I’m not particularly fond of Black Kids. Sure, their song “I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You” was catchy and kind of cute. It made for a good party-mix track. The Killers-like attempt at gender ambiguity in the lyric “You are the girl that I’ve been dreaming of/Ever since I was a little girl” seemed gimmicky. But okay, whatever, I was willing to give their full-length a chance, depending on what the reviews looked like.

So I scooted over to Pitchfork to see how the site had reviewed the band whose reputation they made. The writer, Scott Plangenhoef, gave Partie Traumatic a 3.3 rating. And here is the entire “text” of the review:

Uh, you mean you jerks hyped this band to high heaven on the strength of a measly EP, and all you can give us is a picture of two sad-looking dogs and a lame “sorry”? Did Pitchfork get swallowed by I Can Has Cheezburger while I was sleeping? Are you so inept at admitting you bought into an utterly craptacular band that you aren’t even going to bother to explain what went wrong? I really hope Plangenhoef (who is also, frightening, the site’s Editor-in-Chief) doesn’t get paid by the review.

I mean, I understand what they were doing with their Jet review. They had never championed Jet, and they were just trying to say that the album wasn’t even worth considering. But I think publications are responsible for the hype they create, and with that in mind, this is totally unacceptable.

As Dan Gibson of Idolator wrote in a spot-on IM conversation posted by Maura Johnston, the site’s editor, “I would appreciate a more extensive apology.”

The question is, does Pitchfork want to be a reputable publication, or does it want to be a repository for hipster-douchebag humor? I appreciate irreverence as much at the next 20-something, but I wish they’d understand that you can’t have your elitism and eat it, too.