Accountability in Music • Page 740

1) 100% time for "Accountability" (or whatever catch-all since that term itself is debated often) to have its own forum, and then sub forums for Music, Entertainment and Sports, and separate threads for whatever so we can actually follow what we want. All this stuff is way too important to too many people now to have single threads. Every time this thread gets derailed for pages and pages with these evergreen, tentpole battles, it just buries things and perpetuates the insane telephone game this thread has become.

2) @SoCoWilderNeSs post more please

 

No one is asking you to

 

I've noticed it's generally the no-avatars that end up riling shit up here, at least recently. And then trying to frame it as trying to do things "in good faith." Very odd, very both sidesing, none of it ultimately helping. And of course me posting this ultimately probably doesn't help and you'll go on your way thinking you're doing the right thing by "hearing everything" and "being open to all discussion." It is what it is I suppose.

 

The idea that we have to tolerate opposing views is ridiculous lol. most of us have heard every argument under the sun in favor of oppression, nothings gonna change our minds to think it’s good sometimes

 

You know you're in for a ride when it starts with Finn saying "personally I'm team Ronnie" and M. Shadows responding with "you have to know he's allowed to have an opinion".

I didn't watch the full segment because I couldn't take any more of it but to the curious minds, it was the same shitty centrist rhetoric I see all the time anytime someone has serious allegations brought up against them. Whining about cancel culture, "the mob"... c'mon, we're not naive. We've seen it all before. Anytime someone spouts something full of those dogwhistles, there's a non zero percent chance what will follow is going to be in bad faith that lets abusers and bigots off free of consequences. Both of them are way off the mark here. The former could've just said he didn't care about Ronnie's transgressions and stopped at that, but of course he had to go on a comical rant about society, muh free speech and wah wah why are people so mean.

The way he brushes off everything else Ronnie has done because there's supposedly no proof is gross and the fact that people will eat that up even though it's clearly wrong blows my mind. It's like critical thinking is out of the window once an artist someone likes or has ties to gets ire. For the fans on his side, it's a sad reminder of the hold parasocial relationships has on people. I also don't get how someone, who supposedly doesn't care about any of them, can be so heavily invested in defending them. Surely there must be an underlying reason because this kind of contrarianism is not normal.

 

Back to back weekends doing this?

 

I’d honestly pay good money to punch finn mccunty in his dumb fuckin face

 

Mavs woke up it seems/Charlotte wanted to tank

 

After 25 years of it I can guarantee you no one is going to make any “argument” I haven’t heard and rebutted before. And I can say that the odds of them even making the half way decent arguments are even far smaller (reading the next couple posts prove me right in both cases). When people say they don’t give a fuck about hearing this shit again it’s because for more than HALF MY LIFE I’ve heard it. I’ve explained in probably hundreds of thousands of words now why the dumb arguments are dumb and why the better arguments are also flawed. And most of us just don’t wanna do that shit anymore. We don’t wanna spend our time having another cancel culture argument. Another “but the proof” argument. Another free speech argument. And for the love of god if you’re gonna start the argument again on this website, why would you pick the guy that literally has threatened me personally, and my family, with physical violence? AND THEN WHY WOULD YOU EXPECT ANYONE WANTS TO ACTUALLY TALK ABOUT IT OR HAVE DISCOURSE.

Please respectfully talk about the dude that threatened the guy that CREATED THIS ENTIRE FORUM is just so stupid on its face it makes me angry before even getting into why no one wants to waste their internet breath on an argument they’ve seen every permutation under the sun of before. You’d be better off just arguing against ChatGPT at this point than wasting a second of your time in this forum replaying what we all did in 2008.

 

Hell yeah

 

It is so incredibly annoying and also hilarious that someone thinks ATL and Ronald fucking Radke need a martyr that badly, on this forum of all places lmao

 

lmao I cannot fathom how y'all don't get tired of doing this

 

3 Ways to Deal With People Who Strongly Disagree With You

 

That's way too much fucking work.

 

Why do antagonizing posters continue to follow this thread only to chime in with snarky shit?

 

Yeah for my part it’s been ten plus years of caring and paying attention to this kind of thing and there’s not a single new argument under the sun, and what’s being presented here right now is probably the oldest trick in the book: using the phrase “differing opinions” to obfuscate the fact that we’re talking about r*pe, abuse, and targeted hatred of minorities and women. it’s tired and it’s not even remotely clever.

 

it really is insane. they're shitty people who have continued to have success despite their actions, they really don't need no-avis popping in here caping for them lmfao.

 

Forget Radke or ATL or any specific artist (and lord knows you have every right and reason to feel the way you do about him in particular). This was never meant to be about any of them but more about how we as fans respond to allegations both immediately and well after the fact and about how we treat one another on these forums should someone choose to still listen to the music of an accused artist.

Answer me this one question: if as you seemed to infer in your post, proof does not matter, what path towards redemption or clearing of one's name does any band or artist have? Absolutism sounds amazing when saying "believe women" but what can anyone do who may be wrongly accused? It seems to me that when an accuser recants people say yea well she was probably scared, if a friend says the accuser was lying and shows some evidence it's ignored, if the bands or artists defend themselves it's seen as a power move against a victim and if they post a denial on social media they are deemed liars.

Where's the way out? Because if there is none...then that is a problem.

 

nothing in this thread has been about continuing to listen to problematic artists

 

Anyone who is wrongly accused can prove they have been wrongly accused, as Conor Oberst did.

The way out is that abusers get treatment and therapy to understand why they did what they did and then become a better person. That includes the knowledge that they are not entitled to anyone's forgiveness or respect for doing that work and that it's being done as a public service to no longer be a menace to society. That also includes an understanding of how maintaining a platform can create further damage.

Ray Rice went into intensive therapy after the elevator video leaked and now speaks to younger football players and athletes about anger management and such. It's been publicized once. Because he seemingly has actually learned and grown and understands that his presence on a grand scale is triggering and mostly unhelpful.

The issue is that those steps are not being taken and abusers are either ignoring accusations or behaving as if a simple iPhone notes apology exonerates them.

 

There’s tons of great new music coming out all the time, yet people still want to simp for shitty artists like ATL and Ronnie Radke. Insane.

Also Finn McKinty’s wife is transphobic and he has never once denounced her views, so he can fuck off forever.

 

if your FIRST thought after someone is accused of something like r*pe or sexual misconduct is about the artist themselves, and how they can 'clear their name' you have an insurmountable hill of reflection to climb, and should consider simply no longer posting in at the very LEAST this thread. nobody here wants to continue to be subjected to your whataboutism or your "not defending" abusers.

 

As I said earlier, I'm not going to get into a back and forth about this. I know the ebbs and flows of any of these discussions, and at 40, I've spent too much of my life arguing/discussing/talking on the internet about things like this, and I choose to spend my time and energy elsewhere. Meerkat more than answered superbly in the post above; however, I want to correct the a few things from this post.

First, how we respond to allegations immediately seems extremely easy to weigh harm reduction and very basic math to calculate what an "immediate" response should look like. I believe a response should be one of trust, empathy, and centering the needs/wants/asks/feelings of the person speaking, not the artist themselves. As for how we treat people that still choose to listen to specific artists, I think I've been pretty clear that what people listen to in the privacy of their own homes, on their own, is of very little matter to me. I think I said on some podcast a variation of, "Hell, the world is burning around us, I get why people listen to something, anything, that makes them feel better for a brief moment in this gutter trash last few years." My, again personal, belief is that what you listen to alone and how you choose to process it, is for you. I trust most people that are consuming media, especially if you even know about this forum, to be educated and have worked out your thoughts on what it is you're consuming. I trust that by and large it's not done out of malice for anyone, and that watching a problematic director or listening to a band in your room is not trying to hurt anyone. Where I, again personally, believe that crosses a line is when people try to promote said "art" in a way that feels like it re-centers the artist at the core of it. When it's done specifically to ignore what they did, or feels like it's being promoted/talked about/praised specifically to troll or rub it in the face of the people that have pointed out the issues. That bugs me. I've been relatively public with my belief that I think there should be room for discussion about how to deal with how you consume problematic or difficult media, because ethical consumption is borderline impossible for all the reasons said a million times, and life can suck: see above. But to me, that's about working through your feelings and why you choose to consume it, how it makes you feel, and a discussion that does not ignore the reality of the artist, the accusations, etc. And I don't think when people say or act like they don't believe or care about the people hurt that's the same thing. "They didn't do anything wrong, album rules" is not in the same ballpark of what I would consider appropriate. I've seen good conversations in this very forum about problematic artists and art where no one is coming at anyone in bad faith or "gotcha," but instead working through feelings, commenting on the art itself, and doing so with deference and understanding of the reality of what they are consuming.

I've literally never said "proof doesn't matter." What I said was I don't want to have another "but the proof" argument. That's the argument where internet sleuths try and "prove" someone is lying, or that accusations are false. Or tries to give the most absurd "proof" in defense of abhorrent behavior. The entire world, and system, is heavily titled toward making sure even those guilty see very little, if any, consequence. So my worry is barely ever about "what can they do" -- they can do literally nothing and still have a wildly successful career for many, many years. But, they also have many roads to prove their innocence or prove their redemption without resorting to threats, harassment, or perpetuating further demonization of assault survivors. I didn't do anything wrong, here's my new single, just ain't that for me. I think most anyone reading this post has a good idea in their head of what "doing the work" would look like for someone that was guilty and wanted a path back, but accepting that maybe you don't get your former soapbox/pedestal back is also part of that. To me, that's about centering the proper wants and needs. (And the person that doubles down on cancel culture, right wing talking points, hangs out with those kind of people, and embraces the language of all that b.s. shows me pretty quickly I don't need to pay attention to anything they do or say in the matter.)