Il post definitivo sul fenomeno Hipster Runoff (e, forse, sull'indie-blogging tutto) e una bella riflessione su successo nel web, identità online (personal brand, direbbe qualcuno) e music writing l'ha scritto Rob Trump su Splitsider:
Viral success on the internet is a strange phenomenon. Marketers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to create something people will share with their friends, only to be beaten time and time again by accidents and genuine ineptitude. That’s part of the fun of the web — halfway decent singers wallow in obscurity while Rebecca Black gets 20 million hits, and your meticulously edited Tweet will never be as funny as a horse avatar poorly hawking ebooks. The content we share the most is stuff we can have conversations about, especially when the conversation goes something like, “This is weird and terrible and hilarious and I can’t look away and I think I love it.”
Most people who get that reaction weren’t looking for it and have no idea what to do with it. See, for example, Rebecca Black’s alienation of her fanbase by releasing something not hypnotically awful. But a handful of internet-savvy people have gone for that reaction on purpose. Of these, the most successful and maybe the best is Hipster Runoff, a website whose evolution after finding an audience is part success story, part cautionary tale for anyone looking for a foothold in web culture. [#]
Ma ancor di più è stato Carles stesso, a margine del Lana Del Rey Gate (di cui vi avevo raccontato gli inizi, qua), a fare una riflessione talmente amara da risultare non meno ironica delle sue solite prese per il culo sul ruolo suo e dei blog musicali (o che parlano di qualunque altro aspetto della cultura pop) in questo momento storico. Mentirei se non dicessi di condividere alcune delle cose che scrive.
In the post-LDR blogging era, I feel free to openly admit that I don’t care about honoring ‘bands that sound good’. The opinions that I have on bands are not actually my own, and my goal is not to preserve a relationship with readers or bands/artists based on editorial pandering. All I can do is ‘go down in flames’ with my sweet, Princess LanaBB. My demented online personality that motivates me to type these words in order to accumulate hits, empathy, praise, and controversy does not have much time left.
Wag the Blog.
Cultural criticism on the internet is dying because we finally realized that the voices behind blogs, twitter feeds, and authentic writing outlets are as fat, bored, uninspired, and jealous as the fat, bored, uninspired, and jealous voices that we thought we had escaped from. [#]
