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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   25020 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

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Who?

I mean I have some idea but that's more like 2010s.

A fairly niche band and not even its most recognizable song?

If you think people at large know any other MGMT song better than Little Dark Age, you're not paying attention to zoomer culture.

It's a meme song at this point, has specific (if unintended) political salience and enough cultural impact that a whole genre of musical videos is named after it.

You want the equivalent of Dylan's boomer hymns, this is it.

Zoomers know Little Dark Age, sure, but Millennials will at least instantly recognize Kids.

If you think people at large know any other MGMT song better than Little Dark Age, you're not paying attention to zoomer culture.

I doubt I qualify as such. Having heard this song before and refreshing on it today, it is resoundingly below mediocre. I mean, Dylan is also generally bad so I guess it appeals to a similar sort of person maybe. I've always heard boomers call Dylan a "poet" or something similar. This seems to be popular, to the extent it is, because it conveys a sort of sense of ennui.

I give it a mildly resounding "meh"

The subjective musical merits are, as you rightfully point out, totally irrelevant to our discussion of cultural impact.

You can say the Matrix is a mediocre blend of Neuromancer, GITS and John Woo movies all you want, it's still a cultural touchstone.

One that was not unintentionally avoidable by someone 5 years outside the alleged core demographic.

How old are you? This song is instantly recognizable to a huge portion of Millennials, zoomers and gen alpha across cultures.

Was the song used in some sort of video game or extremely online meme? I think I’m at least in the 95th percentile for this site’s user base in terms of knowledge of popular music, and I was not familiar with this song, despite having been a big fan of MGMT’s debut album Oracular Spectacular when it came out. I’d be surprised if this is the sort of ubiquitously-recognizable song you’re saying it is.

Yeah it had / has a huge presence on social media. It’s extremely popular and well known in online culture, which as we both know tends to leak copiously into the mainstream at this point.

People used to use it all the time in video edits to the point of cliche.

That’s wild because it’s not even a good song.

Forgot to include this.

For example just yesterday this popped up randomly on my feed, probably in reference to Trump quoting Napoleon.

I like it. And I don't even like MGMT's other stuff.

Old enough to know Kids is a far better MGMT song.

Maybe so, but Little Dark Age came out in 2018 has been streamed 700+ Million times on Spotify.

Considering Kids is a decade older and only has like 15% more streams, I’d hardly call it “niche”.

The song has been used a bazillion times on YouTube / instagram / TikTok / Reddit. It has a massive presence in online culture, and not just in weird spaces.

I believe the user you’re responding to is saying that the 2020’s are, in some important sense, a “Little Dark Age”, which is why that song would be an apropos soundtrack.

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