We Hate Music

i. Explanation: 'Roxette sucks because [insert reason here be it good or bad]' ii. Assertion: 'Roxette sucks.' iii. Implication: 'Roxette sucks and the people who like them are idiots.' iv. Abuse: 'Roxette sucks and you, Glenn, are an idiot.'

There is more of type i on ILM than some people seem to think - but there is also quite a lot of type iii.

...and u r foolish to disagree with me. isn't that basically what u r saying here? a bit hypocritical i think.

[I just realised that " this suXoR" pretty much = "this sucks :)": ie removes a. constant requirement for first person singular. b. it's quicker so does not (rudely?) try the (im?)patience of many readers...

Also it's silly and funny: so makes urgent and key — if compacted and thus potentially misunderstrod — aesthetic-social statement impossible in the careful round-the-Wrekin version....

Hate will eventually end all discussion, except for disgruntled moaners (as it is happening with ILM at the moment). Who would want to participate in a conversation which is deliberately trying to be negative/mean-spirited/not very fun?

I wouldn't be surprised if there are folks trolling around these parts, looking to pick fights and start trouble. But that's going to happen in any large gathering of people (regardless of whether they're hand-picked by a select few, or invited in regardless of criteria). The best way to counteract this negativity, instead of butting heads with it, is to soldier on, and state your case, regardless of the odds or opposition. It's too easy to just take your ball and go home, especially when there's more going on than what's superficially visible.

But, then, isn't that the problem in a nutshell (concerning this thread, and other issues raised as a result of this discussion)? People just don't have the time to consider EVERYTHING; they cut corners. Instead of giving, say, trance or 2-step a good chance, they decide to ignore it after hearing one bad example. Instead of stating their reasons for not liking trance, they say "It sucks." Instead of defending their accusition, they ignore the call-to-arms and do something else. Or maybe it's the image, or some poorly- worded hype, or too much hype, or hearing a song on a bad day after getting fired, or associations with this horrible person you once knew. The reasons are endless.

You can try to rise above it all, but that's often not possible. And I'm not sure it's necessarily bad, as long as one is willing to keep an open mind when the reason for one's disinterest is ignorance.

Thus hating overexposed bands is a way of saying "I am not a child who gets carried away over the Next Big Thing because the music I love is Important and Meaningful regardless of press involvement." Which is the easiest hating of all, particularly as the opposition is lined up right there for you.

Also, "unfriendly, unhelpful and inane" are all negative, but they are meaningful words I used in an attempt to explain the negative effects of substituting "it sucks" for "I don't like it" on a conversation, which I don't think can be written off as a matter of etiquette, at least not in a public forum. To clarify them, although I think they're pretty simple:

Unfriendly: "Roxette sucks" insults both Roxette and anybody who likes them. "I don't like Roxette" does neither.

Unhelpful: Writing "Roxette sucks" instead of "I don't like Roxette" adds nothing to the discussion about Roxette. All it does is raise the tension level of the conversation, which thus further reduces the likelihood that helpful information will be revealed (where by "helpful" I mean "likely to assist the non-Roxette-cognizant reader in guessing whether they would like or dislike Roxette").

Inane: Writing "Roxette sucks" instead of "I don't like Roxette" lowers the level of sense in the conversation without adding anything to compensate, and the time saved in typing a few fewer letters is negligible, so I don't see any point to doing so.

But flip it around: is there any way I'm missing in which "Roxette sucks" is a better or more anything contribution to a public online discussion of Roxette than "I don't like Roxette"?

As for "refusing to say" things you believe, isn't voluntary self- censorship for the public good pretty much the fundamental key to civil discourse?

I think the real problem with ILM is, basically, not people hating or liking anything irrationally. It is, to me, about people who are toeing some sort of company line to the point where someone who dislikes XYZ band that has been annointed by the FT staff gets told, basically, to fuck off. Not by the Toms of the world, no, but there is definitely a contingent on this board who do that.

It's not fun anymore. It'd be more fun if everyone was hating things irrationally.

Nitsuh's and Curt's replies: very very interesting.

I agree with Nitsuh that a lot of professed hatred is an attempt to establish some other kind of identity or credibility by opposition. This is what I meant by "approval-seeking", and it's at odds with the idea of rational discussion. So what is ILM for, rational discussion or irrational chatter? You can say "both", at the forum level, but they don't mix well in the same thread...

Let me go on record as saying that I like everything I've heard by David Gray - which is only "Babylon," pretty much. Its prettiness and delicacy renders Gray's troubadour overwroughtness temporarily irrelevant. No, actually…the main reason I like "Babylon" is that I live there, or near there, anyway.

The song Macy Gray song she did with Fatboy Slim, especially in its restatement by the Stanton Warriors, kicks ass and kicks ass because of her singing and the way she hammers out her syllables. (They SAY he SHOOK. HIMSELF. TO DEATH.)

The British dad-rock brigade is marginally more entertaining than, say, the Dave Matthews Band or Train, but what a bunch of weak tea that statement is, eh?

I think the Beatles are the best band, ever, but I swear, I have no interesting take on them at all.

As for the charge that ILM/ILE revels in the glorification-of-stupid, I honestly can think of more counter-examples than examples.

I think Tom severely underrates his charisma (seriously) but to say that he dictates the ILM/ILE mindset is like saying that TV promotes the mindless worship of capitalist values. It's true, no doubt, but conveniently ignores the other half of the equation: people who worship capitalist values tend to be attracted to TV. In other words, ILM/ILE is the way is not only because the people who particpate don't like dad-rock or Macy Gray, but also because the people who do like dad-rock and Macy Gray don't participate, for whatever reason. For many reasons. It's a self-reinforcing feedback loop.

Gareth - if you've spent more than five minutes at a Gap clothing store during the mid-nineties, you've heard acid jazz.

What we need is a REAL obverse (inverse?) of "I Hate Music": someone, or some group of people who will play devil's advocate about any piece of music without resorting to cliché.

This sort of discussion seems to be cropping up all over the place lately. I tend to subconciously translate any "[X] Sucks" statement into "I don't like [X]". They mean the same thing to me (maybe this was covered somewhere in the objective vs. subjective thread) but I agree that one is more likely to facilliate discussion and lead to something I would find useful.

On this board, we're talking about music and none of it is important enough to justify anyone saying "Stop beeing foolish! This is serious!"

Is the only reason no one is objecting to this same kind of talk, in a positive sense (Macy Gray is the greatest singer ever, etc.), that people's feelings don't get hurt? And if we should avoid X-is-bad talk because it translates a subjective dislike into a pseudo-objective assessment, then why is it that some such statements ("manufactured pop music is bad") are more acceptable - is it solely on the strength of the arguments backing up such statements? If so it seems to me to be only a matter of degree, and not a very big one. (I guess what I'm groping at here is that I'm not very happy with this talk about bad pseudoobjective judgments, while 'good' ones are apparently ok, aside from the obvious benefit that they can be less hurtful.)

But should we try not to [hate music], and if we do try not to, does this squashing of whatever impulse led us to hate the bands in the first place make us better listeners/critics?

And from my personal point of view the answer to that last bit is "no".

A choice, meanwhile, between rational argument and irrational chatter is no choice at all.

The main criticism I tend to hear about "[ ] sucks" is that it's sexist and homophobic: the phrase supposedly implies that people who take the passive role in oral sex are degraded, decadent, slutty, unmanly, whatever.

While the promiscuous use of the phrase will lower the tone of a discussion, I reserve the right to keep as part of my palette of critical responses. I like keeping my options open.

Part of the reason I would like to maintain the subjective/objective distinction as clearly as possible is that I do believe it is possible to have some objective discussions about music (i.e., discussions that are not about personal tastes). Part of the discussion of manufactured pop, for example, turned on the question of whether that manufacture undermines the communicative nature of art, and if so what effect that has on its audience. Those are largely objective questions, and although I don't think we resolved them, it's conceivable that they could be resolved. We might end up collectively convinced that NSync's music is ultimately "bad" in some socially-destructive sense, even though some of us still like it, viscerally. Or that some of us hate listening to it, but it's actually a powerful force for positive social change in some unexpected way. These are objective subjects, whether we can make coherent sense of them in the end or not (and whether you care about them or not). Likewise the long-running argument about whether pornography breeds violence towards women, which isn't about whether you, as an individual, like Penthouse.

Related question: how do opinions change? I've found that turning people onto something requires describing/highlighting innate musical qualities and relating those to said persons' tastes. Turning someone OFF something, on the other hand, usually ends up being a worldview discussion. So I might get you to like Blu Cantrell 'coz of the harmonic runs in the chorus, but to get you to dislike the song, I'd have to point out how as the video closes it was all a dream and she goes back to him. Thoughts?

matthew, i would love 4 u to present an actual example of this happening on the forum before u go on to dismiss the discussions occurring here as such. i have never seen an all caps argument here (aside from the odd one off poster who happens here by accident), and to dismiss the posters here as that kind of ignorant all caps spewing malcontent seems grossly unfair.

In this context, hating bands without cause CAN make you a better listener/critic of the ones you DO make time for.

This is insane. The only honest way in which N'Sync's effects upon society can be explored is for people to publish their personal reactions to N'Sync's music. The notion that what constitutes positive or negative social change is "objective" is just a wee bit fascist, don't you think? Am I misunderstanding you? I'm certainly not here to be "collectively convinced" of anything. I want to read about what other people think about music. Nothing could possibly suck more life out of ILM than an extended meta-discussion of what ILM should or shouldn't be, or a bunch of rules meant to clarify the data for your personal hypotheses.