QUICK! Give me three things not necessarily associated with each other, but which are all CLEARLY related....Ill go ya one better, restrain my request to our
kulture. Give up? well, no worries, as Im sure you already guessed I have done the heavy lifting here and connected all the dots for you.
Yes, I give you the H.A.M.B. ladies and gentlemen. A bigger collection of mouth breathing, know nothing, football fucking Simeon simpletons you will never find anywhere else in our kulture. And whats better, they all think they have an opinion that actually counts for something. Truth be told, I have never paid much attention to this rag tag collection of zipperheads that deserve, as much as anything, to be collectively marched off into a shower room with no drains as anything else. Nevertheless, they exist. If only to plague those of us in this life that actually try to do something creative, or righteous, or reaffirming in the best sense of the concept, which is to say, remaining unashamedly TRADITIONAL. I ask myself over and over again, why this gaggle of prepossessed, pretentious over opinionated jag offs should bother me, or anyone for that matter. And after great consideration it comes down to this quote: Those who can, DO. Those who cant,REVIEW. There may be no more perfect sentence with which to underline my long standing vehement hatred of this fucking worthless board. But its deeper than that. In a way, its a deep seated hatred of the INTERNET. The evil, all encompassing beast that has given rise to the oh so vociferous, -living in mommies basement, cant wait to fire up my 400 dollar acer computer that I bought at fucking wall mart to flame some cat that is actually trying to accomplish something with his life- loser. Its kinda the dark side of the Internet if you will.
I am a firm believer that although you are certainly entitled to your opinion, as misdirected and utterly uniformed as it probably is, you are NOT entitled to damage someones reputation or destroy something that actually has value by simply banging out a hand full of anonymous strokes on a keyboard. Dont get me wrong, this isnt a problem for our kulture alone. These miserable fucking discussion boards plague all areas of the internet, from home made chocolate chip cookie recipes, to the on line editorial pages of the new york times. Its just that this one, the H.A.M.B. , is our particular sack of crap. For the two wheel crowd its the jockey journal, and so forth. The real tragedy is not just that these boards give idiots a "voice" without having to go through any of the traditional channels that creative people take, like say establishing and maintaining a blog, or a website, or a shop, or a photo studio or whatever, no. The sobering and simple reality is that of the collective voice of a mob. One shit head says something, and before you know it, 4, 8, 16 - 100 people are all talking smack. Safety in numbers for the cowards, to be sure. And make no mistake, they are simple fucking yellow bellied cowards cum wanna be bullies. The enticement of instant self aggrandizement is more than these double digit i.q. short bus riders can stand. Racing home from work, or staying up to the wee hours of the morning hoping to be the first guy on a thread to offer needlessly critical statements or baseless criticisms on what someone else has produced.
When it first occurred to me to go into the magazine publishing business it was mainly because I couldnt find a magazine that I would actually want to read myself. It was obvious that no one, at least in my eyes, was doing it "right". So you know what, in those days, pre-internet, you did one of two things. Shut the fuck up and sit down. Or put your money where your big assed mouth was and try to do a better job yourself. Almost a decade, and TWO thriving magazines later, yeah...Im qualified to have an opinion.
Granted, you cant argue something subjective, like say taste. If you see something as you go about your worthless existence, and you say to yourself, "well, I dont like that" - fine. Its a matter of your personal taste. But remember chuck-o, thats ALL it is. Your fucking taste. You dont like a tv show, change the channel. You dont like comedy routines with strangely abstract references that require you to have more than a handful of braincells working at any given time. Dont watch Dennis Miller. But until you actually TRY to do something original yourself, and then to go further, and open yourself up to the same non-sensical horseshit that you yourself are all too eager to dish out, my advice to you is to shut your fucking worthless goddamm mouth, and go back to jerking off to interspecies erotica when your mommy is out of the room.
All that having been said, the sad reality is that we (as in those of us who make things for others to consume) will forever have to deal with the vocalized ramblings of people who arent qualified to tie their own fucking shoes.
Do the right thing, shun these sites. Turn your back on them man. I would rather hear that you spent4 hours redoing your myspace page, than learn that you actively participate on a message board somewhere. I dont care how you try to justify it - you like looking at the pictures there, or its a great place to get tech tips or whatever. The simple act of you clicking the URL then lends credence to the site. Your participation, no mater how tacit, is recorded as a stat somewhere. The proprietors of these sites then take that info and use it club us all over the head with it, or worse yet, try to legitimize themselves by selling ad space and earning a LIVING off of all this idiocy. In a weird not so subtly parasitic kinda way, they are making money and enjoying fame and celebrity off of the fact that they do nothing more than provide a rich atmosphere in which the aforementioned football fucking monkey 'tards are allowed to torment and criticize others with no fear of remuneration or retaliation.
Unfair? you bet
no one ever said life was fair, so what....here is the real point to this though. I emplore you, recognize this for what it is. Its a huge shit sandwich folks...........dont buy (or bite) into it.