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Comment by 4gotunameagain | Hacker News Reader

While the research of this guy is certainly impressing, the shtick never failed to repulse me.

It just seems so forced and over the top, and for me personally incredibly annoying.

I get it that it is a love it or hate it kind of thing, so I would be curious to hear about the opinions on people from the other side ?

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I dunno your age or background, but FWIW I feel like his shtick made a lot more sense in the context of early 90s Canadian media.

The zeitgeist was unpretentious, goofy, "slack", earnest-but-also-ironically-detached. So Gen X, but also MuchMusic in 1993 was a lot more like MTV in 1983, except as run by terminally uncool Midwesterners - it almost had the low-budget energy of public access. Weird Al (who has a similar shtick, now that I think about it) would take over the channel over the holidays, and they had an annual New Years tradition where they'd chuck a Christmas tree off the roof of their studio. One of their hosts was a foul-mouthed sock puppet. Growing up in Toronto, for a time it felt an awful lot like the biggest song in the world was "If I Had $1000000" by the Barenaked Ladies.

Nardwuar fit right in, in that media environment - not to say he wasn't sui generis, even then! But I can understand that, divorced of that context, he might just seem like a weirdo.

It did seem like the 90s were a bit more jovial of a time, and people who grew up during it identify nostalgically with the dolls and merch and sillyness of it all. I guess I never thought otherwise, Nardwuar's always been intuitively compelling to me, because I do think people tend to not let themselves feel vulnerable comedically, particularly in Vancouver, but I have heard of some locals not liking his thing.

Oh man, how’d I forget about the Christmas tree and Ed. You just hit me with the 90s so hard.

I used to watch LOUD religiously and I imagine I thought that made me pretty hardcore. I knew about slipknot before they were cool (I probably thought)!

The best thing about Loud is how the promos featured bits of Cryptopsy and Morbid Angel videos that almost never actually showed up on the channel.

I came to Canada in the late 90s, entered my tween/teen years around 9/11 and I saw the general tone of [D|V]Js really shift into weird territory as I got older. I also recall watching the Zone when I was 10 and then seeing it on TV about 5 years later when a friend's younger brother put it on while I was over. Was really shocked to see what I felt as really pandering and patronizing behaviour by the hosts where Phil Guerrero and Paul (can't remember his surname) were really down to earth and laid back. There was some measure, at least to my young, potentially overly naive eyes, of sincerity from TV hosts that I never really saw again.

I loved MuchMusic, which is really weird considering I grew up in Texas. For some reason our local cable company didn't have MTV, and so that meant that so much of my adolescence was influenced by TV from Canada.

Don't forget Speakers Corner.

If you’re ever interested in going down an interesting rabbit hole, you can read a lot of Nardwuar’s interviews transcribed on his website.

Here is one with Drake in 2013:

https://nardwuar.com/nardwuar-vs-drake/

If you read the transcripts, you can cut through the schtick. All that’s left is a very good interviewer with excellent research skills.

If you’re interested in an even deeper rabbit hole, compare some of his interviews to more mainstream interviews with the same artists. Nardwuar has a certain gift for breaking artists out of their perfectly crafted PR messages. I think his interviews tend to be a little more authentic (for good and for bad).

He used to repulse me, but I've gotten used to him and find him endearing now. No, it doesn't make any sense.

He is a genuinely kind person who does some seriously deep research and asks interesting questions.

> While the research of this guy is certainly impressing, the shtick never failed to repulse me.

"Schtick" implies performance, but I don't think it is an act or performance, I think he's genuinely that high energy and enthusiastic. (Which can certainly be annoying as a personality trait.)

I have the same reaction as you - his persona makes me physically uncomfortable and I feel bad for the artists unless they have the common wholesome reaction to well-done research.

But how much of it is a "shtick"? I take it the guy is just weird. If that's the case, it's not forced or over the top.

Well, he's been at it since the 1990s, and I distinctly remember people being way less stuffy and easy to annoy back then

His YouTube channel is a fun place to deep dive if you are into music at all. Is schtick can be a little bit grating, but some of the reactions from artists to the amount of research and understanding he has about their origins can be really fun to watch.

Also, he has his very first interview up from when he was a kid which is kind of cool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=002S7Bho3jE

His interview style is kind of like Sean Evans from Hot Ones crossed with the manic energy of Richard Simmons. It's mentioned in this article, but he tries to ask the questions that nobody else is asking, which can make for great interviews.

But, yeah, his schtick can be incredibly annoying. Part of the fun is watching the interview subject react to it.

The Richard Simmons comparison is PERFECT

If you think about it, he pioneered the style of completely annoying, insufferable yet somehow entertaining content that you see all over TikTok…

But he had to commit to a full interview and release it on classic media, then later on, internet, then finally platforms.

>If you think about it, he pioneered the style of completely annoying, insufferable yet somehow entertaining content that you see all over TikTok…

That's a good thing?

I'm on your side.

He has met lots of interesting artists, but most of his interviews are devoid of value, don't communicate anything, uncomfortable to watch, he often comes off disrespectful and patronizing. The bombardment with factoids is super random too, he picks stuff from old magazines and many answers to that are "what are you talking about, no idea where you got that from". Or "omg, no way, who told you that", but it's always some irrelevant trivia.

I understand that some people find his persona entertaining, he is an iconic interviewer in some sense, but not a good one.

I disagree, a lot of the interviews are quite humanizing and entertaining to watch (entertainment has value) and plenty of them being up early musical influences and encounters which might not be covered as much elsewhere (sometimes even forgotten by the artist themselves)

I think researching a guest for an interview is more about understanding what they are doing and trying to convey, less about digging into obscure facts. Obscure facts may be interesting, but not when it's 100% of the interview.

His newer videos have shifted towards this "adorable weirdo" persona, but he used to be really tactless and I am sure he knew what he was doing.

I never saw him as patronizing and disrespectful. That is unless you put artist and celebrity on a pedestal where you think the common rabble shouldn't be asking certain questions.

If he were to come up to me and asked me all of these really interesting questions that he really shouldn't know to ask I would be flattered I would be like how the hell does this guy know all this about me... But I've always wanted to be asked...

His newer videos are probably okay, but his 90s interviews have questions like "do you still want to commit suicide?" [1], "from my research I got rumors that you slept with such and such person..." [ibid.], "there is a rumor that your cock is shaped like a soup can" [2] etc. How is this respectful, appropriate, relevant? He's also plain rude with the artists he dislikes for some reason. See Beck [3] or the Strokes. He often interrupts people and doesn't let them answer his questions.

If the goal is to break the interviewee, there are more clever and subtle ways to do that.

[1] https://www.serviette.ca/nardwuar-com/vs/lydia_lunch/index.h...

[2] https://www.serviette.ca/nardwuar-com/vs/henry_rollins/pg3.h...

[3] https://www.serviette.ca/nardwuar-com/vs/beck_hansen/index.h...

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