Pretentious intellectual fuckers
 

Can suck sweaty rhino sack. Trendophobes make me retch.

i'm horribly sick, i can go to work and cough on them for you if you want.

Useful, AND a nice rack. Now that's a quality poster.

I'll help; I have strep throat.

let's roll.

Be sure to have Bon Jovi blaring in the background while you do it, please.

will jesus christ superstar be acceptable? i have no bon jovi.

being coughed on whilst listening to jc superstar is a dream we all must attain.

BITCHING!!!

+

=

Is that tattoo for real? It looks like a sticker.

i thought jon bon jovi was a sticker and the tatt was real, go figure

Awwww, what happened?

It was my impression that we were the "pretentious intellectual fuckers" that untold thousands of hapless rubes complained about.

Who needs them!

hey, I don't pretend to be an intellectual fucker, I am what I am. Which, happens to sometimes be an intellectual fucker.

Thanks for the qualifier.
I understand now.

Just a random rant. People who quiver in fear at the thought of liking music/art/films that isn't obscure or critically lauded. People who will admit to such things, but only with the disclaimer of them being 'guilty pleasures.' People who wear their artistic taste on their sleeves as some kind of badge of identification. People who will slam Ben Folds Five and in the same breath endorse Be Your Own Pet because the latter is on Infinity Cat and not yet plastered on the radio. People who casually drop their latest film noir viewings and translated novel readings into conversation, for no other reason (despite what they say) than to advertise that they, unlike you, are culturally rounded and capable of complex thought. People who line up like lemmings to watching foreign films at their local independent theater because, well, it's an indie film - by default, it's better than anything out at the multiplex! People who tolerated Drawing Restraint 9 because they lick Bjork's whiny Nordic asshole, but won't acknowledge that Aliens is one of the best films ever made.

One of the most blatant examples of this, in my cuntish opinion, is the "What are you listening to?" thread.

I would cut off my left tit if there were some way to prove that the majority of people post on that thread for any reason other than to self-importantly crow, "Look! Look what I'M listening to! It's a B-side! I bet YOU'VE never heard it! Did you know I was that obscure? Did you know I was into such hardcore experimentalism? Well, I am. And I bet you're not. I bet YOU don't own this album. Am I avant-garde? Am I? Am I?" Why else are you posting on that thread? Do you really give a good goddamn what I'm listening to? Of course not, you're listening to your own music. Do people typically respond to other people's posts on that thread? Of course not, because they're barely even reading them; they are far too concerned with posting their own brand of advertising.

People who don't realize that Sebastian Bach will own someone like Kathleen Hanna any day of the week because he loves, truly LOVES music, lives for the pure simplistic joy of rock and roll, and isn't using it as a vehicle for a political agenda, an image stamp, a competitive artistic edge, a personality billboard.

The name-droppers, media-haters, trendophobes, rabble-rousers, corporate-bashing, extreme-left, if-more-than-15-people-have-heard-of-that-band-I-can't-buy-their-album music connossieurs -

Contrary to what you must convince yourselves of on a daily basis in order to keep your fragile egos intact, it is YOU folks who are the woefully ignorant, not those supposed intellectual inferiors you turn your noses down at. So don your pricetags, kids, for you are the true sell-outs.

Are there unpretentious intellectuals?

I consider myself an intellectual because all my interests are in the arts, music, movies, books, and so on. But I don't think I'm pretentious. At least, I've never been accused of such.

I feel better now, don't you?

I hate random rant threads bitching and whining about things they don't like...looking down on all the prentious pions that don't get it. Talk about intellectual snobbery.

I find this thread rather pretentious and intellectual.

Fair enough - open forum, after all.

Now piss off and start your own rant thread.

i understand your grievance, and agree about the What Are You Listening To? thread, but the thing about arguements like that is that they seem to automatically discount the possibility that anyone would like weird music for what it is rather than what it isn't (i.e. not mainstream)

Completely agreed, which is why I said "a majority of the people." As with anything, there are exceptions, and one can usually discern true appreciation from the questionably motivated.

In other words, there are people (including on the board) who, in my opinion, are evidently genuine about their taste. There are a number of posters here who can be said to favor especially 'obscure' music, and among those, you can generally pinpoint the ones who hold those tastes out of pure personal preference rather than their liking of the image such a taste creates.

Welcome to the world.

how long before 98% of humainty is culled?

truncated, dude, you are on a sonic youth forum. sonic youth is a band that appeals to a very esoteric branch of music fans. hell, it is a band that appeals to a very fringe group in the general populace of indie/underground music fans, and this grop is a small part of the overall music fandom.

the cloistered attitudes that you expose are a result of the nature of our musical loves. I HATE top 40 music, I find it to be lowest common denominator music. I adore interesting underground acts, music that is at the forefront of innovation or passion or intensity or creativity.
that goes for pretty muchall sonic youth fans.

I am PROUD to dig and discover and network with like-minded fans in search of the next new music, new to my ears, It is a JOY to me.

some assholes seek to impress with their obscurity. Many do not. They just want to share the new weird stuff they ahve found, because it is likly that noone they know has heard them or even is interested in such music.

I much prefer a music snob to a racial snob, or a religious snob

that's a fucking weird thing to say

I accidentally walked into a PIF (pretentious intellectual fucker) clothes store today. It had barely anything in there, the walls were whitewashed, and there was a girl just standing by the door nodding. The shelves were made out of bad 'construction site' wood because that's really street and raw.

Minimalism can destroy entire families.

Trunky here have a kiss *mwah* you've now become my personal hero. Here have a cookie doubt it'll make much difference but hey.

Pretentious suggests pretence. Most intellectuals are too earnest. I'm getting to really dislike for myself, and for all the intellectuals I know, the constant back-footing and defence we have to provide. Obnoxious, arrogant, obsequious, obstreperant, contrarian, infelicitous, introverted, pedantic, bathetic, pathetic, onanistic, puritanical [etc] - there are all valid insults for intellectuals. I don't know a single one who is genuinely pretentious - I know plenty of fake intellectuals though, and that's merely tragic. Pretentious suggests the contrivance of an actor, whom, one assumes, would always sublate the cogniscence of their contrivance.


I'm not terribly fond of this sentiment. Ideally (and all musical arguments are essentially an exchange/ battle of idealisms) the musical dialogue would not be conflated with the economic dialogue. Not a possibility at present (or ever, so long as Capitalism reigns). I'm interested in an aesthetics which attempts (and necessarily fails) to trangress the economic [cf Adornian, Marxist, Hegelian] dialogue which serves merely to encourage the 'judge first lest ye' be judged last'. The top 40 is not a priori a bad thing. Its manifestations, in terms of strict economics, are not immediately better or worse. I honestly believe the Carpenters to be a better band than most, if not all, indie bands of the last 40 years. I love Sonic Youth because they are pop, not because they are experimental (they're really not).

Endless over-sub-conflation of ridiculous dialogues - yes, I entirely agree with Trunky-wunky.

I'm probably clarifying unnecessarily here, but Glice makes an important distinction between intellectuals by definition, and their imposters, which negate said definition. A distinction I failed to make. I am certainly not saying that all purported 'intellectuals' are by default pretentious.

And Rob, I'm not disagreeing with your viewpoint either - the point resides in the inherent difference between those who are genuinely curious about/have an interest in pioneering new aesthetic frontiers, so to speak, and those who have simply adopted a policy of doing so for egocentric masturbation.

It's akin to the habit of lauding (as Glice pointed out) writers like Kundera or Gogol (that's right, I've grown to detest that silly prick), neglecting their utter lack of worthiness save for enthusiastic and long-winded PR by canonesque committees, and summarily dismissing infinitely better writers for their popularity, possession of a monosyllabic last name, whatever half-assed anti-mainstream reason they can regurgitate.

That's merely an example. I'm too pissy to articulate myself better. But I think the attitude I speak of can best be summed up by:

"Too many people like that. Therefore, it must be easily accessible. Therefore, it must be suited to those of average intelligence, and fail to challenge the intellectually superior. Therefore, I shall dismiss it, to show that I, of course, rise above the throngs of the mediocre. I'm so avant-garde."

Assbags.

I am speaking of the general population; this is not limited to the SY board. In speaking of the board, I am not asserting that EVERY poster falls into the deplorable category of the Pretentious Intellectual Fuck; however, there are a good many that do. That is merely my opinion, and a presumptuous one at that, but it is what it is.

My slsk ID is minusthemetric. I'm not sure if my porn is in my shared folder. I have also deleted porn that could potentially have gotten me arrested (i.e. Catholic schoolgirl/priest). I have also renamed some porn in order to disguise it as a more innocent file. So, if you find a file named "4," amongst others more accurately named, that's a winner.

Enjoy.

I have written extensively, many many times in the real world on the mis-use of the term avant-garde. It's far to long-winded to go into here, but I don't think there's a problem with the avant-garde, or the pugilistic pop: the pretence lies inbetween. My band generally go down very badly with post-rock crowds for being too 'weird for weird's sake'. Brickies, office menials and general normal people like it. Afficionados of the more esoteric, and even the genuinely avant-garde, seem to like it. It's the middle-grounders, the pseuds that have the problems. I understand the Fall have a similar fanbase, for the same reasons (ha!).

I find i very very easy to differentiate between those who are in it for the exploration, for the joy of finding something new, yes, even if that includes finding something new before others do, and those that like to have people think they are of that ilk.
it is like those that are religious and devout as oppsoe dto those that want everyone to KNOW they are religious and devout.

iwillalwayshatethesmashingpumpkins

name names, name names!

He he....I love so much music that you guys all hate.

Well, if I've got the balls to rant, I suppose I have to have them to name names, eh?

*Prepares to hang herself*

I get this vibe from:

Atari
!@#$%!
chabib

Now there's forum suicide if I've ever seen it!