handsome young stranger

Two interesting things that sort of ended up feeling parallel:

barthel:

This is how I learned about pop music: by reading enough criticism that assumed the context that I was able to pick up the received wisdom about bands, sounds, and eras. […] I think we probably overlook the socialization function of music criticism more than we should.  By immersing yourself in a culture talking about its own history - as music criticism constantly does - you can haphazardly pick up the information you need to participate in that conversation and present as a reasonably knowledgeable observer.  The social capital is public domain, as it were.  As annoying as criticism’s self-absorption can sometimes be, I think that’s ultimately a really valuable tool.

tomewing:

This changes music fandom. Its currency is debased: individual rare records no longer confer much status; access to lots of music gives even less. But people are still music fans, so across the last half-decade or so we’ve seen different signifiers of status become more prominent (they were always present, of course). What now marks people out in music fandom?

Experience: Much like individual band fandoms, generalised fandom now puts a premium on experience - this is why we see so many waffly articles now about the lost delights of buying and listening to physical music: not the actual music itself, you understand, but the rituals and experiences around it. There’s also more emphasis on shows. “Losing My Edge” captures this shift really well actually - the balance between “every good record ever” and “I WAS THERE” tipping precipitously towards the latter.

(There’s a lot more to the post and I should probably be quoting it in its entirety or not at all and I guess I nearly did, but… Compulsive reblogging is one of the Tumblr things that bores me to tears because it feels like LiveJournal circa 1999 running at some kind of futurist pace but without any of futurism’s invention, creation or progress and all of LiveJournal’s posturing young girls. Though with more porn.)

Anyway, my interest in the former might be related to quite liking things when they go all inside baseball - not taking any of it as gospel but enjoying looking into the world and the narrative it builds around itself, even if it’s self-referential, even if it’s narrow - and the latter because there’s nerd joy in seeing how the shifts happen, and resonance in having shunted several hundred cds out of my life a few years ago without misgivings, though they’d always been more likely to crush someone than win friends or influence people.