I like everything, nothing, and all of the above
I was talking to someone today, and one of my pet peeves arose during the conversation. I asked my standard "do you have any hobbies?" question, along with the musical taste question which I tend to ask to people who I meet for the first time. I have found that this gives me an excellent gauge of someone's personality, and how I will end up connecting with them.
What's so interesting about the common response is that people are trying their best to connect with the other person. The most typical response to the music question is something along the lines of "oh, I listen to all kinds of music. I really don't mind. Just... anything!" I don't understand what this means. This isn't a position, it's a non-position. The person is basically saying that they have no real interest in music, or knowledge of different types of music, so they just listen to "what is playing". It annoys me when someone doesn't have a position on a topic. Often times, you're still trying to form an opinion, but you still have an indication or something to go on. Something like music necessitates an opinion to begin with. If you say that you listen to everything, you should instead be blunt about it and say that music really isn't you thing. It's not of any particular interest, and you don't have an opinion.
Asking this question today, I got a bit of an interesting curveball. To begin with, people tend to be surprised when I ask this question, yet to me it seems so harmless and natural to ask such a thing. It tends to require a great amount of effort in order to answer. It's not even that complicated. You can just list a few artists that you like, or whatever. Saying that you listen to everything is a lie. So today this girl tells me that she enjoys Dashboard Confessional. Seeing that I was not in the least bit interested, and yet still wanting to make a connection with me, this girl quickly recants and clarifies that, however, she "listens to everything". What a typical position. If you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, why not just take the easy, neutral position which will cover all the bases. If you say "everything", I am to interpret that you also enjoy listening to musical interpretations of Mein Kampf -- opera style. But, the reality is, "everything" tends to mean "whatever is popular, whatever I'm told to like by the charts". In claiming that you like everything, you actually like nothing at all.
2 Comments:
Also, notice how most people will tell you: I listen to everything...except country! That's probably the most automatic and most expected statement I get when I ask that question to people. I guess in the end alot of these people simply have the fear of revealing their overly superficial taste in dull commercial music. I would also be interested in seeing if alot of the people who commonly answer that question in that particular manner are also apolitical. That reminds of this one time Pat was talking a fellow coworker of his who was in polisci, Pat simply asked her, so where do you stand on the political spectrum, liberal? conservative? social democrat? ect. She replied, well, im a bit of both you know. A bit of both, what the FUCK is that supposed to mean!!! I guess it it all comes down as a direct representation of how our careless consumerist, ultra-materialistic society does not like having opinions of any sort.
It's because, if you take a position, it is in opposition to everything else. If you're trying to be nice, or show this persona of a nice person, and come out saying you're a fascist or whatever and I'm a communist, things won't stay nice long.
If you like rap and I like pop, there may be a similar conflict as well. It's kind of like saying "I'm open to exploring new things in the context of our friendship. I'm willing to bend." Fuck you! I'm not! :)
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