pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Anyone else always hear the term "Coco Rosie" to the tune of "Who is...Johnny"?

If whiney and deej are queer, that's news to me
― self-clowning oven (Murgatroid), Wednesday, September 30, 2015 5:22 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah well "SJW clickbait" is ridiculous because it implies that social justice topics are things that bring people to music sites as opposed to loss-leaders for the greater good

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Wednesday, September 30, 2015 4:53 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wait so ur saying pitchfork don't make $$$ off The Pitch? why else would it exist? it's awful & shits all over their brand

while we're on the subject this piece rubbed me the wrong way for a number of reasons http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/903-why-michete-is-the-worst-queer-rapper-you-need-to-listen-to/

mostly because the writer only seems to understand how to discuss/analyze music in the context of backlash, in this case perceived & nonexistent backlash against a version of progressivism. there are a bunch of phrases like "this will disturb listeners" but the shit has like 500 soundcloud plays. there are other ways to write about music!!

the author's recent miley cyrus piece in the same place is also horrible. what's up with editorial over there????

I have an idea. Their brand is shit...

:: scene fades to SWJW feverishly scratching at pitchfork tattoo and compulsively clicking reload, just waiting for someone, anyone, to say it aint so ::

I'm just saying, if you intend to talk about this without unintentionally aligning yourself with people you don't want to align yourself with there are better terms to use than SJW. some examples include: almost anything

how about SWJW?

the author's recent miley cyrus piece in the same place is also horrible. what's up with editorial over there????

I don't think The Pitch is actually edited as such; it's more like "You seem really passionate about this issue; here's the login and password - post away!"

Can I post to pitchfork?

I'm just saying, if you intend to talk about this without unintentionally aligning yourself with people you don't want to align yourself with there are better terms to use than SJW. some examples include: almost anything
--a self-reinforcing downward spiral of male-centric indie (katherine)

"cucks" it is

sun kucks moon

*The Safe Spacers* WOULD be a good name for an indie band. can we all agree on that?

no

imo sjw is a good thing to be

fat sjw less good, but that's why i bought a gym membership

What's an untainted synonym now that SJW has gone the way of PC? There's obviously a school of simplistic, self-righteous cultural criticism like the piece Jordan identified (and most of The Pitch) and there must be a way of critiquing it without being tied to fucking Gamergate.

"how much can one permit the absence of racial self-awareness in Michete’s incendiary thematic, considering the often unfriendly or violent cis majority trans* people face?"

"Permit" is the key word here. It's all about what is "allowed" (by right-thinking Pitchfork writers) and what artists "should" be doing and saying in order to benefit society.

In this line he literally sounds like a lawyer at a parole hearing:

"Such inquiries must take into account not only the queer artist’s clear offenses (like a Hitler shout out) but also the artist’s potential radical value"

What's an untainted synonym now that SJW has gone the way of PC? There's obviously a school of simplistic, self-righteous cultural criticism like the piece Jordan identified (and most of The Pitch) and there must be a way of critiquing it without being tied to fucking Gamergate.

― impossible raver (Re-Make/Re-Model), Thursday, October 1, 2015 5:36 AM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You're either with us or you're with the terrorists.

"Sanctimony" works if your looking to actually critique an aspect of the work rather than razz people to the left of you

What's an untainted synonym now that SJW has gone the way of PC? There's obviously a school of simplistic, self-righteous cultural criticism like the piece Jordan identified (and most of The Pitch) and there must be a way of critiquing it without being tied to fucking Gamergate.

― impossible raver (Re-Make/Re-Model), Thursday, October 1, 2015 5:36 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thirsty Allys, def

i ALWAYS ended up feeling like a big jerk for nitpicking the pitch things. like i was kicking kittens or something. i would have some problem with the logic or argument and mouth off about it and then find out the person who wrote it worked in a homeless shelter or something. so now i don't read them.

otm. Also, at this point it seems pretty clear that the problems on The Pitch are due to the fact that no one's effectively editing what gets posted there. I'm sure the thing that Katherine wrote on this has been linked somewhere on this thread, but it's super-otm, and at this point is obviously part of how The Pitch is run. It's hard for me to criticize the writers or pick apart any individual post when the issue is so obviously systematic.

did scott just compare the Pitch to Street Sheet

xp yes that was my intended point - the responsibility is with the editorial function as a whole

imo we all just need to start saying HOOSTEESIA social

i think the pitch overall is a good addition to the site, even if much of it is very bad though. i think it is cool to have this loose informal place with lots of new writers, many of them fairly young. never really got a sense that the pitch is ruining the "pitchfork brand" or whatever, to me it seems like a place given over to individual writers to talk about often very personal stuff about their relationships to music, or maybe just like half-formed thoughts (which is part of the fault of the pitch too, even the best posts tend to be a little scant). idk about reader demographics but i'd guess too that the pitch has improved or continued p4k's relevance among younger readers, seems kind of wise tbh to have this place on the site where they can run stuff like that while doing the more "official" stuff elsewhere on the site e.g. reviews or features. the regular features section or BNM seems like more of the "branded" official p4k stuff, e.g. the "official" interview w/ whoever.

Yeah, but doesn't that create the "this doesn't really count/matter, it's just The Pitch" feeling discussed above by Katherine and others? I think if you're going to run this kind of hyper-earnest I've-just-discovered-racism-and-must-teach-the-others stuff, you ought to give it the same amount of editing and polishing you give everything else. (Which editing admittedly isn't as rigorous as it could be - there are plenty of typos and grammatical fuckups in the reviews and features.)

Yes, there's a sense in which it's a romper room where Pitchfork exiles nettlesome thoughts about gender, sexuality, etc.

yea i won't argue that it could use a little editing

hyper-earnest I've-just-discovered-racism-and-must-teach-the-others

tbf most of the writing on racism/social justice in the pitch is by people of color afaict and many of those pieces draw from the writers' personal histories of being discriminated against

I like katherine's "glass platform" idea. The Pitch's non-editing invites young, engaged writers to tackle tricky topics and then throws them to the wolves, in the process adding to the pile of lousy writing about those topics, thus doing a disservice to the writers, the readers AND discussion or race, gender and sexuality in music.

I think "hyper-earnest I've-just-discovered-racism-and-must-teach-the-others stuff" might be the synonym I'm looking for. Bit long though.

"sanctimonious," "condescending," "didactic" etc all work. if the problem is that shorthand making clear you're talking about liberals keeps being stolen by people who would use it less judiciously...well...

'sophomoric misdirected political earnestness'

i think marcos is on point btw. on the whole the pitch feels like an overdue corrective and better reflective of what people are looking for from an alt music publication! you can criticize the execution of certain pieces but i think the direction of the pitch generally is good

not sure whether I coined "glass platform" but it's fitting, I keep thinking of the ones in videogames that break or fall

"Sanctimony" works if your looking to actually critique an aspect of the work rather than razz people to the left of you

― da croupier, Thursday, October 1, 2015 9:05 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pretty sure there's a left critique of "SJW" or whatever you want to call it -- slacktivism, social-media activism, whatever. that is, the critique isn't necessarily from "the right" or "the center."

see e.g. adolph reed

the critique i always see is college professors writing about how they are scared of their students. which gets boring after awhile cuz everyone already knows that college professors are boring and college kids are annoying.

there should be a "hangry" type adjective that covers both of those
bornnoying

my wife is going through this big nightmare with college kids now and it sounds horrible and i'm glad i'm not in her shoes. though i do have to hear about it a lot. college radio turmoil. it's a bloodbath.

Do tell! We endured grueling college radio turmoil last fall.

ugh, it's a very long story. but it does involve a lot of au courant political stuff.

http://dailycollegian.com/2015/09/29/wmua-community-members-look-to-administration-against-student-leadership/

http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2015/09/volunteers_at_troubled_wmua_as.html

http://www.gazettenet.com/news/townbytown/amherst/18746942-95/umass-amherst-chancellor-responds-to-petition-delivered-by-community-members-of-wmua-radio-station

(it's a student -vs- community volunteer battle. in the latest salvo, on the new fall schedule all the most vocal critics of the students - it's a student-run station - had their shows moved to 4 a.m.)

Just clicked the first link and came back to say that Kumble Subbaswamy is an awesome name.

i went to college in the late 90s and the shit that went down (and was quickly forgotten) would probably fuel a million twitter wars today.

i mean at the radio station in particular

why was Shea fired? sexual harassment?

i went to college in the late 90s and the shit that went down (and was quickly forgotten) would probably fuel a million twitter wars today.

ditto

the students claimed.....a lot of stuff. none of which has gone anywhere. the consensus among community members is that they just didn't like having him around. so they got rid of him. and they got rid of the student advisor who had been there for decades. it will end in lawsuits. the students REALLY want the station to be a CMJ-style indie rock station. and the WMUA charter is not about that at all. it's been a completely free-form non-commercial station forever. to be reductive, the kids don't want to deal with the olds at all.

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