Judge me not by my music

In Nick Hornby's wonderful book "High Fidelity," the "moral" of the tale is summed up with the oft-quoted line: "It's what you like, not what you are like."\nThis line has seemed to give music snobs literary justification to judge people not by their character, but by their Windows Media playlist.\nWe all know music snobs. They may vary on the sliding scale of pretentiousness, but the characteristics are the same for all of them. Music snobs have a constant need to talk about what album they just bought. Music snobs love to name-drop bands, especially if the names are really absurd sounding. (Example: "Man, have you heard the new Sleepytime Gorilla Museum album?") Music snobs love to try to stump their friends by naming the most obscure bands ever. Music snobs love to cruelly ridicule others' music tastes, especially widely popular bands such as Dave Matthews Band or Phish. Probably the funniest thing you can hear is a music snob trying to explain a band's sound. You'll hear the weirdest crossbreeding of genres and artists to put their sound in words. "Man, it's like Bright Eyes, but with Wilco's lyrics, Nelly's personality and Radiohead's ingenuity."\nEven more satisfying than outsmarting a music snob with an artist unknown to them is to discover they listen to a really lame band and hearing their excuse. I guess only they can see the real genius in Jefferson Starship.\nIn high school, everyone knew that a person's taste in movies, music and books has an impact on social standing. If you knew about lots of unknown indie bands or underground hip-hop it easily made you appear a lot cooler than the kid who jammed out to his Broadway original cast version of "Into the Woods." Admit it, nobody wanted to be the overweight kid in flannel who was mocked for his affection for Christina Aguilera.\nBut at some point, I expected the importance of such trivial traits to fade out in favor of preferences that are more indicative of your personality, such as your choice of major, political beliefs and career aspirations.\nUnfortunately, I realized recently that music snobs will exist at all ages -- and will not relent in their pretentiousness.\nWhile hanging out with my old high school friends, I was not mocked for my musical taste, but rather for the fact that I still listen to the same bands/artists I did back then. I was viewed as old-fashioned, stagnant, the musical equivalent of still water.\nBut, ironically, I feel my state is common for most people my age. After a while, most people find they discover far fewer new bands year after year. With the favorites assembled during your maturing years, it's harder for a new band to find time in the rotation.\nMany of my friends throw money away on four or five albums a week when there is no way they could possibly listen to the albums enough with 10,000 songs stored on their iPod. Seriously, I know several people that traded in their 20GB iPod for the 40GB version. Does anyone really need to listen to music for a month straight without hearing the same song twice? "Damn it, I heard this song in January, why is it on again?" Not to mention the financial burden of purchasing $60 worth of music a week, plus concerts. (And kids are still starving in the world, why?)\nThe bottom line is that some people are still trying to define their personality by their tastes. Instead of being pioneers in business, sports or even making their own music, they'd rather find bands that nobody else knows about.\nI am here to say that interests really don't matter much. Yeah, I'm going to look at you weird if you say you're a big fan of Tom Arnold's comedy, but if you're a nice person, things such as that are easy to get by. Everybody has a friend who listens to horrible music or likes every stupid movie that comes out, but the worst that ever happens to that person is mild teasing -- not ostracism.\nSo, I'd like to tell Nick Hornby that I agree, mutual interests are important in any relationship, but how you share these interests is more important. You can like all the same music as someone, but if they act like a jerk, none of it will matter.