To most music aficionados, this isn’t much of a question. Cobain wins by landslide. Of course, there aren’t a great many music aficionados on Twitter, or at least, they aren’t as outspoken as the Bielibers are. Take, for instance, the following genius tweet made by someone who calls herself Amanda Bieber (@MandaSwaggie–no link; copy and paste if you’d like). As you might expect from a Twitter member with such a handle, Manda is a HUGE Justin Bieber fan.
So much so, in fact, she hates Selena Gomez for getting to touch her precious idol and she’ll defend Bieber until the cows come home, even if that means she’s exposing a woeful lack of music knowledge and appreciation. In fact, Manda’s attitude fits in perfectly with a group of people who are too lazy and too wrapped up in their own unfortunate online existences to turn to Google to find out who the hell Paul McCartney is.
With that in mind, you wouldn’t expect much in the way of good taste and a sound knowledge of music history from folks like Manda, and thanks to the discovery powers of BuzzFeed and Colin Gartz’ Tumblr account, you can see for your own eyes just how bad things are when you’re dealing with the tween generation, one that’s more worried about trending and gaining followers than they are doing anything meaningful.
But Manda just took the bar and lowered it exponentially with the following tweet:
Justin Bieber is much bigger than Kurt Cobain, so shut up. Did Kurt Cobain ever have the biggest fanbase on Twitter? NO.
The was met with the appropriate scorn with responses like this one:
@MandaSwaggie are you fucking kidding me, kurt cobain was dead before twitter was even invented you dick head
As you can see, much fun was had by all. Unfortunately, the Cobain/Bieber quote was not the worst of Manda’s display of music knowledge. It actually gets worse:
LOL at people saying Freddie Mercury was a great role model and Bieber is not. You know Freddie was gay and had AIDS right?
Now, it’s unfortunate that Manda has to be singled out, because it’s painfully clear she’s not the only one who has no business discussing entertainment content with, well, anyone. However, her ignorant attitude is par for the course for a nation of youngsters who have the self-awareness of brick wall.
I suppose it wasn’t much different from the teenagers who cried when The Beatles played, but then again, at least they were cheering for a band that, you know, actually played instruments and sung without the help of 21 separate producers (!!!!!). To wit, on their debut release for the United States, the Meet the Beatles album had a total of ONE producer. Meanwhile, Bieber needs more people than are on basketball court during a game to produce throwaway junk songs that no one, save for folks like Manda, will remember in a year or two.
In fact, can anyone, not including tweens like Manda, name one Bieber song besides Baby ?
Good luck with that. So what’s the “cure” to all this? Putting an age restriction on Twitter (yes, please)? While that may seem like an attractive option, it’s doubtful Twitter would axe a large portion of their user base. How about forced education, just like A Clockwork Orange? You know, strapping them to a chair and using these kinds of treatments:
While I’m OK with that, it’s doubtful such reeducation would receive the necessary support, and that’s just too bad.
