This piece reminds me that I’ve been meaning to write for a while about how “poptimism” as a critical concept ended up intersecting with the objective economic incentive structure of digital media.

In a digital, ad-supported universe the way you get traffic is to write positive coverage of cultural products that are popular — in other words to basically not do criticism at all and just cheerlead.

“Just say whatever music is popular is good” isn’t what the poptimism thesis was, but it was close enough that it allowed poptimism to become a kind of conceptual cover story for basically just abandoning criticism altogether.