Monday, March 31, 2008
Defending Your Like
From [craigslist.org]:
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Originally Posted: Tue, 26 Feb 17:25 PST
Thanks, Mr.Hipster Record Store Clerk.
Date: 2008-02-26, 5:25PM PST
Dear Hipster Record Store Clerk,
Thank you for judging me on the CD I bought yesterday. Our passive-aggressive altercation made me realize how conformist I am for buying an old Rage Against The Machine album. Your condescension was just the intellectual wake-up call I needed.
I discovered a new me yesterday, and my eyes were opened in a new way. Thanks to you, I realize now that the key to enlightenment is reading Pitchfork, watching High Fidelity, listening to Velvet Underground, having a tattoo of a star on the inside of my wrist, growing an ironic mustache, living in the Mission, and wearing a too-small sweater, multi-colored 70’s ski-vest, chunky plastic-frame glasses, a high school sports T-shirt, air-tight black jeans, and Nixon-era Chuck Taylors.
I had it all wrong, man. You showed me that a skilled job and a comfortable living is just a lie. I need to go to art school, have my parents pay my rent, join a Joy Division-influenced band, and wait for a record deal, like you. I’m totally missing out in life.
So thanks again for mocking me. I mean, at first I thought you were just a pathetic, frustrated musician trying to feel better about yourself. But now I see you’re an uncompromising visionary.
No one will ever understand you. You’re so different.
Signed,
Everyone Not Like You
* it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
PostingID: 588037045
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For everyone who has ever been told, reflexively, that some piece of music they enjoyed was shit...
- or been answered with a sneer and a "They're really not that good,"
- or told "You get easily excited over crap."
- or had someone imply that they are introverted or uncool for liking something
- or made to feel stupid for showing enthusiasm about some movie, book, or song that touched them
I raise my mug in salute to you, Everyone-Not-Like-You. I've been dealing with people like the asshole clerks in High Fidelity my whole life. Maybe someday they'll realize that the impenetrable taxonomy of music genres is not the highest achievement of intellectual discourse.
