I've been contemplating the importance of authenticity and irony lately. Maybe this is because I just watched entire episodes of Bromance and The City. These reality shows are pretty inauthentic, moderately entertaining, and possibly significant. Quality art or art that aims for higher meaning never really has the cultural import that something for the masses possesses, ultimately making it less signficant. This art can really only hope to influence people in the future into recreating that art into a streamlined populist format that probably moderately shames the original. But enough about The Strokes.
I failed to get krunk during the MLK break, despite a small batch of Sparks nestled safely in my night stand. I hear Milledgeville is a hoot though.
And where does Kevin Costner show up in this mess? I doubt Kevin Costner gets krunk these days, and his art lacks sociocultural import at the moment. But Dances With Wolves probably won awards of some kind. The City will not do so. Which has had more import?
way to read a lot of hipsterrunoff,
ReplyDeletespout it back almost verbatim,
and then pretend like they're your ideas.
dropping a bunch of loaded terms
like "inauthentic," "possibly significant,"
and "cultural import" doesn't make
you seem insightful. nor are you any
more a cultural anthropologist than
the hipster runoff guy, whose favorite
term is "culturally relevant,"
which really means nothing in itself.
you think you can adopt that guys' schtick,
and while ravenously consuming any opinion
handed to you by pitchfork,
still pretend to be separate from the
generic blog-consuming public?
because you're self-aware?
because it's hip to criticize hipsters?
when you start spouting this bullshit
it quickly degrades every opinion
and musical interest into meaningless,
cred-seeking fakery. which is a pretty
pathetic viewpoint, since the only
people who seem to see that in
everybody are the ones who do it themselves.
this whole blog just pisses me off.
it's all such pretentious grandstanding.
you bring nothing to the table
that is interesting or new in terms
of musical preference or writing style,
and then you have the balls to assume
you're above it all because you think
that hipster runnoff guy is way funny.
That is pretty fair crit, duder. However, you probably came here for links. I had music that you wanted. So regardless of how much I ape HRO (which is a fair assessment, although I'm more of an Eggers acolyte via Klosterman), I don't really think I've done any harm to the situation.
ReplyDeleteBeing in a moderately sized college town, my access to music is fairly unhindered, but my exposure to urban environs and the genesis/nexus of culture is fairly limited, and thus websites like hipster runoff and party pics blogs are disproportionately interesting.
Pitchfork is useful for their news, rarely for the content of their reviews.
That was a nice little rhetorical device you used in the comment about "cred-seeking fakery" and that "the only people who see that in everybody are the ones who do it themselves." By virtue of that accusation, are you not claiming that you see this as a rat-race? Pretty backasswards bro. Unless of course you would be amongst the hipsters I would be criticizing? Are you a hipster-hating hipster accusing me of being hip and hating hipsters? Where are you going?
And you want new musical preference? Really? The "generic blog consuming public" knows everything already, right? We all have the same access to the same review sites and archives. This site has a fairly narrow focus on the albums uploaded, and I don't know how many people who download an album here also want me to upload Yes' "Close to the Edge" or Steve Roach's "Mystic Chords."
And as for writing style, this blog was a bad example. The other ones are less derivative and more natural. I could post my essay on Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice," that was pretty good. What are you looking for? Do you want some Hemingway-styled staccato sentences? Some prosaic George Will inflected culture stigmatizing dirge on the death of valid culture? Iambic pentameter? This is a music blog. I posted albums, and they got downloaded. I hope you illegally download my album one day. Cheers.
"but enough about the strokes"--good joke
ReplyDelete