The same people who called me an emo in high school now defining punk as “being nice” and goth as “MILF with big milkers” in their 30s makes perfect sense honestly.
Everyone wants the cool avant-garde edginess of being part of an alternative counter-culture, nobody wants to skim the Wikipedia articles and go down a music research rabbit hole into decades of experimental and extreme music with the wealth of the worlds information at your fingertips. This results in people trying to claim Taylor Swift as punk or whatever, when most punk music and punks would make you hurl.
It’s okay to be into popular or normative things, just accept it for what it is, which is not experimental, extreme or avant-garde in any sense. You don’t have to be innovative in order to be enjoyable or even to be high art so why do you feel the need to steal the Weirdo’s Valor and claim it as your own when you are disgusted by weirdos and their music?
It reminds me of when people feel the need to claim practically apolitical or centrist liberal art is “revolutionary” because they resonate with it. Art speaking to you is a powerful emotion! That doesn’t mean that art is revolutionary in either message or medium because it resonates with you. You can just like something, that’s okay.
