Patrick R

Damage Control! That looks cool.

I didn't explain it well. James explains it better here. But also, and this is different and separate (mostly) from the racial angle, there is the idea that pop or dance music is inherently lesser than country music or folk music. That because it isn't "intelligent" (as if that was a necessary or even desirable attribute for dance music) it isn't as good. I'm coming from a place of being a fan of rap music and having to constantly wade through bullshit about authenticity where people pretend that "rap" and "hip-hop" are two different music genres, one for smart people and one for dumb people. As if all rappers who are "socially conscious" are inherently better musicians than rappers who are "not socially conscious". Scare quotes because gangster rap often has way more to say about poverty and race than your average Common or Talib Kweli record. I'm getting a lot of different ideas muddled because I'm sort of tying together a lot of disparate thoughts I have that are only loosely related to each other, and to the main topic. So, apologies all around.

People don't like vegans because vegans are correct and it makes them feel bad about themselves for not doing the right thing.

Here is David Byrne covering "Just A Friend" so that Biz Markee can finally get the royalties on the song he was screwed out of. It's a bad cover. But a good reason to do a cover!

You are right but it's also about the idea that black music is dumber than white music, which is also very old. There are a million ironic covers of Baby Got Back or Lollipop or any number of black songs, where the idea is "look how dumb this is". That's your prerogative. I also like black music, like white music, and like where they intersect. I just think that, like anything that is politically sensitive, it has to be done smartly. Example: when Anthrax covered "Bring the Noise". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU4o1CrdOQY They invited Public Enemy to be on the song, and the arrangement compliments both acts really well. It speaks to the massive sound of Public Enemy and the rebellious nature of metal acts like Anthrax in the early 90's.

Things get more complicated when it comes to that Miley Cyrus thing, but I think broadly, in 2014, most popular music is coded as black. It's not the same thing, I'm not saying it's the same thing, but that's where that tradition comes from. It's also not the same as, say, the Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin stealing countless blues riffs and songs whole hog without paying the original songwriters because very few people ever make the leap from white YouTube covers to actual celebrity (I think Karmin, who got popular through , is the only example) but it comes from the same place. EDIT: This is sorta derailing the main conversation, because I do think it ties into hipsterism because the other big issue regarding "things widely considered as hipster" (to not tie it down to any one person's definition) is gentrification, and there is a sort of racial politics to a lot of these things.

The broader point is the history of people whitening up black music, and that making it more palatable for other white people, is horrible and gross and real. It's basically the moment in Dreamgirls where Cadillac Car becomes this:

This is exactly what I mean. I hate this so much. Partially because it's hack, but also because it's got really unpleasant racial overtones.

It's a phenomenon outside of that specific video. Here is a good example. This was a cover that went viral and even got a good amount of radio play on radio stations that would never play the original. This kind of shit is the worst.

This is a pet peeve of mine so I'm bound to overreact ever so slightly, but the trend of "I'll take a popular song and legitimize it by performing it acoustically and joylessly" is The Worst Fucking Thing In The Entire Universe And That's Including Malaria. The differences between those two Wrecking Ball covers is not popularity, quantities of money, and distribution models. It's condescension. If you can't detect songcraft unless it's all acoustic instruments, you don't deserve pop music. You deserve DEATH. DEATH I say.

Haribo gummis are my jam. Best mainstream gummi in the gummi game.

Firing/losing (I don't know which it was) most your staff to a competitor will do that! Read The Dissolve now.

The thing about Portlandia is most of their characters are achingly, totally, even misguidedly sincere. Portlandia is chiefly about the absurd shapes people will twist themselves into by trying to do what they perceive as the right thing. There aren't many ironic characters in that show, certainly none that I can think of.

Maybe it's because I live in Chicago, but I feel like I have never ever encountered this in my life? Not doubting you, just baffled this is a thing. I don't think I can even imagine what this as a thing sounds like?

Counter cultural was a term that meant a lot more when there was more of a monoculture. There's no equivalent of Michael Jackson's Thriller or the season finale of M*A*S*H in 2014. I think movies are maybe the last pop-culture hold-out of big cultural events that a huge percentage of the population participates in, but even that isn't what it used to be. How would one define the difference between a niche sub-culture (say, ) and something counter-cultural the way hardcore punk was?

And your place on the hipster/square spectrum is important to you?

Oh brother.

The best working definition of hipster I have found is "one who makes you insecure about how cool you are". That seems to be the way most people use it.

I also find myself saying "super good".

You don't know the half of it. I used that as my avatar on a different forum way back when. It started as a normal Danny Glover headshot, but then I slowly changed the picture little by little over the course of months until it reached it's current melty form. People didn't notice until about week 4, and even then no one could agree if my avatar had always been like that or not. Good times. I only have MS Paint, so I just used the select tool and stretch different parts out. It's amazing how something so simple and lo-fi can be so disorienting. For those who are now afraid to click my link, it's just a picture of Danny Glover stretched weird.

So about 6 years ago I started to make electronic music kind of compulsively. A lot of it is really weird and probably off-putting, but you're all free to use any of it in your games if you want to. I'm gonna be slowly uploading the hundred or so songs I made here on my Soundcloud. I would be interested in collaborating with people and composing new stuff as well.

I think The Avengers mostly works because it's funny and is packed with charming attractive actors being really charming and attractive. And that it doesn't try to do much more than that.

Oh man, if you can see Cheap Thrills with a crowd, do it. Great, crazy movie.

Pretty much. I think "so bad it's good" is a brush people use to paint a really broad range of things, and often fails to recognize camp. Something like Killer Klowns From Outer Space isn't "so bad it's good", it's a comedy. A lot of ridiculous over-the-top action movies from the 80's were purposefully that, and calling something "so bad it's good" often feels like people trying to take that achievement away from the artists. Meanwhile, stuff like The Room and Troll 2 have the fascination of something like outsider art, where a lack of technical skill ends up revealing more about the artist than anything. On another note, I was listening to a lot of Michael Jackson this morning, and a game jam based on Bad would be delightful. Or

Sure, that's why they exist. People like them. I'm just pointing out what I believe to be essential differences between them and something like Troll 2.