Hating the OBVIOUS It all started with a little Tumblr post from DIIV’s Zachary Cole Smith: Hi Austin. Fuck SXSW. There…. I said it.” The New York frontman went on a rampage about how industry-oriented SXSW was. “Here, the music comes last. 5 minute set-up, no sound check, 15 minute set. The ‘music’ element is all a front, it’s the first thing to be compromised. Corporate money everywhere but in the hands of the artists, at what is really just a glorified corporate networking party. Drunk corporate goons and other industry vampires and cocaine. Everyone is drunk, being cool. ‘Official’ bureaucracy and all their mindless rules. Branding, branding, branding. It’s bullshit… sorry.” The rant popped off. Pitchfork reposted it. People started talking. People started tweeting. This is just what happens these days: We chew up and spit out information in a matter of seconds. Once it’s out of our systems, we barely remember what it tasted like. We live in an A.D.D. world. Bring on the Adderall (another fashionable thing to do simply because it is there and life is so, so hard sometimes).
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