just to finish up on the poppy.

iirc, she dated pewdiepie for a while in like 2016, right? i guess i cared a little bit about what was trending in the youtube community back when i thought i could use the commenting system as a means of marketing my own music. so, i would go on to these popular videos and make dozens of comments for the purposes of trying to drop links back to my own music. and, yes, i was trolling, but i was trolling in a way that was very consciously designed to maximize reactions. 

i would literally go to the youtube trending site and just click the top link and go to town.

i didn't otherwise care remotely about pewdiepie or taylor swift or whatever else i was commenting on. and, i probably wouldn't know who she is at all if it hadn't been for that tactic i was using...

they shut me down in a dozen different ways. i got shadow banned. they ruined the trending page. they changed the status updates. they broke the commenting system. i just got completely shut down.

how much does she owe to pewdiepie? that's a question, i don't know. i know i tried to figure out what she was, but i'm not sure i remember it clicking that she was a musician. i think i might have thought she was a blogger.

there are components in her music that, if taken in a different direction, might be more interesting. i think my reaction is mostly a function of my broad aversion to the culture of heavy metal, and the extent that she's dabbling in it is maybe too shallow to justify it - she might be co-opting the imagery of it more than anything else, but even that is enough to make me cringe. it's partly a function of my own gender identity crisis. i legitimately don't like anything about metalheads, but what i dislike more than i dislike metalheads is being mistaken for one. i've had long hair and an effeminate outward appearance since i was about 12 or 13, but i've often been mistaken for a metalhead rather than a transwoman, and i really don't get it. so, i've developed this kneejerk hate-on for anything that remotely reflects heavy metal imagery, even if it's doing so in the most shallow and transparent way possible.

there are some tracks that remind me a little bit of a really watered down take on early queen, but early queen never fell into cliches like this. i just can't connect to the guitar style. in fact, it makes me irrationally angry to hear it. 

you could compare this to the 1000 gecs record, which i gave moral support to, despite writing off as stupid. this isn't really that different - it's a little more metal, a little less experimental, but broadly in the same genre. why did i react better to that than this? the answer is that i didn't get that angry kneejerk to the metallic imagery produced by the guitar work, however shallow it really is.

sometimes, a specific concept will set me off like that....

but, i'm never going to react well to music with this kind of aesthetic, and i hope i've done a little to explain why.