If you're reading this, you're part of the illusion
December 18, 2018 6:11 PM   Subscribe

"Threatin had become an international laughing stock, after a small army of internet sleuths revealed that he had tried to fake his way to stardom using paid Facebook likes, YouTube views and bots. He had uploaded deceptively edited film footage that appeared to show him playing to sold-out crowds, lied about a non-existent award and album sales, completely fabricated an entire US tour, and used it all to secure a 10-city tour of Europe and the UK. As it would turn out, that was all just the tip of the iceberg."
posted by Grandysaur (65 comments total) 26 users marked this as a favorite
 
Oh my, so glad to see this story here. Though let's give credit where it's due for Metalsucks going wall-to-wall Threatin, and being seriously displeased with the BBC coverage. And, and again. As a lover of all things fraudulent, this is a little Christmas present to me.
posted by hilberseimer at 6:22 PM on December 18, 2018 [6 favorites]


The problem with the "you're all part of my grand illusion" narrative is the whole problem with the quality of the work which is, to the ear and eyes of this metal enthusiast, well, desperately cheesy and lacking even a modicum of self-awareness. Not to mention the un-ironic use of "fake news" being terrible and ridiculous, not to sound harsh given my deep pleasure at the entirety of this mess (save of course for the British bartenders, whom I'm sure deserve better treatment). Important too that this is basically everywhere: here, here and, here, just to name a few. Insert requisite "false metal" comment at your leisure.
posted by hilberseimer at 6:33 PM on December 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


It's not trivially cheap to arrange all the stuff he did, including airfare for a band, hotel rental, etc., even if you're going way econo-trip and giving the guys a $300 per 10-days per diem. Plus, setting up and maintaining all that fake internet presence isn't trivially cheap in dollars or in time. Hope he enjoys his 15 minutes, I guess, for what it cost him.
posted by tclark at 6:38 PM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


He definitely would've hit it big in the goddamn '90s
posted by NoMich at 6:46 PM on December 18, 2018 [6 favorites]


The economics are absolutely the most bonkers part of this after the raw obsessiveness of the effort it took to fake a label, management company, interviews, comments, et. al.. But yeah, totally expensive.
posted by hilberseimer at 6:47 PM on December 18, 2018


Sorry I'll back away from the hijack. Just really love this story.
posted by hilberseimer at 6:49 PM on December 18, 2018


I'm kind of sympathetic to this guy. He got his kicks, didn't really hurt anybody. As I understand it, he paid for the fake tickets, so it's not even that the venues were out much. But if you've got the money and you want to play in Europe, why not, man?
posted by kevinbelt at 7:06 PM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


It was hilarious watching all this play out in real time on UK musician Facebook. Having been a promoter as well as being in several bands, I see the difference between Threatin and your typical run-of-the-mill alternative metal band as one of degree rather than kind, and probably a smaller degree than you'd think.

End of the day, everyone got paid everything that was agreed - in some cases more. Other than this being a full on tour by an American band, it was an utterly unremarkable story.
posted by Dysk at 7:11 PM on December 18, 2018 [5 favorites]


He didn't pay for the tickets, he told the venues that the band had sold the tickets when they hadn't.

Let's not give this scammer any more views or attention. He knowingly screwed over a lot of people to pursue a dream that was entirely - like 100% - selfish. Investing that same amount of time and effort into improving his music, building a local fanbase and growing from there never seemed to occur to him.

He's the cultural equivalent of an MLM scheme or bitcoin miners or something similar... something fraudulent and cheap, made in a cracked copy of Premier. Fuck him.
posted by Spacelegoman at 7:12 PM on December 18, 2018 [34 favorites]


[Threatin] admits that friction within his family did precipitate his cutting off contact with Scott and his parents, but he says that what really sent him to California was a sudden, violent coughing fit that landed him bent over the sink, choking out blood. Without going to a doctor, he said, he simply assumed he was dying and decided to make some dramatic decisions. [emphasis mine]

I think this is the key sentence. They don't mention his health again, so maybe he's dying and maybe he isn't. i'm sure he hasn't been to a doctor. But regardless, if he had that kind of moment, then doing something incredibly selfish and dramatic and nearly Kaufmann levels of life-as-performance-art as an exiting statement would be an interesting thing to engineer.

Perhaps that's what he was attempting to do. The problem is, he doesn't appear to actually be dying, so now he has to live with his mess.
posted by hippybear at 7:16 PM on December 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


The venues almost certainly took a hit. Even if they cut the venue cut of the expected ticket sales (and my understanding is that they didn't), most of income for those sorts of clubs is bar sales. No actual concert goers equals a loss. Most of those venues are on a pretty precarious budget to begin with, so missing out on $1-2k of expected income can be a pretty big deal.
posted by Candleman at 7:45 PM on December 18, 2018 [25 favorites]


A lot doesn't add up here, no matter which lens you look at it through. For starters, how on earth did he get the money to pull this off? Why do he and his wife -- who seem like they're perfectly capable of at least pretending to have social lives -- live like hermits, only interacting with one another? He's apparently musically talented enough to record an entire album by himself, regardless of how banal the end result might be. Why is there seemingly no history of him playing in bands, with the exception of the one he played in with his brother? Did he just buy a bunch of recording equipment and learn on his own? And, if so, again, where did he get the money to do that? Even if he did throw everything into an "I'm going to die and this is how I want to go out" last hurrah, he must have either had some kind of massive inheritance or robbed a bank.

It all makes me wonder if he's a kind of J.T. Leroy kind of production -- e.g., an art project alter ego of someone who is genuinely well-established.
posted by treepour at 8:02 PM on December 18, 2018 [18 favorites]


Batshit Level: 5
posted by medusa at 8:10 PM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


The economics are absolutely the most bonkers part of this after the raw obsessiveness of the effort it took to fake a label, management company, interviews, comments, et. al.. But yeah, totally expensive.

Threatin may be lying, but he said he financed all this with his savings from his job flipping burgers. I kind of think that may be the story. It's just that easy, and cheap to throw together a bunch of fake documentation, set up fake companies, websites, create internet users, etc.
posted by xammerboy at 8:10 PM on December 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


Threatin may be lying, but

okay think for a second about what you're saying here

Good to see the MetalSucks followup.
posted by Merus at 8:12 PM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


“I understand that,” he shrugged. “That’s part of the fascination.”

Okay but who talks like this?! Next time someone compliments my shoes I'm going to reply, "That's part of the fascination."
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:15 PM on December 18, 2018 [24 favorites]


I love a good nonsense con, but this one seems not totally thought out.
But I guess he got pretty far for someone with limited means.

It seems pretty likely he was behind exposing the fraud because there seems to be no way in hell this was going to work otherwise. No one was going to the shows, it's pretty easy to look up whether or not his records charted. The story was only going to hold together as long as it did whether he outed himself or not, but would it have gotten as much attention if he hadn't?
posted by bongo_x at 8:31 PM on December 18, 2018


He already has the makings of a documentary in raw footage. If completed, it will be likely be viewed immediately from the print coverage, and it will likely pay off. Such projects have worked to make bands famous overnight. The wild card is more related to infamy than talent.
posted by Brian B. at 10:28 PM on December 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


I think this is the key sentence. They don't mention his health again, so maybe he's dying and maybe he isn't. i'm sure he hasn't been to a doctor. But regardless, if he had that kind of moment, then doing something incredibly selfish and dramatic and nearly Kaufmann levels of life-as-performance-art as an exiting statement would be an interesting thing to engineer.

There's no reason to think he had this kind of moment. The guy is a habitual liar. It is unsurprising that a liar's story is not "I moved after burning every bridge I had back home" but rather some crap about almost dying, conveniently unwitnessed and undocumented.
posted by mark k at 10:31 PM on December 18, 2018 [21 favorites]


There's no reason to think he had this kind of moment. The guy is a habitual liar. It is unsurprising that a liar's story is not "I moved after burning every bridge I had back home" but rather some crap about almost dying, conveniently unwitnessed and undocumented.

I half wonder if the reason he fell out with the family is because he burned through their goodwill with some form of the Munchausen lie.
posted by scalefree at 10:48 PM on December 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


I had the displeasure of dating a pathological liar, and read a ton of stuff about these kinds of related disorders.

The 'I was throwing up blood, man' thing fits into a number of common manipulator/liar/psychopath patterns. They invent deadly health conditions just as much as they invent get-rich/famous-quick schemes.

Come to think of it, My First Psychopath both embezzled half a million dollars in super brazen manner, and (many years later when I knew him) also invented an alarming case of blood vomit when there was some reason to create a misdirection.
posted by twoplussix at 11:53 PM on December 18, 2018 [12 favorites]


I think this is the key sentence. They don't mention his health again, so maybe he's dying and maybe he isn't. i'm sure he hasn't been to a doctor. But regardless, if he had that kind of moment, then doing something incredibly selfish and dramatic and nearly Kaufmann levels of life-as-performance-art as an exiting statement would be an interesting thing to engineer.

Another story that would have been ruined by having a civilised first-world healthcare system, much like Breaking Bad.
posted by acb at 2:00 AM on December 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


There are an awful lot of tremendous artists who had the same instinct for self-publicity, but they were ... well ... interesting. I suspect the problem stems from his self-centredness.

(One might say narcissism, but it's actually possible to cause a lot of problems with simple self-centredness, without actually dipping into that kind of pathology.)

Someone like David Jones of Bromley might have had the same chutzpah, but he also had curiosity and needed other people to get things done - because of that he was able to learn how to do things; to recognise, acknowledge and learn from failure; to build a team of specialists (even quite early on), who were able to do things to a very high standard, leaving him with the time and energy to concentrate on the things he was good at. Consequently he became David Bowie (a persona and role, and a product of the team he directed).

Nowadays it's possible to do it all yourself, but you're not going to be at a high professional standard for very much of it - maybe, what, 5%? - and the effort and energy needed for the other 95% are going to impact one's ability to maintain and develop one's core skills.

The other thing is that Mr Threatin's core skills are probably those of the manager - the hustling, the promotion, the story-building. He's simply performing a lot of the standard issue bullshit the music industry has always run on, just at a budget level, which makes it noticeable and silly. Were he given a band who were capable of attracting attention themselves just playing in a room, who knows what he could achieve? If we want a fun music industry we probably need more people like him - the Simon Napier Bells, the Peter Grants, the Larry Parnes (though hopefully with none of their more extreme tendencies) - but not necessarily on stage.
posted by Grangousier at 2:04 AM on December 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


Nnnnnnnah, I think the "this was all part of the master plan" sounds too much like ".....I meant to do that."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:18 AM on December 19, 2018 [5 favorites]


Oh, but they always say that. McClaren said that. Bullshit is a part of the process. If he could learn from it, he could be effective for somebody, but he probably won't, that's the sad thing.
posted by Grangousier at 2:24 AM on December 19, 2018


“I understand that,” he shrugged. “That’s part of the fascination.”

Okay but who talks like this?!


David Bowie? Freddie Mercury? Not saying that this dude deserves to be in the same room as those guys, but lots of performers are pretty into themselves. It's an adaptive trait if you have a fame-based vocation.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 2:42 AM on December 19, 2018 [5 favorites]


The only way this story could have been better is if he had called the band Catfish.
posted by unliteral at 3:04 AM on December 19, 2018 [15 favorites]


It might have had a different outcome if the music wasn't shit.
posted by chillmost at 3:06 AM on December 19, 2018 [8 favorites]


It seems pretty likely he was behind exposing the fraud

No, MetalSucks already showed it to be yet another lie.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 3:17 AM on December 19, 2018 [10 favorites]


Jared Threatin has a promising career ahead of him in the Trump administration; aren't they looking for a secretary of state or something at the moment?
posted by acb at 4:08 AM on December 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


> He got his kicks, didn't really hurt anybody. As I understand it, he paid for the fake tickets, so it's not even that the venues were out much.

I suspect a night with a fully staffed bar and nobody buying drinks is probably a loss.
posted by ardgedee at 4:59 AM on December 19, 2018 [10 favorites]


Then what the hell is venue hire paying for?
posted by Dysk at 5:19 AM on December 19, 2018


Then what the hell is venue hire paying for?

Presumably the rate they quoted was with the assumption that most of the 180+ presales would turn up and a significant proportion would buy drinks. If there were no punters, they got ripped off.
posted by acb at 5:24 AM on December 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


I played a show once where the bar owner offered to pay us 75% of the guarantee to forget the whole thing and go home. We said no - we needed the gas money.
posted by thelonius at 5:33 AM on December 19, 2018 [7 favorites]


Yeah the main thing separating this guy from actual stardom is actual talent. Which is...both comforting and depressing, in a weird way? Like yeah, malignant narcissism or whatever is going on here is not enough! On the other hand, we totally excuse it when the person is also, you know, good at stuff.

It does make me think of all those larger than life stars as mostly narcissists who got lucky enough to also be talented rather than brilliant artists who fell down a fame hole. Like, maybe the causality went the other way the whole time. In which case...they become kind of terrifying predators? Like the equivalent of Trump: a malignant narcissist who is not very bright, except in a very specific way, who also happened to be born into a fortune, and thus never had to face any consequences for his narcissism. Maybe commercial talent is insulating in the same way.
posted by schadenfrau at 5:33 AM on December 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


or maybe it was half
posted by thelonius at 5:33 AM on December 19, 2018


If you're reading this, you're part of the illusion

am not
posted by entropone at 6:02 AM on December 19, 2018 [5 favorites]


He's apparently musically talented enough to record an entire album by himself

Or is he? That's another thing I began to doubt as I read the article.
posted by clawsoon at 6:10 AM on December 19, 2018


As someone who goes to a lot of small gigs in my city, including niche metal bands, I'm always stunned at how these places survive. It makes me grateful that people are putting in the energy and resources to bring live music to the public.

Not the easy stuff, not the big aging bands past their best milking nostalgia, not the simple formulaic things that aren't bad but you've heard the basic thing thousands of times, but the risky, unconventional, talented, passionate things that will never be big but are damn excellent. There's a place for everything but I'm glad there are venues putting on small unconventional music for people who don't want to necessarily hear and see (and have confirmed) what they already know. It baffles me sometimes how these venues keep going (they aren't I suppose).

This kind of scam is damaging to these places. It's not harmless. You can't put on gigs to nobody and survive. You could pay half the money to a smaller band who will at least have 30 people turn up, but you can't do this.

Not only that but this self-obsessed moron reminds me of the cynical, smarter than everyone, pretend not to give a fuck dude that seems to be the root cause of so many problems. That's a cover for his own ego; he legitimately wanted to be famous and got caught and then backed behind some excuse of "art". I wish he'd just put that energy into becoming a more caring and thoughtful person, or at least into his musical talent so he could actually play something honest and worthwhile.

I suppose he has found fans and made money out of it. Bit of a shame really.
posted by captaincasserole at 6:21 AM on December 19, 2018 [15 favorites]


So, is the music that his brother Scott Eames makes any good?
posted by clawsoon at 6:25 AM on December 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


You can't put on gigs to nobody and survive.

No, but you totally can by charging outside promoters to do that. The few smaller indie venues in my town that have survived (and they were always the big gorillas in that space, even if they're small and indie compared to the HMV Institute or whatever they're called now) very much fit that mold.
posted by Dysk at 6:37 AM on December 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


Bowie also had something of a sense of humor; when he was still a teenager, he formed "The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-Haired Men" and even got on the telly, playing the part of the sincere if slightly naive idealistic advocate perfectly. Or maybe it's not a put-on! But either way, he's providing some value for the people paying him attention; you don't at all get the impression that he's just using people to get grist for a screenplay.

Threatin lied to venues and paid his band starvation wages; he's not cool or cute. Maybe the bass player thought it was worth it, at least for the stories; he got to see the Eiffel Tower. But the best likely outcome is that Threatin is out a whole bunch of money (which I doubt that he saved up from a burger-flipping job) with nothing to show for it.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:01 AM on December 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


I kinda wish people would stop giving this guy attention. He seems like he needs serious psychological help, and I worry for his wife.

Not to mention there are thousands of bands less well known than this chump who could use the publicity instead.
posted by SystematicAbuse at 7:10 AM on December 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


whatever to this dude and his Walter Mitty Metalhead delusions. People got up, went to work in the bars expecting to make money, took him seriously, and now this. Empty Dimebag and his Evil Wife are not worth any of this nonsense.
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 7:19 AM on December 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


It does make me think of all those larger than life stars as mostly narcissists who got lucky enough to also be talented rather than brilliant artists who fell down a fame hole.

But also consider artists who are succesful and have a long-term career but who are not huge stars. Take, oh, Aimee Mann as an example. She seriously has her shit together with business, and has to work very hard at it, at all aspects of promotion and record sales and touring and management of her career. Probably that takes up more of her time and energy than she can spend writing and rehearsing and recording and playing music. I don't see any reason to think of her as a narcissist, but to have a career at all, you have to spend a great deal of energy promoting yourself. It makes me wonder how many people out there have the talent and the creativity to make great music, but are too slack or disorganized or prone to self-doubt to make a go of it?
posted by thelonius at 7:23 AM on December 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


Threatin's "This was my plan all along!" defense is a sad, half-assed attempt to save his pride by going meta, much like Shia LeBouf's insistence that he wasn't a serial plagiarist, he was a performance artist making a statement about the free flow of ideas and how copyright law hindered it.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:36 AM on December 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


Threatin lied to venues and paid his band starvation wages; he's not cool or cute.

Watch the movie called Hired Gun sometime. Many bands actually do that. One of the stories (not even the worst) is that a member of a famous band asks for a raise from a very famous band leader, and they get him a job delivering pizza.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:54 AM on December 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


Bowie notoriously paid poorly, btw
posted by thelonius at 8:24 AM on December 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


The self-promotion aspect is why I always tell well-meaning relatives that I'm not interested in trying to make money from my photography. (Well, that and I don't see what's so special about my photography as compared to a million other people's.) It just seems so incredibly soul crushing. I think you'd have to have a pretty big ego just to be able to do it without wanting to just die.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 8:30 AM on December 19, 2018 [9 favorites]


The Eames live a very small life together. They say they do not socialise with anyone but each other. They rarely go out, and when they do, it’s to drive around and talk.
Yeah that's a huge fucking red flag right there.
posted by juice boo at 8:54 AM on December 19, 2018 [14 favorites]


I read about this at the time and I must be really dense but I just can't see the motivation for it - was he trying to create some hype and convince people he had fans in the hope that some actual fans would materialise? He obviously went out of pocket for the "tour". I'm morbidly fascinated by fraud and people who transparently lie but in this case I'm not sure who he was fooling - he didn't get money or adulation. He had the privilege of playing to a few mostly empty rooms. And all those fake email addresses! What a lot of work for no gain. I sort of envy his work ethic (not the pathological lying).
posted by the cat's pyjamas at 8:56 AM on December 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


1. The falsemetal tag is wonderful. I'm not saying it should get used a lot, because that would be a bad world, but pretty cool. 2. This was up on here a few weeks ago: https://www.metafilter.com/177586/Threatin
posted by Snowishberlin at 9:09 AM on December 19, 2018


treepour: It all makes me wonder if he's a kind of J.T. Leroy kind of production -- e.g., an art project alter ego of someone who is genuinely well-established.

I came here to say something similar. Marketing companies and record labels and such probably wouldn’t go and hook up with a fleeting story like Threatin, which will probably disappear shortly after the new year. They have enough resources to create their own fake band, with better music, that can actually make them money playing at venues with actual audience members. Take WULYF in the early 2010s. They were a pretty big “indie”/hipster band sometime around 2011 or so. They had gigantic press before they had released any sort of album, and their single ended up selling for exorbitant prices on eBay. They were managed by some pretty high up marketing company, and while the band was “real” (in so much that there was actually music created and released by “real musicians”) it seems more like the band was put together as a marketing campaign for the Coachella generation rather than an actual band that busted their asses and worked hard to get to where they were. For what it’s worth, I love WULYF’s music, and they capitalized on a weird moment of Satanic imagery that was huge with millennials at that time (witch house and all those bands with triangles and upside-down crosses, for example. WULYF stands for “World United! Lucifer Youth Foundation”.)

Threatin allegedly made his own music, but then faked everything else. This isn’t too much different, except that he was his own manager and he didn’t do a great job at marketing besides making this whole hoax story thing.

As some have mentioned above, his “health scare” may have even be faked. I’ll take it one step further: I think his brother is in on the whole thing as a foil to make Threatin appear to be more “normal”. “Oh, he’s my brother, he ditched our family a long time ago. It hurts my feelings! I wish my brother would come back!” It adds a weird sort of tragedy to the story that the “health scare” doesn’t, and nearly humanizes Threatin.

What I find interesting is how consistent these viral stories play out:

1. Somebody does something ridiculous (in this case creates a fake band and goes on a fake tour.)
2. It falls apart. People are confused. 30 years ago it would end here.
3. People start investigating.
4. Social media lights up the weird story a bit. It goes viral.
5. Either internet outrage or almost devils advocate-like support (“This guy is a piece of shit!” vs “This is modern art. He’s exposing the fakeness of reality that we all imbibe in.”)
6. Ironic support in the form of consumerism (the MetalSucks guy admitted he bought a shirt for a quick laugh that he’ll never wear again. If you have money to blow then whatever, but you are deliberately giving money to a con artist. Bulk Gildan shirts are dirt cheap.)
7. The follow up that appears conclusive. “Here’s what really happened!” whether or not it is really what happened, but it doesn’t matter because...
8. The end. Story dies and is relegated to a footnote, if even that.

I’m more interested in the manipulation of the viral process, and I think any manager or marketer who knows their salt would understand how to exacerbate this process for maximum gain.

It’s also partially interesting that so many people were duped, but I am not in the hard rock scene. I’m not saying I wouldn’t be duped, and I don’t think I’d be looking so far as to be investigating the addresses of supposed booking agencies, but if a band like Threatin was actually playing to thousands of people, and there was supposed video footage of it, I think I would have heard of them (if I were in the hard rock scene), not only in the wider circle of the scene, but from friends talking about them (ye olde “word of mouth”). How is it that so many people fell for this without thinking “okay, who else has heard of this band?” Not too many bands are playing to thousands of people, and when they are, somebody else has actually heard of them.
posted by gucci mane at 10:31 AM on December 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


We truly live in the Age of The Troll.

Talk about a big let down. Of all the periods of humanity, The Iron Age; The Industrial Age; The Atomic Age; The Space Age; The Information Age?

No. We get stuck with The Troll Age. Jesus Christ.
posted by You Stay 'Ere An Make Sure 'E Doesn't Leave at 10:36 AM on December 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


Omg how could I forget Andrew WK. For over a decade now people have been debating whether or not AWK is “real” or a conglomeration of multiple people or what the hell, and yet “he” has sold millions of albums and had tons of gigantic, successful tours. If Threatin had a bit more acumen he could have done something similar.
posted by gucci mane at 10:50 AM on December 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


but if a band like Threatin was actually playing to thousands of people, and there was supposed video footage of it, I think I would have heard of them (if I were in the hard rock scene)

This is no doubt why he came to the UK (and planned other European dates that didn't end up happening). Until stuff properly blows up popularity-wise, we aren't going to hear about bande filling clubs in the states, certainly not all of them. Even if you're in whatever scene. They're still pretty siloed, geographically. Hell, I know shit all about the interesting stuff that's happening in Scotland, and they know shit all about the Midlands. No way we know every underground band, no matter how exciting or up-and-coming, from the states.

And as soon as he'd played a few shows here, the word was well and truly on the grapevine.

Now the venue owners who were happy to take A. N. Random booking agency's word for the popularity of the band, that's where due diligence maybe could've been better done. Especially the ones who proceeded with their dates after this had hit UK indie musician Facebook and the venues had been contacted explicitly to be warned.
posted by Dysk at 10:55 AM on December 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


Omg how could I forget Andrew WK.

I'm surprised that hasn't come up, that seems like his obvious roll model from what I know.
He just isn't doing it that well. And others have done it better than Mr. WK.

It seems pretty likely he was behind exposing the fraud

No, MetalSucks already showed it to be yet another lie.


I guess that's just another sign he doesn't quite have the talent to pull any of this off. I don't see how anyone could think this was going to get past the part where they started playing shows. I still think outing himself could have been his fall back plan, certainly not the point of the whole thing as he says.

He made it look like a lot of people were interested, but didn't actually get a lot of people interested, and didn't seem to have a plan to get anyone to show up.
posted by bongo_x at 11:28 AM on December 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


1. His wife looks shockingly normal in the article's photographs. I wonder what her story is, and what she's getting out of all this.

2. It kinda sounds like a lot of people didn't make it to the update at the end of the article -- it turns out that he's lying about emailing news outlets to expose himself ahead of time.
posted by crazy with stars at 11:38 AM on December 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


Hmm, I don't think that update was there when I first clicked on the link here.
posted by umber vowel at 11:45 AM on December 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


> 2. It kinda sounds like a lot of people didn't make it to the update at the end of the article -- it turns out that he's lying about emailing news outlets to expose himself ahead of time.

because it wasn't there when I read the article yesterday. That update was posted today.
posted by komara at 11:51 AM on December 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


Previously.
posted by jordantwodelta at 11:54 AM on December 19, 2018


I feel really bad for the members of the hired band. They were basically conned into pouring a lot of time and money directly into someone else's ego (presumably antisocial and/or narcissistic personality disorder).

Here's an interview the the drummer.
posted by pingu at 12:04 PM on December 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


Omg how could I forget Andrew WK [...] If Threatin had a bit more acumen he could have done something similar.
No. Andrew WK has created an art project about Taoist existence in a capitalist reality. His music is entirely about acceptance and love, on multiple levels (whether "explicitly-stated surface level" or "implied multiple-persona abductee" or even "masturbatory art project"). His entire persona across his multiple personas is one of love and community.

Threatin, meanwhile, has actual psychopathic red flags, like refusing to interact with the outside world unless it's for his own self-gain.
posted by juice boo at 12:09 PM on December 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


Band Name of the Day:

Metal von Munchausen.
posted by Lunaloon at 8:26 AM on December 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


Talk about a big let down. Of all the periods of humanity, The Iron Age; The Industrial Age; The Atomic Age; The Space Age; The Information Age?

No. We get stuck with The Troll Age. Jesus Christ.


Could've been worse. You could've been a teenager in the Age of Disco.


(Still bitter after all these years...)
posted by Lunaloon at 8:28 AM on December 20, 2018


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