My music is harder than yours, and you are inferior as a result.

You know what I don't understand? I don't quite understand why listening to "harder" stuff is somehow considered a badge of pride or a talking point when evaluating a musician or band. It's like these people think they'll get an achievement on XBox Live or a gold star on a progress sheet on their walls if they happen to listen to music with more bass and harsh vocal distortion than other people. When you step back and think about it, it's very difficult to even take such comments seriously. It makes you wonder if these people actually listen to themselves when they speak.

(Photo by kevin dooley / Foter / CC BY)

Usually, comments like those are a self-validation mechanism in which the poster has to make himself or herself have a confidence boost in regard his or her place within fandom. This flavor of antagonism is meant to make the person saying it feel better about his or her own music choices, which tend to be an extension of a greater self. The popularity of music that falls outside of these people's worldviews is considered to be a threat to these people's worth, so combativeness occurs.

A lot of the combativeness seems to be grounded in some level of misogyny and/or homophobia, too. A significant portion of the time, people get called sexual orientation insults or anti-woman insults in relation to listening to music that doesn't fit this almost entirely arbitrary and falsely linear level of musical composition. When I hear insults like being called a certain word for female genitalia due to listening to a certain musician, I hear this, "Your music lacks enough bass and scratchy vocals to meet my arbitrary standard. As a result, I will attribute feminine characteristics to you, and by definition, feminine characteristics are bad and should be met with hostility." Does anyone actually see logic in making a statement like that?

All in all, none of it makes sense to me. So, if you're one of those people who attributes a desire to listen to music with a certain level of harshness as some form of achievement, think to yourself, "Does this make sense? Is it logical?" Then, once you've figured that out, ask yourself why it matters to you so much in the first place. The answer may surprise you.