If that's your criticism of Pitchfork, it's really the entire music magazine culture that you don't care for (Pitchfork is simply the most successful entity at exporting that culture to the web). Music magazine culture has been, for decades, about pissing on music from certain eras and genres and glorifying others. They are attempting to be taste-makers, and you can't do that by saying, "Everything is valid, you can find something to appreciate in all music." You have to be exclusionary of a lot, to create an approved body of work to unify your audience around.

Pitchfork is simply carrying on the tradition of NME, Melody Maker, Spin, MOJO, etc.

I don't care if they're successful at the exportation of Indie "culture" to the scene kids or if there's a need to be exclusionary (which is bullsh1t logic to begin with). The influence that publications like Pitchfork hold forces artists who want a crack at sales and positive reception to appeal to whatever criteria the "critics" are looking for in ideal Indie/"hip" music, and that's something I just can't appreciate. Just look what happened after Pitchfork gave Travis Morrison's Travistan a fu-cking zero if you need a case-in-point. You won't find AllMusic pulling stunts like that.

So yes, I don't care for music magazine culture. Living in the Information Age as we do, you'd think people would transcend this whole shepherd-sheep relationship when it comes to the arts and entertainment, but even now you'll find masses under said culture's thumb, crushed without a fight. Unfortunate, but there's nothing I can do for those people besides tell them about what I happen to listen to and see if they reciprocate my efforts. Even if they don't like what I like, at-least they'll consider something they normally wouldn't thought to listen to before. That's all there is to it.

Ultimately, I can only control my own tastes in music. Whether or not others let themselves be influenced by shoddy would-be journalists who focus on aesthetics of a scene rather than the music itself is entirelly up to them. I am merely a colossal blue anteater after all! :)

*goes back to scrounging for Black Widow tracks on YouTube*

Yeah, only thing is, in your world there ARE no 'good indie bands'! So the term's an oxymoron. lol

I don't disagree at all. But, really, it's all entertainment. Some people enjoy that style of "appreciating" music...feeling that they're part of a culture. Clubs are, by their very nature, exclusionary and hipster culture is no different. Reading music magazines, or Pitchfork, and other types of things that feed the special-by-way-of-dismissiveness desire is the ticket in. Some people like that feeling. Since art is by definition what people like, I have no problem with that. I, personally, don't care for music magazines and the hipster culture they encourage, but I don't really begrudge them to people who do.

You can only be who you are, colossal blue anteater or not.

I like true indie, people on independent labels regardless of genre, of that there are many many good indie bands. However the "indie" as a sound or genre is ****ing tripe.

What is the indie sound or genre,exactly?

Probably lo-fi rock like Pavement and Band of Horses' first LP.

Anything that sounds remotely like radiohead or razorlight.

You have boring as **** on one hand, or razor thin guitars and a whiny punk trying to sing nonsensically about something that will get him laid.

Yes, I agree with Brad, above. There is so much anti-Pitchfork sentiment at almost every music site on the web, much of which amounts to fans of certain indie bands who feel that these bands have been unfairly maligned or ignored by the indie music media, the most prominent manifestation of which is Pitchfork, in favour of what they feel are "over-hyped" indie bands. Curiously, though, one gets the impression that if these other bands were to be "over-hyped" by Pitchfork, they would suddenly become unfashionable with the anti-Pitchfork crowd simply because they had attained this form of prominence. Since Pitchfork is deemed to be "faux-anti-mainstream", the TRULY cool kids, in order to maintain their level of anti-Pitchfork cool, have to like what the "douches" at Pitchfork don't like or ignore. So this whole issue ends up revolving around "peer pressure to rebel against the opinions at Pitchfork", despite claims that the "douches" at Pitchfork are in fact the ones who try to impose a sense of "anti-mainstream cool" on the music-loving populace. Crowd mentality.

TLDR
who cares anyway