Skull-fuck - v. To copulate with the head of a person, generally disembodied, via the eye.
Oh, and post-irony is totally a valid concept. This is where people transition from liking crappy things because it is funny, to just genuinely liking crappy things. It's like this...
"Oh man, that knitted wall-square saying "Bless This Mess" is so totally retarded, I must put it in my kitchen. How funny."
to...
"My home is consumed by kitsch. I enjoy it on a visceral level now."
Back to the original topic, though. Yeah, it's cool to hate the White Stripes. I think it's because their whole scrappy, low-key blues rock infused with awkward sexuality worked better on a smaller scale. It felt more genuine. Meg's clunky drumming grounded their music... it made them feel more homespun and huggable. Now that they are sort of a big thing (and thus bigger targets for skepticism) the context has changed. They aren't a scrappy little duo fighting to pay their rent with music. They are a big-name act with a clunky drummer.
I think after the Big Lebowski came out it became cool to hate the Eagles. Sure people who hated the Eagles before might have had a valid point, but it wasn't "cool" to hate them.
Somewhere along the line it became cool to hate The Smiths. And The Cure. Note the difference: before you could very respectably hate these bands, but somewhere along the road it became something of a fashionable statement to hate them. People may not hate them because of said statement, but the statement still exists.
It's cool to hate Weezer. Then again, they took a big nosedive. I think it's cool to hate Radiohead. (Depends on the crowd.) It's totally, totally cool among many circles to hate Coldplay. (Sorry, but... it is.)
It's a weird little thing that happens. You have some small local band... they're pretty good, not perfect... but everyone digs them. If you talk smack about this band, you're being a dick. You should be more supportive. That's like walking into a grammar school piano recital and being all, "You suck, little girl!" You gloss over the blemishes of the music and pipe up the good stuff. You assume that they are good people.
But then they become popular and big and they don't need the support anymore. People pay attention to those flaws. They flaunt that they can identify those flaws. It becomes some weird cool-badge to hate the band for those flaws. You assume that the band is full of rich assholes.
Had Radiohead released "Kid A" as a debut album on a small label I might have thought of it differently. It would have been a totally different context. (I found it, in reality, to be dull and sugar-coated. But then again, I have never been much of a fan.) If Good Charlotte was a small indie pop-punk band playing all-ages venues in the mid-west people would probably be less inclined to be so vocal about their disdain. Sure, they might still suck, but non-fans would probably be more likely to give them an A for effort. If Dave Matthews was a retarded little boy, you might possibly go buy a ticket to a show just to give your support. If Trent Reznor was an acapella singing teenage girl at a high school variety show, I would totally buy her poorly recorded album mastered down from a dictophone tape.
But now, in reality? Fuck those people.
