Little C: The Word I Hate
Hello readers,
As writers, I don't feel like CT and I should ever be eliminating words from our vocabulary. It's a dangerous practice and not one that I feel benefits us in any way. That being said there are various insults and slurs that I don't foresee us every using in anything we commit to paper. I'm sure you can guess what they are, so I'm not going to make myself vaguely uncomfortable by typing them out here.
But there's another insult that I've been hearing a lot lately that gets under my skin. It's thrown around in the entertainment industry in general, but it gets said with a special level of disdain in the music scene.
Sellout.
I hate this. Hearing it escape someone's mouth sends me into a full on Gollum-level fit of hissing and cursing. I hates it, I does. Filthy stupid hobitses. Sorry. I'll pull it together.
Maybe it bothers me this much because I understand where the impulse comes from. You have this little underground thing (music, movie, llama, whatever) that you feel like you have a special relationship with. And then it gets popular. And the relationship changes. And instead of moving on to a new source of art, or embracing it and trying to grow with the changes, people get mad. And then people get bitter.
This particular hissy fit originated with an article someone posted on facebook about the band Fall Out Boy. I've been in the FOB camp for a little over a decade now. I remember falling in love with their very first album. I'm not trying to brag about "I knew them when" or whatever, I tell you that I knew them before they made it big to make a point. Because I loved that early stuff, but for whatever reason they were never my very favorite band. I never had that die-hard when-is-their-new-album-coming-out-because-I-need-it-in-my-ears-right-this-second-or-I'm-gonna-stab-something feel for this band. I've seen them live many times, but always because I also liked whatever band they happened to be on tour with. So when the inevitable backlash came on, it didn't feel like a personal attack.
Starting from the minute "Sugar, We're Going Down" became a hit, this band have been called sellouts by the hardcore members of the punk scene. No big deal for the most part, because the people saying it were never going to listen to the band anyway. And then they were sellouts for playing MTV. And then it was because they used a hip-hop producer for their 3rd album. The article that sparked me to rant is pissed because they use a drum machine and song writers that aren't band members.
I'm not going into a point by point defense of the band. But it's a decade in to them supposedly having "soldout" and enough is enough. They are a band that cut their teeth in the punk scene and then moved past it. They evolved, and according to the record charts I would say they did it successfully. You don't have to love them. It's not required. But every choice they make that gets them labeled with the dreaded "s" word is something that another band before them did and got away with.
So please, before you throw it out there, consider if "sellout" is the word you really want to use. And if it is, please also check if you are within punching distance of me. Just in case.
Little C
As writers, I don't feel like CT and I should ever be eliminating words from our vocabulary. It's a dangerous practice and not one that I feel benefits us in any way. That being said there are various insults and slurs that I don't foresee us every using in anything we commit to paper. I'm sure you can guess what they are, so I'm not going to make myself vaguely uncomfortable by typing them out here.
But there's another insult that I've been hearing a lot lately that gets under my skin. It's thrown around in the entertainment industry in general, but it gets said with a special level of disdain in the music scene.
Sellout.
I hate this. Hearing it escape someone's mouth sends me into a full on Gollum-level fit of hissing and cursing. I hates it, I does. Filthy stupid hobitses. Sorry. I'll pull it together.
Maybe it bothers me this much because I understand where the impulse comes from. You have this little underground thing (music, movie, llama, whatever) that you feel like you have a special relationship with. And then it gets popular. And the relationship changes. And instead of moving on to a new source of art, or embracing it and trying to grow with the changes, people get mad. And then people get bitter.
This particular hissy fit originated with an article someone posted on facebook about the band Fall Out Boy. I've been in the FOB camp for a little over a decade now. I remember falling in love with their very first album. I'm not trying to brag about "I knew them when" or whatever, I tell you that I knew them before they made it big to make a point. Because I loved that early stuff, but for whatever reason they were never my very favorite band. I never had that die-hard when-is-their-new-album-coming-out-because-I-need-it-in-my-ears-right-this-second-or-I'm-gonna-stab-something feel for this band. I've seen them live many times, but always because I also liked whatever band they happened to be on tour with. So when the inevitable backlash came on, it didn't feel like a personal attack.
Starting from the minute "Sugar, We're Going Down" became a hit, this band have been called sellouts by the hardcore members of the punk scene. No big deal for the most part, because the people saying it were never going to listen to the band anyway. And then they were sellouts for playing MTV. And then it was because they used a hip-hop producer for their 3rd album. The article that sparked me to rant is pissed because they use a drum machine and song writers that aren't band members.
I'm not going into a point by point defense of the band. But it's a decade in to them supposedly having "soldout" and enough is enough. They are a band that cut their teeth in the punk scene and then moved past it. They evolved, and according to the record charts I would say they did it successfully. You don't have to love them. It's not required. But every choice they make that gets them labeled with the dreaded "s" word is something that another band before them did and got away with.
So please, before you throw it out there, consider if "sellout" is the word you really want to use. And if it is, please also check if you are within punching distance of me. Just in case.
Little C
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