Black Mass, Black Media

A story that I was working on for Metal As Fuck has completely exploded into the mainstream media much to my chagrin. The organizers of the Black Mass Festival in Sydney were forced to find a new venue after the Newtown Returned and Services League (RSL) Club canceled on them after a barrage of Christian lobbyists protested the gig. The organizers and fans were undoubtedly up in arms. But then a few of them got a little stupid, sending death threats to the national president of the RSL, Derek Robson.

Though regrettable, the argument that the RSL curtailed the freedom of these musicians falls very deaf in comparison to the RSL's counter-argument: They all fought and some of their comrades died to protect our freedom. The point being, you have to act very shrewdly when taking on a prominent, national organization with a prestige that is almost unequaled in this country.

The ABC published a story online and also featured it amongst the "top stories" on ABC NewsRadio, replete with an interview with Mr. Robson. One phone call from one of their members can do that - or their PR division. The heavy metal community hasn't even got a one-hundredth of the clout or resources the RSL has or will ever have. That's just the reality of the situation.

Of course, the morons who sent the death threats to Mr. Robson probably didn't have the foresight or knowledge of any of this - they most likely thought the RSL was just a network of pubs that serve cheap drinks. Now they will most likely be visted by nefarious tabloid journalists with steel-capped boots wedged firmly in their front doors, especially when the ABC prints tracts like these, oblivious to the nuances of our particular argot:

"The festival was billed as a "diabolical union of Australia's black metal elite" and was to have featured a "once in a lifetime live ritual and special black mass performance."

The smart option would have been to find co-belligerents - the Secular Party of Australia and other like-minded groups and had them lead the counter-protest on their behalf (since the Black Mass festival is a "fringe" group in terms of the popular consciousness.) The NSW State Government will always favor the RSL, be it Labor or Liberal. If there was a contract signed between the RSL and the Black Mass organizers, the Black Mass, with their added publicity could have found a progressive, secular lawyer to take their case pro bono. The financial burden on the musicians and promoters is now amplified since they will take a massive loss returning money collected for tickets in addition to what has already been spent on flyers, posters, internet advertising, etc.

So some heavy metal fans have protested the wrong way - and that's perfectly normal. We aren't a politically motivated group of people anyway. We just like to rock out, listen to metal and have fun. In the rare cases in which metal and the moral majority collide, metalheads need to draw on the resources they already have - the metal media - to advise them which route to travel to get the best outcome with minimal backlash.

We may be volunteers but we aren't amateurs.

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http://twitter.com/crushtor

Returning to a Fold

Last week, I pledged to take a break from Facebook and Twitter. I've mentioned previously that Facebook was almost "unavoidable" due to my running of advertising on behalf of a company I work for. But overall, I feel that my social media "embargo" was a liberating experience.

I saw The Social Network with Steph last week and we discussed whether Facebook is popular because it has a purpose or rather, people discover uses for it ex post facto. We couldn't come up with an answer. Social media, like most media, is created by loathsome people with loose morals for egotistical reasons. Well, it holds true for Mark Zuckerberg, anyway.

So, what the hell have I been doing?

Reading More
I have been reading more. News articles, blogs, magazines, books; you name it, I'm reading it...more. All the while not having any desire for electronic pats on the back, distracting me from actually reading what is written.

Getting Fit
As part of my ongoing personal challenge, I've been going to the gym more. I would usually struggle to go once per week, but this week I have gone there three times and plan to go once more before the week is over. My girlfriend says she notices the difference; I sure as hell don't!

Talking
Relying on social media to get critical messages (as in, ones that initiate action) is like telling a dog to pick you up from the train station. Social media, as a process has different meanings to everyone. Some see it as frivolous, others see it as a marketing tool, more as "agenda" or "trend" setting. (If they did, they certainly require the audience to be as passive as possible.) Using the phone, communicating clearly and concisely without losing the "fidelity" of the message has been a byproduct of this embargo.

Of course, my favorite part of the entire experiment is that people ask me how I'm doing. They no longer have a repository of personal information to make those judgments themselves. They become interested; they listen. I can talk with them instead of at them. Friends are genuinely surprised to know what is happening in my life and how these events effect me.

Social media had for the most part, made me feel I had reduced my life to a rolling headline. But it doesn't and shouldn't; social media attempts merely to make Princess Adelaide's whooping cough front page news all day, every day.

So what now?
I suppose I will use Twitter and Facebook again; albeit not to the inanely rapid frequency that I once did. If I ever "lapse," I can always go back into my personal social media rehab and have a great time there. I have missed talking to some people on there since we also talk outside of Twitter but not to the extent we do "on."

I do feel that Twitter and Facebook are good tools for people to have. However, like every good tool - a spoon, for example - they aren't meant to be used all the time, for every possible application. They have limitations and so do we.

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http://twitter.com/crushtor

Olber-mann, what you doin'?

It's been revealed that MSNBC anchor and neo-Murrowite Keith Olbermann was suspended indefinitely without pay after contributing to three separate Democratic candidate's campaigns this week. But why? What for? FOX News has several Republican candidates on the payroll as contributors; so why is MSNBC struggling to appear "objective?"

If you have ever watched MSNBC side by side with FOX News Channel, it's blatant left-liberal bias is as insidious as FOX' own brand of right-wing conservatism. FOX raison d'etre is to provide "fair and balanced" coverage as an isle of conservative right-wing truth in an ocean of Hollywood dominated liberalism. Like any good right-winger, it appears perpetually assailed from the left like the underdogs of journalism despite being part of the largest media conglomerate that world has ever known.

By exposing Olbermann as a Democratic party supporter, it gives FOX news the upper hand and a free shot at MSNBC. Like O'Reilly's McCarthy to Olbermann's Murrow, O'Reilly can proclaim MSNBC as a "bed of leftists" and continue to rail against their leftist bias. By allowing FOX journalists to contribute to the campaigns of the Republican of their choice, they can not be accused of being anything but journalists doing their job under the strictures of their company's internal policy.

But where was the ethical pressure of MSNBC management for Olbermann to tell the objective, verifiable truth anyway? Where is the funding for real investigative journalism and voices to debunk, with empirical and reasonable evidence, the dubious claims of those they seek to denigrate? I still feel that these two stations degrade and almost mock public discourse in the US, reducing public debate to a nightly slanging match that provides little substance in the way of public policy scrutiny.

FOX news insists that their map is the territory and all other maps by their mere articulation by those who are not part of FOX are false. Their "truth" is validated by the fact it is being reported by them. MSNBC have made it their mission to break free from FOX' sinister Aristotelian nightmare but have only served to ruin their credibility further by doing so.

MSNBC makes its money through being as biased as FOX albeit in the other direction. FOX, like professional wrestlers, don't break kayfabe as readily as their MSNBC counterparts. Paradoxically, people feel more deceived now by MSNBC when they told the truth that their anchor may have been lying.

By keeping up the facade, MSNBC's credibility would have stayed intact as "objective" if they believed Olbermann was (by their own standards) acting ethically.

If MSNBC now strives for journalistic objectivity and integrity, they are going against their best interests. It may just happen that they will report the truth one day and live to regret it.

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http://twitter.com/crushtor