IMO IMO IMO IMO

Friday, April 04, 2008

Pitchfork can suck it.

God, Pitchfork hates freedom.

The thing about Pitchfork Media is that it is a great resource. I hear about new albums, singles, music videos, all kinds of stuff. For someone like me who's not always the best at finding blogs and alternative sites to this kind of thing, it's the perfect one-stop-shop for me.

But here's what I hate about it: Pitchfork is full of cynical hipster fascists, who are so certain that their own opinion is right that they just go balls to the wall insulting people. This is nothing new for them, alas. Their sarcasm grows more and more with each passing year, and while I have found that sometimes this yields hilarious news tidbits, headlines, and the like (making for fun reading alongside news that's important to me), it has equal potential to just plain infuriate me.

Today, Pitchfork posted about the announcement that Natalie Portman will be in an upcoming Devendra Banhart music video. I don't like Devendra or his music (although I have a greater appreciation after I saw a recent documentary on the freak-folk movement). Recently, I have come to appreciate Portman as an actress, facilitated by her performance in Closer and her small role in Wes Anderson's Hotel Chevalier. I believe Chevalier, along with The Darjeeling Limited, is Anderson's best work today because it is flawed. He took a chance on exploring (new) emotional territory, and tried to break out of his repetitive style, and for that he earns commendation in my book. Hotel Chevalier in particular was very exciting for me, in part due to its release on iTunes for free.

Enter Paul Thompson of Pitchfork:

[L]ate last month, Nat and Big D collaborated on a video for "Carmensita" from Devendra's three-songs-too-long-player Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon. No word on just when we'll get an eyeful of these two frolicking to the strains of D's chugging cut, but, shit, it's a far better Portman + facial hair guy equation than that thing that came on before The Darjeeling Limited.
"

When I read that, I was infuriated. As I said, I'm of the opinion that Hotel Chevalier is a good film. It seems to have become a trend that slandering and debasing respectable work and people in a casual, off-hand manner is considered "funny." And, well, I don't buy it. It doesn't make someone more intelligent, more knowledgeable of a topic or field, and, with the exception of K.R., I like to think that I never insult people or work on this site unless I feel they deserve it, and back up why. Granted I am guilty of this behavior in my conversational speech, but that is only amongst friends who share similar opinions and senses of humor. Not in a massively public forum.

And let me just say, for all of the K.R. lovers out there who are so certain that I don't see the other side of things, that I do recognize that Pitchfork can (and, dare I say, should) express their opinions to the max. For one thing, it is the expression of their opinions coupled with their ability to be on top of information that got them to where they are in the first place. As someone who runs his own opinion-oriented site, yeah, I get it. But also as someone running an opinion-oriented site, I get to say: Pitchfork writers, you suck. You're full of yourselves, and completely entrenched in your indie-hipster superiority complex. If I could I'd knock you down a couple of notches, I would.

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