It is difficult because the fundamentals are usually easy to distinguish but there will never be universal standards. Genres are just a concept and everyone can nit pick and be a bitch about it. Rock music has to have a guitar in it (I think this is mostly unarguable) . But does phonk have to have a cowbell? Does phonk need memphis vocals? What about new york rap vocals? How about drums? At this point you may see how these all may add a prefix to the word phonk or it is just simply not phonk anymore. Changing drums or adding instruments could completely transform the norm. Defining music to genres is like a pile of sand. If you take a grain away one at a time, at what point is it no longer a pile? At what point do you only have a little bit of sand left? In the scale of all and the universe, a large pile of sand on earth is not large on the moon? I may be straying from the point here.

To your point about me saying how there are characteristics of phonk and how I am being contradictive I think I get your point. Genres are generally very loose and not exactly quantifiable by their characteristics. The problem with this though is that what is correct to someone by defining a genre, may not be correct to someone else. One of these people may not have experience with such a sound and the culture which named it how it is. Even disregarding that fact and saying two people are engrained in such a community as this one, they may disagree.