Are you like me? Do you listen to music because face-to-face interaction with humans usually just gets you down?
I’ve noticed something very consistent over my lifetime: the more interesting, esoteric, or unique someone’s taste in music is, the more disappointing their lives have typically been. They may have personal problems, money problems, emotional problems, maturity problems.
Now this is probably an unconfirmable belief, but I no longer believe people just “discover” stuff (music or whatever) and somehow turn on to it. I’m convinced you have to be a certain way to respond to certain things - maybe even to find them.
I don’t think the toobz are going to change this much. I think because of the way society works and the way we get culture, a lot of this might as well be hardwired. The less mainstream your culture is, the less socially “adjusted” you’re going to be.
(I’m not going to tell you about myself or my own music just yet. I’m more interested in what you think of my hypothesis. I’ll say only that I’m part of my own sample.)
This is a really interesting hypothesis; I’d not thought about a correlation between my character and my musical tastes. But yes, I have - how should I put it - issues, and my tastes are esoteric. And most of the people I know who are comfortable in their skin’s tastes are more mainstream.
I suspect he’s referring to Sen. Ted Stevens’ depiction of the internet as “an interconnected series of tubes” which then was shortened to “intertubes” and now, I guess, shortened to “the toobz”.
So, how do you classify Juggalos/Juggalettes?:dubious:
While I think there may be some correlation between an individual’s musical tastes and their life experiences/societal behavior, I don’t necessarily think it’s that cut and dry, nor do I think it’s strictly tied to “problems”. Some people strive for uniqueness and choose to buck the mainstream because it’s their nature. Others have had the opportunity to be exposed to a larger-than-normal sampling of music in their lives, and their tastes are affected accordingly.
To me, this applies to geekery in general, not just music - the geekier your obsession, the more you are likely hiding inside it to avoid confronting something in your real life…
…in a lot of ways that is true for me and music / guitars. However, I would also argue that hiding within the geekery of a topic can be a good, healthy release at times - sometimes* at the same time *that it is also a refuge where you feel good about your unique tastes and insights…