Age and Musical stereotypes


The caption above is an actual quote from my friend. This meme is called "Musically Oblivious Eighth Grader", a meme poking fun at teenagers for not having a lot of knowledge on music. Sure, I chuckled at a few of them but I personally think this is a bit offensive. Sure, what I'm going on about is almost as ridiculous as extreme feminism, but whatever, it hurts my feelings so I'll say it anyways.

One day, I was in a CD store looking around, and I happened to see Sigur Ros's Agaetis Byrjun, a personal favourite album. I got my 20$ (canadian, that is,) and went up to the cash register. Some hipster-type dude asked me "Have you heard this before?" I stood there in shock. Why would I be buying it if I hadn't heard it before? Everybody knows who Sigur Ros is! Well, to be polite, I said "Yes" and smiled, but in reality I wanted to punch his face in because of the blatant ageism. It happens to me all the time. My tech teacher asked me about what kind of music I like, and his exact words were: "Ellen, you seem to listen to a lot of music during class; what kind of music do you like? are you into whatever is on the radio?". I had to explain to him that I mainly listened to IDM and Avant-Rock, and his jaw dropped. OH DEAR, AN EIGHTH GRADER THAT LISTENS TO AVANT-ROCK, THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE.

The message is, that not all people my age are mindless mainstream sheep. Though my tastes are as mainstream as fuck, at least I'm not listening to the radio. The post-rockers I hang out with are about a year older than me, and guess what they listen to? Post Rock, Avant-Rock, Jazz, IDM, Indie Rock, Progressive Rock, Breakcore.... the list goes on. I even have a couple of uber-indie friends who went to my old school, who are the most eclectic people I've ever met. Shut up, and stop stereotyping 14 year olds as mainstream robots.