Every January, music magazines (and Pitchfork) are flooded with “Best of…” lists, where writers try and tell you what you should have been listening to in the preceding twelve months. In fact, the pages of the Seahawk were graced with such a list shortly before Christmas break.

I can’t get enough of these lists. It makes me want to go out and scoop up all the releases that I missed out on the first time around. However, there’s nothing like a “Best of…” list to bring out the elitist jerk in people.

It never fails; these dudes take every opportunity they can to point out how bad everyone else’s favorite bands or records are. It’s a bit of an enigma, because they seem to be really into music, but at the same time, they seem to not like any kind of music whatsoever. It’s either too childish, or too overproduced, or too metal, or not metal enough.

Oftentimes, they have some sort of witty comment to get their message across, such as:

“Bad Religion? Those guys are so old they should be called Bad Back or In Bad Need of a Hip Replacement!”

Rest assured, there are a lucky handful of bands that will forever hold a get-out-of-jail-free-card with music snobs like this. There aren’t many, but every once in a while you’ll hear one of these guys say something along the lines of “I swear, Elliot Smith could have recorded himself taking a poo into a cardboard box and it would have been better than, like, 99.3% of the crap out there today.”

Music snobs are a rare breed, and you can’t reason with them. As soon as you get caught with one in a discussion about what music is good, it’s kind of like Cousin Eddie said in “Christmas Vacation:” “It’s best to just let ‘er finish.” Then, after they tell you all of their favorite bands, just say something like “Yeah, you know who I really enjoy? That guy Andrew W.K.!” Then they’re almost guaranteed to leave you alone.

This year, do your best not to be one of these people. Just live by the rule of “different strokes for different folks” and realize that there’s something good about all music.

Except for The Ataris. They suck.