Who came up with the idea that punk equals two-faced? In the real world, pre-internet, I don’t recall it being like that. But the internet has brought this whole injection of a charicature of Los Angeles fakeness to the scene.
People who actually live in Los Angeles and work in serious entertainment industry positions are good at playing the game. There is a certain breezy pleasantness to those plastic Angelenos who do it really well which I actually totally enjoy. You do well. You give some people the hookup. You are friendly when you run into people. All goes well. It is clear how to have good manners with people like that and it is comfortable although not deep. But you know it is not deep, so no harm no foul.
But what is up with the whole gothic/punk/alt/fetish/etc. community online? The thing seems to have spawned these mean-spirited people who think they are Joan Crawford on a devilish, back-stabbing, child-beating bender. They are not actually competing for the lead role in a major motion picture, but they will say the most appalling things about people they pretend to be friends with.
I say “pretend to be friends with”, but I think that is where I just really disconnect. They really are friends by their definitions. I think that someone who talks trash with an aura of authority is not a friend. I do not have the ability to cope with the cognitive dissonance of hanging out with someone who I know in my heart is a terrible person. But there are people I come across regularly online who I would never hang out with on purpose in real life. I think a friend should be someone you can depend on, someone who will give you a shoulder to cry on or a pep talk, someone who will genuinely not want to hear someone speak ill of you, someone who will take joy in your triumphs, someone who you always want to do right by because you both know that, if the situations were reversed, they would do the same for you.
A bunch of people I’m not even thinking of right now are indubitably going to be amazingingly personally offended by this little post about what I am contemplating this minute. A bunch of people who might fit what I am talking about completely will indubitably read this and think that they sure know some other people who are like this.
Basically, I am unwilling to lie to myself. If it is obvious that someone is not really a friend, then the relationship needs to be either casual or nonexistent. There is nothing wrong with having positive acquaintances who are fun to interact with and where you both know that you best call someone else if you need bail. That is casual. But the number of people in the scene who have to lie to themselves and lie BIG in order to stand the people around them, even after six shots and two lines . . . well, I think they would be happier if they admitted to themselves what they truly know already: the people they call friends are not their friends.
A friend is not someone who simply sounds more authoritative when they make up smack talk, after trying to get your parents to disinherit you, after trying to fuck your significant other, after trying to sell your proprietary biz info to competitiors, after telling everyone how very much they wish your life would suck and how much they would like to kill you.
Friends. Learn the definition, people.
/rambling stream of consciousness post