*****-rant Take 2 - stereotypes and the modern blah.
Time for more cynical bitchin' fun from your favourite angst-rant Matrixphile androgenous... yeah.
Stereotypes and the modern blah - society and the need to fit in.
Stereotypes. Groups. Society. It seems that, from childhood onwards, society and the captialist world indoctrinates us to 'group'. Naturally, human beings generally want to be accepted, find friends and relate to other human beings - our interests often define a human being and help us build strong relationships with other people, be it our music taste, what kind of books we read, the jobs and countries we occupate, it's how we find our allies in life. But, like everything, there is a limit to it.
When I look around me, I notice things. I notice that other people are so easily shaped, so easily carved my the majority, it scares me. I see girls in my year group who, three months ago went round in combats and chains listening to 'nu metal' (which personally, is terrible, more on that later), are now hanging with their 'posse' (yes, they use that term) wearing the shortest skirts (you'd never believe...) and three-inch earrings, 'bling'. What is it, peer pressure? To stay 'it'? What is this obsession with being popular?
Moving on... the 'revival of punk'. Nu metal. Whatever you call it. Bands like Good Charlotte and 'singers' like Avril Lavigne, all sprouting out of nowhere and seeling ridiculously well, simply because it's 'in'. Give these bands a few months or a year, and you'll never see them again, no doubt. I see pop bands splitting up because they're arguing, chances are pop music (the kind of stuff like S Club and Girls Aloud, Westlife, all that kinda crap) is 'out'. They say they're individual and they don't give a crap - true, they don't generally give a crap about their fans - but they're practically walking out of a machine. Channels such as Kerrang! and p-rock (which I only have the, er, pleasure of watching when I babysit for my mum's friend's hellspawn brats) play the same Blink 182 and Evanescence songs over and over... bands like the Murderdolls are doing terrible covers of 80's songs (destroying them, IMO)... what's the world coming to? So much for individuality.
Even a majority of 'punks' - ones that have suddenly appeared from nowhere that probably used to be 'sk8rs' - buy their clothes from high street stores and fish out loads of money for mass-produced stuff, when they should do what they did in the 70's and 80's, going to charity/thrift stores, customising things... it's terrible, seeing all these clones, and it must be an insult to the people who have always been punks and goths and suddenly had their scene invaded by a load of teenyboppers and wannabes.
So what am I? Where's my group? I don't have one, I'm androgynous, a blank canvas, I listen to what I want to listen to, wear what I want to wear. Maybe it's because I've grown up in a society far away from the bindings of consumerism and sociality and never had the pressure, but it just saddens me to see little children seeing all these adverts and music videos and demanding these material objects that will provide them with happiness for a few days, perhaps. And that's saying something from a child-hater. I don't have the money or the transport to go and get a whole new wardrobe every time a new music 'thing' becomes 'in'.
I'm not a goth, I'm not a sk8r grrl, I'm not a metalhead, a ho, a socialite, an it-girl, a punk, a geek, some kind of sk8r-goth-lesbian-socialite-bling-mistress. I'm just a shadow. God's sake, get out, enjoy the world around you, don't be forced to be anything. And if I've upset you, then go tell someone who cares.
~AI