PREFACE: I ask you to attempt to read this with an open mind. Excuse the writer's imperfection as a human being. Much of what I speak of deals with the grooming and gaslighting of society which is the very same issue that may prevent you from reading this with an open mind.
As someone who is co-founder and CEO of one of the longest running indie music sites ever, with around 50,000 artists and sanctioned by the great Pete Townshend, I feel qualified to speak about art. The fact I am singer/songwriter for the semi-phenomenon online band known as Negative Tendencies is only a sidenote to what you might call the festivities of reading this diatribe. heh
Something I've been noticing for a long time, wrote a blog about it around 8 years ago, has now progressed to the next level. To get to the gist of what this particular treatise is about, first let me share you this excerpt from that blog from 9/29/2017.
The above is not even Facebook's worst offense. That would be the corruption of communication/dialogue by the pervasiveness and popularity of the 'like' option. Now, again, I use the 'like' button as much as anybody. But, I also use actual words more than anybody and I have adapted it to my own usage, often as just an acknowledgement that I've read something, along with that I support the idea or whatever they put forth. But I had something hit me over the head today which was the impetus for this blog. So anyway, I am a major fan of several different TV shows. I saw something on facebook where Saturday Night Live was asking for suggestions for hosts for this year, and I immediately went to a fan group I belong to, to suggest we start a campaign to get one actress to be host on SNL. But as I was typing the post I said, fuck it, I'll start the petition myself and went to iPetitions.com and within 5 minutes, had a petition ready. I was also very prepared to push this petition because I belong to over a dozen fan groups for this show, many I follow on Twitter and Instagram are the biggest fans of this show. Within an hour I hit all of them with pleas to sign the petition and share it. Now I must say, this particular fanbase includes the most enthusiastic individuals I've seen for any TV show online, it's an outright love affair with the star and that's not even taking my overcharged feelings into account. I was relatively certain all these people seeing this petition would sign immediately. What happened was a big surprise and is still a shock to my system. My threads got 'likes', a ton of them, as I expected, but maybe 1 out of 8 at best of the people who 'liked' the idea clicked the link and signed the petition. WTF? It occurred to me, OMG, this is how Trump won. Everybody is so used to just clicking that like button that they didn't have the fortitude to vote, that's been stolen from them, by fucking Facebook which prefers clicks over communication when it comes right down to it. That's right, let me be clear, Facebook has systematically with its Thumbs Up mentality ripped the guts/soul out of activism. Not only are folks less likely to clash with those who disagree cause they're so comfortable in their baby blanket world of family and friends who align with them but they've been twisted into a disposition of utter, unbridled passiveness because clicking the 'like' option means they can get by, not committing themselves to words or actions that might actually accomplish anything. This is actually a conspiracy that could've been thought of by the likes of Russia or ISIS, how to bring the American populace to its knees, coerce them into a state of sappy wussiness by sucking them into a realm where they can just sit back and respond by clicking a Thumbs Up icon. America is ready for the coup now, I'm telling you. I noticed something in this regards when I created a political forum with some nice features and found that all the Trump haters on Facebook would not venture to my forum because they didn't really want to take on the opposition, what they wanted is kudos from their friends. Looky how rebellious I am, fellow Trump haters, I'm bad, I'm clever. But y'all are mostly gutless. Maybe you'd all be there fighting on the street if things turn too fascist but you are definitely not really up for fighting the day-to-day war going on in this culture, and I also have my doubts that some of you even voted.
Speaking of that, do you know just how sucky it is when an artist works hard on a song and gets no comments, just 2 likes or whatever? Sadly they're even lucky to get that these days but I happen to know cause I know some of these folks all too well that they put 'likes' there when they don't even listen. You can see that if you keep a close eye on your artist stats. Not all Facebookers, but a lot of them. When I first came online and there were no stinkin' 'like' buttons, there was all kinds of feedback for songs going on. Should communication be evolving or getting weaker and more stupid by the day? You tell me. Facebook is fucking communication up the ass. Make a god damned comment, even this was not my thing or you need to redo the vocals, stop with the super-sensitivity, you know you're just excusing yourself from committing to an opinion. Bad baby! __________________________________________________
Anyway, now it's 5/4/2025 and yesterday the band released a really cool Trump-protest song called Your Genius, and dare I say there's a lot of depth to the song. From my agonized over lyrics which I do, from the very hard work my virtuoso bandmates did on the backing track, from the painstaking production I did on the video - a lot there to ponder. but extracting words from our followers and general fanbase on X has devolved to close to impossible. Here is what I think is the reason why:
The nature of the internet was obviously meant to be participatory. The band actually did a rock song about this called Lull (there's a lull in the conversation without your participation). Now I know the band's music is going over, the amount of listens we get on the day of release is always pretty large, and when promoting I talk about how good we are and pretty much noone ever challenges us even when I am actually trying to be arrogant about it. heh However, unlike in web days of 1998-2010, discussions that would happen just aren't. We used happy dancing girls in a rather negative song about Trump and I was prepared to explain that but no one brought it up or anything else really. Extracting words these days for songs, memes, any art at all is almost like wiped out by some invisible censor but it's not really. Sure, it's the groomed laziness of the like button, but there's something else causing this withdrawn energy vacuum. I believe it's that even the participatory people don't include appreciation of art in their MO these days - DUE TO THEIR EGO AS CONTENT PROVIDERS THEMSELVES. Howard Stern often says everybody and their Aunt has a podcast. When one is in "content provider" mode the absolute last thing in their craw is being able to stand back and look at somebody else's picture on the wall. Beautiful parts of songs the band puts out there are just not absorbed in the one listen given by the tiny attention span maniacs of today who are busy thinking about what they can do to get more love. I could easily write 1000 page essays on many artists I love, the Beatles, Stones, Neil Young, Led Zep, the Who, Nirvana, Pink Floyd, Elton, CSNY, each Beatle solo , Bowie and so on.. As the acting musicologist for our website, it's my job to pick features and such, appreciation of others' music takes up huge acreage in my brain. A lot of great indies pass my way and I go out of my way to promote them when they do. but your average X participant can't even tell ya why they like your song even if they make it clear that they do like it.
A big part of art is interaction with it. Words. I miss the goddamned words, I crave them. but they are no longer forthcoming because of this beast called the internet. I realize that the "content providers" are overjoyed that the internet allows them to share their content at all and of course this aspect should be appreciated and celebrated but not to the extent that it has shut down, crushed the dialogue. Is it too late to turn back the taciturn turn?
As someone who is co-founder and CEO of one of the longest running indie music sites ever, with around 50,000 artists and sanctioned by the great Pete Townshend, I feel qualified to speak about art. The fact I am singer/songwriter for the semi-phenomenon online band known as Negative Tendencies is only a sidenote to what you might call the festivities of reading this diatribe. heh
Something I've been noticing for a long time, wrote a blog about it around 8 years ago, has now progressed to the next level. To get to the gist of what this particular treatise is about, first let me share you this excerpt from that blog from 9/29/2017.
The above is not even Facebook's worst offense. That would be the corruption of communication/dialogue by the pervasiveness and popularity of the 'like' option. Now, again, I use the 'like' button as much as anybody. But, I also use actual words more than anybody and I have adapted it to my own usage, often as just an acknowledgement that I've read something, along with that I support the idea or whatever they put forth. But I had something hit me over the head today which was the impetus for this blog. So anyway, I am a major fan of several different TV shows. I saw something on facebook where Saturday Night Live was asking for suggestions for hosts for this year, and I immediately went to a fan group I belong to, to suggest we start a campaign to get one actress to be host on SNL. But as I was typing the post I said, fuck it, I'll start the petition myself and went to iPetitions.com and within 5 minutes, had a petition ready. I was also very prepared to push this petition because I belong to over a dozen fan groups for this show, many I follow on Twitter and Instagram are the biggest fans of this show. Within an hour I hit all of them with pleas to sign the petition and share it. Now I must say, this particular fanbase includes the most enthusiastic individuals I've seen for any TV show online, it's an outright love affair with the star and that's not even taking my overcharged feelings into account. I was relatively certain all these people seeing this petition would sign immediately. What happened was a big surprise and is still a shock to my system. My threads got 'likes', a ton of them, as I expected, but maybe 1 out of 8 at best of the people who 'liked' the idea clicked the link and signed the petition. WTF? It occurred to me, OMG, this is how Trump won. Everybody is so used to just clicking that like button that they didn't have the fortitude to vote, that's been stolen from them, by fucking Facebook which prefers clicks over communication when it comes right down to it. That's right, let me be clear, Facebook has systematically with its Thumbs Up mentality ripped the guts/soul out of activism. Not only are folks less likely to clash with those who disagree cause they're so comfortable in their baby blanket world of family and friends who align with them but they've been twisted into a disposition of utter, unbridled passiveness because clicking the 'like' option means they can get by, not committing themselves to words or actions that might actually accomplish anything. This is actually a conspiracy that could've been thought of by the likes of Russia or ISIS, how to bring the American populace to its knees, coerce them into a state of sappy wussiness by sucking them into a realm where they can just sit back and respond by clicking a Thumbs Up icon. America is ready for the coup now, I'm telling you. I noticed something in this regards when I created a political forum with some nice features and found that all the Trump haters on Facebook would not venture to my forum because they didn't really want to take on the opposition, what they wanted is kudos from their friends. Looky how rebellious I am, fellow Trump haters, I'm bad, I'm clever. But y'all are mostly gutless. Maybe you'd all be there fighting on the street if things turn too fascist but you are definitely not really up for fighting the day-to-day war going on in this culture, and I also have my doubts that some of you even voted.
Speaking of that, do you know just how sucky it is when an artist works hard on a song and gets no comments, just 2 likes or whatever? Sadly they're even lucky to get that these days but I happen to know cause I know some of these folks all too well that they put 'likes' there when they don't even listen. You can see that if you keep a close eye on your artist stats. Not all Facebookers, but a lot of them. When I first came online and there were no stinkin' 'like' buttons, there was all kinds of feedback for songs going on. Should communication be evolving or getting weaker and more stupid by the day? You tell me. Facebook is fucking communication up the ass. Make a god damned comment, even this was not my thing or you need to redo the vocals, stop with the super-sensitivity, you know you're just excusing yourself from committing to an opinion. Bad baby! __________________________________________________
Anyway, now it's 5/4/2025 and yesterday the band released a really cool Trump-protest song called Your Genius, and dare I say there's a lot of depth to the song. From my agonized over lyrics which I do, from the very hard work my virtuoso bandmates did on the backing track, from the painstaking production I did on the video - a lot there to ponder. but extracting words from our followers and general fanbase on X has devolved to close to impossible. Here is what I think is the reason why:
The nature of the internet was obviously meant to be participatory. The band actually did a rock song about this called Lull (there's a lull in the conversation without your participation). Now I know the band's music is going over, the amount of listens we get on the day of release is always pretty large, and when promoting I talk about how good we are and pretty much noone ever challenges us even when I am actually trying to be arrogant about it. heh However, unlike in web days of 1998-2010, discussions that would happen just aren't. We used happy dancing girls in a rather negative song about Trump and I was prepared to explain that but no one brought it up or anything else really. Extracting words these days for songs, memes, any art at all is almost like wiped out by some invisible censor but it's not really. Sure, it's the groomed laziness of the like button, but there's something else causing this withdrawn energy vacuum. I believe it's that even the participatory people don't include appreciation of art in their MO these days - DUE TO THEIR EGO AS CONTENT PROVIDERS THEMSELVES. Howard Stern often says everybody and their Aunt has a podcast. When one is in "content provider" mode the absolute last thing in their craw is being able to stand back and look at somebody else's picture on the wall. Beautiful parts of songs the band puts out there are just not absorbed in the one listen given by the tiny attention span maniacs of today who are busy thinking about what they can do to get more love. I could easily write 1000 page essays on many artists I love, the Beatles, Stones, Neil Young, Led Zep, the Who, Nirvana, Pink Floyd, Elton, CSNY, each Beatle solo , Bowie and so on.. As the acting musicologist for our website, it's my job to pick features and such, appreciation of others' music takes up huge acreage in my brain. A lot of great indies pass my way and I go out of my way to promote them when they do. but your average X participant can't even tell ya why they like your song even if they make it clear that they do like it.
A big part of art is interaction with it. Words. I miss the goddamned words, I crave them. but they are no longer forthcoming because of this beast called the internet. I realize that the "content providers" are overjoyed that the internet allows them to share their content at all and of course this aspect should be appreciated and celebrated but not to the extent that it has shut down, crushed the dialogue. Is it too late to turn back the taciturn turn?
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