on visual art
on music
on television/cinema

etc

controversial opinion: imo the beatles are entry-level music even their supposed "experimental" music is one-dimensional and flat. i respect their widespread influence but it was a "right moment in time" situation

controversial opinion: in terms of metal music, folk metal (stuff that uses flutes, accordians, harps, orchestrals) is dumb; folk-influenced metal on the other hand, can be artistically monumental when done right

I don't really get the reasoning behind deriding something as "entry-level". I don't even think I could effectively argue the point- I don't have a firm grasp on the philosophy.

I have pretty divided opinions on rap. For me to even warrant a second listen, a rap has to be on point, poignant and maintain momentum the whole way through. I think that's why lots of songs have a single verse of rap- if you can't keep up the quality the song fails immediately.
Bit of a tangent here- but I think that's why so many horror movies suck and so many make better comedies- it's easy to fail hard.
I was going to savage Eminem's Lose Yourself, but I looked it up and the version I'm listening to now is amazing. Is it the movie version that kills it and the album version that drops the ball after the first verse or vice versa?

I hate most country music. Half of it's so preachy that I want to throttle the singer. The other half is alright, but most of that's just rock music trying to cash in on a cultural trend without its own unique musical style.

It may be that the Beatles suffer a bit from being so foundational for later musicians. It might also be a metal fan thing.

For myself...

I cannot stand Jim Carrey, Will Farrell, and Steve Carell. Slapstick and awkward humor are painful to watch, and comedies that lean heavily on them are bad, lacking complexity and creativity.

most (not all) entry-level stuff is just one-dimensional and utilizes only surface-value qualities of whatever genre it either is from or precedes.

Black Sabbath is entry-level metal, but it still exemplifies all the good aspects of metal music in a nuanced, and multidimensional way.

i cant say the same for the Beatles.


modern country is pop music with twangy guitars. It follows typical pop chord progressions and ABABCB song construction that has been done to death.

try country from 1980 and earlier, also bluegrass. its pretty manly

The Beatles have the same problem as Seinfeld- a modern viewer might find it horribly cliched, but they were the ones who established those cliches. Breaths of fresh air that've gone stale.


I get the gist of what you're saying, but I'm not sure exactly what you're saying the Beatles lacked. Subtlety? Were their chord progressions too simple? Did they just never delve deep enough into all the things they touched on?

There's definitely popy country out there, but I had assumed anything that got to pop was no longer considered country. I have no idea where the genre boundaries lie honestly. (And if we're getting into that "pop" is pretty vague too. It's the "popular" stuff, and it's usually really light?)
I know little of older country music, except that cowboys yodelled and it that was painful. That may be going back too far though.

My understanding of modern musical genres is a mess. I still don't know what precisely "rock" means. You can pick 3 random rock songs from diffrent groups and subgenres, and they'll have (or so I feel) almost nothing in common. Actually, you can pick 3 songs of Beatles, give them to a person who have never heard of them, and (I feel) successfully persuade them that those were diffrend bands playing in diffrent genres. (Cosider this a counterargument to "beatles are flat and one-dimensional.")

Rather than picking bands/artists to be a fan of, I usually choose individual songs/melodies I like, and ignore most of other stuff by same authors.
Lately, for example, I listened to
Yes - Roundabout
Woodkid - Stabat Mater
Rob Hubbard - Monty on the Run
Styx - Mr Roboto
Fall Out Boy - Centuries

I don't like most contemporary (00s, 10s) music that is in fashion in my country now. I especially dislike rap, because it mostly sounds awful. I can listen to some few songs though, mostly because of good lyrics or occasional epic charisma (read "epic charisma" as "snoop dogg is a walking meme").

I actually really like one of the folk bands, but it's from my country, so you don't know it. Its called Melnitsa (The Mill), they often have originally-sounding (to me) tunes, deep texts (once I've read an analysis of one, and the density of meanings, symbolism, and refrences is Homestuck-level), and I wouldn't call them "rock band without it's own style so they borrowed folk" either. The most impressive (for me) thing they pulled off once was a... how do I explain it... landscape-art in song form, which I never seen anywhere else.

As for other media...

I loooove absurd comedies. Hot Shots, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, A Haunted House, Rocky Horror Picture Show, etc. They don't feel dumb to me.

I completely adore Homestuck.

I find anime openings one of the worst things ever.

I often don't mind poor style in literature, as long as the plot is interesting.

I dont buy this argument. The fact that Beatles do songs that could be classed as different genres doesnt change that imo they do each of them in a flat, superficial manner.

as a visual artist, i could fire off paintings in many different styles (abstract, impressionist, etc) but it wouldnt change the fact that if handled poorly, it wouldnt exhibit my skill as an artist

Depth vs breadth.

Unpopular opinion: bringing it all back home > Highway 61 revisited.

Controversial opinion, SEMI SPOILERS:

the visual effects team of Star Trek: Discovery need to stop pretending "It's not 1966 anymore" is a valid excuse, or anything more than a lazy copout to shoehorn flashy new designs (beautiful or not) into canon. "visual rebooting" and retconning are atrocious

star trek is the one franchise where visual continuity should be treated as sacrosanct

and this is coming from someone who, writing-wise, adores Discovery

The writers of Star Trek: Discovery are not nearly as good as they think they are.

The writing isnt bad, just not up to par. but the visual effects and design teams need to be stopped. dont **** with the enterprise. dont **** with continuity

i like characters that are incredibly powerful and/or perfect. the mary sue archetype is one of my favourites.

i wasn't a big fan of one punch man

captain georgiou or commander saru for example

Controversial opinion: insane clown posse's work has real merit. "Miracles", though widely derided, is actually profound. It's commonly mocked for the artists' scientific ignorance, for not understanding, for example, "how magnets work". But do any of us really understand them? We've been able to dig beneath the surface, and see underneath the "electromagnetic force" that causes particles of opposite charges to attract, and those of like charges to repel, but what causes the electromagnetic force? We've simply found another surface, and one that is no more meaningful than that which we tore away to reveal it. At bottom, there must be some sort of miracle, something sui generis. Really, the decision of whether or not to see these phenomena as miracles is a personal choice of perspective, and the clowns' choice leads to a richer, more joyful existence. Read Nietzsche's Der Froehliche Wissenschaft. Also, the beat is pretty kicking.

GT: Was his [Guy Fieri's] personal magnetism really that overwhelming?
TT: Maybe overwhelming in the wrong direction, yeah.
TT: But it didn't happen overnight. It was a gradual decline in the integrity of the system that allowed it.
TT: Eventually the wheels came off and the political scene mirrored the absurdity of the media circus.
TT: By the time Presidents Jay and Dope were elected, western civilization had officially **** itself over forever, and I think everyone knew it.
GT: Oh no.
GT: When does that happen?
TT: 2024. The last free election the world would ever see.
GT: So like...
GT: They were on the ticket together? As president and vice president?
TT: No, man.
TT: They were both president.
TT: They were the first Dual-Presidents of the United States of America. Also the last.
TT: They were also the first and last juggalo presidents. The founding fathers warned us about this, but nobody listened.
GT: They did? Warned us about what exactly?
TT: The Mirthful Executives.
TT: George Washington had prophetic nightmares about them. He tried to warn people, and get language amended to the constitution to prevent it.
TT: Like forbidding the election of what he famously described as "a pair of salty bards," or "unruly jesters given to the sweet drink."
TT: But everyone just thought he toked too hard on the colonial cannabis or whatever.
GT: Im not sure i follow. These are like clown presidents or such?
TT: Yes. They were a **** rap duo from your time.
TT: But they ran a hell of a campaign. By then the juggalo party had gotten huge. While the numerous other candidates split the moderate vote, they retained a very energized and devoted base.
TT: You could say their party had a big tent.
GT: Dirk i really dislike the future you are describing.
TT: Hey me too.
TT: They were swept into office on a wave of Faygo, and the presidential inauguration was the biggest Gathering of the Juggalos of all time.
TT: They all hosed each other down on the Whitehouse lawn with **** soda. The "D.C." in the capital thereafter officially stood for "Dark Carnival."
...

GT: I still dont really know what a juggalo is.
GT: Do they juggle?
TT: Don't worry about it.
TT: People were less prepared for a double juggalo presidency than they ever imagined.
TT: I'm not even going to get into all the horrifying details. Trust me, you just start to feel dirty reading about it.
TT: From the moment Fieri held up the bible to swear them in, and the three of them proceeded to publically defecate on it while freestyling rap lyrics...
TT: That was it. Everyone in the world watching it on TV just said, "Welp. Show's over. Civilization was pretty cool while it lasted."
TT: The next several grueling terms of their presidency was a weird combination of authoritarian practices.
TT: Faygo was pumped through the plumbing instead of tap water. The new national pastime was having type 2 diabetes. And the national anthem was replaced by a 3 minute high-reverb audio clip of President Jay farting into a microphone while laughing.
TT: Chaplain Fieri was authorized to set up the death camps, in which anyone on the planet could be imprisoned if they were not deemed sufficiently "mirthful."
TT: And so the cleansing began, priming humanity for its new ruler waiting in the wings.

I only know ICP by reputation. I'd figure there had to be some merit beneath the ironic zaniness. It is true that nobody understands magnets. The fundamental forces were classified long ago, but their basis eludes us.
I heavily disagree with the underlined text. Maybe ignorance is bliss (and maybe not) but willful blindness cannot qualify as a "richer" state of being.
I have never heard the song and cannot comment on the kickyness of the beat.

I wasn't referring to their ignorance, I was referring to their choice to see the world around them as being miraculous.

I was too. It's okay to not understand and to accept that, but to hold something you don't understand to be simply inexplicable is not a beautiful thing.
Or maybe I'm reading into this wrong, and the "miracle" bit is more about appreciation.

Their later confessions sounded like that, but... consider those lines from a song
(Warning: swearing. Misspellings are intentional.)

"Water, Fire, Air and Dirt,
Fukking magnets, how do they work ?
And I don't want to talk to a scientist,
Y'all motherfukkers lying, and getting me pissed !"

Then again, another line of the song:

"If Magic is all we've ever known,
Then it's easy to miss what really goes on..."

I'd say that the song does celebrate ignorance (as well as appreciation), but also acknowledges that ignorance is unproductive.
Or something.

But yeah, the sing is pretty good and fun.


Fear the day when they'll be elected as Presidents, though.