Would an ANUSite perhaps corner me into somehow admitting that I was listening for social status and covering it up with what I genuinely believed was the truth?
You were obviously listening to them for social status, as evidenced by your desperate cries for approval among the "elite" for your newfound kvlt taste. The only thing you ever genuinely liked was probably Nickelback's "How You Remind Me" when you were 12. Your posts can be basically translated to "I'm such a poor lost lonely sheepie, please tell me what exactly to believe in".
In retrospect, I can say fairly accurately that there was definitely some element of appeal for social status. But it wasn't the most important aspect and I feel came entirely secondary to the actual sonic experience. The trick was allowing myself to succumb to an indiscriminate aesthetic philosophy where I grew myself more and more accustomed to mediocre music and would in turn take a liberal approach and defend all art for the sentiment behind it. Now I see that even though I thought I had a superior attention span to most (as evidenced personally by being able to pay attention to whole Dream Theater albums at a time), it was entirely the opposite. I was so easily bored by music that I required some sort of change every 10-15 seconds. I would listen to a lot of 'true' metal and be off put initially because I never allowed myself to hear the literal progression and thus would never allow myself to even hear the transition to the next chapter of the narrative.
As for approval among the "elite", well I won't deny that there is a certain kinship that I feel to people who think similarly to how I do. Feels good to challenge myself here and the difference is that I'm always on my toes and revising all sorts of thoughts as I read new perspectives from the users here. With that sort of challenge to my already established line of thought, I feel a stronger kinship to the ANUS boards than I have ever felt at UG even though I have posted there infinitely more. Just makes more sense here since people like to uncover the shit from under the rug instead of letting it sit there like so many do.
I can't say I'm on the fence anymore, but as for certain things like social relations (especially with the opposite sex) and political issues (which I feel entirely overwhelmed and uneducated about), I am still revising. Alas, I feel confident that the general philosophy that most have a consensus here about is what is right, and more so what's intuitively right to me.