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chairdriver

Rising Tensions

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I ain't had any issues, i just havn't found the time to visit here. Probably due to the new job and all that.

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Like many here, I've not noticed much/any of these rising tensions. Nothing which warrants it's own thread.

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Man, it's not even close to being as bad as it was back in the day. I think that in any forum of discussion, people are inevitable going to butt heads, and as long as nobody's ego is mortally wounded it's all fair game, right?

 

To be fair, I think there is a consistent majority among forumers that seem willing to go out of their way to to console or offer advice (misguided though it may be :heh:) to others, rather than to go out of their way to offend. Which is cool, and is kinda what sets this place apart from other forums I've been on.

 

Ah, if only I was the same old Bard from years ago =p. Just can't get riled up about shit anymore.

 

Thank god we got rid of that music topic, eh? : peace:

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Thank god we got rid of that music topic, eh? : peace:

 

I'm actually relatively glad about this. Because I've found most of the time discussing music is a really pointless endeavour, because it usually comes down to "Ok, you like this, I don't" or "Yeah we both like this album! Woo!", and the conversation never really gets more interesting. In rare cases it's great, if you're on the same wavelength (I spend my life talking to Paj! on FB about music) but in a forum situation it's ultimately just going to end up shit chat. It's not like films where you can discuss lots of separate aspects, it's not like people are going to discuss how the chord progression in one of Sade's songs sounds a bit shit (or at least not enough to sustain a proper conversation).

 

BASICALLY, I progressively find that music is a very personal thing. Won't/can't make mixtapes anymore.

 

shutup.

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Thank god we got rid of that music topic, eh? : peace:

 

I still maintain that the music a person listens to tells you more about that person than practically anything else will over an internet discussion, and as much as music in the abstract can be said to be purely subjective, the fact is, music today is not wholly abstract, but is doused in many varieties of socio-political identity, which is itself worth talking about...and in my case, lambasting various dumbshits for :heh:

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I still maintain that the music a person listens to tells you more about that person than practically anything else will over an internet discussion, and as much as music in the abstract can be said to be purely subjective, the fact is, music today is not wholly abstract, but is doused in many varieties of socio-political identity, which is itself worth talking about...and in my case, lambasting various dumbshits for :heh:

 

Yes, so true! I believe taste says so much about a person. Hence why I find it stressful talking about it, because you get hit in the face by shit facets of persons'.

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Inevitably though, as with me, while I have always been aware of my own musical preferences adding to my identity package, I have also always been interested in music in itself. Music is just sounds that you learn how to hear, practically anyone can love any type of music so long as they just open themselves to it. Unforunately, music is also the law of diminishing returns, the more you hear particular patterns, the more you 1. begin to become bored of those patterns 2. start to hear those same patterns crop up everywhere. You develop a tolerance to this wonderful, benign aural opiate. Thus begins your quest for more and more esoteric forms of music, something that is never going to translate well to conversation, because your musical development is very much your own culture.. But alas, most people tend to only like music that comes pre-prescribed; they're afraid to venture into the depths because they're unsure about what it will say about them.

Edited by The Bard

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Well I'm going to offer my own vision of what musical tastes mean.

 

While there are many cultural predispositions and possibly biological predispositions to music, I don't believe you can judge anyone by their musical (as well as film) tastes. You can guess certain things, and on chance you could be right more often than not, but in the end they are inductions. Do men like manly* music because they are predisposed to biologically, or because culture has shaped them so? People can like certain music because they are supposed to, and these are the people who like to just follow the crowd, but really you don't really get even an iota of what they are truly like. You get one facet, one piece out of an immeasurable amount. Musical tastes change so quickly, and anyone can really like any music. People can find their own meaning in it, or just associate positive feelings or a positive event with it. Music is so subjective, and so personal that whatever you can gleam from what they listen to will never truly reflect what they are, but only what they take from it, which is basically impossible to find. I think judging people on their music, or taste in anything else so utterly subjective is judgemental, elitist and conceited. A way for you to justify disliking people because you don't want to deal with the fact that they are so inherently different to you in some part of their life.

 

But it's only human to judge, and fear what is different. It's normal to take one point of view and dismiss all others.

 

Know that you may or not refer to you, I don't mean it personally, I'm trying to be general.

 

*For the purpose of the argument, let's just assume there is a decided category of music that is manly. This is not important for the argument at hand.

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Inductions, of course, because you can't deduce a persona; it is (in most people) multi faceted, amorphous and evasive. Then again, I get the feeling that your whole argument is based on a bad induction derived from a simplistic idea of what it really means to be "subjective," as well as a misunderstanding of what I said as being "judgmental." ie. "Music is subjective, ergo, you can't get a sense for a person by virtue of their taste." Sociologically though, this is just bass ackwards. How do you explain the colossal overlaps in taste that occur, or the social and cultural groups that find an anchor in music? How do you explain that the cultural progression in much of the 20th Century is demarcated by its own soundtrack? Secondly, this blatant bulshittery has been touted by all sorts of troglodytes as a means for evading discussion, because their tiny minds and weak mentalities can't fucking fathom having to defend their opinions in public discourse, because of some neanderthal idea that opinions are things, the sanctity of which should not be done the dishonour of questioning.

 

There, you've done it. You've gotten me riled up about something.

 

Back to the idea of an induction; this is particularly important in music, as in people, because I don't believe people are very different. The tiny differentiations in experience aren't so important to irreversibly cause our emotions from being irreconcilable from person to person. In this way, vagueness is also important, once again, because music is incredibly vague in terms of explicit content. It doesn't deal in details; lyrics do add, but are inevitably superfluous, and unimportant in music, because, to paraphrase Schopenhauer, they are like one of many examples superimposed on a universal principle. There is no perfect music to a particular lyric, or vice versa.

 

"Music is so subjective, and so personal that whatever you can gleam from what they listen to will never truly reflect what they are, but only what they take from it, which is basically impossible to find."

 

Music is a universal language, with a few stipulations. Those being that people often close themselves to emotional experiences that they don't feel reflect some internal projection of their personality. And again, what you're doing is misunderstanding me; we don't learn what a person "takes away" from a piece of music; what we learn is, for example, when a person will listen to any form of melodic metal that comes out Gothenburg religiously, but eschews all other forms, that there are some weird mental acrobatics going on simply to justify these preferences, which inevitably leads to the question "Why?"

 

Secondly, its easy to speculate what a person takes from a piece of music based on where that music comes from, the ideals it represents, and the emotions it seems to be trying to evoke, and inevitably, our predispositions and discourse are largely based on speculation.

 

Last of all, I never said anything about disliking people. Except you :heh:.

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But when people like a song purely because they associate it with a positive event in their life. Or when someone likes a song solely for the lyrics, or someone else because of the energetic beat. Or someone else because of what the barriers it breaks. When there are so many ways you can interpret a song, when you can like a song one day and absolutely despise it another. Is it not a terribly inefficient, ineffective and presumptuous to assume a person likes or dislikes a song for the reason you think they do. Or if they just like the song subconsciously, on some level they themselves can't explain because the neurons in their brain have created pathways, sometimes through mere exposure or familiarity, which dictates why they like a song through no choice of their own. Can you really take all those variables and create a picture where you can fully judge someone and their inherent value in your life?

 

I agree that opinions shouldn't have a cloak of fear of questioning. But with something like music, which is so personal, and needs no others besides the creator of the music. Why do they need to justify themselves. Why do they need to expose themselves to other music. Why is it so important to try everything, to justify everything. Why can't he do what he wants with his life, or listen to what he wants to listen to. Why does he have to take time learning about new music when really, objectively he'll be no better off. There is no point in defending your taste in music.

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Nobody likes a song solely for the lyrics; music is what give the lyrics an emotional weight, give them meaning even though when you look at them detached from the music, they might be pathetic and corny.

 

Again; all of the reasons you gave for liking a song are vaild. I guess I'm just being presumptious for thinking that people should be self aware enough to understand their preferences and telegraph them through language.[/a weighty infinitude of sarcasm]

 

If there is no point in defending your taste in music, why are you here, defending the idea of its complete defensibility? People don't need to do anything, but by some sort of imperative, most of us are drawn to discussion, to argument, to anything that can give us insight into what we like, and into what drives others to differ from us.

 

Can you really take all those variables and create a picture where you can fully judge someone and their inherent value in your life?

 

So by way of this, I'm assuming that the first and only impression you allow yourself to have of a person is one that is holistic and formed by extensive experience, and discourse? No. This is not the way we understand people. Our perceptions are mediated by culture, and are vague patchwork constructions that we add to, but that inevitably need some base to work from. Are you assuming that the first I hear of a persons musical taste, that I inscribe that in my consciousness forever, never to be altered, or at times, discarded outright?

 

Again, this is what I said:

 

I still maintain that the music a person listens to tells you more about that person than practically anything else will over an internet discussion

 

Because you don't have the benefit of the myriad ways people have been identifying with each other for thousands of years when your interactions are limited to the internet. Our ideas of who we are are informed by our entertainment consumption for the large part, and then the snippets of anecdotes we skim and chuckle at in the good/bad threads.

 

On the internet, our perceptions of each other are by nature unformed. Look at Chair's recent thread regarding "rising tensions." Why do you think that these exist? They exist because our projections of our personalities are greatly exaggerated online. Any animosity I may have with a person online instantly dissolves when I meet them in person, just because they become real, fleshed out, literally. And what I'm saying extends way beyond music too. When you sit down to talk with someone for the first time, you always come to the table with predispositions regarding what you think the range of the conversation is going to be. Its natural, and anyone who claims otherwise and holds to abstract egalitarian principles is a fucking mental midget.

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Well I'm not really trying to defend my musical tastes. I'm referring to the idea of judging people based on their musical tastes. I made a general remark which you are not taking things you said, and assuming I was talking directly at you throughout, when in fact I was only giving my general opinion on the matter.

 

On the topic that taste in music says much more than anything else. I have to disagree completely. Which is what I was getting at with my previous posts. That you can't get a full picture, or even a partial picture as you are making inductions based on what you perceive is enjoyable about a song, or can be enjoyable in a song, when the song itself may not play a part at all, and only the associations and memories that the song brings, are what makes a person like the song.

 

I don't create a holistic and extensively researched experience. I take their actions, our flow of conversation, our enjoyment in the conversation and many other things. Music very rarely enters I conversation I have, and when it does, we either agree that a song is good, or disagree, and it never really goes anywhere. So their taste in music does little to further our relationship or change anything in any meaningful way. This of course is what I think from the experiences I've had. Musical preference may be very important to you in a friend, but it will never be to me, because I don't believe it is important, or telling of someone's character to any substantial degree.

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Thank you for going out of your way to misunderstand everything I'm saying.

 

Touching all this, for which I thee beseech.

So hold thy peace; thou slay'st me with thy speech.

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I do agree that anyone can like any type of music, you just need to know what to look for. If someone know how to play the guitar they will be impressed by any clever ways the guitarist in a band plays, because they understand that it was difficult or whatever. Rap music impresses me because I love how they(the good ones) can use alliteration to make a song sound like it is flowing the whole time, I hate pauses of more than a second in music. Not just rap though, anything which sounds like it flows. The lyrics of a song really do help me judge it because if they are talking shite with no sense of irony I immediately hate it.

 

Yeah I threw my own taste in, so what? :p

 

With the rising tensions, the thing that gets me is when I haven't thought about something before, mention an ignorant viewpoint, and a guy who has clearly done a lot of thinking on the subject jumps down my fucking throat. At least try to explain things calmly first, assuming I say what I said because I am a cunt is the wrong way to go about it.

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I like songs about shagging hoes and putting....umm...drugs on ice or something.

 

 

Yeah I love that shit. Eat it up like fucking Wonderbread.

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ReZ, I've always wanted to say this;

 

You are a tumescent arsecandle.

 

...speaking of tension and all.

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Ah, but did you think about the sociomaniglant impact of those words on the target (in this case me)? I think in future it may be something to consider. Although the connotated boundaries set in place at a fundamental level do allow for such exchanges to be a mere floundran of "pecking order" (if you will) it can often be a mighty fine reflection upon the targets own insecurities, with which the way they respond to the attack. If we remove for a second any locational or geographic representations of the typical (or average, I guess) transretrolutional reactions, and other people or limitations, then believe it is clear to see this in a much more streamlined and manageble way.

 

Target is clearly bewilldered by the negative connotations that tumerific arse clandestines tend to have, and it is certainly one of the more obvious retorts that he is now showing. Behevomently challenging the industrialisation of sociostereotype, for the first time or the first time of many times - well this probably couldn't be garnered without considering what is arguably the most important aspect of this entire point. I of course do not need to point out the most important aspect, as it is so abundantly clear in no uncertain terms that everyone here has displayed at least that amount of fermentation of gender specific role dynamics, but I am sure you will agree that this is a subject that could be placed in a sealed vacuum for forty years and should we have the nerve to uncover it then we would not be surprised and would instantly be able to relate to the contents.

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I tried to find a picture of Ron being angry and all I could find was this:

 

Ron-Weasley-Rupert-Grint.jpg

 

This guy's such a wimp.

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