u/Epoch_Jester

I am an incoming freshman at MIT and I noticed some of people in this sub, who I know are mostly mit alumnis, are rather discontent or skeptical about their days in mit. Certainly as an incoming freshman, who had mit as their dream school for a very long period of time, this is kinda scaring me and makes me feel as if I am in for a rude awakening. I firstly want to know what is up with certain people's skepticism on their alma mater, and I wonder whether experience at MIT was genuinely worthwhile so that you guys would still choose to come to here again even if, say, you were to be taken back to your high school. Maybe I wasn't getting the joke or something after all where you guys were ranting this place, but still at the core, you all love this place or something.

I love this Tim plush like soo much 🥹

I was very excited to get my card issued, waiting for the printer to print, and soon found this ugly card in front of me. I was expecting the beautiful blue hologram ID card… Did they change the design recently? What happened..?

I personally have believed that experimental artistry and popularity don't generally go hand-in-hand; personally, it is partially because I have seen some vast majority of pop musicians often being subject to criticisms that their music is bland an almost like a cookie-mold music, whereas some of the greatest artists with the most revolutionary styles are very much often underrepresented or not as spoken as much as they should be given their influence. However, thesedays, I did managed to find some counterexample for such a belief and already, musicians like the Beatles, David Bowie, Nine Inch Nails pretty much prove that the aforementioned claim may be flawed. However, I was still looking to see what are your thoughts regarding the relationship between popularity and artistry and whether you guys and some other musicians in mind who essentially are jack of all trades, seizing both experimentalism and popularity at the same time.

I want this to be a formal chance to for us to seriously gather around and talk through the concept of "RYM Core music," and the general stigma that is tethered to it and call an end to to this everlasting ongoing beef.

So basically, the other day i was filling my top 25 albums topster, and one friend of mine took a glimpse of it and went on to brutally slander it, calling it an heavy RYM core. I must acknowledge some of those albums I put in, were exclusively praised by music rating website like say Fishmans’ 98.12.28 Otokotachi no Wakare Live album or The Glow pt. 2, Marquee Moon, and LYSFLATH. Indeed, it was through music rating websites like RYM and AOTY that got me introduced to some of these albums and even some genres as well; say, I literally wouldn’t know what the heck genres like post rock and post punk revival sounded like if it was not for the genre defining albums that I primarily got to know of thanks to RYM and Pitchfork.  

I agree though, that there are certain people who blindly praise only the albums that are like 4.3+ on RYM ratings and perceive those music rating websites as some sort of the HOLY GRAIL of music taste or whatsoever, which is indeed not an ideal way to explore those websites. Obviously, if you were to look me in my eyes with a straight face and say that you love ALL of the top 100 RYM albums and they are only ones that I see from your topster, then I obviously would assume that you are heavily indoctrinated by RYM critics and almost acclimated your taste as a whole to the preference of those websites just for the sake of conforming to the hive mind and following whatever the majority says and does. 

However, my biggest frustration is not those blindly worshipping RYM, but rather, those people who falsely or over-accuse and slander other people’s music as being “RYM CORE” just because they spot a few albums (sometimes even just only one or two) on their topster which happens to be critically acclaimed in those websites. Like, I understand your beef with those websites and your psychology of thinking all of them being “elitist posers,” but you must acknowledge that those albums for the most part are acclaimed for a reason. Of course, it wouldn’t make sense to say that they all fit your taste because they are all acclaimed, but also the other way around, you can’t just belittle people’s taste in those albums as bad or mediocre just because a lot of people praise them. 

And even if there are multiple “RYM core” albums on someone’s topster, I wouldn’t immediately judge that they don’t have their own taste as long as there is a pattern or a correlation. Like say, if you have Marvin Gaye’s What’s going on and Have a Nice Life’s Deathconsciousness, then it obviously might give me more grounds to assume that your taste is actually “RYM Core,” in a sense that definitely there was a heavy influence of the general impressions and personal definition of "good music," primarily shaped by the consensus or the popular vote of those critics in those websites. However, if its similar genres or pattern I am seeing, like say GY!BE’s LYSFLATH and Sigur Ros’ Ágætis byrjun, it is still a valid and respectable taste, isn’t it?

Progressively, I start to notice that music is probably the most distinct form of art in which critics approval is the most taboo’d or stigmatized metric by a particular group of people. Like, for example, I wouldn’t get as much condemnation for putting The Shawshank Redemption or The Great Gatsby as my favorite film or book just because they are praised by IMDb or goodreads respectively, as I would for having Fishmans’ Long Season on my topster. I think we still should give credits to good pieces of art for the way they are GOOD regardless of the voices of particular websites or figures that many people tend to conform to. Anyways, lemme hear your thoughts. Thanks for reading a long post.