Sunday, May 13, 2007

Away Messages as Lyrics Quizzes

A friend of mine whom I retain on my buddy list but with whom I rarely actually communicate has taken to placing song lyrics in his away messages. However, rather than leaving the quotes out of context as a sort of clue for friends/crushes about his emotional state, my friend explicitly uses these quotations to test his buddies' musical knowledge.

For example, from the current away message:
lyrics game #5. name artist/song. "Y'all be frontin. Me give my heart to a woman. Not for nothin' never happen' I'll be forever mackin'.
If one can simply Google these lyrics, thereby reverse-engineering the song title, then this isn't really a test of one's musical knowledge as much as it is a test of one's desire to know/free time (or, perhaps, one's desire to communicate with my friend). In this way, it would seem the internet has functioned as something of a great equalizer for people seeking expertise on any kind of information that is easily organized, categorized, and Google searchable.

I'm hoping we are reaching a moment when expertise in subjective aesthetic fields becomes so diffuse that no one really listens to anyone's opinion anymore, because there are no more experts and there is no more credibility/objectivity, and music journalism becomes what it is first and foremost - a place for talented and funny writers to make puns and share anecdotes.

I once read a review of a middle-of-the-road skate video in Thrasher where the reviewer conjectured that the measure of a good skate video is whether or not it makes the viewer want to go out and skate. The measure of a good piece of writing, journalistic or not, might be whether it sparks further interest in the topic at hand, regardless to its truthfulness or integrity, terms that, in a sea of readily accessible information exposing lies and plagiarism for what they are, are quickly losing relevance.

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