Life, and all opinions one can form within it, can be boiled down into two academic schools of thought: trash or classic. Nothing in between. Shit's either hot garbage or fire flames, a brick or a stunt. The Internet has left us with two options, or parties, if you will, and you're either on one side of the aisle or the other.
In the past month, Drake, Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar dropped music seemingly out of nowhere. As quickly as we could get our hands on the .zip links, we had to tweet our hot takes. We had to scrub through each song, pretend to listen to the interludes and re-listen to "The Blacker The Berry" and "i" in context of the entire album. We had to make sure our stance was known on in the great debate of 2015: "To Pimp A Butterfly: Trash or Classic."
Similarly, it seemed like if you didn't think "All Day" was Pompeii levels of molten hot lava, your opinion was trash. If you didn’t think the live version had more energy than CDQ, your opinion was dirty snow melting on NYC sidewalks during the 1970s type garbage. If "Only One" didn’t make you cry, you bricked it.
So, my question to you, dear reader, is are you a follower of the idealistic and utopian Classic (C) party or a cynical and haughty Trash (T) loyalist? The divide in this country has left our influencers stagnant in dropping their points of view. While working across the aisle was promised by both groups, we still seem to be more interested in pointing out the fundamental differences in our opinions.
The Internet is an interesting place for this kind of discourse because of our confirmation bias. We tend to follow people who have similar views and values as us and, subsequently, form opinions we believe will align with the groupthink in whatever circle jerk we ascribe to on the timeline. As much as trolling stacks the mentions, we're all pretty scared of going against the status quo.
And just like that we've made hyperbole our security blanket. We're scared of attaching our views to something we have to stand by and defend with conviction, so we turned it into a big fucking joke. If I tell you that "the most metal breakdown of the 21st century was on 'Know Yourself'" I can both exclaim that Drake can own a crowd better than Metallica or Slayer and also defend myself when you accuse me of not knowing shit about Metallica and Slayer, in which case, you're right and I was just talking hella reckless. Statements that hyperbole lets me get away with include, but are not limited to:
1. Russell Westbrook is the GOAT and would beat Jordan one on one, in a poker game and in a "who bricked their jeans the most?" contest.
2. Father John Misty dropped the best mixtape of 2015.
3. The Young Thug/Travi$ Scott show changed my outlook on Scientology.
4. To Pimp A Butterfly is trash.
5. It's already March, which means summer is going to be over tomorrow and it's basically already 2016.
Compare those with statements that don't use any hyperbole and are just 100% stating the facts:
1. Migos is better than The Beatles.
2. Mad Men is the best TV show in history.
3. Starbucks solved racism in America.
4. To Pimp A Butterfly is classic.
5. Bush did 9/11.
Grey does not exist because the space that occupies the middle of the aisle is just an identity crisis. It's just a bad mashup of two ideas without a backbone.
The Internet has made us think everything is a zero sum game, that everything is mutually exclusive and liking one thing makes us like another thing less. Our constant need to measure things against one another is why we're so apt to create rivalries between anything remotely similar.
Maybe it feels like that because we think fire is finite. As in, there's only so much fire to go around this world and declaring too many things as "classic" diminishes the things we have already labeled "classic" yesterday. It's the same logic I have when I don’t wear fire fits if I know I'm not going to see anyone important. But what's the difference? Aside from maybe an article of clothing wearing out quicker, there's no an allotted limits of flames the alphet has. If it's fire tonight, it isn't going to run out of fire tomorrow because I wore it to a movie by myself.
That's perception. Again, everything seems like a zero sum game. Everything seems finite. Everything seems like it's either hot or not.
My two most used emojis are the trash bin and the flame. It's so much easier to distill your reaction to someone's query about how your night was or if the cafeteria pizza is any good that day. I could tell someone how I really feel about DeMarco Murray going to the Eagles, but it's so much easier to just say, "Cowboys are [trash emoji x 3]." Sure, I've got nuanced opinions about the salary cap and statistics defending running backs who decline after high usage years, but who the fuck cares, right?
If my biggest concern is making sure people know my opinion, my second biggest concern is making sure I don't come across as caring too much. You know, the lonely Twitter rant where you @ yourself and go on a 1400 word deluge about the idea of a beverage chain trying to talk to you about race relations. Or, the unrequited text message dump defending Kendrick's progression of hip-hop. Even, the Instagram caption that fills the screen with your thoughts on finding yourself while you eat, pray, love in Thailand.
All of that shit can be summed up with trash, fire, brick, classic, lit or wack. The power of these adjectives in 2015 cannot be understated. All of these words are scalable as well. Sometimes you can modify the levels of success/failure with the two letters, "af." They are simple, elegant and cannot be misinterpreted unless you were, like, sending them to your parents.
So, yeah, everything is black or white and there's nothing in between. Grey does not exist because the space that occupies the middle of the aisle is just an identity crisis. It's just a bad mashup of two ideas without a backbone. Occupying the space in between means you're just a mediocre Girl Talk song. Occupying the space in between means you're just Ross Perot. Occupying the space in between literally means you're a trash can on fire, which, fuck, is now just really confusing.
Nickolaus Sugai (T) is a registered Trash party voter. Follow him on Twitter here.
