Music Criticism in Video Form

Whiney those Pink Guy albums have an average of 1.90 and less ratings than say, every single Gentle Giant album. what exactly are you talking about here.

frobgs please don't force me to bolster my argument with the "data" from RYM

cuz your argument is "gigantic music database also contains some albums I don't like". Pink Guy's album is rated on allmusic.com too bud.

if you see rym as a place where people just rate music according to whether they like it or don't seems pretty value-neutral.

but it's more than that. it's a community of people who not only believe that 'objective' evaluation of art/music is possible and necessary, but who highly value such evaluation as a means of constructing the canon/tomorrow's received wisdom. they take to the next level what they've observed the music press doing (in slapping star-ratings onto music and periodically slotting it into ranked lists). the music press has largely been rockist for decades, and i don't think i need to explain the implicit values and biases of rockism here. unsurprisingly, rym's collective rankings (the building versions of which seem to be how a lot of music gets on some devoted users' radars in the first place) are heavily skewed in all the predictable directions.

so yeah, not at all surprising when a fantanbro is a heavy rym user! (he was btw + might still be but i haven't cared enough to check recently)

the piece's author's twitter mentions are a mess omg, so many 'liberals' defending fantano's channel as a parody of the alt-right (??) lol

Really glad ilm exist atm. It's comforting to know that the world's biggest musicheads are not sociopaths (mostly!).

Sorry for getting corny for a second. Carry on.

I don't know if that's necessarily true. It's probably a "good" thing that not all ILMers post on ILE..........

Shaker - regarding where do these people find time...some jobs it's very easy to slack off all day on these kinds of forums.

Shakey**

None of us would know anything about that, of course.

Hahahaha

I really don't think the RYM issue is that complicated, the average forum, comments section, etc. tends to skew more to the right than the average media outlet

regarding katherine's "charisma" post upthread, i posted this w/r/t NARCOS on the netflix thread and maybe it kinda applies to these YouTube types:

i think w/film and tv depictions of sociopaths but it's an easy way out to make them avuncular (which was the right adjective for Moura's admittedly vv good performance.) i think w/a lot of these types there's a constant undercurrent of danger and fear that they put out along w/the likability. or i guess "charm" and "charisma" might be better in this case; some of the people i've known who were possibly (probably?) sociopaths have a lot in common: they draw you into their orbit, they like being at the center of attention, they wilt in certain situations where they are not at the center, people like them but they do not really possess qualities that--charisma and charm removed--make them admirable or worthy of liking. and there's always an undercurrent of something.

i mean what the alt-right has been "good" at (or i guess what the major personalities have cultivated) is this charismatic presence devoid of anything else.

xp well its a little hard to tell now, ever since Trump came along I've noticed a lot of discussion boards instituting a strict "NO POLITICS" rule, which is probably for the best

can't believe a guy who makes a living shouting reductive thoughts about music turned out to be a bad person

haven't seen many of his reviews, but does he really shout in them? The ones I've seen have been, like Treeship said upthread, really innocuous. Like, Mr. Rodgers-levels of subdued. I thought that was his brand—geek who shares dutiful, uncontroversial opinions about music in a soft-spoken voice.

christ i'm not gonna watch the fucker

My favorite music reviewer is being hit-pieced by far-Left journalists. That's it. No more. We're tolerating this too much. Regardless of whether you hate the anti-SJW community, this is pure slander of an innocent man.

Get it trending#NeedleDropNotAltRight

— Arch Alien (@The_ArchAlien) October 4, 2017

A bold rallying cry for these times.

haven't seen many of his reviews, but does he really shout in them?

This was the dude's Twitter icon for years:

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/016/217/photo.jpg

Even if he doesn't actually shout in many of them, how is that appealing.

"So what's your chosen public image...oh okay a shaven headed ranter. And...bye."

shiftless teens/20s guys who are unable to enjoy art without external validation from as much authority as possible have existed since long before RYM

yeah but they used to just get a copy of the rolling stone guide and then grow out of it

but it's more than that. it's a community of people who not only believe that 'objective' evaluation of art/music is possible and necessary, but who highly value such evaluation as a means of constructing the canon/tomorrow's received wisdom. they take to the next level what they've observed the music press doing (in slapping star-ratings onto music and periodically slotting it into ranked lists).

i think there are two forces at work here both largely taking impact from the technology of the internet itself. 1) the need to be an Expert on everything. this is a big internet thing, something that emerges in social spheres, perhaps it is a result of the aggressive/territorial propoganda of capitalisam, the hyper consumerism of post-modern late capitalism. the way we represent ourselves on the internet largely starts with lists, lists of favorite books/movies, lists of consumer products, there is an aggressive need to indulge in this and yeah the ages old traditions of consumerist promotional materials.

2) the methods of art production have been democratized. this is in some ways a bad thing for art. whereas in the past technology and skill cut the average person off from the ability to create, now technology makes it a convenience available to everyone. now people that in another era would have never attempted to make art are getting into "making art" via the hyper consumer route, it is a way to feed their consumer ego, their brand, etc. you see this in Pateron and the modern cult of personality. people on message boards talk about copyright strikes towards their favorite youtuber and say that they are making "art" by playing these video games that somebody else made.

i think in some ways this is good, that art should be available to everyone, but certainly it loses a craft, and you have essentially illiterate (from a traditional art-history educational background) people writing for other illiterate people about art. this is not art. this is criticism. just because you made a video does not mean it is film and it is art. a lot of this criticism is made by people that don't really care about art outside of a consumer sphere - they aren't artists themselves - so much as they care about movies and maybe the political drama surrounding it. not to say it is all bad of course and there are people doing great things (and i far prefer youtube over television) but the convenience of the technology and platform lower the bar to entry and allow a lot of shitty people in.

The internet puts people in touch with others who share their absolute worst tendencies. And it allows them to spend all their time with these people, in a cocoon of toxic reinforcement, and ignore outside influences. When they live this way for long enough the outside world comes to seem strange and alien, and they can only make sense of it with language they learned in the cocoon, i.e. prejudices and generalizations, the kind of thoughts that thrive in environments without light or oxygen. So the internet -- a technology that was supposed to help us feel connected to people all across the globe -- has actually turned out to be a remarkably efficient incubator of hardcore racists and ideological misogynists.

xp j. Basically you're right -- tendencies that were bad i. The past can become so much more damaging today.

good way to set up meets for swingers too

Sure, but if one of these romantic liasions disappoints the male party he just might spend the rest of his life whining about it on an MRA forum, to the point where sexism, along with bitterness, comes to be a core feature of his personality.

They need to warn people about getting sucked into online hate communities the way they used to warn people about getting drawn into cults.

I'm always curious what hair was split when an Adam bruneau ends up here instead of in the needle drop comments section

now deej

Impact!

Needle Drop shows cancelled after controversy https://t.co/4jrOJRBkxY pic.twitter.com/T9uE3P5wH1

— BrooklynVegan (@brooklynvegan) October 5, 2017

I'm a little surprised by this. Are the people that enjoyed his terrible music reviews really put off to learn he has other terrible videos as well?

I was barely aware of this guy for the longest time. I watched his reviews of my records, which he liked, but commented on strangely, and I felt odd about his analyses. I watched a couple other of his reviews and felt he had a profound inability to feel any empathy for any musician who he perceived as "the other"-- women, black musicians, queers, all kind of just were these aliens who made and said things that he wasn't able to directly relate to his own experience. The bodies and minds and art of "the other" were just accessories to his own experience. At a point when he was retweeted into my Twitter timeline one too many times, I blocked him and forgot about him.

About a year ago, a Twitter friend commented something about "a vegan Youtuber" and I replied, "the one bald one or the one with the fedora?" He said "the music reviewer" and I said "if he puts numbers on the art, then he supports the patriarchy and must be euthanized". I stand by the quantitative-analysis-of-art-favours-power-structures-already-in-place idea. "Euthanized"? Not a bad way to be put retired, but it was a lame joke.

Six months later, I guess Anthony found the tweet and made a big deal out of it. He screen-shotted it and made it his banner and @'d me a bunch, suggesting I was aligning myself with historical groups that support euthanasia-- Nazis, I guess. The feeling I felt was mostly bemusement at how little I cared, that this kind of internet trolling just didn't really affect my mental state, or make me feel threatened, and after about 30 minutes of concern I pretty much forgot about it and moved on.

This Fader article is interesting and seemed like a lot of work, and definitely caught me up on crypto-Nazi "edge lording" and what I guess has been going on on those other message boards I don't frequent any more. But, after it's publication, I couldn't help but also feel really weirded out by the torches-and-pitchforks-out response in the music and music journalism community. Tweets that seem harassing, telling Anthony to "choke on your own diarrhea", "die in a fire", etc., and really? Is this really what we want to spend time on? Is this really getting people that up-in-arms?

What I'm trying to say is that I can't help but feel that there is a creepy side effect of this whole affair, and (sure) the way that "social justice issues" enact themselves on social media as a whole. I feel as if the urge to shun anybody who has a really dumb explanation as to "why they don't say the n-word" manifests itself as like, a license to bully, a license to shit-post. It feels like Brooklyn Vegan comments sections all over again. I don't understand why people can't just block and move on; or, barring that, engage with the man directly and discreetly.

I think too that any aggressive response to this Fader article only increases the possibility of some kind of 'white straight male victimhood' complex and will just make things worse. I've gotten super aggro online about that rock band from Kent called Slaves, but I was like... flabbergasted and couldn't control my anger. Does this outrage actually solve anything? Can't we just wait until Anthony goes the way of Chris Ott? Ignore him until he's just a ghost, enjoying his binge-drinking and his beautiful family?

Are people really upset about the fact that Anthony does some crypro-blackface on a side-channel, enough to turn this into an internet firefight? How much more do I have to read about his black wife? or about how his side-channel was satirical? or that he's a Bernie supporter? Why can't people just block him and forget. Ian Cohen sucks, so I blocked him too; if Fader finds out that he's a secret pigfucker and he loses his Pitchfork job over it, I will feel sad for him but happy that music was his side-gig; he's a lawyer? I heard? good. He'll be fine. I wouldn't crow with glee that this music writer I don't like is a pigfucker. Why do I feel like "the resistance" is enacting patterns of abuse and online bullying for no reason except ragey-ragey-rage? Why do I think the response to this article is just making things stupider? Why am I even wasting time on this post?

I think too that any aggressive response to this Fader article only increases the possibility of some kind of 'white straight male victimhood' complex and will just make things worse.

this is totally otm, but i'm also torn w/r/t how funny it is when someone tells a vlogger to choke on his own diarrhea

Are people really upset about the fact that Anthony does some crypro-blackface on a side-channel, enough to turn this into an internet firefight?

"Upset" is strong but yes, for what I hope are obvious reasons I do care that this dude was making money off of shit toxic to my family's existence and I'm glad Youtube demonetized his garbage, removing his incentive for continuing it.

I mean, the bigger picture of your post fgti is that nothing matters anymore and, looking a month down the road, I'm guessing Fantano will be fine and the Fader will be fine and Slaves will change their name like Viet Cong or Eskimeaux or the Morning Benders and be fine

so in the meantime it's fun to repeatedly own a herb

fgti I love you and that post is both accurate and booming

>I think too that any aggressive response to this Fader article only increases the possibility of some kind of 'white straight male victimhood' complex and will just make things worse.

the examples cited in that Fader article that are still online & watchable in their entirety are clearly a lot more complex than what they're being made out to be in that article. especially as he gets more into the Meme Review & densely edited youtubepoop stuff. irony has evolved in some very tortured ways online over the last 10 years, so I have found myself growing more charitable about interpreting someone's intent with an online post or video than I ever used to have to be. kids are drawn to the unspeakable, and today we live online.

when I was 15 we had Book of the SubGenius & the Research Pranks issue, and Boyd Rice was the main cautionary tale of what happened when a troll went too far -- today's 15 year olds have Kekistan. I don't like it but I'd be lying if I said I didn't understand the appeal

I am fine with that channel being demonetized, especially as his reaction / rationale for then pulling his work is that there's no point for it to be up because he's no longer making any money from it. he's got some more work to do on what he believes & I hope he comes out of it. the most interesting bit of the interview with Akkad is the brief bit where they're both delirious over how they can live off their videos.

DJP oh no, totally, I'm not policing the response of direct victims of his hate speech, and I'm not trying to be anti-anger, or anti-violence, or even anti-cruelty, I fully want Barron to be the first to be hung, and by his feet, and for a long time, I'm just (in this case, and other cases previous) finding that the response across Twitter, by musicians and journalists who really ought not to give so many shits, is so... gleeful, weirdly over-aggressive, that it feels inauthentic. Like pageantry. Like an exaggeration of the "trauma" and "class oppression" that might be experienced if Fantano gave somebody's band a bad review, or no coverage at all. Like people railing against white supremacy online but calling the cops when the neighbours' kids make too much noise. Like people exploiting the cause and language of social justice in order to give themselves free rein to be a piece of shit online.

Ahh Milton that's v interesting btw

@ WGW, I kind of feel the opposite, I kind of think everything matters and that it's good to engage properly and directly with people and I don't see the fun in owning an herb

I don’t know why I hate theneedledrop guy so much. I agree with him more often than not but I just don’t like his face or something. I hate that I hate him for no reason too.

Nvm I just got caught up on the Auerbach/Sunderland thing, burn everything and everyone

otm

Sometimes things are exactly what they seem like.

Auerbach/Sunderland?

Enjoy, if that's the word

https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/heres-how-breitbart-and-milo-smuggled-white-nationalism?utm_term=.qvMAnp774#.ybVmxoWWG

there's one graf in there, I don't really want to point out which it is but it doesn't take much detective work, that very heavily suggests that the only reason we didn't have a music GG is because m*lo didn't bite

xxxps
Auerbach/Sutherland more likely?