www.rateyourmusic.com C/D?

Nobody likes spending time voting/rating into the void.

you should see ilxor.com

All my terrible opinions from 19 years ago are still there for all to read, some void...

I think with some better algorithms/analysis RYM could gradually strip out all these artificial voting campaigns (both positive and negative), sock votes and troll votes so they don't have an effect anymore. Detect when an account gives hundreds of rap or metal or country releases a half star vote, just flag those accounts silently and don't include any of their votes in the ratings. Detect if a certain album receives a sudden mass influx of low votes, flag & exclude all those accounts too. I believe IMDB already does this, in this day and age of machine learning a site should be able to detect these patterns.

― Siegbran

my understanding is that rym does, in fact, do some variation on this (and may possibly have been doing this before imdb), but it's tricker to implement successfully than you're suggesting (see: the actual imdb rankings)

Oh absolutely I'm sure it isn't easy (esp not as it is happening) but the bigger the ratings dataset gets and the cheaper/standardized these ML tools get, it will get easier in time to clean up the db in retrospect. If there's a desire to do so at all - I mean RYM can also just let all this ratings gaming run wild and not care.

IMDB seems to get a bit better at cleaning up all the miraculous 10/10 ratings and glowing reviews for garbage low-budget/direct-to-streaming films.

Oh absolutely I'm sure it isn't easy (esp not as it is happening) but the bigger the ratings dataset gets and the cheaper/standardized these ML tools get, it will get easier in time to clean up the db in retrospect. If there's a desire to do so at all - I mean RYM can also just let all this ratings gaming run wild and not care.

― Siegbran, Monday, April 20, 2020 6:10 AM (nineteen minutes ago)

oh, sure they could, but they also do have a fairly heavy influx of users from 4chan.

shit gets _ugly_ there. there is a _lot_ of misogyny. some major releases, like norman fucking rockwell, have their shoutboxes deleted because people would go in and post some pretty disgusting misogynist shit and on a popular release like that it's very difficult to keep it moderated. personally i'm not a big fan of "shoutboxes" at all, too much like youtube comments sections. not sure why they were created, but possibly it was some sort of trade-off to try and reduce the number of shitpost/meme reviews - which they have been going through and doing. a lot of my older shitposty reviews have been "unpublished", which overall i think is a good thing in terms of the site direction.

the black magick ss thing is being pretty hotly debated among the mods and admins right now. honestly i'm pretty disappointed that anybody in that crew would be so naive as to argue that they're _not_ nazis, but as far as i can tell it's just one admin who keeps pushing the argument against the better judgement of pretty much everybody else there. we'll see how it turns out; these sort of arguments tend not to have compromise-based solutions.

i think there are a lot of good people on that site, a lot of good people running that site, but obviously they are facing certain challenges.

the fiona apple shoutbox has been tabula rasa'd - let's see if its second chance pays off

the fiona apple shoutbox has been tabula rasa'd - let's see if its second chance pays off

― when I come out, can you introduce me as Jagger (imago)

unfortunately there's not particularly a strong precedent for that sort of thing happening there :(

fwiw I think my experience of RYM is mostly positive b/c I don't really follow 'new music', as in stuff within the Pitchfork/Fantano/RYM chart sphere. I'm one of the guys who votes 25 albums in the year-end polls here and is astonished to see one of them make #68. the 'critically acclaimed' stuff I like with a ton of reviews/ratings tend to be older albums. so I think I'm shielded by the uglier side of the site. that said I do post on the forums every now and then and I definitely get the sense there are a lot of very active users in the 16-21 age range

lol the forums are a nightmare

btw can't hate on a site which produced this masterpiece

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/ELVISPRESLEYAEROSMITHFAN/led_zeppelins_physical_grafitti___40th_anniversary___1975_to_2015/

forums in general are nightmares

this is my favorite web board but it's just a bunch of us middle aged people who have known each other for probably decades now talking about stuff without being interrupted by 16 year old dudes who just discovered radiohead for the first time

i wish there was such a thing as long-term sustainable social spaces on the internet, i'm sad about all the friends i've lost to community collapse, but i guess there aren't long-term sustainable social spaces anywhere else either

Yeah the idea that you can build a large, stable, self-govering/moderating global social space is a dream that already died in the Usenet age.

xpost

The shoutboxes are a terrible idea. I never look a the forums, I can only imagine how bad they are.

Nazi content and pornographic cover art is already flagged and it makes sense for an archival-type site like RYM to extend the (up to now "experimental")

Descriptors

Granular controls to fine-tune your content filters for a new, more sensitive world.

JIMMY PAGE - WELL WE NEED OUR OWN TIMELESS MASTERPIECE

JOHN PAUL JONES - WHAT ? ? ! ! ? ? ! ! WE HAVE ALREADY MADE FIVE CLASSIC MASTERPIECE STUDIO ALBUMS ! ! ! ! !

ROBERT PLANT - LAUGHS HA HA THAT IS SO TRUE

JIMMY PAGE - TRUST ME THIS ALBUM IS GOING TO BE AMAZING

frogbs that is great !

That’s awesome, ha ha

ROBERT PLANT - LAUGHS HA HA HELL YES THE WOMEN LOVE ME WHEN IAM ON STAGE SINGING TO THEM WHOLE LOTTA LOVE

JIMMY PAGE - LAUGHS HA HA YES ROBERT HAS THE VOCALS AND THE CHARM TO SEND THE WOMEN INTO ORGASMIC PLEASURE IN CONCERT

JOHN PAUL JONES - WELL ENOUGH WITH THIS SEXY ROCK GOD TALK WE HAVE A LOT OF WORK TO TOMMORRY AND THE NEXT SEVERAL WEEKS

JIMMY PAGE - I AGREE WITH YOU JOHN THIS ALBUM IS GOING TO BE A HUGE CLASSIC I BELIVE SOMEDAY SOME GUY WILL BE MAKING A 40TH ANNIVERSARY LIST OF PHYSICAL GRAFITTI

imo this is the one guy who's allowed to have 95% of his ratings be 5s

Why did Fiona Apple suddenly end up on 4Chan's radar? I didn't realize she was still doing well.

Is it just 4Chan people doing this downvoting stuff? Has Vox Day became a singer and decided that he's more popular than Fiona Apple?

a girl got a 10 from Pitchfork, that's all you need to know

You never know with them. I don't understand why there's a ton of un-ironic Brie Larson worship on 4Chan.

RYM has Apple's album at 4.01 (Out of five) with 6 thousand some ratings. Seems like she's doing pretty well.

the fiona apple shoutbox has been tabula rasa'd - let's see if its second chance pays off

― when I come out, can you introduce me as Jagger (imago), Monday, April 20, 2020 6:52 AM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

looks like it's gone for good

it was dreadful, and f4ntano giving it 7/10 broke the floodgates for some reason. even without the shoutbox the negative reviews are making me want to like the album more. so i'll return to it soon lol

looks like the #1 album right now is the new black dresses,

this album is at #302 now, five days later btw

is that above or below the psychedelic nazis

Currently #926 so the algorithm works, sort of.

otoh sewerslvt at #26

mind you i haven't heard it because WHY THE HELL WOULD I PUT MYSELF THROUGH THAT?

I'm guessing there's a backstory to it? I heard the album context-free and thought it was pretty cool, but I won't be coming back to it. Not for any heart-shattering reasons, mind you.

Ok I just read an RYM review that explains it, and I… didn't hear any of that at all. Chalk one up for the school of thought according to which music is terrible at expressing specifics (cue Debussy titling his Preludes post hoc).

well i haven't heard it but some of the trans-related music i've heard has been very... high context. there's certain shared experiences a lot of trans people tend to have, experiences that cis people tend not to have. i've heard music referencing those shared experiences that i've found extremely powerful but which some other people, including other trans people, have found opaque or unclear.

I wonder how much of it would pass a blind test. Like, I'm utterly incapable of hearing Beethoven's Pastoral (the classic example) without visualizing frolicking sheep and the like, but I've never not been aware of its subtitle and its programmatic aims. Perhaps there's a real synergy in such instances, but it requires a key to be made thoroughly audible, a key that is usually of a verbal, explicative nature. I'll listen to the Sewerslvt again in light of what I now know about it.

Since it's completely unclear to me (a random dilettante who stays as far away from 4chan/trigger/troll/etc culture as I can) if Sewerslvt is some anonymous dude in a basement, an actual trans woman with real issues or an online group of pranksters laughing at our gullibility, I find it impossible to have any opinion on the artist/subject matter except scepticism. I can only judge it from a musical viewpoint, which is atmospheric D&B (which is something I'm into) made by a competent producer(s?), with on-the-nose depression/suicide samples. Taken at face value, I like it.

I think rather than being descriptive titles often work best as prompts to evoke and send your thoughts a certain way that synergises well with the music, suggesting context for listening

I don't know any of the backstory to the Sewerslvt album. I assumed RYM was into it because there was an anime figure on the cover.

Since it's completely unclear to me (a random dilettante who stays as far away from 4chan/trigger/troll/etc culture as I can) if Sewerslvt is some anonymous dude in a basement, an actual trans woman with real issues or an online group of pranksters laughing at our gullibility, I find it impossible to have any opinion on the artist/subject matter except scepticism. I can only judge it from a musical viewpoint, which is atmospheric D&B (which is something I'm into) made by a competent producer(s?), with on-the-nose depression/suicide samples. Taken at face value, I like it.

― Siegbran

ok, stop! let's just stop right there. there's some kind of problems implicit in your, uh, skepticism.

first off, there is in fact no difference between "some anonymous dude in a basement" and "an actual trans woman with real issues", assuming that so-called "anonymous dude" identifies as trans. you're talking about the same person here.

as far as your "online group of pranksters" theory i'd just not spend time thinking about it. the choices here are that some assholes are laughing at you or that a trans woman is going through real pain and expressing that through her art. if you choose to believe that some assholes are laughing at you and that you can therefore be "skeptical" or otherwise decline to engage with the work on anything other than a purely aesthetic level, you run the risk of dismissing the trans woman who is going through real pain and expressing that through her art.

my personal attitude is to judge everything someone says as if they mean it. maybe this is extreme but i've seen enough people "joking" about suicide that it seems like the most compassionate course i can take.

I don't know any of the backstory to the Sewerslvt album. I assumed RYM was into it because there was an anime figure on the cover.

― Muswell Hillbilly Elegy (President Keyes)

the dismissive putdown is that some trans women are dismissed as "male-to-anime". personally i don't think any trans or gnc person deserves dismissive putdowns, but unfortunately the putdown does cut to the heart of a lot of the challenges certain trans women face.

I meant I did not know that Sewerslvt was trans and that when I saw the anime character on the cover it fit in with RYM's usual obsessions: anime/video games/Asian pop etc.

wrote up my thoughts. not something i could publish on the site itself - they have rules for what is publishable, and i believe they are reasonable rules - but i feel ok enough about it to paste it here.

Transition was a difficult and drawn-out process for me. One of the more difficult aspects was that the spaces I socialized in were spaces that, in practice, excluded cis women. This made it easy for me to think of women as unattainable, alien, Other.

I don't spent a lot of time ruminating on what I would have done differently, because I have so many _other_ things to ruminate on, because the nineties were a different time, but I do allow myself some regrets. One of those is that I wish I had spent more time listening to women. Once I started listening to women, really listening, it became possible for me to understand that they and I were not quite so different than I had assumed.

I feel this is perhaps not an uncommon experience among trans women, that it is perhaps an artifact of being raised male. A certain popular interpretation of (cishet) masculinity teaches men to avoid women for anything other than sexual encounters. This practice is damaging to both men and women, cis and trans.

If the only encounter one has with the feminine is anime, well, it's not a surprise that this is how trans women frame their goals. And when your goal is unattainable, misery results.

It makes me sad to see this misery perpetuated, to see it celebrated. Everybody has their own ways of dealing with their pain, and if a record like this helps people live with themselves, helps them accept themselves, well, then there's value in that. And there's value in Sewerslvt having expressed herself, having spoken her truth as a trans woman.

I will say that my experience as a trans woman is not like Sewerslvt's. That I am happier than I have ever been. Everyone I know loves me, accepts me, and values me. I am at ease in my own skin. None of this is a question of being passing or being beautiful or anything like that.

I wish I could say this publically, to everyone here who feels hopeless like I used to feel hopeless. But I am of course not talking about the music at all here, can't say this in a way that will meet this site's published review standards. It's a message I will continue to try and speak, though, as often and as loudly as I can, because this is my truth.

Has there been a trend of trans artists being dismissed as imposter trolls? because this happened in spec fic community recently.

a read of the latest Black Dresses album's shoutbox will be instructive

a read of the latest Black Dresses album's shoutbox will be instructive

― imago

why would you ever suggest anybody _read_ the youtube comments

just don't. rym might have the poor editorial judgement to continue to feature these blights but that doesn't mean anybody should ever read them.

on the other hand, i guess it proves that black dresses really are women if the /mu/ spillover contingent is willing to treat them with just as much vitriol and hatred as they treat cis women. "wow, that's fucking awful, but also strangely gender-validating" is an experience i have not infrequently.

I was meaning supposedly woke people calling trans artists "nazi troll" and things like that when they are controversial enough.

tbf the BD shoutbox is also full of v supportive fans and some at times actually-useful analysis about how (trans) women are treated by the rym public. the 'problem' with BD is that their music is actually amazing so all their fans (myself included) keep voting it into #1 lol

tbf the BD shoutbox is also full of v supportive fans and some at times actually-useful analysis about how (trans) women are treated by the rym public. the 'problem' with BD is that their music is actually amazing so all their fans (myself included) keep voting it into #1 lol

― imago

and unfortunately i won't ever see it because i'm not exactly up to seeing the sort of stuff 4chan refugees are prone to spewing out

gresham's law of internet discourse at work

but hey, the system works, right?

that's entirely fair

it is weird how certain trans artists have been 'legitimised' (SOPHIE mostly, as stated above) and I'm curious as to what the reasons are. contrapoints speaks a lot of the dreaded 'passing' idea, and maybe SOPHIE 'passes' not so much as a ciswoman but as cismusic, if that makes any sense?

xpost sorry Kate for the late reply, I realise your reply deserves one even though my English isn't the best:

first off, there is in fact no difference between "some anonymous dude in a basement" and "an actual trans woman with real issues", assuming that so-called "anonymous dude" identifies as trans. you're talking about the same person here.

I'm aware of that, I was more thinking of the scenario of the "dude in a basement" (or "cynical producer in a studio") does not identify as trans and is just trying to invent a fictional persona that hits all the right controversy buttons, for marketing reasons rather than sincere investment in the cause.

my personal attitude is to judge everything someone says as if they mean it.

I wish I could. My attitude is to do this with personal stories from people I meet in real life or from verified sources. In a complete shitstorm I more or less randomly encounter online, I just cannot do it immediately. Nearly everything that skims to the surface online on unmoderated spaces from unaccountable 'people' is not real. The accounts are not real people, if they are real they don't engage in good faith discussions, and messages are carefully crafted to maximise clicks or outrage (which is why it skims to the top in the first place and a casual passer-by like me sees it). It must be incredibly frustrating to be a sincere individual trying to raise issues or open discussions in good faith on these platforms, in the midst of all this garbage. The unmoderated internet just isn't the right place to be an authentic voice. Raising a voice in a genre (Breakcore/Powernoise) that's absolutely saturated with retarded edgelords definitely does not help. Or maybe it does, bringing the fight to their doorstep or something, I don't know.

And to tie into what imago says re: SOPHIE (or Anohni, or for that matter any other people who are caught up in whatever sociopolitical shitstorm-du-jour), I think the reason she's seen as legit is that even for the most peripheral observer, she is undeniably *real*, plays festivals, works with other real people, does interviews with legit sources. She's out there and can't be denied or brushed off.

no worries about the "late" reply siegbran, one of the things i like about this board is that you can say what you need to say when you're ready to say it. the pressure for immediacy doesn't help me communicate very well myself

before we get any further i'm taking from the context of your post that english maybe isn't your first language, so i wanted to let you know that the word "retarded" is commonly considered very offensive these days. that's a fairly recent change - there are a lot of old threads here that used it, some of which have been edited to not use it, some of which have been locked - so i'm making the good-faith assumption that you just didn't know. please make an effort to not use that word again.

i'm trying to come to grips with what you're saying and i admit that i am having a little bit of trouble understanding. so let me try to explain again what i was saying, and hopefully we're not talking past each other too much.

regarding sophie, what you say may be true. i also, when i look at sophie, see a glamorous, a pretty young woman. i am none of those things. i've made my peace with that, and i work to look good and feel good in my own way, because there are are as many ways to be a trans woman as there are ways to be a cis woman. a lot of people maybe haven't reached that place, though, a lot of people _are_ extremely fixated on the perceived need to look glamorous and beautiful at all times, and i suspect that perhaps some of those values are factors why trans women like sophie and contrapoints are more widely accepted.

my experience with "extreme" online spaces is that a lot of the play-acting such people engage in is an attempt to express things they actually feel and believe but don't feel safe expressing "for real". i'm painfully familiar with the phenomenon wherein an "ironic Nazi" turns out, whoops! to be an actual Nazi. i think that perhaps this concept is transferable to people online "pretending" to be trans "for the lulz".

and the only way I can think to react to that is to take everything everyone says as if they mean it. i don't know how that would play out in your "unmoderated spaces" because i don't really operate in those spaces. maybe the result of behaving like that would be that you would be harassed and shouted out of those spaces. maybe that's a risk you have to deal with.

so how about a cost-benefit analysis? you're going somewhere to have a nice conversation about breakcore, someone says something that makes you feel really uncomfortable. you remain silent. what are the costs to that? what toll does it take on you to see that sort of behavior treated as acceptable, as unquestioned and, really, unquestionable, day in, day out?

Active for slightly more than a decade, racked up nearly 120,000 ratings in the process. Impressive?

https://rateyourmusic.com/~teninchshrimp