By now you are likely aware about the two most controversial items that have recently appeared on social media: the Snapchat hot dog and Kim Kardashian wearing a tattered Morbid Angel shirt. Now I could easily write you a think piece on why I think the hot dog is fucking funny but I’ve used up my quota of phallic hoodwinking for July, so I’ll ramble about that other thing.
Celebrities wearing shit they probably don’t understand or listen to isn’t new or even newsworthy—“then why are you writing about it?” you breathlessly ask, hands shaking with excitement as you hit ‘send’ in the comments section—but two things about this particular case caught my interest: the amount of people concerned with Kardashian owning said shirt but not, in fact, listening to the band, and the vitriolic remarks suggesting sexual violence and the sort of shit that’s sadly somehow expected from this melting pot of a subculture. The pot in this analogy is a shitter, in case you needed it spelled out.
“She doesn’t even listen to them!” cried a portion of the population who are actually concerned with that sort of thing. If that scenario isn’t representative of modern American society, then I don’t know what is. To have that thought isn’t the worst thing, but to have the lack of self-control, the compulsion to actually express said thought, either verbally or written, is #sad and not making America great again. It’s a fucking no-win situation. She doesn’t listen to Morbid Angel? What a fucking poser! She does listen to Morbid Angel? Fucking rich elite infiltrating our scene! I even saw a few places refer to this as “cultural appropriation,” which not only screams “2017” but is also such a misuse of the term, much like how most people use it in 2017 anyway.
I get why certain segments of the metal underground don’t want Kim Kardashian involved in metal, mostly stemming around the fact that her family is haunted after a witch cursed her father and his bloodline for helping get OJ off, but it’s not like she’s going to go to shows. She’s not going to buy the record you wanted on Discogs. She’s not even going to be a presence. But we keep her and her stupid family rich because if someone asked one of them to eat shit out of a horse’s ass they’d all do it as long as there were fucking cameras and a paycheck to enable them to continue being parasitically famous for being famous. Which is a concept that is part of the reason there’s terrorism and global warming, not to mention talks of the Rock and Kid Rock (no relation) running for office because the world doesn’t hate us enough.
Which brings us to the second topic: the backlash against her for wearing a Morbid Angel shirt and using a Snapchat filter while ignoring her lines of cocaine. And I’m not just talking about the debate on whether or not she’s a fan or was introduced by Kanye West but rather people calling her a “whore” for it or threatening violence or rape. For wearing a fucking shirt on an app where you’re often pictured with dog ears for Christ’s sake. How is this affecting your life at all, really? If your first instinct is to berate someone for having the audacity to fuck when you’re agitated over something that means fuck all, then you need to reevaluate your life. If you feel the need to attack her (or any woman) over something like this, then take aim at them for their ridiculous behavior and not because they’re a woman. it’s easy to take out the frustration of having no one who wants to fuck you out on half of the population. A lot of women don’t want to fuck me either (surprising, I know) but when I see Kim Kardashian or any other woman do something asinine, their gender isn’t going to part of my shit-flinging equation.
Which apparently is why I don’t write for Loudwire, who’re doing a fabulous job creating a dialogue on gender equality in the metal world with such hard-hitting stories like Slayer think tank Kerry King taking time from discussing sick tribal tattoos to talk about how he’d like to see her and her family dead. This is coming from the same place that bitched about the “scourge” of pop stars wearing metal shit like it’s both new and also relevant while covering whatever dumb shit the guy from Nickelback said to the guy from Slipknot, like that’s the bastion of noncommercial metal and not a can of Budweiser.
And like Bud itself, the lowest common denominator drink that shit up, even though it has no flavor and gives you hangover shits. It stokes this mob mentality that emboldens men who already have severe issues with women to say more and more outrageous shit. It’s this mob mentality that easily shifts from a target that—let’s face it—is untouchable and points them towards something more in reach, like the girl at the show who told him to fuck off because he grabbed her ass. And while the regressive left sits and argues about the rights of infants to decide their goddamned gender, shit with real consequences directly in their wheelhouse gets pushed to the side because it’s easier to complain on Twitter about the lack of a gluten-free option at the Vatican than some asshole who’s going to verbally and potentially physically assault a woman because some vapid human trash bag posted a picture of a shirt he wanted and he needs to take that anger out somewhere.
Look, I don’t give a shit who wears a Morbid Angel shirt or if Chris Brown has Municipal Waste sweatpants or if Lady Gaga was spotted with a Doom patch. I don’t even care if David Vincent looks like a pedophile with that new beard and cowboy hat. I’m secure enough in my life and listening habits not to let them be shaken by the stupidity of others and I’m not going to let it ruin my enjoyment of metal or any kind of art in general. It doesn’t matter, it really does not matter. But when it turns to abusive language and the threat of violence against women, that’s when we all need to fucking grow up. If you actually allow your anger at this kind of thing collide with your confused feelings about women, then just go the fuck away.
