U2, Brute?

June 12, 2011 2:06 PM

I think this was a bad deletion.

The post in question was funny and interesting, and had already spurred quite a bit of funny and interesting (if contentious--but not even particularly fighty) discussion. "Thin and glib" is a lot of single-link posts here, but many of those are allowed to stand even when they never lead to 60+ comments.




Feel decidedly neutral about U2, but I was enjoying the concert anecdotes quite a bit.

posted by PhoBWanKenobi to Etiquette/Policy at 2:06 PM (231 comments total)

I actually don't, but I was annoyed by it because I had this killer post on The Stranglers I'd worked on for, ooh, a good ten minutes, and I was just about to post it when the gate went down. GOD DAMN.
posted by Decani at 2:10 PM on June 12, 2011

The post was not worthy but the thread was. I'm guessing that's not a good enough reason to keep something though.
posted by Summer at 2:12 PM on June 12, 2011

I actually don't, but I was annoyed by it because I had this killer post on The Stranglers I'd worked on for, ooh, a good ten minutes, and I was just about to post it when the gate went down. GOD DAMN.

Well, see, that's the thing. It seemed to me like one of those posts where the reactions of the community and the discussions lead to a value greater than the content of the OP. I'd just gotten back from watching a bunch of awesome Beavis and Butthead videos after watching the one mintcake! linked to only to find it closed, and felt decidedly disappointed.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 2:13 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm sort of shruggo on the deletion personally but it was one of those situations where there were a bunch of people who flagged it and may have been feeling like I felt about it: absent any context in the post at all it was just a link to a thread on another Q & A site. Not sure why the OP thought it was interesting or useful and so a few people made decent guesses and the discussion was okay. That said, it was a sort of weird "I'm not really sure what you're going for here" post which sometimes go well and sometimes confuse/bug a lot of people who wind up flagging it. Sometimes front page posts are deleted as mod judgment calls, this was one that was less in judgment call territory, is what I'm saying.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 2:13 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

(In other words, I guess I would have understood it being an edge case more before it had spurred a whole lot of really pretty good discussion.)
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 2:14 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

You win this time, The Edge!
posted by BeerFilter at 2:19 PM on June 12, 2011 [8 favorites]

That was the co founder of excecise.com. He was really writing about himself, not some unspecified uncool people as people seemed to assume, he nailed too many of the details, Tod's loafers? Is there anyone who hasn't been inside Saks who knows what those are?

Quora is really just about looking smart and witty so all the other CEOs invite you to their dinner parties.
posted by Ad hominem at 2:20 PM on June 12, 2011 [2 favorites]

Sorry excercise.com
posted by Ad hominem at 2:24 PM on June 12, 2011

I also thought it was a bad deletion and came to meta just to say so.

Also, I love u2, unironically, but I would not go to one of their shows.
posted by empath at 2:25 PM on June 12, 2011

I thought the OP was interesting enough to wake my husband up from a nap to show him. The framing as a quora question was kind of interesting--as codacorolla said in the thread, " It's like someone answering a Yahoo! Answer about American history in character of a frenzied and confused Abraham Lincoln being pursued by time traveling Velociraptors." Actually, kinda reminds me of herrdoktor's ask.metafilter answers. But it also talks a bit about cultural stuff around U2 (and, uh, I have no idea what Tod's loafers are) in an interesting way and the ensuing discussion was really pretty good. I was under the impression that mods try to take into account how the thread is going when deleting posts like this? Again, I could understand deleting it after only a handful of comments, though I'd probably disagree, but at this point it seems like throwing the baby out with the bath water.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 2:30 PM on June 12, 2011

I think U2 suck bigtime, but my wife likes them so I'm stuck listening to them way too often. I thought the article nailed a demographic really well, but I agree with the deletion -- a thumbnail, snarky description of a demographic, folded around U2, is pretty thin gruel.
posted by Forktine at 2:34 PM on June 12, 2011

I was on the fence about it and probably waited too long, so yeah, I hear you. That said, it was a brief "Your band sucks and you suck for liking it" rant that I winced pretty hard at, and I don't give a damn about U2 or yuppiehood one way or another.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 2:35 PM on June 12, 2011

Tod's are somewhat expensive Italian shoes. He must be located on the west coast, upper middle class men on the east coast wear expensive British shoes.
posted by Ad hominem at 2:37 PM on June 12, 2011 [2 favorites]

My stance against the U2 Hate™ which is a hobby here on MetaFilter was well documented in the thread. I was surprised to see the FPP deleted, but wasn't sad to see it go.
posted by hippybear at 2:37 PM on June 12, 2011

If you're going to be eliminating discussions about how people's favorite bands suck, I don't see how this is the internet.
posted by found missing at 2:38 PM on June 12, 2011 [15 favorites]

It would be a really good answer to that question if it were asked on AskMetafilter. It is not a very good FPP for Metafilter. We should have some standards beyond just "this is a wry, long-winded blog post."
posted by John Cohen at 2:38 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

(We did make it 53 hours without a MeTa post... that's pretty not-too-bad.)
posted by hippybear at 2:38 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

Making fun of your own demographic is way way over the line.
posted by Ad hominem at 2:39 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

Welp!
posted by boo_radley at 2:39 PM on June 12, 2011

Now that we're talking about deletions and the day without metatalk plug has been pulled why wasn't the K-Hole thread deleted? The majority of it seems to be unattributed copyright violations.
posted by Mitheral at 2:41 PM on June 12, 2011

The K-hole thread got one flag and started zero (flagged) fights so I personally just didn't look at it very hard. Copyright violations are one of those things that we don't police specifically unless it's sort of edge-case-level egregious (and would be an issue I'd kick up the chain, personally, because I know I don't have a complete grasp on the precedents there.) But "a blog that doesn't attribute the photos it uses" describes about half the internet so isn't exactly an edge case.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 2:47 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

Because it's not our job to be copyright police.
posted by empath at 2:47 PM on June 12, 2011 [5 favorites]

My stance against the U2 Hate™ which is a hobby here on MetaFilter was well documented in the thread. I was surprised to see the FPP deleted, but wasn't sad to see it go.

Looking back at the thread, it doesn't seem all that well-documented. There were a lot of comments there that were along the lines of, "I saw u2 play, and here's how it was awesome." Or, "here's how their shows have changed over time," or whatnot. Knee-jerk haterade didn't seem particularly worse than any other metafilter music post.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 2:48 PM on June 12, 2011 [2 favorites]

That was the co founder of excecise.com. He was really writing about himself, not some unspecified uncool people as people seemed to assume, he nailed too many of the details,

and were this kind of context offered in the initial FPP, it likely would not have been deleted. But even so, though I understand that the post is in "violation", I find its deletion a little on the heavy-handed side. If it ain't broke, don't fix it (and all that).
posted by philip-random at 2:50 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

Ah, sorry. I guess I was assuming taking any stance about U2 which isn't "this band started sucking after October and anyone who has liked them since is a total sell-out and probably a fool who drools on himself" was a document against the U2 Hate ™.
posted by hippybear at 2:52 PM on June 12, 2011

I also think this was a bad deletion, but I liked the Quora post when I saw it on reddit a few days ago. Granted, I think U2 is about as interesting as a pair of overpriced loafers.
posted by loquacious at 2:54 PM on June 12, 2011

I think once a thread gets to a certain number of comments it should not be delete-able. If you mods are gonna delete posts do it while it's still early in the thread.
posted by MattMangels at 2:55 PM on June 12, 2011

Because it's not our job to be copyright police.

Well, in that case... U2 fans reading this thread... I have 2.6GB of U2 remixes which I've sorted through and curated available for download. MeMail me if you want the download link. It's a pretty excellent collection which I worked hard to weed through.
posted by hippybear at 2:57 PM on June 12, 2011

I commented on and was following the thread, but I have no problem with the deletion. This was the thinnest of things on which to hang a post.
posted by Etrigan at 3:00 PM on June 12, 2011

Quora is really just about looking smart and witty so all the other CEOs invite you to their dinner parties.

To those of who don't know anything about Quora, this is useful information that probably should've been in the framing of the FPP. If Quora was a place more like AskMe, that answer would've been borderline delete-worthy.

I'm pretty meh about the whole thing, really. The post didn't really need to go, but it's not like it really needed to stay, either. An example of r_n erring on the side of heavier moderation rather than lighter, perhaps, but not a big deal either way.

Also just want to say, I like the title of this thread.
posted by mstokes650 at 3:01 PM on June 12, 2011

In other words, U2 is Generation X's "Big Chill."

Had to pull that from the thread because - no way! The Big Chill is still awesome outstanding.
posted by Glinn at 3:02 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

I think it's a textbook case for something needs to be deleted; what makes this site special is that there are standards and people are encouraged to put some thought into a post, and good posts aren't drowned in a sea of random internet cruft.

That said, I just noticed the title of this post in the browser bar and that's really funny. Well played.
posted by drjimmy11 at 3:04 PM on June 12, 2011

Had to pull that from the thread because - no way! The Big Chill is still awesome outstanding.

And Achtung Baby, isn't?
posted by philip-random at 3:10 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

Post was thin but then so are a lot of the SLYT fpps.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 3:16 PM on June 12, 2011 [3 favorites]

You know who else was thin?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:17 PM on June 12, 2011

The post was thin and probably deleteworthy IMO, but after 60-odd comments seems a little late to pull the delete trigger.
posted by immlass at 3:18 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

Quora is really just about looking smart and witty so all the other CEOs invite you to their dinner parties.

Don't get me wrong, there is good stuff on Quora, there are technical details of how high profile sites work that show up in Quora answers and nowhere else.

But my elevator pitch for Quora would be "Ever wish there was somewhere you could show off all that hard won knowledge and your rapier wit? Well now there is. No, not stackoverflow, Quora.com"
posted by Ad hominem at 3:18 PM on June 12, 2011

And Achtung Baby, isn't?

I do not feel qualified to answer this but the original comment seemed to take a negative view of both items and I felt compelled to defend a fine film (without much opinion on the U2 part).
posted by Glinn at 3:21 PM on June 12, 2011

I think it's difficult now from 20 years later to realize how startling and revolutionary Achtung Baby! felt on its release. I still imagine the MTV VJ staff sitting with their jaws hanging open after they previewed the video for The Fly before they debuted it on air. And as a fan, buying the disk and taking it home and putting it in the player (with that graphic face -- totally unheard-of at the time!) and then hearing the opening distorted guitar sounds for Zoo Station come out of the speakers...

It was easily as shocking a moment for me in my lifetime as it was for people living in 1967 hearing Sgt. Pepper's for the first time. Another thing which is impossible to imagine if you were born after it happened.

The transformation of Pre-AB! U2 into Post-AB! U2 was truly startling, and there hasn't been much to match it since in the collective musical mind.
posted by hippybear at 3:25 PM on June 12, 2011 [9 favorites]

My stance against the U2 Hate™ which is a hobby here on MetaFilter was well documented in the thread.

Is it really? I've completely missed any sort of general sentiment that Metafilter cares about U2 one way or the other.
posted by 23skidoo at 3:27 PM on June 12, 2011 [2 favorites]

I don't care about them pretty intensely
posted by found missing at 3:34 PM on June 12, 2011 [11 favorites]

metafilter: a stance documented.
posted by clavdivs at 3:36 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

This dedication to Gabrielle Giffords that involved her husband in space and one of her favourite songs is kinda sweet.
posted by gman at 3:37 PM on June 12, 2011

I probably started that thread on the wrong foot. I'm not a huge U2 fan, but it just seemed like lazy sniping. "Boy, this guy on the internet really knows how to mock the demographic that likes a band" doesn't really hold up for me as post-worthy. I didn't find it funny when Carles did it either.
posted by to sir with millipedes at 3:38 PM on June 12, 2011

I think it's difficult now from 20 years later to realize how startling and revolutionary Achtung Baby! felt on its release

Really? I bought it when it was new. I enjoyed it, I listened to it, but I didn't remember it as being particularly mind blowing. It was just pop music.

Maybe because it came out in the Year of Grunge. It just seemed so 80s and 'dad music' to me, even at the time.
posted by empath at 3:52 PM on June 12, 2011

Not sure why the OP thought it was interesting or useful and so a few people made decent guesses and the discussion was okay.

Hay! OP here! And yea I did mention in the thread why I posted it (a simple "the framing was amazing") but I'll elaborate on what I meant here. It's not like I have anything better to do :p.

I posted it because the answer came from a guy who co-founded a startup, and it was written in exactly the way you'd expect someone who co-founded a startup would answer the question. Also, it's an answer on Quora, a robust Q&A website that seems to only exist for talking about startups (this Awl post is relevant here). I giggled at the fact that one of the few questions I've seen on Quora about something other than a website or a tech thingy somehow managed to totally feel like a Quora answer.

I alluded to this in the post by calling the answer "THE Quora answer" and titling it "U2 through the lens of a startup". Apparently that wasn't enough framing for people to get it, which is understandable. Not everyone bums around Hacker News as much as I do.

One of the things that I like about Metafilter is that the qualifications for deletion are kinda loose. Something as thin as my post totally fits the guideline for deletion, but I thought it was amusing and unique enough to possibly stand. It's totally up for the mods to decide though, and while I still love what I linked to I can stand to see it gone.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 3:58 PM on June 12, 2011 [7 favorites]

That said, it was a brief "Your band sucks and you suck for liking it" rant that I winced pretty hard at, and I don't give a damn about U2 or yuppiehood one way or another.

Was it really that mean spirited? Maybe my "expect the best from people" meter is turned to much towards "everyone is nice", but like I said in the thread, I thought it was in good humor. He's not all "all yuppies should die" and more "yuppies are kinda silly", which they are.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 4:02 PM on June 12, 2011

Achtung Baby didn't blow me away that much in terms of its NOW-ness as I was pretty big into hip-hop, rave-stuff, industrial etc at the time. Where it got me was the songs themselves: One, Until the End of the World, Even Better Than the Real Thing, Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses, The Fly, Mysterious Ways ... and on it goes. You can count on very few hands the albums from the past fifty years that have that much going for them.
posted by philip-random at 4:05 PM on June 12, 2011

Yeah, The Devil Tesla, if some of that had been in the actual post that would have been neat. (Although looking at the actual link again, it really still looks like a mini-rant wedged into a product pitch document. Not that I haven't seen pitch docs like that, but the whole "this guy founded a startup and knows business" doesn't come through at all.)

And just to reiterate, it was not a great call on my part to pull it so late. My internet went down, and when, after half an hour of cursing Time Warner, I looked and saw it was still picking up flags, I yanked it after a pretty quick skim of the actual thread.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 4:13 PM on June 12, 2011

It seems like a reasonable decision. I wasn't kidding about the chatfilter: had this question been posted to AskMe, it would have most likely earned a deletion. One smart-ass and not particularly insightful answer by someone who is pretending that the typical "mode" of U2 fan somehow just discovered them on the basis of some shallow convenience-based preferences instead of having seen their videos on MTV back in the day MTV had nothing but seemed ... goofy.
posted by adipocere at 4:27 PM on June 12, 2011

I feel more animosity towards quora than I do to U2.
posted by rtha at 4:29 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

Achtung Baby was the first U2 album I ever bought (one of my first CDs ever, actually) and it just totally blew me away. Every song on it is incredible. "One" is my favorite song of all time but songs like "Acrobat" or "Love is Blindness" still give me chills.

BTW, I think I'm plugged it here before, but any U2 fan should read U2 At the End of the World. An incredible rock biography centered around the ZooTV era. By the end of it it's almost Gibsonian.
posted by kmz at 4:31 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

I think it's difficult now from 20 years later to realize how startling and revolutionary Achtung Baby! felt on its release

it may have been startling and revolutionary for U2, but to me, it was just a good album that brought some edgy outside ideas into the mainstream - which, in those times, a lot of bands were doing

even zooropa, which furthered that set of ideas, wasn't that unprecedented in music

perhaps if they had followed up quickly with more of the same, they might have managed to pull off the 90s version of sgt pepper - but they didn't

and as someone who was around for sgt pepper - no, the impact of achtung baby! was not comparable - sgt pepper pretty much announced to the world that rock music was not going away and was going to continue to change - all achtung baby! announced was that U2 wasn't going away and was going to continue to change - worth knowing, but not as earth-shaking
posted by pyramid termite at 4:35 PM on June 12, 2011 [4 favorites]

The music business ensures that music exists for us primarily as a product and a marker of demographics. Strangely enough the kind of performance that tends to be successful in attracting consumers has an anti-commercial and counter-cultural attitude. Successful bands, including the very successful band U2, are the ones that can walk that tightrope - appear "edgy" and "challenging" just enough to be taken seriously, while being safe as a merchandizable brand image.

That there is a contradiction here is maybe drolly amusing, but I don't see what "your favorite band sucks" has to do with any of this. The real message here is "your favorite industry sucks". These same dynamics and contradictions come up with any other artform, though people are historically more likely to assign identity based on the music they listen to rather than the books they read or the movies they watch etc.

Whether the music is any good is irrelevant. The question was "why do people like this band". I think that the kind of concerns this essay addresses are more likely to answer that sort of question than any analysis in the realm of music theory.
posted by idiopath at 4:35 PM on June 12, 2011

empath writes "Because it's not our job to be copyright police."

True. However no context photostreams of unattributed photos used to get deleted with some regularity.
posted by Mitheral at 4:35 PM on June 12, 2011

The fact that a post starts an interesting discussion does not say anything much about its value. You could past a random text string and an interesting discussion might ensue. There are enough interesting people here, and any given number of comments will include something to respond to or riff on. But the posting might still be lousy.

By analogy, Richard Thompson could probably generate a nifty guitar solo on "Yummy Yummy Yummy I've Got Love In My Tummy" but that doesn't mean he should be putting it in his set list.
posted by argybarg at 4:36 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

MetaFilter Deletions: I Can't Live With Or Without You
posted by Poet_Lariat at 4:37 PM on June 12, 2011 [2 favorites]

metafilter deletions: how to disassemble a trolltopic bomb
posted by pyramid termite at 4:40 PM on June 12, 2011

I too am sad to see this post go. Or "I2", I guess.
posted by Artw at 4:41 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

It's an age thing and I find myself on the cusp.
posted by Sailormom at 4:43 PM on June 12, 2011

I posted it because the answer came from a guy who co-founded a startup, and it was written in exactly the way you'd expect someone who co-founded a startup would answer the question. Also, it's an answer on Quora, a robust Q&A website that seems to only exist for talking about startups (this Awl post is relevant here).

(raises hand in back of room)

I don't know anyone who has founded a startup, so I don't have any experience with how people who co-found startups answer questions. Moreover, I've never heard of Quora before. Can you explain how someone in my position may have found a way to enjoy this post?

If so, can you explain why you didn't include that explanation in the post itself? Because I imagine the number of people who lack experience with "how people who co-found startups answer questions" is somewhat larger than the people who have this experience.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:47 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

Dear argybarg: Richard Thompson does "Oops, I Did It Again." And does it well.
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:58 PM on June 12, 2011 [2 favorites]

Homage To My Dead Thread

See my post out on the Blue
See the snark first post from you
I wait .... for someone true

Sleight of hand and twist of fate
cortex has played it straight
Now I wait ... without you

With or without you
With or without you

Through the storm we reach the shore
Had eight favorites , wanted more
And I wait .... in Meta

With or without you
With or without you
I can't live
With or without you

And you gave my post away
And you gave my post away
posted by Poet_Lariat at 5:01 PM on June 12, 2011 [7 favorites]

I read the quora essay and it gave me a melancholic feeling that made me go "Awwwww," as though I was touched by the plight of our mythical U2 fan. What Rosenthal is describing is a mainstay of our culture: The grown-up in the best, most productive years of his life looking back and trying to hang onto the pre-grown-up years. It is a bittersweet moment to think you are in your heyday, yet remembering with nostalgic longing those lazy, crazy days of summer. I don't know if this is a cross-cultural phenomena or if it is most prevalent here in the youth-obsessed USA.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:05 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

If "thin and glib" is really a reason for deletion, I'll expect to see far fewer FPPs.
posted by orthogonality at 5:06 PM on June 12, 2011 [6 favorites]

I liked the irony in the OP's motives, found the Quora post funny but not too mean-spirited (granted, I read it with the irony in mind), and thought the thread discussion was going well. I don't feel I can second-guess the delete decision, but from where I sit it does seem kind of like a pointless loss.
posted by salvia at 5:13 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

You know who else was thin?

Bono in his 20s?
posted by scody at 5:15 PM on June 12, 2011 [6 favorites]

If so, can you explain why you didn't include that explanation in the post itself?

I try to not explain my jokes too much, but yea, I probably went too far here.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 5:15 PM on June 12, 2011

This dedication to Gabrielle Giffords that involved her husband in space and one of her favourite songs is kinda sweet.

Oh good, if we're discussing Giffords' favorite songs involving her space husband, it gives me an excuse to add a much, much better one.
posted by FelliniBlank at 5:25 PM on June 12, 2011

I've completely missed any sort of general sentiment that Metafilter cares about U2 one way or the other.

Without in any way calling out hippybear's sense of the Sentiment of Metafilter, I've found it's pretty easy for different people to come to a thread and walk away with a very different impression of people's feelings toward the topic. The Diesel jeans thread is a great example of this; I saw a lot of folks snarking about a bunch of ads with a theme they didn't like for a product that didn't interest them and it was clear from some of the responses that other people had read the thread very differently to me. (Don Quixote what? People were mocking the ads and sometimes the jeans on the blue, not suggesting doing anything about either.)

By the same token, for all that one of the cool things about hanging around on Metafilter is finding some people who like shooting the breeze on the internet about your favorite topic, it's also a big group and that means there will be a lot of folks who are indifferent, a lot of folks who like to snark, and a few haters. If a particular member is invested in a topic (like U2), sometimes it's easy to notice the haters and the snarkers and not feel the love from other members who may adore the band, or the indifference of the silent majority.

Again, not particularly a comment about U2 or even the Diesel thread, just a general observation about how Metafilter seems to operate. My $0.02, YMMV.
posted by immlass at 5:31 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

I think it's difficult now from 20 years later to realize how startling and revolutionary Achtung Baby! felt on its release

I don't remember any such feeling about that album. At the time it seemed like they'd finally given up trying to do anything but grind out radio hits to support endless touring.
posted by octothorpe at 5:33 PM on June 12, 2011 [8 favorites]

It must suck to the drummer for U2.

"Introducing U2! Bono, the Edge, Adam and ... and ... Larry. Really? Larry? Couldn't give him a cool nickname, huh? A group of masterful, creative artists and you're sticking with 'Larry'?"
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 5:40 PM on June 12, 2011 [2 favorites]

Look everyone, I've been transformed into a duck!

Quack quack!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:48 PM on June 12, 2011

This isn't the first time I've thought restless_nomad deleted a post that should have remained. In my judgement, sometimes a post that gets a lot of flags is the mark of a post that has a lot going for it.
posted by Daddy-O at 5:53 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

Oh, and hats off to the mods. It's not an easy job.
posted by Daddy-O at 5:54 PM on June 12, 2011

I also came here to say I think this was a bad deletion. "Thin and glib" describes quite a few FPPs which nevertheless contribute positively to the site. I think the measure of a post should be whether it and its discussion adds to Metafilter— and the discussion was interesting and I enjoyed following it, and I'm annoyed that it was cut off.

I'm trying to decide if I think the post actually would have been better with context on Quora, startupiness, indications on why it should be interesting. It would have been less upsetting to some people, I guess, but I think that the lack of editorializing or rigid framing is what helps discussions become interesting.


(I'm also bemused by hippybear's perception of site-wide U2Hate™, but that kind of thing is always kinda subjective)
posted by hattifattener at 6:10 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

The mods move in mysterious ways...
posted by jonmc at 6:12 PM on June 12, 2011 [2 favorites]

True. However no context photostreams of unattributed photos used to get deleted with some regularity.

Trust me. This site is much more than a no context photostream, though it might take a few thousand words to really nail that context -- something to do with a strange mirror found in a dumpster that offers a devastatingly clear view into the last fifty years of suburban existence . Ugly and beautiful.
posted by philip-random at 6:12 PM on June 12, 2011

I love the phrase space husband.
posted by -->NMN.80.418 at 6:19 PM on June 12, 2011 [2 favorites]

Daddy-O, was there one in particular you remember offhand? The feedback is definitely helpful but specifics are more so - a quick scan of my activity since the beginning of May shows that I've deleted ten posts including this one, six of which were doubles, so there's not a whole lot of data for me to figure out a pattern from.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 6:20 PM on June 12, 2011 [2 favorites]

This isn't the first time I've thought restless_nomad deleted a post that should have remained.

Now I'm nostalgic for when Jessamyn first became a mod.
posted by dirigibleman at 6:22 PM on June 12, 2011

I've got no strong feelings about U2's music (which is damning in itself), but I laughed at Bill Bailey's portrayal.
posted by Ritchie at 6:40 PM on June 12, 2011

Can someone memail or link me to the deleted photoblog that keeps getting brought up? I meant to check it out early, but the nsfw tags kept me away, and without the deleted thread blog I can't find it.
posted by codacorolla at 6:55 PM on June 12, 2011

Even three weeks later I'm still confused as to why my last post was deleted. Cortex* wrote: "Lousy situation for sure, but I'm not sure what there is to do with this post other than argue with each other about who in a bad situation is the worst." I wasn't aware we had to "do" something. People post news stories all the time, today someone posted about the Bilderberg Meeting taking place in Switzerland. What are we supposed to "do" with that post?

I get it when deletions are for doubles, or too much editorializing, or when a situation has not developed fully enough, but I do take exceptions to these deletions that are done by Mods because they are flying by the seat of their pants. I think the U2 post is fine, it is certainly no thinner than a SLYT or a Letters of Note and should be undeleted.

*Not Cortexist
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:55 PM on June 12, 2011 [5 favorites]

Phillip-Random posted it... I need to fucking preview better, this is like the 3rd time in a week I've done that.
posted by codacorolla at 6:56 PM on June 12, 2011

codacorolla - credit to the mods, that FPP hasn't been deleted, though you had me going for a moment there.
posted by philip-random at 7:07 PM on June 12, 2011

If Tod's made Project Red loafers, do you think Bono would wear them?
posted by box at 7:16 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

It must suck to the drummer for U2.

I seriously doubt it sucks to the the member of U2 who put together the ads which called together the rest of the members of the band, who was the drive behind the group forming in the first place, and the member who pretty much has the most important vote on nearly every move made by the band when it comes to what their next move is.

Larry Mullins Jr. is, in many ways, the most important member of U2. He's the one who gives them some sense of center across all their madness, and he's regularly lauded by the other three as embodying the rock and roll soul of the quartet.
posted by hippybear at 7:22 PM on June 12, 2011

Mullen Jr, Dude. With an 'e' and no 's'
posted by jonmc at 7:23 PM on June 12, 2011 [2 favorites]

I think it's difficult now from 20 years later to realize how startling and revolutionary Achtung Baby! felt on its release.

I fell asleep watching MTV while home from college during Thanksgiving break (November 1991) and woke up just as the video for "The Fly" came on the air.

What IS this? I thought. That KINDA sounds like The Edge's guitar, but it's so...weird...and that LOOKS a little like Bono, but he's got weird sunglasses on....Achtung Baby!? What the hell sort of name is that for an album?

And this was waaaaaaaaaaaaay before the internet, so it's not like I could look it up on Wikipedia or U2.com and figure out what was going on. I didn't want to ask about it in a record store, for fear I'd dreamed it and people would laugh at me.
posted by Lucinda at 7:25 PM on June 12, 2011

The mods move in mysterious ways...

Ok, now, that cracked me up.

Now I just need to get that song out of my head. What's the universal antidote song? Does anyone else remember some theory going around in high school (or whenever) that some song was the universal antidote to stuck songs? The theme song to Three's Company or something?
posted by salvia at 7:27 PM on June 12, 2011

Mullen Jr, Dude. With an 'e' and no 's'

Ack. How embarrassing. I knew this, and still let my fingers type ahead of my brain. I apologize to this thread and to Larry for being such an ass and not proofreading.
posted by hippybear at 7:28 PM on June 12, 2011

What's the universal antidote song?

It's the entire theme song to Green Acres sung out loud. Don't ask me why it works, but it does. Don't forget to do the "da-na na NA na... NA! NA!" instrumental bits, too. Otherwise, it will all be for naught.
posted by hippybear at 7:29 PM on June 12, 2011

"Low Rider" is also a good solvent for shit stuck in your head.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:31 PM on June 12, 2011

> What's the universal antidote song?

She wore Lemon. Lemonnnnnnn.

Wait, that might just displace it as an earworm.

Try not to think about the refrain to the U2 song "Lemon".
posted by Horselover Phattie at 7:32 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

It's the entire theme song to Green Acres sung out loud.

The Banana Splits theme has been recommended to me as an audiosorbet to cleanse the musical palate, so to speak. and it's worked.
posted by jonmc at 7:35 PM on June 12, 2011

I remember going into a coffee shop the day after my father's funeral. The line was long, and I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience waiting forever and ever for my coffee. There was a kid and a mom in front of me and they were picking up like, fifteen hyperinvolved drinks. Every time I thought it would be my turn to order, nope, one more giant freaking drink would appear with whipped cream on top.

I could just sort of hear a song coming out of a speaker above my head, in my raw state, it seemed to speak right to me, and I wrote down some of the lyrics so I could look it up later, and when I did, I was surprised it was U2, I certainly can recognize a U2 song, I loved Boy and October like many here.

At full volume it didn't do a thing for me. I guess I only liked it when I could only sort of hear it.
posted by pinky at 7:40 PM on June 12, 2011

I'm of an age with hippybear, and U2's AB was not even a blip on my radar. I really don't care about them one way or another, but I certainly don't feel there's any sitewide hate for U2. And music in general seems to do really well on Mefi.

I mean, sure, people will come in with the typical "your favorite band sucks" comments, but it seems to me that more music posts stay up than almost any other kind, and there's a LOT of music posts. When it comes to criticism, TV and film posts are much tougher on the content. Every film thread is full of people explaining to me why every movie I like is bad. Of course, I'm a cinemaphile.

Anyway, hippybear, it's clear you are a huge U2 fan, and that's great, but I think your adulation might be coloring your take on just how important or unimportant they are to rest of the Mefi user base.
posted by misha at 7:44 PM on June 12, 2011

What's the universal antidote song?

I've always used this.
posted by carsonb at 7:44 PM on June 12, 2011

Oh man, way too many commas. Sorry about that.
posted by pinky at 7:45 PM on June 12, 2011

Anyway, hippybear, it's clear you are a huge U2 fan, and that's great, but I think your adulation might be coloring your take on just how important or unimportant they are to rest of the Mefi user base.

It's possible... although I generally don't give a fuck who likes or doesn't like what I like. The impression of MetaFilter being anti-U2 isn't new or recent for me. It's been around easily since How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb was released, years before I joined the site. Probably before that, but that's around the era when I first started noticing it.

Whether they're important to the MeFi user base or not, if you ever want to draw out all the people who say that they hate U2 or used to like them but now they hate them, make a post which concerns them in some way, even tangentially. They'll come out of the woodwork to express their displeasure, much more reliably than just about any other topic.

The typical "if you don't appreciate the subject of a thread, skip it and don't comment" wisdom which is usually shared so readily across MetaFilter never is trotted out when it comes to U2.

I've already been accused of being Comic Book Guy about the band once today when it comes to U2, so I'm not going to do the research and show why I say this. I'm sure anyone who wants to could do the same research. Maybe the next time it comes up I'll feel more like digging in and providing the evidence to back up my well-founded assertion about the collective attitude toward them here.

Anyway, it's time to sleep for this new job of mine which has me waking up way too early every day.
posted by hippybear at 7:59 PM on June 12, 2011

Does anyone else think this type of deletion should be referred to as a "Matt Lauer"?
posted by J. Wilson at 8:08 PM on June 12, 2011

The transformation of Pre-AB! U2 into Post-AB! U2 was truly startling, and there hasn't been much to match it since in the collective musical mind.

Radiohead. Post-Sugarcubes Bjork. Aphex Twin.

Hell, Insane Clown Posse's Miracles was more startling to me than Achtung Baby! And there were plenty of graphical CDs printed before Achtung Baby!, they just weren't released by major record labels like Island.

What you saw as a transformation or renewal - a lot of us younger folks saw as outright cultural theft and appropriation and we were angry about it. It was such a blatant financial and cultural territory grab I'm still pretty pissed off about it.

U2's reinvention for ZooTV was obviously inspired by the Madchester sound of the late 80s and early 90s being produced by bands like Inspiral Carpets, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine and most importantly - Pop Will Eat Itself, who really majorly invented that fake-corporate tongue and cheek use of marketing materials and graphics courtesy of The Designer's Republic. (Well, ABC and Sigue Sigue Sputnik also did it much earlier, but not at the level or sheer aggressiveness that PWEI did it.)

It was also U2 trying to pick up on the rave/club/manchester and "new psychedelic" music scenes by way of picking up a new pair of sunglasses and a couple of samplers and video screens. It was like watching Lawrence Welk suddenly try to play disco, or One Toke Over the Line - contrived, soulless and awkward.

ZooTV baldly and badly tried to mimic this new high-tech blinkenlights rave aesthetic. ZooTV's aesthetic was very arguably a rip off of the Emergency Broadcast Network. There was nothing startling about it at all if you already knew where it was coming from.

Wait! Wait! It actually gets worse!

While U2 was busy "reinventing" itself and becoming the safe yet fashionable arena rockers they still are - they were suing the San Francisco art-noise-sampling band called Negativland and SST records for this "cover" of a U2 song called "The letter U and the numeral 2".

Suing some broke-ass germaphobic experimental radioshow copyright-law nerd for his art-parody of their work isn't the action of a rock-and-roll God - it's the action of an insecure businessman and a stiff in a suit. It's not revolutionary, it's the same old happy money-making horseshit any large business tries to pull off.

Sure, they can write a mean hook. They can sell you an epic-sounded, rocking good time of an earworm that's at once soaring, yet comforting and not too threatening or too different or too angry or too dark. So can Madison Avenue. That doesn't make them artistic revolutionaries or innovators. I promise you that U2 hasn't innovated in anything artistically in the last 25+ years that wasn't better suited for an MBA class on cultural appropriation and youth marketing.

And this is why I actually hate U2. Because it's rather provable that they're rip-off artists who mainly wish to sell a marketable product and lots of it. They've demonstrated time and time again that they care more about business and money than they do about music.

In the wise, measured words of Casey Kasem "These guys are from England and who gives a shit?"
posted by loquacious at 8:12 PM on June 12, 2011 [26 favorites]

I've always used this.

I kill you.
posted by Glinn at 8:12 PM on June 12, 2011

i hate you, carsonb.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:12 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

I don't mind U2, but all the bands I like tend to be anthemic and quasi-religious. There's an ever-present danger of them turning into U2. There's still something smug about them I don't like.
The 'best' music threads I've posted are about bands a 30something demographic can agree on and trade concert stories. Any younger and you get 'this is too emo/this is for hipsters'. Any older and you get 'suck it, Boomers!'
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 8:16 PM on June 12, 2011

I've always used this.

My, your face sure looks delicious! Come here and give me a hug!
posted by loquacious at 8:18 PM on June 12, 2011

Harsh loquacious is harsh! (Too bad hippybear went to sleep.)
posted by Glinn at 8:19 PM on June 12, 2011

I've already been accused of being Comic Book Guy about the band once today when it comes to U2, so I'm not going to do the research and show why I say this.

Best read with Comic Book Guy's voice ^
posted by ericost at 8:19 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

Harsh loquacious is harsh! (Too bad hippybear went to sleep.)

Sorry, that was a bit harsh. I do like hippybear as a person, even if he likes U2 so much. :)
posted by loquacious at 8:22 PM on June 12, 2011 [2 favorites]

I'd forgotten about that Negativeland nonsense. For all that I agree totally with hippybear about jeans and facial hair, I'm not on board with the U2 love. Sorry, hippybear.

In the wise, measured words of Casey Kasem "These guys are from England and who gives a shit?"

Geography schmeography.
posted by Forktine at 8:24 PM on June 12, 2011

No, it was good. There's something satisfying about a ranty thing that's well-written because the person is invested in the topic (and communicates well).
I don't think hippybear would mind too much.
posted by Glinn at 8:34 PM on June 12, 2011

Geography schmeography.

Yeah, they're from Ireland. That's why the Casey Kasem quote is so great. FUCK SNUGGLES!
posted by loquacious at 8:35 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

Wow, that Banana Splits song... can't... stop... watching... The best part of the theme song (I can tell you after listening to it sixteen times) is around 0:40 when you thing "I absolutely can't stand another second of this" and realize you're not halfway through.

Ahhhh, but here's some relief (after the ad).
posted by salvia at 8:42 PM on June 12, 2011

I want to say this was a bloody good deletion. Sure, you may feel you shouldn't explain your jokes, The Devil Tesla, but the problem is I couldn't even tell that it WAS a joke. It had no context, it had no real introduction, it just seemed to be "lol here's this thing" without anything to put it on a page. And thus, confused as to why it was the best of the web, I flagged it, and moved on. I never went back to look at the discussion, because honestly I saw no real discussion worthy material there.

And I do believe the mods have said before that no matter how good the discussion is, if the post doesn't meet the guidelines they nuke it from orbit. Anyone have a link on that?
posted by strixus at 9:19 PM on June 12, 2011

hippybear, I understand your love for U2, though I do not share it.

Love,

An R.E.M. Fan

Murmur is still the best record evar. Shut up.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 9:21 PM on June 12, 2011 [4 favorites]

What's the universal antidote song?

Important question! Ana Ng is mine and I endorse it for all other humans.
posted by furiousthought at 9:27 PM on June 12, 2011

hippybear can push AB all he wants but the greatest U2 album was Joshua Tree and that's not an opinion that's MY opinion.

Unforgettable Fire was pretty good too.

To be fair though One might be my favorite U2 song.
posted by Bonzai at 9:36 PM on June 12, 2011

U2 are still around?
posted by Joseph Gurl at 10:00 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm with BOP, Murmur is still leagues ahead of U2's discography; and I love the early U2 albums from my youth.
posted by arcticseal at 10:41 PM on June 12, 2011

I think this was a bad deletion as well. I don't see how asking how to deal with sadness at being alone in an infinitely vast universe is a less acceptable (or answerable) question than say, asking how to deal with grief at becoming a father - and we've had at least two questions about that that stayed up.

Sorry for just sticking that in here, of course, but it just seems sort of rude to make another thread for it when this one would be right under it.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 11:05 PM on June 12, 2011 [2 favorites]

I disagree, deleting super broad, rambly philosophical AskMes is fairly standard and a good idea. There's even a relevant point in the FAQ: - Questions with no problem to be solved or where the problem is some variant of "I'm curious if other people feel like I do" - that matches that question really well. They're not bad questions, just not right for AskMe.
posted by donnagirl at 11:12 PM on June 12, 2011 [3 favorites]

Suing some broke-ass germaphobic experimental radioshow copyright-law nerd for his art-parody of their work isn't the action of a rock-and-roll God - it's the action of an insecure businessman and a stiff in a suit. It's not revolutionary, it's the same old happy money-making horseshit any large business tries to pull off.

The full story about this comes clear in this interview from Mondo 2000 mag.

On a break from the Zoo TV Tour, U2 management set up a long phone interview for Edge with Mondo 2000 magazine. Apparenly, Edge was a fan of the magazine, which included contributors such as William Gibson. Edge’s goal was to discuss the ideas behind Zoo TV and the Cyberpunk movement with the magazine and its audience.

What Edge did not know was that Mondo 2000 editor R. U. Sirius invited his friends from the band Negativland (Don Joyce and Mark Hosler) to take part in the interview.
posted by philip-random at 11:26 PM on June 12, 2011

I think this was a bad deletion as well. I don't see how asking how to deal with sadness at being alone in an infinitely vast universe is a less acceptable (or answerable) question than say, asking how to deal with grief at becoming a father - and we've had at least two questions about that that stayed up.

I think that was a good deletion. I would have no idea what to make of that question. The questions about fatherhood seemed fairly different to me. There have been a few existential questions (the ones that come to mind were basically "how do you enjoy life in a world also full of pain?" and "how do you decide to have kids when we're living on the brink of disaster?"), but they have been very tightly focused.
posted by salvia at 11:36 PM on June 12, 2011

The post was thin and probably deleteworthy IMO, but after 60-odd comments seems a little late to pull the delete trigger.

We have deleted posts with far more comments on identical grounds. Brewing conversation can be an influencing factor sometimes, but it's no guarantee that a not-great post will stick around and as precedents go 60 comments is nothing at all. Weekends have slow reaction times, Jess and Matt are both traveling and I was throwing a meetup, so restless_nomad nixing it after a few dozen comments and a bunch of flags is wholly unremarkable.

A thread slipping under the radar for a bit is zero guarantee that it'll slip past normal moderation guidelines. It's a bummer if something you're enjoying goes by the wayside, but that's life on Metafilter.

> empath writes "Because it's not our job to be copyright police."

True. However no context photostreams of unattributed photos used to get deleted with some regularity.

They still often do. But there's a difference between "weirdly sublime curated tumblr", for example, and "blatantly sketchy scraper blog". The khole site, whatever else you might say about it, was far more the former than the latter, and the latter is the sort of thing that is more consistently nixed.

I think this was a bad deletion as well. I don't see how asking how to deal with sadness at being alone in an infinitely vast universe is a less acceptable (or answerable) question than say, asking how to deal with grief at becoming a father - and we've had at least two questions about that that stayed up.

Good god that was a mess. Poster could probably trim it down to a concrete, answerable "help me figure this out" question next week and that'd be absolutely fine, but as stated? No. Textbook delete. Not even a debate there in my humble.

The mods move in mysterious ways...

It's alright. It's all right.

It's alright.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:39 PM on June 12, 2011 [3 favorites]

I don't know, I still think "what do I do about this feeling?" is a pretty concrete, totally answerable question. All the philosophical stuff is just the paper it's wrapped in.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 11:44 PM on June 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

All the philosophical stuff is just the paper it's wrapped in.

But to me, all that paper matters. Is your position that as long as there's a concrete, answerable question, it doesn't matter whether the rest of the question is long, meandering, philosophical, and hard to understand?

Imagine a spectrum between a super-focused one-sentence question and the most meandering question imaginable that still included an answerable question (such as "here are all of the thoughts and feelings I have ever had about life.....[infinitely long]......Do you feel like me and if so what do you do?"). It seems to me that at some point along that spectrum, there has to be a line beyond which questions get deleted. This question seems to be a bit past that line to me.

I can see what you're talking about, because after reading the question a few times, I got a sense of what was being asked. But the question is fairly overwhelming, and with a bit more focus, the poster will probably get better answers. I'm actually not sure it's the kind of question that can really be solved with AskMe. An overwhelming sense of longing, loneliness, and being trapped seems to me like something to discuss with a philosopher, religious leader, and / or therapist.
posted by salvia at 12:14 AM on June 13, 2011

I have a slightly more general question if the mods have time. "Bad post that spawns good discussion" is a reasonably clear candidate for deletion. "Meh post that spawns good discussion" seems to be more of a fifty-fifty call. Could you guys expand on your sense of what leans to deletion in these cases versus what stays around?

I realize that I'm asking you to explain "feel" decisions to some degree, and I want to be clear that I don't have a problem with your instincts, nor am I asking you to codify in policy those decisions. I'm more curious about the process that goes into evaluating "meh" cases and I'm curious, to the degree that you're able, to hear how you describe how the balance shifts between deletion and staying, in situations where you're making judgment calls without clear indicators like tons of flags or a shitstorm discourse.
posted by Errant at 12:24 AM on June 13, 2011

i've been waiting for U3 for a decade when's it gonna come out
posted by not_on_display at 12:35 AM on June 13, 2011

I think this was a bad deletion.

You too?
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:56 AM on June 13, 2011

May I just say that the phrase
sort of shruggo on the deletion personally
is one of the most beautiful things I've seen here for a while.
posted by Namlit at 3:37 AM on June 13, 2011

hippybear can push AB all he wants

If I'm really going to push a U2 album, it will be POP.

Don't tempt me. :)
posted by hippybear at 4:23 AM on June 13, 2011

In one of those experiments with new distribution models, U3 was released exclusively on flash drives.

Funny BOP mentions R.E.M., because I think that, in terms of their career arc, and the way that people react to them, there are a lot of similarities between them and U2. They're both mainstream artists working within, generally, both the stylistic and capitalistic framework of rock/pop music. This comes with a certain high profile, which often means heavy media coverage. It also means wide distribution, so lots of people manage to discover them during their teen years. They're popularizers, and they're hipper than the average member of their fanbase, which means that they're going to appropriate stuff from more indie/underground artists and that they're going to ask that same fanbase to follow them down some interesting paths. And over their long careers, there are at least a half-dozen moments where they made a turn, lost some old fans and gained some new ones.

It's an interesting position for an artist to occupy, I think, among other reasons because folks' reactions are often both highly emotional and starkly polarized. And I can think of more than a few artists that, from where I'm standing, produce a similar reaction when they show up on Metafilter.

U2 and R.E.M. are big ones. So's Radiohead. Although they didn't have a long enough career for all the stuff I'm talking about, we can give Nirvana honorary membership. Wilco might've made it, but I don't think they're quite popular enough. If Mefi skewed a little older, I think we'd see more of this reaction to Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Lady Gaga is well on her way to becoming one of these people, and I think Kanye West has a good shot at it. There are probably other examples I'm not thinking of, but you get my drift.
posted by box at 5:01 AM on June 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

Dear fellow MeFites,

Saw this on threadless the other day, and thought of you. If you get one, we could be T-shirt multituplets!

Love,
likeso

(yeah, 5$ n00b sassing her elders)
posted by likeso at 5:18 AM on June 13, 2011

The Onion beat you to it.

Again, this makes me weary about posting band threads. My favorite band does not suck. My favorite band saved my life. Your favorite genre, however, gives me panic attacks.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 5:57 AM on June 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

U2 and R.E.M. are big ones. So's Radiohead. Although they didn't have a long enough career for all the stuff I'm talking about, we can give Nirvana honorary membership. Wilco might've made it, but I don't think they're quite popular enough. If Mefi skewed a little older, I think we'd see more of this reaction to Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Lady Gaga is well on her way to becoming one of these people, and I think Kanye West has a good shot at it.

You don't have to be 'old' to love Bob Dylan and Neil Young, and you can be young and think Lady Gaga sucks. I think all those artists are polarizing, though the Lady Gaga love here is pretty surprising.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 5:59 AM on June 13, 2011

Daddy-O, was there one in particular you remember offhand? The feedback is definitely helpful but specifics are more so - a quick scan of my activity since the beginning of May shows that I've deleted ten posts including this one, six of which were doubles, so there's not a whole lot of data for me to figure out a pattern from. restless_nomad

I guess the other deletion I noticed you making I disagreed with also, so that's what I was thinking when I made my comments. It wasn't a post, but a question by mutant. After further review, the question was reinstated. Not trying to bust your chops, I appreciate you mods doing a not easy job. I hope to meet you at a meetup here in Austin some day!
posted by Daddy-O at 6:19 AM on June 13, 2011

The Onion beat you to it.

Nah, LIB, that's not the same sentiment at all. I don't wish to tell anyone that their favorite band sucks. Poking gentle fun at elitism - my own included - on the other hand...

I don't have enough emotion invested in any band I don't personally appreciate to attack afficionados. Nor will I "defend" bands I do appreciate beyond much of a shrug. Seriously, there's enough music to go around.
posted by likeso at 6:21 AM on June 13, 2011

Again, this makes me weary about posting band threads. My favorite band does not suck. My favorite band saved my life. Your favorite genre, however, gives me panic attacks nap attacks.
posted by heyho at 6:30 AM on June 13, 2011

sometimes a post that gets a lot of flags is the mark of a post that has a lot going for it.

This is not one of those times. Borderline at best, putting it in "could go either way". It went the deleted way. No big loss IMO.

As to "great discussion" in the thread, it a total derail and just "chat about u2". Make a good U2 post? Why does this great discussion about U2 have to be in a crappy dis of them? Weird.
posted by cj_ at 7:24 AM on June 13, 2011

ZooTV's aesthetic was very arguably a rip off of the Emergency Broadcast Network.

EBN, the guys U2 hired to work on ZooTV?

not too threatening or too different or too angry or too dark

I can understand not liking U2's music for whatever reason, but come on. They've had plenty of angry and dark songs. Usually not for the lead singles off an album or whatever, but "Exit", "Peace on Earth", "Wake Up Dead Man", "Mofo", "Love is Blindness", "Please", "Bullet the Blue Sky", hell their cover of "Night and Day" are not exactly happy go lucky anthems.

/U2 Nerd Guy
posted by kmz at 8:40 AM on June 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

I don't wish to tell anyone that their favorite band sucks.

There was a sticker going around Vancouver (and probably all Canada for all I know) back in the 90s that simply said, "I HATE YOUR BAND". Must say, I found it rather refreshing.
posted by philip-random at 9:11 AM on June 13, 2011

Well it was basically an Ask Metafilter post. If I find an Ask Metafilter post I really like should I post it to the blue?
posted by JJ86 at 9:39 AM on June 13, 2011

Could you guys expand on your sense of what leans to deletion in these cases versus what stays around?

The case-by-case-ness of this makes this hard to codify. At some level the flagging is one of the other data points that we consider. The time of day matters [and probably affects flagging]. The way the conversation is going--if there's good discussion but also a lot of people asking "why is this shit here?" for example--is part of it. Good discussion that also has a lot of "this is a crappy post" is a lot worse than so-so discussion but no "this sucks" comments scattered around.

We usually err on the side of inclusion. We usually talk to each other to get an idea of how other people feel about the post. We'll think about whether we think the post is on a topic that is one of MeFi's sort of core reasons-for-being [is it a neat thing on the web, or is it a newsy update post about some US-centric story?] and we're more inclusionist on the former and maybe more deletionist on the latter.

Meh-post-but-good-discussion happens a lot in obit posts and new-tech-thing posts [if they're not destroyed with infighting]. Less so in news posts and sort of angry-posts. Music posts tend to be polarizing for whatever reason. More mystery-type posts tend to be not as loved as posts that are more clear but maybe not interesting to any particular person. Having human mods means that there will always be judgment calls at some level and we're always around to talk about them when they happen if people aren't okay with them.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 10:38 AM on June 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

It's entirely possible to make fun of something you love. Exhibit one: The Rutles.
posted by Daddy-O at 11:51 AM on June 13, 2011 [3 favorites]

"I guess I would have understood it being an edge case"

i c wut u did dere
posted by Eideteker at 12:38 PM on June 13, 2011

Also, thanks to this thread, I'm totally launching execercize.com. Business plan forthcoming as soon as I think of one.
posted by Eideteker at 12:41 PM on June 13, 2011

"The K-hole thread got one flag"

And I guess we know who that is. Sorry, Mitheral. You just god mod-outed.
posted by Eideteker at 12:55 PM on June 13, 2011

I didn't actually look, but it constantly surprises me that the overlap between people who flag threads and the people who complain about threads is not usually all that large.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 1:17 PM on June 13, 2011

"Your favorite genre, however, gives me panic attacks."

Good. Fuck your comfort zone, with your twee, folky bullshit. Give me something with a goddamned beat.

The problem with music these days is that it's all indie-folk crap, or oontz-oontz dancehall shit. The stuff with a soul has no beat, and the stuff with a beat has no soul. Whatever happened to rock 'n roll?
posted by Eideteker at 1:21 PM on June 13, 2011 [3 favorites]

"it constantly surprises me that the overlap between people who flag threads and the people who complain about threads is not usually all that large."

So FIAMO is a myth? It's more FI(XOR)MO?
posted by Eideteker at 1:23 PM on June 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

Well, it's more complicated than that. You need at minimum a magic square: FLAGGED and DIDN'T FLAG on one axis, MOVED ON and DIDN'T MOVE ON on the other, and then bucket people into one of the four of those.

1. Someone who flagged and didn't stay did indeed FIAMO; those folks exist.

2. But you also have FIADMO, people who flagged something but said something about it sucking as well.

3. And then there's DFIADMO, people who didn't flag but did grouse in-thread.

4. Finally, the default case of DFIAMO where folks neither flagged nor complained in thread.

What restless_nomad is saying is that the overlap between flaggers and didn't-move-oners is lower than you might think: if someone is going to complain in thread about how the thread sucks, they're gonna flag it, right? Not necessarily. So it's not that FIAMO is a myth, it's that DFIADMO is maybe a bigger slice of the pie than you'd expect.

The magic square thing up there also doesn't take into account unexpressed motivations: did you not flag it because you didn't think it needed flagging at all, or did you not flag it because you didn't quite feel it quite crossed that threshold, or did you not flag it because you don't believe in flagging; did you hate the post but add a non-grousing comment since if the thread is there it might as well have a decent existence, in which case you moved on in writing but not in your heart; did you flag and then complain in the thread as well because you felt it would add weight to your complaint, or did you try to move on and have a lapse of self-control, or did you complain in the thread as a sort of mission for justice in the case where your flag doesn't get the post deleted after all?

And so on. It's a great big complicated world out there in the kingdoms of Flagistan and Moveonia.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:36 PM on June 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

Today is not just my birthday, it's also the day the mods take my jokey comments as opportunities to exposit on the back end details of their job.

that's right I said back end

and I do love you guys
posted by Eideteker at 2:10 PM on June 13, 2011

okay hippybear I will defer to your obsessive fandomness on this issue. Dowloading POP now.

Also, since I once had a similar level of ownership towards a band (The Police) I will not judge.
posted by Bonzai at 2:52 PM on June 13, 2011

Pop is where they went off the rails for me, never to recover, but YMMV.
posted by entropicamericana at 2:56 PM on June 13, 2011

Whatever happened to rock 'n roll?
Rock 'n' Roll is dead.
posted by dg at 3:05 PM on June 13, 2011

The ol' boy may be barely breathing, but the heart of rock 'n' roll is still beating.
posted by entropicamericana at 3:18 PM on June 13, 2011

How long must we sing this song?
posted by perhapses at 3:50 PM on June 13, 2011

ARGH NOT AGAIN.

*scours playlist for earworm removal juice*
posted by loquacious at 3:55 PM on June 13, 2011

Here we go.
posted by loquacious at 3:57 PM on June 13, 2011

"Your favorite genre, however, gives me panic attacks."

Good. Fuck your comfort zone, with your twee, folky bullshit. Give me something with a goddamned beat.

The problem with music these days is that it's all indie-folk crap, or oontz-oontz dancehall shit. The stuff with a soul has no beat, and the stuff with a beat has no soul. Whatever happened to rock 'n roll?

I agree with you. I don't know if the boring folk punk/pop punk/rockabilly listen to helps, but Gaslight Anthem, Titus Andronicus, The Bronx, Foxy Shazam, Jim Jones Revue, Hold Steady, Off With Their Heads, Against Me! are all trying.

But yeah it seems to be bloodless indie or techno disco.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 4:10 PM on June 13, 2011

But you're right, today's music ain't got the same soul. Give me that old time rock and roll.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 4:13 PM on June 13, 2011 [2 favorites]

If there's a rock and roll heaven, then you know they got a hell of a band.
posted by box at 4:21 PM on June 13, 2011

I don't know. I went to the Appel Farm festival last weekend and now I'm convinced that folk is everything, punk is folk, and rock is dead.
posted by Rory Marinich at 4:26 PM on June 13, 2011

Folk music died when they started using Axe body wash.
posted by box at 4:36 PM on June 13, 2011 [2 favorites]

That's what the smell was? I thought it was camaraderie.
posted by Rory Marinich at 4:40 PM on June 13, 2011

Camaraderie by Old Spice.
posted by Rory Marinich at 4:40 PM on June 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

I don't know. I went to the Appel Farm festival last weekend and now I'm convinced that folk is everything, punk is folk, and rock is dead.

Defiance Ohio did get the best response at a mini punk festival I was at, leading my friends to coin the term 'folk punk mosh'.

Head down to the next Revival Tour, Rory. Folk-punk in its most literal form.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 4:58 PM on June 13, 2011

It looks like Revival Tour is UK-only. If they come to the Philly/NJ area I'd give them a look, but unfortunately I'm not yet rich enough to cross the seas in search of a concert.
posted by Rory Marinich at 5:03 PM on June 13, 2011

okay hippybear I will defer to your obsessive fandomness on this issue. Dowloading POP now.

Also, since I once had a similar level of ownership towards a band (The Police) I will not judge.

POP has some truly brilliant song writing, and some really great sonic bits. I won't wax eloquent about it here because it would get tiresome, I'm sure. I will warn you of the Discotheque / Mofo one-two punch of trying to combine house music with rock-n-roll... The band has an amazing ability to play in a style which sounds like samples (and is partly, but largely isn't). The middle of the album, If God Will Send His Angels, Staring At The Sun, Last Night On Earth, and Gone is a brilliant 4-song sequence which rivals anything on any of their other albums. The Playboy Mansion is U2 at their most directedly ironic. And Please... holy shit that song works on levels that I'm still discovering.

More than any other U2 album, POP is a ride which, once I start, I have to finish. I have a small list of albums like this. Boingo, Rites Of Passage, No Code, Indian Summer, The Fragile, Ray Of Light, It's A Beautiful Day, and POP. I probably have others, but those spring immediately to mind.

Now that I've completely made a fool out of myself by revealing that much about my musical tastes, I should probably go hide for a long while.
posted by hippybear at 5:14 PM on June 13, 2011 [3 favorites]

I am reminded of the time I went to see The Cure in Melbourne in 2000-whatever, against my will, on their Bloodflowers tour. I think one of the warmup bands was Boy George, though I may be thinking of another rubbish concert I didn't want to go to and yet did. Anyway, it was another one of The Cure's "last tours ever", and Robert Smith came on and he looked like one of those guys you'd find in the corner at a goth club, drinking beer and smoking endless cigarettes, there because it's expected of him because he's one of the old-school goth guys, and they played for about an hour and nobody in the audience recognised a single song they played, because they were all from the new record, which nobody in the world had bought. It was probably the shittiest concert I've ever been to in my entire shitty life. In summary then: breezes.
posted by tumid dahlia at 5:43 PM on June 13, 2011 [3 favorites]

It looks like Revival Tour is UK-only. If they come to the Philly/NJ area I'd give them a look, but unfortunately I'm not yet rich enough to cross the seas in search of a concert.

They've come to Australia, so they'll probably tour America too. It's basically folk-punk guys playing acoustically.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 6:03 PM on June 13, 2011

Homage To My Dead Thread

See my post out on the Blue
See the snark first post from you
I wait .... for someone true

Sleight of hand and twist of fate
cortex has played it straight
Now I wait ... without you

With or without you
With or without you

Through the storm we reach the shore
Had eight favorites , wanted more
And I wait .... in Meta

With or without you
With or without you
I can't live
With or without you

And you gave my post away
And you gave my post away
posted by Poet_Lariat at 5:01 PM on June 12 [8 favorites +] [!]


Was going to favourite this, then realised why I couldn't.
posted by Sebmojo at 6:17 PM on June 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

The typical "if you don't appreciate the subject of a thread, skip it and don't comment" wisdom which is usually shared so readily across MetaFilter never is trotted out when it comes to U2.

Unlike Lady Gaga, whose talents are elaborately respected by even the unenamored and whose admirers are treated with unctuous deference amid expressions of admiration for their enthusiasm.
posted by y2karl at 6:31 PM on June 13, 2011

Its because Gaga and U2 are so ubiquitous that everyone is exposed to them so they have to have an opinion. I don't comment in micro-house or Euro disco threads because not only don't I like it but I can easily avoid being exposed to it. But everyone hears Gaga and U2 songs so you're forced to decide whether they suck.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 7:06 PM on June 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

But everyone hears Gaga and U2 songs so you're forced to decide whether they suck.

Not I. My only exposure to Lady Gaga was hearing a medley of her hits sung by a couple of nine year old girls. Catchy hook laden tunes, those were. And she seems very smart from her interviews. I have managed to not see a single video of hers, however.

As for U2, after being dragged to a concert of theirs in 1979, I found myself not a fan of uberpretentious bloatrock frontmanned by an ego the size of the Hindenburg. The lack of interest has lasted since.

I know about both as much as I know about the travails of the current Bachelorette. Which is far far more than I want to know. But one has to eat and, in order to eat, one has to buy groceries.

Therein lies the rub. Jesus Christ, people get upset about twitpix sent by Representative Weiner to a few individuals and yet no one ever complains about the billions of eyes raped daily by the covers of Us and People magazine in checkout lines everywhere.

I guess my point was that, no matter the artist or genre, dislikes seem stronger than likes to those liking. When one likes some pop musician of any genre, any expression of dislike seems incredibly hateful. And for the record, on the whole, I have noticed more U2 worship here than derision. As with Bob Dylan, Lady Gaga, Bob Marley and whoever else comes to someone else's mind.
posted by y2karl at 8:10 PM on June 13, 2011

I used to listen to Zooropa while playing Doom on an old greyscale laptop. IT WORKS QUITE WELL.
posted by tumid dahlia at 8:37 PM on June 13, 2011

I guess my point was that, no matter the artist or genre, dislikes seem stronger than likes to those liking. When one likes some pop musician of any genre, any expression of dislike seems incredibly hateful. And for the record, on the whole, I have noticed more U2 worship here than derision. As with Bob Dylan, Lady Gaga, Bob Marley and whoever else comes to someone else's mind.

Yeah, its true. When you're really invested in an artist you can take any attack on them as an attack on you personally, especially if that band has helped you get through some tough times.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 8:41 PM on June 13, 2011

But you're right, today's music ain't got the same soul. Give me that old time rock and roll.

Sorry, but I must object. You've pulled lyrics from possibly the most turgid, reactionary, detestable song in the history of so-called rock and roll. And I fuckin' love rock and roll.
posted by philip-random at 11:45 PM on June 13, 2011

That terrible Seger song is the reason poor Cruise became a Scientologist in the first place.
posted by Horselover Phattie at 11:53 PM on June 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

Rock - n - roll!
posted by Rube R. Nekker at 2:26 AM on June 14, 2011

You've pulled lyrics from possibly the most turgid, reactionary, detestable song in the history of so-called rock and roll.

I own several Jesse Malin albums. I've paid to see Frank Turner twice. I have at least 3 songs about listening to The Clash, and about 4 covers of 'Trusty Chords'. My Facebook biography is a quote from an Uncut writer about how "The Gaslight Anthem and The Hold Steady live in a mythographical universe where rock and roll, when played by those who believe like they do, can heal the most wounded and forlorn among us." You want turgid and reactionary songs about rock and roll? You ain't seen nothing yet.

Who'd have thought that after all something as simple as rock and roll could save us all?


And I still find U2 a bit insufferable.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 3:05 AM on June 14, 2011

Yup, visions of uncool young Tom bopping around in his underwear accost me even now ... and even if I was gay, I would consider it scarring.
posted by philip-random at 8:21 AM on June 14, 2011

When you're really invested in an artist you can take any attack on them as an attack on you personally, especially if that band has helped you get through some tough times.

Then there is La Rochefoucauld's 13th maxim: Our self-esteem is more inclined to resent criticism of our tastes than of our opinions.

And I still find U2 a bit insufferable.

To a degree, this has always been my experience. To a much much greater degree, that is...

That concert was most wretched. Silly names -- The Edge ? Oh, for Christ's sake, come on! And don't get me started on Mr. Leapt Fully Grown from The One Named Monobrow of Cher... -- not to mention the shameless and transparent attempts at audience manipulation were enough to put me in the hater camp forever from the git go.

And then there is merely living long enough. When the machina becomes far more apparent than the deux, as it inevitably and always does, one loses one's pop music religion.
posted by y2karl at 8:57 AM on June 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

And then there is merely living long enough. When the machina becomes far more apparent than the deux, as it inevitably and always does, one loses one's pop music religion.

The issue is -- can it still shock, surprise, knock one off balance? This song may not be Rock And Roll but even with an ad stuck in front of it, it leaves a few nasty bruises. (don't even click the link if you're not going to stick with it to the 2:40 point).

Who'd have thought that after all something as simple as rock and roll could save us all?

Appreciate the sentiment, but that vid's just way too clean cut. There's not a single person in it who'd have trouble holding down a day job in a bank, and they'd barely have to adjust their wardrobe. Lyrical content aside, there's no threat to any of it and if it ain't a threat, it ain't the rock and roll I love.

... and um, sorry again for coming off so strident with my denunciation of that Bog Seber song. It's just that it really did speak to everything I'd come to HATE about the state of Rock and Roll in the late 70s/early 80s -- that this music that really had saved the world in the 50s and 60s had hit boring middle age. What once had been a harbinger of change, revolt, evolution had turned around and become un-ironically xenophobic. What once had been the soundtrack for freaks, weirdos, outsiders had become just one more accoutrement of the straight, uptight, conformist, preppy lifestyle ... as epitomized by that awful scene from that mostly awful movie.

This is also pretty cool in a disturbing way.
posted by philip-random at 9:15 AM on June 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

Eh, I still think U2 is awesome and I have for years.

And if people disagree, that just means more copies of All That You Can't Leave Behind for me, so that works out.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:17 AM on June 14, 2011

And don't get me started on Mr. Leapt Fully Grown from The One Named Monobrow of Cher...

Look, if you're going to be snarky and insulting, at least start from a place of intelligence so we don't all dismiss you as a git, okay?

His original stage name was Bono Vox. It's Latin. If you have to look it up, you didn't study hard enough in school.
posted by hippybear at 4:24 PM on June 14, 2011

Yeah, anyone who makes jokes about Bono's name clearly must be ignorant of what his name means. No one could possibly make such a joke AND be aware of his original stage name. That would be impossible,
posted by 23skidoo at 4:45 PM on June 14, 2011 [3 favorites]

Appreciate the sentiment, but that vid's just way too clean cut. There's not a single person in it who'd have trouble holding down a day job in a bank, and they'd barely have to adjust their wardrobe. Lyrical content aside, there's no threat to any of it and if it ain't a threat, it ain't the rock and roll I love.

Yeah, I sorted posted that as the 'worst' of the modern stuff I listen to. Last time I saw Frank most of the punks had been replaced by English backpackers. There's an interview with Brian from Gaslight Anthem where the interviewer asks him if they'll ever be as big as U2, and it's a joke... but as much as I love them they write inoffensive, redemptive, old-fashioned style rock and roll. A few years ago nobody predicted Kings of Leon would get so big or so crap either. Its like 'being U2' is the illogical endpoint for what I listen to, if that makes sense (it doesn't).

The issue is -- can it still shock, surprise, knock one off balance? This song yt may not be Rock And Roll but even with an ad stuck in front of it, it leaves a few nasty bruises. (don't even click the link if you're not going to stick with it to the 2:40 point).

what is that? I can't see it in my country?
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 4:52 PM on June 14, 2011

what is that? I can't see it in my country?

The song's MGMT's Flash Delirium, though it's more the video itself I was linking to. If you haven't seen it in its unedited form, I recommend tracking it down.
posted by philip-random at 5:02 PM on June 14, 2011

MGMT and Klaxons? Nu-rave is going to save rock and roll? It's probably some of the least horrible of the hipster music but I don't think think its what we need...
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 7:02 PM on June 14, 2011

Nu-rave is going to save rock and roll?

Are MGMT + Klaxons "Nu-rave"? Those two songs are just quick examples of newer hard sounds that have caught my attention recently in an immediate and un-moribund way. Black Mountain's Let Spirits Ride also packs a refreshing punch.
posted by philip-random at 11:51 PM on June 14, 2011

If nu-rave means anything (it kinda doesn't) its defined by Klaxons and a bit of MGMT. The question of where to go for rock and roll is actually a pretty hard one. I'm slowly moving into hardcore like La Dispute and semi emo/pop punk like The Wonder Years.

MGMT and the Klaxons are okay, but I don't like the whole dance/rock hybrids. It ends up with sunny mush. I think we both need to check out the new Fucked Up album, though. That might save rock and roll this year, like Titus Andronicus' The Monitor did last year.

Or maybe the saviors are Jim Jones Revue's retro rockabilly. Or Foxy Shazam's soul glam.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 11:56 PM on June 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

Lovecraft In Brooklyn: "The question of where to go for rock and roll is actually a pretty party hard one."

FTFY
posted by idiopath at 12:18 AM on June 15, 2011

I've only heard one track from the new Fucked Up but yeah, it's a killer. What I immediately like about them is that they manage to be both utterly raw and rather polished at the same time. Powerful stuff.

Or maybe the saviors are

I've been in and out of the rock and roll wars for years. For instance, I was just graduating high school when Punk hit and effectively pulled the rug out from under what we now think of as "Classic Rock". Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones, the Who et al -- they all took a palpable hit in terms of credibility. Yeah, they'd continue to sell gobs of records but in terms of defining the zeitgeist, none of them ever got it back (except perhaps in some kind of weird retro-way; Led Zeppelin did suddenly sound awfully cool again in about 1988 when all their break-beats started showing up in hip-hop anthems).

What I learned from punk (and keep learning) is that the only saviors worth caring about always come from way under the radar, literally from the underground. And when I say underground, I say it without a capital "U". Because the hype machine will always hype, and payola will flow ... but real and meaningful cool new stuff will always be outside of that bullshit (beneath it), grinding out of drug soaked suburban basements or perhaps fire ravaged Brazilian favelas, because there's always some faceless young folks with grievances to settle, protests to register, dragons to slay ... or maybe just the summertime blues. And they will be heard.

And the best stuff always seems to erupt at precisely the moment when the mainstream is at its blandest, most predictable, most cynical, most UNDER CONTROL.

keep on rockin in the free world.
posted by philip-random at 9:31 AM on June 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

When i saw the klaxons live (with 2 many djs and diplo), i thought they were going to save Rave & Rock and roll.. i had never heard of them before, but they rocked my world. One of my top 2-3 concerts of all time.
posted by empath at 9:50 AM on June 15, 2011

His original stage name was Bono Vox. It's Latin. If you have to look it up, you didn't study hard enough in school.

Uberpretentious2, brute ?

I didn't have to look it up. It was not a requirement when I graduated. And thank God, life is too short as it is.
posted by y2karl at 12:14 PM on June 15, 2011

Personally, I think every new Chemical Brothers album is what saves Rock & Roll.
posted by hippybear at 4:36 PM on June 15, 2011

Rock'n'roll is jazz at this point. A museum piece or an ingredient in other musics.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 8:03 PM on June 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

Rock'n'roll is jazz at this point.

Still awesome to see live?

I'm not a jazz fan, but when I hear it I'm pretty happy. Rock and roll has been declared dead from almost the moment it was born, but it will never die.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 8:43 PM on June 15, 2011

Rock'n'roll is jazz at this point. A museum piece or an ingredient in other musics.

Rock And Roll? The stuff that Buddy Holly, Elvis, the Big Bopper, Bill Haley were doing? Yeah, that's a pretty apt dismissal. Mind you, they were saying as much as early as 1959 when Buddy Holly's plane crashed. Ever paid attention to Bob McLean's American Pie?

But that other less definable thing that I generally think of as driven, LOUD, amplified, irresponsible young person's music which has been continuously evolving, devolving, inverting, subverting, erupting, disrupting ever since, say 1965, when Bob Dylan went electric? That shit's still alive and well and I currently hear it coming from all manner of unlikely sources.
posted by philip-random at 8:52 PM on June 15, 2011 [2 favorites]

Of course it will stay around, just as jazz has. And yes, it can be great fun.

But yeah, still dead. Developments in music no longer occur there.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 10:31 PM on June 15, 2011

I just got out of an outstanding fucking show. So there!
posted by rtha at 11:05 PM on June 15, 2011 [2 favorites]

People still do archery, too. It's quite fun. But...
posted by Joseph Gurl at 12:41 AM on June 16, 2011

> ever since, say 1965, when Bob Dylan went electric

*shakes head sadly, mutters something about his lawn*
posted by languagehat at 8:14 AM on June 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

metallica has recorded a new album with lou reed
posted by pyramid termite at 2:12 PM on June 16, 2011

Rock'n'roll is jazz at this point. A museum piece or an ingredient in other musics.

Joseph, your snark has maybe given me insight into why Gaslight Anthem, a pure rock band, have songs like The Spirit Of Jazz.

OTOH I have given my life to rock. I'm 26 and I already have tinnitus. Rock might be dead or old fashioned but it (and offshoots like folk rock) are all I listen to. I'm seeing some awesome bands this year, local and international. Rock will never die.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 4:01 PM on June 16, 2011

We all have our investments, Lovecraft In Brooklyn. Hope you find some relief for your ears--I have a lot of friends with tinnitus, and they current thinking is that diet can help a little.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 4:30 PM on June 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

"Recent studies show that rock and roll is, in fact, dying"
posted by Horselover Phattie at 4:34 PM on June 16, 2011

Wow, seriously, Lovecraft In Brooklyn?

I had my hearing tested the day after seeing U2, and came up as "normal" for my age range.

Seriously, what are you doing to your ears? I easily have a full generation-worth of rock concert attendance on you, and a lot of those were in the bad old days of large stacks of speakers on either side of the stage with seats on the third row edge aisle.
posted by hippybear at 7:26 PM on June 17, 2011

I'm guessing he's seeing bands in small clubs. That's where you can jack up your ears.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 7:34 PM on June 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm guessing he's seeing bands in small clubs. That's where you can jack up your ears.

I don't have tinnitus, but I do have mild hearing damage, and it's largely from exactly that. I've only ever been to one largish show (maybe there were 2000 people there); everything else was all punk bands in tiny venues with the sound cranked to 11. Fun at the time, but I wish I had been smart enough to wear earplugs. I'm lucky that I didn't get more serious problems; I can remember dozens of shows that left my hearing all muffled for a couple of days after, but somehow I escaped the worst of it.
posted by Forktine at 7:38 PM on June 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

I certainly see plenty of small (under 1500 capacity) shows....

And I haven't ever worn ear protection.

And holy shit... looking at his age... I've been seeing concerts since before he was born. Eek.

Maybe I have genetically strong hearing or something.
posted by hippybear at 7:40 PM on June 17, 2011

Anywhere near 1500 capacity isn't exactly small. Tiny rooms that hold maybe 100 people can be brutal on the ears. I've spent a lot of time at noise shows, but I always wear earplugs. My hearing is very, very important to me.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 7:42 PM on June 17, 2011

Yeah, I think we might have different ideas about what "small" is. (There's a joke in there, somewhere...) I'm talking 20 to 200 people in a cramped, echoing room, not a big auditorium with good acoustics, like what Joseph Gurl describes.
posted by Forktine at 7:48 PM on June 17, 2011

but I wish I had been smart enough to wear earplugs.

my thanks go out to a Communications prof at Simon Fraser University in 1978 who had been doing a lot of research into hearing damage. I remember him pointing out that most rock shows peaked at over 120 decibels which was effectively the PAIN level and also the permanent damage level.

Now some 33 years and at least a thousand bands later, my hearing still seems pretty much average for my age group (losing a bit at the high end), maybe even better than average.

By the way, my personal solution is not the ear plugs you buy. They tend to cut out too much sound. I just use tissue paper, adjusting the amount to the volume of the event. But don't jam it in too deep. It can be a bugger to get out.
posted by philip-random at 7:48 PM on June 17, 2011

It go to about 2 gigs a week, in venues of all sizes. I review music, so that increases the amount I see. No earplugs. Everything from tiny punk shows to arena shows. This is a 'quiet' period for me. Last night I saw a whole night of punk covers. Next weekend it's a local indie band, and the weekend after it's two days straight of rock in a pub.

In festival seasons it gets worse. One week in February was a HUGE all day punk/metal festival, Gaslight the next day (medium size venue), and Social Distortion/The Bronx the next day. No earplugs. And of course I crank up the iPod whenever I'm depressed....

So yeah. Fucked.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 8:24 PM on June 17, 2011

I play (often very quiet) improvised music, so I've made a point of protecting my ears, but in the late 90's that was tough, hanging out at EJ's & similar in Portland. Fortunately I knew people even then who already had tinnitus and significant hearing loss, and I'm very glad I avoided that fate.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 8:31 PM on June 17, 2011

Dude, buy earplugs. The cheap ones work great, but you could certainly justify a set of those fancy molded-to-your-ears fancy ones. The damage just builds on itself; it's better to keep the hearing you still have than to go totally deaf.
posted by Forktine at 8:31 PM on June 17, 2011

I ordered those Etymologic ones you guys keep recomending. Last night I wore cheap ones, and I'll do that at every gig I go to.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 8:45 PM on June 17, 2011

In any case, ears are as much a crapshoot as lungs. Some folks smoke pack a day for 20 years and breathe easy; some folks go to rock shows with no ear protection and hold onto enough of their high-frequency hearing to not notice damage. Both are stupid habits, but if you get lucky then you got lucky and more power to you, but maybe try out the patch and buy some goddam ear plugs because nobody is bulletproof and bodies get frailer.

Hearing damage is very common among rock musicians and loud music enthusiasts; tinnitus somewhat less so but far from rare and a matter of degree in any case. But hearing damage is progressive; if you've fucked up your ears some already, that sucks (and given that those cilia don't grow back, it's not likely going to get better either), but it doesn't have to keep getting worse.

Buy earplugs. Cheap ones are cheap and will protect your ears; good ones aren't that expensive and have surprisingly good sonics to boot. You can be sure as hell that neither will degrade sound quality the way progressive hearing loss will.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:47 PM on June 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

And of course I crank up the iPod whenever I'm depressed....

I can't help but think this may be doing more damage than the concerts. Do you always use headphones, or do you have a stereo system with speakers you use to fill the room with sound? I've heard for decades that the equivalent volume coming out of speakers is MUCH less damaging to your ears than headphones.
posted by hippybear at 5:48 AM on June 18, 2011

hippybear: yup.
posted by likeso at 8:14 AM on June 18, 2011

Headphones. Okay headphone, but sometimes ear buds. So yeah. I looked at some old MeFi threads on the subject, and they all say the same thing. I should also mention I usually stand up close to the speakers. At one point I literally sat in front of the speakers when the Vines played a massive festival.

I don't have many self-destructive habits, but I needed one...
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 8:58 PM on June 18, 2011

http://metachat.org/
posted by Horselover Phattie at 10:10 PM on June 18, 2011

http://whatsittoyou.huh
posted by Joseph Gurl at 3:15 AM on June 19, 2011

http://metachat.org/

Ahem.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:46 AM on June 19, 2011

Ahem what? That was clearly on target and making fun of your idiot lover's quarrel there.
posted by Horselover Phattie at 12:48 PM on June 19, 2011

That was clearly on target and making fun of your idiot lover's quarrel there.

This is a great example of when the placement of an apostrophe can change the entire meaning of a sentence...
posted by Forktine at 1:46 PM on June 19, 2011 [2 favorites]

Wow. The link in the deleted FPP describes my coworker to a tee, down to the sneakers and blazer.

He just went to a U2 concert two days ago, and told us all about it at work the next day.
posted by ixohoxi at 1:12 PM on June 24, 2011

He waited until the next day? Damn, he's slacking.

He should have called you all while the concert was happening and said "listen to this" and then held the phone up so you could get that distant echoey sound from the speakers.

Jeez. What's his name and email? I'll school him in how this is done.
posted by hippybear at 2:29 PM on June 26, 2011