Everything on the Internet is Brisbane. How fucking depressing.

Here's The Hype Machine's reply to the best fucking rant I've heard all year. In full. From the donkey's mouth.

On music journalism

Watching this guy squeal about the death of music journalism (spoiler alert: the 5 of us at The Hype Machine killed it), I started to remember why I hated music critics. Think back to your college paper: they were the loud, obnoxious, Comic Book Guys who would spend a few sentences spitting on their dicks before wanking out the six paragraphs of extended metaphors that felt good to absolutely no one else. They’d review an album they hated because…well, why? Did they really feel a sense of duty to let you know what not to buy, or is it just cool to make fun of some intangible rock band? Or is it about the ad space that labels buy in magazines, and maybe the magazines should put those labels’ bands in the issue if they want their contracts renewed?

Journalism isn’t free. It never was. So wail about SEO all you want, advertising is what has been supporting magazines, newspapers, TV, radio, and pretty much the entire internet. The problem isn’t blogs, Google, or us, buddy. The problem is shitty writing. If Whiney chose to address the actual caliber of the writing on blogs, I’d be totally behind him: a lot of it sucks. But that has little to do with click-throughs or PageRank. It’s about people reading less and thinking even less about what they do read. Criticism isn’t dying because we made an aggregator—it’s dying because people don’t exercise their critical thinking. It’s dying because they’re tired of having some guy in a baseball cap scream in their face about what they should and shouldn’t appreciate, because now that all of their friends and their mom, too, have a blog, they can’t see why they should listen to him instead.

There are incredible music journalists, in all sense of the word, who write with passion, regardless of the medium. Nitsuh Abebe tumbls well thought-out pieces (often dealing with music criticism itself), Sean Michaels has been blogging amazing stuff for years, and there are hundreds more talented writers in the HM list who choose to create, not complain. Clicking on a page labeled “Popular” and being upset that it shows you what people like, is like pretending not to understand why McDonalds is popular. If you go to the supermarket, bypass the fruits and vegetables, and run directly to the Doritos aisle, where’s the onus there?
This was inspired by the 140conf rant, but it isn’t in defense of our website—I know that’s the dude’s shtick, and it’s eh, whatever. This is in defense of music on the internet. The good writing, the weird, wonderful music you’ve never heard, it’s all there. And if it’s important to you, you can put the tiniest bit of effort into finding it. Here’s a start.
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Chris' response (on Twitter, of course!) is here.
1000TimesYes So, @hypem defended themselves! I actually agree with about 50% of what they say! I'll let you figure out which parts: http://bit.ly/aFlwmf
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Me speaking
I have to admit that my initial knee-jerk reaction to the point Chris was making via his "1,000 reviews on Twitter" was based somewhat round some of what The Hype Machine refers to as the "indie music critic = Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons" syndrome. I thought Chris was that guy. Now I think he's way way smarter than that, even if he does have appalling dress sense. And we all hate that guy, right - even the guys that are that guy hate that guy, don't they? Don't they?

Actually, now I put my finger on it, this whole " indie music critic = Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons" ABSOLUTELY sums up the problem with the Australian street press. All these dullard assholes who've been given an outlet to express opinions that have been copied wholesale from other slightly better-known dullard assholes that have been copied wholesale from other slightly better-known dullard assholes, and so on.

The person writing this response misses the whole point about music criticism - that it's FUN to be confronted, challenged, informed, misled and inspired by great writing about music, that it INCREASES enjoyment of the music a thousand-fold, or it can. That we don't need that great writing reduced to a lowest common denominator, or aggregated (especially when that writing is personality-driven). AND THAT WE NEED FILTERS. WE NEED FILTERS. WE NEED FILTERS. Not site aggregators, FILTERS whose scope is wider than merely if the new Broken Social Scene album sucks.

And, of course, the person writing this response is entirely RIGHT about music criticism, that most of it can't even tumble-dry a limp wet cloth - but, um what? Isn't that true a MILLION-FOLD about the music?

Plus, his reply doesn't even begin to address some of the smarter assertions Chris makes: that sites like The Hype Machine through their lazy appropriation of other people's views are homogenising listening habits, and people's ways of appreciating and LOVING music, that NO ONE is even beginning to enter into dialogue with the music itself because... um... well, there's no point in such a trans-local world where the only people who listen to you are the ones who live on your block. And you don't want to be pissing them off.

Everything on the Internet is Brisbane. How fucking depressing.

How completely fucking entirely depressing.

P.S. Someone has just asked me to clarify that last statement. By it, I mean that music criticism in web 2.0 environments now exists within a set of trans-local parameters, and hence is bound by the rules and regulations that exist within such scenes: that you don't speak out of turn; that you don't criticise, only praise; that you write about music within an incredibly narrow context; that you ply your craft alongside a hundred Comic Book Guys that you despise, knowing that all the while someone's going to be mistaking you for them; that you're unpaid because everyone rates what you do so little (and rightly so, looking at the folk around you); that if there is any opinion it's opinion lifted wholesale from the popular zeitgeist and made a little less interesting...

P.P.S. For anyone feeling unduly sensitive this morning, the comment about Brisbane isn't supposed to be a reflection on the city or its people, more a certain approach to music criticism....