The Null Device

Hating Radiohead

The new big thing among New York's hipsters is hating Radiohead: (via VM)
"You have to have a very concrete opinion about why you like or dislike Radiohead, and maybe a lot of people are afraid to say they dislike them because they're afraid that their only answer is going to be 'it seems too smart for me.' "
"Hating Radiohead is the hipster's dirty little secret," says Franzman, the entertainment guide editor.
"There's definitely now a symbolic value to saying you hate Radiohead - even Kid Rock makes a big deal about hating Radiohead. He even has a video where he's literally using toilet paper with the word 'Radiohead' embossed on it."

Hang on; if Kid Rock is leading the I-hate-Radiohead bandwagon, could it be that the hip thing is ironically hating Radiohead, in much the same sense as wearing a mesh trucker cap?

There are 4 comments on "Hating Radiohead":

Posted by: kenny Tue Oct 14 16:45:55 2003

i hear they're hating quentin tarantino now too :D beware the hipster backlash/inquisition!

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org Wed Oct 15 02:14:53 2003

After Jackie Brown, that's hardly unexpected.

Posted by: John Keogh http://www.enkil.demon.co.uk/blog.html Wed Oct 15 09:05:17 2003

If it is ironic in the modern sense, does that mean they continue to waste time listening to music they don't like?

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org Wed Oct 15 13:36:48 2003

Nonono, that would be ironically /appreciating/ Radiohead. Ironic appreciation is only done with things like bad 80s pop and teen-slasher movies.

Ironically hating Radiohead would be wearing a stance of hating Radiohead based on tenets (anti-intellectualism or atavism) which you don't sincerely agree with.

OTOH, it may have to wait a few decades until the hipsters of that day start ironically dressing like Fred Durst (witness all the 70s/80s metal iconography appropriated by today's hipsterati).