Punk is that which gnaws at the roots of Yggdrasil
February 13, 2018 2:54 PM   Subscribe

Logan Paul: A Brief Meditation. "They made a kind of monster machine, with every possible lever thrown towards a caustic narcissism, and then they pretend to be fucking surprised when an unbroken stream of monsters emerge."
posted by Sebmojo (65 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
Trolls are the new Punk.

Uhhh

I mean, I'll grant that trolls are maybe the new G. G. Allin?

Logan Paul is...the new Marilyn Manson? Maybe?

Punk came from disaffected youth searching for meaning. Trolls just want to feed everyone their shit. Logan Paul is well-off white privilege gazing into its navel. That's never been punk.
posted by Existential Dread at 3:05 PM on February 13, 2018 [71 favorites]


He's a human manifestation of social network ranking algorithms. That is, he is the sum of the positive reinforcements of Facebook, Twitter, etc. processes that decide what is visible in your timeline and what you have to explicitly navigate to. Facebook is changing their attitude about this effect, Twitter is constantly implored to do the same, and meanwhile the pop culture sausage machine promotes people its software is configured to value, without the software developers (or anybody, really, and certainly not Zuck) knowing what those values are.

Logan Paul (creature) is not making a fool out of them (the wizards), they're producing the fools (shit). Logan Paul is conceivably two algorithm tweaks away from invisibility, but that just means the future will produce some other unintended consequence.

Punk came from disaffected youth searching for meaning

That, and Malcolm McLaren's advertising ideas for Vivienne Westwood's clothing store.
posted by rhizome at 3:08 PM on February 13, 2018 [34 favorites]


Logan Paul is a jackass

YouTube Jackass is probably the most succinct summation one could produce for his career, such as it is.
posted by Existential Dread at 3:12 PM on February 13, 2018


Mod note: Folks, please actually engage with the article on the table. We hashed the Dickwolves stuff out to hell and back and you can go read those discussions if you want, or you can make a specific argument based on *this* content, but don't just bring up old fights reflexively.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 3:17 PM on February 13, 2018 [7 favorites]


As has been pointed out elsewhere, several years ago Logan Paul played the villain on the Gamergate episode of Law & Order: SVU, which is just entirely too spot-on.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 3:18 PM on February 13, 2018 [10 favorites]


i don't want to start a mod back and forth but i also don't want to start a meta, and i do think PA's past shitstirring with deliberately obnoxious and provocative content is relevant to the things hypocritically criticized in the linked article.
posted by poffin boffin at 3:19 PM on February 13, 2018 [13 favorites]


We hashed the Dickwolves stuff out to hell and back

Sorry but I would just like to thank restless_nomad for the glory of this phrase.

posted by howfar at 3:21 PM on February 13, 2018 [10 favorites]


Yes, I'm not sure I agree it is reflexively bringing up an old fight to point out that Tycho deciding to take this tone would seem to show a remarkable lack of self-insight, given his own history.
posted by halation at 3:22 PM on February 13, 2018 [1 favorite]




Logan Paul bubbling to the top of the YouTube algorithms is the equivalent of music studios giving tiny contracts to a zillion different artists and when some new sound comes along they find the artist they own that most closely fits the zeitgeist and promote the hell out of it.

That is not very punk.
posted by straight at 3:22 PM on February 13, 2018 [8 favorites]


I hear Wired and Jacobin have merged to form Dysentery (no apologies to Woody Allen)
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 3:23 PM on February 13, 2018


I feel like that's all I really know about said individual.
posted by Zalzidrax at 3:29 PM on February 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


Trolls just want to feed everyone their shit.

“All trolls are equal, but some trolls are more equal than others.”
~Erich "Blairmann" Fromm
posted by lazycomputerkids at 3:31 PM on February 13, 2018


Logan Paul is punk

Duchamp, Cage, and Baudrillard were all shitposters

David Foster Wallace was an authorkin, the spirit of an author in the body of a non writer.

King Solomon was the greatest comment moderator of all time.

The only escape from the endless suffering of death and rebirth is to stop logging in to social media.
posted by idiopath at 3:32 PM on February 13, 2018 [24 favorites]


The audience is fairly clear on this point: they’re rewarding the most extreme content they can find with viewership and direct dollars.

i mean. this is coming from a guy who gleefully sold tshirts specifically to mock people who asked him to stop making fun of sexual assault, and he sounds wholly disconnected from any part he might have played in helping create the circumstances under which shitheads like logan paul are currently flourishing and profiting.
posted by poffin boffin at 3:33 PM on February 13, 2018 [29 favorites]


Not a knock, because I enjoy him enjoying his words but Tycho/Jerry's posts really should have a purple background.
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 3:35 PM on February 13, 2018


Granted, I'm pretty far and away from "punk", but isn't it supposed to be anti-establishment? I think these days especially, "trolls" punch down a lot. I guess there's a certain symmetry in that they were both co-opted by Neo-Nazis.

I was reading the Wikipedia entry on Punk, and I was like… Writing a Wikipedia entry on Punk is probably the least Punk thing there is

I can't believe what a bunch of nerds we are. We're looking up punk in a dictionary.
posted by Query at 3:36 PM on February 13, 2018 [17 favorites]


yeah tycho trying to make any kind of Learned Point about shit like this is p sad. even if he made good points (imagine!!!!) his cultural position sort of prevents him from being a maker of those points. this is a long comment to say i wish vidya guys learned when to keep quiet
posted by nixon's meatloaf at 3:38 PM on February 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


Is it time for everyone to hate Logan Paul now? I hope so, he seems a worthy sacrifice for The Harvest. I mean he's pretty enough, but other than that.. Metafilter is perhaps too old a demographic to understand his appeal.

My own personal hate story was him showing up on Top Chef. Where everyone on the show was like "uh? who? he's famous on instagram?" and he proceeded to make an ignorant and useless fool of himself. Still better than John Besh or Johnny Iuzzini, two other Very Special Guests who were edited out entirely in production because the producers later leraned they are sexual harassment scumbags.
posted by Nelson at 3:38 PM on February 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


Misunderstands punk more completely than John Roderick!
First class troll tho.
posted by rodlymight at 3:39 PM on February 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


You know, it will probably be old man Logan Paul in ten years that will put up a YouTube vlog on how those trendy new AR-Dronehive-ShitMakers have taken things way too far.
posted by FJT at 3:39 PM on February 13, 2018 [9 favorites]


yeah funny how absolute shitboys get recuperated into being staid grown men who dont have to own their shit. weird
posted by nixon's meatloaf at 3:41 PM on February 13, 2018 [17 favorites]


The only escape from the endless suffering of death and rebirth is to stop logging in to social media.

It is the framework which changes with each new technology and not just the picture within the frame. ~Marshall McLuhan

Now...if I just had the antecedent for Marshall's "IT"...heh,
posted by lazycomputerkids at 3:41 PM on February 13, 2018 [3 favorites]


Jesus, that was like .782 on the Quincy scale.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 3:42 PM on February 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


Metafilter is perhaps too old a demographic to understand his appeal.

I am not convinced there is any? Can you put it into words? I am pretty sure this is an honest-to-goodness real-life instance of No, It's The Children Who Are Wrong.
posted by halation at 3:43 PM on February 13, 2018 [17 favorites]


I can't believe what a bunch of nerds we are. We're looking up punk in a dictionary.
Speak for yourself: I define it as style over substance.

It's misleading to suppose there's any basic difference between education and entertainment. This distinction merely relieves people of the responsibility of looking into the matter.
~Marshall McLuhan
posted by lazycomputerkids at 3:44 PM on February 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


Metafilter: the spirit of an author in the body of a non-writer.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 3:45 PM on February 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


I don't mind my comment being deleted, because maybe it wasn't worded clearly enough, but I don't want to rehash the whole dickwolves controversy so much as point out that you have to consider the source with this particular op-ed. I don't need fucking Jerry Holkins to point out that Logan Paul is an insensitive dumbass. This is the pot calling the kettle black.
posted by axiom at 3:47 PM on February 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


Metafilter: human manifestation of social network ranking algorithms.
posted by sammyo at 3:49 PM on February 13, 2018 [3 favorites]


He looks a lot like a young Woody Harrelson. I’ve been noticing this a lot, lately. There’s that Tom Cruise looking guy on This Is Us, and that Johnny Depp looking kid on Fear The Walking Dead. And that Matt Damon looking guy on the second season of Fargo. And that Brad Pitt dude in that british viking show. Gotta be a trend.

I don’t think this Woody looking kid is gonna get a real show contract, though. Not like those other guys. But I’ve been wrong before.
posted by valkane at 4:02 PM on February 13, 2018


Every time I think we can't go any lower, there's a trapdoor. It's shit all the way down
posted by Marky at 4:03 PM on February 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


The only thing I knew about PA prior to reading this post was the old controversy (which I was aware of, but didn't follow). It's literally the first thing I thought of when I realised where the link was heading, so I imagine for anyone involved in the fight at the time, it's going to be context that's hard to set aside.

That said, ad hominem fallacy, stopped clocks, etc. While I disagree with the ostensible point of the essay [punk was youth counterculture that upset people; Logan Paul is young and everyone hates him; ergo Logan Paul is indistinguishable from Johnny Rotten] - his fundamental point that algorithms are bad and social media is bad and video content is bad and everyone should just get the fuck off my lawn seems fair and reasonable to me.

He looks a lot like a young Woody Harrelson.

This is also a correct opinion. Like a young Woody Harrelson with the neck of Henry Rollins.
posted by chappell, ambrose at 4:25 PM on February 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


At rock bottom, you know which way is up.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 4:28 PM on February 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


The thing I find frustrating about this is that a fair number of my favorite YTers are leaving the platform because the "advertiser friendly" algorithm is demonetizing them, causing them to lose the vast majority of their income because most impressions happen within hours of posting. These are people who play games like Minecraft and Darkest Dungeon, never swear or discuss adult topics, who just play video games with creativity or comment on how games are put together while playing them. THEY are not suitable for advertising, apparently. But jackasses like Logan Paul and Pew Die Pie have human beings who ultimately decide to yank their advertising, and are apparently not subject to the auto-demonetizing process that is breaking smaller creators who haven't hurt anyone into bits.

I hate YT. They deserve to fall apart.
posted by xyzzy at 4:39 PM on February 13, 2018 [13 favorites]


I hate YT. They deserve to fall apart.

You might enjoy the LA Review of Books's long, long article articulating How Youtube Blew It, by Aymar Jean Christian.
posted by chappell, ambrose at 4:52 PM on February 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


Here is a much better piece of writing about Logan Paul and his breed: Prank channels on YouTube should take a lesson from Jackass
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:56 PM on February 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


He looks a lot like a young Woody Harrelson. I’ve been noticing this a lot, lately. There’s that Tom Cruise looking guy on This Is Us, and that Johnny Depp looking kid on Fear The Walking Dead. And that Matt Damon looking guy on the second season of Fargo. And that Brad Pitt dude in that british viking show. Gotta be a trend.

One of my perennial research projects is to confirm my suspicion that casting directors use photos of already- and previously-famous actors as children (or just younger) when running auditions, favoring those who look like "a young X." Did 4 year old Gretchen Mol look like 4 year old Marilyn Monroe? Stuff like that, and I really think it's a thing, or if it's not it seems like an oversight in casting economics because the studios already know what looks audiences like and they are run by monsters possibly only slightly more cynical than myself.
posted by rhizome at 5:12 PM on February 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


Here is a much better piece of writing about Logan Paul and his breed

[Irritable comment deleted when I realised that you were referring to the OP, rather than replying to the comment immediately above].

For anyone else confused, DrFedora's link is about Logan Paul being a jackass, but no Jackass. The LARB link is a deep dive into the history of YT's business model, and why it's broken.
posted by chappell, ambrose at 5:52 PM on February 13, 2018


I guess I'm a bit confused why, compared to things like outright white supremacist propaganda on YouTube, some guy being disrespectful to a dead rat is apparently the tipping point. Or I guess I'm not really confused; it's because advertisers only really care about the appearance of propriety.
posted by Pyry at 6:36 PM on February 13, 2018


🎼 Just don't look.🎵
posted by 4ster at 6:43 PM on February 13, 2018 [4 favorites]


I just sort of assumed he was a white supremicist as well TBH.
posted by Artw at 6:46 PM on February 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


THEY are not suitable for advertising, apparently. But jackasses like Logan Paul and Pew Die Pie have human beings who ultimately decide to yank their advertising, and are apparently not subject to the auto-demonetizing process that is breaking smaller creators who haven't hurt anyone into bits.

It's not about suitability or decency. The loud assholes make YT more money, so they support them until they're too much of a liability. The nice quiet people you follow don't earn much for YT and so are ignored. It's what rhizome is saying above, that Paul and his ilk are the result of the current incentive structure of social media.
posted by Sangermaine at 7:36 PM on February 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


This is a thin nothing of an article that only is remarkable because of the implicit irony in the person writing it. Anyhow, I wonder how much money PAX gets by facilitating the same sort of culture that Tycho, suddenly and conveniently, is sick and tired of? How much ad revenue did they scrape off of their forums that supported and germinated all of this?

The essential argument, after he gets done mumbling incoherently about punk, seems to be that democratization and direct monetization of the Internet has allowed assholes to come to the top, while ignoring the two decades of abusive culture that the original site admins like Tycho worked to facilitate. Well, he's sort of right, YouTube has a lot to answer for. But so do assholes like Tycho.
posted by codacorolla at 8:29 PM on February 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


Two thoughts.

A.) I read this this morning. I can't really get behind the logic that punks and trolls both piss off the g'rups, therefore they are the same. Obnoxious jerks like Paul have always been a dime a dozen, there's nothing counter about their culture, imo. They're not so much gnawing at the roots as they are the inevitable fruit.

B.) I like Mike and Jerry. People hug them at PAX and it's not because they taze rat corpses.
posted by Horkus at 8:42 PM on February 13, 2018




The loud assholes make YT more money, so they support them until they're too much of a liability.
That doesn't make any sense. The entire reason for the "advertiser friendly" algorithm is because Unilever and a bunch of other huge advertisers came to Google and said, "Quit showing our soap ads next to white supremacist rants and dead bodies or we'll stop buying ads." I find it difficult to believe that the hugely popular troll YTers are the ones escaping the notice of Unilever & co.

And while many of the YTers hit on the regular by auto-demonetization that I watch are relatively low sub channels, a couple of them have gold Play buttons.
posted by xyzzy at 10:13 PM on February 13, 2018 [3 favorites]


"his fundamental point that algorithms are bad and social media is bad and video content is bad and everyone should just get the fuck off my lawn seems fair and reasonable to me."

While I hear what you're saying, when I log onto youtube, I have a few recipes, some episodes of late night television, some vox videos, and some music videos that I'm shown. It was algorithms that 'found' these for me, and I'm pretty comfortable with that. Youtube isn't suggesting that I might want to watch some MRA videos, white nationalist videos, or even Taylor Swift.

So yeah, I can see the argument that shitty voices are amplified and monitized, but the thing isn't showing me the awful shit that I don't want to see. It might be keeping me in my bubble, but given shit like what is described above is apparently outside of my bubble, it feels like a pretty comfortable bubble to me. Thanks algorithms.
posted by el io at 12:20 AM on February 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


He looks a lot like a young Woody Harrelson. I’ve been noticing this a lot, lately. There’s that Tom Cruise looking guy on This Is Us, and that Johnny Depp looking kid on Fear The Walking Dead. And that Matt Damon looking guy on the second season of Fargo. And that Brad Pitt dude in that british viking show. Gotta be a trend. -- valkane

Um, well... I hate to break this to you, but you know how some grandparents can't describe anyone without saying they look like a Jimmy Cagney in his prime or a young Greta Garbo?

♥️
posted by rokusan at 12:54 AM on February 14, 2018 [8 favorites]


Yeah, I don't think that it's rehashing old fights simply to point out that Jerry Holkins is reaping the whirlwind, given that his own come-to-Jesus moment came very reluctantly and he even marketed some merch connected to it. And there's no real acknowledgement of such in the post that this FPP is formed around. I don't think that it would be asking too much for a little reflective self-awareness and even some contrition.

Whatever punk is or was--"that which gnaws at the roots of Yggdrasil" comes off as more cute phrase-mongering than anything else--for a while, punk became just another way for asshole jocks to be assholes, and so did PA, until some very persistent and sincere public criticism forced Holkins and Mike Krahulik to consider otherwise. I'd also throw in that comment that Going To Maine linked to as another example of someone (Pastabagel) confronting that sort of attitude head-on. The blue seemed to undergo a sea change of sorts around 2007, and I think that it's a much nicer place than it used to be, and maybe part of the reason for that is that someone had the nerve to call out people who asserted that Mr. Rogers, of all people, was "creepy." Not just shaking their head woefully and going, gosh, what has this world come to.
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:02 AM on February 14, 2018 [3 favorites]


Logan Paul being a jackass, but no Jackass.

Yeah, I remember when Jackass came along, somewhere near the year 2000. I had been a fan of all kinds of irreverent, self-deprecating, black comedy and pranksters in general for most of my life. Even the Three Stooges, though they were a bit hit and miss in practice, I approved of in principle. I really hated Jackass though. It wasn't funny. It wasn't interesting or clever. It was, in my view, stupid, possibly on occasion physically dangerous, and relied primarily on being deliberately offensive to garner the massive amount of attention that it got. I didn't care for it. Pretty much the same feeling as today's trolls pretending to joke about being nazis. These guys were pretending to joke about being stupid. Or were they actually stupid? How can we know? Oooh, what a compelling mystery. Jackass seemed like, not quite the beginning, but a notable early step in the end of an era where transgressive comedy had been a useful indicator of some kind of merit. It was popular enough though, and short-attention-span friendly enough, that it seems only natural that its successors, inferior in technique though they may be, are taking over large parts of youtube.

If I were in charge over at the YouTube, I'd start by giving a larger share of revenue to smaller channels. As in, pay out the ad money at a higher rate on videos with somewhere less than half a million views, maybe even more for 10-100k. That's where all the good ones are mostly, you'll never find them all by hand, and it could compensate at least partly for the attention and various algorithmic advantages given to the big stars who as a group you don't want to get overly reliant on. Do something to help the video creators that are on the margin of success or failure. Don't get so caught up trying (and failing) to compete with Netflix that you forget what the site's about and what made it great.
posted by sfenders at 5:42 AM on February 14, 2018


"that which gnaws at the roots of Yggdrasil" comes off as more cute phrase-mongering than anything else.

Tycho has always had a penchant for excessively flowery language in his columns.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:19 AM on February 14, 2018


Bingo squares for online conversations about punk:

(1) "Punk is about anti-establishment politics, the DIY ethic, a source of community for marginalized people, etc."

(2) "LOL well actually, punk was created by a fashion designer and a manufactured boy band"

And, like, (2) is not clever. I'll grant that – for better or for worse – the history of punk can't be told without the Sex Pistols. But they were active for, like, three years – four decades ago – and released one album. And all of the punks I know think they're a joke.

Punk is much bigger than this one crappy band. Heck, punk is much bigger than the whole of the UK scene in the 70s. Why, when the word "punk" is mentioned, do people immediately start talking about The Clash? It's weird. If someone tells you that they're into rock, does your mind immediately go to Elvis? I mean, yeah – Elvis was a thing, but that's probably not what they were talking about.

tl;dr: when people are talking about punk, responding with "LOL but the Sex Pistols" is unlikely to be constructive.

More on topic: this isn't the first article to refer to trolling culture as "the new punk". And (as we've seen in this thread), the choice of the word "punk" is more distracting than illuminating.

What they're trying to say, I think, is that trolling culture is a new form of adolescent rebellion. And that's self-evidently true. Trolling is a way for disaffected young men (mostly) to hold up a gleeful middle finger to (what they see as) the establishment. (These dudes live in online bubbles which understand progressivism as a bunch of strident, censorious "SJWs" screeching at them to conform to their orthodoxy.) It's a cheap and easy way to provoke a reaction, and thus to feel powerful.

It's Jackass, radio shock jocks, Sid Vicious wearing a swastika T-shirt – refined and crystallized into runaway toxicity by the peculiar social dynamics of the internet.

It's a profoundly dumb sort of rebellion, of course. But I understand the comparison being made. Trolls troll because it's fun (especially if you're young and feel powerless) to say "fuck you" to the people and systems you resent. Their resentment is just hella misguided.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 9:02 AM on February 14, 2018 [6 favorites]


(Replace "feel powerless" with "feel like you aren't getting what you're entitled to". That's more accurate.)
posted by escape from the potato planet at 9:04 AM on February 14, 2018 [4 favorites]


Reply All posits Logan Paul as a harbinger of doom, which I find hard to disagree with.
posted by orrnyereg at 9:20 AM on February 14, 2018


Bingo squares for online conversations about punk:

(3) "We stopped a triple album, man!"
posted by thelonius at 9:25 AM on February 14, 2018


anem0ne: I'm guessing that you haven't had much direct exposure to punk? It's a lot of different things. Some of it isn't particularly political. But a lot of it is – and the majority of the political stuff is very radical-leftist, and explicitly anti-racist, pro-LGBT, anti-fascist, feminist, etc. Some factions are basically vegan hippies with spikes and (fake) leather jackets. 80s punks so despised Reagan and Thatcher that it's a bit of an in-joke.

Racist punk does exist, of course – and you're correct that (in the US, at least) the punk scene in general tends to be pretty white (although punk scenes thrive in POC communities around the world). And punk doesn't have a perfect track record in accepting women as full members of its community. But it's absolutely not the case that punk in general tends toward racism – quite the opposite, really.

May I ask what your impressions of punk are based on?
posted by escape from the potato planet at 10:56 AM on February 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


(1) "Punk is about anti-establishment politics, the DIY ethic, a source of community for marginalized people, etc."

is it?


black americans and brits started punk, then hardcore in the US, but then were marginalized, as you recognize...you get songs like "white riot" by the clash, you get drop out sub cultures. making your own press and record labels, back when those things mattered

A lot of punk is white dudes and gals making efforts to remove their white privilege or their class privilege via haircuts and tattoos, and failing. so yeah, punk is racist as anything else in a societies based on racial caste, like the US.

but, as it is a stronger tradition of punk to make sure people know who the posers are, Paul is the definition of a poser and a jock. so it would be punk as hell to disallow this shit to claim punk.
posted by eustatic at 11:03 AM on February 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


Thinking more about the Jackass / Logan Paul article, I think it misses the point. The Jackass pranks on themselves were mostly funny*, but any time they did candid camera style stuff involving members of the public they were obnoxious at best. The bad grandpa stuff came out of the later movies and was awful, but the later movies also had really funny moments like the rodeo seesaw etc. Logan Paul just seems to have been inspired by the wrong bits of Jackass (and also independently seems like a dickhead).

*Although even the pranks that they did on themselves could be pretty unpleasant and mean-spirited. Mostly it was an issue of consent: when they volunteered to do something dumb, or it was an artful prank that it was clear that they would take it in good humour - funny. Anything by Bam, who was clearly a jerk - not cool. That thing they did when they pretended a guy was going to get shot and also made him wear a beard made of pubes - yeah, ugh.
posted by chappell, ambrose at 11:42 AM on February 14, 2018


Bingo squares for online conversations about punk:

(4) "It's a complex interplay of cybernetics and economic psychology."
posted by rhizome at 11:44 AM on February 14, 2018 [2 favorites]


*shakes head* I mean, in a lot of ways punk is my favorite musical subgenre, maybe the one I'm most familiar with except perhaps for folk. And I got so heavily into it in high school and college--not so much the dress but absolutely the music--because so much of it was political, because the ethos of punk was so heavily about attempting to do the right thing, whatever it was, and trying to take care of your community. Those were themes that resonated with me, and still do.

And obviously that is by no means all punk, for sure. I mean, you look at skinheads, that came out of punk--and while not all skinheads are/were racist assholes, the racist strains really put a bunch of fear into everyone related, right? But I mean, if I glance through my own playlists--there's things like The Press Corpse and the Prayer of the Refugee and That's So Gay and Rebels With a Cause and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Fuck me, there's Billy Bragg's entire career, not to mention the long and well-established punk tradition of covering old union and labor protection songs. And that's the stuff that's making direct political commentary on current events (more or less), as opposed to things like Take Back the Power or Stop! that are exhorting the audience to get up off their asses and do something.

Punk is a flawed genre, just like all musical genres, but the last thing in the world I associate with punk as a whole is fascism or racism. When I think general punk ethos, I think of anti-war sentiments, political commentary on class warfare, and strong currents pushing for acceptance and protection for queer people, immigrants, and PoC. I do think punk has tended to fall down on directly interrogating both sexism and racism, but I think it has also tended to stand up in terms of demanding its adherents to actually get up and do something for their communities.

I think the association of racists being into punk is probably something you've got because punk is so political, and because the counterculture element draws these fuckboys as well as anything else that is anti-establishment does. But within punk scenes, you hear very aggressive pushback against racists, against homophobes--I can't recall so much against sexism, but then I need to delve into the riot grrl scene more than I've had time to. Hell, I think even modern antifa has strong, strong roots in punk scenes and communities--look at organizations like Anti-Racist Action.
posted by sciatrix at 12:23 PM on February 14, 2018 [2 favorites]


So, yeah – POC are relatively uncommon in the punk scene, and more than a few observers have noticed this. Hardcore punk also has a long tradition of leftist politics, which usually includes explicit anti-racism. Both can be true. It doesn't necessarily follow that "a lot of racists [are] into punk".

The documentary Afro-Punk explores the experiences of four African-Americans in the punk scene. I haven't watched it yet, but it looks interesting.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 12:23 PM on February 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


I can totally feel what you mean by that, whoof. Esp groups of white guys that look like they're out on patrol or whatever, and esp esp skinheads.

I mean, also bear in mind my associations with people dressing punk are heavily tilted towards either a) fuck all the glam shit, I'm wearing jeans and a flannel shirt and yelling a lot about the asshole media or b) pop-punk fans of the 00s, which means like... tight jeans on everyone and maybe someone in full goth loli type gear or something. Y'know? Like, the visual aesthetic is totally something else again.
posted by sciatrix at 12:38 PM on February 14, 2018


The entire reason for the "advertiser friendly" algorithm is because Unilever and a bunch of other huge advertisers came to Google and said, "Quit showing our soap ads next to white supremacist rants and dead bodies or we'll stop buying ads." I find it difficult to believe that the hugely popular troll YTers are the ones escaping the notice of Unilever & co.

My guess is the number of advertisers threatening to leave and the demands advertisers were making weren't nearly as severe on Youtube as we assume, but it's convenient for Youtube to let everyone think that as it gives them an excuse to lower the amount they pay out to content creators.
posted by riruro at 1:04 PM on February 14, 2018


is pansy division punk tho
posted by PMdixon at 10:02 PM on February 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


no, he's not "just a dickhead", he's a fucking racist.

Well I guess I don’t have to feel bad about just assuming.
posted by Artw at 12:00 AM on February 15, 2018


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