Every Like Is A Flirt

A grad­u­ate stu­dent got in touch with me re­cent­ly to talk about a re­search pa­per she’s writ­ing on iden­ti­ty and mu­sic. Since I’m a mu­sic jour­nal­ist I’m an ex­pert, I guess. Ex­pert at bull­shit­ting things on the fly any­way. “I’m de­tail­ing the rea­sons be­hind young peo­ple defin­ing them­selves by the mu­sic they lis­ten to,” she said. “Not, like, ‘Why do goths lis­ten to in­dus­tri­al?’ It’s more like, ‘How is it that young peo­ple are us­ing their mu­sic taste to de­fine them?’”

Us­ing Face­book, and iLike and Last.​fm and Pan­do­ra are the ways we broad­cast to the world what­ev­er our shit­ty taste is now, and has been for years. Back in my day you had to go through the painful process of grow­ing out a mo­hawk and sewing weird shit on­to your jack­et to let every­one know you were in­to punk, or not show­er for a week to let every­one know you heart­ed Nir­vana for­ev­er. It took some ef­fort, you see. Gross, gross ef­fort. Nowa­days all you have to do is push a but­ton to push some­one’s but­tons.

“When I had My­space, I would on­ly add peo­ple whose mu­sic pref­er­ences over­lapped with mine,” she said to me. “Why? Why is mu­si­cal pref­er­ence so im­por­tant for some peo­ple? How can it com­prise an iden­ti­ty?”

Why? Bon­ing each oth­er is why. Like every sin­gle oth­er thing we do and have ever done, it’s be­cause we’re look­ing for sex. But in this case, it’s not just sex in gen­er­al, it’s genre-based sex. Wel­come to the fu­ture.

Peo­ple like the mu­sic they like, and that can ei­ther be a pri­vate rit­u­al, or one they can share with the broad­er com­mu­ni­ty of like-mind­ed fans. But the out­ward ex­pres­sion of that fan­hood out­side of the spe­cif­ic fan com­mu­ni­ty is all about sex and dat­ing and in­creas­ing your op­por­tu­ni­ties for both. It’s a broad­cast sig­nal sent straight from your crotch via your brain’s way­lay sta­tion, to the world at large, but it’s cod­ed in a sig­nal that on­ly oth­er mem­bers of your group can de­ci­pher.

It all comes down to sep­a­rat­ing our­selves in­to lit­tle tribes for the pur­pose of more ef­fi­cient mat­ing. Ex­clu­siv­i­ty has al­ways been at­trac­tive, and the more ex­clu­sive your ex­pres­sion of your self is, the more at­trac­tive it is go­ing to seem to oth­ers. This is shit that goes back to the first di­nosaur scen­ester writ­ing on her cave­book wall page that her in­ter­ests in­clude “dudes with sticks and fire.” Same idea ap­plies when you’re us­ing your on­line iden­ti­ty to trum­pet your mu­si­cal tastes: it’s just an­oth­er way of thin­ning the pool of po­ten­tial suit­ors to ones you’d deem ac­cept­able.

Where­as our par­ents and grand­par­ents prob­a­bly looked for qual­i­ties in a mate like, you know, sta­bil­i­ty, life-build­ing po­ten­tial, and sure, at­trac­tive­ness, now it’s more like “I’m in­to dudes who are fans of oth­er dudes who know how to ma­nip­u­late a lap­top or gui­tar in the high­ly spe­cif­ic man­ner that I al­so deem to be com­mend­able.” It’s no less su­per­fi­cial than it ever was, it’s just us­ing dif­fer­ent cri­te­ria to de­ter­mine whose face you want to smash your face in­to.

Why do we do it like that now? Be­cause peo­ple treat part­ners like ac­ces­sories. Young peo­ple any­way. If you’re in­volved in a par­tic­u­lar mu­sic scene, you have to have the right pants and shirt that evokes mem­ber­ship, but al­so the right hu­man be­ing to wear on your arm like a shoul­der bag cov­ered in band badges. And even when it’s not about di­rect­ly at­tract­ing a mem­ber of the sex you’re at­tract­ed to, it’s a means of gain­ing en­try in­to a club that might be sec­on­dar­i­ly ob­served as be­ing de­sir­able. For ex­am­ple, you may not be that in­to some ob­scure tech­no, but you know that be­ing per­ceived as some­one who is, that there are plen­ty of peo­ple who are go­ing to as­sign val­ue to that. Peo­ple like peo­ple who like things, par­tic­u­lar­ly if those things are deemed just enough out­side the norm to be in­ter­est­ing.

Or it could be sim­pler than that. What else are we go­ing to talk about with oth­ers be­sides the things we are en­ter­tained by? Pol­i­tics? Doubt­ful. Lit­er­a­ture? When I was younger I used to judge peo­ple on whether or not they had read enough Dos­to­evsky, but I was al­so what you might call a judg­men­tal prick. I’d love to still do that now if on­ly I could find any­one who read any­thing be­sides Gawk­er any­more. Nonethe­less, the idea re­mains that you need to pre­s­e­lect for con­ver­sa­tion­al suc­cess by fil­ter­ing out the peo­ple un­like­ly to ‘get you.’ It’s like nar­row­ing the pa­ra­me­ters on a Google search, but you’re search­ing the world for a mate.

Putting quotes around your per­son­al iden­ti­ty search field cuts through all the search re­sults that would be a waste of your time. Have you ever tried talk­ing about cul­tur­al likes with some­one who is on an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent wave­length? Not, like, some­one who is in­to dub­step while you’re in­to hard­core – be­cause the very act of lik­ing there can be grounds for over­lap as “fans” – but some­one who isn’t very par­tic­u­lar about what it is they like? That is a se­ri­ous­ly rough hang. “I like all kinds of mu­sic!” “Uh, I got­ta go.” (Just kid­ding, for the pur­pos­es of a sin­gle hookup a dude will prob­a­bly tough that one out pro­vid­ed the girl is at­trac­tive enough. You know what I mean though.)

Peo­ple who say they like every­thing are re­al­ly say­ing they don’t like any­thing. That doesn’t wash in our con­sumer dri­ven cul­ture, where brand iden­ti­ty is so im­por­tant, not just for the prod­ucts we buy, but for the prod­uct that is our rag­ing bon­ers and rag­ing vagi­nas, the things we are most dri­ven to sell to the world. A prod­uct that every­one likes has a less­er val­ue. When you lim­it sup­ply, peo­ple want it even more. Why do you think they on­ly do lim­it­ed runs of iPads or what­ev­er? It’s not be­cause they don’t think they couldn’t sell more. It’s be­cause the less peo­ple that get to fuck an iPad, the more peo­ple want to fuck an iPad.

So every push of a “like” but­ton on Face­book, or every­thing you up­load to your Sound­cloud or what have you is just an­oth­er en­try in­to your iden­ti­ty port­fo­lio. It’s like a pea­cock show­ing off his feath­ers or a bird singing a mat­ing song, ex­cept in­stead of some­thing in­her­ent to our bi­ol­o­gy – dis­play­ing our sec­ondary sex­u­al traits like tits and ass and broad shoul­ders or what­ev­er it is we’re bi­o­log­i­cal­ly in­clined to be turned on by – it’s a killer remix of a Crys­tal Cas­tles track that we wear to ad­ver­tise our readi­ness to make a ba­by, ex­cept not re­al­ly, just a pre­tend style ba­by that floats above our heads in an au­ra of cool when we walk down the street to­geth­er, whether the ones in the re­al world, or the ones on the in­ter­net.

For young peo­ple this is a lot more im­por­tant ob­vi­ous­ly, but that’s be­cause the pool of po­ten­tial part­ners is so much big­ger. When you are in your mid 30s and old­er I’d guess, women start to set­tle for some­one who isn’t, like, a can­ni­bal per­vert, who al­so has a job and clean shoes. Dudes start to look for a part­ner who isn’t too fat and laughs at his dumb jokes. Good enough. It doesn’t re­al­ly seem that im­por­tant that they aren’t the type of per­son who down­loads all the right shit from Rcrdlbl.​com any­more, be­cause giv­en the choice be­tween get­ting old on your own with no one to talk to, or hav­ing to talk to some­one who can’t nec­es­sar­i­ly ex­pound on the poignan­cy of Mor­ris­sey’s mid pe­ri­od b-sides, it’s not re­al­ly a choice at all. Well, not for me any­way. I’d take the crush­ing soli­tude, but that’s be­cause I’m a gi­ant pussy who self-iden­ti­fies as a huge Mor­ris­sey fan. Then again, I’m prob­a­bly just say­ing that so oth­er Mor­ris­sey fans out there will want to take a look at what’s go­ing on in­side my Mor­ris­sey fan pants.

More from Mr O’Neil over at Put That Shit On The List, and if you want to re­design his site for him, he’s af­ter some graph­ic de­sign at the mo­ment…