“I will always be like this.”
I remember saying this to my folks when I was about 16. Hair down to my ass, dressed in a patch and stud covered jean vest over a leather jacket, a Metallica shirt, torn bluejeans, white basketball hightops; the 80s Thrash Metal Uniform.
This was me. This was, for all intents and purposes, my rebellion. I was angry. Had that chip on my shoulder. No on understood me, my art, or my music. I believed that, right down to the very core of my being, I was my own person and no one could tell me what to do. The system, The Man, wouldn’t get its hooks into me.
What I didn’t realize when I was young was that our little rebellions are prepackaged.
The bands that I listened to when I was a teenager screamed “think for yourself!” and we all screamed back: “Fuck yeah! I think for myself!” as we handed over fist fulls of money for albums, and t-shirts, buttons, and patches. All so we could advertise to the stiffs of the world that we were the same as all the other people who thought for themselves.
Like Rock n’ Roll in the fifties, the hippies in the sixties, punks in the seventies, Metal in the eighties, Grunge in the nineties… eventually the rebellion is analyzed, figured out, homogenized, put on an assembly line, mass produced, wrapped in shiny packages, marketed as unique, and sold to the greater masses.
This is what the moral panic groups never understood: There is no Satan. There is only capitalism.
Clarity in life is realizing that those you considered to be heroes all signed on the line and were then sold to you and the marketing was soooo very good that you didn’t see it coming until it was too late; Che’s face on your t-shirt.
You can still rebel. You can delete your social media and not shop for dropshipped garbage from Temu or Shein (or Amazon). You can install ad blockers and download media from questionable locations on the internet. You can rebel by not paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars watch a band who once told you to think for yourself play a two hour nostalgia set list because they know their fans won’t won’t be happy unless they hear songs primarily off the first three or four albums.
Or you can go right ahead and do all of those things. You can do whatever you want. Don’t forget, you’re supposed to think for yourself.
