The Rules Of The Game #1: Joining In

[koganbot]

Hurrah, I've been given a column (first one here: The Rules Of The Game #1: Joining In) at the Las Vegas Weekly website, where I can actually get paid to write stuff I've always wanted to write - to ask questions, basically, and to intellectualize to my heart's content. The column runs every Thursday* with a brief minicolumn update on Mondays. I welcome your commentary: in fact, will need it, since my hope for the Monday minicolumns is that at least some of them will have me addressing people's comments about the previous Thursday's column.

*The especially sharp-eyed among you will notice that today is Friday, not Thursday. The Las Vegas Weekly is revamping its website and going through something of a shakedown cruise, so things don't always go up in a timely fashion. Some future Thursdays may also end up as Fridays, and some Mondays will be Tuesdays.

EDIT: Here are links to all but three of my other Rules Of The Game columns (LVW's search results for "Rules of the Game"). Links for the other three (which for some reason didn't get "Rules Of The Game" in their titles), are here: #4, #5, and #8.

UPDATE: I've got all the links here now:

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/179531.html

Comments

[koganbot]

even when people like similar things, it's often for very different reasons

Actually, this points up what I think is the major problem with the way I worded my question, "How is it that individual visceral responses align - or realign - so that members of the same social group respond similarly to music?" In fact, the visceral responses don't have to align; all they need do is bring about the same result: We all like metal! But the reason I needed the phrase "visceral response" was to emphasize that the individuals were liking metal for apparently internal reasons (liking the sound, being moved by the rhythm), that they weren't liking the music just so that they could all like the same thing, which is simply too weak a reason to like something, to feel the music. And it's interesting that I use the phrase "visceral response" to encapsulate a whole bunch of reasons including "I'm taken intellectually and emotionally by the lyrics" and "I'm fascinated by the music's form." But the brain is part of the body, and the word "visceral" really does serve my purposes.

I don't know if "chaos" and "complexity" are the only relevant words (Duncan Watts calls his field "the science of networks), but my (limited) understanding is that the people interested in such theories are also interested in how complexity can sometimes produce simple results - e.g., everyone in our group likes metal, even though what causes each individual to like metal is varied and complex.

I'm bringing up the random element to counter my generally admirable tendency to give deep social and psychological reasons for the appeal of popular music and explain why this appeals to lots of people now, and that doesn't. Those social and psychological reasons are powerful, and I intend to explore how they exert their subterranean pull. But we need to remind ourselves that there really is an element of chance, e.g., in the fact that three metal fans happened to get seat assignments near one another.

Let's suppose that once our three youngsters discover their common liking for metal, and under each other's influence expand and deepen their knowledge and love of the music, they come to the attention of other kids, some of whom also like metal and so gravitate towards these three. So in effect these three have become the opinion leaders. But this isn't necessarily owing to any leadership quality in the three, but just to there being three of them and their constituting a noticeable clump.

And if this were happening in real life, a followup questions would be: what happens to these kids' other tastes? Do the kids become interested in the nonmetal music that their metal friends like, developing broad, eclectic tastes? Or do the other musics get shunted aside, an individual kid spending more time on metal and less on his other (former?) likes? This could go either way, but I can see how the latter can happen, my own behavior on the teenpop thread being an example: I started it in January 2006 mainly so I could have somewhere to talk about Ashlee and Lindsay and Kelly (I was already talking about them on the country thread, for lack of a better place), and maybe Marion and Marit if they were to resurface (and man, they did). But as things developed I ended up exploring a whole bunch of other performers, some really good, some not; but overall, since I was examining them more deeply, I got a greater appreciation of that musical area as a whole, hence a deeper liking of the performers, which reinforced my interest. And the time spent on teenpop did take away from crunk and hyphy and country. And - going back to our hypothetical classroom - I can imagine some metal nonfans disparaging the metal that our metalheads like; and if some of these metal nonfans are fans of Eagles-style country, I can imagine the metal fan who also likes the Eagles to start veering away from that music. Not that the Eagles would suddenly sound bad to him, but he might feel a sourness towards that type of music, so no longer explore it as much.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

There is lots more than that causing the taste for the Eagles to shrink. He's not getting the reinforcement from his friends; he is not getting the discourse, which is both an extra dimension of enjoyment for metal and a way to get more out of the music itself, by understanding it better; he is probably getting direct discouragement from the metalheads who think the Eagles are pussies, and peer pressure (to like the same things, to dislike the same things, to not be a pussy) may not be a reason to like or dislike something on its own, but it is surely a contributing factor; he is not sharing this with his friends, or getting them playing other country-AOR to round out his experience; when he is alone, there is more incentive to play the new metal album, to become expert in it, rather than to further explore his non-shared tastes; and yes, he thinks the Eagles fans he knows are twats, and doesn't want to be associated with them, and if liking the Eagles also means liking Garth Brooks or whatever, then maybe he would prefer to stay away from them; perhaps his parents or other relatives find the Eagles kind of pleasant, but hate the metal he plays, which is another good reason to play the metal - and to turn it up.

That's not exhaustive, but it's a decent start towards sufficient reason to lose interest in them, to look back on this foolish young taste (and this connects to Mark's Seven Ages point below) with a bit of embarrassed contempt. There are so many dimensions to this kind of thing.