Accounting for Taste....

/I don't like it when influential music mags say something is "The Best" as its a fact. It's their opinion...It is the very essence of rockism/
Could we have a ruling on this use of "rocksim" by one of the in-house experts on its meaning? (I have a feeling the answer is no, we cannot.)
-- DeRayMi, September 14th, 2002 11:08 AM.

is answered by a sarcastic article from Brunching Shuttlecocks....
http://www.brunching.com/features/accountingfortaste.html

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Some people think that music preference is just a matter of personal taste, that the music you listen to is no better than the music anyone else listens to. That's just stupid. If their music is just as good as your music, why aren't you listening to it, instead? Clearly, your music is better, because you like good music.
But how to convince those around you that their preference in music is misguided and wrong? It's clearly not enough to point out that your music is good and theirs is bad; if they wanted to listen to good music, they'd already be listening to yours. Stronger measures are in order. Luckily we at the Brunching Shuttlecocks are here to provide you with a quick course in how to demolish the musical taste of others.
The first and most important step is to determine whether your adversary's music is more popular, or less popular, than your own. From there, simply use the following guidelines:

Their Music is Less Popular
People who like less popular music than you are just trying to impress their friends and peers, as well as random strangers. Heterosexual men, in addition, are just trying to get into the pants of aesthetically-misguided women. The important thing here is that they don't actually like the music, no matter how much they protest otherwise. Their so-called musical "taste" is merely an exercise in self-conscious pretension.

Their Music is More Popular
People who listen to pop music (where "pop music" is relative to your own tastes) are brainwashed by the music industry. They listen to their music only because they are told to by masses of suit-wearing advertisers and the mainstream (where "mainstream" is relative to your own tastes) music critics they hold in their custom-tailored pockets. End listeners are merely a money-delivery device for their corporate overlords, like an ATM that buys concert T-shirts. The listeners do not actually enjoy the music they listen to; they merely think they're enjoying it because they're too weak-minded to form their own opinions.

Difficult Cases
You may run into trouble when dealing with someone who listens to music that's approximately as popular as yours. Which are they, you may ask, brainwashed or pretentious? Happily, the answer is "both." You can use either argument effectively, or combine them into a truly devastating tsunami of rhetoric.

Finally, some people listen to music that is enormously popular, but largely ignored outside of a particular market. These include country-western music, Spanish-language music, and Christian contemporary. You may be able to get by with a dismissive exhalation when the subject comes up, because fans of this music are often, oddly enough, more interested in listening to it than arguing its validity, but when in doubt you can always assume that these people simply don't know any better.

Summary (In Clip-And-Save Format)
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• People who like less popular music than yours are pretentious poseurs.
  
• People who like more popular music than yours are brainwashed marketing slaves.
  
• People who like music different from yours, but similarly popular, are pretentious brainwashed marketing-slave poseurs.
  When in doubt, people who like music other than yours just don't know any better.