Slashdot Mirror
The Internet — Enabler of Guilty Pleasures
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "'Sure, the Internet has revolutionized the spread of information and all that high-minded stuff, but its combination of reach and anonymity also makes it the greatest enabler of guilty pleasures ever invented,' Jason Fry writes in the Wall Street Journal. 'Indulgence is just a click away, and nobody needs to know, except you and some server somewhere.' For example: Fry, a rock snob, has a double secret life as a pop-music fan (secret no more, of course). From the article: 'If your secret love of "Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)" has caused it to creep into your iTunes list of 25 most-played songs, a simple right-click will let you reset the play count. If you want to hear Fall Out Boy, but would rather do so in secret, you can command Last.fm to ignore that the song was played — or delete it from your charts if you forget. Viewed from the standpoint of cool logic, this behavior is at least mildly insane. But who needs things that remind us of who we really are, as opposed to how we want others to see us — or how we'd like to see ourselves?'"
I caught myself watching MTV's "Wanna come in" few minutes ago and gave myself a slap.
Res publica non dominetur
FRom TFA:
Given such freedom, hipsters can let their inner dork out for a romp, extolling the virtues of the Arcade Fire by night and retreating to their headphones by day for a Hanson or Boston fix.
I think that Boston and Hanson are two totally separate things. Boston can be filed quickly under Classic Rock, but any god fearing man who listens to hanson even behind closed doors, in my book, might need a psychiatric evalutation.
If by "guilty pleasures" you mean jacking it to man-on-man pornos while refreshing slashdot in another tab, well ALL ABOARD THE SLASHDOT EXPRESS!
How does any of the write-up make sense? If I wanted to listen to New Kids on the Block without letting my Metallica friends know, I'd just go out and buy the tape and hide it in a different place than my regular tapes. The only person who'd know is me and the record store guy, and he cares less than some server somewhere since he probably doesn't keep records of every customer and every tape they bought. Whereas now, who cares if you could reset the play counter? Your friends are still gonna know if you have an N'Sync album on your iTunes because it's all there on the list.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
yes, it's revolutionized the spread of information, BUT
BUT! it's become the greatest enabler of pleasures ever invented.
horrible.
everybody get back to your miserable farmwork!
True enough..... I caught myself tapping my toes to Nickleback's "Savin' Me" until I saw....
BSG Season 3 promo
Some blogger far more witty than I commented that "The only show that could make them sound -good-". That's now my excuse. Yes, that's it.
First off, people who care that much about what others think about their taste in music (or food, clothes, whatever) are in need of serious psychological help. If you don't have the self-confidence to like what you like, and the hell with the rest of the world, you are (in my book) suffering the deepest kind of herd mentality that deserves disdain at every level.
But more to the point, who in the world has other people looking at their iTunes playlist? If someone is looking at my PC and browsing my iTunes library, I suspect that they probably know me well enough to know of my love of 50's car songs (Jan and Dean & The Beach Boys) and penchant for listening to Weird Al's Starwars songs.
I have to ask what type of paranoid thinks that the whole world is trying to ferret out their listening habits...
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Hmm...is this song from the soundtrack of Brokeback Mountain?
No wonder he wanted to hide that one....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I think they put it best in Clerks 2:
"What's the point of having an internet connection if you're not using it to look up weird fucked up pictures of dirty sex you'd never have yourself?"
Summation 2
Wow and I suppose the gas stations I go to that sell porn, booze, and have poker machines don't enable guilty pleasures. When all else fails, use the internet to make yourself look better WSJ.
'Indulgence is just a click away, and nobody needs to know, except you and some server somewhere.'
;)
Tell that to those AOL users.
Argh.
The first thing that came to mind when I saw the title of this article was pornography, of the general and more dubious types. I was surprised to find no mention in the article. Under the same context as the music references in the article, is there a danger in making stuff like child pornography and beastiality readily available to anyone who knows where to look? Or does that fall into the "they were fucked up to begin with" category that we already apply to subjects such as violence in videogames?
A B A C A B B
pr0n, and flaming people as an Anonymous Coward - chief guilty pleasures of most slashdotters (of course I'd never do the latter). In all seriousness though, I'm not sure what the point of that article is. As the author hints at, the "social" aspects of sites like last.fm actually make it harder to keep your musical tastes secret, and we regularly discuss here how all these "social networking" sites in general make information about people more public.
So actually it seems to me that the opposite is true, the internet makes it harder to keep your guilty pleasures secret. Reductio ad absurdum, before the net, sure the guy in the shop might know you bought a Britney album, but the rest of the world would have no chance of finding out. With the net, however, you have to try to hide it.
Oh no... it's the future.
(Family Guy reference in case you didn't know)
Peter Griffin - If you could have any woman in the world, who would it be?
Quagmire - Taylor Hanson.
Joe Swanson - Taylor Hanson is a guy.
[Pause]
Quagmire - [Laughs] You guys are yankin' me. "Hey, let's put one over on old Quagmire."
Peter - No, he's actually a guy, Quagmire.
Quagmire - What? That's insane. That's impossible.
[Pause]
Quagmire - Oh god. Oh my god. I've got all these magazines. Oh god.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You wouldn't want anyone to know if you're into this.
For Porn!
Now excuse me while I wipe my cache of slashdot pages and cookies, don't want my friends finding out...
*cries*
Except Facebook, of course. Your secret life will be woefully exposed in blow-by-blow detail, there!
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
The only person who'd know is me and the record store guy, and he cares less than some server somewhere since he probably doesn't keep records of every customer and every tape they bought.
I have this thing called a brain which it was in my interest to keep full of records which records/tapes you bought, since I wanted to be sure you bought the next N'Sync album, from me.
Just so you know though, everyone who worked for me laughed at you as soon as you left the store.
KFG
Note the quote at the bottom of the page:
People humiliating a salami!
Are we having fun yet?
My website contains things like a guide to optimising animations on Linux rather than, say, a guide to breeding monkeys videotaping the results and raking in a fortune on selling the results because if I go for job interviews guess what one of the things they look at is?
Anything on the internet that has your real name on it is probably fair game, and because this is not limited to the internet we all self-censor all the time at home and at work. It's part of being an effective human being - if you always follow every impulse you have then no one would want to be around you. Part of the reason the internet has been so popular is because people *don't* have to put their real name to everything they do and can let out some of their being a jerk with few repercussions.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
i don't write for the WSJ, but i've always felt that if you like crap, there's no shame in it. why try to conform if you have to compromise what you actually feel? why lie to yourself? on last.fm, young man, there's a place you can go.
"Life is great; without it, you'd be dead." -Harmony Korine
Now that doesn't mean that I haven't let a friend of mine live down that he once said he really liked Hanson.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
idiot monkeys with nothing else to do but to sit behind their computer all day in their mom's basement jacking off to porn and the latest star wars novel (how many are there now, 10,000?) Everyone else enjoys the sun and gets laid.
The correct spelling is "Bestiality".
I'm not quite sure why, but it might have something to do with the first four letters of the word.
Oh wait - crap - that was supposed to be an 'anonymous guilty pleasure'...
Love sees no species.
Mine
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
While I went home and played StarCraft, messed with and tags, and trolls forums - nobody even knew I used a computer. For 3 or 4 years I did not tell anyone but a few friends whom I had to tell so we could play quake 2 together after school. I kept my social life together and nobody had an idea till my senior year when I started to not care.
At that point I knew I was going to college for Computer Science and I was missing classes for game tournaments. I thought, screw it, why keep this under wraps like an idiot. So after missing some classes for a computer game tournament (War3 and yes, I was nothing great) I just told everyone where I was going. They thought it was awesome, so I ran with it. I let my geek out and it was embraced by everyone without question.
People just did not care. They knew me already so they were well beyond the phase where you judge people. Some were interested while others were indifferent, but all in all, I got few jokes tossed my way, nothing more.
It goes to the point that people worry to much about what others think. While it is nice to be able to control what some people see/know about you, what you are really doing is allowing them to not know the real you. So what, you like Fall Out Boy, I might pull out a "You know how I know you're gay" joke, but it is not like I will "defriend" you or it.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
If I wanted to listen to New Kids on the Block without letting my Metallica friends know, I'd just go out and buy the tape and hide it in a different place than my regular tapes.
What is this "tape" you speak of? Are you into bondage? On the internet? With kids?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Our brave US Attorney General is trying to get congress to make ISP's track every website you visit so you can go back to avoiding things you don't want others to know about.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
TFA is rather amusing, but there's nothing in my *.m3u that shames me at all.
As a musician, I suffer from a form of ADD. It's called "getting bored with listening to the same old crap". It doesn't matter what kind of music it is, as long as there's passion behind the making of it, rather than a "contractual obligation" to make a recording
.So, if I've got a hankering for David Lindley, or the Kleptones, dammit that's what I'm gonna listen to. Sure, I've got tunes that I might get mocked for, but if you've got a narrow taste in music, I couldn't care less if you don't care for country.
Keen idea man lynches
Your guilty pleasures are a subpoena away from being public knowledge.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
The internet also allows people with insane viewpoints to find like-minded nutjobs, with which they can circle jerk about their common opinions all day long and never need to expose themselves to an alternate viewpoint or way of life.
Do you believe we never landed on the moon? Do you think horse-fucking is A-OK? Would you like to find someone to kill (with mutual consent) via erotic asphyxiation?... or worse, do you think sexually abusing little kids is acceptable behavior? No problem! The Internet has a message board or newsgroup just for you, that way you never need to think about your thoughts, actions, or obsessions.
There is no such thing as deviant behavior on the internet!
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Alchohol is the greasest enabler of guilty pleasures. The 'net just lets you do it semi-anonymously. Alchohol let's you do it and just blame the drink, and usually at the time you are doing it, you don't care who knows anyway, and you tend to be a lot less inhibited and willing to try even *more* 'guilty pleasures'
The new defense for the evils of all mankind:
"The internet made me do it."
Guess this means the devil can resume his duties as President of the United States now.
8==8 Bones 8==8
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5430343841 227974645
... A Warcraft animated musical.
"The Internet Is For Porn"
(very funny)
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
As long as I don't let anything slip, no one's ever gonna find out I'm jacking off to furry porn.
It's still easy. Tapes might be harder to come by but it is still possible to buy CDs...
Q: What do you call a dedicated internet appliance?
A: A Pornograph!
A goal is a dream with a deadline
If I wanted to listen to New Kids on the Block without letting my Metallica friends know, I'd just go out and buy the tape and hide it in a different place than my regular tapes.
What is this "tape" you speak of?
He's posting from 1986.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Actually, read some books on anthropology and you'll discover that it's more common and pervasive than you'd think. It's, in fact, so pervasive, that any poll asking people anything about themselves will basically get a bunch of more socially-acceptable lies, rather than the truth.
Actually, let me rephrase that: it's also not about consciously deciding to tell a lie, or actually being paranoid that someone will rummage through your computer. It's that humans have their own ideal of "what I _should_ be like", and from there use selective confirmation to "filter" the real "I" into fitting that ideal. It's not even as much for the benefit of others, as for one's own benefit. People need to believe that they're, basically, better than they really are.
If you will, it's sorta how every good Christian believes that someone else will go to Hell, but noone believes that he'll personally go there. If someone defines himself as a good Christian, he will distort his perception and memories to see himself actually fitting that ideal. He'll remember the time when he did something good and in line with God's commandments, but conveniently forget the times when he did nasty stuff that goes right against those commandments.
And I'm not just picking on Christians there, as the same applies to everyone and everything else. Good citizen, upstanding pillar of the community, patriot, charitable, top-notch computer expert, l33t h4xxx0r, teen rebel, good parent, whatever. If you define yourself as X, you'll distort your perception and memory to see yourself fitting the X ideal more than you actually do.
And, just for your entertainment or enlightenment (whichever you choose), here are some RL examples picked by anthropologists:
E.g., when asked to define themeselves, most members of a tribal community all claimed to be hunters and warriors. In reality, they had in the meantime turned mostly into peaceful agricultors. (Civilization can creep up on someone like that.) Extremely had actually used a weapon in years, or even owned one any more. But their culture was so biased towards hunters/warriors, that everyone basically kept viewing themselves as one even long past the point where it had become a lie.
E.g., a community defined itself as a shiny-happy model of cooperation where people help each other all the time, even help each other build a house and work together in the fields and everything. And everyone would cheefully tell you that they're still like that, and help each other all the time. The only problem is that the last time anyone helped another build a house was IIRC in the 50's, and they weren't helping each other work the fields any more either. But somehow kept believing that they do.
E.g., during a crisis where meat prices went up, they polled the people in some communities about what will they do. And everyone said basically "screw this, I'm not paying this much. I'll eat less meat until prices come back down to normal." The problem? According to both the sales data _and_ sifting through people's thrash to see what packaging they're throwing away (yes, they actually did that), people were buying _more_ meat than before. Go figure.
It may seem illogical to you (and maybe even is), but that's what humans do and how human society functions. In other words, welcome to the real world.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"But who needs things that remind us of who we really are, as opposed to how we want others to see us"
I just don't understand the mindset where those two things are drastically different. Sure, there are things about myself that I keep private, but I've never been overly concerned about others' opinions.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Tools > Clear Private Data (Ctrl + Shift + Del)
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
The article is about how the internet enables "guilty pleasures". I believe the author is using the term "pop music" as a euphemism for porn.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Does that require that you have some extension installed? Or is it specific to the Linux version?
I'm using FF 1.0.7 on Windows (woe is me) and that option doesn't exist in the Tools menu, nor does that key combination do anything.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Melon with a hole in it, heated in the microwave.
Dustbuster with corner attachment.
I didn't understand the question!
Blar.
It's the stuff in my head. Two weeks ago, I went to the mens room at the movie theater, and the Muzak got a disco-era BeeGees song stuck in my head for four days.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
They say laws make honest people honest. That goes for your public reputation too.
Lack of anonymity is a chilling effect on human behavior - it encourages conformance to social and legal norms.
If you think you can do {insert pleasure here} and get away with it without any of your friends or the law finding out, you may feel free to do it.
Have friends who think alchohol is the drink of the devil? I bet you don't let them see your liquer cabinet. Your boss thinks gambling is a sin? I bet there's no football pool in your office. Live in a country that outlaws child porn and plans to track web usage? Bet you don't surf for it without taking precautions.
Beside, this tape was for my sister.
Seriously, how much of a wuss are you that you can't fess up to what you listen to, or silly sites you go to? My iTunes top 25 is probably embarassing as hell, but I don't care.
Now, if TFA was focused on ministers that surf hotjapanesetenticlerape.co.jp every night, that would be a different story.
I don't have an anger problem, I have an idiot problem
This is really only a problem if you define your self-image/worth by what others think about you (which we all do to some extent). Unless you hang out with a bunch of 13 year olds, most people will not ostracize you just because you like something that is not a mutual interest. If you are not being yourself, then you are clone; a "poser," if you will.
All of this hinges on the fact that your interest is morally/socially/legally acceptable.
Why should we always have to be so fake? It's insane. If we can't even admit to our friends what music we listen to, I think there's something wrong that has nothing to do with the internet being involved or not.
Example from my own life: Most of my friends listen to metal, some of them to old-school hip hop, with random bits of jazz, world music and electronica thrown in in some cases. Basically things which don't get in the mainstream charts all that much (or only in watered down form), and carry certain associations of snobbism with them. Now, although I enjoy most of these styles of music myself and listen to them once in a while, I also listen to lots of stuff a lot of people would automatically turn their nose up at because they'd consider it so extremely mainstream. For example, I'm a reasonably big fan of Phil Collins.
But tell me - why should I be hiding that? When I like something, I like something. Why should I be having hour-long conversations about the virtues of metal and jazz when I'm among people and only be listening to my copy of Face Value secretly?
All my friends are roughly aware of what music I listen to, the bits they approve of as well as the bits they don't. And you know what? Although they largely detest Phil Collins, I still get respect from them, just for being the person I am, doing the things I do, saying the things I say, treating people the way I do. MY FRIENDS JUDGE ME ON THE BASIS OF WHAT SORT OF PERSON I AM, AND NOT ON THE BASIS OF HOW HIP I AM AND HOW ALTERNATIVE THE MUSIC I LISTEN TO IS.
That doesn't just go for friends - I don't try to hide myself before people I've only just met, either. Because frankly, people that would only be interested in me as a person if I listened to The Mars Volta but not if I listen to Genesis are not the sort of people I want to be around.
End of rant.
Basilisk Digital
I show off my guilty pleasures. There's nothing funner than driving down around the mall looking for a parking space blasting "Mmmmm Bop" or "Safety Dance" as loud as possible. All the lil "I'm so emo. I'm going to go buy some black clothes" teenagers just look at you like WTF? It's hilarious.
Freedom is a state of mind. A mind is a state of being. Stay the fuck out of my mind and my being. - Corporate Avenger
The only person who'd know is me and the record store guy, and he cares less than some server somewhere
Sure, now your non free software vendors know you better than you know yourself. That's one of the reasons I don't use non free software. When Fry pushes the counter reset, Apple takes note that something bothered you about yourself. What books I read, where I go on the internet and what I read there, how much I paid in taxes, all of these things I'd rather keep to myself.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If that's the most disturbing thing that happens in your local theater's men's room, then things have really changed since I last went to the movies.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
I don't care who knows. That was incredible. Camp, yes, but beautiful for what it was. I loved those dancing icons in the background. Stil, it was missing something, or it was too long. It started off good, but it needs to turn it up to 11 to give it that extra kick. Let me know if you find any more of those.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
"Farmwork"? Kinky....
-
Are you still in high school? I hope so, because having hidden tastes that you are ashamed of is pathetic. Who cares what the hell you like to listen to. They don't have to listen to it so screw them and anyone else that wants to judge you for such petty matters.
If you are a metallica fan and like new kids on the block and are openly admitting it, that's an odd choice I must say, but more than likely if your friends are your friends they might make jab smart ass remarks from time to time, but they aren't going to banish you from their ranks. And if they would, they can screw off anyway.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
Do you believe we never landed on the moon? Do you think horse-fucking is A-OK? Would you like to find someone to kill (with mutual consent) via erotic asphyxiation?... or worse, do you think sexually abusing little kids is acceptable behavior? No problem!
You forgot money laundering and drug dealing, but the rest of the things you think about are interesting. Who put those ideas into your head? What is a circle jerk? What does this really have to do with an electronic network?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Those are great. Don't make fun of me? While they are doing that? Hillarious. And No, I really think its their problem that this happend. Let's go dutch! Do you think people would undestand me If I did that in Japan?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Here's the real poll /. will never ask:
"How many times a day do you rub one out to internet pr0n?"
> pr0n, and flaming people as an Anonymous Coward - chief guilty pleasures of most slashdotters (of course I'd never do the latter).
You suck!
(Sorry, I just had to!)
I was just making an example and relating the story summary to around 15 years ago when those bands were both popular. The summary makes a point of people being ashamed of what they're listening to, and I ran with that concept.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
When I grew up, everyone listened to either punk and metal, or hippie music and reggae, and not too much overlap between the groups. There were several people who listened to other things, but we all worked at a radio station, listened to each other's shows, but for the most part music was segregated by who you hung out with. Sure there was "fitting in" and such that other comments talk about but for the most part, music was homogeonous.
Napster rocked my world. I got into raver music--something I halfheartedly got into while I was at the radio station, but not like now. Bands like Aqua, Toybox, Captain Jack were fun! Napster rocked my world further! Turkish pop bands! Dutch rap bands! Gabber! Rai! Reggaeton! Klezmer! Gamelan! Worlds of music I had never heard of!
It's not just that the internet allows anonymity in what you are checking out at three in the morning. It lets you privately check out new ideas, and not deal with someone looking at you funny because you are merely curious. A Metallica fan can download the NKOTB albums and it's not the same investment as it would have been to explore before the world of downloadable music. If you don't like it, delete it, if you change your mind, it'll be out there on the internet somewhere again.
I guess what I'm saying is that it is not just "guilty pleasures" to listen to music that other people around you don't listen to. It is also the accessibility of music. I had pretty much stopped listening to music before Napster came around--it didn't mean anything to me.
Yes, yes, I know Napster is no longer that Napster and it has been replaced by Kazaa, Gnutella, eMule, etc, and it opens up people to lawsuits from the RIAA now, but kids still swap mp3 collections like they used to make cassette tapes for each other, and there is a wealth of freely-downloadable music (see irate.sf.net) for people to listen to in all genres. And when it only takes a click to listen to a new song, why not? It's not the $15 CD or $10 tape that it used to be! Why (and for many people, where) would I buy a fado tape or CD by some artist I've never heard of, and how do I know I will like it? But now with a little googling I can listen to fado and decide if it's awesome or not with little investment.
And I only feel guilty when depriving poor starving artists of some income.
>The Internet -- Enabler of Guilty Pleasures
Guilty pleasures?? On the internet?????
On behalf of myself and everybody else who has only used the internet for e-mail and the occational trip to Mapquest, I thank you for bringing this to my attention.
>If you will, it's sorta how every good Christian
...
>believes that someone else will go to Hell, but
>noone believes that he'll personally go there.
Slightly OT, but no. A good Christian believes that
he does indeed *fully deserve* to go to hell (as do all
sinful, fallen men, like himself), but through the
miracle of God's grace in Christ he will not.
But more interestingly to most, probably, is to ponder this phenomenon you describe. People do indeed feel that there is a standard to be lived up to. People are indeed troubled if they don't see themselves living up to it. People do indeed feel as though they are being watched and judged from without, even when they are apparently not.
So, why is that? Maybe this Christian thing is worth looking into after all
... "Bachman", "Turner", "Overdrive".
You ain't seen nothing yet. Great mate.
Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules.
Gay moderators speak for yourselves please, and do not mod up comments written entirely in bold text because that's just rude.
Guano: Colonel! Colonel, I must know what you think has been going on here!
Colonel: You wanna know what I think?
Colonel: I think you're some kind of deviated prevert. And I think General Ripper found out about your preversion, and that you were organizing some kind of mutiny of preverts.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
I sing along to Meat Loaf's "Bat Out of Hell" album when I'm doing circuit layout!
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
I think I heard that Q-Link first really got rolling on the Commodore 64/128. Would that be the dawn of internet guilty pleasures, with the lovely text files out there?
New
Ready.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Only a New Kids on the Block fan would still be buying tapes...
My lack of God, it's Trotsky!
Legendary guitar great Richard Thompson has done covers of "Oops!". If you don't want to be caught listening to Brittany, you can download a free copy via Thompson's site.
Oh please. Our economy and culture are built on the assumption that people care about what others think. There are a zillion words for it: fashion, trends, branding, making a statement, memes, peer pressure...
Not that I'm endorsing all the cultural trends that strike me as pointless and lemminglike. But I'm not arrogant enough about my own lifestyle to label those who don't follow it as "in need of serious psychological help". Nor do I suffer the illusion, as you apparently do, that I'm totally indifferent to how I appear to others. Nobody who belongs to a social species can make that claim.
Yes and no. The point is that everyoe basically has a different standard and judges himself. There is no one standard that everyone strives for. Some people want to be a teenage rebel, some people want to be a l33t h4ck3r, some people want to be a warrior, some people want to be an insidious grey eminence, etc. Heck, some even strive to be a perfect psychopathic asshole. Each one tries to be something different.
Heck, TFA presents someone who, basically, wants to be a "rock fan". It has nothing to do with religion or morals or whatever. He just wants to define himself as strongly biased towards rock music. God knows why, but he does. And ends up doing all sorts of silly tricks, like resetting the play count, to maintain that illusion for himself.
Umm, nope, that wasn't really the point. Most people basically watch and judge themselves.
That may well be, but that's completely irrelevant to the point here. Unless you're trying to tell me that Christianity is why that guy defined himself as a "rock fan". But I don't remember the Bible saying anything along the lines of "thou shalt buy all Black Sabbath records", really.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
This song is from a quirky musical called "Avenue Q." If you can, check out the entire soundtrack (or, better yet, go to new york to see the show) - the music is good and some of the lyrics are hilarious.
It starts that way - not worrying so much about what you listen to any more. Then you're not fixing your hair before you leave the house. Then you start leaving the house in track suit pants instead of jeans, and not bothering to find a clean shirt.
It's called growing up.
We've got "guilty pleasure" and "Internet" in the summary, and the examples end up being about music artists he's embarrassed to admit to listening to?
Music snobs always say Phil Collins is bad. Then Pandora offered me some songs. I dig them! There's an art to creating a polished 80's rock sound too, you know... I'm actually a musician myself and I like trying to mimic those sounds. All this pop snobbism makes you forget one thing: music should sound beautiful. So what if it's embarrassing?!
When I grew up, everyone listened to either punk and metal, or hippie music and reggae, and not too much overlap between the groups.
I hope none of them ever heard The Clash doing reggae and punk at the same time. Hehe.
Back in the mid-90s I interviewed the drummer from Cannibal Corpse and he told me his favourite artist was Alanis Morissette. Who gives a rat's ass if someone likes NKOTB and Metallica? On my computer Kylie Minogue shares hard drive space with KMFDM...life goes on.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
In a sense, I think this is why the discussion is rather weak. It's not so much the music that is the indulged pleasure here, but social and sexual things. It's easier to loudly proclaim your love of bondage when you're just words on a screen to people you may never meet. The risk of it blowing up in your face seem lower.
The internet lowers the barrier, as it really is less stressful to check out that naughty website from your home PC than it is to sneak a look at that smut mag in the convenience store, much less buy it. Online, there's enough "free" content that even the stress of purchasing, of parting with your cash isn't felt. It's the old story of being invisible, of not having to face consequences.
Now, please note that I don't want to imply that there aren't any consequences, but I do want to say that we aren't as aware of the possibility of consequences. Online, we get more of a *sense* that there will be no consequences. We don't see the clerk, we don't see the other people millling around, ready to click their tongues in disapproval.
DISCLAIMER: I tried to read TFA, but was rebuffed by a dumb, dumb firewall that blocks the WSJ but not Slashdot. *shrug*
it figures. Metallica were friends back then.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
Nah, it's just that if he hides it in a tape, even if it was discovered nobody would know WTF it was nor how to play it :-)
I remember clearly when I first compiled the scrobbler plugin for xmms and installed it. After about a couple days, I checked on last.fm, and I immediately cleared my stats. I found myself thinking, "What will the neighbors think?" On last.fm, you literally have neighbors, and you're matched by what you listen to, so if you want to be linked with other poseurs like yourself, you have to be careful. After clearing my rankings, I made sure to seed my account with a few days of selected tracks before I let any of my real listening habits creep through.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
That all depends on whether you have the iTunes MiniStore enabled or not. If it's turned on, then it definitely does upload your playing statistics to Apple.
Granted, after people freaked out about it initially, they changed it to be opt-in:
http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1473
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."