pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

it's a gross joke trying to pass itself off as "ironic" while conveniently still sponning the con

xpost tbh this kind of stuff is under almost every viral tweet

(Also, I found the tweet funny)

pop-poptimism discourse is even stupider than the normal sort

going through some of the replies... "In fact that's exactly what happened. Poptimism became a major thing right around the time Condé Nast bought Pitchfork." lol

you're right and you should say it

— elizabeth bruenig (@ebruenig) June 13, 2021

https://media.tenor.com/images/160d117c737caec24882db70c222dc48/tenor.gif

poptimist silvia

people on twitter think that "poptimism" means "pop music is inherently better than other music because it's popular," which, uhh, no.

seemed to me at a distance on ilm that the semi-popular stuff was always more the focus, say, Robyn for example

this phenomenon has nothing to do with any website (and especially not one that barely covered pop the first fifteen years) and in 10 years of "poptimism" debate i've yet to be successfully convinced why i should take white folk in vineyard vines making indie shit more seriously https://t.co/WQSrg0XQAk

— Craig Bro Dude (@CraigSJ) June 14, 2021

maybe we should just accept that the term "poptimism" means a new and different thing now

I saw that tweet earlier, and then spent a few minutes reading their timeline. They struck me as an absolute, yet extremely banal, paragon of the affectless irony-poisoned terminally online shitposter whose socialist/progressive/shrug politics are entirely opaque because they only exist in relation to twitter. Felt pretty depressed after scrolling through it for a while. The replies are a dizzying but also sad combination of "reads The Culture Industry once" or "I hate indie" or "rockism was 100% correct actually"

I guess with pitchfork basically being the only music crit venue with any significance, it's become this rorschach blot for people's anxieties about taste + literally anything?

i didn't realise until recently how many people there are online who think p4k used to be cool before it sold out. surely back then no real hipster would ever admit to thinking it was cool even if they secretly took it v seriously

Devastated to learn a new breed of poptimism-haters have an ahistorical understanding of the discourse that gave rise to such an invaluable mode of criticism. Oh, no!

— willy 💧 (@willystaley) June 14, 2021

I guess with pitchfork basically being the only music crit venue with any significance, it's become this rorschach blot for people's anxieties about taste + literally anything?

Once upon a time entire books were written about how unfairly certain bands were treated by Rolling Stone.

They struck me as an absolute, yet extremely banal, paragon of the affectless irony-poisoned terminally online shitposter whose socialist/progressive/shrug politics are entirely opaque because they only exist in relation to twitter. Felt pretty depressed after scrolling through it for a while. T

I had the same reaction a little while ago too -- I couldn't figure out what this person loved, hated, was bored by; it was like watching someone acting out their version of Warholism without ever seeing a Warhol painting.

rob otm

re: simon, the "things are good because they're popular" straw man version of it isn't a view point anyone actually holds. the twitter OP said she'd never even heard the term poptimism before people brought it up in response to that tweet anyway. this is all just people who don't really pay much attention to any of this stuff going "lol there are some pretty goofy/embarrassing writing on pitchfork sometimes" and "isn't it weird pitchfork likes beyonce these days when they used to only like indie music" etc. and then ending up in weird conspiracist places

Its hilarious that everyone's flipping out because you could totally read the phrase "pop music" as "popular music (i.e., everything that's not classical music) but everyone apparently chose to read it as (**soy facing in Swans shirt**) YEPPERS YEPPERS CARLY RAE JEPPERS

^^^

going through some of the replies... "In fact that's exactly what happened. Poptimism became a major thing right around the time Condé Nast bought Pitchfork." lol

lol at deej getting "doxxed" as Pitchfork staff

xp to whiney: oh come on lol she says "the more highly produced/marketed the greater reverence you should afford it when listening. Absolute cuckoldry" which is clearly directly aiming at actually popular pop (genre), so not crj and also not "everything that isn't classical music"

Once upon a time entire books were written about how unfairly certain bands were treated by Rolling Stone.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Monday, June 14, 2021 1:21 PM (eight minutes ago)

yeah definitely a little "it's time to take down the Millennials" going on too

how have all of you been on the internet for 20+ years and not yet figured out how to process jokey shit-posting that has a small kernel of truth but isn't really thought-out at all? isn't that like 75% of ILX?

yeah that's obviously what it is but on twitter people are acting like it's some deep insight instead of nonsense

twitter is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

anti-poptimism on the rise in the twenty-first century

isn't that like 75% of ILX?

I mean, no (at least not ILM)? That's why I spend time here, lol

Yeah, I merely posted it because I think there's a minor kernel of truth, and also it's a viral tweet related to the subject of this thread. I am not in total agreement...I love Carly Rae Jepsen, lol.

"cuckholdry" is the most instructive part of the whole thing and also a signal to stop engaging

bruenig cosign checks out though

Ah, ufo, didn't put that tweet together, oh well, wgas

imo what this Tweet's popularity is showcasing is basically the huge divide between "We should take popular music seriously" (probably correct) and what the market (i.e. incredibly online people) demands

the tweet is way too flattening to contain a minor kernel of truth ffs

how have all of you been on the internet for 20+ years and not yet figured out how to process jokey shit-posting that has a small kernel of truth but isn't really thought-out at all

i "haven't figured out how to process it" because i hate this shit, it's bad

as much as there's a kernel of truth here it's just "sometimes p4k reviews of pop music are goofy/embarrassing" or something in the background etc

which yeah obviously but the tweet isn't a good dunk on that at all or anything

brb, rewriting Cake's "The Distance" as "The Discourse"

HE'S EATING THE PIZZA HE'S GOING FOR CHEESE

Sung by Taylor Swift.

how have all of you been on the internet for 20+ years and not yet figured out how to process jokey shit-posting

it sucks, all the processing necessary

Feel like there's some context collapse in all of this. The issue isn't that someone posted a dumb tossed-off thought, it's that it bounces around Twitter and spurs a discourse full of other dumb, tossed-off thoughts, which then eventually gets presented to people who are more informed about and engaged with the subject, who get annoyed by the inevitable distortions.

i know there’s probably a large poptimist side of twitter i’m not on that these ppl are responding to but im always surprised by how rockist my feed is. and it’s like a strong form of anti-poptimism that believes that it’s not possible for girly commercial pop music to be good except by pedophiles

just want to report that the other Discourse going on is whether batman should be shown going down on people so really we don't have it so bad

intern at pelican brief consulting (Simon H.) at 6:17 14 Jun 21
maybe we should just accept that the term "poptimism" means a new and different thing now

Treating all pop music as equal is where this shit goes wrong from the off

To my ears, Charli XCX's album last year truly WAS sacred poetry that reflected the global lockdown spirit perfectly. Whereas Lorde featuring Bridgers and Clairo produced by fuckin Antonoff is like a microcosm of mind-numbing artless shit for total basics to swallow whole. Obviously this is just my opinion but everyone will have wildly divergent opinions even confined within the field of mainstream pop

literally no one is disputing that some pop music is bad, can we move on

I'm just saying, there's something so offputtingly empty and self-aggrandising about Lorde's music and it's triggering these often wild and silly responses, but it's doing so because a lot of people can sense the con if not quite put their finger on what it is

(and so they're throwing the pop baby out with the Lorde/Conde Nast bathwater)

i know there’s probably a large poptimist side of twitter i’m not on that these ppl are responding to but im always surprised by how rockist my feed is.

Ugh like half my Twitter feed is millennial music theorists on a crusade to rescue pop music from its dungeon in the ivory tower.