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I started hating Pitchfork when I was 14. I found a negative review of Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity and as a result I decided I would have everything this publication ever liked. Kid A, a 10.0? Fucking glorified cable testing, even though I had only heard “National Anthem.” . . . And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead? What a dumb pretentious name that’s impossible to put into a manageable sentence.

Up until the sophomore year of my college career, I didn’t know anyone who was even aware of the P4K, a common abbreviation for the site. The girl I met had gone to the inaugural festival held by the online news outlet. She described a litany of bands I had heard of but never heard and the numerous amount of hipsters, which I had never seen. “Is there anything more trite than the electric guitar?” was the overheard phrase that justified my hatred. Her shared animosity at this likely tight pants wearing, wolf shirt donned hipster proved to me that I could trust her.

We shared war stories of going to the same stand up and live shows despite never meeting each other. We hated the same opening bands and loved the same headlining act. My vitriolic hatred for anything in “Best New Music” began to whither. I would accept P4K recommended bands as long as they came with a personal voucher. If someone in real life could love a band without actually referring to a three digit numerical score, I could give them a fair shot.

At the end of 2005, she made me a mixtape in the form of a CD. Both of us were aware of the rules of mixtaping without ever talking about them. But there it was. Both “Rebellion (Lies)” and “Haiti” were by Arcade Fire.

In 2006 I bought Funeral and listened to it incessantly. It followed me to my car, to my stereo and would often play gently in the background if I had any company. I didn’t even listen to the lyrics. Hell, I would never fully understand “Wake Up” until it appeared in the Where the Wild Things Are trailer.

I didn’t know who I could trust. But now, now that I had a mixtape to guide me on which albums to buy, it became easier. I now knew someone who could help me. More importantly, it was someone who didn’t give Clarity a review describing it as the emoest album ever.

The mixtapes we exchanged would be vital in me discovering new music. If she liked something it was a pretty safe bet I’d like it. But in hindsight, all my attempts to not let my musical tastes be shaped by the hegemonic web site of indie subculture, I was still falling victim to P4K. Instead of blindly listening to anything listed in Best New Music, I’d turn a deaf ear to anything that P4K would praise. And now that I’m older, I can see it was all a big lie.