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# Posturing and Pretending
- URL: https://www.canneddragons.net/posturing-and-pretending/
- Published: 2026-09-29T01:39:34.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-29T01:48:18.000Z
- Description: Is it elitist to admit you had never heard of Ella Langley?
- Author: Robert Rackley
- Tags: culture

When [I wrote](https://www.canneddragons.net/choosin-texas/) that I had never heard the Ella Langley song "Choosin' Texas," I meant, very simply, that I had never heard the song. Marissa Moss from *Rolling Stone* [isn't buying it](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/ella-langley-choosin-texas-never-heard-the-song-meaning-1235631932/?ref=canneddragons.net).

> At this point, though, if someone contends they’ve never even heard of “Choosin’ Texas” or Langley, it may say more about the listener than the song. Or, for that matter, what they want to project to the world. With incessant news coverage alongside chart and playlist presence, it’s pretty difficult to still claim total ignorance on this one. Perhaps there is a deeper reason why people say they haven’t heard the song and feel the need to make it known: cultural cachet.

I assure you, cultural cachet was the farthest thing from my mind when I posted the latest entry in my Saturday Night Video series. Though the song and video are outside my usual fare, I thought the phenomenon was interesting enough to post about it. Unfortunately, so much of what people do on the internet is performative, it's hard for some to even take a statement at face value.

Yet... David Marx thinks [the shoe is on the other foot](https://culture.ghost.io/good-taste-is-not-whats-oppressing-us-in-2026/?ref=canneddragons.net).

> The loudest cultural critics are most energized when bragging about their love of Top 40, contemporary country music, and reality TV. ("Addison Rae, Paris Hilton, the Real Housewives...my harbingers of a great night!") An exclusive interest in high art is almost taboo: a sure means to be called pretentious, if not, sinister.

It seems to Marx (and honestly, to me) that the greater cultural cachet is to be gained by falling in love with pop culture and decrying anyone who doesn't as an elitist. He further describes the wave of poptimism in sociological power dynamic terms.

> To disparage the immediate pleasures available in industrially-manufactured pop is an immoral act denying the tastes of marginalized groups.

It does feel like that's what Moss and others are trying to sell. A vision of low culture as some sort of great equalizer.

> Imagine being so wrapped up in your tiny corner of the world that when you learn there are people who don’t live in that corner, your first thought is that they must be posturing.
> 
> — Brian Goetz ([@briangoetz.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:zais7ptvm6xhichxoehnayef?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=canneddragons.net)) [September 27, 2026 at 8:14 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:zais7ptvm6xhichxoehnayef/post/3mwirleysuk2p?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=canneddragons.net)