Pinegrove - Skylight (September 28, 2018) Album • Page 86

Very very well said

 

wait Leerkat is banned from this thread? Why? What the fuck?

 

I gave this album a listen last night and really liked it. Much mellower tone than I expected, and shorter songs, but the songwriting is beautiful.

 

I did not know to what extent leerkat knew anything, or if they actually did. All I saw was a lot of aggression and name calling towards others which I don't condone nor do I think it helps promote a healthy conversation. These are incredibly tough subjects to deal with, but if we're careful, something good can come from the bad. Rather than attacking each other, a better effort needs to be made that people understand what the problem is and why it is a problem. If we allow our peers to get a grasp of this situation and it provides them some insight into how they should handle themselves within the relationships they create with others, then we can start progressing. I feel like a rift was created that was not beneficial for either side of it. I understand why this was the case, if you were close to the situation at hand. And I understand it when others have dealt with unrelated but similar situations. Unfortunately I just saw a lot of shaming when someone said something that didn't immediately side with the victim, even if that person didn't realize there was any more outside of the one provided by Pitchfork and the initial Pinegrove release. Everyone in this forum holds the power to help others grow in a positive way, and I think, especially in the light of this situation, we should all work to do that.

 

Just caught up, and all I have to say is this:

There are people who haven't spoken publicly about their abuse by people in touring bands. People on this site. Maybe they'll tell their friends, folks they know who might be able to help them. Maybe they won't. They'll struggle with whether or not it's worth it. They read the words put here, and other places like this. They see the band getting positive attention. And they remain silent because of how horrifyingly these cases are treated, even by the well intentioned. Maybe they'll get sad, maybe they'll get angry, maybe they'll try to put it out of their mind. Maybe they'll just shut their mouths. No one other than their abuser and the abuser's knowing allies are responsible for this, although many contribute to it: but it's a cold hard fact.

This is bigger than Pinegrove, bigger than this thread. Bigger than this site. Want to be kind on the internet? Before hitting "post", maybe tell yourself an unreported survivor is reading it, and then make your decision. That way, at least, you can say you've owned it.

 

From what I can see, there are multiple people that seem to have direct contact with those involved that have trepidations about what happened and what was conveyed in that Pitchfork article. Even before getting into if there are other allegations from other people.

What I've been trying to break down is that there are multiple pieces here, and together, they end up not looking good for this band. People can do whatever they want, I really don't care that much what individuals do with their lives and am not going to try and convince anyone. However, what I am trying to convey is that this is not as simple as "oh it's all good now, who cares" which is what I think some of the posts in this thread come off as. Even when I asked a few questions, for example, the answers that came back were a misrepresentation of where things actually sit with the band. There are people, some apparently that have talked to the main person involved, that say the Pitchfork article was misrepresentative of her feelings. From what I can piece together, another person has come out saying Evan was manipulating to them as well, and did not get any apology, but has since decided to remain anonymous because they don't want the public backlash right now.

I think what we need to be careful with is differentiating between someone that's actually just a random stranger on the internet, and everything else we can put together. We know Leerkat pretty well. It's not like they're unable to be found on Twitter. They have a posting history here. They're not completely random, or anonymous, or coming in with one post to make an accusation.

One thing to consider is why people would want to work through an intermediary, or why they would want to remain anonymous. What I'm not saying is that any piece of text on the internet needs to be immediately believed, but from just my cursory searching on Twitter, I can see that things aren't quite the way they've been painted by p4k and Pinegrove fans. Something's not meshing together right from the start.

I think there's already a compelling case that things aren't what they seem without ever needing to believe Leerkat. However, I think Leerkat having more information adds to an already uncomfortable feeling around this entire situation. I don't see much incentive to lie here.

Most of my thoughts on this are above.

I think people can be diligent without coming across as hostile. Research, understanding the situation, and trying to find out what is going I think are all reasonable actions from people. But I don't think what we have here is a case of anonymous strangers. But what I see are multiple people that are not anonymous saying quite a few different things that make me pause.

If this was an anonymous, zero other posts, not able to find any other information about them kind of account, I would understand wanting to take some time to get to the bottom of it. But, I don't think that's what we have here. Combining that with what we can find from other non-anonymous sources on Twitter, makes me, personally, cautious. I don't know any of these people, no one involved has reached out to me, so I am just as out of the loop as everyone else. But I don't think what I've witnessed is the same as an anonymous stranger.

Grumble. This personally bugs me for a few reasons, the first being that this has happened to me before. Since I've decided to take a more public stand in believing women, I've had red-pill asshole trolls make fake accounts and fake accusations under the guise of "see you have to believe this because it was said." Someone literally made an account to make a post like this about 15 minutes after you made this post, our spam/dupe/fake account controls caught it. Years ago someone faked being an ex-girlfriend of mine and started messaging my current girlfriend at the time and harassing them. This sort of shit does happen. I had to warn Hannah about what my online life can cause when we started dating. That shit fucking sucks. "Hi, I know we just met, but ... uh ... random internet people may follow/stalk/harass you online because you happen to have met me."

However, I think there's lots of ways people can start to verify things. These twitter accounts from people are under their real names, and they're expressing real concern. We have a good idea who Leerkat is online, they've never tried to hide this.

I've also been in abusive relationships. Emotional and physical. It fucking sucked. I've talked about this various places over the years.

I think there's a big difference and it's not that hard to suss out trolling, fake posts, and things like that, with actual allegations or issues. They read differently. The detail and verifiable information within them are usually very different. On that topic, there's a reason someone may want to be completely anonymous when they make an accusation online, and that should be respected. (I've long wondered what I should do about completely anonymous allegations that are made and if I should cover them. Or how I view them. I understand the trepidation. I don't think that thinking about these things is a bad thing. And I'm not the kind of person that would say "believe everything no matter what no matter what is said or where or by anyone." But I would say there's a lot of place between that and where we are right now. [FTR: Currently, I usually don't cover something unless I can track back to a real person, or verify parts of the story independently, or actually talk to the person who made the accusation.])

 

Just going to RT this and say this is 10000% true. I've heard from quite a few people exactly this. People with stories and a history with the bands we listen to that they will probably never tell. They fear everything they see happening in these threads, everything they see happening on TV, everything they see happening in the battle for the highest court seat in the entire country, everything they see coming from celebrities, from the President, and from their peers.

This is worth remembering.

 

Agreed.

 

I want to precise I never wanted to be held as some kind of heralded messenger who Knows Everything. The last few pages of this thread made the pinegrove conversation all about me rather than what I was saying. Which is pretty uncomfortable. I’m not even close to the original victim. But what I think Jason said well is that you don’t need to know the very slim extra information I have to realise things about this case smell fishy as hell and to AT THE LEAST err on the side of caution. That was probably my main point.

I would also just like to say that what happened in this thread is 100% why extra victims of evan won’t want to come out and say something. This was so fucking hostile and the tone policing was suffocating. Like I literally got threadbanned for being a meanie to a bunch of 27 year old men. You think this is a welcome environment for victims to come out? Seeing people who take a hardline stance against harmful positions like this being shut down for lack of civility? I back everything Anna has said about this.

Thanks to @JasonTate for coming and explaining it all.

 

I thought this was a pretty good read: Pinegrove’s New Album ’Skylight’ Can’t Exist Outside Its Context

 

This almost sums up how I feel but almost certainly remains too generous to ESH.

 

I agree, but I think that's inherent in it being an article (ostensibly, a review) that centers on him/the band/the music, and in part the fans, rather than the survivor(s).

It's also obviously missing the context of some of the conversation that's gone on in this thread: not just that there are likely more survivor(s) but that the reaction from some of those in the music community close to this, and the survivor as conveyed through some of those in the music community, has been to challenge the narrative of the Pitchfork article and a lot of fan reaction to it.

 

Just finally caught up on this thread. The timing of this release and all the Pitchfork stuff, even all the way back to how
Evan released his weird, ambiguous state last year, is a clear PR move trying to paint PG and Evan as some sort of golden redemption story. Wow, he came forward himself, he resolved things with the victim, buy our new album! It's a clear response trying to contrast with how other bands have poorly handled similar allegations. That in itself is enough for me to err on the side of the statements from those in the victim's circle, and I sure as hell won't be publicly supporting them or going to see them, at the VERY least.

 

If your posts were uttered irl, there’s no way they wouldn’t be considered abusive

 

all the good posts over the past page and you still choose to go after leerkat??? fuck outta here

 

yeah we went over all this, catch all the way up before you start tone policing

 

also not all conflict is abuse

 

“y’all are being whiny, reactionary assholes” is not an abusive sentiment

 

^^^ this is something very crucial that is often missed.

 

yes we’ve all read the book

leerkat at the minimum is an overly aggressive jerk who dismisses and invalidates other people’s feelings by reducing them down to caricatures. this is a frequent theme in hard conversations, where a total inability to recognize the people you’re talking to as actual people is excused away by referring to the importance of the conversation at hand.

that making fun of people’s feelings (and essentially calling them children for having feelings) is consensus considered acceptable by using “don’t tone police” as a rebuttal is absurd. that is literally one of the things abusers do.

 

Are you done?

 

i don’t even really agree with a lot of that book which is why i shifted around the syntax. also what a disingenuous way to start a post

 

this conversation moved incredibly fast so i'm sympathetic to the people who wandered in and were like "wait what's the problem here exactly???" but also almost all discussions of abuse on the internet are full of men wandering in, not reading the entire conversation, asking "wait what's the problem here exactly???" leerkat's frustration and the way they expressed that frustration is eminently understandable to me even as it verged into hostility (my personal reaction to several of their posts in this thread was "this is going to be super unproductive for the conversation as a whole but regardless i absolutely feel everything they're saying," but also it's not up to me how they should be reacting to this), even if my instincts are almost the complete opposite of theirs (i like to keep my head down and only chime in if i think i have something valuable to bring to the conversation, which is an approach a lot of dudes here could afford to adopt).

beyond this: calling someone a "rape apologist" is not abuse. if it is i've been very abusive to a bunch of shitheaded men over the past few years, beyond which we live in a society that is by default "rape apologist." if your feelings are too hurt to see that, you should spend some time thinking about why you like this band so much that you're unable to even basically listen to survivors, whether directly or indirectly. i'm sorry if that sounds unnecessarily blunt or hostile but that's the basic message here. think. be thoughtful.

emotional abuse is hard to pin down, is hard to lay out and say "this, exactly this happened," bc there are so many layers of self-doubt. you think, "oh, they were just kidding and i'm just really gullible," or, "it's probably not that big of a deal," or "oh, i'm just taking this too hard, lol, i must be crazy" even though you know, in some really deep and scary layer of yourself, that it fucking happened, and there's very little you can do about it, it's not even illegal (not that the illegality of physical assault has ever protected the victims of it). abusers take advantage of that ambiguity.

the last thing i'll say about this is: if evan's goal was for anyone who liked this band who also had survived an emotionally abusive relationship getting totally retraumatized over the past week, he succeeded. if that wasn't his goal, that's what he fuckin did anyway

EDIT: i felt the need to add something but i didn't want to bump this... at this point pretty triggering thread, so: i went through the whole thread again and there's a really shitty page or two where leerkat is talking past everybody else trying to engage with them, which is actually a legitimately harmful approach to conversation and also resembles the dynamic of really disingenuous conversations on twitter. i do understand why they got that frustrated, but it was hurtful, so i'd just like to reiterate my point in the second paragraph: be thoughtful. this conversation is hard to have

 

Why would that be his goal?

 

Why are we still challenging this? I have my own thoughts on the situation but there's something to be said for knowing when to shut up and let a good discussion take place