[topherclay]

I found this article really odd. I thought for the majority of it that the author was conflating "goodness" of music with "survival". Saying all these songs disappeared into obscurity and that's okay because they were bad and we know they were bad because they disappeared into obscurity.

They even invoke "Survival of the Fittest" which often trips up high school kids who think fitness is strength or some other specific quality (like goodness) and you have to correct them that the definition of fitness is "that thing that gives a population survival".

[giraffe_lady]

To me it feels more like an "essay" in the older, more literal sense of simply exploring an idea. I think he's just kind of ruminating around the model of "what survives is good but not everything good survives."

He ends up bringing it around to the purpose and responsibility of criticism in light of this, which he finds is to elevate the good but not necessarily push down the bad. I think this is his biggest concern here? He doesn't make a big deal about it so it's easy to miss, or I might be wrong.