Pete Fenzel, Mark Lee, Jordan Stokes and Matthew Wrather overthink the VMAs, the state of pop (and country music), Max Martin, the Floyd lick, the utility of the hashtag and the new show Selfie.
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WELL ACKSHULLY:
I think Stokes is conflating two bits of received wisdom regarding JFK, at least one of which is apocryphal. The story regarding the debate with Nixon is, as I understand it, those who watched the telecast thought Kennedy had won the debate, while those who listened to it on the radio thought Nixon won. The idea that he single handedly made hats uncool comes from the mistaken information that he went hatless to his inauguration. In fact not only did Kennedy wear a hat to the event, he wore a TOP hat, pictures of which can be easily googled. It seems like an easy and interesting explanation however, so it caught on, much like the myth that Clark Gable caused men to stop wearing undershirts after he was suddenly and sexily revealed to not be wearing one in ‘It Happened One Night.’
I for one would appreciate more music theory segments on the podcast!
I go on Twitter about once a month, though it used to be my favourite social media site – these days I spend a lot more time on Tumblr – and I noticed that I literally do not know what Twitter hashtags are actually FOR anymore, aside from raising awareness for brands/charities/jokes. The categorization aspect has definitely been lost, and the only real point I can see is to get these tags “trending”, which in itself seems a little pointless to me as a generic user.
On Tumblr, it seems a lot more practical to have tags, because people actually “follow” tags in order to find posts about their interests. So if you’re making a post you’ll tag it with “gotg” or “cats” or something, in order to get that post to join the wider conversation about Guardians of the Galaxy or cats or whatever.
But ALSO, tags are used as a way to communicate or comment on a post that a person doesn’t actually want to comment on in the wider scheme of things. So say there’s a picture of a cat, someone might tag it, “#cats #this is so adorable #i really love cats :D #gotta show this to my friend later”, or if there’s a quote from someone, they might write a short paragraph in the tags about what that quote means to them. It’s something that is too personal to broadcast or not conducive to the conversation but you feel like saying anyway. The advantage is that nobody can see your tags aside from your followers, and so you’re less likely to elicit a reaction or change the original post (it’s generally frowned upon to reblog a post and write “LOL” underneath – you save that opinion for the tags).
I’m not sure if other social media sites have this way of using tags (they’re not specifically hashtags anymore because Tumblr removed the actual hashes at one point, though if you copy and paste the tags into the post itself the hashtags DO show up), but I just think it’s pretty interesting how tagging as a way of adding an aside or footnote has evolved on Tumblr, compared with how it’s evolved on Twitter.
Aw, guys, it’s adorable when you try to talk about women’s fashion.
I never thought I’d say this when she was still on X Factor but I will vouch for Cher Lloyd. Her first album is a little more irritatingly bubblegum pop but her second album is a very solid effort as far as pop albums go. Jessie J could definitely have better songs but I thinks she’s a brilliant singer.