What are words worth: We should change the way we talk about dance music

Since seeing Hunee's tweet, I realised that a day hasn't seemed to go by without an atrocity taking place or a fear-inducing decision being made by a global leader. Death and destruction feels all-encompassing in 2017 with social media acting as a megaphone for all the negativity. And I'm not saying we should simply shut ourselves off from anything negative in the world, but when we already hear words like 'destroy', 'smash' and 'kill' screamed at us from the front pages of tabloids or by the scrolling ticker on the 24-hours news cycle, do we need to use them when describing music?

The bond between crowd and DJ is sacred. They soundtrack your night and help you forget your outside troubles. But the culture’s changed since the simple days of just playing some records to like-minded people. We’ve reached a point of idol worship where it’s all about the DJ conquering us. We’ve become the adoring masses, expecting the DJ (and the booze and drugs) to "destroy" us with a few handily-placed EQ cuts. The DJ has embodied the spirit of Genghis Khan in the booth, pillaging the town he or she comes for and leaving ravers with a smoking pile of brains they have to clean up with 5htp and bananas the next day. I don't really want the thing I love to be described like that.

And don’t get me wrong, we in the media are 110 per cent guilty of propagating this language, myself included. It's an easy crutch to fall back on when trying to describe something in a pinch. Clearly, we too, need to use the synonym function that is only a right click away more frequently.

Dance music was born out of love and togetherness so let’s ditch the negative. There’s enough death and destruction in the world to ease off words like kill, smash and destroy.

Louis Anderson-Rich is Mixmag's Digital Intern. Find him with his head in a dictionary and on Twitter