Music Criticism in Video Form

http://www.metalinsider.net/in-memoriam/grindcore-fan-that-happened-to-be-a-goat-passes-away

"to complete the analogy, you'd need: some fake scandal supposedly showing the too-cozy relationship between well-connected music writers pushing music for its politics (or trying to punish for its bad politics), and a mass of fans who are angry enough about progressivism to turn it into a rolling crisis, with a growing hit-list of enemy-writers and a counter-slate of 'anti-pc' critics and musicians as heroes."

all of this exists already.

also I shouldn't be surprised, given almost everyone here is male, but GG wasn't about politics -- that is the alibi GG made up in like a day to cover their ass. GG certainly tapped into politics but at heart it was about someone's ex getting revenge in the messiest, most trollish way possiblbe

*possible

Harrasment towards the lead singer of Chvrches (I forget her name, is it Lauren Mayberry?) was the one moment I believed something similar to gamergate would happen to the music community, it never reached crisis point like in the vg industry.

I can think of multiple instances where female music writers were harassed by roughly the same crowd, up to and including doxing

also I shouldn't be surprised, given almost everyone here is male, but GG wasn't about politics -- that is the alibi GG made up in like a day to cover their ass. GG certainly tapped into politics but at heart it was about someone's ex getting revenge in the messiest, most trollish way possiblbe

― a self-reinforcing downward spiral of male-centric indie (katherine), Monday, January 9, 2017 3:57 PM (fifty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean, maybe i'm not 'getting it' because i'm male, but how is that not also 'politics'.

like, the boundary between "politics" and "white male resentment" has all but been annihilated right?

http://i.imgur.com/XujHL.gif

the difference is that while the political resentment existed for decades, the thing that made it boil over was a harassment campaign against one female developer. the former was an excuse for the latter.

but then it turned into a harassment campaign against many female developers (and journalists) and implicitly against the very idea of female (or black, or gay, or...) developers unwilling to develop exclusively for straight white males -- i mean there were many victims in that thing besides ZQ and many toxic ideas about things much more general than ZQ, and i don't rly know what the point of reducing it to its flashpoint is. what they covered their ass with was the "ethics" shit -- that was garbage, no argument, but imo they v quickly became a genuine protofascist movement. now of course they've shed the proto.

(I'm exceedingly familiar with how the whole thing played out, no need to recap.)

the point is, it can start at any time, and what incites it will not be a music vlog or whatever, but someone's ex going nuclear. I can think of at least two separate instances where I was genuinely afraid this was going to happen, but fortunately they petered out. (deliberately not mentioning specifics because fading into obscurity is the best-case scenario for things like this, which I realize makes it difficult to argue.) it's different from just garden-variety internet nazism

I can think of at least two separate instances where I was genuinely afraid this was going to happen, but fortunately they petered out. (deliberately not mentioning specifics because fading into obscurity is the best-case scenario for things like this, which I realize makes it difficult to argue.)

oh no trouble believing this, or that, as u say above, the conditions are already in place in the music sphere.

the video game industry is an _industry_. there's serious money in it. i don't know what difference that makes, but it seems to me that money seems to be an extremely important factor in a lot of things these days.

strange times

Music industry generated revenues of 15 billion $ in 2015. Much less than video games (and film/television), but enough to consider there is serious money in it.

VG industry earns more than music.

My mistake, I thought the previous post was claiming the opposite.

no, you're right. there is serious money in it. beyonce makes serious bank. and people have tried to target beyonce, and so far they have failed.

gamergate is, at its core, about hostility to women. rock music has been fighting that battle for decades now, and it's losing badly. a successful gamergate-style campaign would require some degree of novelty, not just embracing the nuge and kid rock. you'd have to champion somebody like bieber over carly rae jepsen, and there's just too much cultural ossification in recorded music for people to do that.

music is also highly respected as an art by both music fans and industry as well as regular people that don't care too much. videogames still very much considered just base consumer products with no craft to them, with little cultural cache, and this resentment combined with a internet-fueled redpill conspiracy mindset is part of what feeds GG.

I heard there was an attempt at a metalgate a few years ago but nobody cared.

Sam Dunn/Banger did a panel about sexism in metal and I think it got a pretty hostile response.

tbh it's immaterial whether this turns into a Gate it's simply a question of noting that Fantohno is at best an alt-right sympathizer and all-purpose douchebag

I heard there was an attempt at a metalgate a few years ago but nobody cared.

there was, and you're right (it was a half-assed attempt by a longstanding metal provocateur/troll/dickhead) but women metal writers still got, and get, a fuckton of abuse in their DMs etc & in the comments on their stories, etc

i can't imagine something like "women vs. tropes in metal" ever taking off any more than i could imagine "women vs. tropes in pro wrestling" taking off. the thing about things like gaming and comics that make them such flash-points is that women are very heavily involved in those things. in contrast, metal and pro-wrestling are still predominantly male spaces, and while these scenes continue to successfully marginalize, isolate, and drive away women involved in them i don't see there being a great deal of controversy.

Asking again how far Fantohno goes? Trump supporter? Makes silly rants about political correctness? I think that's annoying and probably has some negative impact but is that all?

I don't believe he is actually a Trump supporter. He's more likely a bernieorbust type that is constantly at war with SJW strawmen. AKA a living caricature of the "typical redditor"

Can a Bernieorbust guy be a typical Redditor?

he's a bernie or buster but a really dumb one. the kind of guy who's not sure if he likes bernie or ron paul

also money is a bit irrelevant to GG because their primary targets are indie games, which make essentially none (it isn't comparable to music -- music has revenue streams open that games don't) (ugh, "revenue streams," but)

I always thought Anthony Boitano was just reading pitchfork reviews out loud

http://gifrific.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Tina-Fey-giving-herself-high-five.gif

http://www.thefader.com/2017/10/03/needle-drop-deleted-youtube-channel-this-is-the-plan

well.

A truly satisfying story, given his clear panic over being directly called on his shit.

yeah i was more nauseated by sam hyde's description of his sexual techniques than satisfied, but i guess ymmv

also, like, this is the sort of stuff those alt-right shitheads eat up as evidence that they're ~~the truly oppressed class~~

xpost Admittedly more in the sense of 'laying his shitheadedness all out' satisfying than having to deal with gross fuckup details, but yes.

Never reallt watched fantano's videos but this is still a weird story. My impression was that his reviews were kind of lame but innocuous?

The Fader article on this is ominous because they claim that video is the medium where the alt right flourishes.. and also the medium to which a lot of media companies are moving.

both of those things are true

My impression was that his reviews were kind of lame but innocuous?

how could you tell, you'd have to watch one

I disliked Fantano from the get go partially because we have very different tastes but is this article reaching a bit? Like, is he truly that lame? No way am I watching those Hyde and Akkad videos so I guess I'll never know.

In short, Fantano may have discerned from the popularity of his friends like Sam Hyde and Sargon of Akkad — not to mention his own icon status on /mu/ — that a market existed for reactionary video content.

this is really what it comes down to with most of these reactionary pivots. gamergate cracked open this massive White Nationalist Incel demographic and every scumsucker with a platform swam right into it. i don't think it's a case of anyone being "redpilled". i'm not sure people like fantano or pewdiepie or ian miles cheong actually believe in anything outside of themselves

qualx OTM

ive seen this dudes music reviews sitting on the sidelines forever and i dont know that ive ever clicked on one before and now i feel vindicated bc what a fucking creep

on a purely aesthetic level why would anyone want to look at people like af and pewdiepie let alone listen to their opinions

Like, is he truly that lame?

I followed him on tumblr back in the day (never been interested in vlogs), he would say the odd anti-sjw anti-gamergate thing every now and then but he'd sometimes call out racist messages he got sent to him around the time To Pimp a Butterfly came out. I never liked his politics but he wasn't nearly as bad as his godawful 94% male fanbase. It looks like he's totally gone down the alt-right rabbit hole now though

So yeah, i'm glad the fader is calling out his bullshit

the main thought i have of him is still people making fun of him on tumblr for having hentai displayed on his blog through his likes

can't believe a guy who makes a living shouting reductive thoughts about music turned out to be a bad person

I am deeply, deeply suspicious of anyone who uploads themselves to youtube and always have been.

the best illustration of just how far gone this particular YouTube/Let's Play/etc crowd is, for me, was when a commenter called one LP guy "far-left" for saying he supported Obama. some fuckin' karl marx shit right there