biscuitdough wrote: Fri Aug 13, 2021 8:05 am Cool underground bands groom their young girl fans too.

Men over 21 interacting online with underage girls in the name of "nurturing their fanbase" just should never have been normalized. I blame YouTubers and (speaking of Blur) Gorillaz.

Gorillaz are the enemy. Their continued use of cartoons ensures an endless stream of kids finding their way to creepier elements in their organization/extended network.

octoberallover wrote: Sat Aug 14, 2021 2:24 pm

biscuitdough wrote: Fri Aug 13, 2021 8:05 am Cool underground bands groom their young girl fans too.

Men over 21 interacting online with underage girls in the name of "nurturing their fanbase" just should never have been normalized. I blame YouTubers and (speaking of Blur) Gorillaz.

Gorillaz are the enemy. Their continued use of cartoons ensures an endless supply of kids finding their way to creepier elements in their organization/extended network.

You know, there's Joe Camel, and then there's the sort of media element that Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett do. It's always been pretty much an intrinsic part of the Gorillaz thing, and for them to have discarded it sometime in the last few years to avoid their fans getting involved with

creepier elements in their organization/extended network.

would have been kind of weird. Care to be a little less nebulous?

iembalm wrote: Sat Aug 14, 2021 2:56 pm You know, there's Joe Camel, and then there's the sort of media element that Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett do. It's always been pretty much an intrinsic part of the Gorillaz thing, and for them to have discarded it sometime in the last few years to avoid their fans getting involved with

creepier elements in their organization/extended network.

would have been kind of weird. Care to be a little less nebulous?

Jesus where to start? Well, for one.

Kids are perennially attracted to Gorillaz because of the cartoons. Really young kids. I have huge issues with how interactive Gorillaz are online with underage fans, because these kids come away thinking this is how musicians should relate to them.

And they go looking for other grown-ass men to interact with online. Big weird validating thing among young “stans” to be “noticed” by a celebrity on social media. Gorillaz fans quickly figure out that you’re more likely to be “noticed”—ie have a comment liked or replied to—by an aging Gorillaz adjacent musician than, say, Millie Bobby Brown.

Gorillaz discourse is weirdly sexualized. Plug Jamie Hewlett or Damon Albarn DILF into Twitter and you’ll see what I mean.

I have a hard time believing that the principles in this band aren’t aware of these things. If you’re gonna have a cartoon band, maybe set a few more parameters and go about it more responsibly. Or divorce the music from the cartooning and let each stand on its own.

I strongly recommend that you have a chat with your kid if they get seriously into Gorillaz.

octoberallover wrote: Sat Aug 14, 2021 3:30 pm I strongly recommend that you have a chat with your kid if they get seriously into Gorillaz.

Agreed, on grounds of taste alone.

penningtron wrote: Fri Aug 13, 2021 10:51 am"..really? we're still doing this?", like some dinosaur rock relic that should have gone the way of pyrotechnics.

Yes. Guys want to fuck. Girls want to be fucked. Modernity has yet to erode that urge in most of us.

IMO, we're essentially culturally illiterate around issues of sex - watching 90's hypersexuality change into 00's prudishness has been interesting - as if the mainstream begrudgingly admits that the religious attempts to regulate sexual discourse wasn't so stupid after all... but now the genie's been let out the bottle and no one has any idea what to do, least of all the feminists, who always want to have their cake and eat it around these matters.

At the risk of sounding like John Zewizz - sex is incredibly powerful. Personality altering, perspective shifting experiences. It is not safe and it is not nice. As a result, decadence can get DARK. It's not for the weakminded or inexperienced, but you can learn a lot. I've been a monogamous relationship for 7 years now, but in my sluttier prime I often found the situation would either not conform to the fantasy (often it was simple mundane, occasionally it was grim) and sometimes I would experience bliss beyond language. That was the game and the price to be paid for playing it.

Throw in the intense emotional response that music can create and engaging in this sort of thing seems pretty understandable to me. Just be careful doing the decadence dance... you might learn some things about yourself that you don't like...

Groupies: NC.

M.H wrote: Mon Aug 16, 2021 4:24 amIMO, we're essentially culturally illiterate around issues of sex - watching 90's hypersexuality change into 00's prudishness has been interesting - as if the mainstream begrudgingly admits that the religious attempts to regulate sexual discourse wasn't so stupid after all... but now the genie's been let out the bottle and no one has any idea what to do, least of all the feminists, who always want to have their cake and eat it around these matters.

You simplify some of this, and you make it sound as if there was unanimous opinion on one side at one point, which flipped over into its opposite at a later point. In the 1970s already some feminists objected to the mentality of the sexual revolution as being simply an excuse for men to gain unlimited access to women's bodies; in the 90s roughly a current was taking shape which questioned these earlier views in favour of more "positive" ones, but in both cases you are faced with the notion that it is not as simple as just "freeing" sexuality, just removing impediments; it still has to be dealt with in some way.

In any case this is completely different from the conservative view, in which we just lean back on some supposed wisdom, which is the soil from which the sexual revolution emerged from to begin with. Current discussions about consent, about safety, about power imbalances and so on; these would not be possible without either the sexual revolution or the feminist challenges. So in essence it is different from the conservative argument, although you may sometimes find the conservative argument appealing to the same rhetoric.

Where I do agree with you is that there is a lot of naivety about this, as if it were just a question of being nice, treating each other well etc., not recognizing that sexuality is disruptive in itself. But I feel you fall into a similar naivety by stating "Guys want to fuck. Girls want to be fucked.", which again portrays it as something common sense and unremarkable that can be fitted into an otherwise ordered life.

It has nothing to do with prudishness. It has everything to do with the people on stage just being fucking people like anyone else, and there's no 'status' to be sought. Sure it may still happen at Bieber concerts or whatever, but that world is still clinging to the notion that bands are still Bon Jovi or some shit. Most of us moved past that b.s. decades ago, so yeah if I occasionally see some bass player trying to use his 'clout' at the Empty Bottle I'm gonna roll my eyes.

Sure, if people are on equal footing (which may be being downplayed on a message board almost exclusively made up of middle aged dudes) then yeah go as nuts as you want.

I think the whole concept is way too loaded to begin with (it seems to only apply to women, and assume they're in a subaltern position), and find it hard to discuss because of that. It's like even acknowledging there is such a thing as a groupie really shows your bias towards the place of a woman in that context, for me. I'd be curious about what the few women in the forum have to say about the theme.

Not grooming children for sex is so prudish.
Damn prudes gonna ruin rock 'n roll!

...Get the fuck out of here.

This got weird immediately.

brownreasontolive wrote: Not grooming children for sex is so prudish.
Damn prudes gonna ruin rock 'n roll!

...Get the fuck out of here.

No-one’s advocated paedophilia here, have they?

Bernardo wrote: I think the whole concept is way too loaded to begin with (it seems to only apply to women, and assume they're in a subaltern position), and find it hard to discuss because of that. It's like even acknowledging there is such a thing as a groupie really shows your bias towards the place of a woman in that context, for me. I'd be curious about what the few women in the forum have to say about the theme.

I agree. The word’s loaded with associations that reflect as much on the one saying “groupie” as the person or persons they’re describing.

octoberallover wrote:If you’re gonna have a cartoon band, maybe set a few more parameters and go about it more responsibly. Or divorce the music from the cartooning and let each stand on its own.

I don’t like Gorrilaz’s music, but this deserves context. Jamie Hewlett’s published art is consistent from his earliest popular publications, when he wrote and illustrated “Tank Girl”, an anarchic comic book in the ‘90’s that seemed pretty wild and funny to teenagers back then, me, my friends and siblings included. Damon Albarn was Hewlett’s flatmate and close friend when they were both getting popular, and their collaboration came from that, a wish to work together. The idea has always seemed daft to me. I am fairly sure it’s primary purpose was not to be popular with children.