Pitchfork's Chris Ott takes No Prisoners

It's amazing to see the most self-righteous indie ideology aimed at the smallest possible purview. He's fine with you working for the beast, as long as you leave music out of it (he does!). He's fine with you GIVING your work to the beast (via twitter and tumblr), as long as you don't make money from it (he doesn't!). The scope of his contempt and ire is nothing more than people who dare to make even the smallest amount of money in the fashion he attempted ten years ago. He doesn't even expand it to journalism or criticism as a whole, just fucking indie rock. How anyone can see this as anything but sour grapes is beyond me.

this fuckin guy, yeah I saw Bratmobile in 1991 also, go fuck yourself.

not a writer and didn't read the OG article, but I am just stopping in here to give props to katherine. fwiw I do purchase music writing.

katherine, you seem awesome and I think you have made some great points in this and the other threads that have been around recently.

xp I see it as sociopathy, but sour grapes is more polite

but the only logical conclusion to his main points is "destroy capitalism" because there is likely no paying job in the system that does not indirectly fund people's huge mansions. some may be more direct than others, but I don't think directness comes into his argument at all.

katherine otm as usual

the Pelly twins are "very sharp girls"

this isn't exactly about me

didn't Henry James call Jane Austen "that clever little woman"

I'll say one thing for Ott he's never been afraid to double-down on his idiocy.

The conclusion I'm drawing from his discussion is that he actually doesn't mind capitalism, but music is uniquely holy and should be untouched by it, and that bands and writers are increasingly tainted by corporations that turn music into purely a means to sell something.

There's also the fact that despite the venom with which he promotes his stance, who he shits on and who he hits up for a chummy RT is completely irrespective of it. I get why we can't turn away (for all his talk about the entitlement of music critics, he's set himself up as their unchecked, ugliest form of id), but I don't get how anyone can take him seriously. In the long history of self-righteous macho indie, I can't think of anyone who stood for so little and so unconvincingly.

What totally pure completely non-exploitive industry is Ott actually in now btw?

I honestly think he's the most self-important deluded asshole I've ever encountered in music journalism. Kudos Ott. Everybody's paying attention to you because you've out-assholed everybody else but keep on telling yourself it's because they can't handle The Truth.

don't agree with it, but I think that a key part of his point is that music should be untouched by "brand bullies" to quote No Logo, a book I'm sure Ott worships.

"The only thing that has tainted what I’ve done is that YouTube shows ads before my videos .... All that they ask and all that they demand is that they show ads before my videos begin. I can’t reach that many people any other way."

"When your viewpoint goes up with a Converse banner behind it, you better start digging."

whereas beer or whatever, that's fine, that's a product pure and simple, so capitalism is totally fine for that.

WE ARE NOT MEANT TO PRODUCT ART OR ART COMMENTARY FOR THE AD-PR COMPLEX WE ARE MEANT TO WORK IN THEIR SALT MINES AND MAKE PURE ART ON THE WEEKENDS. THAT IS THE WHOLE OF THE LAW.

Ott places huge importance on being there and "having lived through it." Pity he wasn't born 20 years earlier so he could have screamed "PUNK IS DEAD!" in 1979

Ads on YouTube videos are not mandatory, btw. You have to opt in.

da croupier otm, i think that's basically Ott's point. I think it's a tad ridiculous

fucking entitled music writers

expecting to get paid to write a review of art

wtf

God damn if I don't find his appropriation of the term "speak truth to power" genuinely offensive here

If I want to hear about brands and counterculture without all the toxic self-regard and name-calling, Thomas Frank did it 20 years ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/f/frank-dissent.html

I agree he's a little out of his mind but dude makes a point

it's like the world's teeniest tiniest version of "fight club" - a guy giving himself a righteous ideology to explain why he made the choice he made, then going batshit trying to force that ideology on the world.

I get why we can't turn away (for all his talk about the entitlement of music critics, he's set himself up as their unchecked, ugliest form of id), but I don't get how anyone can take him seriously.

i've been semi-following this and i was gonna ask, as a britisher who's not in the NYC music crit scene, is this guy actually like...relevant to anyone, or is it just ~naming names that's provoked this conversation

he's relevant in the sense that i'm sure lots of people toil with the idea of whether it's worth it (or whether they should try harder or should have tried harder, etc), and he's pushing the envelope on the "hey maybe if i don't try to make money off my art, my art will be better" impulse to a violent, blinkered extreme.

violent, huh? missed the part where he stabbed Vampire Weekend with a machete in his video

at this point it is relevant for being relevant

His point seems to be that music writing should be a hobby for the already affluent. Or for people who live on air. Much like the pro-piracy hardliners who resent any band who expects to earn any money.

"His point seems to be that music writing should be a hobby for the already affluent."

some would call this a bug, not a feature

I really hate how he thinks he has music writers "shitting their pants" - like what people are responding to is His Great Truth instead of his poor reasoning

Really uh, lol, that when he talks about independent music pubs that don't depend on ads he fails to mention Maura Magazine which iirc is entirely based on reader subscriptions, but then later calls out Maura as not having the independence to say what she wants to say?!

that shit was heinous. also i still don't know what a collapse board is

― emo canon in twee major (BradNelson), Thursday, December 5, 2013 9:48 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

especially weird because it looks like he writes for Maura on occaission??
http://www.maura.com/451/unreal-is-here

waterface doesn't agree with ott but is powerless to resist the siren song of such percfecto online assholism

Everyone wants to always invoke riot grrrl as if it was some fucking scion of feminism—you weren’t fucking there, I was there.

They don’t know. They’ve demonstrated that they don’t know… I cannot allow that. If you’re going to start talking about things like punk and DIY, then I can’t allow that.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/90s-punk-decries-punks-of-today,1486

xpost totally, that plus the fact that he's calling out names. Take the bizarre NME/Pelly section out of that video, my guess is that the online response to Ott decreases about 60-70%

xxpost on that last one

waterface doesn't agree with ott but is powerless to resist the siren song of such percfecto online assholism

I agree with him u numbskull

i don't care

you have achieved perfecto online assholism

nah man i'm a nice guy

online posting should be for the intellectually affluent

delurking to comment that oddly Ott's position reminds me more than anything of these quotes from Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek I read in a Corey Robin article this year:

However important the independent owner of property may be for the economic order of a free society, his importance is perhaps even greater in the fields of thought and opinion, of tastes and beliefs.

The importance of the private owner of substantial property, however, does not rest simply on the fact that his existence is an essential condition for the preservation of the structure of competitive enterprise. The man of independent means is an even more important figure in a free society when he is not occupied with using his capital in the pursuit of material gain but uses it in the service of aims which bring no material return.

It is only natural that the development of the art of living and of the non-materialistic values should have profited most from the activities of those who had no material worries.

http://jacobinmag.com/2013/06/nietzsche-hayek-and-the-meaning-of-conservatism/

to think this could have all been avoided if people had funded his kickstarter (well, and mark mcgrath's)

ha

I mean, everyone is kind of painting Ott's argument on some NO LOGO, SHEEPLE 9/11 truther shit because, well no doy, brands have been tacking themselves on to bands since Fred Astaire was shilling cigarettes in the '30s.

But I think what's getting lost here (probably since Ott can't make a cogent argument) is that the gap between the oligarchs at the top of the internet food chain and the bands they cover is probably wider than it's ever been.

It's one thing to talk about how Bob Guccione Jr or Ryan Schrieber bought a nice house covering Husker Du or Tapes N Tapes, but another thing when the FABULOUSLY WEALTHY (ie, Vice is a BILLION DOLLAR company, Mountain Dew's record label, Converse Rubber Tracks) are taking advantage of the new culture of cool: writers and editors who will work for the lowest rates in the history of music journalism, and bands who've existed less than a year.

It sucks and that's the way things are headed now.

I don't know if blaming the writers is the answer, but I wish editors would pay more since this is basically hastening the eventual demise of "music journalism" as a career even faster than Spotify can

(probably since Ott can't make a cogent argument)

this appears to be the crux of the problem, resulting in the whole "blaming the writers" thing

I mean, everyone is kind of painting Ott's argument on some NO LOGO, SHEEPLE 9/11 truther shit because, well no doy, brands have been tacking themselves on to bands since Fred Astaire was shilling cigarettes in the '30s.

But I think what's getting lost here (probably since Ott can't make a cogent argument) is that the gap between the oligarchs at the top of the internet food chain and the bands they cover is probably wider than it's ever been.

It's one thing to talk about how Bob Guccione Jr or Ryan Schrieber bought a nice house covering Husker Du or Tapes N Tapes, but another thing when the FABULOUSLY WEALTHY (ie, Vice is a BILLION DOLLAR company, Mountain Dew's record label, Converse Rubber Tracks) are taking advantage of the new culture of cool: writers and editors who will work for the lowest rates in the history of music journalism, and bands who've existed less than a year.

It sucks and that's the way things are headed now.

― tuostprophets (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, December 5, 2013 10:29 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't know if blaming the writers is the answer, but I wish editors would pay more since this is basically hastening the eventual demise of "music journalism" as a career even faster than Spotify can

― tuostprophets (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, December 5, 2013 10:30 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you're right of course

it's all horrible

then Ott's essentially like a guy walking through a field in Bakersfield screaming "SELL OUT" at the migrant workers & asking to be treated like a hero for doing so

considering you want editors to pay more to help "music journalism" as a career survive, i don't believe what you see as being lost is what ott's trying to have found