Skrillex for 2012 yay or nay

Great point, it would be like someone discrediting your post by criticizing your atrocious grammar.

That being said, I think it has been made quite clear by those critical of Skrillex that they do not enjoy his music due to its shallow nature and creative deficiencies.

Yes because Bassnectar (Who never got this level of hate) is actually a creative genius along with the rest of the dubstep artists. What people don't like is that he got popular too fast for them to like him before he was cool. It is more a resentment thing as far as I can tell. I have certainly never seen anyone be able to articulate what singles Skrillex out as the trash of the dubstep genre.

People don't like Skrillex because he has taken a certain subset of a music genre, watered-and-dumbed it down, and helped to package it as the Next Big Thing for the mindless bro set. It's pretty much that simple. It's why people hated Limp Bizkit - fusing hip-hop and rock/metal wasn't new by any means, but they did it in an obnoxious, brash, overly commerical way that pandered to the lowest common denomenator and became overwhelmingly popular despite the fact that much, much better music was being made. So when someone is all "I love EDM! Skrillex is the best!", I imagine its the same type of reaction a fan of punk rock has when someone is all "I love punk! Blink 182 is awesome!", or a hip hop head hearing "I love rap! The new Black Eyed Peas album is great!", and so on. He has become insanely popular by taking an artform that was near and dear to a very small minority of music fans, and blown it up to gargantuan proportions by ruining it.

And Girl Talk has gotten plenty of hate, frankly. Come on man, how many times have you made the "I guess he needs a bigger iPod" gag. There are loads of people who dislike Girl Talk, for whatever reasons. I think the reason he doesn't get the hate that Skrillex does is that he's not necessarily perverting an artform in the same way - call it elitist if you want, but dubstep used to be the province of small, smoky clubs and basements, and people who remember that fondly get irritated at seeing this poorly-shorn goofball getting a bunch of 15 year olds ULTRA HYPE with his SICK DROPS BRAH. Girl Talk didn't have that problem - he doesn't masquerade as EDM, and he clearly lets people know that he's not a DJ. At best, you could say he's a mashup artist (though I'd dispute that - he uses too many bits and pieces of samples and songs to create something new, whereas mashups primarily just flip vocals and beats, wholly - the Hood Internet is closer to a mashup, IMO). It's not exactly a genre that has a long-standing tradition, or even a bunch of diehard fans. It's meant to be a fun, silly exercise and that's about it. So people tend to b*tch and moan about Girl Talk mainly just because he's EVERYWHERE now on the festival scene, but he gets less vitriol than Skrillex or Bassnectar as nobody sees him taking over something which isn't rightfully his.

As for Pretty Lights...I don't really know. I think of him similar to Girl Talk - he gets lots of cricticism, but mainly just because he's everywhere now. It's overexposure. I don't think his music is that terrible. I've only listened to some of his stuff (whatever he had that was out around 2008-2010), but he always seemed more akin to hip-hop than EDM to me, but since he sort of neatly straddled the line he didn't get the big guns from either camp turned on him. It really could be something as simple as PL making music that is more palatable to people than the dreck Skrillex produces - speaking only from personal experience, the PL that I've heard generally gets me to at least bob my head, while Skrillex just sounds like the Death of Western Civilization. But again, PL also hasn't hit the level of celebrity that Skrillex has - sure, PL headlines some fests and shows, but he's not on the Grammy awards, or getting articles in major music magazines, and so on. So he's not going to inspire the same level of anger.

Bottom line is, it's a combination of things. I personally think most of the hate has to do with Skrillex's foray into a musical genre which carried with it a very dedicated, yet still small and somewhat underground fanbase, and appropriating the sounds and culture of that genre for his own benefit by watering it down to make it appealing to the masses. And it's not necessarily elitist - its a natural byproduct of the human condition that many people feel threatened when their particular bubble is invaded. We seek out certain subcultures because they make us feel safe or included; so when the sanctity of that is breached (rational or not), we react in a visceral manner. And when that invasion or breach is accomplished through a complete co-opting of things we feel as though we hold a personal stake in, it's all the worse.