I was speaking with someone the other day about some music. We were asking each other if we were familiar with certain bands, and with some, I’d say that yes, I am — but would quickly add that I’d only heard one or two songs, or an album.

Which is a practice that is not without reason or purpose. I mean, what if the few songs I’ve heard (or album) is an outlier and not truly representative of the overall body of work produced by this band? Additionally, I don’t want to come across as a poser or whatever you want to call it. But, it is a little absurd, isn’t it?

As my friend pointed out, it is as if, with the advent of the Internet and in particular streaming, people are expected to be experts about something before they can safely say that they are familiar with something.

He pointed out that it probably wasn’t like that when the popular (or only possible) practice was to hunt for an LP, which would be a more difficult task perhaps, whereas today it is a matter of making that hunt virtually, substituting various Internet sites and music providers for record stores.

And I am wondering if this increased expectation is necessarily a bad thing.

Of course, there are probably tons of people, maybe even the majority, who don’t split hairs and simply say, yes, I know this band, which I suppose would make what I am saying slightly irrelevant, but for those who do, maybe it isn’t such a bad thing to have the added expectations of knowledge brought on by the Internet.

Perhaps, if this invention that has brought just an incredibly vast body of knowledge within fairly quick and easy access to the average person, people will be directly faced with the fact that no one knows everything.

Perhaps this might make people somewhat less self-important, while also making people strive to become more educated and informed about everything before expressing an opinion, including something so relatively insignificant as an opinion about a band.