"Say it’s because your dad was a fool. Don’t defend me."
May 28, 2023 8:26 AM   Subscribe

Stereogum's interview with Insane Clown Posse, of note is the following paragraph:
And the amount of gay Juggalos out there is really surprising. I think about them doing their research and getting the old records, getting excited about it, and getting their hearts broke or something, you know? I tell my daughter, “For the rest of your life, when your friends ask why your dad said that, say it’s because your dad was a fool. Don’t defend me. Say I was a fool then, but I’m not now.” There’s no excuse. I was going with the flow, and that’s the very thing we preach against — being a sheep. And that’s what I was doing.
(some details under the cut about this passage in particular)

The excerpt of that passage first 'went viral' in early 2022, when first shared by Twitter user Abe Goldfarb:
Sometimes I think about Violent J and I am reminded that people can change.
Later given a further boost when quote-tweeted by curmudgeon-for-hire Steve Albini who connected it to the contemporary social media fracas that was the Spotify-Joe Rogan debacle
This is absolutely model owning-your-shit behavior, and if a goddamn fucking Juggalo can manage it, a nine-figure podcaster can step the fuck up without whining.
Of a related similarly interesting note is Albini's own reckoning with his past 'edgelord' behaviour:
For myself and many of my peers, we miscalculated. We thought the major battles over equality and inclusiveness had been won, and society would eventually express that, so we were not harming anything with contrarianism, shock, sarcasm or irony. If anything, we were trying to underscore the banality, the everyday nonchalance toward our common history with the atrocious, all while laboring under the tacit *mistaken* notion that things were getting better. I'm overdue for a conversation about my role in inspiring "edgelord" shit. Believe me, I've met my share of punishers at gigs and I sympathize with anybody who isn't me but still had to suffer them
posted by Pachylad (66 comments total) 60 users marked this as a favorite
 
I really have no interest in their music but everything I hear about the ICP is just kinda wonderful.
posted by egypturnash at 8:37 AM on May 28, 2023 [42 favorites]




So they figured out how fuckin' magnets work, I guess. Rules of attraction and all that.
posted by chavenet at 9:08 AM on May 28, 2023 [8 favorites]


I really have no interest in their music but everything I hear about the ICP is just kinda wonderful.

Terry Funk and the Insane Clown Posse is the one story I always go back to when it comes to wrestling autobiographies.
posted by Etrigan at 9:13 AM on May 28, 2023 [8 favorites]


Everyone who complains about wokeness ignores the fact that people who honestly and publicly denounce bullshit they used to espouse get welcomed with open arms.
posted by JHarris at 9:17 AM on May 28, 2023 [137 favorites]


So they figured out how fuckin' magnets work, I guess.

I always felt that was unfair. Physical forces are incredibly mysterious and only partially understood!
posted by trig at 9:27 AM on May 28, 2023 [33 favorites]


So they figured out how fuckin' magnets work, I guess.

Funnily enough, their last time on the Blue, a retrospective of ICP's memetic contribution to the Culture , there were a bunch of comments pontificating about how it was promoting 'anti-intellectualism', perhaps due to the hyperbole of "And I don't wanna talk to a scientist / Y'all motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissed."

That sub-conversation got shut down when folks were informed they cancelled the Gathering of the Juggalos 2020 due to the pandemic lol.
posted by Pachylad at 9:48 AM on May 28, 2023 [20 favorites]


So they figured out how fuckin' magnets work, I guess.

There's an obvious and lame joke here that I've been trying very hard to resist, and do keep in mind that this is something I would totally say to my queer friends as a queer person. So, fuck it, let's go:

"Fucking faggots, how do they work!?"
posted by loquacious at 10:07 AM on May 28, 2023 [25 favorites]


"I've seen this quote from my Violent J interview going around in the past few days, and I gotta add that he just brought all this stuff up on his own, in response to the question "hey, remember when you were on that Three 6 Mafia song" - Tom Breihan
posted by Pachylad at 10:09 AM on May 28, 2023 [9 favorites]


There was a documentary about ICP and the Gathering that I encountered here in an FPP, that really changed my opinion of them and their whole phenomenon. The music isn't really my thing and I feel like at a Gathering I'd stick out like a sore thumb, but I also would kind of like to check it out in person sometime.

This was an interesting interview, thanks for posting it. It's good to see someone honestly reappraising their history like that.
posted by Dip Flash at 10:33 AM on May 28, 2023 [3 favorites]


As far as apologies go that's not bad.
posted by East14thTaco at 11:14 AM on May 28, 2023 [3 favorites]


I do not like their music, but I've known a number of Juggalos over the years and they've to a one been lovely, standup people. Also, yeah. "How do magnets work?" is a perfectly valid question. Richard Feynman was once asked how magnets work and within the context of a popular interview he could only describe what they do. Magnets are bonkers!
posted by brundlefly at 11:17 AM on May 28, 2023 [17 favorites]


FUCK
YOUR
REBEL
FLAG

posted by NoMich at 11:20 AM on May 28, 2023 [25 favorites]


I think I was introduced most aggressively to ICP by my sophomore roommate in college. He would blast them while studying for finals while I drank my way loudly out of my tuition. Since then, I've been aware of them as if through a wall. Always repellent, but increasingly heartwarming. It's like when you learn about a cult or an MLM; you build up some resistance. But they seem deeply human and nice. Like a messiah complex happened by accident and then did their best with their charge. Two guys got bigger than they ever expected and then did right by their folks and the world. How nice.
posted by es_de_bah at 11:38 AM on May 28, 2023 [6 favorites]


Just a couple of nice boys from the Midwest
posted by aubilenon at 11:43 AM on May 28, 2023 [3 favorites]


Probably it will be deleted soon, but I think we already established that we shouldn’t post slurs, even if it is done in a joking or ironic way.
posted by snofoam at 11:44 AM on May 28, 2023 [11 favorites]


(That Three 6 Mafia song (it's built on a Portishead sample))
posted by box at 11:47 AM on May 28, 2023 [1 favorite]


There was a documentary about ICP and the Gathering that I encountered here in an FPP, that really changed my opinion of them and their whole phenomenon.

Geez, time flies. That FPP was from 2011. The link in the FPP is broken, but here is the documentary on Vimeo. (It has some NSFW moments.)
posted by Dip Flash at 12:09 PM on May 28, 2023 [5 favorites]


Middle of nowhere Indiana, middle of the night, pre-smartphone/GPS days, so maybe 2005 or 2006? I'm trying to make my way across the state by following some east-west blue highway, because the interstates are like 100 miles to the north and south. Road atlas on seat, kicking it old school. I have to pee so bad that I just pull into some abandoned store's parking lot at a crossroads... and drive right over a big old sharp piece of scrap metal. It's my wife's car, and for some goddamned reason the tire iron is completely missing. I already had a terrible headache and now I've got to figure out how to take the lug nuts off the wheel?

I'm just about resigned to sleeping in the car and trying to sort it out after dawn, when in pulls a beater blasting what turns out to be ICP. Four or five total misfits pile out when they see me and the obvious flat tire. You could not ask for a more helpful bunch: "We were gonna light some trash on fire in a barrel and maybe smoke some weed, but we gotta get you back on the road again." They even drew me a map on the back of a fast-food bag to point me to the nearest place where I could get a proper tire put on after daybreak. I ended up sitting with them around the trash fire for a good chunk of the night: they were absolutely uneducated, underemployable and probably going to stay that way, but they were helpful, kind and there was nothing stupid about them. They were very clear that it was the ICP spirit that motivated them to be helpful: "clowns gotta take care of each other, sir." They made it clear that "clown" was intended entirely as a compliment.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 12:19 PM on May 28, 2023 [183 favorites]


Like a messiah complex happened by accident and then did their best with their charge.

There really aren’t a lot of people in the last fifty years who’ve managed to bootstrap a durable subculture out of basically nothing who turned out to be decent, growing people standing in front of a decent crowd of inclusive, stand-up folks, face paint be damned.

I don’t know what they saw or how they did it, but if they could bottle it, carbonate it and put it on store shelves next to the faygo the world would be a better place.
posted by mhoye at 12:24 PM on May 28, 2023 [64 favorites]


"Fucking faggots, how do they work!?"

As with most things, this is a matter of physics. Friction plays a large part, but you can't have too much and this is why there are so many lubricants available. There are a lot of documentaries online about faggots fucking and if you do a little search on that two word term you can learn a lot!
posted by hippybear at 12:40 PM on May 28, 2023 [37 favorites]


It's more impressive they've built a positive culture out of groups (weirdo misfits, rural Midwesterners) that under other circumstances have been easily swayed to hateful ideologies. I know that's not the whole of the people in the culture but a lot of the basis of it started from there.
posted by Ferreous at 12:44 PM on May 28, 2023 [28 favorites]


"The costumed man was equipped with a tactical belt, pepper spray, scissors and handcuffs, and wearing a bullet-proof vest, black leather jacket with a bee logo, shin guards, knee pads, black leather gloves and carrying a shotgun."

Just another juggelo.
posted by clavdivs at 12:57 PM on May 28, 2023


fucking magnets, how do they woke
posted by flabdablet at 1:00 PM on May 28, 2023 [19 favorites]


As with most things, this is a matter of physics.

Ok, this really is a derail, but I thought loquacious was bemoaning how hard it is to hold down a job when you have better things to do, not the mechanics! Boy, is my face red!
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:01 PM on May 28, 2023 [5 favorites]


I'm confused, clavdivs. Are you saying that this man is a juggalo? There's no mention of it in the article and I couldn't find much more about him online.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 1:01 PM on May 28, 2023 [1 favorite]


It's more impressive they've built a positive culture out of groups (weirdo misfits, rural Midwesterners) that under other circumstances have been easily swayed to hateful ideologies.

Because of this FPP I was just talking to a friend about precisely this. I can imagine a vulnerable, disaffected, rural kid reaching a crossroads where they could go in the direction of white supremacism OR they could go in the direction of an open, positive community where people wear clown makeup.
posted by brundlefly at 1:12 PM on May 28, 2023 [31 favorites]


I'm confused, clavdivs. Are you saying that this man is a juggalo?

Yes. My old link is 404 from years ago... l get me try something...but I got high with him once. Lotta friends who are juggalo, some are really cool, some, not so.
posted by clavdivs at 1:50 PM on May 28, 2023 [4 favorites]


Juggalos are like Dead Heads. They're a hugely diverse population gathered around a band who makes music they like and the community that has grown around that has become something well beyond what that band signifies.

As such, some are really cool, some not so. Like with all facets of humanity.
posted by hippybear at 1:55 PM on May 28, 2023 [17 favorites]


As far as apologies go that's not bad.

After reading the interview, it seems that (harking back to another period of Detroit-area white musicians) that they decided to be the MC5 instead of Ted Nugent. Wayne Kramer seems alright these days.

Two guys got bigger than they ever expected and then did right by their folks and the world.

In terms contemporary to the time and place* they emerged from, they are the healthy alternative to Kid Rock.

* Kid Rock is not "from Detroit." He grew up on Daddy's relatively palatial compound in Romeo, which isn't even in Wayne County.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:18 PM on May 28, 2023 [17 favorites]


Juggalos are like Dead Heads

Agreed. Why? hippybears encyclopediic knowledge on music spans centuries but 20-21st C. especially.

{a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result.
plural noun: ironies
"the irony is that I thought he could help me"}

Only speak for this Michigander but Irony is just the end result of life happening. Irony is just not a thought when your honking at a dude in Bee like security outfit, him waving back, to me at least.
Kutsuwamushi.
here is A post on the super hero? in question, it is interesting. But no link, mine is 404. I'm rebooting an old computer for the link to a bbs if your still interested.
posted by clavdivs at 2:42 PM on May 28, 2023 [5 favorites]


During the 2000 presidential primary, both ICP and John McCain were in my down at the same time, and McCain and ICP your busses were both parked behind a freeway adjacent chain hotel. I thought it was as a hilarious coincidence at the time, and find it awesome that ICP has grown into a positive force over the years
posted by CostcoCultist at 3:10 PM on May 28, 2023 [2 favorites]


Just another juggelo.

I'm just a juggalo, and everywhere I go
People know the part I'm playing
Paid for every dance, selling each romance
Ooh, what they're saying
There will come a day and youth will pass away
What, what will they say about me
When the end comes I know there's a just a juggalo's
Life goes on without me
posted by chavenet at 3:15 PM on May 28, 2023 [12 favorites]


Richard Feynman was once asked how magnets work and within the context of a popular interview he could only describe what they do.

IIRC more than that, he was like: look at you, fuckin newb, thinking this can make sense to you, you utter fool.
posted by fleacircus at 3:18 PM on May 28, 2023 [1 favorite]


Maybe Guy Fieri could become a Juggalo to create an old mefi snobbish wrongitude singularity.
posted by fleacircus at 3:19 PM on May 28, 2023 [11 favorites]


buddy of mine when he first started playing insane clown posse, his mother's like
"what is this!, what is that whistling noise! ...like it was some sort of Mike Cockrill painting come to life.

kinda like when the Stones were accused of multiple bad things from devils or devil bikers to movie stars.
posted by clavdivs at 3:28 PM on May 28, 2023 [1 favorite]


I think the “Magnets, how do they work?” meme is popular because it’s relatable. I mean, really, how do they work??

Here’s that Feynman interview about magnets discussed above. I’d say his real point was that answers to “why” questions just lead to further questions, until you reach a level where you can build on someone’s existing understanding. So it’s not always possible to answer such questions in a few sentences, without being either misleading or unhelpful.

However, Feynman was also famously of the opinion that you do not really understand something unless you can explain it to a non-expert, as in this anecdote from David L. Goodstein:
Once I asked him to explain to me, so that I can understand it, why spin-1/2 particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics. Gauging his audience perfectly, he said, “I’ll prepare a freshman lecture on it.” But a few days later he came to me and said: “You know, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t reduce it to the freshman level. That means we really don’t understand it.”
posted by mbrubeck at 3:32 PM on May 28, 2023 [25 favorites]


The only thing I know about ICP is the line "fucking magnets, how do they work"
posted by mike3k at 4:05 PM on May 28, 2023 [1 favorite]


mbrubeck Eh... I think Feynman's view is a good rule of thumb for some things, but I don't think it's even remotely universally applicable.

Some things are just inherently complicated and unless you go into Lies To Children territory and/or metaphors so far removed from reality that it's absurd then you can't explain a lot of things.
posted by sotonohito at 4:12 PM on May 28, 2023 [2 favorites]


"We were gonna light some trash on fire in a barrel and maybe smoke some weed, but we gotta get you back on the road again." could be Indiana's state motto.
posted by MengerSponge at 6:05 PM on May 28, 2023 [27 favorites]


Since it seems to have come up in this thread unfortunately, I note that among the white people I know from quite diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, folks at the absolute bottom of the pile are more frequently accepting of others of different races and sexual orientations, while the upper middle class folks I know are the most likely to overestimate or over-state the extent of their progressivism. Likely related, but the upper middle class folks I know are also more likely to have grown up in more economically and racially segregated communities.

The average wealth of Trump voters was higher than that of Clinton voters, recall.

There are, of course, conservatives and bigots of all socioeconomic classes; I’m just talking about the overall population dynamics I’ve observed among people I’ve met, which runs from chronically unhoused people to “my daddy runs a Fortune 500 company” types (going to a private liberal arts college for part of my undergrad was certainly eye opening).
posted by eviemath at 6:24 PM on May 28, 2023 [20 favorites]


Mod note: Just a reminder that Queer people have the right to reclaim words that have often been used as slurs against them. We understand the concern of some folks in this thread about the word used in this thread by a Queer user, and just want to remind folks that it is important to acknowledge the nuance of certain words being reclaimed by people from specific groups and communities.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 7:24 PM on May 28, 2023 [49 favorites]


Thank you travelingthyme. I wasn't sure how the mod team was going to react to this use of language, but I stand strong behind my word choices and will until my last breath.
posted by hippybear at 7:30 PM on May 28, 2023 [5 favorites]


Let us just admit it: we have arrived at a point in history where these are among the best of us.

There is such evil afoot that even a churlish jester can end as a defender of everything against those who want nothing.
posted by aramaic at 8:38 PM on May 28, 2023 [11 favorites]


Richard Feynman was once asked how magnets work and within the context of a popular interview he could only describe what they do. Magnets are bonkers!

The even better thing he says is he can't explain magnets to you because everything is magnets. All the matter you see is held together by electromagnetism. If I try to explain magnets by saying they work like little balls or rubber bands or anything else you've ever seen, you can then ask, "But how do rubber bands work?" and I'd have to admit, they're made of magnets.
posted by straight at 8:45 PM on May 28, 2023 [14 favorites]


Boy, is my face red!

The other intended meta-layer of my joke is just the general confusion of negotiating queer relationships or just being queer in general, because just like magnets it's often a cosmic mystery.

We'll probably figure all of this out better about the same time we figure out how magnets actually work.

That will probably be nice for fully automated luxury gay space communism.
posted by loquacious at 8:50 PM on May 28, 2023 [11 favorites]


Given
a) the blue collar, or no collar (or maybe no shirt no shoes) nature of the Clown position at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder
and
b) the current normalization of "Ya know what? There's prolly nothing more Clown than being Queer. Right?" now gives license to Clowns who are maybe more than a little curious...
maybe it should be
"Working faggots, how do they fuck?"
posted by bartleby at 9:48 PM on May 28, 2023 [1 favorite]


It is a good apology, but whenever I see it brought up no one talks about what he is actually apologizing for, it is not just standard 90s homophopia or saying some slurs.

This kind of shit got people killed.
posted by St. Sorryass at 10:46 PM on May 28, 2023 [7 favorites]


This kind of shit got people killed.

Wow. I thought it was kind of somewhere on a spectrum between "Fairytale of New York" using the bundle-of-sticks-word or up to Eminem using anti-gay slurs on "Rap God," but not that.

This pivots me from "these guys are evolving, great" to "if they aren't unpublishing this stuff, pulling it off Spotify and making real efforts to eradicate it, yeah, you're nowhere close to where you need to be."
posted by Shepherd at 2:53 AM on May 29, 2023 [5 favorites]


I'm rebooting an old computer for the link to a bbs if your still interested.

Isn't a "link to a BBS" just a phone number? Now, I'm pretty nerdy, but thinking quickly, I don't think I can lay my hands on a modem in short order.

Nevermind. Just checked and the laptop has a RJ-11 jack, so I assume there's a modem in there somewhere (it's a pretty old laptop), and I'm sure I could get Linux to dial out.. Maybe I have an old copy of Procomm+ somewhere.
posted by mikelieman at 4:37 AM on May 29, 2023 [1 favorite]


I hate to blame Ice Cube, but we wanted to be like Ice Cube. We wanted to be like gangsta rap, and gangsta rap said it all the time. And we had a gay producer! Our producer was gay! And he didn’t give a fuck.
posted by box at 4:54 AM on May 29, 2023


This kind of shit got people killed.

Worth noting that they disowned this track even at the time. It was released against their wishes -something about intending it as a joke, but realising it didn't come off that way?

This pivots me from "these guys are evolving, great" to "if they aren't unpublishing this stuff, pulling it off Spotify and making real efforts to eradicate it, yeah, you're nowhere close to where you need to be."

They never released it. It is not available commercially, or through ICP, nor has it ever been.
posted by Dysk at 5:16 AM on May 29, 2023 [24 favorites]


it is important to acknowledge the nuance of certain words being reclaimed by people from specific groups and communities

Damn straight
posted by flabdablet at 7:09 AM on May 29, 2023


Worth noting that they disowned this track even at the time. It was released against their wishes -something about intending it as a joke, but realising it didn't come off that way?

Down at the bottom of that link, under the lyrics, is an extended "about" section which goes through that all in some detail. My take is: shame on them for writing it thinking it would be funny, but good for them for then being able to see that it was bad and should be scrapped rather than released. Sucks for them that it got leaked, but that's part of the risk of doing something that dumb.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:12 AM on May 29, 2023 [3 favorites]


I ignore ICP, but I always read all of the comments in an ICP post on Metafilter.
posted by tommasz at 7:24 AM on May 29, 2023 [29 favorites]


There is such evil afoot that even a churlish jester can end as a defender of everything against those who want nothing.

I think this describes most of human history so far.
posted by LooseFilter at 7:36 AM on May 29, 2023 [5 favorites]


They never released it. It is not available commercially, or through ICP, nor has it ever been.

Pivoting back to Team Violent J, and it feels good to feel good about people, even briefly.

Thanks for the clarification on that.
posted by Shepherd at 8:47 AM on May 29, 2023 [8 favorites]


I ignore ICP, but I always read all of the comments in an ICP post on Metafilter.

So you are saying that ICP is the EveOnline of… clowns?
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:57 AM on May 29, 2023 [10 favorites]


Metafilter: fully automated luxury gay space communism
posted by bendy at 1:54 PM on May 29, 2023 [3 favorites]


They never released it. It is not available commercially, or through ICP, nor has it ever been.

That’s good to know because it’s revolting. But it’s still out there.

I recently rewatched the episode of Black Mirror where the Prime Minister is forced to have sex with a pig on television and social media. The internet puts a lot of ugly shit out there and doesn’t always include nuance like backstories.
posted by bendy at 2:02 PM on May 29, 2023


Not a fan of their music, but part of me would've liked to go to a Juggalo campout event (if I was younger and had more stamina). It seems like they have a sincere community of young non-conformists trying to support each other in a way, with an element of weirdness.

Curious to hear accounts from anyone who has attended their events?
posted by ovvl at 4:40 PM on May 29, 2023 [3 favorites]


I mean, not only magnets, but how does anything the fuck work? ICP for the win as usual here, despite the hand-wavey "explanations."
posted by Camofrog at 8:18 PM on May 29, 2023


how does anything the fuck work?

What kind of answer would satisfy you?
posted by flabdablet at 5:19 AM on May 30, 2023 [3 favorites]


Physics.
posted by hippybear at 12:14 PM on May 30, 2023


Nathan Rabin formerly of the AV Club wrote Phish and ICP and fandom.
posted by mmascolino at 12:59 PM on May 30, 2023 [3 favorites]


The 2016 Nardwuar interview with ICP is pretty good. He blows their minds a few times.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:14 PM on May 30, 2023


« Older Micromouse   |   Bringing 19th-Century Black Organizing to Digital... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments