Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mindcrime 4765 days ago
It only seems esoteric because it isn't what you're into. Spend some time hanging out with metalheads[1] sometime, and see how quickly their discussions descend into esoterica (from the perspective of anybody who isn't into metal)...

"Dude, check out this awesome new Death Metal band I found!"

"Dude, that's not Death, that's lame melo-death."

"Nah dude, this is ambient drone death!"

"There's no such thing as ambient drone death."

"There totally is, haven't you heard of $FOO?" (where $FOO is some random Finnish band that recorded one EP in a shack in some guy's backyard, using gear that nobody has ever heard of, musicians that nobody has ever heard of, a producer nobody has ever heard of, and only release the album as ogg vorbis files transferred onto 8-track tapes)

(Some other guy comes along) "Oh, that band... no, they're not ambient drone death, they're avant garde post-moral melo-death-core"

(Yet another guy comes along) "That's not avant garde post-moral melo-death-core, it's avant garde drone viking noise metal."

(everybody sane) "Aaargggghhhhh"

("that guy") "Yeah, they're totally tr00 kvlt, dudes. Let's go sacrifice a goat."

I'm sure devout fans of Trance, Country, Jazz, Classical and all sorts of other kinds of music likewise get into some pretty esoteric knowledge, when viewed from outside their sphere.

[1]: http://metal.reddit.com