In the Internet age, why do people still listen to shit?

[Hades]

That's pretty shallow... Do you have great taste in everything? Are you ok with people looking down on you because you don't share their love for their artform of choice?

Well I think its the people with shit taste in music that are usually the shallow ones. Never met a "deep" intelligent person with shit taste in music, could be eclectic but never shit.


.

absolutely !!

but then, shallowness has become a true and very nurtured "lifestyle" these days.
alume said it, we live in an age of plastic people...

[Lost to the Void]

[gedda]

Personally, I don't think its that people are lazy. I think it's that most people just want to march along with the collective effervescence of popular culture. People want to do what other people are doing to feel a sense of belongingness and to feel some spirituality; a type of nefarious spirituality in the culture industry which is still a spirituality nonetheless.

[seanocean]

idk, maybe it's information overload really. there's TOO MUCH input all at once. you get a blinding white light shown in your face, you can't really get a chance to know what it is or what it actually looks like. so in that sense,i do think some technology is in effect here.

but for a lot of people, there's a lot of other factors at play and i think it could be narrowed down to these ideas:
+a lot of the younger ravers and electronic music fans do like good music but they're inundated with a saturated music market.
+there's tons of bad producers out there so the status quo and the bar is set really low.
+there's lots of indie rock kids jumping ship for electronic music who write for electronic music mags and they are pushing this naive perspective about what's cutting edge based on no continuity of the music at all. (they started calling them DJ concerts for fuck sake. they made us forsake the party and now we're doing "shows" >:( )
+there's this whole ironic idea that's what is bad is cool and what's really trashy is kinda neat and punk rock

put all of the above together and you got some real problems for people who believe in music as an artform.

i think the trashiness is waning however in recent years, so maybe it's really just a fad. but if you are in touch with some of these kids or i suppose blithely ignorant people, tell them why you like the music you do and maybe they can learn something from a new perspective.

[DixieWhiskey]

I asked if they did requests, and asked for Barber's Adagio for strings, I mean, for some people that might still be cheesy, but I still love it every time I hear it, I can't help it.
Anyways, the double bass player knew the start, but not how it continued.
The violin player didn't know the piece at all.
Can you imagine a classically trained violin player who doesn't know this piece ??

Anyways, I said : "look, you know the key, no ? Your bass player just played you the first few measures, why not just improvise some, I'll gladly pay you for your services."
And I waved a nice 20€ bill.

That sounds obnoxious alright.. the last part made me cringe a little bit At least you are aware of it. Sometimes those kind of attitudes will slip from me and I realize only after the fact, and then I feel a little like a pretentious cunt. Only a little though...

But apparantly even those people that dedicate several hours a day for years to make music their profession, even those can be lazy and stupid and just choose the same Bach, Beethoven and Mozart as if classical music was never anything more than that.
And the worst part is : it will give them more money from the people passing than if they played Arvo Pärt...

Exactly... it's one of those things which you can't expect others to have the same standards as you. Just like you would not appreciate others judging you because you don't share all the same standards.

[Koichi]

That's pretty shallow... Do you have great taste in everything? Are you ok with people looking down on you because you don't share their love for their artform of choice?

Well I think its the people with shit taste in music that are usually the shallow ones. Never met a "deep" intelligent person with shit taste in music, could be eclectic but never shit.


.

absolutely !!

but then, shallowness has become a true and very nurtured "lifestyle" these days.
alume said it, we live in an age of plastic people...

On the one hand I agree and think it's a line of least resistance thing. To appreciate music, art, books, entertainment that is complex, nourishing and you gain something from it takes effort to listen to or see - the consumer has to make effort and the rewards from that are higher and fulfilling.

For the shallower forms of culture, as the audience you don't need to make any effort - you passively consume.

On the producer's part however, whether high art or creating a hollywood blockbuster, for example, takes a lot of effort. It can definitely be a high level craft to create shallow, commercial entertainment.

This argument is basically the high art/pop culture argument as put forward by Adorno, who was a Marxist and a cultural theorist of pop culture. I may have over simplified or got it wrong, so apologies if I have.

But I also think that both high/pop culture have different functions and can be appropriated in different ways by individuals too.
Art and music of any form, whether sophisticated or not comes to have emotional and significant meanings to different individuals as we use them in our daily lives and attach our feelings and memories to them.
This was my overcomplicated and long way round of saying - even shallow music can be extremely meaningful to an individual depending on the ways they use that music or the feelings/memories they attach to it.

[Hades]

For the shallower forms of culture, as the audience you don't need to make any effort - you passively consume.

.

that, to me, is pretty much the essence of our current "culture" :
you are either prepared to put in an effort,
or you're not.
if you're not, you will be spoonfed with more of the same poopoo shit
however, I think barfunkel was honestly irritated by the share laziness of the "common" folks who don't want to put in any effort, and that's what made him create this topic in the first place...

(if I'm wrong, please do correct me mr barfunkel)

[jordanneke]

For the shallower forms of culture, as the audience you don't need to make any effort - you passively consume.

.

There's actually a few positive things about mass consumerism of non-material goods. It's one of the few forms of consumerism that doesn't destroy the earth's resources.

But I have to re-iterate, that who's to say what's shit or what's not.

Why in this age do most people's clothes look shit, and if they only kept up to date about high fashion, they could look and dress a whole lot better.

Why in the internet age are people still overweight, with all the diet advice and gym advice available on-line, more people should look better and take better care of themselves, it only takes a few clicks of a mouse... after all, it is their health.....

I don't actually think these things, just trying to make a point.....

[Lost to the Void]

It`s about engaging your mind.

Some peoples minds aren`t that engaged, or they are engaged narrowly.

Art engages the mind, whereas with pop (at least pop as it is today, things were different) isn`t designed for you to engage your mind, it pushes specific buttons that do the opposite in fact. It`s there basically to sell you something, not and idea, not a thought kickstarter, but the notion of passivity, the mind state of receiving, it only really engages with the most broad, surface level thoughts and emotions. There have been many papers on the subject, but this kind of thing is across pop media. From films to literature to music to television.

Fashion is something separate. Fashion is about tribalism and being left out if you don`t join, it appeals to something else, it plays more on fears (much like the beauty industry). Fashion is the business of telling you the perfectly good clothes you have are now know longer good, and that THESE clothes are now better, and look great. And you are sold this idea very carefully. Your own taste is irrelevant, THEY know what looks good and you should listen to THEM.
Fashion isn`t even seasonal any more, it`s monthly now. Consume consume consume consume consume.

It`s like comparing a shitty advert for some crappy product with a well made short film.

[jordanneke]

I agree, but some people just don't want to be engaged.

I feel the same way about quality journalism. The masses love the daily mail. I don't, but I realise that looking down (even though I do) at people who don't enjoy the quinoa letters page in the Guardian is very snobby.

I think the mail is a stinking piece of horseshit, and potentially a lot more dangerous to society than people realise, but then again, I love barbecued ribs and not haute cuisine. So who am I to say what's shit or not.

We all care deeply about things that outsiders to the scene don't care about. But I believe everyone cares deeply about some art form, be it football, breakdancing or modern art.