These hatred threads are seriously making me so, so very happy. Dan's "I'm Sorry But That JT Track is Garbage", Ned's similar-minded JT thread, even Alex's "Defend Linkin Park: I DARE You" thread. It's been really cathartic to see such an outpouring of vitriol.
Lately I've been feeling overwhelmed by pressure to care more about some things pop than I actually do -- it's like the Soul chapter in Blissed Out where SR ridicules self-conscious soul-baring as an empty display of thinly-disguised bragadoccio ("witness the depth of my feeling!"). Not that it's intentional on the part of any of the posters here, but I sense a kinship (at least w/r/t off-puttingness) between SR's clean-living, healthy, soul-baring prototype and the sharp-thinking, clear-writing, musically cosmopolitan pop-loving prototype on ILM, a prototype fulfilled at different times by different posters (including myself -- I certainly don't claim to be "innocent") but whose presence is, at least to me, felt quite strongly.
Like Ned expresses in his recent article for Freaky Trigger, sometimes I just want to say "fuck it." I want to hate and not have to defend, to feel righteous in my apathy, to wallow in my blind and unexamined disgust for Vanessa Carlton or or "Dilemma" or Pink -- to scour off the grimy film that discourse and reasoned aesthetic sensibility have left behind. I know it's all part of the game, part of my sometimes antagonistic but neverending (how could it?) affair with pop -- but now's the time for *hate*. Now's the time when I put on "Everlast" by Labradford as loud as my ears can handle and let it burrow into my confused brain, when the scales tip heavily in favor of cleanse, raze, caress. Right now I need the things that pop can't give me, and that's okay, right?
― Clarke B., Wednesday, 4 December 2002 10:13 (twenty-two years ago)
Clarke, what do you see as being the distinction between threads like these aimed at pop stars/groups and those aimed at non-pop stars/groups? Do you
really think there's a pressure to self-censor when it comes to disliking pop over and above a general community distaste for meaning-less, unreconstructed and generic rants? (why i like Dan's rants more than most, for example, is that he bases them on very specific and unusual criteria)
I think you need to expand upon the soul-boy comparison too - I don't see how SR's complaints re them really apply to intelligent pop discourse beyond a broader "reject rationality" standpoint. The problem here is that you seem to be conflating intelligent discussion of music with an overt attempt to rationalise music itself, and the visceral experience of it. Which is a big stretch.
― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 11:52 (twenty-two years ago)