So... To begin with, I've had a mediocre and confusing year.
In November, I was nearly hit by a car and pinned under my own wheelchair.
In December, an adult film star who I was close to, August Ames, passed away from suicide after coming under fire on Twitter for attempting to defend her right to choose. When this article comes out, it will be what would've been her 24th birthday.
Currently, I have friends in Romania dealing with government corruption and rioting, and one of them got mildly teargassed by police. There's also the ongoing political tension, social upheaval and constant unearthing of scandals in the news. Cats and dogs, mass hysteria, all that jazz, and people feel the need to bitch about it.
My main point in bringing all this unpleasantness up is that, besides me wanting to vent, tensions are incredibly high in the world today. People feel the need to jump to conclusions, pick sides and throw whoever they can under the bus, under precipices of "justice."
I had yet another experience with this when I found out that State Champs, a band I had gotten to meet a mere two weeks ago, was now the subject of allegations involving misconduct between their lead singer, Derek Discanio, and a minor. This news was relayed to me by a very concerned fan in one of my Facebook group chats. I later found out that this story had broken on Twitter and I went to go investigate.
What ensued was quite confusing. What I found was that the person who had made the accusations, merely had second-hand knowledge of the misconduct and that the victim was uncomfortable with coming forward. I countered back that I had heard that the allegation could've been misattributed and instead referred to The person also repeatedly stated that she knew that the allegations/accusation were true. I told her that she should've gone to the management instead of going off on Twitter. She answered with "nothing will happen."
I took a couple hours to think after that. I reexamined what I knew about the person that had posited the claims. She was a user on social media and had some loose secondhand accounts of this illicit behavior. Now, this wasn't to say I completely dismissed her claims, earlier this year several other bands, Emo legends Brand New among them, had come under fire under similar allegations and many of these were proven to be true.
More pertinent, of course, was the #MeToo movement that had swept the film industry and especially at Tisch, where the majority of the students are female. #MeToo combined with how many of my favorite bands had been caught doing these deplorable things, had sharpened my senses.
But, I'd also seen the various false or, at the very least, morally gray allegations. Aziz Ansari and the Babe.com article he was involved in immediately came to mind. Knowing in my gut it would be wrong to take a side immediately, I informed several other State Champs fans about the allegations.
The response was overwhelming, most fans disbelieving the claims and even finding similar accusations from the Twitter user that had posited the claims, and perhaps tellingly, proof of her mocking rape to another user. Needless to say, whether or not the allegations/accusations are true has been dropped, at least for now. The band hasn't made a statement, and the Twitter user has moved onto other things.
What I did take away from this was how easy it is to cross lines. It's good to fight against injustice, but sometimes there are ulterior motives. Some merely want to harm the reputations of others, some want merely to vent their rage and take no responsibility for their actions. I saw this almost happen to a member of my favorite band and watched it drive someone that I cared about to suicide. We live in a world that has grown used to being combative and cruel over disagreements or insecurities. We use larger agendas or causes to give us meaning, and we often forgo human decency to "defend" what we believe in.
Personally, I don't have the answers. Maybe this article wasn't it. I'm still grieving the loss of someone I considered a friend. I've watched the real world become more dramatic than any movie could be. I'm left with my dreams, some memories, and some good albums. I had to see this image on Twitter, remember injustice is still alive.
