Arts & Culture
GOLDFINE | Alpha Art Bros, Clitoral Bangers and The Chainsmokers
|
I love The Chainsmokers and I’m bitter about it. I love them the way I love reality television: deeply and wretchedly, gluttonously and gloriously. I love them the way you love a boy who doesn’t know you exist. I’m bitter because The Chainsmokers bought their fame with aural scourge, “#SELFIE,” a pseudo-gesture at cultural critique (about like, image culture or something) that did it’s real work as a femininity-bashing reduction of women to jealousy, narcissism and mirror-primping chatter. I’m bitter because Drew Taggart and Alex Pall are spokesboys of a thriving subculture of Alpha art bros, aka standard edition bros disguised in floral button-ups and Nike Frees, dripping with entrepreneurial smugness; the EDM analogue to the nerds with god complexes who start a successful business exploiting a market trend, care a little bit about their product (they refer to their music as “topline” or “deliverables”) but a lot about making stupid amounts money and being very famous.