I Will Never Be A Real Journalist

I've been doing the podcast thing since 2007 in some capacity or another. When I started No One Likes Your Band in 2011, my intention was only to shine some much-needed light on the more aggressive bands in South Carolina and the surrounding area. Now I find myself receiving press releases and getting requests to review upcoming albums; things I never really anticipated. Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely not complaining, I recognize this as a stepping stone on the way to my initial goal.

However, this does bring me to the somewhat interesting dilemma of staying true to myself versus being viewed as legitimate in the eyes of the journalistic community. First off, anyone who knows me or has listened to an episode or two of NOLYB knows that I don't give half a box of shit about the opinions of others in regard to my life. It's mine and I'll live it any way I want. Second, I view my time as being far more valuable than peer acceptance or a paycheck. Yes, even more valuable than a paycheck; the “almighty dollar” isn't the mightiest thing in my world. Frankly, I'm perfectly happy with drinking malt liquor in my mobile home and if you have a problem with that, don't come over.

I'm like virtually anyone else interested in this genre of music, I read the Metal sites that try to inject humor into pieces about bands that I mostly don't care about and I usually walk away thinking, “wow, this really does suck”. (That's usually before I've even started on the comments section; I'm sure you're familiar with the brilliant conversations those contain.) I've even read sites whose articles usually appear to be written by a barely post-pubescent basement dweller in between bouts with video games, self-loathing and porn viewing. With only a handful of exceptions, metal journalism is mind-numbingly stupid. It's really no wonder since most of the music being pushed by the energy drink companies is... well... mind-numbingly stupid. Some writers are artful and intelligent, some are genuinely funny, but those select few are the brightly-colored life rafts in an otherwise murky ocean of septic waste.

So what's an up-and-coming, completely independent, future “taste-maker” such as myself to do? (Oh man, my tongue almost pierced my cheek with that one.) Maybe I should write about every album sent my way just so my opinions can be viewed as justified and informed in the eyes of people I'll probably never even meet. Maybe I should spend hours a day filling a screen with flowery words that amount to: “this album sucks and I wish I never heard it”. Maybe I should draw attention to bands I don't like just so people won't think I'm a hack. I should just write a new article every week about how Emmure is shitty, because yeah... that's never been done before. It's really useful information as well, in fact, I should start on my piece about this band I heard of called, “Creed” and how they're even worse than Collective Soul. Yeah, that's cutting edge, right there. Hard-hitting journalism at it's finest. My next article will be: “Does stop, drop and roll work for nuclear blasts?”

The truth is, people will write just about anything to get someone to click a link. Their job is to generate traffic to the site they're writing for; no matter the topic. The problem with that is it causes a whole lot of misinformation to fly around, now we've reached a point where you can't trust anything you read. I ask you, is that journalism? That's at least what it's become. Furthermore, does the world really need another pretentious asshole raving about the next big thing so “elitist” metal fans can cry “hipster metal” a few more times? I'll answer that for you: FUCK NO!

I don't have anything to lose and I basically just don't care what people think of me so here's what it all boils down to; I'm not reviewing stuff I don't like. Yes, I just admitted that I'm only writing advertisements disguised as reviews. *GASP* Does this make me a hack? I don't care, I don't get paid for this (yet) and anyone who doesn't like what I do or how I do it can eat a bag of dog dicks. 

I just read an article on a science website that used the non-word “learnt” and you think I really care who views me as legitimate? No way, sign me up for the hack team any day.