Absolutely nothing

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

K-punk appears to have declared war on us.

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Nope, still blocked at work.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

apart from his eternal attempt to second-guess, and miss by a mile because of his own weird projected psychosis, what 'popism' might be about, is there ever any point to any of his popism-centric articles?

[perfectputsch.livejournal.com]

to be fair, a lot of you in here do think you're cleverer than you really are for liking Avril Lavigne...

this is a problem i have with Popjustice, which is a good site but can sometimes go a bit up its own arse about hating any band with a guitar, which is just creating another silly criteria against which to judge music... where kids used to say "i only want to listen to bands who play their own instruments/write their own songs/are 4 real etc" now kids say "i only want to listen to bands who have been manufactured especially for my enjoyment" as a way of railing against daddy's punk records.

the fear of accidentally agreeing with a 50 year old radio 2 listener is as ridiculous as the fear a 14 year old goth has of liking anything in the top 40. alright so no one wants to be pushed into liking this or that music but you can like what you like and stand up for it without making big declamatory statements of "i hate indie" or "i hate real music".

cant you?

maybe you cant on the internet. but back in the real world i find that my mates and i all like music because we like it, and this popist and rockist shit is reserved for people who dont really live in the real world much of the time. personally i like both the Libertines and the Sugababes and thats my radical big YOOF statement, and that of most of the people i know, who cant be fucked with being told what to listen to by popists or rockists.

i suppose when i joined this community i didnt realise "poptomists" meant popists, not just people who kind of liked pop music...hum.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

"The once-challenging claim that for certain listeners, the (likes of) Backstreet Boys could have been as potent as (the likes of) Nirvana has been passive-nihilistically reversed"

this argument cropped up on ILX loads too, idiots like jess and deej and that terminally unpleasant Alex in Baltimore person all made it on the Hilarity Duff carcrash thread. are they seriously saying that popism has won to the extent that you'd be taken seriously among not even critics but the general public if you casually opined that Backstreet Boys or Hilarity Duff were superior to Nirvana? seriously? I mean...if so they must go out even less than I thought.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

also, can we unlock this so he can see it please? the main thing that annoys me is his reluctance to converse about any of this, just posting rants, he mayaswell be shouting at his bedsit wall...

Argumental flaws, dissected

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Blimey, reading that is like wading through treacle. Mr Punk appears to be doing the sort of sums where 2+2="dude where's my scapegoat" instead of 4. Plastering over his points with hand-waving about Blair or public school gives me the impression he's not at all confident in his points and doesn't really understand what we're on about. If this thread is unlocked I'd be interested to hear his responses to the following:

Example 1: "Debating the merits or otherwise of a boring heiress" - surely the fact that there IS a debate invalidates the 'boring' adjective? A minor gripe but this is the essence of what Frank's writing, encouraging debate and finding the interesting points in canonically-overlooked (or otherwise) topics.

Example 2: "The problem is the idea that saying this is in some way news in 2007" - Frank's column is based on his thoughts and opinions. Was this ever claimed as news? The Backstreet Boys may not be new, but Frank/Nathan's thoughts on the matter were, if not new, then processed into a new opinion?

Example 3: "motivating factor with British popists is, overwhelmingly, class, with Americans it might be age" - Where the did this come from? On what is he basing the class/age assumption?

Example 4: "they don’t seem to realise that, if there is an establishment, it is them" - why is this a problem? Are establishment residents incapable of independent thought?

Example 5: "The old high culture disdain for pop cultural objects is retained; what is destroyed is the notion that there is anything more valuable than those objects." - I am struggling to grasp the point of this paragraph. Are us poptimists disdaining of high culture or not? Do we assign greater value to lower culture, or vice versa? The point evolves halfway through into something different, I would like K Punk to expand on what exactly he's getting at here.

I could go on but I'm late for dinner.

[mooxyjoo.livejournal.com]

golly.

[http://users.livejournal.com/xyzzzz__/]

KP attacks the titling of Kogan's piece "Paris is our Vietnam" but in the end calls us to choose "our weapons" oh my!

Some interesting intersection with stuff from Penman and Morley...

Read "Words and Music" a long while ago but surely the point, insofar as it had a central point, ws to re-establish the listening of his youth as in listening and having a go at and considering it all (not that I ever do enough of this). He likes Penman but he has yet to respond to Penman's attack of Simon's (and, by extension, KP's) over-use of Hauntology (which is proving to be a master key to every single LP he has ever liked and will like until his dying day, oh "the poverty of theory"), or of what I suspect the fact that Penman would defend Paris Hilton, or at least defend PH against the ppl that attacked her, found her worthless. In fact I remember a great post of his where he did that.

There ws a hilarious line on a prev post of his that basically placed most of the ILM crowd in the same 'establishment' box as well (he probably read the K-punk thread on ilx).

I've been actually enjoying KP, and the back-and-forth between him and his (made up?) readers on class, etc.

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

Ha, any guesses on which Kelly Clarkson post he couldn't get to the end of?

Everything I have to say about this is totally unhelpful, but man oh man.

[epicharmus.livejournal.com]

You know, I have to admit that when British people start talking about class, education and their attendant shames, my brain kinda turns off. I don't really know how else to put this, or if I'm making sense, but discussion about these subjects seem like a mere hobby -- sort of like putting ships in bottles or collecting Beanie Babies, only without their real-world relevance. They only get talked about because everyone knows they don't really matter.

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

Let's stop choosing sides.
I like Slayer.