No, they are often emotionally needy, overly dramatic & terrible listeners (I know someone who used to be a "sex-worker", kind of lost touch w her)

However, they are usually so enthusiastic!

^ is that tl;dw video about trigglypuff?

tl;dw yesterday

Sorry, can't realize which video is this. My connection sux now.

Really Sargon and the two other British YTers are what I watch mostly.


Alright I forgot to watch it, and it's the worst time of my internet connection in a day.

I download them, then watch them. That's how I roll. I'll reedit this post whenever I could watch your video.

Seems like pure garbage to me.
I'm not gonna lie, I couldn't sit through any of the videos in their entirety, so there's a possibility that there's a u-turn that happens later in all of them that I didn't get to, which redeems them. I tried. Not very hard, but I tried.
What I watched seemed to have little to no factual basis and misogynistic overtones.


Let's take the music one, because I lasted the longest on that at 2 minutes (and because I have no desire to discuss gender politics on the internet):

What are the parameters of lyrical complexity used in the research he alludes to? Number of words? Words per line? Number of verses/length of song? Grammatical structure? Frequency in the native language of words used, which presumes infrequently used words are necessarily "smarter"? Abstract versus concrete nouns? Structure of rhyme schemes? Use of allusion, metaphor, or other literary devices? With a scant 12 words, the following haiku (attributed to Murakami Kijo) conveys a wealth of information, emotion, and possibility of interpretation using very simple simple concrete words and no showy sentence structure: First autumn morning/the mirror I stare into/shows my father's face. An elementary school student can understand that superficially, but would he comprehend or interpret the deeper meaning? Does that make the poem more or less intelligent than a Shakespeare sonnet?

What songs are used as the basis of comparison in the research to claim that music has declined over the past 50 years? If we are looking at current pop music, it stands to reason that only pop music of the past 50 years should be held up as the standard. But if the comparison includes music of the past 50 years of other genres then that makes the claim worthless. There's excellent current music out there in other genres (and probably a cleverly written pop song or two), and there's some shitty pop music that's been written in the past 5 decades. I don't think anyone would hold Nat King Cole's L-O-V-E, as catchy as a tune as it is, as the pinnacle of complex and intelligent songwriting.

Which culture's popular music is being evaluated? I assumed at first it was American music labeled under the genre pop, but he mentions a Spanish study as well. Does Spanish pop equate to American pop? Evaluating complexity across languages brings up a whole host of other issues. And even within America, on-label "pop" may not be representative of popular music. Rap, for example, is more representative of the popular music of the African American culture, which is lyrically and musically very different. So is the argument that the genre called "pop" has become less intelligent and more homogenized, or that music which is popular has suffered the same fate across genres?

Regarding musical complexity, he provides a quote from someone's summation of recent research stating "numerical indicators that the diversity of transitions between note combinations - roughly speaking chords plus melodies - has consistently diminished in the last 50 years." Does a higher number of transitions necessarily indicate that a song is better written? You can play a lot of notes with not a lot of content (all Vivaldi is basically the same use of chord sequence), or you can start with a pretty simple musical statement and create astonishing beauty (Beethoven's 9th symphony, mvt IV; anything by Philip Glass).
And what does loudness have to do with the quality of a song? Altering the intensity of certain lines/components within a track may be done for balance issues. The over all trend towards increased loudness may have something to do with the settings in which the music is usually played, or may be an artifact of newer (and arguably better) recording technology, but it's hard to see how a louder track necessarily is a worse one. It's not like pop music ever had a huge variety of dynamics to begin with. The Beatles, Prince, and Nirvana (alt rock was 90s pop, right?) are all brilliant musicians, but none really mastered the use of the fortepiano. If it's too loud, you always have the option of turning down the volume on you car stereo.

The first two minutes I watched do absolutely nothing to support his initial claim that the decline in the quality of pop music is an objective fact. Just because a database has 1 million songs, doesn't mean that those songs are a good representation of the subject of purported research. All research has subjectivity built into it in the way the research question is framed, the subjects selected for inclusion in the research, which statistical analyses are selected, and what conclusions are reached from statistically significant data. It would be nice to get a look at the original studies he references to determine what methodology was used and whether or not the conclusions drawn in the study were valid; and, on top of that, whether or not he represents the results of that research accurately, or is pulling sound bites that suit his overall theme.

So sure he's a smart guy, and maybe well informed, too. But smart people are great at cherry picking that information to construct an appealing argument which is sound on its face.

I never expressed an opinion on pop music. I'm just pointing out some of the flaws in his argumentation.

I'm 80% in agreement with PJW (I'm like 60% in agreement with Sargon). This percentage has been unprecedented, so I should defend him. His career as political reporter and commentator has been great, and he entered the social aspects in the last two years. About Syria, EU refugee Crisis, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, etc. His concerns about sexual behaviour, 3rd wave feminism, crisis in Europe, post-modern and popular culture is true and if certain policies won't be utilized anytime soon, the real downfall of this Modern Civilization (version 2.2: made after WW2 and in 1960s, with recent SJWs add-ons to it) will be imminent. I'm a historian (have read more than 100 books about history and philosophy of history, philosophy, politics and related subjects and I confirm you cannot explain historical events by genetics. Even current technological achievements and progress is no guarantee to keep up degenerating this civilization to something fully nonsensical and laughing from the above...

Your faith in western Civilization is hilarious. At this rate in a few decades or at best one century this Civilization will collapse because it has become devoid of culture and spirituality and it's full of liberal-communist-capitalistic contradictions. Unfortunately it expands its influence and realm around the world. Only countries with center, nationalistic and traditional values and policies can survive this world wide corruption of western culture which is growing with Mass Media. The social suicide of Germany and Sweden is nothing to be neglected or be happy about. Also there is "the Islamic World" that you should be very afraid of! Then after this collapse my kind of people will laugh at these epidemic sluts loud when all these traditional values are revived! I hope the world won't become a fully Islamic world, but if it ever happens you morally relativist hipster sexologist nihilist elites asked for it by ruining your own societies and cultures.

Fuck, Jorji, this is why I refuse to discuss gender politics on the internet.
Now I feel obligated address a few points.

I am not familiar with any of his other work. I would hope that all reporting was based in fact; and that his commentary on other issues has been less biased than the videos which you posted above, or at least acknowledges that bias and/or presents alternative viewpoints for consideration. Of note, his concerns, which I will not attempt to invalidate, because I don't seek to tell other people that what they feel is inherently wrong, cannot be "true" by definition. They are his opinions, to which he is very much entitled, as much I may believe they are misled. They are in no way fact, should not be construed as such, and, therefore, can neither be true nor untrue. That is what distinguishes commentary from a factual report.

Here are some things to consider while weighing his expressed opinions against your own, and against what you perceive and judge to be happening in the world around you:

Others' sexual behavior is nobody's fucking business (see what I did there?). I know you're a student of history and all, but the historical record doesn't contain full documentation of commonplace public events, or even all perspectives of well documented landmark events which occurred, let alone what happened in the privacy of individuals' bedrooms. We have very little basis of knowledge of how greatly current sexual behavior (which is also very much subject to self-report bias and therefore difficult to quantify despite a plethora of current research initiatives) deviates from what humans have done in the past, nor what effect it has on society as a whole.
People have been having sex since humanity came into existence. That's how we got here. I don't foresee it stopping. Prostitution is referred to as "the oldest profession" with good reason. There is a long tradition among homo sapiens of seeking sexual encounters which do not necessarily result in procreation and in seeking sexual gratification outside of a defined socially documented relationship. And there is debate as to why certain conventions came along. There are excellent arguments for a biological basis for monogamy (along with biological bases for seeking sexual experiences outside of that monogamous relationship), just as their are a political/religious underpinnings for the same. Is there an objective reason for frowning upon the use of contraception in some segments of the global population? Absolutely not. It could be said that it discourages premarital sex, which helps to ensure a man will not be cuckolded. It could be said that it helps to establish a bond between a couple with a shared unique and intimate experience. It could said that it helps a group to multiply its followers by encouraging sexual congress which produces a child who will be raised in a way congruent to that group's ideology. It could also be said that it is to enforce dominion over a subset of that group, for which the consequences of engaging in sexual congress may be more readily apparent. None of these arguments is right or wrong. I have opinions about things like access to contraception, but I can't say why certain current attitudes exist or that they are better or worse than historical attitudes around contraception in the past. I can point to evidence that access to contraception has changed statistics around certain phenomena like teenage pregnancy. But the decline of teen pregnancy over all doesn't mean that for a certain couple that hole someone poked in a condom won't change both of their lives forever and should a third life become a part of theirs won't affect a new generation as well.

I will not discuss 3rd wave feminism except to say that the behavior of a few crazy people should not be taken as representative of a philosophical/political movement (just as we would not consider ISIS to be representative of all of Islam), and it certainly should be considered representative of all people who have matching genitalia.

I don't know to what exactly "crisis in Europe" refers. There's a lot of bad shit happening: economic decline, refugee influx., infighting among member states, and political discord within some countries, so I'm not sure which is of greatest concern here.

Finally, postmodern and popular culture are not inherently vulgar. You may not like them, but there is nothing detrimental to society about them. You know what drives me nuts? The use of "they/their" as a gender neutral pronoun and the decline of the subjunctive tense. But if I had my way, everyone would mind his or her ps and qs as if his or her life were dependent upon it. But that particular sentence is a mouthful and I recognize that my grammatical rectitude is stodgy and antiquated. You know what's great? The contraction. And that's the result of the evolution of language. Language, like culture, is not static but evolves to meet the needs of the citizenry. I miss the tradition of the Romantic symphony as much as you, but we have plenty of those around, the best examples of which have survived. Crappy symphonies are rarely played by orchestras. There's no need to reinvent the wheel. Not every composer is Dvorak, and we wouldn't like if they all were. And it's not as if all orchestral tradition has died. A man who plays in my volunteer symphony writes what I believe to be incredible, current orchestral music. We recently performed one of his compositions and it was exquisite. There are plenty of talented, active composers out there right now. Postmodernism brought us Phillip Glass, Kurt Vonnegut, Rem Koolhaas, and Andy Warhol, to hit some big names. I don't like John Cage's work, or Marcel Duchamp's, but I appreciate the statements they made in their work and what they have contributed to the artistic landscape of our time. Postmodernism remains challenging for me to wrap my head around at times, but that's what people said about Impressionism and Romanticism when those movements emerged as well. And what is popular is not necessarily bad. Mozart's operas enjoyed contemporary popularity, as did Shakespeare's plays, and we recognize those popular artists to be pinnacles of their genres. Not every artist is as miserable as Van Gogh, receiving no recognition in their lifetimes. And you know what? I like Lady Gaga. She's a talented singer. Lovely voice. Listen to her duet with Tony Bennett of "That's Why the Lady is a Tramp," you might even like it.

The heat death of the universe is also imminent.
I am interested in the happenings and demarcations that have helped us reach v2.2, though. I bet there's some disagreement as to where we are in the continuum of Modern Civilization.

I've read a lot of smutty romance novels. That doesn't make me an expert on sex.
One can find literature out there to support any view point. Even the most rigorous experiments following the scientific method are subject to bias. What matters more than the quantity of study is the quality of it and the diversity within it.

But one can find evidence of meddling here and there.

I think it's worth noting, that a hipster is a young person who engages in anachronistic and irritating behavior (like wearing a trilby, or drinking rootbeer brewed only with organic sassafrass root made in the traditional method, or listening to only live, "authentic" recordings of 1920s AfroAsiatic folk music) because s/he thinks it impresses others. A hipster is not some one who has an opinion which differs from yours.


You.  Don't feed the bears.
I love you very much, but you're throwing gasoline on that gender politics fire I never wanted lit in the first place.


And in conclusion, this is a politics forum discussion, not lobby discussion, so I request that it desist, lest it attract the attention of our glorious and revered mods.


Now then, on topic. What's your favorite underwear color?
I prefer black. Classic and flattering. Red seems too attention getting and intentionally risque. If I'm going to go for color, purple is wear I'm leaning now. Less expected and makes more of a statement than pink or light blue.

It seems you're using the same card and there is nothing to debate. Choosing your game, I prefer Immauel Kant over Michel Foucault and Beethoven over Nicki Minaj.

And I prefer my own Grey pants.

I prefer black as well. It's just classy. Emerald green and azure blue are nice too. What I don't like to wear are pastel colors and white. I do like white boxers on a man, though.

Fellas...what's cooler than being cool?