Friday, February 22, 2013

Why Genres Are For Posers Mar 17, 2007 11:45PM PST

An explanation of the name. As some of you know I used to lurk around the ultimate-guitar.com forums before I was a 1upper. You may also know that the majority of that website is made up of(or was made up of) 12 year old pricks that have nothing better to do(I admit I initially signed up just to be a dick. Hey don't judge, we all need an outlet and it's not like everyone else there signed up for anything different.) Well, I would often hear arguments over what "true" punk is and whether countless bands were metal. Ultimately the metal arguments were a lot dumber in retrospect. Punk arguments at least had clearly distinct sounding sides i.e. Sex Pistols vs. Green Day. The metal argument usually gave bands the names of about 20 different subgenres from "hair" to "nu" to "thrash" to "speed" before I just didn't care any more. Anyway, while I don't really have anything against constructive/interesting discussions about what defines certain genres(making the name sound hypocritical but wait for an explanation damnit!) these kids were always being annoying and stereotyping anyone based on what music they listened to. Anyone that listened to pop-punk had a high-pitched voice and loved gay sex. Anyone that listened to emo(not necessarily was emo... yes there's a difference, I think) cut themselves and loved gay sex. And anyone who listened to nu-metal loved Fred Durst.... in the way that they wanted to have gay sex with him. At the end of the day, I know at least a couple muscle bound hardasses that like Green Day, some people who love hardcore death metal listen to emo as a guilty pleasure, and I used to like Limp Bizkit and have always found Fred Durst totally repulsive. So people, what type of music you listen to doesn't put you above anyone else or give you the right to stereotype them. And let's face it, you can not like a genre of music all you want but if you're going out of your way to let your friends know your a "true" punker instead of just listening to whatever the hell you feel like and to hell with what they think, you're being a poser: doing what your friends say is cool just to get in with them. So the names not really saying that no distinction exists between genres and if you think that you're a poser. It's saying your preferences don't put you above anyone else, and do whatever you like not what makes you fit in, posers do that crap. Phew! Now after that long explanation, take a vote and tell me what the first part of this miniseries should concern Music, movies, videogames (I don't think I'm book savvy enough to do a good blog at this point but I'll get to it anyway) I'll probably end up having to split these blogs into their most general genres each i.e. if music then I'll do one blog about metal, another about punk, then rap and so on.

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