ABSTRACT
The anonymous internet essay “So You Wanna Fake Being an Indie Rock Expert?” bears the stamp of its late 1990s origins, an era that saw the rise in popularity of easily digestible reference tomes like the For Dummies series and illustrated comic book paperbacks like Philosophy for Beginners. Like those types of guides, “So You Wanna” begins with the assumption that the topic at hand is laden with enough complexities that essentially it must be translated into a more accessible language for a lay audience. “Indie rock” indeed has long been a notoriously difficult term to define, especially in terms of a specific musical style. The article steers the discussion away from this angle, however, focusing instead on one of indie’s most distinctive features: its prominent connoisseur audience. Connoisseurship traditionally is measured in terms of knowledge and taste, and as the article shows “indie rock” comes with its own rules for how this can be mastered. Crucially, it is not the knowledge itself that makes one an expert, but rather how one wields this vast storehouse of information that separates the suave hipster from the socially ill-equipped nerd and transparent poseur.1 Is the article’s outline and advice convincing? Could you imagine how similar instructional guides for other popular music styles might read?
