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PaperclipPerfector  19hr ago (text post)   819 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 9, 2026

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There's a certain kind of American who calls himself "Irish" because he has a single Irish great-great-great-grandparent. He likes nothing more than donning a green scarf, drinking "Guinness"* on "St. Patty's Day" and greeting his friends with a cheery "Top o' the morning to ye!". Some Irish musicians have realised how potentially lucrative this demographic is, and started recording trad-infused folk music with lyrics about drinkin', fightin' and ridin' (delivered in a comically thick Irish brogue which bears no resemblance to the singer's actual speaking voice), intended to pop up in "Irish"-Americans' Spotify playlists alongside the Dropkick Murphys and other purveyors of plastic Paddyism. I find the tradslop produced by acts like The Scratch, Kingfishr and Amble uniformly execrable, and their whole approach rather cynical. I mean, there's a museum in Dublin whose entire marketing schtick is based on the idea that there's more to Irish people than whiskey and spuds, and they're so aggressive about it that it goes full circle and becomes full-blown oikophobic – and yet, listening to these bands sort of makes me feel how black Americans supposedly felt about Louis Armstrong appealing to white audiences by puttin' on and deliberately playing up negative black stereotypes.

Yesterday I discovered that this business model is so lucrative that even the bots are getting in on it. A colleague of mine showed me this very bawdy song which came up on her TikTok, and something about it seemed extremely off: the "fiddle" is clearly a synthesised instrument, it's billed as a "live" recording but sounds impossibly crisp and clear (and doesn't specify in what venue, or even city, it was performed in), no videos or photos of the band are anywhere to be found, and the artwork for the single is blatantly AI-generated (note that the word "the" appears twice at the top of the image, a howler I thought would have been stamped out a few generations of LLM ago – and what does "The Foxhole" have to do with anything?). There is no way this band actually exists.

People sometimes derisively refer to Irish trad as "diddly-eye" music. We've now reached the era of diddly-AI. If it puts The Scratch and co. out of business, I'll consider it a blessing.

*If it wasn't brewed with water from the Liffey, it's not Guinness.

I mean, there's a museum in Dublin whose entire marketing schtick is based on the idea that there's more to Irish people than whiskey and spuds, and they're so aggressive about it that it goes full circle and becomes full-blown oikophobic – and yet, listening to these bands sort of makes me feel how black Americans supposedly felt about Louis Armstrong appealing to white audiences by puttin' on and deliberately playing up negative black stereotypes.

Well, the Irish are the blacks of Europe, and Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland, and the Northside Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin, soooo... say it once, say it loud?

Completely agree about the Guinness, btw, it's just not the same.

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