# Poptimism and Type-of-Guy Anxiety  ## Metadata - Author: [[Freddie deBoer]] - Full Title: Poptimism and Type-of-Guy Anxiety - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: Media and critics shrink people into crude stereotypes called "Types of Guy." Poptimism now rules music criticism and is often pushed by insecure white men who want to avoid being labeled old or racist. That taste policing has caused harassment and a strong backlash that few will admit. ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > approximately 98% of people who work in media are two standard deviations above the mean in personal insecurity and it makes them feel good to reduce the rest of the world to clumsy generalizations while they maintain their self-conception as unique and beautiful individuals. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k3rrssw2kq3t3yp8384vz9s8)) > > The other factor is that, history aside, the particular demographic group that I belong to — college-educated white guys — is both the demographic group that was most into indie rock, and has also historically punched way above its weight in terms of representation in jobs like magazine editor or movie director or television showrunner. As a result, our idiosyncratic niche culture had a tendency to worm its way into aspects of mass culture. > This is the most sacred contention in the poptimist bible, that rockism is the domain of stodgy old white men, and that is why it ultimately ruled, because poptimism’s ascent tracked the rise of a crude identity liberalism that left savvy people scrambling to decry whiteness and maleness (in ways that had no ability whatsoever to actually erode structural white and male advantage). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k3v5fek8mj3pdzzq9fzzrm4n)) > But why? Why is it that poptimism is a discourse driven by white men who insist that it’s a movement of women and people of color? And why is it a hegemonic force in its cultural space that insists that it’s a plucky underdog? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k3v79sa33rh8xfwq3kx8sj9x)) > Patrin refers to the death of tastemakers, but what we’ve really seen is something far worse, which is the death of taste; under the relentless peer pressure that the internet enables, the idea that every individual should be in possession of a deeply personal and highly idiosyncratic taste that they are willing to go to war to defend has become deeply unpopular. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k3zq0gvsnyjh8k1grc06yabw))