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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   25709 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 25, 2024

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Quick question: WHY?

Like many, I have Spotify, and pay for it to avoid the constant ads and improve the sound quality. Like many, I have it on my television because the March of Time has somehow created a situation where I have no stereo player in my home. I still have CDs that sit on a shelf unused and probably need to be sent to a recycle shop or sold or thrown in a landfill. I also have some (gulp) LPs but they adorn my office shelves like tchotchkes of a bygone area--even the millennial guy I know who collected vinyl has stopped doing so because it's "too expensive." I threw out my last turntable about 15 years ago but I keep the records. Sentimental, probably

Back to Spotify. I was making a holiday playlist for putting up our tree this year. I prefer the oldies to the newies, and the medium oldies like Driving Home for Christmas. Anyway as I was browsing I decided to look (and this is on my TV app) at the various genres thinking maybe there would be one called holiday.

There wasn't. What there was, well. That's why I decided to post this.

What there was were the expected playlists like Made for You (which had songs that are algorithmically linked to the account meaning songs my wife and sons click on). Also the expected K-Pop, Top Hits, Jazz, Hip Hop, In the Car, Chill, Punk, Party, Blues and even Educational, Kids & Family, Latin, and Ambient. All this is fine.

Then I saw a Playlist called Glow. Hm. Glow? Turns out this is subtitled "Songs from the Community." The community being the ineffable LGBTQ+ community. There is also a Spotify-produced playlist called EQUAL. This one? You guessed it. Songs exclusively made by women. Then there was FREQUENCY which, no, wasn't the top requested songs, but was a playlist of music made exclusively by black folks. The subtitle: "All Black like the Cover of Essence."

Question is Why? Why is this needed? Audiophiles want genres that have something to do with the music, no? Who decides to listen to music just because it was produced/written/performed by a gay group? Is this just Spotify pandering? And if so, who signed off thinking this was a swell idea? What does the performer being gay have to do with the sound? Do people actually care about this?

My best steelman is that they are trying to signal boost "underrepresented groups" but of the three groups mentioned arguably only women are underrepresented in music.

Theories appreciated.

From https://archive.is/QMpmd#selection-1045.452-1045.744

(Harris) gestured at some of the art she’d brought in, on loan from various galleries and collections, describing each piece in terms of the artist’s background rather than its aesthetic qualities—Indian American woman, African American gay man, Japanese American. “So you get the idea,” she said.

Bailey: Lots of critical theory about representation. Motte: Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad

I haven't been an Atlantic reader in some time, but enjoyed that article, thanks for the link.

Like many, I have it on my television because the March of Time has somehow created a situation where I have no stereo player in my home. I still have CDs that sit on a shelf unused and probably need to be sent to a recycle shop or sold or thrown in a landfill.

If you have a PC, I'd suggest using it to rip your music with something like fre:ac. If your PC doesn't have an optical drive for reading the disks, you can pick up an external one off of Amazon.

Spotify researches the playlists that users make and will make similar ones. This is something I've noticed over the years; it's just serving a userbase, because some people won't bother to actually create themed playlists but will search for them. For example, I've made a playlist or two for (NFL) football season, and if I enter "football" it shows me a Spotify-created list called Hype Football Mix. There's a Vampiric Mix (which is actually garbage) because I've favorited some user's playlist to make fanvids for an Anne Rice series. Most of these are probably AI-driven.

because some people won't bother to actually create themed playlists

This isn't exactly helped by having no way to tell Spotify to never ever suggest this artist / album / song for this playlist.

In general Spotify is a classic example of a company where the majority of developers exist only to make themselves look useful. The Spotify client hasn't improved (and has actually declined) in a meaningful way in a decade and would realistically only need a small team of handful of people per platform to keep it up to date. Instead the company has more than doubled its employee count in five years while losing money throughout its entire history of operation.

Spotify is convenient and relatively cheap. With zero effort I can play music from any modern device including all of my smart TVs or anyone else's smart appliances. If I'm hosting a party and playing some music someone else with spotify on their phone can seemlessly add songs to the playlist, I do this at least once every two weeks and frequently more often than that. The enhanced shuffle where I can throw a dozen songs into a playlist and it'll find other songs that fit into the playlist is genuinely useful for discovery. on my desktop spotify client I can control the music for my bigger sound system used on the 7.1 setup I have across the room. There's just lots and lots of uses and it's very inexpensive.

Is this just Spotify pandering?

I think t his is Spotify sprinting full-out to stay in one place. People really, actually have been driven insane by Intersectionality/DEI/etc.

When 'Emo' first emerged in the early 90's, I recall being gobsmacked that some pretentious a-holes decided their music was 'emotional' as opposed to all of the other music that wasn't. Since then it's been one stupid made-up genre after another to the point that I hardly care. I only care because when I release a track myself, I want/need to tag it so that is ends up anywhere within the possible blast radius of people who might want to listen to it.

I once got a promo record, this was 2015, and the record said something like "file under trans-core." What? Trans is a type of art form? It's a genre? I suppose I believe it, but probably not in the way I was supposed to. Of course it was the same old bland techno music everyone else is making--nothing made it more trans than anything else except maybe the song titles and vibe? It was just a way for the artist to try and carve out some new category they could sit atop of.

And that's the game. There's no art here, no deeper meaning. It's all pandering it's all cynical attention grabbing. It's all a fad and always has been. It's all fake in the most blatantly Holden Caulfield kind of way. Spotify is merely trying to keep up with it, they decide nothing.

As for the overall terribleness that is DEI, there was a pretty good substack about how the NYT and Bloomberg buried a report that directly points at how these types of initiative boost racism, bigotry, Balkanization and authoritarianism. I enjoyed it and it should probably be a top-level post: https://substack.com/inbox/post/152110346

You really didn't see the obvious evolutionary difference between early emo bands and the hardcore punk scene they developed out of? There's a pretty clear difference that makes the name make sense.

No, I was a metal head...hardcore was not my thing (to put it lightly) so I didn't listen to it. I had heard of Fugazi (13 songs is ok) and I liked Bad Brains, but I didn't like the hardcore scene and avoided it. When I heard the term 'Emo' (in 1996?) for the first time it just seemed pretentious.

Makes sense and I get your point out of context. But when you listen to Minor Threat and then listen to Youth of Today and to Rites of Spring, it's reasonable to refer to the latter and its genetic descendants as Emotional.

Interesting article! Thank you for linking it.

I expect for anyone who might not already be convinced, however, the study will not be compelling or alternative rationales will appear. For example:

Through carefully controlled experiments, the researchers demonstrated that exposure to anti-oppressive (i.e., anti-racist) rhetoric—common in many DEI initiatives—consistently amplified perceptions of bias where none existed. Participants were more likely to see prejudice in neutral scenarios and to support punitive actions against imagined offenders. These effects were not marginal; hostility and punitive tendencies increased by double-digit percentages across multiple measures.

The (pat?) response is to say "Thus we can see, there are in fact no neutral scenarios, nor any situations where bias does not exist." This is the end state of DEI: Racist/sexist turtles all the way down.

I am also skeptical of the study, but then I'm skeptical of most sociological and psychological studies. I'd need time to look at it for methodology issues (of which there are almost always a few, in addition to all the statistical noise in psychometrics). I am at first blush very willing to believe it at face value, but that's the still soft voice of the serpent.

I think it’s just the preferences of the employees at these companies. They see themselves as taste makers.

It’s also a reflection of changing tastes. Just like a rockstar of the 80s was considered “legit” if they did cocaine and heroin and had a ton of promiscuous sex, a hip hoppist of the 90s was considered legit if they dealt drugs or killed somebody, whatever the equivalent of the 2020s is somebody who is a part of one of these groups.

If you’re trying to listen to the music for the aesthetics of the music, you’re just old. The music is just a superposition of the identify of the creators and the people who listen to it. It’s almost irrelevant what it actually sounds like.

If you’re trying to listen to the music for the aesthetics of the music, you’re just old. The music is just a superposition of the identify of the creators and the people who listen to it. It’s almost irrelevant what it actually sounds like.

This is very accurate as I’m beginning to notice all the pop songs nowadays sound exactly the same. They all have a very similar and homogenous feel, to the point that I don’t see why one would be a fan of any one in particular, except as a signifier of some other fashion trend (gay, queer. Trans, black, woman and some combo of these)

Hope this doesn’t sound too Chud of me but the straight white male artists seem to be the ones who try hardest to differentiate their music in style (although you’ll still find plenty that sound generic)

This is such a bizarre take to me. Can you provide some specific examples of songs that you think sound “exactly the same”? I think there’s plenty of differentiation among pop artists today - easily as much as there was during any previous era, and almost certainly more than in, say, the 1960’s.

I think this community suffers from a general inability to actually appreciate pop music, and apparently even to detect differences between different songs, artists, and sub-genres. This is a reflection of the limitations of the user base, not of these artists.

It's a very common take, universal to musical genres someone doesn't like. Most people can't tell jazz or classical music pieces apart, it all sounds the same to them. My wife loves listening to jazz but can't identify the pieces I put on at virtually every dinner party for years, or even pieces we've seen performed live. Most people would call anything harder than Slipknot "death metal" and say it all sounds alike.

It has nothing to do with judgement of musical quality and everything to do with what one identifies music by.

Most people would call anything harder than Slipknot "death metal" and say it all sounds alike.

Oh, I’m intimately familiar with this. I cannot count the number of times I’ve had to explain (unsuccessfully, as if my words were harmlessly impacting a brick wall) that “death metal” and “screamo” are actual distinct genres of music, and not just interchangeable terms meaning “any music with unclean vocals.”

You are of course correct that it’s common for the average person, with a passive approach to music and zero music theory training, to lack the ability to discern somewhat subtle differences between pieces of unfamiliar music.

What I find bizarre is the claim that pop music used to be more differentiated and varied, but that it has recently started to all sound the same.

Yes, I’m aware that some YouTubers, courting the engagement of boomers (both literal and spiritual), have produced some videos claiming to demonstrate objectively that all modern pop music sounds the same. As someone who is an avid listener of music spanning several decades, though, I’m just not seeing (hearing?) it. As you’re getting at, it’s almost certainly just that most of the people commenting here have no interest in any music produced after their mid-20’s at the latest, and thus they have no ear for it.

What I find bizarre is the claim that pop music used to be more differentiated and varied, but that it has recently started to all sound the same.

Depending on how you define "recently", is it really so bizarre? Why couldn't popular music be moneyballed into a garbage incredibly formulaic product like so many other things?

Again, the claim is superficially plausible as long as you don’t actually listen to the music in question. Yes, I’d be perfectly willing to believe that pop music had been reduced to an undifferentiated miasma of formulaic crap, except for when I actually listen to it that’s not the reality I encounter.

Like, I don’t read modern YA fiction, so if you made an effortful case to me that it’s all just formulaic indistinguishable garbage, I might be willing take you at face value because I don’t have any firsthand experience with the phenomenon you’re discussing. If someone who reads a lot of the books in question were to push back on your claim, though, I would have to take their claims seriously and actually investigate it myself, or else remain studiously neutral.

I'll also add that the take I find most bizarre is when people say that modern music is corporate. Pop music has never offered more opportunity outside the structure of major labels.

People have a lot of trouble understanding that they, too, are subject to biases. The brain perceives at the level of its baseline skill, and it stops processing information as quickly as possible. It's the source of the claim that Asians/negroes/blonde sorority girls all look alike.

It's much more fun to get on ones high horse about one's own superiority.

This is a bizarre take? Really? Because I’m far from the only one that’s noticed this. Just a couple curso dry examples I found with a quick google:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=9IucBIoCzc0?si=_mta-cYZ9v_t8dhR

https://youtube.com/watch?v=AsQUQ8P8c-A?si=1hpvTqFEX9Bd0Gn_

I’m not going to go out and find examples, sorry I’m just not that invested in this argument to go listen to a bunch of music I find unappealing to prove this to you. But I do find it kind of funny you think this opinion is strange or unique to this community. I guess if you’re a real music nerd you can hair split but I think you could probably find data to show variance in music has gone significantly down. Music is likely stagnating and decadent, along with all the other creative fields.

I have no idea as to overall style, but in at least one respect—dynamic range (how quiet and loud a song gets)—there is far less variance than there used to be. A quick search pulled up this article from 2017, which in turn cited this video from 2006, showing that the trend has been going on for awhile.

...And that's a good thing!

Listening to music with high dynamic range is a drag. I want to hear the quiet parts over ambient background noise without bursting my eardrums in the loud parts. Normalise normalisation!

The loudness war refers to dynamic range within a song rather than across songs, so it's not really relevant here. I've never seen e.g. an analysis of range of maximum loudness across all songs in a given year.

Agreed. Pop music seems to be in a really good place right now, and has a ton of variety.

I guess part of the problem with all discussions of music is, what genre are we talking about, does that count as pop, does this, etc. Does, I like the way you kiss me, by Artemas count as a 'pop' song? What about, I had some help, by post Malone? To me they are both pop songs, but I could see arguments for defining them (and all the other pop songs I like) out of the pop category and then maybe I too would think that 'pop' music is bad.

(Am I being overly literal and autistic when I define pop music as, popular music played on mainstream (none genre specific) radio stations?)

When it comes to both queer artists and black artists, you’re talking about a specific subculture, which comes with shared slang, shared points of reference, and shared social hierarchies based on knowledge of in-group signifiers. A person who wishes to participate meaningfully in the queer subculture will want to be familiar with the musical artists that others within that subculture are listening to; this allows for participation in a larger cultural dialogue. Knowing about the new Chappell Roan song is helpful for participation in conversation, and can be a source of bonding with others. The same is also true of people who wish to consciously identify with the constellation of black subcultures and to acquire/demonstrate knowledge of the shibboleths of those cultures.

I think it's simpler. We might ask "is there a perceptible statistical relation between an artist's identity and the music they make?" I think the answer to this is clearly yes. This is probably most obviously true with with black people but it's not hard to suppose a case for others. Think about how much music is about love and relationships, for example. Might gay people enjoy a song more if the lyrical content was aligned with their own attraction? How many straight guys are singing songs pining for their lost love (another man)?

This isn't to say that only people of a particular identity can make a particular sound or that people of a particular identity must have a particular sound. Just that there is a perceptible relation such that consumers can use artist identity as a kind of crude filter for sound.

Obviously there's a strong correlation between one or more of an artist's various identity markers and the style of music they perform or its lyrical themes, but I don't think that implies that audiences are more likely to enjoy music created by people with whom they share identity markers. Jazz is a niche genre, but probably more popular among white audiences than black despite being a historically black genre; hip hop has been more popular among white urban audiences than country music for as long as hip hop has existed, and this was true even when hip hop was pretty much exclusively a black genre; K-pop is enormously popular among white girls and women; numerous gay musicians have found large followings among straight people and in some cases are even more popular among straight men than straight women (e.g. Elton John, Freddie Mercury of Queen, George Michael, Morrissey of The Smiths, Rob Halford of Judas Priest, Sam Smith, Boy George, Ricky Martin).

Sure. My point is that consumers use artist identity markers as a way to find kinds of music. Obviously the consumers don't have to share the identity markers to like the music.

hip hop has been more popular among white urban audiences than country music for as long as hip hop has existed, and this was true even when hip hop was pretty much exclusively a black genre

Because country is red tribe identity music, and that’s the actual definition. Not ‘white’ identity music more broadly, because broader white identity doesn’t exist.

In any case I’d imagine the most popular music among urban whites is generic pop music.

In any case I’d imagine the most popular music among urban whites is generic pop music.

Much of which is performed by ethnic minorities (The Weeknd, Bruno Mars, Olivia Rodrigo, Rihanna, Shakira, Usher).

Sure, but it bears as little resemblance to actual hip hop as Taylor swift’s most recent album does to Johnny cash.

Yes. So? Both pop music (created by an ethnically diverse range of musicians) and hip hop (traditionally a black genre; black musicians still create the preponderance of music in the style) are extremely popular among white audiences.

You're close to it - it isn't (necessarily) that the listener shares an identity marker with the artist. It's that the artist shares an identity marker with other artists the listener has previously enjoyed and they're taking that as a meaningful signal.

Like many, I have Spotify

Quick question: why?

The MP3 format was a game changer for music. My oldest MP3 was encoded in 1998--the year the format was published as an international standard. I am not an audiophile, I don't worry about lossless encoding or accruing complete discographies or whatever, but the ~40GB of digital music I've accumulated in the last 26 years fits comfortably on most any portable device and provides more hours of music, with no repeats, than I can listen to in a week, never mind a day.

I understand that not everyone has been slowly building their personal media libraries since the 20th century, but you can still buy DRM-free MP3s today, depending on the artist and publisher, and you can still buy CDs or even vinyls and encode the audio yourself. Obviously streaming comes with the convenience of you not needing to take that additional step, but once it's done, it's effectively done forever. Take the time to properly tag the files and it's not long before your personal library is miles better than anything Spotify has to offer (unless you listen to Spotify in hopes of discovering new stuff).

I recognize that I am something of a fossil, in Internet years, but it's amazing to me how much culture has shifted in the last two decades, and how much of that seems to be directly connected to media companies asserting greater control over culture-relevant media (e.g. Netflix blackwashing, social media companies doing bad "fact checking"). Just taking the ever-so-slightly affirmative step of disconnecting yourself from other people's libraries and algorithms has grown to be much more liberating than I ever would have guessed, back when I was more interested in the intellectual property questions than I was in the culture war questions.

Yea when I was 17 I discovered new music naturally. Now I’m almost 41 and someone has to tell me ‘ hey look at this it maybe doesn’t completely suck ‘

Pop on Spotify and this in ‘ Female Fronted Stoner Doom Tracks ‘ been my favorite playlist for years. Never would have heard of a dozen 10/10 songs if not for discovering that.

Not to mention genres like City Pop or other random things. I even discovered the worst album of all time (Kult 45 by Otep) this way.

Spotify is fantastic.

For me it's just much easier to discover new music and sample it through Spotify. Despite the fact I don't really like paying for it or giving data to them.

I used to have an MD player, those square disk-playing things, where I transferred loads from Napster and the like, and still have most of the minidiscs. The player has long died. You can find stereo components that play these discs but they take space, and the convenience of playing Spotify over our sound bar has won over. The playlists are also available on my mobile and can be bluetoothed into our car speakers. It's quite a marvel technologically for someone who grew up with turntables and 8-tracks and created actual mixtapes (using actual cassette tapes). @aqouta put it well.

I bought a Fiio X3 about seven years ago, specifically because you can put an SD card into it and have effectively unlimited storage. If you're an audiophile, you can have thousands of FLAC files instead of MP3s. Not only does the audio player still work, its battery life barely seems to have declined at all and I still use it occasionally. (The main reason I don't use it as often as I used to is just because I don't listen to music as much as I used to.)

Depending on your preferred genres, most artists will upload their music to Bandcamp as well as streaming platforms. There's no subscription fee for Bandcamp, you just pay when you want to buy a release from a specific artist. If you buy a release, you can listen to it as often as you like via the Bandcamp app, OR you can download the release in your preferred file format (MP3 at a range of bitrates, FLAC, even WAV if you're feeling nuts) and upload it to your personal audio player.

I've never had a Spotify subscription and never intend to get one, firstly because as previously mentioned I don't listen to music very much anymore, secondly because I loathe SaaS on general principle, and thirdly, because for all the talk of it being a "great way to discover new music", everything I've read about it indicates that its suggestion algorithms work the same way as every other such algorithm: it shows you "new" artists which sound extremely similar to the artists you already like. Just because I like listening to Weezer doesn't mean I want to listen to Weezer knockoffs every day.

I'm far from a typical music listener - I'd guess I'm in the bottom 20% of the population in terms of enjoyment I get from music - so my perspective is probably heavily skewed, but I feel like the discovery or "lootbox" aspect is part of the appeal of streaming over building offline libraries. The vast majority of the music I listen to is instrumental video game soundtracks, and I do so primarily through YouTube music, where I choose some track I like and then let the algorithm go forward. This allows me to discover fan-made remixes/covers of such tracks, which are often far better than the original tracks (despite tending to have much worse production, which even my completely philistine-level ears can detect). And it's those tracks that I actually want to listen to during my commutes, not the original tracks themselves. Now, I could download these tracks and build my library of them, but the rate at which new official tracks come out from companies like Hoyomix (probably a couple times a month on average, but in clumps) and the fan-made remixes/covers that come out (much more often than that, due to each release causing multiple fans to release their own takes) combined with just how little I actually care about music means that the effort to do so each time just doesn't seem worth it compared to just puling on the YouTube Music slot machine lever.

unless you listen to Spotify in hopes of discovering new stuff

This is indeed the point, for me at least. On Spotify I listen to:

  • Discover weekly
  • Release radar
  • My previously liked songs

Every week Spotify surfaces maybe 5-10 songs I actually like in the first two (which is really not bad IMO). Every now and again I buy something from the third on Bandcamp to support the artist more directly. I'm blissfully unaware of holiday playlists, black playlists, gay playlists, Asian playlists, or any other kind of playlist you can imagine besides the three I just mentioned.

Maybe this from US/European language differences and that Spotify is a European firm. Using "Holiday"/"Holidays" to mean "Christmas" is a soft-secular move that only seems to happen in north America---e.g. saying "Happy holidays" instead of "Happy Christmas" or "Merry Christmas".

If I Spotify search for "Christmas" there is the genre "Happy Christmas" with playlists "Christmas hits", "Christmas carols", "Christmas pop", "Cozy Christmas jazz" and maybe another 50 giving all sorts of subtle variations (the christmas jazz playlists are pretty good!). @George_E_Hale, if you do a search for "Christmas" do you get a good set of results?

Edit: didn't see UrgentSloth's reply before posting. Under the hood "Happy Holidays" and "Happy Christmas" seem to index the same spotify christmas playlists, and yes "Happy Holidays" comes up from a search for "holidays" so this all seems pretty easy, no?

My first search was "Christmas" but I was also interested if there were "Seasonal" or "Holiday" mixes which as you say would cast a wider net.

Anyway as I was browsing I decided to look (and this is on my TV app) at the various genres thinking maybe there would be one called holiday. There wasn't. What there was, well. That's why I decided to post this.

There is. It's called "Happy Holidays". It's immediately after GLOW, so I 'm surprised you missed it.

I'll look again but on my television and computer this was absent. It's true I may have missed it.

Edit: Just looked on my phone. There is no set playlist called Happy Holidays for me. Strange.

Based on what @Gaashk said, it sounds like the placement is algorithmic and for some reason Spotify decided you wouldn't want a Christmas playlist. Is Spotify's machine learning sophisticated enough to know that would upset the shit out of you and keep you engaged?

Possibly because we are in Japan and my (Japanese) wife and family regularly use the same account?

I thought that although Japan is not a Christian country, to say the least, Christmas carols and at least the aesthetics of Christmas were very popular there, although often reinterpreted into oddities like KFC for Christmas.

Very true. Christmas decorations are up for sale at the local Costco, and Christmas cake adverts are also already out. The colonel as you point out is already in his Santa garb in front of KFC. Christmas music is also played in public areas like shopping complexes. That said, Spotify may not be aware of any of this.

Of note, Christmas Eve is the day of import here, I think December the 25th goes largely unremarked upon in Japan. Christmas cakes are discounted, and kids after a certain age get no more presents in most households (the local house that used to have really nice decorations outside stopped having any once their kids got out of elementary school). Christmas Eve is actually a datenight and couples go out for some romantic whatnot. I remember girls' without boyfriends saying they would party with their girlpals and called it "single bells" (シングルベル). New Year's Eve, meanwhile, is a family time here, and you're hard pressed (or used to be when I would go out at these times) to find anyone singing auld lang syne at midnight in a local bar.

At my own house we celebrate more the American-style I'm used to, with a tree, decorations, presents opened Christmas morning, etc.

For what it's worth, I had no idea that the 25th and 26th had relevance beyond "two days to sleep off the hangover from Christmas (the 24th)" until coming to England to study. Curiously, this is reverted for Halloween (All Hallows' Eve?), which is only observed in Germany as an American import, while the following Day is a bank holiday which Christians actually assign great significance to.

Yes, in my case it’s before glow, first row of Browse. Glow and Frequency are half way down the full genera list.

My hypothesis is that the Social-Justice-IdPol is a memeplex that successfully evolved in the past two decades to infect any institution that recruits US college graduates and is sufficiently large to rely on authority (like Human Resources) to settle inter-personal disputes.

Many US colleges claim to promote "critical thinking" and "citizenship" in their students. They operationalize those challenging concepts by requiring general-education courses. Both students and professors realized that the easiest way to appear to meet the "critical thinking" and "citizenship" requirements is to ask, given any topic X: "But how does X affect $[underrepresented minority Y]?"

US employers say that they are looking for employees who have "critical thinking" and "citizenship" skills. Well, there are now a bunch of college grads who got trained on "But how does X affect $[underrepresented minority Y]" version of "critical thinking" + "citizenship". Meanwhile, few institutions have developed any antibodies to such concern-questions, and quite a few candidates for such antibodies get squished hard by appeals to HR.

E.g.: Meeting at Spotify. Boss asks for suggestions for playlists. A senior employee suggests Christmas songs list. A new employee says something like "But how would our centering Christian-holiday songs written in part to support White Supremacy and heteronormativity affect BIPOC Muslims and LGBTQ2S Wiccans?" Everyone grows quiet because they all had to take that harassment training last week and they are not eager to repeat that experience. Result: Glow playlist.

Spotify is a Swedish company, though.

That's either evidence against my hypothesis, or proof that the memeplex metastasized.

I think the “idea” that Spotify used to bootstrap the service was that you could share playlists made by other people - their raison d'être.

So I’m guessing this is a Spotify thing adapted for IdPol.

Like any other modern media, I avoid their content and just build my own.

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