People will cluster into cultural "regions" based not on physical proximity but on mutual attitudes

[koganbot]

At the very end of my Why Music Sucks broadside of February 1987 I wrote a paragraph that in retrospect might seem supernaturally prophetic. Whereas now, such a paragraph, with a few of the words changed, would be the common, received wisdom. However, despite almost every sentence of it being right, I think it's fundamentally wrong. But see for yourself:

A prediction: Music will (continue to) become more local, regional, less mass media. But by "local" I don't mean tied to a physical locale; by "regional" I don't mean a physical place. The locales will be mental. Due to the ever-increasing availability of cheap recording, cheap photo-copying, cheap communication, people will communicate easily with other people all over the country and all over the world. Without going through the mass media. People will cluster into cultural "regions" based not on physical proximity but on mutual attitudes, tastes, hobbies, beliefs, etc. It's already happening; indie-cassette-fanzine culture is one example; the Moral Majority, I think, may be another. I'm sure there will be more. THIS MENTAL REGIONALIZATION IS NOT NECESSARILY A GOOD THING. IT MIGHT BE HORRIBLE. A couple hundred years ago many people were tied to locales, only seeing people from the area, the nearest village. This could have been very constricting; one only got to deal with a small group of people, most of whom had the same religion, values, etc. Nonetheless, a person would have to deal, to some extent, with ALL the people in the locale. Now, one is likely to live very near people with whom one has little in common. But, thanks to modern communication technology, networking, all that shit, one can avoid dealing with these people. Especially once one has gotten out of high school. Or one can deal with them superficially day-to-day if one has to on the job but then go home to a supportive people-like-me communications network for "real" interaction. This may be the true meaning of indie-cassette-'zine culture. This is why I can't accept its self-justifications, its self-congratulation. Even though I'm part of it, perhaps need it.

[This paragraph was something of an elaboration on a more interesting passage I'd written the previous year for an aborted book on punk rock: "It is a social achievement that parents can't understand their kids' slang or that one child will become a punk and another a Mormon and a third will go into interior design (and discos and cocaine) and none will have much to say to the others. Each incomprehensibility is a kind of vengeance."]

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

It was fundamentally wrong because without that regionalization you never woulda met all these crazy people who comment on your LJ! Woo!

Anyway, I think to a great extent we still have to deal with those unlike us, not just in a professional or "official" context that can be cordoned off from the rest of our existence. Like, you still have hear music in the grocery store; you still might watch the news occasionally; you still might _______. And you can always seek out that opposition, or throw yourself into a conversation slightly out of your depth and learn to swim, but only if you're a somewhat adventurous person.

But then, if you aren't already a somewhat adventurous person, who's to say you'd really be all that willing to engage with people whom you disagreed with regardless of how much you "had" to do so? Just call 'em a witch, burn 'em, call it a day. (And even if we don't call for real witches, we often construct ones made of straw, which suggests a mass out there which we yearn to engage, even if we're too chickenshit to actually do the work. The impulse is still right there in the strawmen.)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

This also sort of assumes that different sections of our personal and public lives naturally overlap -- i.e. our music is our politics, our film taste is our food taste, our sneakers are our philosophies. And to some extent this is certainly true, but to just as important an extent it isn't true -- one issue with PBS as a Lonely Hearts network is that it limits what you can do with all of your leisure, all of your politics, all of the many facets of your life. But then you might still be an orthodontist as opposed to a choreographer, etc. etc. There are some mutual attitudes that simply don't mix in any meaningful way, and there are a ton of not necessarily mutually compatible (though not incompatible either) parts of our personality that we all carry around with us at any given time -- be it a love of Kuhn and a love of Aly and AJ, or a love of documentary film and a love of Grizzly Bear, or a love of Republican dogma and a love of alpaca farming. I think to some extent an attempt to bridge a few of these gaps may close mutual attitude gaps (right now I'd bet more educators than music critics I know would take what you say in your "classroom/hallway" discussions seriously), and to some extent it's a moot point. Why do I give a shit if the guy I talk stamp collection with is a right-wing nutjob, or a college radio station DJ?

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

Anyway, I think to a great extent we still have to deal with those unlike us, not just in a professional or "official" context that can be cordoned off from the rest of our existence. Like, you still have hear music in the grocery store; you still might watch the news occasionally; you still might _______.

Also, it's odd to assume that when people cluster into regions based on "mutual attitudes, tastes, hobbies, beliefs, etc.," they will cluster in such a way that they all share all of those things -- there's no reason why people with the same hobby would also hold the same beliefs or have the same tastes. I mean, we're all yammering on about music on the Internet, but we're not all yammering about the same music, and we're not all doing it for the same reasons. Even when you retire to your "supportive people-like-me network," you still have to encounter and deal with people who are unlike you.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I've always been pissed that S. Reynolds never really fought back on my terms during the Paris Wars because "what do I stand with if I stand with Paris?" is a question that deserves answering. Who actually listened to it, and how, and what did they think and feel about it? Who are these people with whom I seem to be identifying? (This is, again, why strawmen can be important, too -- I'm not convinced there IS a cogent audience for Paris, it's probably an incredibly diffuse and disparate one, but there's a perception of a "mass" of consumers who idolize her in a positive way. I argued at the time that "no one admits liking Paris Hilton without reservation," but I have no evidence for that, just as the haters had no evidence that anyone DID like her without reservation.)

[koganbot]

I like Paris Hilton's "Heartbeat" without reservation.

Well, it's possible that some Astrud Gilberto type could do it better, but the chance of Alexander, Steinberg, and Storch writing it for such a person or that person wanting or allowing it to be a Scott Storch production are pretty small.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was keen for a long time on the "it will be horrible" argument, and I'm starting to revise that, because it hasn't been horrible so far. But I'm not sure the threat of horribleness has receded entirely.

The mechanism of "I like X and you like X and then we get to explore everything else we like" works so long as the system is set up to encourage not discourage that exploration. Twitter works like that, USENET did back when it started, ILE and ILM did - but the initial split between ILE and ILM is an example of the counter-force: the exploration being discouraged because it's off-topic.

And definitely it seems to me some of web culture is pushing against the exploration, and sees the future in defining and refining comfort zones: whether the highly fragmented model of groups and fan pages that Facebook has, or the increasing use of algorithms for recommendations.

[koganbot]

I think that insularity ultimately loses, even if some individuals and groups can maintain their deep ignorance and isolation for a while. Threatening the insularity is the existence of weak links, casual friendships, minor acquaintances. My guess is that while the relationship to a casual acquaintance is not going to be one of deep understanding, such acquaintances will make it nearly impossible to avoid an acquaintance with - if not necessarily a great understanding of - a broad range of the culture. And my guess - or hope - is that enough understanding will seep through (someone will get his or her interest stirred by something distant) that insularity won't ultimately be able to maintain itself.

(There's a sociologist, Mark Granovetter, I've never read him, but he wrote a famous paper in 1973, "The strength of weak ties," that I'm guessing you heard of long before I did. A quick Google search doesn't get me the original article, but here's a follow-up he wrote a decade later that I think I'll bookmark.)