Mystery: I go to my local record shop, pick up a stack of records that look unfamiliar, hope for the best and give them a listen.
If I’m lucky, I make a new discovery. If not, we’ll, there’s always next weekend. That’s my relationship with music pre internet, pre social media, pre streaming. This influencer hype is just noise.
…yup, the outro is too obvious good will hunting…
but happy endings ain’t sellin’ this year, anyways…
so fuk the silverlining…
that’s what they want you to think.
Also Fred Again… is just Brian Eno driving a good looking robot.
KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES!
…but white noise contains it all…
Well, that just demystified M83 for me. Though I still haven’t listened to their music. Nor plan to, since now I know that it’s “electro-pop.”
Anyway, my point—if I have one—is that there’s a ton of mystery. You want to be mystified? Just go to Bandcamp and start browsing. Where did all of these bands come from? And 99.9999% have zero presence on social media.
…fred again is just brian eno puppeteering via a robot to catch the candy…!?
ooook, now i finally know why fred does not do the trick for me…
thanx for clarifying…errrr, demystifing…
but whoever wants to be brian…there’s only one burial…and it ain’t four tet…
puh, at least still nobody knows who banksy is…
to be a global brand while nobody knows ur truu identy…
that’s truu mystery right there…
and an artform for itself…all on it’s own, these days…
I know this annoying guy who apparently knows who bansky is and brings in up in the most obnoxious wink wink I worked with this famous anonymous artist wink wink way. It’s absolutely nauseating. What a winky wanker.
…oooonooooo…let’s not start to talk about all those pretenders…
…warm welcome to the rat race…
while the art of understatement would suit us all…
but pretenders are the new predators…
Double-edged sword. It is cool when people livestream their process so others can learn, I know artists are looking to avoid the parasitic aspects of streaming, but also I know someone so desperate to be seen and flattered/validated he became a “reply guy” to DJ twitch streams.
Wynn/Contrapoints has a pretty good chat on Tangent: Parasocial Relationships - YouTube
which gets into a lot of classic one-sided relationships and how people reach out in isolated loneliness.
I know it’s still ongoing with radio (building a sense of friendliness) Youtubers who want the viewer to be a part of their friends circle, and as a cratedigger I recall seeing plenty of “Sing Along With Mitch” records where you could be a part of a “group” sing by adding your part on to a prerecorded track.
So really, its a legitimate concern only made more extreme by pandemic isolation and cultivating influence in ways that can be understandable, or can be hostile to society in matters of degree.
I’m not against charisma, and under a negative “attention economy”, getting people to pay time to my creative efforts involves at least a passive amount of engagement and sincere friendliness. Building an audience requires conscious thought, being an artist was always about needing charisma to get people to show up or contribute your life-energies.
The latter at least WAS about a reciprocity, I wouldn’t say universally (because the negative aspects of fame and framed-as-male “genius”) but music and visual artists not only want to be liked on some level but give back. From my experience in a collective, people will often be less about massive technical skill in who they cultivate around them over people they… enjoy having around.
The internet gives feedback indirectly, in what the algorithm dictates, and that is most reflective in how dark patterns and hostile weaponizing of the parasocial aspects in how we’ve replacing basic in-person human connections with less sincere pleas.
Again, as the video gets into it’s a matter of degrees, often indistinct boundaries.
It doesn’t discount persons who need connections and are incapable for a variety of reasons for being present in-person, there’s plenty of awkward in-betweens to sit with.
Reminds me of the “Massive Attack is BANKSY!” meme that was everywhere, but not as a joke. The art is completely different beyond 3d being also into graf and coming from Bristol.
It was just this complete modern “i’m going to say something stupid, overconfidently, and you’re going to act as if I’m smart because I made the connection” that leads the usual chan kids, tweeters and redditors to take up any type of contrarian conspiracy because they can pretend they have sekrit knowledge of something.
But it’s just stupid and vain and completely unimpressive.
Nobody gives a shit who Banksy is.
I love the little person, I love the little things about my friends and strangers that make them who they are.
The idea that one nobody has “sekrit knowlege” that makes them special is some pseudocultic shit that I do not want to be associated with. But again, confident liars who are not really concerned that they are liars or sincere or not (it’s beyond the point) are perhaps not a modern phenomena, but endemic to internet communications platforms.
Storytellers (even dim ones), still can acquire clout by crafting the least compelling or interesting narrative, with enough scale to your audience capture, there are dimmer than dims who want to be around that sort of bloviator, a rising tide of poop lifts all dims and that’s still a “community” of totally special people who want to all talk about how their uncle invented Pokemon, trust them.
I think saturdays=youth is a masterful poprecord but I think the industry ate up his edge and now he cant see beyond the industry. Move back to france Gonzalez!
popcorn.
Pfft! 
These issues have existed in some form or another since the first shoutymen stood on stones in the public square to drown out the bards, since before written language, since pamphleteers and the press, since individuality was prioritized for.
Building an audience always leaves the opportunity for harm, and art is about communicating ideas. Sometimes the ideas suck, sometimes the artist drains their audience, the algorithmic technocratic dystopia only accelerates and optimizes for those aspects.
Awareness of how creatives engage with the emotions of their audience in heathy (and unhealthy) manners can only help.
Banksy and Burial are Daft Punk
Hypothesis:
De-mystification is only a problem if, as a pop star, you profited heavily (pre-social media) by having a tightly curated persona which allowed for fans to construct a heroic ideal around you.
Maybe popular artists were historically canvasses for us to project our “creative hero” image onto because we DIDN’T see them picking up Joey from the soccer game, DIDN’T see that they use that same Costco smoothie powder, they DIDN’T also have a live, laugh, love sign behind their toilet (or a succulent collection in the bay window)
Maybe we need the artist to be more than a human? I don’t know.
What about Sting having tantric sexual relations for 6 hrs straight?
…parasocial society patterns lost all their manners…
aaaaaamen, brothers and sisters, goys and birls…aaaaaaamen…
no lovers without haters…no secret knowledge needed…
i’m the god of understatement, the founding member of the “make more compliments club” international and banksy, too…
reeloy, is it true you’re actually cardi lee?
