“Jann Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone magazine, has now found himself in hotdog water after an interview with New York Times writer David Marchese, where he revealed that the reason he did not include Black or female artists in his book is because they were not in his ‘zeitgeist,’ and he did not feel that female artists were ‘articulate enough on this intellectual level.’”
Jann Wenner is extremely inarticulate himself, but has been the gatekeeper of such things as who is or is not articulate enough for quoting or admiring for their contributions to Rock & Roll — a genre of music CREATED by Black people. And since he failed to mention any, lest we forget, people can be both Black and women simultaneously. (TERFs dni)
And just for clarity: Wenner exhibited the racism, sexism and tokenism that has probably held back many talented people throughout his very long career of picking winners and losers, and deciding who gets rewarded and who doesn’t in the music industry.
And one last thing: while I give the audio interviewer partial credit — not full credit — for pressing Wenner on his sexism and racism, I am imploring white people to unambiguously name and call things for what they really and truly are, in the moment.
PLEASE STOP CODDLING RACISTS AND MISOGYNISTS.
Coddling white fragility is not helpful, it’s harmful.
Unambiguously calling out racism is helpful, not harmful.
SN: Obviously the same goes for all the other isms too (Islamophobia, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. etc.)
Don’t let members of the oppressor class trick you into thinking that call-out culture (aka, accountability) is a bad thing. It’s not.
Racist gatekeepers need to be embarrassed and called out. On a regular basis. When they’re young, people want to excuse their racism because of their youth. And then when they are old, people excuse their racism because, “Well that’s just the way they grew up,” and before you know it, some racist misogynistic asshole has lived their entire life without anyone ever seriously telling them that they’re racist. AND THEN we wonder why nothing is changing!
Instead of being concerned with hurting the feelings of a racist, maybe try being more concerned with the people who their racism will inevitably harm. Let’s try more of that please.
Humans can’t help creating a narrative any more than we can help breathing. The second there’s someone else out there besides you, narrative exists. The moment our most ancient proto ancestors realized there were some who came before and some who would come after, narrative sprang into being. Narrative is what we think about our species, and the more people we become aware of, the bigger and more powerful it gets. It simply is, and while it can’t exist without us, it also exists separately and apart from each of us.
Narrative isn’t evil or good. It just is, like magnetism. It isn’t capitalism, but capitalism definitely uses it. Whatever mode of society we’re trying out at any given time uses it: capitalism, socialism, monarchism, feudalism, theocracy, etc. This isn’t about narrative’s inherent morality, because it has no more morality than magnetism does. It’s about how it’s used, and to what ends. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who want to use it for selfish reasons: to compel you to vote a certain way, shop a certain way, or set certain goals. The Great Heaving Mass is what happens when selfish people wrest control of our collective narrative away from the rest of us and use it to further their own ends, instead of the common good.
We’re all pretty good at seeing some of the Great Heaving Mass some of the time, and in those moments, we’re also pretty good at resisting it. But this is also its cleverness: it doesn’t try to overpower you, it overwhelms you. You could probably survive a blast of water for a short period of time. How long would you survive treading water in an endless sea?
My point with all this isn’t that we should avoid narrative, or flee to the woods, or shun anyone who tries to use narrative to push a message. Narrative can be used for good: the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, the fight for marriage equality, and the current push to normalize the existence and acceptance of trans people are all good examples. Narrative can be used for fun, or for necessity, or for community building, and at its best, it inspires all of us toward a common goal.
I’m not suggesting we need to be afraid of narrative, but we do need to be aware of narrative.
The people that have bought into the Great Heaving Mass need you to forget that you’re living inside a narrative—and they really need you to forget that you can shape the narrative, too. These tools that have arisen in the past few centuries—printing presses, telegraphs, phones, radios and tvs, the internet—have given smaller and smaller groups of people undue power over the narrative, but they’ve given us that power, too. We have to band together more than they do to wield it, but we can band together and take that power for ourselves.
And it terrifies them.
Why do you think they want to keep us in their walled gardens?
Got another one up at my website about narrative, how it affects us, and what Eleanor Roosevelt and Banksy might agree on.
The duality of me wanting to yap 24/7 about my favorite book while also wanting to gatekeep it from everyone forever because nobody can like it more than I do
Being a Sonic fan and meeting new Sonic fans sometimes feels like a nightmare blunt rotation, where every new fan you meet has a new randomized vendetta against one and sometimes more than one aspect of Sonic as if it took their wife and destroyed their crops.
This Sonic fan seems nice! Oh no they hate all western continuities and content and think fan content based on Fleetway, Archie (especially preboot Archie), SATAM, etc, is "wasted space".
Well this guy over here seems super nice! Oh no they despise anything that isn't one of the classic games and think Sonic peaked in the mid 90's and never again. Maybe they think Mania is pretty good.
How about this person? Nope, they think Frontiers ruined Sonic's good streak by allowing the story to take itself seriously. They love the 2010s games and think their writing was as good as Sonic should ever get.
Do I even have to say it? Yeah this dude is an early Archie Sonic stan who thinks Ken Penders and Karl Bollers did the best with Sonic ever and all their issues are exaggerated.
And the list just goes on. But you know what, I love pretty much every era, game, and continuity of Sonic at least a little bit. I love all of them with no need for "ironic enjoyment" at all. No one can convince me that the majority of Sonic isn't really fun and good, I dare them to try.
Curious to spur some discussion, how do gatekeepers in other systems look?
Some general prompt questions that you can answer or ignore.
What do you / they do? Are they able to do something other parts cant? How much of it is a job (as in a task / thing that needs to be done and someone has to do it) versus how much of it is a role (as in a more innate thing that the part is uniquely made for)? How communicative and cooperative are they with the system as a whole? Where do they fall into the structure? Do they front often? How aware of the inner world and real world are they? Do you have multiple gatekeepers or just one? If you have multiple how do they coordinate (if they do)?
These days gatekeeper shit is a large part of my life as a part so I enjoy talking about it and since I've been front more because of gatekeeper shit, I might as well generate some interesting conversation. We need to sleep but either in replies to others or just our own I might answer for me since we have a lot of gatekeepers.
Lolz gatekeeper get on my nerves T^T liek over music??? XDD "6arelyhuman and rebzyyx aren't even scene 💀 it's scenecore" yea *SCENE*core! Da difference is barely visible! And gatekeepers get so mad over da word core added at da end of scene XDD Srry lol just a lil rant TwT
Out of character music taste is not a thing, y'all are just misogynistic gatekeepy jackasses.
Duke can canonically listen to metal and dress like the sun threw up on him and y'all are cool with it. But people simply headcanon Jason enjoying Taylor Swift and suddenly y'all forget being three dimensional is a thing.
So it turns out that Musk isn’t motivated as much by “free speech” as he is by gatekeeping and silencing the voices of marginalized progressives he disagrees with. A spiteful rich old conservative white man, cheered on by a younger spiteful rich conservative white woman, buys media outlet to ridicule, censor and silence the powerless. Shocking. 🙄