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According to people who spend their nights dreaming of million-pageview bounties, the social-news site Digg is very very important, thanks to its horde of users who can flood webservers with metric tons of traffic. But every time I look at its music page, a little part of me wants to die inside. For example: Can you guess what the top music story on the site is right now? Music For A Phone Keypad, which will let you know just what keys you need to press in order to dial “Mary Had A Little Lamb.” Yes, really. And let’s not even get into the inexplicable Michael Winslow love, the first clear sign to me that Digg is probably the worst place on the Internet to look for anything related to music. After the jump, five more examples of music-on-Digg “culture” to support my claim!
1. No matter what their age, the site’s users have the musical taste of 15-year-old boys. Really angry 15-year-old boys. If Trent Reznor farts in his hand and puts a recording of it on the Internet, you can bet it’ll be on the front page of Digg within an hour of its posting. And you can probably guess that these kids love Radiohead. And they hate dumb “corporate” pop music, like, a lot! Although if said corporate pop is by a hot chick, well, at least they can LOL about her boobs.
2. Dumb pop music by pretty girls who flatter them, however, is THE BEST THING EVAR.
Meet Kina Grannis, whose love song to Digg–which she wrote for the express purpose of winning an online songwriting contest governed by a popularity metric–got her enough YouTube love to get her some interest from an unnamed record label. Which is kinda ironic, because…
3. Digg’s users may love music enough to click yellow buttons in support of it, but paying for it at all is totally just being a tool for the man. Not that I’m a big fan of the RIAA by any stretch, but those four letters represent some combination of Satan, Godzilla, and a reverse Robin Hood who steals from the poor in order to line Doug Morris’ crypt-like office with gold-plated money. And kill puppies. And they also represent anyone who ever said “hey, maybe we should think about paying for music once in a while,” because dudes, music is like water! And the music that they want to hear will just, well, get made, because it’s what they want to hear, and since when have a bunch of entitled adolescents not gotten what they wanted?
4. Also, DRM is totally bad too. And yet: Good luck getting any of the people who cheered the opening of Amazon’s MP3 store to actually pony up 89 cents for one of its wares!
5. To get back to the “perpetual 15-year-old” thing: Its users have worse senses of humor than your normal morning-zoo staff. “Crank That (Kosha Boy).” This guitar. Really, the whole thing with Michael Freakin’ Winslow (in music! because he makes noises with his mouth! get it?) should have been the red flag on this point.
Music [digg]
Gotta Digg [YouTube]
I’m pretty sure I went to the same college as that girl… (checks facebook) Yeah. Fuck… Oh well, Digg is still the place to go for X-Box rumors, pictures of open sores, and Ron Paul news. Basically, SomethingAwful minus creativity and the giddiness over it’s own amorality.
Wow, I honestly think “x, then y (where y = X minus creativity and giddiness over its own amorality)” pretty much describes the evolution of every internet-related idea ever.
Everything in this post rings true, except that guitar really is a hoot.
I thought you were exaggerating about Digg’s love for all things Trent Reznor, but then I clicked the top music stories of the last 365 days. Holy shit, you ain’t kidding!
I feel like an old nerd chiding that young girl, but the fact that she’s name checking SENATOR Ron Paul, doesn’t speak well of the comprehensive knowledge to be gleaned from Digg on any particular topic.
digg makes slashdot look like mature and reasoned debate. ‘Nuff said.
story dugg
haha
if trent resznor farted in the woods would diggers digg it?
Is it sad that I know how to dial mary had a little lamb by heart already. (notice the lack of a question mark).
Why has such useless information been stuck in my head for the last 15 years?
yo that guitar is hilarious, and not entirely because it’s sort of ironic.
That title could be more concise. Just drop everything from “for” on.
Everyone Digg this story ok?
Oh snap! Check the comments page to see what the angry 15-year-old boys have stung y’all with!
Hate to be Idolator right now…
@GovernmentNames: yeah!! if i saw someone using that thing in person i’d die
oh, and we have a winner over at digg:
“Question: I am an independent artist and I am coming out with an album pretty soon. I am not interested in a record deal (artist suicide in my opinion), can anybody give ideas or ways to promote independent music? I don’t give a fuck about money, I just want people to hear the music.”
Reddit fer fuck’s sake! Sure you get the same group of nimrods, Ron Paul supporters, and a complete lack of music coverage, but the average reddit poster is probably 21 instead of 15. You know, where they’ve taken a couple economics classes and think name-dropping Ayn Rand is the answer to every dispute.
On the plus side, there are a handful of redditors who’ve taken a few sociology classes as well, so one out of every 50 comments might have a little more analysis to it but don’t bet the farm on it.
If you have a farm that you’re willing to wager on blog aggregators, that is.
I hate when individuals acquire like half an hour to text back. I know you have your phone around you aswell. Tool! Haha.