This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I have to disagree massively with the timeline here. Pop-punk became huge concurrently with nu-metal; Green Day’s Dookie and The Offspring’s Smash both came out in 1994, the same year as Korn’s self-titled debut album, and several years before Limp Bizkit and Slipknot got going.
Also, pop-punk was never just an “ironic and emotionally guarded” genre. The Offspring released “Gone Away”, a plaintive song mourning the death of a friend, in 1997. Hell, even Blink-182, maybe the poster boys for juvenile tongue-in-cheek pop-punk, have a song on their breakout album - “Adam’s Song” - about teen suicide. And drawing some distinction between “emo” and “pop-punk” in the 00’s just has no basis in reality. By that time the two genres were inextricably linked, with most of the major practitioners of the genre effortlessly bouncing between ironic detachment and almost cartoonish emotional sincerity and airing of traumas. Sure, you have bands like Bowling For Soup who stayed committed to above-it-all jokiness, but most of the 00’s-era bands in the Warped Tour scene were famous for their songs about how their dads screwed them up emotionally. (Simple Plan, Sum 41, My Chemical Romance, The Used, etc.)
I'm aware of the connection between pop punk and emo in the '00s – I didn't mean to make it sound like I considered them wholly distinct genres. In the context of the '00s I would say most emo bands were pop punk, but not all pop punk bands were emo. Bands like Blink-182 are a great example of how ambiguous it can get. There was also some overlap between indie rock and emo, to make things even more difficult.
This is actually a little hard to quantify – I looked at Billboard charts from this era, but most of these acts never charted that high. Journalists certainly commented on the decline of nu metal in the early '00s. My perception at the time (I was a teenager in those years) was that there was a sharp decline in the number of white boy dreadlocks post-2001, and a marked rise in skinny jeans and guys wearing eye liner. My Chemical Romance, AFI, Fallout Boy... also the rise of metalcore took place during that period. None of this is to say that pop punk doesn't predate that period (it absolutely does), just that when nu metal collapsed, a specific kind of pop punk moved in to fill the "edgy teen rock" space in radio programming.
More options
Context Copy link
Even there, songs like "Highschool Never Ends" and "Come Back to Texas" clearly have a core of molten sincerity beneath all the jokes.
Oh sure, not to mention songs like “A-Hole”, “Cold Shower Tuesdays”, “The Luckiest Loser”, etc. And their more recent stuff is more openly sincere.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link