Waiting for the album on the 15th has been one of the few things I’m looking forward to this July besides getting off work and the weekends.
I ordered the physical album. I wasn’t planning to buy the digital one at first — the plan was to use a “pirated” version to tide me over. Even if I did buy the digital album, I’d probably end up exporting it to another player anyway. But when the songs dropped early on the night of the 15th, I really couldn’t wait any longer and bought the digital album at 9
. When the album page refreshed and the new songs became playable, I hesitated a lot, not knowing which one to start with, and in the end just chose to listen in order.I’m an old fan, but I can’t write serious music reviews. While waiting for the “work” over these two weeks, I’ve been hanging around on Tieba and in fan groups, and ended up noticing more about things surrounding the album than about the music itself.
These two weeks have been quite “eventful.” First came the news that the album would include several older songs, which sparked some huge controversy. After the songs were released, the expected “no surprises” and “decline in quality” comments also showed up right on cue. Then there was the “No.1 on the chart” battle over album sales with a certain Xiao, which was quite the talking point too.
Lately I’ve been addicted to Sekiro, and because of that I downloaded the Tieba app to look at meme posts and newbie livestream threads. Checking Lun Bar was just incidental, but I noticed something interesting: in the Sekiro Bar, which is mostly made up of “smelly gamers,” the atmosphere is surprisingly good. People patiently answer newbie questions, actively help analyze problems, and there are very few low-quality posts. But in Lun Bar, threads revolving around keywords like vocal cords, standard, sincerity, etc., can easily explode into dozens of floors of pointless arguments. The content is just endless permutations of right/wrong and good/bad, and everyone seems to revel in it.
My take is that this difference in atmosphere has to do with emotional venting in discussion, and on another level, with the different basic competencies required to talk about each type of content.
On the first level, in 🐺 Bar, posts are mainly newbie questions, memes, and experience sharing. The biggest disagreement you’ll see is probably over which way of dealing with a certain move is better. That usually has an objective answer; even if it doesn’t, the argument can end with “it’s just habit/personal preference.” But when it comes to whether a music work is “good or bad,” there’s no way to really “discuss” it — it’s just me saying it’s good and you saying it’s not, a simple clash of subjective emotions. Unfriendly exchanges are pretty much inevitable from there.
The so‑called second level is actually related to the above. I said earlier that you can’t really discuss the “good or bad” of a music work, but that’s not absolute. If a few friends all have a solid foundation in music theory, they can have in‑depth discussions about style, arrangement, and melodic structure. It’s just that this kind of discussion is unlikely to show up on Tieba. By contrast, with a particular game, after spending a few dozen hours, you can basically be an “expert.” And in game Ba’s, there are very few cross‑game comparisons, which also reduces conflict. Put simply, discussing music quality itself has a relatively high threshold. Without that foundation, it’s easy to fall into the “good/bad trap.” Games differ from music in that, aside from discussions about the work’s intrinsic quality (which also have a high threshold), players can talk about more objectively grounded topics like gameplay techniques and route planning, which helps create a subjectively “better” communicative atmosphere.