Pop (Counter) Culture
Update: After some feedback, I realized I might’ve not made clear where my analogy is. It is not between design and music, but how popularity affects the value of each. Besides, there’s plenty of bad popular music and not so much popular bad design. But that sparks the centennial discussion: is design art or science? ;)
We all have the “hip” friend, right? The guy/gal who listens to bands nobody else has heard yet. That could also be true for any other form of art. Or politics. Or anything. But I’ll focus on music because I believe that’s where it hits the hardest.
The interesting thing is the passion they show when promoting that unknown band. They attend all their shows, they’ll spam their Twitter/Facebook account with pictures and other praises, they’ll buy their hand-pressed merchandise, etc… Or they might not go to shows or buy merchandise but will offer to send you MP3s of it because “it’s awesome”.
Then, if the band is really that good, it will obviously pick up in popularity. That’s great, right? Not for the “hip” folks. They feel ownership of that band drifting away and now everyone else hears what they thought was awesome. That doesn’t set them apart anymore. They are no longer “special”.
Social Ownership
A more interesting happens later. In the hipster brain, the band had to clearly give up making their own “heartfelt music and had to go with what the big corporate label told them to write”. Sound familiar?
I’m guilty of the same problem. I’ve done it countless times internally. I’m pretty eclectic so I do listen to pretty everything from pop to post-rock, from classical to (some, not much) rap. I have music I love in all quadrants. I have music I dislike in all four as well. Here’s an example: I love Coldplay. I’ve loved them since before they were mainstream. I watched them live in the Madison Square Garden back in 2003 and it was quite possibly one of the best concerts by all measures. They are talented musicians who write good music. My favorite album is still Parachutes but I like some songs from more recent albums. Some songs I love, some songs I don’t. That is also true about pretty much every other artist I listen to more than once. But after the band got popular, I started hearing a lot of people I knew liked them initially starting to say they “lost it”. And the “hipsters” that only heard about them after they were already popular judging them based on “pop fever”. What a sad way to (over)generalize.
Social Evil
I believe this goes back to one of the darkest aspects of our society: we don’t like other people’s success, particularly when it comes from talent not “hard work”. We want to believe that if you work more ours you’ll make more money, get promoted and become rich. We hate the fact that some people are just more talented than we are and will require less effort in order to be successful. It’s a really sad thing and also very true in the webesphere. A designer is good until he goes work for some big company we don’t particularly like. 37signals was great until they started having big clients, got a new amazing office or DHH bought a custom-made, one-of-a-kind Zonda. They got rich and popular
The Point
Seriously people: get popular, get rich, get whatever you like, or just don’t. As long as you’re doing what you love, listening to what makes you happy and are surround by those you love, you’ll do just fine. And stop hating other people’s success. That hate will infect all other areas of your life and no matter how much you work or how much money you make, you’ll never be happy.
