“we thought the whole music world was loosening up, that online discourse would foster a new eclecticism of taste and an almost unlimited range of discourse.

Like pretty much everyone else’s hopes about the internet, ours have come back to bite us in the ass. What we’ve gotten instead is indeed a click-based media economy, in which publications do try to produce as many headlines about a handful of big names” https://slate.com/culture/2025/09/taylor-swift-pitchfork-new-yorker-music-reviews-poptimism.html

Grumps Blame It for Everything From the Rise of Taylor to the Fall of Pitchfork. They Don’t Even Understand It.

Criticism’s most abused straw man.

Slate

“the music industry would find new ways to hegemonize, now arm in arm with the world’s biggest tech companies. And the laser focus from all directions on a handful of the biggest stars now feels of a piece with all the other ways billionaires and their lackeys hog all of society’s resources …

That’s also the logic that governs the labors of armies of stans, the Beyhive and Swifties and others who will swarm, insult, even dox you online if you voice a discouraging word about their beloveds. “