Accountability in Music • Page 468

I'm in disbelief at these comments.

Do we actually know he's a bad person? Are we entitled to his beliefs, opinions, etc.? The dude clearly struggles with mental health issues. It's no secret he has trouble dealing with the pressures of what he's built. Imagine, in your own lives, that you wake up to countless people demanding what you tweet or speak up about. Think about that for a minute. What the fuck has this world come to? Do we begin the day dwelling and drowning with a perpetual thought that we need to know the stance of an individual artist? Why can't we just appreciate his music and also let him live his life as the human being he is? Is it not a little counterproductive to focus all of our energy on an all-out bash fest? We know nothing of his struggles; he doesn't owe us anything. If he wants to speak up on certain issues, then he should be able to do so on his own accord (which would only make it that much more genuine). This feels forced, and now the ones who pushed for this in the first place are unhappy with the result. And so what if he should have just sat in silence? Why are we so obsessed with squeezing the life out of particular people when it is not our lemonade to make? Perhaps he offered the keyboard warriors a glass too sour for them to taste? It does not at all mean he is against those said causes. Maybe he is completely enveloped in his own life right now with his wife and their recent baby girl. Again, do we actually know he's a bad person?

 

It's not so much the fact that he barely spoke out, it's that after barely speaking out for months he makes an out of the blue post apparently mocking people who want him to use his platform more for major issues happening in the US and around the world. If he doesn't want to speak out on important issues in the world, fine, that's his choice, but don't mock people (or make it seem like you are) for asking you to do it. You just look like an asshole.

 

Offering verbal support to a movement does not require a heavy mental lift. Especially when your fame directly relates to your benefiting from the appropriation of black music.

 

I don't know if this is in good faith, but I'll play along on the off chance that it is. For future reference, using terms like "Keyboard warriors" immediately sets the tone and implies that you have no interest in actually engaging in meaningful dialogue on this topic - which was either a deliberate choice on your part, or an unintentional mishap. Thus, my clarification.

Here's what I know:

I know he has displayed a willful inability to read the room, and I know that kind of thing causes a lot of pain to vulnerable communities.

What I also know is that if a grown ass man wants to come online in THIS socio-political climate and make a deeply bad-taste joke like that, he doesn't get to divorce himself of how people feel about that. He's not a victim to anyone but his own apparently awful instincts. Which is a charitable interpretation of what happened here.

I know all he had to do was read the room and keep the little jokes in his drafts folder. If you want to post about mental health, great. Do that. It's an important cause. But that's not what went wrong here. And by the way, the "silence doesn't mean he's against those causes" argument is a knife that cuts both ways - historically, silence by "good people" is a tool oppressors rely on to do their work.

Lastly, I know he and his career will be fine. If they aren't, it won't be over this. Cancel culture isn't what the anti-SJWs pretend it is.

That's what I know. I don't give a single crap about "good person" "bad person" discourse because those terms have been overused into meaninglessness.

 

When your music borrows heavily from black culture and inspiration, when your fanbase has a noticeably vocal LGTBQ and POC contingent and the songs touch on mental health issues, struggles, etc., I think you rescind your right to be silent and you certainly don't mock them with a shitty dad joke.

 

Look, I have a twenty one pilots tattoo. Tyler Joseph’s lyrics have helped my mental health in more ways than I can possibly put into words. That said, it takes 30 seconds to post a BLM statement on your social media. No one is asking him to do heavy lifting and post day in and day out about the struggles of Black people. But clearly he saw people asking for him to use his 2+ million followers to uplift marginalized voices and he chose to joke about it and then refuse to back down until it became a PR nightmare. Your mental health struggles does not make you exempt from valid criticism.

 

I'm comfortable saying that if your response to pleas from fans that you show support of BLM is to do what this dude did, you're probably not the best person yeah. Just saying!

"Good is not a thing you are, it's a thing you do."

 

Too many comments on TOP he's dumb doesn't care etc. Focus the energy on blm plenty of protests still on going and places to spread the good word.

 

News flash: People can dedicate their time, energy, and frustration at multiple things at the same time. We can criticize Tyler Joseph while also caring about BLM and protests. Implying that folks criticizing him aren’t also dedicating their time to these issues is odd because you don’t know what each of us is doing in our own time to help out re: BLM, systemic racism, etc.

 

His reactions sort of seemed like that of someone who isn’t that mentally stable and knowing his past struggles with mental health, I can empathize with that. That said, having mental health struggles does not justify you from behaving in a way that shows your privilege and straight mockery of a movement you later claim to be behind. It does not absolve you from criticism, especially when you decide to double down instead of taking ownership of the bad choice you made and trying to rectify it. I cannot speak to his person, as I don’t know him personally, I don’t feel comfortable labeling him as a bad person, but most definitely someone who made a bad choice and further bad choices when confronted with that. I do wish that straight white males would stop playing the mental health victim in times where they’re being rightfully criticized, I think it just furthers the stigma around men talking about mental health and it does not do anything positive to twist a narrative to be something it wasn’t. I’m hoping he can get help if he needs it, but understands that his mental health is not an excuse nor a justification to act this way.

 

This got me pretty good

 

This you, Tyler?

 

My god, shut the actual fuck up.

 

lol oopsie!

 

Oh wow. It’s interesting that their current rise to fame made him do a complete backpedal into being a coward.

 

Yo Lord Byron it's a fucking tweet

 

Ok, but, like... how many people do we need to reply to one bad post from someone who's only posted once in this thread on this topic so far? Especially when some good responses happened relatively quickly afterwards, giving good perspective on why that 21 Pilots guy's Twitter behavior is bad.

 

i didn’t know people gave a shit about that boring band enough to give dude this many benefits of the doubt lol jesus

 

like, it’s 21 pilots lol. gross.

 

God I hate that fucking band.

 

how many times do people have to say that whether or not you like a bands music is not relevant or helpful when discussing accountability

 

apparently infinite

 

They are arguably the biggest rock band in the world how is it surprising that people care this much lmao. I don’t like them either but it’s not exactly surprising that people view the dude as a hero.

 

Hard for some people here to realize but you can not like a band and still recognize their massive impact, especially when people in this very thread are talking about how much they've helped them and then you can just not comment at all!