u/tavinjlewis

A specter is haunting r/musicteenager—the specter of nu-metal.

“Blind rank these nu-metal albums”
“Nu-metal tier list”
“This or that: my favorite albums” (half are Linkin Park and SOAD)
….blah…blah…blah…

One opens the sub seeking to gauge the musical sentiments of his peers, or perhaps to offer his two cents on some album, or maybe even to challenge himself with unfamiliar genres. Instead, one is ferociously bombarded with an endless barrage of painfully unoriginal tier lists and blind rankings—all concentrated with that one genre, that aberration, that tinnitus-inducing anti-art: nu-metal.

This unholy obsession with nu-metal has pervaded and perverted this sub. It has poisoned and corrupted us. Nu-metal can be likened to a parasite which exploits its host and, after destroying the good parts of the victim’s music taste, spreads itself to other unsuspecting innocents.

If this sub is, indeed, the vanguard of Gen Z’s musical consciousness, if it is tasked with leading the way in the youth’s artistic discovery, then this nu-metalization is a terrifying development. Nu-metal is a pitiful excuse for metal, let alone music, and art. No doubt, such garbage is by no stretch of the imagination worthy of the term “art.” It is a genre of untalented pretenders and poseurs. It is a disgrace to every unique, talented, original band that has ever existed. Every time I see someone rank “Death” lower than some horrendous nu-metal atrocity, a little part of me dies inside.

Please, for the love of ourselves and posterity, let us discard this trash. Let us take up genres worthy of the term art. Let us indulge in Death, Opeth, Testament, Imperial Triumphant, and the plethora of other original, talented bands.

I'm something of a closeted socialist. My parents, and most people who surround me for that matter, are deeply confused about the inner--and outer--workings of the world. For this reason, when conversations involving politics arise, on pain of exposing myself as some sort of alien deviant and subjecting my peers to a wild culture shock, I kind of shrink and avoid involving myself as much as possible, even if I might have something quite enlightening to say. The reasons for this tendency of mine are felt by all of us I'm sure. Not only is it nearly impossible to use political terms correctly because of years of deliberate obfuscation, explaining your position with any degree of depth seems like a complete waste of time when your foundational assumptions are different from everyone else's. You are forced to stay within the extremely restrictive bounds of acceptable popular notions; literally everything that might be useful is unthinkable and deemed conspiratorial. What a great testament to the power and diligence of ruling class ideological forces that the term "socialism" is taken to mean the exact opposite of its historical meaning. Our whole political vocabulary is a carefully conditioned psychological entrenchment which incontestably elicits certain emotional reactions depending on the preferences of the rulers: "communism" bad, "democracy" good. These terms are subject to no critical consideration nor serious investigation. Unlike the rest of the English language, they are not ever-changing definitions with varying connotations, but definite and irreproachable truisms independent of historical influence. They have a single meaning and a single acceptable attitude to be adopted toward them. I may sound cynical, but popular attitudes are so expressly sheepish and embarrassingly uncritical that not complaining about it seems to me an act of complacency for the existing order.

For these reasons, I wanted to know how fellow socialists express their positions to people who, having been systematically fooled by the masters, may not be familiar with the elementary facts of political-economic life. It seems to me that describing your political position with a single word like "socialist" or "communist" is entirely impossible due to reasons detailed above. So what do you say when people ask you what your political beliefs are? How do you work around the indoctrination, the deeply ingrained misconceptions, the unavoidable sheep mentality? How do you support your position with theory and evidence without sounding pretentious and high-minded?