"Cool" Music

        The article "Why the Old-School Music Snob is the least cool guy on Twitter" talks about just how much music culture has changed in the last decade alone. It used to be that knowing about obscure music was cool, and people were so snobbish about it all. The thing is, like almost every other aspect of our lives, the internet has changed all that. Anyone can know anything about any artist at the click of a button, so the "knowledge guardians" as the author calls them, are no longer needed.
       The thing that the author, and so many people, have a problem with is that they have to share what they thought of as their tastes with the rest of the world. The author realizes this is pointless and snobbish, but knowing that everyone else might love his tastes just as much as him makes him feel insignificant and unoriginal. I find these lines really interesting: "Like friendship, taste should be somewhat exclusive. If everybody is friends, then no one is, really. The same applies to being fans of Arcade Fire." The author has a point and perhaps the fact that everyone likes something makes it less meaningful to some. But would you not be friends with someone just because a lot of other people were also friends with them? It would seem completely ridiculous and to me that's what music snobbery is. Then again, liking something just because everyone else likes it is also ridiculous.
     The author acknowledges that the way we share music now is in many ways better than it was before. Talented artists get the recognition they deserve, and I like how easy the internet makes it for unknown artists to be discovered. I think they point that the author doesn't touch on is that secretly we all  want to jealously guard that obscure song or unknown book and believe it will be "ruined" if it becomes popular.
    Taste in books, movies, and music is all about personal expression, which is why people resent liking something popular. It reminds people that they're not as unique as they thought they were. I try to look at it from a different point of view. To me, the aforementioned aspects of popular culture are less about the actual content and more about what that content means to each person. That song, movie or book is still going to mean the same thing to me no matter how many people like it. Thoughts, memories, opinions, and emotions make an individual, not their tastes. For me it's about the emotions that song evokes or the memories that a book conjures up. That is what makes those things mine.