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This was one of the songs i posted m8; it's ok I guess, but like the lyics are the worst of any of the things I posted

yeah I had a feeling you already posted it

but you posted so much stuff this was like a protest of sorts

Yeah lmao i agree

Anyway I'm about to explain why this music ruled the airwaves; in 2000 we had a republican president, then in 2001 as u know terrorism happened. Now that was when it started; the erasure of American "freedom" in order to achieve "security". If you didn't notice by now, literally every music artist is liberal as heck, especially punk rockers (fuck the government)

So for a solid 2 years we have a constant barrage of "revolutionary" political ideals talkin about why it's so bad to conform because while real right-wingers were targeting minorities and "suspicious people" (not that this can be blamed on conservatism; ppl were scared m8!), a majority of ppl were all like "conforming is kind of nice and mainstream" but music artists used this as an opportunity to talk about why individualism is good. Which it is.

Now this wasn't a unique opinion to 2002-2006 at all. It certainly started as a revolution against garbage information in the 90s. Look at the grunge movement, it was about the same thing. But for "intelligent" young teenagers that felt stuff (the government is sucky, i'm rebelling against my parents because they supported these conservative actions while I use the internet and facebook, the teachers are dumb, _school_ is a _prison_), they jump started a new movement.

So pretty soon other bands saw how amazing this was for business. You have green day and blink-182 that's doing "legitimate punk" (society is bad-ish) stuff as well as political stuff (american idiot for ONE, but look at even modest mouse and float on was literally made as a big fuck you to president bush). Nothing wrong with political music, you know? But then people started to see that this stuff was popular. Fall out boy, boys like girls, random one-offs started to emerage as this sort of music became from just a teenage rebellion "anthem" (excuse the pun!) to real mainstream music.

The punk genre is already designed to be incredibly catchy and sound super fun to listen to. So it's easy for new groups to come along piggybacking on the same chords and messages.

Where I think it all started to fall apart was three things: 1. the rise of rap, hip hop, and "pop music" (I place gaga's poker face as a truly revolutionary song in pop artists and music; she basically created kesha and the 'crazy artist with personality trend'). This shifted away from rock as the main music source

2. The emergence of internet news and media. When the iPhone came out in 2007 a VAST number of adults and real 'average people' suddenly had direct internet access across the nation. Facebook exploded, new apps are being released every day (twitter, Instagram), news started changing to the internet and all communication started becoming "garbage"; ie clicks and clicks and traffic and saturation rather than direct, slow, measured information. When a majority of the population got smartphones the world really "updated" and got "complacent" i think

and 3. the liberalization of politics of course; that sucked the discourse from the music industry.
So what do u think?

nice history lesson mate

yeah I agree with that I remember there was a collab album called Rock Against Bush so like how obvious can you get hahaha

Lady Gaga is said to have just mostly copied Madonna but I agree for this era she basically started a new type of artist and brought a lot of shock value which actually makes it quite amazing how she dropped off lol

I agree with the liberal artists too

idg what you're getting at with the internet though

news shifted from TV empires (Fox, CBS) to click websites (buzzfeed, huffpost, theblaze, politico, washpost/NYT). It changed journalism to getting the facts for a lot of eyes to see your story for a long time (60 minutes special tonight!) to getting whatever "facts" you might have at the time out ASAP to get a precious click; because people will only read 1 article about an event so u must be first

social media is the cause of this, in my opinion. Not that that's a bad thing. "Mass media" was bad before the internet really took over. It's just easier for "uneducated people" to integrate it and surround themselves with it thanks to block lists, instant sharing of articles, big data linking people what they want to hear

I really like this new era of music and culture! That's also why I'm so fascinated with that old era. Because looking back on it, my parents were HUGE anti-bush people so I grew up similar to those (Californian) suburb kids revolutioning against society. Except I was too awkward to actually get into punk.

But looking back on it, I think that era of politics was grossly exaggerated through the internet. Most websites were frantically liberal at the time due to "most educated people" (read: silicon valley Californian startup designers) are liberal. So it was a saturation of "truth" from 1 viewpoint. I believe the criticism of bush is heavily filtered from our youth's PoV: looking through MASSIVELY right-wing articles on how Obama is from kenya is laughable right now, but that's what it was really like back in the 2000s. Bush had the unfortunate place of being 1. the first president criticized through online media and 2. the president during an incredibly stressed and transitional time of society into the information age, combined with the massive security threats in a new age

yeah unfortunately there's tons of clickbait now and the "I read it on the internet so it's true" thing

I honestly feel that social media is making society worse in very tangible and measurable ways.

I just don't know what it had to do with music like you were talking about music being about politics and then moved on to the internet because it was also about politics

Oh; I believe the internet contributed to the end of music/politics interaction because it was replaced through social conversation among peers over social media. Parody videos took the place of protest songs. It's easier to rally around some story when everyone is sharing information instantaneously. 30 years ago we needed 99 luftbaloons to do that.

Anyway i think that 1. Obama starved the music makers of material 2. facebook stole the platform of politics from music and 3. new artists created new content to fill the vacuum of political punk music on the radio. So everybody moved on and stuff still exists

I don't believe that social media is actually harming us. And I don't think it ever will. As horrifying as it is, the people that just surround themselves in a vapid, selfish culture they build or just use it to blast their bind with useless content always existed. It's just much, much easier to see them now. We have the lowest crime rate of 20 years but nobody would believe that. And social media gives great business opportunities too! Maybe at most it makes it easier for stupid people to keep themselves stupid. But I don't think it's going to make "smart people" (or independent, free thinkers? trying to sound as humble as possible here but that's not happening lmaooo) be "dumb"

I agree, that's not what I mean by harming though. It may not change people fundamentally but it does enable them to do a lot of stuff that they weren't able to before. Yeah some of it is for good but a lot of it is bad. Like you have people with their opinions now having basically the world as their audience in just a facebook post. It's creating a dangerous environment of circlejerking your own opinion and getting validation. And yeah it can be good if your opinion is "good" so that's the real question, whether it's doing more harm than good. Especially because people on the internet actually do have a lot of power to make real-life change and by just typing away on their keyboard they might not realize how big of a power that actually is.