We all know about the fetish of playlists. Let me see yours. If I know your playlist I can look deep inside of you: if you have lots of hip-hop that means something, if is full of jazz it means quite another thing. Big rock, oldies, mainstream pop, electro-stuff, lo-fi, they all come loaded with meanings, like fingerprints, they put you in a time and place. Enter the forensics of music literacy.

Googling a bit in this direction, Wired's article iTunes Undermines Social Security pops up. And nobody tells it like Wired:

«As if it weren't hard enough to be cool already, Apple Computer has introduced a new way for people to ruin their social standing.

Thanks to the ability of Apple's iTunes to share music collections over local networks, it is now possible to judge someone's taste in music -- or lack of it -- in a way that previously required a certain level of intimacy.

The ability to examine the music collections of co-workers, neighbors or fellow students is akin to peering into their souls: Someone who appears cool and interesting from the outside is revealed as a cultural nincompoop through the poor sap's terrible taste in music.»

Yep, it has a name: playlistism.

«On college campuses, for example, a new form of bigotry called "playlistism" is emerging.

The invention of students at Wesleyan University, playlistism was first reported by Stephen Aubrey, a 20-year-old student and columnist for The Wesleyan Argus.

Playlistism, Aubrey explained, is discrimination based not on race, sex or religion, but on someone's terrible taste in music, as revealed by their iTunes music library.

Aubrey said an iTunes music library tells a lot more about people than the clothes they wear or the books they carry.»

The forces involved in this physics are unclear until someone tries to deconstruct the trend (involuntarily) and tear down the construct in a form of reversed playlistism. Jaguaro.org comes up with this -- hm! -- interesting idea of making a list of One Hundred Albums You Should Remove from Your Collection Immediately. It is about your CD collection, not about computer playlists, but I think is relevant. No, not what they say. But the comments they get. Here's a sample:

«What in the hell is wrong with you? I understand that everyone is entitled to their opinion but opinions such as this should be slaughtered and those who announce them should be dragged into four way traffic and shot repeatedly.

«Your opinion means about as much as your pathetic life does to me right now. Until you start selling out arenas and making records,you pretty much sound like some backwards fuck who doesn't even have a grade 3 education. Show some respect, not your I.Q level!!! So put down your budwiesser and your sister and do some reading, it'll do you some good. If you spent less time criticizing and more time learnig to accept other types of music you would'nt come off as some traler park trash eating jack-ass. Get a life.»

So what does this mean? Means you don't mess with playlistism!