…when you don’t like or speak unkindly (as perceived by them) about music they like? (and it’s a big some with certain band fandoms).
Like, seriously. Just because I don’t like the Beatles doesn’t mean I “have no taste in music” and that I “don’t know what real music is.” I’m really getting tired of hearing the condescending “you just don’t understand them” when I say I don’t like the band.
Just because I don’t like Nirvana doesn’t mean I listen to the worthless pop crap that has infiltrated the airwaves.
The same pattern follows when you speak unglowingly about Bob freakin’ Marley and Elvis Presley.
Beatles fans are the MOST rabid when you “insult” the band. Nirvana fans aren’t far behind. To them, saying “I don’t like the Beatles” is the same as saying “I think you’re child is the most ugly monster demon to ever waste our oxygen.” They act like you are personally insulting them when you don’t fall lock-step in line with the “Beatles are the greatest musical act ever, EVER!” mentality and the “Nirvana was like, so incredible for its time” ideology.
I picked out those bands because their fans seem to be the most “vocal” in their distaste for those who disagree with them, but it happens with just about everything.
I really like Chicago, but I don’t spazz when I hear someone say, “I don’t like Chicago.” I like the Stones but I don’t throw a fit when someone says “I don’t like the Rolling Stones.” People like different kinds of music. Just because they don’t like a certain kind doesn’t mean they are intellectually vapid, musically ignorant or a close-minded idiot.
People tend to think their taste in everything is proof that said thing is good. I think a little “for/against” bantering can be educational/fun sometimes, but it should obviously be done with respect.
And of course the opposite is also true: just because someone does like a genre doesn’t mean that they are intellectually vapid, musically ignorant or a close-minded idiot.
I can totally accept people not liking the music I listen to or listening to music I don’t like. When it starts getting into insults or claims that some people don’t understand “real music” (as it tends to do on the SDMB), well, the eyeroll smiley says it better than I can: :rolleyes:
I remember that Bee Gees vs. Beatles thread from months ago but most of the people who replied weren’t even reading the OP! It wasn’t vs. as in “who is better” it was vs. as in “let’s compare”. We can compare and contrast and still all get along!
Perhaps it’s because of the overhype? On some level they become aggressively defensive about their fandom because they’ve elevated their band (or whatever) to extreme, indefensible levels. The less defensible a position is, the more aggressive some people become; for an extreme example, look at people who try to defend baseless prejudice like racism or sexism.
They’ve elevated their favored band (book, movie, TV series, etc) to a status that it can’t meet, that none could actually meet; so since they can’t actually defend their claims they try to shout critics down.
Well, if you don’t like The Beatles, that’s fine. If don’t like Nirvana, that’s fine. If you don’t like Elvis, that’s fine. If you don’t like Bob Marley, that’s fine. But… if you don’t like ANY of them? Well, I think your critics may be on to something…
Some of us just didn’t grow up with those artists and have the connection to them as others do.
Music is subjective, what sounds good to one will sound bad to another. For me, a young sprite of about 30 years, I didn’t start listening to music until high school (didn’t even own a radio). The Beatles, Elvis, Bob Dylan…all those guys sound old and dated to me. Their rhymes seem simplistic, their lyrics harken back to days where women stayed home and men worked and black people served drinks. I don’t like them, nor do I like the kind of mental imagery they invoke.
Had I grown up in that time and felt the music revolution and rock and roll establish dominance, I would be moved more by the sounds I hear. But I didn’t grow up then. Nor was I ever an angsty teenager, so I can’t stand Nirvana. Don’t like rap either, nor country. None of those things touch me
There are three things you should never argue about because you’ll never change their opinion, politics, religion, and music. Seriously though, for a lot of people, they take it as a personal attack that, because you don’t like it, it is somehow an attempt to invalidate their own taste. People create an us vs. them about music in the very same way that they do about things like politics, and for some people, where they’re demonize their political opponents, they view their musical ones as being tasteless.
Personally, I could care less if people like or don’t like what I do or if people like something I think is awful. The only part that gets me is when people insist that, because they like them, they must be enormously talented, and because they don’t like them, they must be bad musicians. Yes, most of my favorite bands and musicians are enormously talented, but there’s several bands that I enjoy quite a bit that are hardly anything special, and I feel the same about bands I don’t like, where there’s plenty of decent stuff where it just doesn’t do anything for me, but there’s also plenty of stuff I don’t like that’s utter crap too. But, really, who the hell cares if it does something for you?
If people could just let go of that obnoxious connection, that they’re necessarily talented because they like them, and get down to the real reasons they like them and talk about those instead, I think there’d be a lot less hostility.
This is why they get upset. All the bands the OP mentioned are hugely popular, and because they are hugely popular, people put them in a mental category, which allows them to be glibly dismissed. For example, Nirvana was never music for “angsty teenager[s],” although many of them did like it. Enough actually that it would seem like a good description of the band if you didn’t listen to the music. Having opinions on music you don’t listen to is how you make people think you know nothing about music.
In junior high and high school (in the '80s) I used to make mix tapes for friends. It would be hard to believe now how much hatred some people had for bands like R.E.M., Husker Du, The Replacements, etc. - especially from people into “classic rock”. “What is this shit? It isn’t even music!” “I can sing better than this guy!” So I grew up with people having violent reactions to the music I liked. I learned not to take it personally a long time ago.
I’ve definitely noticed disbelief from Nirvana fans when I told them I was “Meh” about them. I’d been listening to that kind of music for almost 10 years, from acts who IMO did it better, but I understand how important a band can be when it reaches you at a certain point in your life, so I wouldn’t press the point.
The worst offenders in my experience have been Grateful Dead/Phish/Pink Floyd fans. I’ve heard them use the “You just don’t get it” excuse many times, as if the music was so deep there were levels to it I couldn’t possibly appreciate, and if I could just become enlightened I’d realize the majestic beauty of it all. I always just laughed at that kind of condescension. No, I do get it, I just don’t like it. I guess it comes down to this: If you think somebody not liking your favorite artist is an attack on you as a person, you need to work on your self-esteem.
