Explain-to-the-folks-at-home-ism

Norm Macdonald, whose podcast had an inside joke of saying "Explain to the folks at home..." in reference to an obvious concept.

Explain-to-the-folks-at-home-ism (or Prerequisiteflation) is the phenomenon of music theory communicators wasting so much time explaining the basic prerequisites for a concept that they never get around to actually exploring the fun stuff you can do with it.

This phenomenon is perpetuated both by theorists who are too lazy and inarticulate to put together compelling ideas with visual/auditory explanations, and an audience too stupid, helpless and perpetually ignorant to understand anything unless you spend 12 minutes holding their hand every step of the way.

“This PinkPantheress song uses a lot of chords, which leads to the question… What even is a chord? Let's take a step back for a minute. In music (or more accurately, in western music! Hahahahaha!), there are these things called keys, this one right here is called C...”

Explain-to-the-folks-at-home-ism is a problem for explanatory content in any field, but most music theory enthusiasts are so uniquely dumb and lacking in resourcefulness that even saying "If you don't know what a chord is, I linked a video in the description explaining it, come back and watch this video about PinkPantheress's new single after" poses an intellectual challenge too frightening to bear.