Patrician Music Chartposting: Toxic Pretension in the Internet Age
by Owen Murray
For better or for worse, pretentiousness, or pretension has been a part of music appreciation for decades. At times, it has been openly celebrated. LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy developed a persona nearly entirely around his pretentiousness—starting from the band’s first single in 2005 “Losing My Edge.” On this song Murphy—a former DJ—laments about “the internet seekers who know every good member of every good group” before launching into an off-the-cuff sounding list of all the “cool” bands he knows. In 2010 Murphy went so far as to tell The Guardian “I actually want to write a treatise in defense of pretension.” The way he saw it, pretension was just a force making him explore new things. “The first time I read Gravity’s Rainbow, I did so because I thought it would make me seem cool….now I’ve read it six times.” Characterized this way, pretension seems like nothing more than a competition to see who can find the coolest books and the coolest music, but Murphy’s view totally overlooks it’s toxic, and completely unproductive side.
The John Cusack movie High Fidelity (2000) makes both sides of pretension abundantly clear in one two-minute scene. The main character Rob, who owns a record store lists his “top five favorite side one, track one’s” to his employees at the record store he owns. He lists some classic albums and throws in some Massive Attack. The response: “a sly declaration of new classic status slipped into a list with old safe ones….very pussy!” Crude, but harmless. There’s nothing wrong with teasing a friend in an effort to get them to listen to cooler music. But when a nerdy-looking customer asks about a Captain Beefheart record, they tell him they’re not ready to sell it. Well aware the record is ready to be sold, a regular customer calls them out. “You guys are totally elitist. You feel like the unappreciated scholars so you shit on the people who know less than you!”
Patrician Music Chartposting or “PMC” is a Facebook group with well over 50,000 members that has grown to embody the internet seekers James Murphy feared in 2005 and the toxic elitism displayed in the record store High Fidelity. While the group is predated by equally toxic communities like 4chan’s mu/ page, PMC has become the quintessential music group for music snobs or “patricians” on the world’s most popular website. The page’s creators had a fantastic goal: recommend music to each other and your post charts— many of which resemble Rob’s “top side one, track one’s.” Getting recommendations from 50,000 people every day has the potential to be an excellent resource for music discovery. Unfortunately, the elitism and inevitable trolling that comes with so many people interacting virtually with strangers makes it difficult to tell if the recommendations are even worth it.
This is a typical post in PMC, and it’s a pretty quality one. It’s somewhat original and genuinely thought-provoking. It provides a lot of opportunity for discussion and recommendations for music of any genre. Of course, the post is ridiculously pretentious. It’s hard to tell if it’s designed to create discussion or just as an outlet for people to show off the obscure, obtuse albums they listen to. Regardless, it did create a number of engaging responses.
And of course, there are those who manage to devalue the post with completely unhelpful responses.
Thank you, very cool.
This is where PMC becomes like the elitist record store owners from High Fidelity, deriding others whose interests aren’t “cool” enough. In PMC, Death Grips’ The Money Store is practically a pop album. And if you think otherwise you’re a pleb or a normie.
This brings comment up another issue with PMC: literally just liking things Anthony Fantano likes. And Kanye. If you don’t like Kanye, you’re going to have a bad time. More often than not, group members are there to validate their current beliefs, rather than learn about new music. Discourse in the group is closer to a competition to see who has the best taste than a discussion of opinions. As a result, the groups’ opinions can be surprisingly homogeneous, which really defeats the point of joining such a massive group in the first place. While it seems like the main cause of this is that members take excessive direction from Pitchfork and Anthony Fantano—though most would vehemently deny this—the group’s heavily male-dominated membership is likely a factor as well. Kanye, Death Grips, Bjork, Aphex Twin, Talking Heads, Swans, are among the few artists who longtime members of the group know are held in the highest esteem. Any criticism of these artists is brushed off as “bait.” Oftentimes it is bait—some bored kid trying to get a rise out of thousands of music snobs at once. But legitimate criticism is lumped in with the bait as if not one person in a group of 50,000 could ever come up with a legitimate criticism of the all-powerful Kanye West.
Despite the massive downsides of the group, the potential the group has makes it difficult to leave. The idea of sharing music with people all across the country, and often across the world is so exciting that it’s tough to turn your back on it entirely. The simple post below is the kind of thing that best displays the groups potential. Showing people what you like, and asking for recommendations.
Patrician Music Chartposting is a lamentable community, full of internet seekers who were bad enough when James Murphy called them out in 2005. The group takes the toxic pretension depicted in High Fidelity to a new, meme-powered level but unfortunately, if you’re a music enthusiast on the internet in 2019, there’s really no better community to turn to.
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Seriousy? No one there really cares what you listen to. People just like to joke around. This is like the blog post equivalent of a kid complaining about bullying when people were just making jokes of their favorite Pokemon.
I ag
xD
poppostnjhert
post your chart coward
They made fun of you didn’t they?
adminad
uhhh this text box is broken
but admin here, thanks for the writeup lol
oh ohskmd
oh god oh fuck
Look, as a member of the group I can 100% understand PMC not being a place for everyone (I love it and it’s still a bit much for me at times lmao) but it’s also equally a shitposting group as much as it is a music discussion group. While it’s got it’s tuffians about 95% of its members are being half-sarcastic with everything they post. It’s jesting. I do it and I’ve had it done against me, and I’ve also had tons of genuine and informative discussion there. I mean really, now.
That group is full of cyrcle jerking snobs that love licking Fantano’s dick and listening to the same /mu/ core garbage, I haven’t found a good recommendation there, it’s all cyrcle jerk
Kanye West
Kero Kero Bonito – Bonito Generation
nice
nice bait
"In PMC, Death Grips’ The Money Store is practically a pop album. And if you think otherwise you’re a pleb or a normie."
While Death Grips isn’t Ariana Grande, they’re very much popular and that album is pretty accessible. There comes a point in time where your favorite "underground artist" just isn’t so underground and surely with 400k monthly listeners in Spotify, they passed that point.
The word "pop" has various meanings. For others, it’s a contemporary aesthetic defined by what is mostly played in radio. For others, it’s measured by popularity. For some, it’s essentially music that is not art music, folk music or jazz. That album certainly fits the bill with two of these definitions.
Another thing one should understand is the context: people who get into PMC are usually music enthusiasts who have spent their time scouring the internet for new music and virtually everyone there would know Aphex Twin, Death Grips and so forth. Even if majority of people do not know of them, each and every single individual in PMC does and has heard their music. If you were among heavy metal enthusiasts, maybe you could surprise a few people with Burzum. But try and imagine yourself among black metal enthusiasts talking about how Burzum is hardly accessible music (unless you refer to outsiders).
And this whole article, on the other hand, is a huge mess. There’s a lot of satire & irony in PMC that you seem to have taken seriously. But more importantly: you absolutely can have great discussions there on various topics. But if your takes are like this, I honestly can’t wonder if you’ve gotten dunked in there or something. And I absolutely can’t care about Aphex Twin, Kanye West, Death Grips or Swans. Björk I would care about though. So I can tell you that I don’t exactly belong to the typical PMC member either.
On a last note, I also don’t really understand what is so upsetting about pretentiousness? There may not be much good in pretentiousness, but there doesn’t really seem to be much bad in it either in this case. What exactly is the "toxic" part of it, implying that it causes harm to the enthusiasts?
Also, there absolutely are better communities than PMC for music enthusiasts. Almost any other scene-specific community in fact suits your needs better. However if it’s required that the community isn’t bound to a scene or a genre, then you may be right. But you might want to visit those other communities then and witness some real pretentiousness and write this again.
hey jose post feet
If you ever find someone that listens to articles about PMC almost obsessively, give that person a hug. Because the people that relate to that music have been through hell and are probably still there.
w
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w
Subscribe to T-Series
thank you, very nice article! !
So I started this group a few years ago with this Bulgarian dude. It started as a way for us to post charts and rec music to one another based on those charts. I wrote this mission statement and it’s been on the description ever since.
"If you ever wanted to discuss music and need some good recommendations, this is a place to be. Let’s keep it civil. Don’t care if you listen to Green Day or Merzbow, try to respect one another. Also please post the names of the albums you are posting if they are not very clear."
The name patrician started as an ironic joke and it came from a Death Grips group (that’s why a lot of people in the group like Death Grips derp…). None of us thought it would blow up the way it did because it was literally for the love of music. Not only is this article poorly written, but it is completely missing the point. Are you surprised that elitism exists on the internet when discussing any type of art form? It’s inevitable. The group gives a lot of people an opportunity to discover new music and I don’t mind dealing with the occasional asshole because guess what? That’s life.
P.S. I fucking hate Kanye but I don’t get mad when people like him. That’s half the fun of these groups. Debating. It’s good for you
very cool
Being a former admin of the group who left on sour terms even i view this article as sycophanty rather than a criticism on a community
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Hot head
Oh no, that pedagogue grab the microphone, ease back up [?]
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Hot head, oh no
Pedagogue grab the microphone, ease up [?]
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Oh no
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Hot head, oh no
Pedagogue grab the microphone, ease up [?]
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Oh no
Blo, blo, blo, blo, blo, blo, blo
Hot head, oh no
Pedagogue grab the microphone, ease up [?]
Blo, blo, blo, blo, blo, blo, blo
Oh no
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Hot head, oh no
Pedagogue grab the microphone, ease up [?]
Oh no, hot head
Imagine unironically writing this article
Unkle Adams with a pussy would be breathtaking. It would be so pink and hed make sure to wax every once in a while and his lips would be silky. To see his clit, youd have to spread his lips because are also chubby. His walls are fluffy and itd be so easy for him to squirt.
every single artist i saw mentioned in this article is bad so it makes sense that their fans are bad people
whine whine