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the_dunk_tank @hexbear.net
Cromalin [she/her] @hexbear.net

"mr rogers was punk"

"ohhhh, punk has been made too widely palatable and for everyone. REAL punks are like presbyterian minister mr rogers!" there are still hardcore bands out there! you can go see them if you want! i bet this person would listen to the ramones and go "umm, he wants to sniff glue? are we glorifying drug addiction now? this is SO not punk!"

there are people in the notes going "yeah! this is so true!"

i think this is part of a broader trend of people feeling to need to justify everything they enjoy, it can't just be a show they remember fondly from when they were a kid, it needs to be punk

86 comments

  • This is why I always say, Punk is an aesthetic

    It's not an ideology so much as the appearance of one

    Plenty of self-described punks are leftist and do righteous shit, but so many are just angry middle-aged kids who want to seem cool

    Hence why you always get the Conservatism is the new Punk shit every copy of years or so

    • every copy of years

    • as a participant of DIY music scenes, that is a difficult pill to swallow. on the one hand principled individuals foster a sense of community around what they do with political outreach front and center, things as simple as pamphlets talking about veganism and such at house shows and vfw halls they themselves have organized.

      on the other there are way more people who show up because it's something to do on a saturday night.

      They tend to wash out after spending their summers day drinking at the show, hitting on all the underaged girls, and can only remember the style of clothing, and never engaging with any of the present political outreach that's ALWAYS THERE. They've only ever been a warm body that paid $5 to make people uncomfortable like the nihilism they cosplay for is about them as individuals instead of a social one that remains present even today. if they know anything about the history, it's idolizing Syd Vicious for some reason.

      When they say Punk is dead I tend to agree with them.

      • as a participant of DIY music scenes, that is a difficult pill to swallow

        DIY isn't exclusive to punk, tho. Punk definitely pioneered it, punk is also likely to still be the genre with the biggest DIY subculture, but DIY as a mode of minimum-capital, non-exploitative, cooperative cultural production that's available to everyone can work in any scene that has diehard, enthusiastic fans. Does that mean that people who organize underground raves are techno punks? Does that mean metal bands that put out records DIY and go on tour sleeping on their fans couches are metal punks?

        idk, i'm inclined to say no because then you're at "everything is punk" again. I don't think punk can be meaningfully defined as anything but an aesthetic and a vibe, and that aesthetic and that vibe are very closely tied to DIY, but are also very closely tied to "what if we start DIY, but then it works out too well and we become actual capitalists", aka how indie labels start, something which was also pioneered by punks. And that aesthetic has also from the very start been something that has been co-opted and monetized by established capitalist actors within the cultural industry, sellouts and posers have been a part of punk since before people started to call it punk. As soon as punk became noticeable, there were corporate ghouls who realized that a movement built around aggressive contrarianism was something you can market to suburban teens with rich parents, just as there have always been kids who've genuinely needed punk as a first step to reject the norms of capitalist society.

        Punk also always had a revolutionary, liberatory and inclusive side to it and it always had a toxic, nihilist and exclusionary side to it, these have clashed with each other since the very start. As soon as there was hardcore, there were both subversive queer kids who found they could be themselves at punk shows and violent meatheads who went to shows to beat people up and be sex pests in the pit. I agree that the latter should have no part in the scene, but it takes work to keep them out. You have to watch out for people when you don't want punk to be a space that's only safe for white cishet boys who can hold their own in a fight. Building a punk scene that isn't awful, violent shit requires active struggle.

  • I feel like "punk" gets mis-attributed as "authenticity" so much. Mr. Rodgers seemed like a guy who walked the walk and that gives him authenticity, but it sure doesn't make him punk.

    Edit: Ruminated this a bit and I feel like the attribution of "punk" is probably because it's the last widespread cultural touchstone where "authenticity" was an assumed component of it. (I don't think this reflects the reality of it though, the Sex Pistols were a boy band after all).

    • My punk credibility is super high and yup, also it's been an ongoing thing in a very underground capacity for the last 30 years and people's last mainstream touchstone is the 90s. DIY punk has been an ongoing international network that's grown since the 80s and lets bands from Columbia or Russia play anarchist community centers or peoples basements and still make enough to get home and hopefully some pocket change, bands get well fed and drink for free in any town that has its scene together enough to get touring bands. But yeah, there is a pretty deep and historically long rooted international diy punk network and if you're around long enough you can easily contact just about anyone cause everyone is a friend of a friend and being a Rockstar isn't allowed everyone in the audience is also in bands generally, there isn't really a division between bands and Fans and the worship that comes with it. The second singer for Black Flag lives in BC and picked my friends up from the airport on their first tour. He also still has to work a day job. People just really like punk enough to do this work.

  • Hippies were mean people pretending to be nice, punks were nice people pretending to be mean—change my mind

    • plenty of hippies were genuinely decent and plenty of punks are huge pieces of shit. but broadly i think these are trends that can be drawn.

      not important to this post though because mr rogers certainly wasn't pretending to be mean at a single point of his public persona (i mean maybe in an episode where someone says "that made me feel bad" and then he apologized or something, but you get it) and therefore isn't punk. cannot fathom a world where i believe he was

    • some punks were and are assholes. not all of them, but sometimes it is about breaking shit and beating people up and it's not deeper.

    • So hippies were libs and punks were leftists? Makes total sense.

  • i think this is part of a broader trend of people feeling to need to justify everything they enjoy

    I see this all the time with sexual preferences. It can’t just be “I like big boobs” or even “flat chested girls aren’t sexy,” no, it’s got to be “Western culture was built around the ideal of the large breasted woman and any deviation from that will cause the downfall of civilization and rational thought.”

    • When you're hating on flat chested girls like that you're a misogynist pig and deserve to be kicked in the face until you bleed. Same for when you shame any other girl for her body type. This must be repeated until you understand that "i'm not into (body type)" isn't the same as "people with (body type) aren't sexy". I don't get why it's so hard not to be a piece of shit about other peoples' looks.

      • Don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing that phrasing a sexual preference as “anyone who doesn’t fit my preference is not sexy in an absolute sense” is okay. And that goes for any gender or sexuality. I’m just observing that a lot of people these days go beyond that to “My preference is a cornerstone of civilization/logic/biology.”

  • These chats are fun to jump in, but only because the people who listen to Sex Pistols and Queens of the Stone Age show up to shit on Folk Punk. My bad music is just better than your bad music.

    But yeah, Mr. Rogers isn't particularly punk. Not to say he's a bad person, but that you can be a good person that fights for good things and not be "punk".

    • I remember being at a festival somewhere at some time. It was a very broad-tent festival.

      There were two main stages so acts could alternate - you'd have one stage where an act was playing while the other stage was being prepped by crew so the next act could jump on stage pretty much directly after the previous act, rather than having one main stage that has a lot of downtime between each act.

      Björk was on one stage at the time. Love her stuff, really great and she was putting on a good show. But there was a big crowd who were there waiting to see Rage Against The Machine so they weren't interested in Björk which is fine, whatever, not all music caters to every taste and especially not her stuff.

      What really left me disgusted though was the Rage crowd booing Björk, not for singing Declare Independence while raising a Tibetan flag (lol), but because they didn't like her music. Lots of people where flipping her off and shit too.

      I was just like, man... y'all aren't nearly as countercultural as you think you are. I could play half of that crowd some early stuff in Björk's musical career that they'd probably find tolerable or agreeable, if not particularly likeable, because she started in punk and alternative music - which is pretty obvious if you look closely because she continued to draw on her punk and alternative influences as a solo artist. But also imagine being a big fan of countercultural music and being so openly hostile to music that pushes the boundaries.

      "This music is very different and it's not like what I hear on the radio. I don't like it because it's unusual and uncomfortable so I'm going to heckle this artist. I'm countercultural as heck, bro!!"

    • QotSA aren't bad, they actually rule

    • folk punk is good

    • folk punk is fun, my friend's in a folk punk band and i got to see them do their thing and it was nice. no real experience with the genre outside that i'm afraid

    • okay but hear me out like mr rogers can be punk as a treat and ill fite you over this

  • I am so glad this got so many comments. this is exactly what i did in middle school on those old proboards during computer class. metal is when you mosh, hxc is when you slam dance don't you people know ANYTHING

    creating new genres based solely on my brain's posting power like ambient whitemetal/mathcore and yelling at people for being wrong. hell yeah, this shit rocks

  • I’m sorry for the punk discourse but also, I was never a punk, not really, but they seem to get along with my nerdy ass and I can pass out the books so I think the moral of the story is if u can hang then who cares 🤓

  • This is punk Mr. Rogers would hate it. There is a bit of truth to it where I did get taught by cool pinks early on that being Sid Vicious at people is cringe and if you're a dirty punk, thr impression you give will carry over to any other punks they meet and as a consequence I've made sure to be really really nice to strangers. Punks have about a dozen or so sub subcultures but your none oogle crust types who are more of the antisect/discharge than gg Allin/spiderweb face tattoo and banjo side of things do practice the none Christian parts of being Mr Rogers and radical kindness is what keeps this ship afloat. We couldn't have flown a band from Moscow to Canada for a 6 date tour and made it worthwhile and trust worthy if it weren't for that mentality. DIY punk has worldwide underground organizing I desperately wish could be put to more use than letting bands tour and put out records and priestly managing to break even.

86 comments