So this morning at work I made everyone listen to my own version of the worst CD ever made. Meatloaf to ABBA, every song I hate but can't turn off. (This will end up being several volumes when I'm done....I'm a glutton for punishment, music-wise.) Anyway, this sparked a discussion I've had several times the last few months--namely, why am I retarded when it comes to music?
I've worked it out into a very simple theory--I am a movie snob, I am a literature snob, and I'm a tremendous sports fan. There's just no room in my head to follow which bands the lead guitar from Audioslave has been in before or who the early influences of Widespread Panic are. I barely know who either of those bands are, for that matter. And I'm happy this way.
The backbone of my theory is this: There are four main areas of potential snobbery for people in my age group--people between college and parenthood. Everyone I know is interested in one of these four things: sports, movies, music, or {other}(I'll explain, promise.). What's more, there's various levels of snobbery -- the more of your energy you focus on any one of these, the less snobbish you will be about the others, unless you possess a supernatural capacity for information retention and only require 2 hours of sleep a night.
Sports: The sports snob is almost always male. I don't mean to suggest that girls cannot be interested in sports, or shouldn't be. However, in my humble experience, the vast majority are not. So. The pinnacle of sports snobbery is that guy everyone knows who follows baseball and professional table tennis with equal interest, just because they're both sports. "Fan" is not descriptive enough for people at the top of their game in this particular region. Sports snobs are occupying their precious mental space with meaningless statistics and well-formed opinions on everything from the starting fullback for their local high school to Superbowl conspiracy theories.
Movies: My personal favorite. Movie snobs don't just watch movies, they devour them. They talk in great detail about camera placements and script to screen transitions as if anyone might actually care. They can list the entire oeuvre of even the least significant bit player and instantly rank for you theri favorite Western bad guy or Englishman-doing-American accents. The other related path for movie snobs is the People magazine/US Weekly/E! Network celebrity cult, the people who know who's sleeping with who before the condom's even dry.
Music: My least favorite, because these people can consistently make me feel slightly stupid. Popular music is almost certainly bad in the mind of the music snob, as a general rule the validity of someone's work is directly inverse to the number of people who have actually heard it. Underground rock bands, basement DJ parties, concert bootlegs--the music snob doesn't just listen, they listen. Ten seconds of any song, they'll give you five bands who influenced the sound. Twenty seconds, and they'll tell you what brand the cymbals are.
{other}: Other is not a throwaway category. Other can be a number of things, but it is important to note that ascending to a high level of snobbery in {other} will limit you to only being able to converse with someone of a similar level--no one else cares. Be it politics or basket-weaving, other is the category that makes us unique, as long as it's held in check. You can dabble in a million things on this category, but you automatically sacrifice accessibility, because you've limited your potential for common ground. The other category is always that oddball friend you have who refuses to care even a little bit about any of the pop culture stuff we all bask in, but will have excruciating conversations about wine or philosophy. Want an example? Two words for you: Evangelical Christian.
Pick two, pick three, you're going to be able to talk to just about anyone. Pick 4, and you're going to be in over your head in any conversation. Pick 1, and you needn't worry about conversations, they'll be few and far between, and most likely at conventions of similarly awkward people.
Oh, and don't worry if you're feeling below-average in any of these. Look around at anyone over thirty who has any kind of life, and you'll realize that once you have kids, a spouse, responsibilities, and a career, it's a little more difficult to care about meaningless bullshit like this. Lucky for you, too bad for the rest of us. Welcome to being an almost-grown-up.
No comments:
Post a Comment