I Think It’s Worse
I was standing in the nosebleed seats of the Hollywood Bowl when I knew my youth was over.
I don’t mean my actual youth, as that was already long gone (I was 30 at the time, and only getting older). I mean the realization that the world had changed — that my experiences as a young person would never be replicated by future generations — washed over me like the dregs of a $20 draft macrobrew.
The inciting incident wasn’t Daniel Johnston tottering onstage with a walker and shaking uncontrollably during his opening set, it was when the band he was opening for, Neutral Milk Hotel, kicked into “The King of Carrot Flowers, Pts. Two & Three.” Two men, younger than I, were standing directly in front of me — shirtless, drunken, and in backwards baseball caps, they looked like the kind of guys who would have called me a dyke in high school (now, everyone under the age of 30 who isn’t a Proud Boy dresses like Winona Ryder in Night on Earth; at the time of my development, however, backwards hats were the uniform of the oppressor).
Arms draped around one other, enormous beers held aloft to the heavens, they screamed along to the song’s opening lines, punctuating each syllable with their fists:
“I love you, Jesus Chriiiiiiiist
JEEZ-US Christ, I LOVE you
YESSSSS, I do”
While I would be engaging in revisionist history if I told you Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea was a bomb upon its initial release, it certainly did not generate sales that would have resulted in the group being booked at the Hollywood Fucking Bowl (5,500 CDs were pressed at the time, one of which I purchased at a Borders Books and Music, rest in power). It was, and remains, a bizarre album written by a mentally ill man about using a time machine to save Anne Frank from the Nazis — not exactly Top of the Pops material. There were no shirtless men driving around in Ford Mustangs blasting “Communist Daughter” during the summer of 1998.
And yet, in the summer of 2014, the shirtless backhatters simply couldn’t get enough of that funky stuff. What changed? The internet, for starters. In the late ‘90s, the only thing you (and by “you,” I mean, “I”) could do on it was look up .txt files of the Anarchist Cookbook and attempt to download a “Weird” Al Yankovic .mp3 only to discover upon opening the file that you actually spent the last four hours downloading a home recorded racist song parody (“If you like ‘Weird’ Al, you’ll love this guy too cowardly to use his own name wantonly mumbling the n-word over a default keyboard setting!”). At the end of the day, you were still alone.
In the years that followed, the internet evolved into our constant companion, bringing the entirety of recorded knowledge and existence straight to our hands, our laps, our pussies and our cracks. It has, in a manner of decades, dismantled the underground and made anything, everything, accessible to anyone. There are plenty of things I never thought I’d see in my lifetime, up to and including:
Computers in pockets
ABBA getting back together
Someone successfully selling a Tad shirt for $463
Side Note: The fetishization of vintage rock tees is, to me, one of the most perplexing and infuriating byproducts of internet culture. It means the vast majority of those who now own them do so solely because they can afford them, as demand has generated a wildly inflated price tag for these non fungible totems of musical history.
An Additional Commodification of Culture-Related Side Note: The other day I found myself scouring the aisles of an Urban Outfitters looking for sale items to purchase and resell (with their comically generous rewards program, at times they pay you to take their trash) when I came across a vinyl copy of Neutral Milk Hotel’s On Avery Island; near it was a pile of $75 Nirvana In Utero sweatshorts (if you’re a bargain conscious lover of cotton/poly blends advertising albums recorded by Steve Albini, know said shorts are “only” $59 on their website). In related news, it appears Courtney Love’s money troubles are over.
While there are myriad dreadful things about the internet, by far its greatest achievement has been its ability to not only connect but give a voice to those who live on society’s margins — freaks, weirdos, queers, et al. Would life have been easier if, during my development, I was able to kibbitz with a global community of like minded individuals on my cell phone and not be stuck in some horse-fuck town praying for the sweet release of death? If I had lost my virginity in high school to some cool non-binary person I met on Tik Tok and not afterwards to a townie I hardly knew, who, even though he didn’t finish (I drunkenly threw up mid-coitus all over my Imperial Bedroom-era Elvis Costello shirt (current retail value, $300)), still gave me HPV?
Sure, but I wasn’t; sure, but I didn’t. I fully admit I am bitter and jealous of the opportunities for collective acceptance that exist for today’s youth — that doesn’t mean I hate them for it, though. I’m not one of those sociopaths who think student loan debt shouldn’t be eliminated because I had to pay it back.
Rather, I feel sorry for them (the queers specifically, because it’s their big month!!!!). Because the more people are able to embrace their true identities by connecting with a global community, the more marketing opportunities big business sees in their mined data. This is, by and large, the only societal development that has arisen from the queerification of culture.
We’ve seen it before, with feminism — the commodification of identity as a consolation prize. (“Hey, we know the Equal Rights Amendment never passed, but we got you this makeup bag that says ‘Nasty Woman’!”)
And now, in Pride Month 2022, the Rainbow Capitalism flows like Rosé — desperate to cash in, corporate America is grasping at straws trying to give the gays anything but rights. There’s a scramble to pander, like when they found out Latinos existed in the ‘90s and every other ad had someone playing bongos in it while a narrator talked about the “sabor of tu familia.” The products they’re creating to fill this perceived demand seem algorithmically generated — the other day I saw a silicone dog bowl in trans flag colors at Target, an object so exquisite in its batshittery it took my breath away.
The ability to buy an unethically manufactured mug with a quote from Sappho on it is cold comfort, however, when queer rights are actively being dismantled, and during a democratic administration at that. Legislation is being passed that will actively kill trans youth; meanwhile, Netflix gives a transphobic millionaire more hours and more millions and tosses the queer comics one special to share time on and plead a case for their existence.
Wholly disingenuous, it’s even worse than being ignored. “Representation matters,” but only insomuch as the existence of a demographic means there’s someone to peddle wares to. OK, they say, you exist — now buy something or fuck off. Marketability, sadly, doesn’t breed humanity. Find comfort in each other, kiddos. It’s all you’ve got.