commedesfuckdwn asked: It's such an easy cop-out slacker attitude that "the man" is out of touch and "cool" will never be popular - people who are dope at shit get dope jobs, Mike Mills can only make so many skate films before PEPSI hits him up, RUSKO can only do the sideshow at HARD Fest so many times before he's in a breath mint commercial... Most people think it's enough to sit around being cooler than everyone and having good taste - the ones with drive get jobs at creative firms & bring “cool” to the world.
Totally. Good stuff generally rises to the top, and people who can consistently sift the good from the bad will usually be rewarded. Plus, you know, you can’t pay rent with promo CDs and festival wristbands, so I certainly wouldn’t criticize Liza Richardson for taking a chance to do music supervision for iTunes spots, or Bentley for doing Tron, even if it means my favorite little track that only me and my friends and I know about will suddenly be on TV every forty seconds.
Where I do start to get a little bummed out is when artists seemingly go for the immediate cash grab over any kind of long term plan, but that’s just because I’m old. Time and again it’s been proven that most people under 30 just don’t care that much about corporate and artistic intermingling. They know nobody’s paying for content anymore, and seem to intuitively understand that artists still need to eat, and that they can take money from Pepsi or Slim Jims or Scion or whoever without the body of work being compromised. I mean, yeah, if Girl Talk’s next tour was sponsored by BP, he might lose some sales, but I bet he’d net out just fine.
Obviously when people complain about an artist “selling out” they’re more often complaining that their little clubhouse is no longer an exclusive spot, which (I think) is at the heart of hipster hatred.
If you aren’t capable of liking something that people other than you, and possibly your friends, know about, then you didn’t really like that thing to begin with, you only liked your own perceived coolness. Also, you probably fear that a rise in society’s overall coolness will damage your own status, which is a logical but totally meaningless thing to worry about.
Man, I know I feel a lot better now. You?
