3 am all over the world

My internet has shrunk to a tiny community of complete fanatics, called head-fi. This is what I read when I'm in between things or just feel like surfing. It's all about audio equipment. There are people (guys mainly as far as I can tell) who are looking for a replacement for their Skullcandy headphones in that jamming camo pattern (I'm serious). There are people with multi-thousand dollar home set ups who swear by cables forged by blind virgin Vikings out of pure silver and unicorn hair.

I'm not serious about the blindness, virginity, Vikings, or unicorn hair, but there are some very interesting (and completely mystical) threads about cables that are eye-opening about human credulity and the predators waiting to take the credit card numbers of true believers. There's no swearing allowed (you'll get banned) and no politics (ditto). I've learned a lot about digital audio, bought two new in ear monitors (iem) and a portable amp. I'm planning to get custom iems sometime this spring. It's relaxing to just read opinions about audio gear (no matter how heated).

So why am I in this backwater of the internet? Because the rest of it increasingly reminds me of the days (nights really) when I'd be reading soc.culture.african.american back in the 1990s. A pleasant conversation would be going on and then some lunatic would jump in writing the most inflammatory, racist flamebait. The whole convo would be completely derailed for the troll (predating the term), which was, after all, his/her point.

This type of interaction wasn't limited to just that group though. I remember this long, crazy fight I got into on Sappho with this woman who insisted (against all evidence) that western (meaning European) classical music was the oldest and best music ever!!111!!!!!. These things would happen late at night or early in the morning and there was usually an uptick in the crazy whenever aol sent out a new CD or when a new technology made it easier for people to get online.

Now internet access is ubiquitous and cheap(ish). As a result, the comment threads of any site, unless tightly regulated, is dominated by the ramblings, rants, paranoias, and obsessions of thousands. And they're increasingly mean-spirited.

Why would someone on Ravelry (a, scratch that, the knitting site) write, "Yuck!" after a woman wrote to say how happy she was to get a holiday card from the White House with the First Dog's pawprint on it?

Why would someone post this in response to NPR's story on the (always interesting) Oxford American Music collection?

But no ...
Enlarge your horizons. Listen to music from Bulgaria, Macedonia, Norway, Sweden, especially Falu Spelmanslag; now that's sound! Have you ever heard Ethel Raim and Martin Koenig's Nonesuch record from Macedonia? Try music from Slovenia. Try Tabla rhythms by Alla Rakha. Learn something about Middle Eastern music, but please spare me the BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM ...

The story was about Alabaman performers, jackass. I happen to like Macedonian music too, thanks to Laine, but I don't go on about it when the subject's Beethoven's late quartets.

It's this arbitrary insistence on foregrounding opinion, presenting preference as law, disregarding context and audience that has sent me into the quiet contemplation of sound quality and improving my music source files.

Tell me when it's morning.