On Being Slightly Evil

Thoughts on making the dancefloor a more harmonious place

“Sociopaths?”

“Yeah, it’s called MOPs, nerds and sociopaths.” he says over one large inhale.

Exhale.

“It’s like the nerds make culture, the sociopaths make it cool“

His fingers leave the controller briefly, in air quotes

“and the MOPs fill the space.”

It’s midday Saturday. Andrés is knee deep in a video game and I’m across the table using his search-engine sized brain to pressure test my writing. I type despondently into my search bar: “MOPs, nerds and sociopaths”; sincerely hoping the essay in question is full of hot air. I have little interest in writing this again.

The first link, a charmingly ugly blog penned by David Chapman, reads “Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution.” Three basic classes of people exist, he argues, in the development of a cool thing. The geeks come first. Geeks are the engines of culture; they engage with media out of pure interest. Sociopaths, fluent enough to speak geek, translate and monetize the geeks idea into a broadly popular one. The MOPs (members of the public), follow the lead of the sociopaths. Attracted by their belief in Cool, MOPs fill the space—validating both the geeks and the sociopaths.

The Thing is now Cool ™

Ok, I’m re-writing…

Maintaining an Optimal MOP to Geek Ratio: Fostering Community in Dance Music

DISCLAIMER: While these terms (MOP, Geek, Sociopath) may seem to carry a value judgement, they do not. All of us engage with various aspects of culture in moppy, geeky and sociopathic ways.

At present, DJ sets represent the most common MOP experience of dance music. Fundamentally, DJing consists of playing, breaking and layering of pre-recorded tracks. The barrier to pleasure requires no formal knowledge (i.e. geekery), though it may enhance the experience. The barrier to involvement costs little more than one hundred dollars. That is to say nothing of mastery: a deeply misunderstood concept. The Boiler Roomification of DJ culture shifted the public understanding of mastery from technical to cultural. With few exceptions, DJs that pull 5-figure booking fees are, by and large, not the most technically competent. John Summit playing 4 hours of formulaic 4-on-the-floor tracks to a rolling EDC crowd is, shocker, not an example of technical competence. Lovie, local DJ and thinker-of-thoughtful-things, claims good DJ’s to simply be live producers; turntables are their instrument. So, the equation is this:

No barrier to pleasure + low barrier to entry + complex and variable routes to mastery = MOP heaven

Chapman writes:

“If the scene is unusually exciting, and the New Thing can be appreciated without having to get utterly geeky about details, it draws mops. Mops are fans, but not rabid fans like the fanatics. They show up to have a good time, and contribute as little as they reasonably can in exchange.”

Unfortunately, for the Club writ-large, a large influx of MOPs proves life threatening. Without diving too deep into race politics, the Club, historically, was a safe space for mainly brown Queer folks to commune and express themselves freely. For the sake of this argument, marginalized folks represent a class of conceptual geeks. Pure interest and necessity drive participation, not perceived coolness. Maintaining safe, queer/geeky spaces requires either: a high degree of exclusivity or a high degree of interest and contribution by MOPs. By and large, our (New York) dancefloor is neither hyper-exclusive nor highly-intellectual.

Take Public Records, for example. No door policy invites a largely straight Manhattan crowd drawn by unique cocktails and a “vibey” interior to share space with rat-tail toting gays-and-theys interested in CCL’s take on bass music. To some degree, these crowds have always co-existed; Paradise Garage saw its fair share of coked-up-and-closeted finance bros mingling with Chelsea’s dolled-up queens. Now, though, we seem to lack a shared cultural context. MOPs easily capture geeky social capital on Instagram without ever communing with the geeks themselves. Deeply entrenched media silos seem to jeopardize conversation and mutual understanding. The MOP presence may be more extractive than ever before. Rather than issue a boomer-esque plea to “all get along”, we need concrete solutions to make the dancefloor a more harmonious and joyful place for us all.

1. Door Policies

“Why are you here?”

“Who are you here to see?”

These two questions do a tremendous amount of work in reducing the amount of extractive MOP presence on the dancefloor. A door policy allows a subjective level assessment of interest or contribution to the dancefloor. If it’s a safe, geeky and gay space you seek to inhabit, you’ll probably get in. If you’re desperate to see Roza Terenzi, you’re in too. If you’re insulted at the question itself, you’re unlikely to comfortably share a diverse dancefloor. There’s the door.

2. Nerd Nights

Tommy Value is an Aussie transplant and creator of Beautiful Machines, a live-coding and modular synthesis event. Unlike a DJ set, live events represent a class of ephemera too nerdy for large scale MOP buy-in. There are no track-ID’s to be extracted. It is a pure exploration of sound, impossible to be reasonably commodified and extracted. Hosting the event at Public Records makes MOP-to-Geek conversion possible. Last edition’s performers, Dan Gorelick, Drum & Lace, and Daedalus, meandered around the club floor before and after their performances. They fielded questions and chatted with the club-goers about their respective hardware setup. Purely live events promote process aesthetics over product aesthetics. Beautiful Machines represents the regenerative end of club culture: allowing traditionally cool folks a space to discover interest in Geeks and Geekery.

3. Be Slightly Evil

This is Chapman’s solution: “[By being slightly evil] geeks can capture more of the value they create.” Amelia Holt is slightly evil. DJ and boss of left-field oriented club night, Honeytrap, she’s mastered the art of straddling the arcane / cool divide. The latest edition at H0L0, a neutral event space in Ridgewood, featured 3 DJs and one live techno set. At surface level, it’s a well-branded club night that might attract a good number of MOPs. Yet, it’s weird and worm-hole-y enough to keep the geeks interested; if so inclined, the Geek can openly enjoy the technical complexities of a live techno set. Mid-week, Amelia hosts a chess club. By curating a musically “cool” environment atop a seated, game-based structure, a Geek and MOP may find themselves twelve moves deep into a friendship.

Dancing and dance music possess the capacity for real social transformation. Our hope, in contributing to a more intellectual/critical conversation is to make the dancefloor more loving, thoughtful and open.

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That’s it from your overly-intellectual club rats. As always, much love, keep dancing.

XOXO

CLUBSTACK ®