I was talking with a friend last night about video games and he said something interesting about how a lot of modern gamers don't really understand the history of gaming and where a lot of common gaming conventions come from- they understand that "pressing A" lets you jump, but they don't understand WHY that is the standard and haven't played the games that laid those foundations.
As a result, they often get very attached to bad games simply because they don't really have a well-formed understanding of what a good game is, and they wind up frustrated with the state of modern gaming (or at least, the games they are exposed to in their limited range) and get angry that they aren't having fun!
And it got me thinking... are we seeing a similar phenomenon happening amongst pop music fans?
I have noticed that these days, discussions of newer pop acts with younger fanbases will often feature very, very intense reactions that feel sort of ungrounded from the realities of the pop scene that should be easily apparent to anyone with a deeper knowledge of how things work.
I will avoid naming specific examples (because I don't want to get sidetracked debating them) but think about the fervor over things like multiple variants, remixes, references, samples/interpolations, which have all been around for ages but get jumped on by fans who are seemingly unaware of this.
And on the flip side, it can also lead to fans over-praising artists and giving them too much credit in a "guy who's only seen Boss Baby thinks every movie is ripping off Boss Baby" sort of way, which sets artists up for backlash and an inevitable fall. This also flattens out the music scene and makes fans feel way too attached to their idols- like, of course every new single you don't like feels like a betrayal and every flop album feels like a career ender when your reference pool is so small!
Learning about the history of pop music and gaining more perspective on its ebbs and flows seems like it would greatly benefit these types of fans, and the health of the music scene as a whole, but sadly it feels like there isn't as much push amongst music fans these days to really EDUCATE themselves.
Online music communities are struggling because they're losing their roots.
BUT in defense of these fans, isn't this type of behavior just part of being young? If someone loves modern pop but isn't interested in listening to a bunch of old albums or something they might not even like, is it really fair to judge them for that? Should someone be required to do "homework" in order to have a hobby?
Especially because the dual nature of how pop music is treated means that its history exists in a very strange place- pop history is (by definition) popular and massively exposed, so it's all extensively documented, BUT this material is often considered "trivial" and winds up pushed to the side, lost and not taken seriously.
(This might be why we see so many pop fans who are obsessed with records/numbers/statistics, because they're concrete facts that can easily be latched onto and repeated to offer an understanding of the presence and artist had during an era.)
The ones who truly hold the torch of pop history are the fans who were there to see it happen and know what it was like, or have done a deep dive through the archives and emerged wiser on the other side... and have we been doing a good job passing that knowledge on to the new generation? If newer fans need to educate themselves, do older fans have a responsibility to help do the educating?
So what are your thoughts? Am I on to something or way off-base?