Reynolds' Pazz & Jopp essay

[nomadologist]

I didn't force it, it just turned out that way. I didn't know what to expect. Of course, afterwards none of the observations I'd made had any meaning to them at all, in retrospect. I found acid very emotionally charged, mushrooms even more so.

mushrooms for me are more giggly, but i've had mushroom trips turn bad a lot more often. luckily they wear off fast. do you like acid better or mushrooms, do you think? for me, acid wins hands down, even though you have to be prepared for an acid trip to potentially get very very intense. mushrooms are more predictable--for me, i just see Aztec murals in 2.5 dimensions superimposed on everything, and trees melt into the ground. the last 4 or 5 times i did mushrooms ended in me getting kicked out of stores and restaurants, so i've sworn them off. once i found myself with four random thugs from the bronx arguing with the manager of mcdonald's about whether it was still "breakfast" time, trying to convince them we needed egg mcmuffin. embarrassing.

 

[swears]

No, everything seemed to have some hidden, gnostic, mystical meaning. Didn't really feel like anything was revealed. I dunno, like you say it's hard to describe. It's not something I'd really like to do again, I need to keep my head together. It's all very intense at the time but it never left an impact on my behavior or outlook afterwards, as far as I can tell, anyway.

 

[nomadologist]

No, everything seemed to have some hidden, gnostic, mystical meaning. Didn't really feel like anything was revealed. I dunno, like you say it's hard to describe. It's not something I'd really like to do again, I need to keep my head together. It's all very intense at the time but it never left an impact on my behavior or outlook afterwards, as far as I can tell, anyway.

i know exactly what you mean, it is really really hard to describe. i always feel awkward saying "magical" or "mystical", but that's really how it feels. you feel like you're in this realm where things are interesting again. which is especially fun because i think normal life is pretty damn boring and obvious...the mystical thing is what makes me start enjoying music and reading again, because i get a sense that there's still things to learn...i guess it makes me less jaded

 

[swears]

Yeah, it's a load of crazy bullshit looking back on it, but it makes perfect sense at the time.

 

[nomadologist]

Yeah, it's a load of crazy bullshit looking back on it, but it makes perfect sense at the time.

Even if it is just bullshit, a lot of the people I've done hallucinogens with are as close to me as family, some of them a lot closer, I have like a surrogate tripped out family. There's something people get out if it--it's been around for as long as civilization has and has worked on some level for people across radically different cultures. A lot of good things have resulted from whatever the bullshit is, so I'm not going to look at it as "artificial" or a degraded form of experience. I don't regret it like I regret the weeks at a time I lost to super nintendo when I was 11...

 

[Guybrush]

[...]what one set of aspirations do hipsters share that would make them fit into the body builder analogy? There are hipsters who are into all different sorts of things. There's no one group of "hipsters" who all buy the same thing, do the same things, live in the same place. "Hipster" as a sociological type is nowhere near as simple as "body builder."

I used the word ‘body-builders’—perhaps wrongly—to denote the heterogenous group of people who exercise regularly; not your average jogging-once-a-week coach-potato, but the more zealous practisers. For preciseness sake, let us define it as those who go to the gym more than three times a week. These people share a common aspiration, and, I argued, their consumption patterns likely are similar. Consequently, there are at least two ways to define them: 1. as a group of individuals who share a common aspiration, or, 2. as a specific consumer group.

‘Hipsters’, unlike the aforementioned group, are identified not by their common aspirations, but by their common interests and preferences. As with the group of ‘body-builders’, ‘hipsters’, too, can be defined as a consumer group (perhaps by modifying Nomad’s much too broad ‘hyper-consuming early adopters in the 18–35 bracket’ definition), leaving us, again, with two definitions.

I think each group’s respective consumption pattern says less about the group than does other definitions (e.g. one emphasising the group’s common interests and preferences), hence my shunning the consumer-group definition.

Guybrush, you listen to more American R&B than most Americans do! How do aspirations define you in a marketplace? They don't. What you buy does!

I am not going to comment on my own situation, but suffice it to say that I know not of anyone who has bought a cd, or an audio file, for years. The same, increasingly, goes for films.

And Americans STARTED file-sharing on the level you see it happening now, and we take part it in as much as anyone. It's a few companies here that litigate around intellectual property laws, not your average person here in the States.

I think this is a very telling answer to my plea for you to dissuade from applying your own country’s state of affairs to other countrys’. But, while we are at it, show me the facts. A more moderate guess would be that it started among people from all across the globe.

 

[mms]

I am not going to comment on my own situation, but suffice it to say that I know not of anyone who has bought a cd, or an audio file, for years. The same, increasingly, goes for films.

does that mean you don't know anyone who has bought a cd or audio file or film for years?

if so, that's a rarity think.

 

[mms]

Even if it is just bullshit, a lot of the people I've done hallucinogens with are as close to me as family, some of them a lot closer, I have like a surrogate tripped out family. There's something people get out if it--it's been around for as long as civilization has and has worked on some level for people across radically different cultures. A lot of good things have resulted from whatever the bullshit is, so I'm not going to look at it as "artificial" or a degraded form of experience. I don't regret it like I regret the weeks at a time I lost to super nintendo when I was 11...

i have very much enjoyed taking hallucinogenics too and had quite a few experiences where things have been very reassuring and meant alot to me. rather than being mystical or hidden, a few things have just been laid out straight for me, which are things i will always remember.
I'm not really into calling being in a drug altered state degraded as that's really not what it is.

 

[soundslike1981]

does that mean you don't know anyone who has bought a cd or audio file or film for years?

if so, that's a rarity think.

Yeah, I was going to say, that sounds quite odd. Most people I know do some peer-to-peer downloading--but generally with the concept that "if they like something, they'll buy it". And most committed music geeks still buy the vast majority of the music to which they listen.

 

[noel emits]

Yeah but in scandinavia you can get entertainment media provided free as part of the welfare state, along with drugs and prostitutes. It's brill - we're being totally screwed in the rest of Europe.

 

[shudder]

And most committed music geeks still buy the vast majority of the music to which they listen.

really? the vast majority? I'm probably about half and half.

 

[Guybrush]

You have all understood me correctly, even though I regret writing ‘anyone’ (in actual fact, I know one or two). To explain why it is like this takes some time, so that will have to wait until tomorrow.

 

[nomadologist]

I used the word ‘body-builders’—perhaps wrongly—to denote the heterogenous group of people who exercise regularly; not your average jogging-once-a-week coach-potato, but the more zealous practisers. For preciseness sake, let us define it as those who go to the gym more than three times a week. These people share a common aspiration, and, I argued, their consumption patterns likely are similar. Consequently, there are at least two ways to define them: 1. as a group of individuals who share a common aspiration, or, 2. as a specific consumer group.

‘Hipsters’, unlike the aforementioned group, are identified not by their common aspirations, but by their common interests and preferences. As with the group of ‘body-builders’, ‘hipsters’, too, can be defined as a consumer group (perhaps by modifying Nomad’s much too broad ‘hyper-consuming early adopters in the 18–35 bracket’ definition), leaving us, again, with two definitions.

I think each group’s respective consumption pattern says less about the group than does other definitions (e.g. one emphasising the group’s common interests and preferences), hence my shunning the consumer-group definition.

I am not going to comment on my own situation, but suffice it to say that I know not of anyone who has bought a cd, or an audio file, for years. The same, increasingly, goes for films.
I think this is a very telling answer to my plea for you to dissuade from applying your own country’s state of affairs to other countrys’. But, while we are at it, show me the facts. A more moderate guess would be that it started among people from all across the globe.

Guybrush, I think you're completely missing my point, because you're not understanding that I'm talking about theoretical principles here. I'm talking about whether Marx was right, whether capital infuses everything, whether capitalism is a corrosive force, and working from there intellectually. If Marx wasn't right, then what is wrong with consumption of any kind?

A lot of people can be defined and redefined and labelled according to different preferences and consumption patterns. Ultimately, however, they have one thing in common: they are all consumers. Being a "hipster" is (to use a mathematical concept) a subset of being a consumer: many would argue, however, that being ALIVE is a subset of being a consumer, as a citizen in a first world free-market economy.

I find it funny how often you can try to take a moral high ground against others, Guybrush, when you then try to disavow the very theoretical or ideological framework that props up your values. How can you feel superior to hipsters if Marx wasn't right, and we aren't all consumers? But then again, even if Marx WAS right, we are ALL complicit. I don't think self-righteousness is intellectually useful, especially when it comes to understanding late capitalism.

I find it odd that someone who hates "generalization" so much see it so necessary to pigeonhole "hipsters" into some category where you judge their motivations for dressing, listening to music, etc. For someone so morally outraged by unfair categorizing and defining people by their choices in the market-place, you seem unusually committed to doing the very same thing to people you call "hipsters"--a group that, I'm beginning to feel, is defined by you in a much broader and more general way than my own. I happen to think that there are too many different subsets of "hipster" as a category to make it a useful descriptor of anyone. I would never give it a precise definition. That's just not useful, let alone possible.

Napster, the first peer-to-peer network to make international headlines and do enough piracy-inflicted damage to the industry that it warranted attention from lawmakers, was a program written and distributed by an American frat boy. You can easily google the history of open-sourcing and see that it has since its inception been heavily practiced in America. Why is it better not to buy CDs? I don't have a problem with people sharing files, but I don't think pirating music is some sort of bold political statement that should be applauded. What does pirating music accomplish in your mind?

 

[shudder]

Maybe I'm just totally thick, but it seems like what Guybrush was saying (at least in the last post) was simply that

1) there are others ways of describing hipsters, beyond their consumption patterns, and

2) he finds those ways more compelling, at least w/r/t hipsters.

I take it that (1) must be uncontroversial (there are many if not infinite ways of describing anything). As for (2), I guess that hinges on your commitment to the Marxian framework Nomad's been assuming. I don't see how moral high ground comes up here, at least not in this post (and I can't be bothered to look into his previous posts...)

As for file-sharing, I'm sure many countries have wonderful pedigrees.

 

[nomadologist]

Maybe I'm just totally thick, but it seems like what Guybrush was saying (at least in the last post) was simply that

1) there are others ways of describing hipsters, beyond their consumption patterns, and

2) he finds those ways more compelling, at least w/r/t hipsters.

I take it that (1) must be uncontroversial (there are many if not infinite ways of describing anything). As for (2), I guess that hinges on your commitment to the Marxian framework Nomad's been assuming. I don't see how moral high ground comes up here, at least not in this post (and I can't be bothered to look into his previous posts...)

As for file-sharing, I'm sure many countries have wonderful pedigrees.

Shudder, I gotta go so I'll be brief (also getting bored with the hipster discussion): I'm mostly referring to a set of points Guybrush has been bringing up for a while in different threads. My number one concern in even responding to them is that I find it funny that people need to so much to use hipster as a pejorative term. It just doesn't make sense to me to see hipsters as qualitatively (maybe they can sometimes quantitatively) "worse" in their consumption than anyone. When people fling that term around like it's some sort of insult, I can't help but see it as a form of self-righteousness. I'm also admittedly limiting my discussion of hipsters in this discussion of Reynolds' piece to their function as music fans *within a marketplace of goods and ideas*, not trying to "generalize" about anyone, not applying labels to people with flagrant disregard, just trying to understand what Reynolds means about "hipster metal." (BTW, watched some Sun O))) on youtube and I actually kind like it...)

Anyway, earlier today I was doing my Lazzarato reading and he wrote some really interesting stuff about "immaterial labor" and the "production of subjectivity." Read it here:

http://www.generation-online.org/c/fcimmateriallabour3.htm

Send me music Shudder if you have any--getting into hearing all you Dissensus people at work...

 

[DigitalDjigit]

Man, this thread certainly covered a lot of ground.

Nomadologist, what are you studying that you have to take all these weird classes?

 

[shudder]

haven't read it yet but this article/convo on hipster metal might be interesting:

http://www.decibelmagazine.com/features_detail.aspx?id=4912

it pretty much starts by saying that the much of the time when ppl use "hipster" it's kinda meaningless, and goes on to talk about subcultures, selling out, indie, etc.

 

[swears]

Harmony Korine was the original metal loving hipster wasn't he? There's some pretty heavy stuff on the Gummo soundtrack: Burzum, Eyehategod, Dragonaut, etc.

 

[mms]

Harmony Korine was the original metal loving hipster wasn't he? There's some pretty heavy stuff on the Gummo soundtrack: Burzum, Eyehategod, Dragonaut, etc.

sure, but i think that stuff being hip probably caught up, he's someone regarded as hip who used alot of that stuff to illustrate his film no?

russell haswell is a guy who's been championing all sorts of extreme music for the past 15 years or so, he sorted out the disobey nights pretty much, released stuff by merzbow, autechre, incapactants farmers manual and earth on his or records label for a while.

some classic stuff on that soundtrack tho. people forget the combined powers of post hardcore, that kind of dillinger escape plan math metal, death metal and the classicist tendencies of black metal all had some strange directions in the 90's.
Also this doom/stoner stuff, the main inspiration for sunn were earth, who's signing to grunge label sub pop was due to the fact that kurt cobain was in them once pretty much, i'm not saying sunn are not a product of metal as o'malley is a long standing journalist and supporter of death and black metal and was in a bunch of bands b4 sunn and a metal officinado, but the band that inspired the newer stuff were on a grunge label.
Anyway death were a great band, people forget about death, and the christ illusion new slayer is good.

 

[Guybrush]

I will have to make it brief (yep, it’s binge time again ); I promise to dissect Nomad’s arguments tomorrow (did I write that yesterday too?).

I'm mostly referring to a set of points Guybrush has been bringing up for a while in different threads.

For this quote to have any substance you will have to show us those remarks. In the meantime, it might me of some interest to look up how many times I have used the term ‘hipster’ outside the various semantic discussions (let alone used it depreciatory)—precious seldom, I’m confident.