Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Retro: A Callback
Some of this stuff is OLD! Older than dirt, I say! Nah, not really. It's from my old "myspace" shit that I tend to draw on when I feel I have to clarify some things or clean it up a bit. I posted this with the links all fucked up, so maybe this time around, I'll get it right.
I bring this to you, entitled "Your Band Doesn't Suck," because I laughed my way out of the computer lab in my free time after I finished my paper this afternoon.
WARNING: THERE IS A LOT MORE READING INVOLVED IN THE LINKS PROVIDED THAN IS JUST IN THE STORY. IT IS ESSENTIAL TO AT LEAST SAMPLE THESE LINKS TO BE ABLE TO FOLLOW MY CRITIQUE. NOT RECOMMENDED FOR ANYONE WITH LITTLE FREE TIME.
--
I may be drawing a foregone conclusion based on the fact that I'm not really sure who 'your' band in particular is. But this was where I was heading with my previous entry about being pretentious, which in itself became something of a rant about how a certain website has shaped my personality here on the web.
Has it affected others similarly? Of course it has. People who not only feel but now (thanks to the internet) know they have the power to express themselves as unbridled as they possibly can in an untamed environment take full advantage of this and are indirectly responsible for the rise in average blood pressure here in the U.S. The first person who anonymously posts "I hate Jews, blacks, and black Jews alike" gets a flood of email once a few hundred or thousand hits are made on the entry and finds himself with a handful of "fuck you"s and "your a fag" (I know it's actually 'you're,' but mind you, I'm trying to emulate the average internet trolling imbecile.) messages that do nothing more than amuse him.
And why does this amuse him? Because he knows what he has intended to happen HAS happened, and it's what he was looking for all along: to get a rise out of somebody. My particular knowledge of the universe here known as the internet is rather small, namely porn from the old days or random games here and there, but a couple of my favorites are particularly a douchebag who has become known as merely "Maddox" and another douchebag who brands himself as "Dr. David Thorpe." With the amount of attention these guys receive due to what they write, it was only a matter of time before one of them became a published bestseller. Guess which one without looking it up.
A few examples of the articles written by this pair are as follows: a social commentary on women, blue collar america gets a wake-up call, a zing marathon on any and all types of music, and an objective view of various musical personalities. There's a little criticism for everybody, and there are several reasons why I read these articles avidly. For starters, I'm a grammar nazi, which for the layman reads the idea that I'm an admirer of anyone who takes the time to make anything they know will be read by more than 3 people presentable as a thesis. Secondly, they at least make you THINK they know what they're talking about, and thirdly, I'm a fan of the shock jock strategy... which means that I'm fully aware that there's no possible way anyone could be THAT moronic and suspend my disbelief long enough to see, you guessed it, how people respond.
A few more links: fans of Coheed and Cambria, reader mail, people don't like Maddox, and more mail.
We've already gone over why they don't let the hate-mail bother them. But the aforementioned are not only testaments to their getting the job done, but also are solid evidence that some people are as ignorant as these guys assume we all are, and their responses do not help the case for us that "get it." Notice how sophomoric the responses are and the suspicious absence of anything that remotely resembles a lucid thought. There's a reason for that as well, and I'll let you figure that out.
But it's great entertainment, at least for me. It's akin to watching lions at a zoo, in all their glory, caged, of course... With the zookeepers specifically telling the children not to put their hands through the cage, at which the children scoff, completely disregard, and proceed to get their fingers bitten off by agitated lion cubs. Yes, I'd laugh at that.
I bring this to you, entitled "Your Band Doesn't Suck," because I laughed my way out of the computer lab in my free time after I finished my paper this afternoon.
WARNING: THERE IS A LOT MORE READING INVOLVED IN THE LINKS PROVIDED THAN IS JUST IN THE STORY. IT IS ESSENTIAL TO AT LEAST SAMPLE THESE LINKS TO BE ABLE TO FOLLOW MY CRITIQUE. NOT RECOMMENDED FOR ANYONE WITH LITTLE FREE TIME.
--
I may be drawing a foregone conclusion based on the fact that I'm not really sure who 'your' band in particular is. But this was where I was heading with my previous entry about being pretentious, which in itself became something of a rant about how a certain website has shaped my personality here on the web.
Has it affected others similarly? Of course it has. People who not only feel but now (thanks to the internet) know they have the power to express themselves as unbridled as they possibly can in an untamed environment take full advantage of this and are indirectly responsible for the rise in average blood pressure here in the U.S. The first person who anonymously posts "I hate Jews, blacks, and black Jews alike" gets a flood of email once a few hundred or thousand hits are made on the entry and finds himself with a handful of "fuck you"s and "your a fag" (I know it's actually 'you're,' but mind you, I'm trying to emulate the average internet trolling imbecile.) messages that do nothing more than amuse him.
And why does this amuse him? Because he knows what he has intended to happen HAS happened, and it's what he was looking for all along: to get a rise out of somebody. My particular knowledge of the universe here known as the internet is rather small, namely porn from the old days or random games here and there, but a couple of my favorites are particularly a douchebag who has become known as merely "Maddox" and another douchebag who brands himself as "Dr. David Thorpe." With the amount of attention these guys receive due to what they write, it was only a matter of time before one of them became a published bestseller. Guess which one without looking it up.
A few examples of the articles written by this pair are as follows: a social commentary on women, blue collar america gets a wake-up call, a zing marathon on any and all types of music, and an objective view of various musical personalities. There's a little criticism for everybody, and there are several reasons why I read these articles avidly. For starters, I'm a grammar nazi, which for the layman reads the idea that I'm an admirer of anyone who takes the time to make anything they know will be read by more than 3 people presentable as a thesis. Secondly, they at least make you THINK they know what they're talking about, and thirdly, I'm a fan of the shock jock strategy... which means that I'm fully aware that there's no possible way anyone could be THAT moronic and suspend my disbelief long enough to see, you guessed it, how people respond.
A few more links: fans of Coheed and Cambria, reader mail, people don't like Maddox, and more mail.
We've already gone over why they don't let the hate-mail bother them. But the aforementioned are not only testaments to their getting the job done, but also are solid evidence that some people are as ignorant as these guys assume we all are, and their responses do not help the case for us that "get it." Notice how sophomoric the responses are and the suspicious absence of anything that remotely resembles a lucid thought. There's a reason for that as well, and I'll let you figure that out.
But it's great entertainment, at least for me. It's akin to watching lions at a zoo, in all their glory, caged, of course... With the zookeepers specifically telling the children not to put their hands through the cage, at which the children scoff, completely disregard, and proceed to get their fingers bitten off by agitated lion cubs. Yes, I'd laugh at that.
# posted by bosstoonlou : 1:37 AM
