Needles & Grooves

Oh my god the discourse on this today is bruuuuuutal. Staying off twitter for 24 hours.

@BjorgenFjorgen it's not just Twitter, it's across all social media platforms and YouTube etc. It's disgusting tbh

I once heard there was no such thing as bad press. If the social media channels are alive about this then she was quite successful I’d say.

Huh? I just woke up, did people not like her performance or the guitar smashing? I loved both. I mean, it took a second to really fuck it up, but she got Sparks out of the amp and by the end there was a giant chunk out of the guitar. What’s the issue?

Okay, so I just did a quick scan on Twitter and aI seem to be finding way more people reacting to to the initial reaction than her actual performance but if this...

Is the consensus reaction...
EDIT: Well, I guess person that initially tweeted that musta got tired of being called a shit bird as it’s been deleted.

@TenderLovingKiller®, I don’t really take issue with smashing guitars and I think there’s iconography in watching a contemporary female doing it. The juxtaposition of the laid back, dispassionate song presentation that suddenly escalated to this seemed insincere, though. Like, if the intent was just to do it for effect she would have gotten many more miles opening the set with a smashing.

People are fucking dumb and don’t deserve cool fucking Rock N Roll moments. I remember Kurt Cobain fucking up equipment on the regular and Keith Moon went partially deaf for rigging his kick drum with explosives during an Ed Sullivan performance. Destruction and Rock & Roll go hand-in-hand.

@debianlinux if people didn’t like it for that reason. Then fine. It did seem a bit performative (but IMO that’s part of being a rock star). Ideally, even if it was perfunctory, she would have done a better job selling it a spur of the moment type thing but people seem really worried about the actual guitar/gear on social media which seems like a really dumb thing to clutch pearls over.

Who fucking cares if the guitar smash felt contrived, insincere, planned or otherwise! Why is this even relevant or being debated in the first place

@Hollywood I think because people posted about it here and went so far as to ask about it?

@TenderLovingKiller® to your point:
Jack Aries I agree! Smashing instruments just pisses me off! If you don't care about the instrument and the amp, donate them to some musically inclined kid who could never afford those!

I am gonna say the Twitter reaction I am seeing seems like some sort of weird generational dunk on Gen X/Boomers along the lines of “pfffft, you just don’t get it grandpa” way more people upset about someone’s initial reaction than people actually offended by Bridger’s performance but that is social media in a nutshell I suppose.

@debianlinux but the discussion on social media is very much real not to mention all the negativity, hate, male chauvinism, internalized misogyny and even racism

@Hollywood eh, I guess. I enjoy when artists do some live destruction on stage. I am fine if a guitar gets sacrificed to the Rock God’s every now and again. I bet there are more guitars dying a slow death while gather dust in a parents damp basement than get smashed on stage.

One last thing then I’ll shut up. I thought Machine Gun Kelly’s performance last week was much more offensive just in it’s outright terribleness.

@TenderLovingKiller® I don't have an issue with the guitar smash either...the comment was taken from a poster on Facebook

@TenderLovingKiller® I haven't seen his performance so I can't comment

Fuck @Hollywood who you following on social media you might wanna cut those people out of your life.

@TenderLovingKiller® it's not anyone in particular which I'm following just a random poster to a CoS post on FB

@Hollywood LOL, yeah, you’d be wise to keep it that way. That was some sub Sum41 level garbage. My 13 year old self even thought MGK was trying too hard.