Pitchfork's Chris Ott takes No Prisoners

he seems to me to be presenting himself as earnest-but-uncool relic of a bygone era ("zine culture") lecturing kids today on what that culture was, why that culture died, what replaced it, and why contemporary artists and journalists who have latched on to its ideals and tried to run with them are fucking it all up

I keep thinking of the grad student in Slacker who videos his manifesto before taking his advising committee hostage.

it's just a matter of time until we have to change this thread title because he's actually begun taking prisoners

― some dude, Sunday, December 1, 2013 3:29 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

niiiice

actual lol @ that sd quote

i for one was shocked to find out that media company bosses make more than the people writing articles for those companies. capitalism gone mad

until i saw that video i had no idea how much charlie sheen had let himself go

I already nailed it with the Nice Guy Eddie reference upthread. No further celebrity comparisons will be allowed from this point on

That video is so weird. It's got the not-terrible analysis of the big picture economics of the media landscape, paired with the weird attribution of responsibility for this situation to writers and bands. And then the demand that writers publish their work for free so they can remain pure, instead of pushing forth what Ott views as an irredeemably corrupt system.

It seems like an analogue of the "buy ethical" argument, this idea that it's incredibly crucial to make sure you're never purchasing anything that has any dicey production practices. Which I think everyone does in certain doses, but becomes a total dead end when taken to extremes. If you spend all your time making sure you never make "unethical" purchases, you end up spending a ton of time, money, and energy that you could have spent more actively making the earth less terrible.

That's not even getting into the digressions about NME, and how dare they try to draw attention to a scene that's not actually significant, like that's this weird new thing that NME is doing in 2013.

No further celebrity comparisons will be allowed from this point on

His hair and mustache always remind me of GWAR manager Sleazy P. Martini.

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b72/karmacorn/sleazy.jpg

i'm actually somewhat confused by the idea that music mags/sites aren't supposed to make money for the vc firms that invest in them.

i really don't think that's how vc works.

also i think he's a smidge off on trader bonuses, in general.

i mean lol "multiples of 6 figures".

i guess when your ladder reaches all the way to $94k base then quantities above that become a bit... fuzzy.

dude really spends a lot of time bitterly subtweeting... someone

oh and he neglects the main reason ppl want to write for big sites -- not necessarily so they can say they're paid, but to get more exposure. like he of all ppl should understand writers and egos.

what a weird thing for him to hone in though... some woman who wrote an article about a little regional scene? shouldnt that be the kind of writing he IS championing?

But you see she did it and got a small fee for it. It would have been better had she not been paid at all

I think he maybe has a point about media/vc, in that sometimes media properties are allowed to be loss leaders in order to give a veneer of prestige or cool to corporations. The Atlantic Monthly, for example, wasn't profitable for decades.

down with the corporate oligarchy! down with reporting on small regional scenes! up with, uh.

The New Yorker is also a huge loss leader for Condé Nast iirc

still think his overall argument is weak, for the record, and I wouldn't be surprised if he gets details wrong re: monetary amounts and other things

I think he maybe has a point about media/vc, in that sometimes media properties are allowed to be loss leaders in order to give a veneer of prestige or cool to corporations. The Atlantic Monthly, for example, wasn't profitable for decades.

― intheblanks, Sunday, December 1, 2013 9:31 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but the problem here is its usually the individual rich benefactor with a prestige project that sustains publications that don't do well. freefloating investment groups care much less about that stuff and much more about just making a quick buck.

Just had the insight that the term "loss leader" here is just the idea of patronage recontextualized for the 20th and 21st century. Need to monetize this idea quick

xpost Yeah, you're probably right. it would certainly explain the ridiculous turnover at Spin.

Maybe Ott just really wants a ton of on-the-scene reporting from Rich Antoniello. He was pretty mad that guy doesn't have any skin in the game.

the odd thing is that he seems to think he's dropping truth bombs on every other writer, but what does HE imagine that WE imagine the reality is? he thinks the rest of us are walking around thinking that every place that still pays for music writing is faultless and noble and that covering important music is their #1 priority and entire plan for reaping profit?

honestly what I might find most puzzling about this is claiming you can't live in NYC on $50,000 a year

51K is median HOUSEHOLD income in NYC

average NYer just ain't living

Not super-shocked by that, though. The internet is full of upper-middle class/fully upper class folk imagining a 6-figure income is the "middle."

It usually takes the form of morphing an actual fact ("The cost of living is higher in NYC.") into a self-serving fantasy ("100K in NYC is 50K in every other city.")

That's not even touching the issue of bennies

this whole thing just makes me very YOU AIN'T GOT THE ANSWERS, SWAY! because it seems like he's just scolding anyone who's not doing the exact thing he's doing without suggesting any real alternatives and frankly, we don't all have the amazingly hypnotic hair it takes to be a vlogger.

Think there is somebody missing from this thread: Sticky-Uppy Hair

these videos resemble joe pesci in jfk more and more

The New Yorker is also a huge loss leader for Condé Nast iirc

― 乒乓, Sunday, December 1, 2013 9:33 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a good thing imho?

tbh i think it's the "he has to offer an alternative" that fucks this all up -- he DOES offer an alternative, it's just dumb and misguided, and the whole thing would've just been better as a floating rant about how badly the industry has changed wrt the branding and the money (this has happened in every industry but w/e). maybe he's smart enough to know that nothing he says in his dumb vlog is ever going to change the way the venture capitalists and whatnot act, and he needed SOMEONE to yell at, so, uh, why not the plebes feeding the machine? guess he's not smart enough to know that there'll ALWAYS be people willing to make 5 cents a word to replace all these new tumblr martyrs? idgi

there really is nothing he can say to anyone that'll change the way the system works. he just ends up coming off as a dude using an otm rant about capitalism to cover up his baseless disdain for certain writers

also jfc how old is chris? how can he possibly have this super-old-person "you have the whole internet at your fingertips! your opportunities are endless! the world wide web is a real game-changer!" attitude? this is so close to my mom telling me that i need to start making tutorials for things and putting them on youtube "i don't know how but i think you just have to put tutorials on youtube and you'll start getting money"

when the vid started in on those bands from the early-mid 80s i thought "oh wait was that his scene, i guess he has been around for a minute" and then lol headfake his 'scene' was shittier bands from way later. also i thought those early-80s bands were pretty good sounding from the clips and i was thinking maybe he'd big-up them or something?

he's vehemently arguing for the status quo, basically.

i'll bet that most everything he rails against now is pretty similar to the way things worked in the 90s, the 80s, the 70s, etc. every era has some big magazines or sites or what-have-you that become well-recognized gatekeepers/taste-makers, and i'd bet those magazines or sites invariably become too cozy with their favorite labels or acts.

brb, i gotta go dig out my copy of clap-your-hands-say-yeah.

Thought those bands sounded fine too, guess I fell for the lol head fake.

lol yeah my biggest takeaway from the whole thing was "wow i want to listen to the oysters"

Haha, me too. In fact head fake fits in with the whole shinola-grin wearing "I know something you don't because I have a third eye that allows me to distinguish among things that are otherwise identical DO U SEE?" vibe.

anyone know where this guy is from? i kinda figure he's from Boston, woke up one morning, read the story in the NME and got super bitter that it was this new scene and not his old scene that's having a moment, and that's why he zeroed in on the Pelly/NME piece.

also, yeah, some dude w/ the lol line of the thread

alpine static

http://www.hipsterrunoff.com/node/8599

this piece did this whole steez much more effectively imo

I gave up midway through the video. I was getting a weird feeling that Ott was trying to channel Professor Brian O'Blivion in Videodrome and then I couldn't stop laughing.

His argument feels stale. I'm sure I read something similar in Maximum Rock & Roll in the early 90s.

http://www.cartoonito.co.uk/sites/www.cartoonito.co.uk/files/imagecache/Image-Character-280-280/robbieroten-mainimage.jpg

It's weird that he thinks that writing an article in NME equates to letting us all know about something.

and that P4K was covering Radiohead before Spin and Rolling Stone

yeah that was bizarre