In the ‘80s, MTV was blamed for turning young people into zombies. (And later, harvesting them for reality shows.) Pitchfork.tv — the infamous music webzine’s spanking new video site launching Monday, April 7 — can’t decide whether it wants to attract the zombies or drive them away.
To be fair, ‘Fork head Ryan Schreiber et al. aren’t screwing around with this video thing. Pitchfork.tv’s live band footage dominates its nearest rival, Vice’s vbs.tv, on any playing field you’d care to name — audio and video quality, curation, format, etc. The full-screen viewing is a dream (and YouTube’s nightmare) and the site’s high production values make sitting in front of the computer watching videos something you might plausibly do on a lazy weeknight. Also, short documentary series such as Daytripping — whose first episode tracks down Man Man (pictured) recording themselves breaking glass at their studio in Philly — will trigger flashbacks in readers who remember when The New Music was a must-watch. (Man Man’s music will merely trigger flashbacks.)
But lying around and watching endless videos on MuchMusic was perfect for a generation with a medium-sized attention span, and it’s hard to imagine that the average ADD-addled net surfer will want to sit at a desk or on a couch and watch their computer the way we used to watch TV. The Christian right’s new moral fibre–destroying boogeyman isn’t YouTube but MySpace, and with good reason — social networking has made it possible to spend hours doing something that amounts to nothing. Pitchfork.tv is long on content but short on interactivity, and college kids aren’t going to stop forwarding YouTube clips of whales exploding or tagging photos of themselves on Facebook long enough to watch an interview with Mastodon.
I would like to be wrong, because Pitchfork deserve praise for making a top-quality site and filling it with artists who deserve an outlet as well-built as this. But just as some of their best reviews sometimes fall victim to that age-old judgment, tl:dr — too long, didn’t read — Pitchfork.tv may be dubbed ni:dw: not interactive, didn’t watch. (www.pitchfork.tv)