Dear Lobsters: There Is a Better Way

Nathan J. Robinson, writing at Current Affairs:

I’d like to send a message, then, to those who like Peterson, or those young men who think Ben Shapiro is a “cool kids’ philosopher,” or those who find Sam Harris profound: You are missing out on the real world of ideas. You are accepting a shallow substitute for the real thing, and it is a dead end. These men do not have solutions. They have pseudo-solutions. If you are depressed, if you are alone, if your job sucks and you aren’t sure where your life is going, what you need is not the shallow bromides of _12 Rules for Life_sc. You need to come and join the left.

There is a misconception, pushed by people like Shapiro and Peterson, that “the left” consists of a very particular strain of “social justice” thinking that traffics in making white people, especially men, feel ashamed all the time.

YouTube Dominating Streaming Market

YouTube

Mark Mulligan, writing at the Music Industry Blog:

YouTube is the dominant music streaming platform, with 55% of consumers regularly watching music videos on YouTube, compared to a combined 37% for all free audio streaming services. YouTube usage skews young, peaking at nearly three quarters of consumers under 25. Although YouTube leads audio streaming in all markets — even Spotify’s native Sweden — there are some strong regional variations. For example, emerging streaming markets Brazil and Mexico see much higher YouTube penetration, peaking at close to double the level of even traditional music radio in Mexico. Indeed, radio is feeling the YouTube pinch as much as audio streaming. 68% of those under 45 watch YouTube music videos compared to 41% that listen to music radio. The difference increases with younger audiences and the more emerging the market.

I Was A Cable Guy. I Saw The Worst Of America.

Huffpost

Lauren Hough, writing at HuffPost:

This is the stuff I can’t remember — how a particular day unfolded. Maybe the next job was the Great Falls, Virginia, housewife who answered the door in some black skimpy thing I never really saw because I work very hard at eye contact when faced with out-of-context nudity. She was expecting a man. I’m a 6-foot lesbian. If I showed up at your door in a uniform with my hair cut in what’s known to barbers as the International Lesbian Option No. 2, you might mistake me for a man. Everyone does. She was rare in that she realized I’m a woman. We laughed about it. She found a robe while I replaced her cable box. She asked if I needed to use a bathroom, and I loved her.

This was a great read.

All Time Low Taking a Little Break in 2019

Alex Gaskarth of All Time Low talked with Kerrang about the band’s 2019 plans:

“We’re taking a bit of a break,” he tells Kerrang! of the band’s plans for the year. “For the last couple of records, we’ve done two-year-long cycles. With Last Young Renegade, it was winding down in the first half of 2018, but then we decided to put out [non-album singles] Birthday and Everything Is Fine, which revitalised that campaign and led to more dates on the calendar. That meant another six months was tacked on to what had already been a full album cycle. For us, it feels too soon to be properly thinking about the next record – I need to sleep for at least a fortnight straight! We need to figure out what’s next and what All Time Low should be doing going forward.”

Hopeless Records Founder Picks the Label’s Ten Best Releases

Hopeless Records

Louis Posen, the founder of Hopeless Records, sat down with Noisey to rank the label’s albums:

Actually, the label’s bestselling record is the one before that, the Avenged Sevenfold record, which is almost platinum now in the US. It’s gold in many countries. And the next two after that are other All Time Low Records—Nothing Personal and So Wrong, It’s Right are both gold in the US. So Wrong, It’s Right has “Dear Maria” and that’s our bestselling song and is platinum in the US. The reason I picked Future Hearts is that it’s our only record to debut at number one in the US and UK.

A Look Back at Digital Music Piracy in the 2000s

Abhimanyu Ghoshal, writing at TNW:

What was particularly interesting back then was the wide range of ingenious methods people used to share tunes. Back in the day, people went beyond simply hosting music on public-facing websites, and instead, found ways to send and receive tracks directly with other internet users. Let’s take a walk down memory lane and take a look at some of the ways people grew their music collections in the late 90s and early 2000s.

Post Office Named After Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix

A post office in Renton, Washington has been named after Jimi Hendrix:

Last week a bill was signed into law re-christening the Renton Highlands Post Office the James Marshall “Jimi” Hendrix Post Office in the legendary guitarist’s honor. The bill, which passed unanimously, was sponsored by Rep. Adam Smith, D-Bellevue, and supported by both of Washington’s U.S. senators, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell.

How Much of the Internet Is Fake?

Max Read, writing for New York Magazine:

How much of the internet is fake? Studies generally suggest that, year after year, less than 60 percent of web traffic is human; some years, according to some researchers, a healthy majority of it is bot. For a period of time in 2013, the Times reported this year, a full half of YouTube traffic was “bots masquerading as people,” a portion so high that employees feared an inflection point after which YouTube’s systems for detecting fraudulent traffic would begin to regard bot traffic as real and human traffic as fake. They called this hypothetical event “the Inversion.”

Wonderful.

Pete Wentz Has Learned the True Meaning of Christmas

Alex Robert Ross, writing for Noisey, about the band’s holiday song “Yule Shoot Your Eye Out:”

Wentz says that they didn’t overthink the lyrics, that it was “mostly just a goofy song that we took and burned on a cd and gift wrapped in holiday paper and gave out to kids at the show.” […] “Maybe that was a bit overdramatic,” he says now. “I don’t think it was awful. I think monotonous would be a better word. I think when you are a punk rock kid in the suburbs, the holidays represent the biggest version of the monoculture. How could you not take a shot at it?”

Jackie Fuchs Talks Being the Reigning “Jeopardy!” Champion

TV

Madison Bloom, writing at Pitchfork:

Jackie Fuchs—who was the bassist for the Runways from 1975 to 1977 under the name Jackie Fox—is the current reigning “Jeopardy!” champion. As of last night, she’s on a four-win streak. Fuchs made her first appearance on Friday, December 14, but it wasn’t until her third appearance, on Tuesday night, when Alex Trebek finally acknowledged her tenure in the band. Fuchs won for the fourth time by correctly answering a question about the poet Dylan Thomas.

Love It or Hate It, Refused Changed Punk

Refused

David Anthony, writing for Noisey:

All that love, and all that criticism, was only further proof of the impression that The Shape Of Punk To Come made. Even if it’s become cooler to deny the record its place in punk history, the actual shape of modern punk music would be drastically different without Refused. For a full decade, bands used The Shape of Punk to Come as a sonic reference point, and it became a stand-in for a bigger ideological shift within the genre. It’s become a way to describe punk and hardcore music that has a forward-thinking approach, one that sees the style as an open space where anything could be possible. So while it may not be easy to find a band that accurately replicated Refused’s sound, the fact that they became the baseline for an entire artistic approach speaks volumes.

More Allegations Against Dahvie Vanity

Huffpost

Sebastian Murdock and Jesselyn Cook, writing at Huffington Post:

Hendry’s story is disturbingly familiar. HuffPost spoke to a dozen women who said Torres sexually assaulted them between 2006 and 2015. We also spoke to a girl, now 16, who said Torres started grooming her when she was 13 and he was 30. Most of the women said they were under 18 at the time of their alleged assaults.

After the article came out, Big Cartel have (finally) removed Torres’s merch store.

Rising Instagram Stars Are Posting Fake Sponsored Content

Instagram

Taylor Lorenz, writing for The Atlantic:

Taylor Evans took the fake-“sponcon” game one step further, once faking the entire purpose of a trip to Miami. Technically, she was just there on vacation, paying her own way for everything, but on Instagram she positioned it as an exclusive press trip. “I took a lot of pics at restaurants and posted ‘Thanks so much XYZ restaurant for the hospitality!’” she said. “You say it in a way that people could interpret it as you having an established relationship with that brand … The hope is that it’s perceived in a way that looks like there’s a reason you’re in a different city and state, not just enjoying a weekend vacation.”

We live in interesting times.