Courtesy of Getty Images.

On a cold, bitter February night, I snuggled up on my couch for the second time. The first was to knock out a season of Grey‰’s Anatomy, but you know when you get snacks and return and it‰’s sort of like beginning a new activity. I had meant to watch the Grammys, but I didn‰’t really watch them because let‰’s be honest, I can watch and listen to any of these artists at any impulse. Instead, I spent a few hours watching as listicles broke and history was written right in front of my face.

It sprawled about the digital cosmos, like the transcendent patterns of nature laid before my eyes: thing is posted, friend posts thing, more friends post thing. It was the handiwork of a generation known for their innovative solutions, humorous dispositions, and love of lists. Content after content, thinktweet after thinktweet, my social media feeds became a place for culture and discourse ‰ÛÒ imagine a Socratic seminar stretched all around the globe.

Courtesy of The Daily Mail.

Retrospectively, I don‰’t remember much of the details except for one event, one clashing of the most forward-thinking artistic minds the world may have ever known: that time Kanye West stood on stage for a second or two and then sat back down. Since then, we have seen the emergence of two distinct sects: each is predicated on a different interpretation of awards shows and subsequently, a manifesto for the creative endeavors of human beings for the foreseeable future: Team Kanye or Team Beck.

One of these is the side of artistry and one of these is the side of big business. Team Kanye: The Grammys are no longer celebrating art. Money and old white guys have stripped BeyoncÌ© of her rightful award for Album of the Year. It‰’s time that we take the Grammys back to the golden days, or else spring an artistic revolution so that artistry can be protected from those blind to it. Team Beck: Artistry was rightfully awarded that night. How could a claim to artistry be made when BeyoncÌ© has multiple writers for one song? Besides that, Kanye is a jerk anyways. Besides that, Beck actually plays all of the instruments on his album.

Courtesy of Getty Images.

So which will it be, America? Freedom to create or the tyranny of cold hard money? Only your echo-chamber, trickle down advertising of preferred parasocial relationship, as presented by a multi-million dollar media event, can put the world back on its axes. So go free, read your lists, like and unlike your pages, retweet those tweets, but always keep in mind that you and you alone are the sole holder of Truth and do your best to ignore all those other people chattering their uninformed, ahistorical, down-right problematic opinions. Also, how exciting is it that Spiderman is now in Marvel movies?