scenesterism...

Bad points - ossifying of preferences into communal taste, smoothing over of differences.

This is purely from a 'creative' p.o.v. Socially of course scenes are great and if the in-crowd don't want to hang with you then best not to waste time banging your head against the door - go find somebody you do have a mutual liking with.

With online scenes and communities the nature of the communications channel throws up different disadvantages and opportunities.

I always associate scenesterism with narrow-mindedness of taste and a consensus that becomes *very* difficult to shift. I think of myself more as a drifter between musics and their attendant scenes without any kind of roots or settled position in music (hence, perhaps, my desire to create such roots in other aspects of my life).

Community is for the honest.

More seriously -- Dan is being honest (and Tom mentioned the importance of friends in the 'reviews' thread). You don't have to follow blindly to be part of a scene, any scene -- the best ones being the ones you create yourself. ;-) Only if you *never* talk to anyone else who has similar musical/etc. inclinations as you, and thus you have to do everything on your own, can you say you're not part of some sort of community on that level.

I realised this most clearly when I read a sociological analysis of the conditions that made it possible for a bunch of jocks to rape a mentally retarded girl. All the complicities that were present - the social pressure not to say anything about their weekly get-togethers to watch pornography, their lewd and objectifying comments about girls, their cruel treatment of their female followers - are so obviously present even in my local band scene - which is supposed to be 'avant-garde', I suppose.

Most people who are absolutely negatively *against* scenes and scenesterism turn out to be those who have some negative experience with "a scene" and they end up blaming that Scene and the Scenesters for their lack of social and musical acceptance, and their greater problems with music, aesthetics, the world, blah blah blah, etc.

Yes, I could probably be included in that number. ;-) (this is probably why I found it most bizarre, bewildering, and ultimately very funny that I should be termed a "Scenester" by some persons on this board, when I've spent most of my life being excluded by "Scenes".)

Those who are actually part of the "Scenes" we desipse are generally so concerned with their own social status, or loss thereof, that they would never dare to criticise the organisation. So there you go.

I don't think Scenes, or by extension any community or large social group, is good or evil in and of itself.

I've brought it up before, how and why scenes can be a good thing- if a community supports and encourages its members (not neccessarily the aforementioned self congratulatory circle jerk- honest criticism from one's peers is probably one of the most valuable things an artist can have) and is welcoming and *inclusionary* to newcomers, then it is a good thing.

However, as many have noted, large numbers of people often give way to crowd mentality, groupthink, and the abdication of personal responsibility and free will. If a community becomes that "circle jerk", suppresses free expression, and uses its "scenehood" to *exclude* newcomers, and in fact, starts defining itself in negative terms about what it is not- then clearly it's not fit for man nor beast, and especially not artists.

In one of those weird contradictions, community works best when it is run by those who are strong enough to hold their own opinions and have a sense of self worth by themselves.

But this is getting to be less and less about music, and more about sociology, so I'll back off.

ty, you don't like discussion of music. you don't like intellectualisation of music. you don't like scenes or scenesters. you apparently don't even like communities.

considering that this is a community of people discussing and intellectualising music, may i ask what it is that you are doing here?

I guess....

*shrugs shoulders*

Would it help if I said that I thought the Hives were a punk rock explosion?

I love music!