreneur whose personal choices have made huge ripples in the music industry (not just indie!) it isn't really hard to see how someone might find that inspirational -- going from nobody loser to cultural mover -- while not caring at all about the capital. whiney used the "$15m paycheck" to represent something and you took it completely literally.

i don't like schreiber but he's reached a level that can only be described as "the total fantasy end-goal of any narcissistic music critic", and people having exceptional achievements can be inspirational even if they have no desire to keep on doing it, or if they sell it all out to conde nast.

i am also just really weirded out by people who think the conde nast sale represents the corporatization of pitchfork like have you visited it at any point over the past decade

i understand this thread is going very quickly but i didn't post and in case happy days wants to go down this route again, i'm not saying the filthy lucre makes everything uninspirational, or that there's nothing cool about how ryan went from "i love 12 rods" to "i got 12 million" blah blah all that shit for someone to tell me that i'm not open-minded enough to get how this could be inspiring to someone.

like noooo shit. starting small and getting big can be inspiring. not blowing my mind here.

i am also just really weirded out by people who think the conde nast sale represents the corporatization of pitchfork like have you visited it at any point over the past decade

― qualx, Saturday, October 17, 2015 10:01 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^

you guys realize one could be nonplussed by the sale AND be aware that the site has been moving this direction for ages

i almost want to find a genuine brokenhearted indie fawn on twitter for you guys to engage with so you can have a debate with someone who won't keep pointing out you're making an ass out of u and me

lol double-checked the meaning of nonplussed and apparently it means both "confused" and "unperturbed". pretend i said uninspired.

i actually missed that post but it doesn't exactly gel with everything else you've been saying for the past 3-6 hours

this is getting into stupid semantics: maybe whiney shouldn't have said it "should" be inspiring but at least he singled out the general reason why he felt that way, you responded by zeroing in on the specific thing that he already clarified, and that's the state of this thread.

i'm just imagining a situation where someone calls the movie where james franco gets stuck in a rock inspirational and you respond "actually, it's only inspirational for people who want to cut their arms off"

that would be a weird stance to take, which is why i corrected the impression in a post with your name in it that you reposted

but no one is arguing that some people can find it uninspiring, and you spent half that post continuing to position it as "you are either a person who finds this inspiring or uninspiring and that choice says stuff about you", which is why i said that two things can be true at the same time and also this is a bunch of semantic bullshit. it is possible to find the sale of pitchfork to conde nast uninspiring and depressing or whatever and still be inspired by schreiber's bizarre life turning out the way it has or whatever. which is kind of there already in the monumental whiney g weingarten post that set all this off.

i've become the thing i've hated so let's just say whiney's into compartmentalization and you're not and be done with it

I dont recall saying being inspired by the sale says something about you - actively avoided casting aspersions. and Whiney specifically said it was inspiring to imagine getting to do nothing, so if the idea is that he was really saying it was the journey not the paycheck that was inspiring, I think you might have missed that.

It was chachi who took the "ahem the pitchfork story can clearly be inspiring" tack, earning a "FFS duh" before you even got here

and in case happy days wants to go down this route again, i'm not saying the filthy lucre makes everything uninspirational, or that there's nothing cool about how ryan went from "i love 12 rods" to "i got 12 million" blah blah all that shit

dude I made one fuckin post with some loose thoughts of very minor import to anybody in the world, just a response to what seemed to be a weirdly NO FUCKIN WAY IS THAT INSPIRING YOU GODDAMN CLOWNS thing you were mounting. just a personal "well, you know, there are are some ways in which that's kind of inspiring." in response, this multi-post ongoing jeremiad from you

like, I am usually the dude to whom people say "relax a little," but maybe relax just a tiny tiny bit?

Sorry when people claim I said something I didn't it gets my hackles up, trust I plan to avoid contradicting people on ilx in the future

For instance the "you goddamn clowns" tone came re: people pretending I was saying money is bad, not people saying it was inspiring

david geffen selling his stake in asylum records for millions in the 70s was certainly impressive, but it's inspirational only if your goal is to build something and then sell it for a large amount of money.

this is what you said; I think it's a false statement, thought I made my case for a different idea calmly and lucidly, since I wasn't mad at your claim, just disagreed. in response, you have been yelling a lot.

Tbf I can see why people might get defensive upon statements as simple as "selling your company is inspiring if you want to sell" - certainly leaves room for people to see extra words around it, but I can only point out the lack of them so many times.

it's the "only" that's the problem there, imo

Chachi if you look at my first response to you you'll see that I quoted the offending line of your post and repeated the previous post I made that makes clear why I'd find "croup why you saying money is bullshit" aggravating

it's inspirational only if your goal is to build something and then sell it for a large amount of money.

^^^

direct quote of a rather transparently false claim you made. in response to what I felt was a fairly mellow "well, no," you continue to be really snippy and weird ("I can only point out the lack of [other words] so many times")

Also "ffs...I'll repeat" is kinda the opposite of yelling

I am sorry if people were made defensive by my initial posts and yes I could have been nicer about clarifying

croup i'm sorry but we're just gonna have to agree to disagree here, murder is wrong imo even if it is for "shits and giggles"

Lol you goddamn clown

yeah i was trying to find net work for brett gurewitz as another likely candidate for someone who got rich off of indie rock. dexter holland is worth $65 million fwiw but they jumped to the majors earlier than i remembered. liz phair is worth $3 million but who knows what the various pathways for that income stream are.

― balls, Saturday, October 17, 2015 5:21 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just as a library science like q, where are these numbers coming from?

http://www.slj.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Marc.jpg

Possibly bullshit google results.

sites like Celebrity Net Worth are total speculation and even the estimated worth of celebrities that Forbes publishes don't seem to be much better

only way to know for sure is to troll a person into bragging about their wealth. then knock it down 10%.

add back 10% for bennies, though

ott only makes $84,600?

he explicitly stated the bennies

he makes so much money that he needed to crowdfund a podcast, because podcasts are so expensive to produce

just the pod will run you 25k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bLkcCZFKvA

thought it was 94K plus bennies...also that was probably quoting 2 years ago, so assuming even a 4% type cost of living bump for 2 years

he could be at over 98K plus bennies, however it's possible that that's been offset by rising health care premiums post ACA

i don't know, lots to think about

4% damn son

this is the ott we're talking about man c'mon gotta pay to play

my daughter has a little friend named Benny and I think about Ott's bennies every time he comes over. which is nice.

i always think of benzedrine

I named my son 94K because you have to dream

Maybe Ott has two little friends both named Benny?

I named my son 94K because you have to dream

― Why because she True and Interesting (President Keyes), Tuesday, October 20, 2015 10:33 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I can just imagine little 94K Bennie Keyes running around the playground, talking shit about Best Coast for doing a Scion sponsored club show

somewhere, right now, chris is nodding

https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/radioheads-ok-computer-is-20-but-lets-talk-about-hail-to-the-thief-instead

I don't know about Chris but I am nodding

9.3

what is he actually up to nowadays?

enjoying those bennies

looks like he has an infrequently updated podcast about the cure and that's about it

the less online presence he has the better obv

i actually managed to join his semi unofficial discord server once i caught a livestream. there were a fair deal of people considering how elusive the whole thing was, they weren't that friendly to newcomers like myself though. i actually had to send my rym account to an admin in order to "prove i was a real person" but come on that was obv to judge if my music taste was good enough lol.

i like some of the shallow rewards videos, mostly because i'm more interested in critics talking about the music industry as a whole rather than trying to sell me why an album is good/bad. if anyone knows any other critic that does this i'd be glad to hear

ott's analysis of the industry sucks though & regularly would delve into conspiratorial nonsense

oh and also the two rules of the server were 1: NO FANTANO and 2: NO CARETAKER whoch i think is super fair

he bought a CD off me via discogs last year.

which one?

Caretaker

disintegration loops