[Despanan]

*Cracks Manly Knuckles, These are the beefiest knuckles ever, they have BEARDS and the sound they make kinda makes you want to throw up*

Sorry, came late to the party, was busy getting things ready for the Fringe.
So, Kontan coverd allot of bases allready, just want to point some things out first, before we get to the MEAT of this argument.

I enjoy foreplay, and I'm sure you do too, so prepare to have your intellectual nuts ticked for a while before I straight up make you my woman and force you to enjoy it.

Originally Posted by Doobie

When you run out of points, the next logical step is to resort to ad hominem. I see you've studied Bill O' Reilly's debate tactics well.

Hate to break it to you but insult /= ad hominem. Ad Hominem is a fallacy of irrelevance. If I say "You're wrong because of X and therefore you are a dumb shitfucker" I have not engaged in an ad hominem argument. If I say "You're wrong BECAUSE you're a dumb shitfucker" and leave it at that, THEN it's an ad hominem, because even if you ARE a dumb Shitfucker, that has nothing to do with the argument at hand.

Ad Hominem's don't even have to be insulting, for instance this is an Ad hominem:

Originally Posted by Doobie

I contend that you shouldn't be bothered by the idea of your music being a product first if you enjoy it. The idea that "real" artists are somehow better than "fake" artists (pretty much any musician the guy doesn't like) is a lie perpetrated by people who want to return to some "glory days" that never happened.

Unless your problem is that by buying her music your feeding into the massive dinosaur that is the record business, I hate to break it to you, but unless you're listening to nothing but buskers playing on the streets, you're feeding into that machine one way or another. One of the problems of living in a capitalist society and whatnot.

This entire argument hinges on slandering the character of those who disagree with you. Instead of addressing the very valid argument of:

1) There are objective ways to view, judge and appreciate a particular piece of art.

2) One of the major factors that is considered when judging a piece is the intention/motivation behind it's creation. (Honest expression of the human condition created for it's own sake vs. A a product designed to make money)

3) Because of X, Y, and Z I find that said artist is more interested in making money than expressing themselves honestly. Honest art is more appealing to my aesthetic senses therefor said artists work is unappealing to me.

You say: The only reason you're saying that is you want to return to some fictional "glory days" and if you consume any kind of commercial art you're a hyppocrite and therefore you are wrong.


See how this has nothing to do with the initial argument? That's why it's ad hominem. It doesn't matter if I'm a hypocrite because that's completely unrelated to the argument. If a doctor who smokes tells you smoking is bad for your health is his argument invalid? (you also have a bit of a straw man thrown in there for good measure btw)

You dumb shitfucker <---Not ad hominem.

Let's continue:

Originally Posted by Mr.Doobie

What I'm getting at is that it's ok to like whatever music you do like, and there is no right or wrong answer. Implying that someone is somehow less virtuous or whatever because they can arbitrarily declare the music "manufactured" is stupid.

This attitude is very common among we liberals, it is also one of the MAJOR things wrong with our ideology. You have taken the post modern-approach: ie: All art is subjective, and therefore there is no right or wrong answer, and therefore art cannot be criticized.

It is an attractive ideology, but in the end it is broken. There are objective facts and objective ways of judging a piece's artistic merit. Your argument hinges on attacking the ability to make critical distinctions between works of art to such an extent that it completely removes the ability to judge anything at all. However, this is obviously absurd. The Mona Lisa has far more artistic value than a 5-year old's macaroni painting. Shakespeare has far more artistic value than a Naruto fanfic. These are both objective statement, therefore your argument is invalid.

Originally Posted by Doobie

You don't have to listen to pop music, that's completely fine, but admit that what it really comes down to is that you don't like the music.

This is also an ad hominem. Even IF the listener in question is completely unobjective about his reasoning, it would not invalidate the argument.

Do better next time.

Originally Posted by Doobie

Even so-called "bottom up" artists worked out like that. One band that springs to mind is the Beatles.

The Beatles were not bottom-up. They weren't as prefab as the monkeys, certainly, but their early work was commercial tripe. ("Love me do" is a terrible song) It wasn't until later in their career that they began producing songs with any amount of artistic merit.

Originally Posted by Doobie

THIS JUST IN! GETTING BIG REQUIRES ONE TO KNOW THE RIGHT PEOPLE!

That's how the machine functions, and the business has been pulling tricks like that with artists since music became a business. Even so-called "bottom up" artists worked out like that.

Man, you really love these fallacies of irrelevance, don't you? The commercial success of one's work has little to do with the artistic merit of that work. It also has nothing to do with our argument (That lady Gaga's music has low artistic value due to the intention behind it's creation). Tell me, if you're selling hamburgers, the way you get big is to become a fast-food chain, correct? Consolidation and standardization is a basic rule of how to succeed at capitalism. Therefore, since that's how you get big, is every chef serving a hamburger required to become McDonalds? Is there no difference between a McDonald's hamburger and one painstakingly prepared by a chef in a fine-dining restaurant, other than one's personal preferences?

Of course not.

Originally Posted by Dumbass

Almost every early Led Zeppelin song (and a good deal of their later ones) ripped off an old blues artist. In fact, almost all of rock, underground and mainstream, relies on tried and true tropes because so much of it is lifted from a lot of stuff that has come before.

While tropes saturate the artistic process (Because it's impossible to produce art without invoking tropes) this does not destroy the ability to judge which tropes are used well, and which tropes are used poorly and/or cheaply. There's a difference between Stephen King cheaply evoking Magical Negros and Lucas's use of Archetypes in "Star Wars: A new Hope". While all art is derivative to a certain extent, there's a difference between Neil Gaiman's brilliant use of The Jungle Book's structure in The Graveyard Book, and Christopher Paolini's straight hijacking of the plot of Star Wars.

Overall Doobie, you are attempting to undermine our arguments by attacking our character, and everyone's ability to make judgments about art. You are appealing to cynicism and intellectually bankrupt post-modern thought, while spitting out thought terminating cliche's to quell your own cognative dissonance.

Stop it.

*sprays Doobie with a squirt bottle*