Trolling is an internet phenomenon. One nerd says something stupid supposedly on purpose, other nerds get mad, insults are exchanged, everyone goes away from the ordeal thinking they are the victor. We've all been there, we've all done that but hopefully we still have enough dignity left not to wear the t-shirt. It's easy and not very interesting to troll on the internet, but what if someone was able to pull it off in real life? Obviously because of the nature of trolling it's impossible to concretely label someone as a troll, but a very good candidate would be
Brokencyde.
Basically
Brokencyde pander to two audiences. There are the actual "fans", woefully misguided teenagers who only seem to exist in the form of youtube comments and last.fm scrobbles; these are the people who actively enjoy the songs, they buy the music and merchandise, go to the shows and probably have sex with the band members if they're deemed good looking enough. That's all well and good, this audience help
Brokencyde achieve what they aim to by being in a band, making some money, having fun and getting laid. But it's the other audience are far more important; they are the critics, the self proclaimed music elite. This audience listen to
Brokencyde not out of enjoyment but because they are so
angry at
Brokencyde for making music. They write negative reviews about the band, they tell other people to listen to
Brokencyde because it's so bad, creating a whirlwind of furor and indignation that ever perpetuates the
Brokencyde hype machine.
Brokencyde really are geniuses at fuelling their own hype machine; many people reading this may have heard of the (false) rumours that emerge from various corners of the internet about the band all dying in a car crash, or being arrested on charges of child pornography, et cetera. These were all media stunts, perfectly orchestrated by the band themselves.
Brokencyde are so well known because it seems like everyone hates them. The really impressive thing about
Brokencyde is how they deliver perfectly for both of their audiences.
The music itself is almost irrelevant. The synth lines are poor at best, and everything else is obnoxious. But this is music for scene parties; it's supposed to be obnoxious, and it is the perfect amount of obnoxious. The scene kids will enjoy the insipid beats and think they're being alternative by listening to music with naughty lyrics and screaming, and the critics themselves will scream with collective rage at the fact that this has the audacity to be considered music and that this band are making money from their craft. Imagine if you will the lives of the band members; they probably spend maybe a month of a year writing a few simple synth lines, scraping together a few stupid lyrics, re-hashing it all as many times as necessary then recording it and then spending the rest of the year doing shows, getting drunk and getting laid. They are achieving exactly what they want to. It's almost a certainty that some people are out there grinding their teeth thinking "I would rather make no money at all and retain my musical integrity...", that shows how infinitely less naive
Brokencyde are from the rest of the musical world. Their music is shallow, forgettable and definitely lacking "musical integrity", and they've probably only got a couple more albums in them before the next Death Of Music™ comes along (what ever happened to
Soulja Boy?). Consider this: Amadeus Mozart, widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influential composers of all time died in 1791, grossly in debt and with relatively little critical recognition for his compositions. Sure, he's famous and fawned over by music aficionados these days, but now that he is just dust in a tomb somewhere in Austria what does that mean to him? Nothing at all. As he lay bed-ridden and dying, the last thoughts that went through his head must have been regret that he had wasted all that time on ultimately pointless "musical integrity" and wishing that he had spent more time getting drunk and getting laid.
Brokencyde are well aware of this, and they know exactly how to use us to get what they want.
So here's to you, the ironically facial haired hipster who linked a
Brokencyde video on your ***ty underground "indie" blog and proudly proclaimed them to be the Death Of Music™. Here's to you, the overweight fifteen year old wearing your
Between the Buried and Me t-shirt who got so full of rage when you heard "Freaxxx" that you slammed your fist on your desk so hard all of your zits exploded. Here's to me, the idiotic reviewer who wasted his time typing this review in which I literally compared
Brokencyde to ***ing Mozart. We've all earned
Brokencyde a few more forties and blowjobs.
Brokencyde have trolled the *** out of all of us.
Either that or they're actually serious about this nonsense in which case yeah it's pretty bad.
