Social Engineering and "Music for the Preparation of Exercising Assertiveness"

[OlongJohnson]

I've been picking my way through the "Music for the Preparation of Exercising Assertiveness" thread.

Typed this up as a reply to that thread, but decided it has stayed so beautifully on topic that I don't want to jack it into a discussion of social engineering

Playing many of the links in that thread triggered a new angle on something that's been bugging me for the last dozen years or so. I no longer impose any a priori limits on the levels of social engineering I'm willling to consider as plausible.

Looking back at popular music since WWII:
The '50s were awesome: high energy, against the dominant paradigm (middle class white kids dancing to music played by black people - oh my!), rebellious, fun.
The '60s were amazing: The Beattles, the entire rest of the British Invasion, the hippies, the "cultural revolution," the anti-war protests, don't trust anyone over 30, the birth of heavy metal.
The '70s rocked: Disco died the death it deserved to, but you cannot kill the metal.
The '80s rocked: A little less blue, a little more thrash, then talent met production and you had GNR.
In the '90s, it exploded: Seattle blew up, the new sound was darker, more intense, more emotional, more musical, angry. And it wasn't just grunge. AC/DC and Aerosmith had comebacks. Metallica hit mainstream. On the rap side, Snoop Dog did the same thing to a complacent and stale scene that Nevermind did to rock. Blew it open and, whatever you think of the culture, led to an impressive stream of creativity. When I was in high school, music made rooms full of kids explode. It was beautiful.

In the '00s, there was Emo. And we've been stuck with that crap as the mainstream pop music ever since. It has defied the cycle of trends, fashions coming and going, any normal evolution or change. We're locked into everything new sounding exactly like the last new thing, over and over. It is all devoid of everything this thread is about. It's all plastic and candy. No adrenaline. No testosterone. No fortitude. Lady Gaga has more kick-ass in her music than anyone else who gets current-release radio play. Even the Black Keys: If you listen to the early albums, it will blow your mind and melt your face like you were standing over the ark when it was opened (at least it works that way for me). But their first album that goes mainstream has about 90 percent of that cut out, and everything that has come after has been softer still. They couldn't become the hottest band in the world for however many months that was until they chopped off their balls and handed them over to the gate keepers.

So here's the question for discussion:
How plausible is it that "they" have engineered the assertiveness out of music, as a way of engineering the assertiveness out of youth? After fifty years of music being the inspiration for, and soundtrack to, the younger generations telling the older generations to go kitten themselves, did the establishment figure out that if they controlled the music, they could control the mood? And by eliminating the music that makes kids feel kitten-assness, kitten-youness, and general assertiveness, they eliminated the experiences of those feelings from the vast majority of kids' growing up?

I'm worried that it's contributing to that effect, intentional or not. I remember as I branched out and discovered new stuff as a teenager, I didn't have to be told what was cool. I heard it and knew it was awesome. I still want to rock out to the same music that made me headbang 25 years ago. And when I heard the amazing music that was 20, 30 and 40 years old then, I knew it was amazing. Music that has blown minds and melted faces for generations. But when you play stuff that has stood the test of time for kids today, they just look at you funny. It doesn't resonate, they don't feel it. They want to hear Katy Perry again.

I've come to the general approach that when you see something in the world that doesn't make sense, doesn't seem natural, it's liable to be that way because someone is making it that way on purpose. It's obvious that the entertainment industry is generally on board with anti-gun social engineering, which is an agenda of the establishment. Could they be on board with anti-rebellious-youth social engineering as a way supporting the establishment, too? Are they consciously building generations of subjects who don't know how to get angry?

Just wondering what y'all's thoughts are.

[orionz06]

No, you're just listening to the wrong shit. People are still pissed off and writing music about it. What sells has changed though, things that sell have become more formulaic, but the kids who hate the world are still out there.


As for the emo stuff... Lots of really kick ass music out there that gets lumped into that genre. It was actually around that time where things became so strange with genres as there was emo, screamo, hardcore, emocore, etc...

[OlongJohnson]

No, you're just listening to the wrong shit. People are still pissed off and writing music about it. What sells has changed though, things that sell have become more formulaic, but the kids who hate the world are still out there.

I admit that I don't invest a huge amount of time in looking for new and different music. But that's also kind of my point. In the past, you couldn't avoid at least some of the kick-ass stuff, because it was mainstream. Now, you have to go looking for it. Kids in general suck at going and looking for stuff that's different than everyone else around them is doing. As a social engineer, you don't have to prevent the undesirable stuff from happening, you just have to make sure the gate keepers don't let it see top 40 radio play.

[orionz06]

I'd argue that it's more likely a money thing than social engineering thing. If there were money in the fuck-the-world music you'd have no choice but to hear it. Teenyboppers like Katy Perry and Taylor Swift instead.

[Lex Luthier]

Frank Zappa had a lot of fun lampooning this around 1981.
(Plus he gets a dig in at David Bowie because Bowie hired Adrian Belew out of Zappa's band in 1976. "Fuck you, Major Tom", he said.)



And yeah, it's still there, but you have to look for it. The good stuff was usually co-opted by the establishment while I was still in short pants, and I'm a grandpa now.

[Jay Cunningham]

Baroque never goes out of style.

[Joe in PNG]

There's a whole lot of survivorship bias when looking back at things like music.
There was a whole dang lot of schmaltz in the record bins and broadcast on the radio at the time. In the late sixties, you were probably more likely to hear Montovani or the Archies on the AM band over Cream or Jefferson Airplane. Much of what we consider to be classic rock standards were obscure when they first came out.
Mass market pop music has always been pretty bland.

[Chuck Haggard]

Not wussyfied;