my mate wrote this on his blog. just wondered what people thought of it ...

Anushka Asthana, having spent £90 on a ticket for Guns N' Roses in the week (my ticket for the goddess cost £14, and I got a seat) asks: "why are rock fans so stupid?"
Simple. It's because they cause unjustified inequalities, retard social mobility, favour charisma over ability, uniformity over diversity, and help sustain capitalism.
In looking for "stars", people to worship, they generate inequalities of power and income.
For sure, there's nothing wrong with this if the stardom arises from inequalities in ability. But in rock "music" it doesn't. Axl Rose is indistinguishable from thousands of other long-haired shouty men. He's just benefited from Gergaud and Verardi's version ( ftp://mse.univ-paris1.fr/pub/mse/cahiers2006/Bla06017.pdf ) of "superstar economics", whereby some people get wealth and fame simply through the dumb luck of large groups of people coming to believe, arbitrarily, that they are cultural icons.
Put it this way. I suspect that, given a few weeks of the right training, I could play guitar well enough to appear in a rock band; I'm coming from a running start. I have not the foggiest hope of ever being as good as David Russell or Davy Graham or Martin Simpson or she of whom I am unworthy to speak.
What rock music does is favour superficiality over substance - charisma over genuine ability. It's no coincidence that so many rock stars - Chris Martin, Mick Jagger, Bruce Dickinson, Busted, pretty much any 60s prog-rockers (though some of them could, in fairness, actually play) - went to private school, whereas hardly any folk musicians did so. Private school gives people a confidence disproportionate to their ability. That's what matters in rock.
Worse still, this inequality isn't merely of income. It's of power and prestige. So, Axl Rose thinks he can keep fans waiting two hours, and Bono thinks he can walk round in shades looking like a bell-end and lecturing us all to death. And no-one tells them to feck off.
And then there's the groupthink. Rock music gains much of its power from the communal experience. It needs a crowd.
Put it this way. If Guns N' Roses performed in front of two men in a pub, they'd look ridiculous. If Kate Rusby or the McGarrigle sisters or the sublime being did so, it would be a magical experience.
This groupthink generates conformity, not only as fans look for the same bands, but as wannabe rock stars emulate others: can anyone really be bothered to distinguish between Coldplay and all their imitators? Not only does this lead to a bland conformity, it also makes life easy for the music business.
Rock fans, then, are an offense against all that I hold dear.
I'll leave you with the killer argument. ( http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,1678432,00.html ) I rest my case.