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Comment by withzombies | Hacker News Reader

When we were kids, just knowing music that wasn't on the radio made you "into music". Things were very different! The internet has really allowed music choices to be much more personal and I think it's a good thing. We have such a wide variety of music available to us now.

I've had some luck finding some TikTok creators who curate specific "vibes" and publish Spotify playlists. I think that's just how it's done now.

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I love the variety for sure, I just miss the curation and the shared culture. It's harder to find people in person who know the same music and TV that you do.

Every silver lining has its cloud. Shared cultural touchstones came hand in hand with tastemakers and gatekeepers. We’re more directly connected to the movers and shakers than ever before, but it’s largely parasocial interaction, mediated by platforms and gated by subscriptions. We’re increasingly disintermediated with respect to creators so that we can be separated and reconstituted into our profit-bearing parts.

We’re old wine poured into new wineskins.

Is it hard because of the media landscape or is it hard because you are older?

As someone who is still listening to today’s pop acts and whatnot, there are still tons of people you can talk to in person who probably listen to similar music, concerts are well-attended, etc. If anything the definition of popular has broadened to include new stuff like KPop, Latin pop, Afrobeats, etc. and I don’t have an issue finding people who like that music in person.

This has always been an issue though. I am 30 years old, and I could remember back to elementary school. I remember us bullying a girl for liking songs such a Linkin Park among other songs we (they) considered emo. For the record, I love Linkin Park now, but all the bullies never bothered to listen, and we did not know English either.

Talk to people, ask them about it, introduce them to new music and movies, listen to these songs together, or watch the movie together. That is what I do with my girlfriend. She does not have the same taste in music at all as I do. There is an overlap, since I like songs from classical to rock, but yeah.

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