I'm not trying to exacerbate things, but I for one was offended by the same generalizations - especially the 'boys club' tone of Chris Herbert's post, yet somehow it was the 'yeah, right on brother' reinforcements that came just after that seemed far worse. So joke or no, it makes no difference at that point. Damage done. I'm a girl. I love music, for real. Why should I have to read that shit in a supposedly enlightened place like this? It's also a really disturbing social phenomenon that whenever anyone, anywhere, ever has the courage to stand up and call someone out (with good reason) there is always a legion of 'smoother overers' that start pressuring that person to let things be. Apparently conflict makes people uncomfortable. Is it really better if those feeling discomfort to begin with, just shut up seethe silently beneath the status quo? And yes, I CAN leave if I don't want to read it.
ethan, you rock.
― Kim, Monday, 7 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
I just have to say that the brutal truth contained in the orginal indie kids article intoxicated me, and made me go perhaps a little further than I should have.
― Chris H., Monday, 7 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Audrey, Tuesday, 8 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Chris H., Tuesday, 8 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
I don't even care if saying that gets me yelled at. I still fail to see - NEWSFLASH I AM A GIRL - what was so offensive about Chris's original post. It was glib and sarcastic and definitely in poor taste - so fuckin' what? As I said, people need to go reread all that jumping down the throat done to necromancer (yes, Ethan, this means you) when he went off on rap music being a bad influence on popular society - ie a FAR BETTER SELLING FORM OF POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT THAN A MAGAZINE (just ask Fred Solinger about magazine sales) - yet you're all going to claim Maxim is going to negatively influence people? It's going to negatively influence people just as much as rap music will.
Mind you, I'm not someone who thinks rap music is going to influence any sane person to do anything different from what they would've done otherwise, so I'm saying magazines are not a major influence either. Obviously, anyone stating Maxim is a major influence would be a hypocrite to claim that music, a more popular form of entertainment, isn't an influence on people's behavior. A popular magazine has a sales base of a few million around the world. A popular rap album has a sales base of a few million in the United States alone. Do the statistics.
And I'm ticked off at Chris for even apologizing. Don't bow to the pressure of the board, it's not worth it. Piss them off. Music obsessive IS by and large the male of the species. Which isn't to say girls aren't music obsessives - my favorite band seems to appeal only to females, from my non-internet experience - but rather that the majority share (ie more than 50%) of music obsessives are males. This is an oft stated, oft studied fact. If you don't like it, tough. Try to get more of your female friends to buy music. Just look at the proportion of men to women on this very board. Don't give me the "this is the internet, computers are for men" bullshit either (which is so hypocritically sexist it's not even funny anyhow - music is for everyone but computers aren't? Fuggedaboudit) because recent studies (and no I don't have them but one of them was cited to me by Tom Ewing himself) show that the internet is nearing the 50/50 mark more and more every day and the disparity is nearly non-existant. You can probably look this up in the technology section of Yahoo! news, which I believe had a story on it recently. Yet music sites are around 75% male. Why do you think this is if you believe what I'm saying right now is offensive? This goes out to anyone, not someone in particular...
The indie scene IN MY EXPERIENCE is particularly bad because the girls do put more thought into their clothes. I used to hang out with a pile of them in Arizona and they knew jack all about music. As I said, this is my experience and gladly this board proves to me it's not necessarily a common thing, but I can see how Chris's experience led him to the same conclusion.
Maxim RULES. End of story to me. And I don't even read it. I'm just giving them props for using Photoshop to blow up the breasts of every flat chested actress they ever have on their cover. Rock on with your fantasy world, rock on with making these women look ridiculous because everyone knows they don't really look like that. It's all hilarious to me, and I quite frankly hope someone from Maxim is reading this and offers me a dirty spread in the mag for propping them.
This has fuck all to do with Indie Kids, mind you.
― Ally, Tuesday, 8 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― ethan, Tuesday, 8 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Otis Wheeler, Tuesday, 8 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Chris H., Wednesday, 9 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Influence of media - Ally, it's pointless comparing music and Maxim. A self-help book, for instance, will tend to have much lower sales than a magazine but will be more influential on those who buy it because it is directly addressing and advising them. Music tends to have no such pretension and is - overtly at least - entertainment. Mass media mags fall halfway between the two: half entertainment (look at her! read about him!) and half advice (how to be a cooler man!). So though less ppl read it, the influence may well be stronger. I personally dont have a problem with admitting that entertainment media influence society, anyway.
Female obsessives over music - nothing to do with it being a statistical minority, at least online. In the USA, 52% of surfers are women, slightly out of proportion to the population as a whole I believe. In European countries though the average is about 40% women. In the top 20 by volume posters on this board the percentage is either 10% or 15%. Napster users are (IIRC) about 65% male. That all said this board is about individuals not generalisations: leave your Hornbyesque 'observational comedy' at the door please.
― Tom, Wednesday, 9 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
EVERYthing influences people. You can listen to whatever you want and label it however you want.
Mental conditioning/brainwashing/memetics is as real as writing in E-prime is a real solution to disspelling falsehoods and "spooks" (false essences of things).
It is funny as hell when some prick tries to tell you what you are allowed to appreciate or disapprove of, however. For me, I felt gangsta rap/most rap = shitty topics that I don't want to dwell on (whether it's fighting, cheating, bling blingin', gettin' respect, getting revenge, smoking pot, or rising above these peeps in the community who act this way) and it is my choice after all, what I want to dwell on. Funny how it twisted into something else. I see that going on here, too... Hmmm, who's the culprit?
― , Wednesday, 9 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― ethan, Wednesday, 9 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Pop is the most accessible and most instantly appreciable music of all, a fact which I think *can* be supported by sales and radio play. A self-clarification is not in and of itself automatically elitist; the fact that you think it is only suggests to me that pro-pop sentiments threaten you somehow. Which is funny because racism, sexism, homophobia etc. are obviously a threat but liking pop is just as obviously not.
I found Chris' original post funny because it coincided so perfectly with my own experience of the indie pop world - that both the guys and girls were more often than not shallow people pretending to be deep in order to pick up; that the rejection of style had turned into a fashion as cynical and sexually-motivated as the plastic, "sluttish" world of pop. Chris's behaviour proves that the guys are probably more shallow than the girls, which seems correct to me (and don't say that Chris isn't an indie kid; he goes to indie clubs and is therefore an indie kid). Of course most musical scenes are like this, but at least most of them admit it quite openly.
I'll agree that Chris's comments about girls are a bit bizarre and he's done little to disprove your charge of sexism; it worries me that I barely noticed at the time. Good on you for pointing that out then, but I can't help but feel that you were using it as simple ammunition for your original tirade.
― Tim, Thursday, 10 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
I am also sexist. I believe that there are differences, both innate and socially constructed, between males and females. I also don't see the problem, so long as there's truth backing it up.
― Chris H., Thursday, 10 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
To go from, say, some statistical evidence on the proporionately high number of young black males in London with a criminal record (which I entirely ascribe to environmental factors, by the way, lest there be any doubt!) to an assumption that all black men are criminals is a) wrong and b) socially divisive. Agreed?
― Nick, Friday, 11 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Anyway, when I meet, talk to, or hear about girls who have the same relationship with music that I do, it's exhilarating. I am in favor of girls listening to music.
― Chris H., Saturday, 12 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Chris, let me get this straight - so to correct this grievous injustice these 'fakers' are perpetrating against your delicate sensibilties, you decide to screw them over by umm... being a FAKER? Or do you just not like yourself? Either way, it's just crystal the way that you're ALL about the integrity...
― Trillium, Saturday, 12 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Can we have a *new* article on posers? Please?
― Kim, Saturday, 12 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Sterling Clover, Saturday, 12 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Also Chris, what do you do when you go out with a girl who finds your indie image appealing, then she finds out what your true music taste is? Because I would probably drop you because we wouldn't have that much in common....
I'm not trying to inflame the situation, I ask merely for information.
― Audrey, Sunday, 13 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
The actual indie rockers, the ones who ought to be able to see though me the second I walk into a room, probably aren't going to date me. They might like the shoes enough drunkenly make out with me at a party, but that hole in my CD rack where the Young Marble Giants should be is just too conspicuous.
― Chris H., Monday, 14 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Curious, Monday, 14 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Chris H., Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― ethan, Monday, 5 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― jess, Sunday, 30 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
"Or New Balanced one-strap baggers."
Brilliant.
― JM, Monday, 31 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― bnw, Monday, 31 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― mark s, Monday, 31 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Josh, Monday, 31 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Ronan, Monday, 31 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Nicole, Monday, 31 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Tim, Monday, 31 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
But I get no excitement out of watching someone tilt at straw men of their own making. The article falls into the very same cooler-than-thou trap that is implicitly at the heart of most problems with the indie scene -- or for that matter with any scene, since the real problem is a self-congratulatory way of thinking that's common to nearly any obnoxious, inbred milieu, and has nothing to do with horn-rims and single-sided 7-inches. The narrators' voices [1] don't convince me that they're particularly more insightful or interesting or free-thinking than the people they're critiquing, so the whole thing comes off as a nasty bit of sniping between groups who, from the article, would seem more alike than either would like to admit: they just have different signifiers. (Why trade one set of scenesters for another?) I can't help but think that the people who like this article like it because it's telling them what they already want to hear. But the problem with this article and the problem with indie and the problem with any scene are all one and the same, at heart.
To make a litany of contempt worthwhile, you have to offer an attractive alternative to what you're mocking -- otherwise it's just a series of cheap shots, really. And once you've seen a few of those, they're no longer interesting, and end up seeming like the kid at the back of the school bus who brilliantly picks apart everyone's faults but who never actually does anything of his own: once in a while he's funny, but usually all he succeeds in doing is to ensure that everyone else has less fun. People like that are a dime a dozen, but they make very little of what's worth loving in the world.
[1] (as expressed in this single piece, without regard to anything of theirs I've read elsewhere -- this isn't intended as a slam of the piece's authors)
― Phil, Tuesday, 1 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
That would be a year or so ago. Now, re-reading it and bearing in mind this revitalised thread, it just looks as offensive as the stereotypical comments that the (trolling?) bloke above made about fans of rap music. Actually it would be a much better piece if it was updated to describe the 'IDM' lovers who use "indiekid" to describe all music outwith their own narrow tastes.
― Alexander Blair, Tuesday, 1 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― bnw, Tuesday, 1 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― jess, Tuesday, 1 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
It's not that good a piece - some of the charges stand up (generally the good points come from Maura, who knows the lifestyle better than I do), some are just cheap, most as Phil points out are true of any scene. The "pretending to like" jibes are intentionally unfair in a frothing "see how you like it" way. But I'm glad I did it - it was a good way to lance a couple of boils that had built up over the course of a year when FT and NYLPM had got attention and criticism from just these kind of people, and I like to think that my comments on indie *since* writing that have been more intelligent and inclusive. Some may disagree. ;)
― Tom, Tuesday, 1 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― toraneko, Tuesday, 1 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Ronan, Tuesday, 1 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
I don't know if Britain is different from Ireland in this respect, but the people buying the sort of middling crap that seems to go under the "indie" label here are not really part of any scene at all. the markers have been changed so much with the huge growth in the pop industry, that popular (ish) rock is very very accessible to the average 18, 19, 20 year old. So we're talking alot of the Coldplay clones, aswell as Coldplay, U2 perhaps, Charlatans, that type of thing, Travis. the fans are just your average lad types. I get the impression Britain might be like this too from magazines and the like.
― Rob A, Tuesday, 1 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Tim, Wednesday, 2 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
I disagree the mocking is healthy - quite the opposite - it's lazy and now very monotonous.
I like glam, mod and northern soul. Liking all sorts of things is a good thing.
― Alexander Blair, Wednesday, 2 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link