{"id":321,"date":"2007-05-05T23:58:05","date_gmt":"2007-05-05T18:28:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wokay.in\/2007\/05\/05\/shes-like-so-whatever\/"},"modified":"2007-05-05T23:58:05","modified_gmt":"2007-05-05T18:28:05","slug":"shes-like-so-whatever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/2007\/05\/05\/shes-like-so-whatever\/","title":{"rendered":"She’s Like So Whatever"},"content":{"rendered":"

I swear, this is the most awesome line in the history of manufactured pop music ever. I first heard the song<\/a> on Radio Indigo at the gym a week ago, but didn’t pay attention to anything except the chorus.<\/p>\n

But this week, I heard the song again on my car stereo. And there the line was in it’s full glory:<\/p>\n

She’s like so whatever<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was awestruck. I wasn’t even sure I had heard it correctly. But, no, it came up a verse later and there it was in it’s full glory:<\/p>\n

She’s like so whatever<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After a line like that – where 75% of the words have no actual meaning- even<\/p>\n

Hell yeah, I’m the motherfucking princess<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

fails to startle.<\/p>\n

But what really took the cake was when Rohit Barker announced at the end of the song that the song was by Avril Lavigne. Cut to dialogue between two inner voices.<\/p>\n

Inner Voice 1<\/em>: You expect meaningful lyrics from someone who wrote stuff like ‘He was a sk8er boi, she said see ya later boi<\/a>‘?<\/p>\n

Inner Voice 2<\/em>: That is different. That is a form of genre writing about a minority group and it can use the jargon and pidgin which that group uses. Skaters are a self-selecting group and have created their own subculture<\/a>. You are perfectly entitled to create your own dialect if you have done something to earn it like cracking JEE and getting into IITM, or jumping over cars or whatever it is that skaters do. Teenage slang is not the same because all you have to do to be a teenager is be born at the right time. Besides, wasn’t this woman supposed to personify rebellion against teenage vacuousness as exemplified by Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Inner Voice 2 was apparently not alone in its thinking. Head over to the video’s YouTube page<\/a>, and you’ll discover a whole lot of incensed comments about how Avril Lavigne has sold out and betrayed emo or punk (or whatever people thought she was).<\/p>\n

This is basically the story of the safari suit being played out in the present day. A brand or product originally has a niche following. The owners then reposition it to the mass market, and end up pissing off the original niche market, who promptly stop buying it. For the safari suit, the original niche was elite IAS officers, who switched to western formalwear once the safari lost its cachet and was being worn by everyone from Gujju traders to auto drivers. For Avril Lavigne, the original niche market of teen punks (or should that be punk teens) is dropping her like a hot potato now that she is being pushed to the teenyboppers (to give you an idea of how bad the situation is, in Crossword the album is being sold with a Garnier hair highlighting kit).<\/p>\n

But on the upside, I now have a new killer retort. From now on, if I disagree with something I will just say ‘That’s like so whatever.’<\/p>\n

(Safari Suit fundaes courtesy The Flower of TamBrahm Womanhood)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I swear, this is the most awesome line in the history of manufactured pop music ever. I first heard the song on Radio Indigo at the gym a week ago, but didn’t pay attention to anything except the chorus. But this week, I heard the song again on my car stereo. And there the line […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arbit-fundaes","category-books-movies-and-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7AOU2-5b","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}