The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success • Hacker News Board

Re: The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

#91

Post by bluetomcat » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 3:06 PM UTC

api wrote: post #86

caleb-allen wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I was especially unconvinced at the arguments for "repetition", for example that today's music is separated from the 90s only by "nuance". What? Sure, from up close it may seem that way, but given 30 years I'm sure we can look back and very clearly see the style developments just as we can for the 70s and the 80s. It sounded to me like a case of "back in my day" but with incoherent arguments.

That's the part I completely agree with. Music is absolutely stuck. There have only been micro-genres, such as the many micro-genres of techno/EDM or hip hop. There has been nothing approaching the birth of hip hop, techno/rave, grunge, "alternative" rock, and so on. Those all came of age in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. For some reason after 2000 music died. My personal explanation is the collapse of the record industry. I…

Music became largely teen-oriented by the late 90s and onwards. Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears... fast forward to the 2010s and nothing has dramatically changed - Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande etc. Maybe it's a very profitable spot exploited by producers and songwriters.

Re: The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

#92

Post by alexilliamson » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 3:06 PM UTC

bluetomcat wrote: post #60

seibelj wrote: post #37

I disagree with criticisms of current art or “pop” art like pop music, popular fiction books, etc. To become broadly popular you must appeal to as many people as possible. This is a balancing act between mediocrity and edginess that pushes just the right amount of boundaries to feel “new” and “fresh” without turning off a lot of people. So by definition the most popular song in the world is going to usually be fairly…

The quality and sophistication of mainstream pop art is an important indicator, though. It is consumed by the majority of the population and gives sense to the "wisdom" of an era. Nowadays you simply don't find any mainstream music approaching the levels of sophistication of, say, 1980s mainstream music. Where's the Dire Straits, the Gary Moore and the David Bowie of the 2010s?

I just looked at the top 5 songs from 1985, and I will gladly take WAP or Old Town Road over Careless Whisper or Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go. Top of the billboard has mostly always sucked IMO.

Janelle Monàe may be this generations Bowie. And Kendrick Lamar can definitely hold his own in comparison to dire straights.

Re: The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

#93

Post by leetcrew » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 3:07 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #23

This is a fascinating discussion because it hits directly at a topic that civilization-after-civilization has faced throughout history: are we able to reasonably assess whether we are continuing towards growth and progress or stagnation and extinction? Frankly, the historical record is not encouraging. Usually, when this topic comes up people chime in with easy takeaways like "people have always complained about this…

> Hell, ask a few people when the Western Roman Empire ended. Good luck with that. There are folks who will tell you it never did end. If you're that far in denial, how could you ever reason from your current historical position to the long run?

AFAIK, the argument over when the western empire fell is not so much about the facts, so much as the meaning of the word "fall". it's inherently arbitrary to point to the "end" of a civilization with routine violent regime changes, varying degrees of centralized control, continuous contraction/expansion of borders, and cultural/ethnic mixing from the territories. everything we think of as "roman" was constantly in flux. if you look solely at centralized political/military power, the western empire clearly fell in the late 400s AD. if you look at cultural influence, you might argue it lives on today in the catholic church.

Re: The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

#94

Post by alexilliamson » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 3:09 PM UTC

eanzenberg wrote: post #66

bluetomcat wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quality and sophistication of mainstream pop art is an important indicator, though. It is consumed by the majority of the population and gives sense to the "wisdom" of an era. Nowadays you simply don't find any mainstream music approaching the levels of sophistication of, say, 1980s mainstream music. Where's the Dire Straits, the Gary Moore and the David Bowie of the 2010s?

Wasn’t 80’s pop music disco?

Disco died pretty early on in the 80s. Flock of Seagulls and Tears for Fears are quintessential 80s IMO.

Re: The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

#95

Post by api » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 3:10 PM UTC

bluetomcat wrote: post #91

api wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the part I completely agree with. Music is absolutely stuck. There have only been micro-genres, such as the many micro-genres of techno/EDM or hip hop. There has been nothing approaching the birth of hip hop, techno/rave, grunge, "alternative" rock, and so on. Those all came of age in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. For some reason after 2000 music died. My personal explanation is the collapse of the record industry. I…

Music became largely teen-oriented by the late 90s and onwards. Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears... fast forward to the 2010s and nothing has dramatically changed - Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande etc. Maybe it's a very profitable spot exploited by producers and songwriters.

When I was a teen in the early 90s I listened to Tool, Nirvana, emerging Techno/Rave, Rap, as well as older rock like Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Jimmy Hendrix, and King Crimson. I could keep going but that's a sampling. In college I got more into electronic and obscure hip hop, both of which were quite new and innovative at the time. I lost all interest in pop because that was the late 90s when all pop went to crap.

All of that has held up pretty well because it was all good music. Nobody is going to remember the absolute dog shit pop that teens listen to today. It's boring, repetitive, devoid of deep emotion, and is basically the same song over and over.

What I see is that many teens today (those who really like music) are listening to old music from the 60s-90s and very little new music. That's because their generation's music is objectively awful. I have seen studies that have quantified this via means such as Shannon information content. The content of popular music has been declining since the late 90s, and the similarity of songs and acts has been increasing.

Re: The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

#96

Post by marcus_holmes » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 3:11 PM UTC

api wrote: post #86

caleb-allen wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I was especially unconvinced at the arguments for "repetition", for example that today's music is separated from the 90s only by "nuance". What? Sure, from up close it may seem that way, but given 30 years I'm sure we can look back and very clearly see the style developments just as we can for the 70s and the 80s. It sounded to me like a case of "back in my day" but with incoherent arguments.

That's the part I completely agree with. Music is absolutely stuck. There have only been micro-genres, such as the many micro-genres of techno/EDM or hip hop. There has been nothing approaching the birth of hip hop, techno/rave, grunge, "alternative" rock, and so on. Those all came of age in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. For some reason after 2000 music died. My personal explanation is the collapse of the record industry. I…

Have you ever heard of "classical" music? It's a single music genre covering about 500 years of music.

Then, very briefly, the technology of recording music developed to the point where it was commercially viable to mass-market music. As happens with any technological revolution, that triggered a massive spike in innovation. That spike lasted ~50 years, we're just getting to the end of it.

My point is that what happened between ~1950 and ~2000 isn't normal. That's not how fast music normally changes. That was a specific response to a specific stimulus. It will take another stimulus of equal magnitude to provoke a similar level of change.

(also: musicians were almost permanently broke prior to the recording industry. Interesting, and sad, to see that returning too)

Re: The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

#97

Post by api » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 3:13 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #96

api wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the part I completely agree with. Music is absolutely stuck. There have only been micro-genres, such as the many micro-genres of techno/EDM or hip hop. There has been nothing approaching the birth of hip hop, techno/rave, grunge, "alternative" rock, and so on. Those all came of age in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. For some reason after 2000 music died. My personal explanation is the collapse of the record industry. I…

Have you ever heard of "classical" music? It's a single music genre covering about 500 years of music. Then, very briefly, the technology of recording music developed to the point where it was commercially viable to mass-market music. As happens with any technological revolution, that triggered a massive spike in innovation. That spike lasted ~50 years, we're just getting to the end of it. My point is that what happe…

The rate of change is approximately constant when you adjust for population growth:

https://populationmatters.org/sites/default/files/styles/ful...

Everything moves faster now because there are more people to move it. The rate/person is not that different.

What we have seen since the late 90s is the collapse of musical creativity (at least in popular music... you can still find some creative music if you dig really hard) in spite of population and economic activity continuing to grow. That is not normal. That's a dark age.

Re: The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

#98

Post by compiler-guy » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 3:14 PM UTC

api wrote: post #86

caleb-allen wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I was especially unconvinced at the arguments for "repetition", for example that today's music is separated from the 90s only by "nuance". What? Sure, from up close it may seem that way, but given 30 years I'm sure we can look back and very clearly see the style developments just as we can for the 70s and the 80s. It sounded to me like a case of "back in my day" but with incoherent arguments.

That's the part I completely agree with. Music is absolutely stuck. There have only been micro-genres, such as the many micro-genres of techno/EDM or hip hop. There has been nothing approaching the birth of hip hop, techno/rave, grunge, "alternative" rock, and so on. Those all came of age in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. For some reason after 2000 music died. My personal explanation is the collapse of the record industry. I…

Manufacturer produced pop’s beginnings are exactly contemporaneous with the invention of recording. Just as soon as people learned that they could sell a recording, they started collecting and selling them. And they took care that what they recorded they could sell. And people did buy it. See the Columbia music hillbilly series for example. The recorders totally looked for the most marketable acts.

They got better at predicting what could sell, but commercialized recording didn’t appear later.

Further, prior to recording, musicians couldn’t make a living without that same broad appeal. People don’t buy tickets to shows they don’t want to see, and patrons don’t commission works from artists they don’t like.

The only artists free from commercial concerns are ones who have money from other things.

Re: The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

#99

Post by voldacar » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 3:16 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #23

This is a fascinating discussion because it hits directly at a topic that civilization-after-civilization has faced throughout history: are we able to reasonably assess whether we are continuing towards growth and progress or stagnation and extinction? Frankly, the historical record is not encouraging. Usually, when this topic comes up people chime in with easy takeaways like "people have always complained about this…

It is interesting to note that if you read Roman generals' letters from the fourth/fifth centuries AD, they seem like they have no idea that their civilization is in the late stages of decline, something totally easy for us to recognize millennia later. It's weird and uncanny, and kind of concerning given contemporary circumstances

Re: The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

#100

Post by voldacar » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 3:17 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #67

I realise this is a review, not the actual text. But still. This is utter bollocks. It's typical of non-technical "intellectuals" to completely ignore the main areas of modern human progress, simply because they don't understand them. e.g. the whole discussion on Art completely ignores Video Games, which are undoubtedly Art, and also an area of rapid innovation and development. Yet they're usually dismissed out of ha…

Video games are indeed a form of media, but I think it is misleading to say they are art in the same sense as this author intends. Art and mass entertainment are only superficially similar, and most video games are made to entertain. Video games are (generally) consumable goods created to provide an amount of temporary pleasure.

Good art is recognized not just by beauty or the skill required to create it, but by its ability to engage with some aspect of what it means to be human, in a way that is coherent, mature, and thought-provoking. There are no video game equivalents (yet, one would hope) of, say, Bach, Rembrandt, or Bernini.

Maybe someday there will be, but not today.

edit: To the downvoters, I'm saying all this as a pretty avid gamer. video games are a very young medium and a hopefully in a few centuries I will be wrong.