“home schooled by a dog”: what I learned from the Maestro

This is the first of what I hope will be many posts for a re-imagined, re-focused Sniperhunter2012. As this post deals with the Internet as a tool for communicating ideas, and for practical interactions with others, the timing seems like (excuse the fuzzy term) kismet. Following up on comments left in response to a Facebook Group post I made, and due to conversations I had with other folks later, I’ve learned – or rather, re-learned a basic lesson. The Internet is simultaneously the best and the worst forum for discussing ideas.

I made my acquaintance this past week with a gentleman who calls himself Maestro Maahanmuuttaja. Identifying himself as a student of psychology, Maestro is a member of a political discussion group I belonged to {ed note: I no longer belong to the group}. Maestro had responded to a meme I had posted (the details of which are irrelevant to this discussion) which  included a quote from a philosopher, lecturer and author. Maestro’s initial comment? That the meme author/individual quoted was “clearly…a person that was home schooled by a dog”.

Crap songs or crap tastes? Song lists

Image via CrunchBase

Ever listened to a tune and, feeling that gut deep desire to cover your ears and scrub your brain, thought some equivalent of “I’d rather raw dog a beehive than hear that crap again”? Dramatic, si’, and yet…

Hunter spent several hours he will never get back listening to a top 100 ‘worst songs ever’ playlist from Songza today. The list was compiled by AOL.com. *Sigh*, poor AOL. Anyway….

So he spent the time assaulting his better sensibilities with crap ass tunes, originally as a distraction, but halfway through open questions lurked in the back of his protesting mind.

Just what makes an individual hate (or love) a particular song? Aren’t musical (or, for that matter, all aesthetic) tastes subjective, despite our obsessive music-geek debates over styles, genres, and quality of a sound or lyric?

What purpose do ‘worst…anything’ lists serve? Do they exist as some critic and fan ‘fuck you, you suck. We’ve kept a record’ smackdown of shittier artists or of good artists occasionally dropping on we the fans a lump of compositional/lyrical shit?