Clothes and music have no connection. There is no reason to dress a certain way because you listen to a certain kind of music. The correlation that does exist is therefore a sign of wankerhood.
If that were the case, sure. But, as I said in my first post on this topic, isn’t it a major fucking coincidence that the people who are into that subculture also just happen to like that look?
It’s bullshit. They don’t dress that way because they think it looks good. They dress that way because… I don’t even know. Which is why I wrote about it in a thread called “Mindsets you will never understand”.
Of course not. It’s what their idols look like. It’s what their lovers look like, in many cases. It’s probably what most of their friends look like. I don’t see how that’s any different from the fact that “looking good” means something different in downtown San Diego vs. certain parts of the Bay Area that attract starving artists. It’s a different subculture which values different things and finds different looks attractive.
So they dress that way because people who play music they listen to dress that way, and because a bunch of other people who listen to that music dress that way. Which is a mindset I’ll never understand.
People who support think sports are just as important as academics in public schools. I team-teach a constitutional law class in a DC high school, and one of our students skips half of every other class to go play soccer. We have a note from the main office instructing us to let him do that.
What the heck? These kids are supposed to be here to learn, not play games. I’m not saying school shouldn’t be fun - I put a lot of work into keeping my lectures engaging - but surely learning about the Fourth Amendment is far more important than kicking a ball around, yes? In fact, I can’t think of an academic subject that isn’t more important than playing a game.
And yet, we let kids skip classes to play these games. I don’t get it. I suppose it could maybe make sense if they thought these kids were going to get athletic scholarships - but aren’t those relatively rare? I would think that making sure kids get a good education, and thus have a shot at academic scholarships, would be the far better bet.
Sports can teach a lot of good team building values, time management, discipline and other nice things, but you’re right: no matter how “important” sports are, they should NEVER be taking up that much of the student’s school time. I played sports in high school, and it would be unreasonable and unethical for a coach to “make” me start practice before school let out for the day. Sports is an extracurricular activity, which means that it should not interfere with your education; treating the sports-academic relationship in the opposite manner is ridiculous. Where on earth are you teaching that they are allowing students to be cheated out of a good education for the sake of an extracurricular activity?
I knew this would be a controversial statement. I’ve read some of the threads on the subject and am certainly enlightened now about “super tasters”, food allergies or different neurological reactions. I feel bad for people for whom cilantro tastes like soap. Personally, I don’t care for beef liver, because the way my mom prepared it was crap. I don’t much care for uni with quail egg.
However, to state that everything is a physical unpleasant reaction is a bit disingenuous. Clearly there is a combination of factors that make one adverse to certain foods. There are a lot of people (in my experience it’s cultural) who refuse to try anything, or reject something unfairly because it is unfamiliar. My Russian buddy refuses to try anything I’ve made, the last two things being pomegranate jello shots and kimchi. Russians eat tons of picked cabbage, so I couldn’t really understand it. He will only eat one thing at a chinese restaraunt, Mongolian beef. He ate nothing but hamburgers for the first year he was here. He’s rather proud of the fact that he’s coming around to soy sauce.
I suspect that if you grow up in a ethnically diverse community, you will be much more willing to try different types of food. I don’t know a single person who doesn’t like sushi, but most of my friends are from California.
I’m sure the way you dress (or the way anybody, everywhere dresses), isn’t influenced similarly, eh? Of course, theirs is obvious, your influences may not be so, but they are there. Don’t pretend for one minute that your tastes in clothes (or what society considers “looks good”) isn’t influenced by your friends, peers, or society as a whole. Just because your “culture” consists of a majority, doesn’t mean that you aren’t just as conforming.
Clothing, especially a specific look corresponding to an interest like music, is a uniform. It’s an identifier. The person who chooses to wear, say, goth clothes is announcing to everyone around him that they enjoy that specific music, literature, movie, what have you.
It makes the person easy to identify by others who share the same interests, and makes it easy for them to identify others who share those interests.
They could just as easily wear a sandwich board with their tastes spelled out, but significantly oversized black pants festooned with chains and studs have, arguably, more style, more conversational openers, and are more comfortable to wear.
As most people and their interests become more complex as they age, a simple uniform no longer meets their needs. So, either they drop it entirely or alter it as they accumulate new interests and drop old ones.
BTW, as a data point, I’ve been trying to dress emo from time to time (my hair does not tend to cooperate, sadly). Now I don’t actually listen to any music more emo than Franz Ferdinand and the Scissor Sisters. So why the look? Because I think it’s cute. I like looking at emo guys, just like I liked looking at raver guys at the beginning of this decade. I find them cute, I want to look cute, and I think I do look cute when I’m dressed that way (and in a number of other ways besides).
Jeez people, what’s with this? I say I’d never understand religion, no-one reacts. I say I’d never understand why people would change the way dress because they listen to music, the legions arrive.
Here it is: If I had grown up in another culture, I would have found other things attractive. That is not in contention. But if you wilfully and deliberately dress a certain way for any other reason than that you think it looks good/is comfortable (and this includes dressing a certain way because people who play a certain kind of music dresses that way), then you’re expressing a mindset that I will never understand. And I do not believe that the people who dress heavymetalish or whatever all think it looks good/is comfortable, because then it’s a huge coincidence that people who happen to like that music also happen to like that look. I therefore believe that they changed the way they dress because they listened to music, and hence they’re exhibiting a mindset I’ll never understand.
How this can be more controversial than all the other stuff mentioned in this thread may very well be a sign of another mindset I can’t understand.
Just trying to help you understand a mindset. You may never get it, but that doesn’t mean we won’t give up right away.
FWIW, I dress perfectly ‘normal.’ Just offering explanations as to why others would do it, not getting defensive about it. Sorry if I came across that way.
Incomprehensible mindset: People who can’t fathom why another person might not wish to marry and/or have kids and then want to harangue said person over these decisions.
Ever justifiable? I think it is, mostly in the same way that killing is sometimes justifiable, ie, in response to a direct threat against your life or freedom. If someone kidnapped me and placed me in a situation where, after gaining the upper hand I needed some information from him to escape and survive, I should, what, ask nicely? Just accept that I’m going to die?
Now, if you mean “torture by the state as part of a system of ‘justice’, ‘warfare’, or ‘information gathering’”, I’ll agree with you.
We should probably move further discussion to its own GD thread.
“I don’t like gambling so I wouldn’t like Vegas” is a non sequitur. I’ve been to Vegas four times and I’ve always enjoyed it there, and I’ve never spent a second gambling or paid any attention at all to gambling activity. There is a lot more to that city than gambling, believe me.
Correct. If memory serves, any county in Nevada with a population under 400,000 can have legal brothels. I saw two just outside Beatty earlier this year.
