the 1975

also good to see I'm officially a troll for disliking a song

― aloha darkness my old friend (katherine), Thursday, August 16, 2018 3:19 PM (thirty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

when ONE person said this another immediately defended you, no one actually thinks you're a troll although i do think you have a weirdly bad faith reading of anyone who doesnt share your opinions

basically, my stance is this, so I guess you can go ahead and call Iain a troll too, as well as the billions of people on earth who have committed the obvious bad faith malice of not liking a song: If you’re singing “poison me daddy” and “fuck your feelings” as slogans for satire, you’re still singing “poison me daddy” and “fuck your feelings” as slogans.

― aloha darkness my old friend (katherine), Thursday, August 16, 2018 3:28 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is an insane expectation of art that I can't imagine you would hold to many of the artists you enjoy

also, please inform me where I have said or implied anything about the band's fanbase? having young and/or female fans does not insulate an artist from being or presenting as an insufferable asshole, and having young and/or female fans does not mean that critics are obliged to only say positive things about a bad record. if anything I like those fans more, because they have not dragged me into a thread calling me a troll on a Thursday afternoon I was previously enjoying.

― aloha darkness my old friend (katherine), Thursday, August 16, 2018 3:46 PM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not saying that's what's happening w/ katherine per se but the way you phrased this reminded me of this point ... i find it super frustrating but also occasionally funny

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Thursday, August 16, 2018 1:25 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the bad faith readings extend to the band's fanbase itt apparently

someone posts let’s make this thread more about the music and less about the various trolls, about a review I posted on an entirely different website, on a thread I have deliberately not been posting in, and yet I'm the one who's a troll?

katherine is awesome, cmon lads.

there is a list of men I ever want to hear repeat anything from the Billy Bush tape, ironically or not, and that list has zero people on it

― aloha darkness my old friend (katherine), Thursday, August 16, 2018 3:19 PM (thirty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

reading this song as flat edgy "irony" misunderstands its effect imo .... the song is a harrowing feeling of being overwhelmed by disgusting popular culture mixed w politics & the current condition, & it captures that feeling in song, i don't think its supposed to be 'ironic', he is not being a mouthpiece for his own point of view (sincere or ironic), he is creating an artistic effect that is reminiscent of being bombarded with fucked up headlines & the entire subtext is "the world feels fucked and the feelings it creates are difficult to wrap your head around but this approximates the feeling" imo

someone posts let’s make this thread more about the music and less about the various trolls, about a review I posted on an entirely different website, on a thread I have deliberately not been posting in, and yet I'm the one who's a troll?

― aloha darkness my old friend (katherine), Thursday, August 16, 2018 3:58 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

literally only kevin, who is obsessed w this band to a near hyperbolic extreme, called you a troll & jordan immediately defended you

this is an insane expectation of art that I can't imagine you would hold to many of the artists you enjoy

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Thursday, August 16, 2018 4:56 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no, it really isn't? that's like saying it's "insane" to not want to drink a gallon of sewage every morning. even if the sewage is actually shat out in some kind of elaborate performance-art attempt to highlight the failures and corruption of the sanitation system, drinking it still means drinking a gallon of sewage.

and my favorite artists generally are not drenched in so much irony poisoning that it is impossible to distinguish their "ironic" quoting of Donald Trump from sincere quoting of Donald Trump. this is very easy to avoid in art!

but as jordan has said let’s make this thread more about the music and less about the various trolls

― k3vin k., Thursday, August 16, 2018 2:09 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

out of respect I will amend from “the various trolls” to “those who refuse to discuss the music in good faith”

"bad faith" does not mean "disliking a song that I like"

like, my idea of "bad faith" is calling someone's opinion of a song -- on an entirely different website! -- "insane." it is a perfectly reasonable expectation that one's "satire" do more than just repeat the thing it is satirizing. it's a bare minimum expectation, in fact. and an even more reasonable thing is to not want to listen to, or read, watch, etc. art that does not do so.

also, this kind of thing is seriously incredibly easy to avoid in music. the only artist I can think of who is irony-poisoned to such an extreme degree is Father John Misty, and I don't go out of my way to listen to him either, for the same reasons. and the only thing I can think of that's a song I actually listen to is Kristin Hersh quoting some nihilist pamphlet she was handed in the intro to "Hate My Way." but that still isn't an example, because A) the pamphlet is just silly more than anything, and doesn't quote the equivalent of the Billy Bush tape, and B) she immediately distances herself from it in line one of the song proper ("I make you into a song -- I can't rise above the church"), then proceeds to write an actual song. and that song is good, unlike this one.

what i am saying is insane is specifically this part: "if you’re singing “poison me daddy” and “fuck your feelings” as slogans for satire, you’re still singing “poison me daddy” and “fuck your feelings” as slogans."

the idea that context doesn't shift meaning, that an artist cant repurpose these slogans ... means that I can't read YOUR POST about them as anything but a slogan... why is the artist not allowed the leeway to recontextualize those statements, but its fine for you to do so on ILX?

that isn't even my review

this is not about 'your opinion' of a song, but a method of reading art that isn't so straightjacketed by arbitrary rules that it cant allow for other possible interpretations

that isn't even my review

― aloha darkness my old friend (katherine), Thursday, August 16, 2018 4:22 PM (twenty-seven seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

did i misread that you're agreeing with it?

"irony poisoned" again i don't think this is irony!

no, but I didn't misread that I'm the one who's being called insane over it

i do wonder sometimes how nirvana's "polly" would be interpreted in a discourse like the present one

no, but I didn't misread that I'm the one who's being called insane over it

― aloha darkness my old friend (katherine), Thursday, August 16, 2018 4:24 PM (fifty-nine seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

im sorry for using the word 'insane' which i know has such a loaded gendered whatever, but if you prefer, reading that kind of thing makes me insane, because it's again a bad faith reading of the song, which i don't think is at all 'ironic'

oh cool, so this is just another thinly disguised rant about social justice warriors ruining the pure, unsullied music discussion of the past

???? how did you take that from this?

because every dog in the office has been barking for the past hour at this: i think this problem has become more pronounced on twitter (going back to tumblr maybe) but

yes i definitely think 1990s music discourse was 'unsullied'

this is a good example of what i mean by bad faith readings, though

whenever somebody complains about "twitter" or "tumblr" ruining something it is almost always a dog-whistle

(specifically talking in terms of how "toxic" or "unreasonable" etc. they are, not in terms of their actual problem with harassment, etc.)

because every dog in the office has been barking for the past hour at this: i think this problem has become more pronounced on twitter (going back to tumblr maybe) but

― aloha darkness my old friend (katherine), Thursday, August 16, 2018 4:27 PM (seventeen seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pointing out that people get caught up in myopic algorithmic circles that feed their preferred pov back at them is not a jeremiad about social justice warriors; its simply pointing out that ppl project broader trends onto their immediate social environment, which becomes even more problematic when that environment is shaped by algorithms

oh, so it's a rant about algorithms instead

hmmm calling it a 'rant' is a dogwhistle...you're trying to associate me with dennis miller

I had to google who that was, so no

i was just joking

as far as nirvana's "polly," kurt cobain said this about the way (part of) his audience interpreted the song: "Last year, a girl was raped by two wastes of sperm and eggs while they sang the lyrics to our song "Polly". I have a hard time carrying on knowing there are plankton like that in our audience."

that was, for what it's worth, a sincere post, not a defense of how the song was received back then vs now

I haven't heard this song but this conversation makes me think about

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCFAzPl1QmE

except now "grab em by the pussy" is Joe Piscopo

i def have a kneejerk response to the idea that art needs to pander to the fact that a bunch of idiots are going to interpret it the 'wrong way'

like someone telling kendrick not to advocate drinking alcohol in 'swimming pools' or something

'polly' is an especially nutso version of this though... i mean i think the song is pretty important snapshot of an era and message, but i also can't imagine it coming out the same way today for reasons that totally make sense...its a super weird song

the idea that context doesn't shift meaning, that an artist cant repurpose these slogans

Those things aren't really out there as slogans (maybe "fuck your feelings", less so any of the other worst lines) the point is that they're repurposing them as slogans. Appropriately enough I'd suggest reading that line of the review in the context of the one afterwards. I don't think that you can't ever say terrible things as satire, just that it's hard for the benefits of seeking out and quoting not-particularly-mainstream awfulness to outweigh the costs.

Whether the song succeeds in its aim (which I think Deej successfully captures - though I'd add a nuance below) strikes me as an almost textbook example of a matter about which reasonable minds may differ.

It's not "bad faith" to fall on the "I don't like it" side. But I see why these discussions get heated. As with a lot of "does this work?" questions about music, the reason people can't see eye to eye or even acknowledge room for more than one answer is that they start with a disagreement about what the song is trying to do, with dislikers seeking to reduce or flatten the complexity of the exercise (this is just <insert>"). "An ironic slogan is still a slogan" starts with a reductive reading (and I use that word non-pejoratively) and then seeks to reduce it further. The implication is that there is nothing more to see, whatever more the likers are seeing is an illusion, or something they're putting there. And this in turn implies something about the music's audience even if that was never the speaker's intention, or they hadn't followed the line of reasoning that far. It is never just "about the music".

Of course the flipside problem is that the reductive reading is usually at least half-correct about something going on, which is difficult to acknowledge when everyone's guns drawn at 20 paces (and which, again, see below).

This all interests me mostly because I used to apply the above reductive frame a lot and don't do so much anymore, not because I think it's inappropriate but because at some point I stopped viscerally disliking almost any music (for unknown reasons), and at that point I'm less likely to question the music's aims even if I'm indifferent to the outcome. The sheer intensity of the binary positions on the Singles Jukebox review page is intriguing to me in a cultural tourism sense.

"reading this song as flat edgy "irony" misunderstands its effect imo .... the song is a harrowing feeling of being overwhelmed by disgusting popular culture mixed w politics & the current condition, & it captures that feeling in song, i don't think its supposed to be 'ironic', he is not being a mouthpiece for his own point of view (sincere or ironic), he is creating an artistic effect that is reminiscent of being bombarded with fucked up headlines & the entire subtext is "the world feels fucked and the feelings it creates are difficult to wrap your head around but this approximates the feeling" imo"

The additional thing I'd say is that I think there is a sense in which Katherine and the reviewer (Iain?) she is quoting are correct in saying "ironic slogans are still slogans": for me, one of the things that this song is about is the idea that contemporary society reduces the world to a permanent state of "We Didn't Start The Fire" - and whether Matt is a mouthpiece for the phrases in the lyrics or not is actually complex question. In my view the song is not merely about being overwhelmed by disgusting popular culture and current politics, but also about being implicated by them, about the fact that you cannot participate in popular culture while also holding yourself apart from all the toxic stuff and say "but I am not responsible for that". So you could say of the criticism "ironic slogans are still slogans", "yes, that is precisely what this song is about".

and I have a kneejerk response to the idea that just because someone is attempting social commentary, I am obliged to find it successful, or something I want to listen to, or that I am unreasonable or operating in bad faith if I in fact dislike it. particularly when it involves a man glibly singing the words of trump bragging about getting away with sexual assault — by these standards, that alex jones to the music thing of bon iver meme is also great music.

I've been working on a theory that the ALWAYS ONLINE class of musicians who let internet sewage into their art can be split into "posters" and "lurkers"

Posters
Grimes
Tyler the Creator
Azealia Banks
Kitty
Weezer

Lurkers
Death Grips
The 1975
Sophie
Charli XCX
Oneohtrix Point Never

Actually, scratch Banks from that, but she is very much a poster

I also have a kneejerk response to a bunch of men telling me what the appropriate way to feel about other men glibly quoting that sexual assault tape is — and I haven’t even touched the “suffocate the black men” line

That would be a great article actually.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/572d4fca4c2f85ddda8831ac/572e40128259b5058ce821ca/5ac6c890aa4a9945f380bc05/1522983921623/America.png?format=1500w

https://www.itsnicethat.com/system/files/032018/5ab3aa757fa44c58a4001128/images_slice_large/willo-perron_thirty-seconds-to-mars_album-cover_graphic-design_itsnicethat-apple.png?1521724168

Those things aren't really out there as slogans (maybe "fuck your feelings", less so any of the other worst lines) the point is that they're repurposing them as slogans. Appropriately enough I'd suggest reading that line of the review in the context of the one afterwards. I don't think that you can't ever say terrible things as satire, just that it's hard for the benefits of seeking out and quoting not-particularly-mainstream awfulness to outweigh the costs.

― Iain Mew (if), Thursday, August 16, 2018 5:51 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the entire point is that the awfulness IS mainstream!

Banksy's done it again

I also have a kneejerk response to a bunch of men telling me what the appropriate way to feel about other men glibly quoting that sexual assault tape is — and I haven’t even touched the “suffocate the black men” line

― aloha darkness my old friend (katherine), Thursday, August 16, 2018 4:56 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i havent told you how to feel about anything?? im defending other possible interpretations, and arguing that your interpretation is coming from a place of misunderstanding what it's attempting in the first place... you can draw the exact same conclusion (ie that it fails at doing what I think it's aiming for) but it seems like you're denying the *very possibility* of other interpretations

like, how do you respond to an argument that it's not attempting irony? you just seem to reassert that, actually, it is attempting irony

The vaporwave bridge, these dudes are the /b/lue nile