Keep Screamo out of Texoma!

“You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”

Ah, this is a wonderful time! I have so much to say and to think about, my head is filled to the brim. The best part? Unlike other so many situations where you have a lot to say, I know exactly where to begin.

I’ll start with something from my from my life. I am a metalhead, and on facebook, a local band invited their followers to “join” a “troll“ (I.e. internet sarcasm designed to frustrate and confuse) event called “Keep Screamo out of Texoma” and “troll” them. The fake purpose of the satirical page was to pass a law banning “screamo” (I.e. metal mislabeled by normal people) from the area between Texas and Oklahoma. While this page was clearly a joke, It got me think about people who honestly think that metal/”screamo” must be stoped, and that it undermines the values of society.

The huge(est) problem with that is that Metal has its own values. In fact, one could even go so far as to say metal is its own culture. No one who wants to stop Metal (or Goth or Punk or any other counter-cultural music) realizes its importance to the listener. It’s easy to assume “It’s just music” to an outsider, because to most people, it’s just a causal form of recreation, or at most an interest. But to many metalheads, it is like a religion, a way of life, or a crusade for ideals (or somewhere in between).

However, I can’t judge them at all, their ignorance is totally understandable. I found that I did (and sometimes still do) the same kind of undervaluing to aspects of peoples life that I find of low importance.

Namely, religion.

I was raised atheist (whether or not I still count as one is debatable, and I intend to address it later), and so when I talked to religious people about religion, I had know idea what it really meant to them. I viewed it (when I was an elementary schooler anyway) as a simple waste of time people did, and thought that logically trying to disprove peoples beliefs, would be enough to make people just “shrug off” what I now know are often the most core assumptions in peoples life. And as a child I was not at all afraid to speak my mind.

You can imagine how that went.

So what does this have to do with the title? Well, to put it simply, this post is a reminder to everyone (including myself) to tred carefully when trying to persuade others. You don’t know how important something you might find trivial is to someone else, and since this blog is going to go into some pretty weighty subject matter, it’s especially important to keep that in mind here.

　

-J. Patrick Wentz