u/No_Aesthetic

I was living in New York City in 2023 with a couple of dudes who were into filmmaking, both actors and involved in producing their own pilot.

I hit it off especially well with the more down to Earth one, who was also a musician and comedian.

His childhood friend moved to the city with him many years ago, both from a depressed ex-industrial city in Massachusetts, and the two of them would hang out a lot.

I discovered very quickly that the two of them were quite into Joe Rogan and everything that comes with that scene, including the many, many, many conspiracies.

I am a skeptic by nature, in the best sense of the word, and that involves critical thinking, the real kind, not the bargain bin "I saw some stats on a Facebook post and now I hate vaccines because I'm not a sheep that listens to experts" stuff, so I knew immediately I was in for a wild ride

I forget how it happened, but they brought up one of the signature Q-adjacent conspiracies, the one about Bourdain/Bennington/Cornell having been killed for working on a documentary about child trafficking

I expressed doubt that such a thing ever existed and the other guy (the one that I didn't live with) was incredulous, the face he made was unforgettable, he could not believe I doubted it

Then, I was interrogated with a rapidfire sequence of conspiracy theories, many of them Q-adjacent, which I also expressed doubt in

I had heard most of them, including the documentary one, but they introduced me to the mud flood conspiracy, this idea that there was a civilization called the Tartarian Empire that ruled the whole world and was wiped away by a global mud flood, leaving us a bunch of architecture and a fake history for whatever reason

I once more expressed doubt and was met with looks of confusion, like they'd never even imagined anyone could think these ideas were insane

Mind you, these are late 30s urbanites, fairly educated (in the arts, which may be a negative point), and not particularly right-wing or whatever (actually, the other guy I was living with was a Tucker Carlson fan, and somehow the least conspiratorial of the three)

About a year later I was in the city again on the way to Europe and decided to hang out with them for a couple days, took them to a punk show (Weekend Nachos, for the curious), and stopped off at a really rad Vietnamese restaurant on the way back

I was pretty drunk there but I encountered a guy working there who was so stupid and out of touch that I practically sobered up on the spot

Guy was Gen Z, had to be about a decade younger than me (I was 33 at the time), and he really did not understand anything

He was asking if I thought there were really litterboxes in schools and I said "...no?" and he looked at me with the same kind of expression the other guy had before, like he had never even imagined the answer could possibly be "no"

And then he asked if I had heard of QAnon and asked if I thought there was anything to it

Again I said "no" but kind of more firmly and he said something like "I don't know man, it might not be but I'm not going to vote for Hillary this year just in case it is"

I really thought he was fucking with me

I felt it in my bones

But we had to leave so I just kind of put all of that behind me

Some time later, I realized one of my friends actually knew him!

I asked if he was seriously like that and she said "oh yeah, he's always been like that"

This was, mind you, over a year later, so the middle of last year

She said he did fine in school and all but he essentially just lives in a fog of knowing nothing at all

She told me that she didn't realize until earlier that month he didn't know who Biden was

Yes, that Biden, the President one

She showed me some screenshots from earlier that year where he was convinced Trump had been President and tried to prove her wrong but could not and blamed it on the "Mandala Affect"

I wish I were kidding about all of this but these people are out there and at least some of them do vote, although hopefully not that one

Southpaw were revealed to be actual dyed in the wool Nazis and their shows are being canceled for it now.

The hardcore subreddit thinks this is a problem, in the sense that if you complain about Nazis you are the problem.

No idea what's up over there but I just thought everyone should be aware. I copped a perma for talking about it openly.

Southpaw were revealed to be actual dyed in the wool Nazis and their shows are being canceled for it now.

The hardcore subreddit thinks this is a problem, in the sense that if you complain about Nazis you are the problem.

No idea what's up over there but I just thought everyone should be aware. I copped a perma for talking about it openly.

Hi, I am an American that moved to Portugal with my wife who is from here. It doesn't seem like there is much of a scene of any kind in this country. I was used to hardcore punk and extreme metal stuff back in the states, but here we've got a lot of goddamn Linkin Park cover bands.

I've got a voice somewhere between Ian Curtis and Michael Gira, suitably dark lyrics, primary skill in guitar, secondary skill in bass, learning drums, can fuck around on a synth, do production with Logic Pro X.

And I've been using the voice and an acoustic guitar lately but it would be a lot better to have a synth going under it that can be built on, among other things. Lap steel guitar and stuff. I'll probably get one of those.

I don't want to be a direct copy but the influence is obviously heavy.

Anybody out there?

In the story of Jonah, the aforementioned is chased all over creation by YHWH, who has given him a prophecy to purvey. In the end, YHWH wins and Jonah delivers the message: the people of Ninevah must repent of their sins or be destroyed.

Jonah clearly does not expect this to happen, but in the end it does. Ninevah repents of their sins and they are not destroyed.

Ninevah was not a Jewish city, it was in the Assyrian Empire, and they were able to repent by appealing directly to YHWH.

There are other stories of repentance in the Old Testament, sometimes whole societies and sometimes individuals.

If humans could freely repent of their sins and be forgiven before Jesus, what is the point of the sacrifice Jesus made?

Yeah I know it's some EPs pasted together but the sound is pretty consistent: very heavy bass, very chaotic and frankly nonsensical writing, stupid vocal sounds that actually fit in the context.

Specifically, I really like the heavy bass sound. Are there any bass/drums war metal bands similar to bass/drums powerviolence ones?

My dad became a minister in his 20s and now, in his early 70s, he has been running the church I grew up in for nearly 20 years

I was never a believer at all but was forced to go to churches for the first 16 years of my life

Over the last 20 years, he and I have had many clashes about religion, but over the years it evolved into a gentler back and forth over the subject

Eventually, it seems like my approaches sharpened enough that they started to chip away at the armor of faith

These days, he still puts on a good performance in church (he's always been a performer) but in private he sings a very different tune

He will speculate about things far outside the bounds of his religion, like what AI will be capable of, but then has to pull himself back to religion

He will suggest that AI might create a utopia, or it might destroy humanity altogether, and in either event it's obvious that will not result in the 2nd coming of Jesus

But when he reminds himself that he is a Christian and can't believe those things, he seems very half-hearted about it

Essentially, he has the sound of someone who has become rather uncertain in faith, he is no longer capable of the grand, sweeping statements of confidence about the nature of reality

At first I thought maybe it was just a fluke but it really does seem like a big change

I also suspect his rather unfair life might have led to some of it, like becoming disabled at a younger age, having health problems later on, having issues with mental health

So he's just in this really weird position that seems very uncomfortable, where he can't really let himself go deep into secular thought and he can't let himself go back into the Christian cocoon but his position in between is very unstable, he's not a man who loves ambiguity, he loves his certainty and here there is none

I wondered if I was reading into this a bit too much so I asked around a bit and other people have noticed the same thing I have and begun to wonder

But I don't know if he would even admit this to me, especially since I am the one that would have poked and prodded the most in this direction

I always thought by the time this moment arrived I would be well-prepared to handle it, but I am woefully unprepared, actually

Has anyone ever gone through this? A very religious parent or close family member losing faith but unwilling to embrace it or talk about it much? How did it go or you?

Thanks

It should go without saying that this question is for American conservatives, but I still want to say that in the intro of this post so we're all on the same page.

2016 was the pivotal election of our time for the Republican Party, where Donald Trump took the primaries by storm and then delivered an enormous upset against Hillary Clinton.

Since Trump is term-limited and cannot run again in 2028, it's wide open. Do you expect to see a return to the establishment? Another MAGA type? Or another dark horse in the same way POTUS was himself?

Thanks for reading and answering if you do that!

Obviously it's not the same, the absence of Rod Serling is very clearly felt, and the scripts generally aren't as great as anything he or his guys came up with, but it was bizarrely enjoyable. I saw it in the context of a random YouTube channel that does broadcasts pretending to be an actual channel from the 80s. During commercial breaks there were insane AI generated ads and commericals alongside real ones. That probably added something to the experience.

My wife was very touched by an episode that seemed to be about miscarriage. I can't say any of the plots stuck with me like that, but it was a nice experience.

Does anybody out there recommend digging into the full series? Any favorite episodes I should know about?

I remember during the Pitchfork era that Beck was pretty well-regarded among critics (not just Pitchfork, which was kind of hit or miss for him) and also had a surprising amount of mainstream appeal.

In 2005 you could hear songs like Girl on the radio and it wasn't the first time. He had some success in the early-mid 90s as well with the song Loser and the album Odelay. A few years after 2005, Modern Guilt (2008) was a decently big album and some of those songs floated around popular media in the waning PF era. But there was a pretty large commercial success gap between Odelay (1996) and Guero (2005) because he kept changing up his sound.

The hitch was that his less commercial era from the mid-90s to the mid-00s was really popular with critics. Odelay started it, and I think that's because it was popular and weird but also strangely more serious than earlier albums. Sea Change (2002) was the big one, a lot of critics and listeners treated that like a rebirth of Beck.

After 2008, Beck's success fell off dramatically. Morning Phase (2014) still did very well on the charts and even did better with a lot of critics than the previous couple had, but it didn't have much impact on mainstream or indie audiences. The next two albums did even worse on all fronts but especially the commercial one.

So by 2014 he had a very long history of critical and commercial success, he had a number of mainstream hits, and Beck was kind of a known quantity. But somewhere between 2008 and 2014 he had lost relevance and just never really got it back. Beck's popularity with younger listeners fell off and now the only people you're likely to find talking about him or remembering him are Gen Xers that grew up with his music.

And I think this unpopularity among younger generations shows on RYM, since every single Beck album on there is received pretty poorly vs. their critical reception. Check this out:

https://preview.redd.it/ch9felwpri4h1.png?width=1716&format=png&auto=webp&s=ddc24403ab461fd31ae75fe389882a14e514405c

This was the peak of his commercial and critical success but the ratings are pretty middling and hardly what you'd expect for a dude that was an indie darling. In the mid-00s, dude was perceived as basically a mainstream Neutral Milk Hotel or something. He was BIG in the eyes of a lot of people!

Then the second period:

https://preview.redd.it/s21ft00fsi4h1.png?width=1712&format=png&auto=webp&s=8703d3916ca168e66378793a45fe504a2bcea9b7

Huge ratings drop off but you have to remember that he was still pretty damn popular for the first part of this period up to 2008. The songs from that part of this era were used like that one Franz Ferdinand song that became their entire legacy, but there were several of them.

And I don't know what happened there, really.

Obviously Beck got older and fell out of fashion as his output became worse but plenty of artists had big fall offs and didn't completely lose relevance. Plenty of artists from the two distinct Beck eras were viewed similarly to him and still retain relevance in indie circles or mainstream circles or both. Plenty of those artists had lower sales and worse critical reception as well.

It's just kind of hard to explain. Any thoughts?

I noticed that whenever I drop a new video, there's a cascade of views originating from that video. Like, say a new video gets 2,000 in the first day. The next most recent will get 100, the one after that 80, the one after that 60, the one after that 50, etc.

It wasn't really like that before. I've had some bigger videos (200k+, 600k+) and those videos never resulted in that. What's the deal? How normal is that? Because I like the trend, it makes me think if videos start doing better they'll pull the others up with them.

Yes, it sounds like a troll post, but I'm curious about the answers.

Surely there is nothing worse than going to Hell, and the vast majority of humanity will not be converting to Christianity, so wouldn't it be better to dramatically reduce the number of humans being born through practically any means necessary?

Obviously birth control is another option, but if 40 million abortions happen, that's 40 million people that will for sure not be going to Hell. Had they been born, how many of them would have eventually found their way in Hell?

No matter the score, if Hell is real, it seems like the best thing to do is prevent as many humans as possible being born.

I've never told this story before but I saw someone on Reddit playing a Metallica cover in a way that took me back to when it happened 15 years ago.

My older cousin had been going through some real shit. He had problems with his off and on girlfriend, he was struggling with alcohol, he was feeling like he couldn't get anywhere with work, and he had no real direction in life. We spent a lot of time drinking, smoking weed, playing video games, skateboarding and listening to music, usually the stuff I liked (Napalm Death, Wu-Tang Clan, Electric Wizard, etc).

We understood each other very well when it came to being depressed about circumstances. My life wasn't really any better than his, but I guess I was more determined to make it through all of my problems out of sheer stubbornness. I couldn't see it and neither could anyone else, but he was getting closer and closer to just giving up entirely.

One night, on one of those rare nights that I was a ways away at my father's house instead of his dad's house, he messaged me saying he was going to commit suicide. As far as I understand, he didn't want to be saved, he just thought I would understand the decision, since he knew of my own problems. But I did not. It was probably pretty selfish of me but I didn't really have anybody else and I wasn't about to let him die. So he was sending songs he liked, weird 00s post-grunge stuff, and I was sending songs back trying to keep him awake.

At the same time, I was messaging everyone we knew seeing if anybody knew where he was for sure and if they could get to him. It took way too long but eventually his brother responded. My task was to keep him awake long enough for his brother to get there. So, for whatever reason, I sent Fade to Black. Yes, it's kind of a shitty choice in retrospect, but you're frantic and don't really know what to do.

He had apparently drank a ton of liquor and overdosed on xanax and spent the next two weeks in a coma, but he survived, and his recovery was very fast. He went on to get a much better job, got married and had two kids, both of whom are around 10 years old now. We've drifted apart by distance but every now and then we connect on Discord and he'll randomly bring up that song from time to time. We don't really talk about the attempt itself, it'll just be him saying "remember this?" and I'll say "yeah, of course."

Sadly, the friend who took me to visit him in the hospital (biggest Pantera and Alice in Chains fan you'd ever meet) overdosed several years later and didn't make it. My cousin has one of his shirts framed on his wall. Probably one of his Slayer shirts.

What's really strange about the whole affair is that Metallica was hardly the first choice either one of us would normally have gone for. You'd probably have expected me to send In My Darkest Hour by the band that needs no introduction considering what I was into at the time. But that's not what happened. Somehow, some way or another, it was Metallica that came through for us that night and made the impact.

So... thanks Metallica. I wouldn't have my cousin and he wouldn't be a father without you.

Cheers, everyone. Stay safe out there.