Hi everyone! I'm a college student doing a research essay on this topic (title) and I would love some feedback or any personal insight into this topic. The academic world has very little to offer on such a current topic, so I'm going straight to the source to gather information. Last.fm users tend to be the type of listeners I'm writing about so I would love to hear y'all's opinions.

I want to focus on communities of music listeners that are very active on social media, and therefore have a dynamic that overlaps with "meme culture". Think virgin-core/ mu-core type music. This group has a certain perception of music and their taste in media that simultaneously embodies embarrassment and superiority, which I'm comparing to the post-ironic wave of humor that gen-z has adopted. They are able to recognize the absurdity or very strange aspects of the music they consume while genuinely appreciating its uniqueness. Music is no longer judged simply on the ease of listening or the musical merit of the artists, what seems like a joke for one listener is groundbreaking for this group.

A good example of this mindset is something I hear sometimes: "This music sucks, you just get used to it." The lines between liking and disliking music are blurred. The post-irony here synthesizes the sarcastic joke of the music being bad (as to signal that they like it) with a truthful acknowledgment that this music could be considered genuinely really bad. You also hear the phrase "You just have to keep listening. It'll click eventually" often when referring to these types of artists.

Artists I've earmarked as falling into this category: Bladee (and other DG members), Death Grips, Back Country, New Road (and a lot of other post-punk acts), Neutral Milk Hotel, Animal Collective, The Velvet Underground.

If you have any others that you think fit into this group, I'd love to hear them! And if you're a big fan of any of these artists and can speak extensively on why you like them so much PLEASE direct message me (Or if you really hate one of these artists and you have a really well-developed reason why)! I would love to interview some people.

Also, if you're a little bit older and were a fan of any of these older bands (The Velvet Underground, Slint, NMH, Aphex twin) as they were releasing music, I would love to hear your experience of the ideas around these bands before this internet-influenced music culture arose.

TL;DR - A college student is asking for input or personal experience on the topic of post-irony's influence on meme culture and how it affects the online music community's taste.