I just received this message on RYM.
I've just received the below message from a user called MeaTTraY on RYM, calling me a Nazi and a racist (amongst other things) for the simple reason that I enjoy listening to Burzum. This is despite the fact that my review clearly states that I find the creator of the music to be an abominable human being. Honestly, I look forward to the time when humanity gets past this ridiculous black and white / us vs them thinking that seems to have taken over since social media became popular. Any individual should be able to call Rosemary's Baby a great movie, despite it's director being a convicted rapist / paedophile. To enjoy the works of H.P. Lovecraft without fear of being labelled a racist. I truly believe they will look back on this time and wonder how and why humanity suddenly lost its mind over the most ridiculous things.
"My response to your flooding Filosofem review:
Childish, Hateful Angst dressed as Art
You'll find stooges that write long-winded, fawning reviews of this trash but who claim to have no allegiance to his fascist ideology and Nazi philosophies.
Don't be fooled; you do not have to give this cretin his credit.
He is no musical genius. He is not clever, nor inventive. He is the perpetual edge-lord. The pinnacle of adolescent resentment and misplaced rage. He has produced the ultimate degenerated, degraded, Northern European variation of a Black American idiom, sapping it of all its swing, verve, and effervescence.
If you like indistinguishable distorted tremolo guitars, sloppy, muddy drums, sub-demo production, childish screeching, and aimless, rudimentary synthesiser compositions, then this is for you.
If you hate black people, immigrants, people of different religions, non-European cultures, groove, compelling harmony, and musical melody, then this is for you.
If you're the sort of person that claims not to be a Nazi but likes Nazi aesthetics, who is purportedly "nuanced" enough to seperate art from the artist, and who can't help saying things like, "At least Mussolini made the trains run on time", then this is for you.
Basically, if you're a piece of shit, this is an album for you."
Wow, I genuinely don't know what to say about that. Something is really upsetting this guy on a deep level. To make such sweeping, derogatory statements about someone he doesn't know in any way whatsoever is the very definition of hubris. Who the fuck does this prick think he is?
Sometimes I just despair about the state of the internet and the world at large, to be honest. I hope you don't let this knobhead get to you Ben, because we all know you better than that and it his him who is the P.O.S, not you.
By the way, I just put his username into RYM's search and it isn't on the list that comes up. Maybe you aren't the only person he has targeted and he has been banned for it (fingers crossed).
I've just received the below message from a user called MeaTTraY on RYM, calling me a Nazi and a racist (amongst other things) for the simple reason that I enjoy listening to Burzum. This is despite the fact that my review clearly states that I find the creator of the music to be an abominable human being. Honestly, I look forward to the time when humanity gets past this ridiculous black and white / us vs them thinking that seems to have taken over since social media became popular. Any individual should be able to call Rosemary's Baby a great movie, despite it's director being a convicted rapist / paedophile. To enjoy the works of H.P. Lovecraft without fear of being labelled a racist. I truly believe they will look back on this time and wonder how and why humanity suddenly lost its mind over the most ridiculous things.
"My response to your flooding Filosofem review:
Childish, Hateful Angst dressed as Art
You'll find stooges that write long-winded, fawning reviews of this trash but who claim to have no allegiance to his fascist ideology and Nazi philosophies.
Don't be fooled; you do not have to give this cretin his credit.
He is no musical genius. He is not clever, nor inventive. He is the perpetual edge-lord. The pinnacle of adolescent resentment and misplaced rage. He has produced the ultimate degenerated, degraded, Northern European variation of a Black American idiom, sapping it of all its swing, verve, and effervescence.
If you like indistinguishable distorted tremolo guitars, sloppy, muddy drums, sub-demo production, childish screeching, and aimless, rudimentary synthesiser compositions, then this is for you.
If you hate black people, immigrants, people of different religions, non-European cultures, groove, compelling harmony, and musical melody, then this is for you.
If you're the sort of person that claims not to be a Nazi but likes Nazi aesthetics, who is purportedly "nuanced" enough to seperate art from the artist, and who can't help saying things like, "At least Mussolini made the trains run on time", then this is for you.
Basically, if you're a piece of shit, this is an album for you."
Interesting. I didn't even know that mum HAD on RYM account.
I've requested for him to be banned, but I don't think it has happened... yet.
I'm certainly not taking it personally Sonny. It makes me more sad than angry.
What's bewildering to me though is that my review actually includes the following:
"The beliefs and actions of the man responsible for it have been mentioned many times over and questions are continually raised regarding the morality of supporting such an individual, even if this support only takes the form of praise for his art rather than his personal philosophies. I’ll leave those discussions for another time (there’s one in the forums right now) and assume that anyone reading this is sensible enough to in turn assume that all the superlatives below are to be associated with Varg’s music alone and in no way suggest that I admire his racist existence, nor his morbid habits that include arson and murder."
It does seem like you're letting him get to you too much, considering how much you've written about it. Making a topic about it on another forum is letting him get to you, even if it isn't as much as it could be. No idea what he said, but if it's any indication based on his review, he seems to be so pretentious that he misses his point to go off to use big words and then lose track of where his sentence was supposed to go. Frankly, the topic made me think it was much more serious than random asshole on the internet who apparently doesn't read reviews. Don't take that the wrong way, I'm just pointing out that angry asshat who randomly crapped in your PMs is not something you should dedicate any amount of time to.
It does seem like you're letting him get to you too much, considering how much you've written about it. Making a topic about it on another forum is letting him get to you, even if it isn't as much as it could be. No idea what he said, but if it's any indication based on his review, he seems to be so pretentious that he misses his point to go off to use big words and then lose track of where his sentence was supposed to go. Frankly, the topic made me think it was much more serious than random asshole on the internet who apparently doesn't read reviews. Don't take that the wrong way, I'm just pointing out that angry asshat who randomly crapped in your PMs is not something you should dedicate any amount of time to.
There's a lot of irony in the fact that my response to someone telling me how I should think about something gets a response telling me how I should feel about something.
I cannot say that I am at all surprised by the entitlement of these kinds of people on the internet.
Music is completely subjective and value can be found in anything. Some people are born with a knack for songwriting, some people are born with hateful views towards their fellow man. These two are not mutually exclusive.
Ben clearly falls into a large category of people who like Filosofem for it's songwriting, atmosphere among other things and that is okay! And Ben has also mentioned in his review that Varg is a reprehensible human being and that his admiration for the album has nothing to do with the writer's hateful opinions. But in the eyes of some, you have to pick one; you cannot speak out of both sides of your mouth lest you be labeled just at hateful as the artist in question.
I can see that Ben won't let this delusional take get to him and will continue to listen to albums like Filosofem despite the controversy. And it's honestly the right course of action to take. Good music is good music no matter who is making it; art and artist can be separated, but that sentiment is becoming less frequent by the day it seems.
P.S. these are the same people that hate on social media like Meta (Facebook) and X (Twitter) and their directors, while continuing to scroll and post on the platform every single day.
This is one of those cases where an idealist has to have every little thing be perfect without realizing that "evil" itself is based in justifying a low opinion of a whole group by pointing out something they often do that may be perceived as "wrong." There is no such thing as "perfectly evil" or "perfectly good," thus there's no merit to attacking a persona's musical abilities along with their beliefs in many cases. He's doing the same thing that Burzum's doing, stereotyping. Evil keeps placing blame and then justifying cruelty. And zealousness is a form of cruelty, as it's built on drastically low opinions of people. The way he's thinking, it's like saying "You can't say Hitler was good at strategy! He's evil!" But if he wasn't good at strategy, then he wouldn't have been a major dictator. Basically, the lie that a person needs to either be good at everything or bad at everything is a disappointment, and I honestly believe people who think like that shouldn't even be allowed to vote...
I would say all of this to this person and then reply with, "and how do I know you don't support something evil? Did it ever occur to you that someone you support could be doing something evil and hiding it? Don't tell me you can confirm that none of your favorite artists do that." Then I would block him. People like that tend to focus on the last thing said, which will either make this person more mad or plant a seed in the head that might grow larger or both.