Mining the forums

Unpacking hardcore's complex relationship with the internet

Last year, right after Tied Down fest, I deleted Twitter. I did it for a number of reasons. First off, changes to the app’s verification system (namely the pay-to-pay blue checkmark nonsense) made it almost unusable. I was also tired of seeing a constant stream of hate-speech, misinformation, and (on a less threatening but equally annoying tip) woker-than-thou posturing.

Mainly, though, I had to stop wasting my time consumed by stupid drama and bullshit. My average screen time has gradually dropped about three hours a day since I got rid of the app, and let me tell you, I don’t miss that time I spent squabbling or scrolling through constant threads of inane arguments.

The only thing I do miss is being on the cutting edge of hardcore discourse. Facebook is for old heads. Reddit is for people who don’t go to shows. If you want to be looped in on hardcore’s hot gossip, you need a Twitter account. I used to have a direct plug to the discourse as it unfolded. Now I either get that information third hand from Facebook groups (you won’t catch me dead on r/hardcore) or wait until Axe to Grind talks about it a week later.

I’m probably better off not witnessing a 19 year-old with TERF bangs call some legacy act racist and then get dogpiled by a bunch of grown men every three days, but as someone who writes primarily about hardcore and the scene around it, I do feel left in the dark sometimes. I talked in my last review roundup about how things like YouTube and Spotify have blurred the concept of localism in hardcore music. Social media has done the same with the community aspect, although that didn’t start with Twitter.

I miss the days of community-focused message boards, like B9 or the Punknews forum. Sure, you could waste all day on there too, but you wouldn’t have to contend with a constant drip of algorithm-promoted white power nonsense. Nor would you need to worry about lining the pockets of some soulless reptilian billionaire. Any ad revenue you helped generate went right back into the pockets of some weirdo mod who used it to keep the servers running.

I wish going to shows and listening to the music was enough to stay plugged in, but Internet discourse has been an integral part of hardcore since I started coming around. The community is so spread out. Some people have hardcore homies all over the world. Without being plugged into what’s happening on the internet, it’s easy tp develop FOMO. The lore, the banter, the trends, the memes — it’s a vital part of the subculture, and missing it means some of your involvement in the collective experience is bound to slip through the cracks.

The journalist in me worries about what I’m missing, then the punk in me remembers it’s all bullshit. I was at the inaugural edition of More Reality Fest in Toronto this weekend, where the inane goings-on of the internet couldn’t feel less important. I saw, with my own eyes, the fruits of DIY, small room hardcore’s burgeoning resurgence. I felt as plugged in and a part of the action as ever.

I didn’t need to see hot takes about Speed’s Footlocker collab to feel like I was getting everything I needed from the music I love. I didn’t need to see the hilarious quote-tweet dunks on neo-nazis calling hardcore “white coded”. I watched Mil-Spec cover a Mental song, and crowdkilled someone for the first time during the last set of local legends The Fact. Social media was the last thing on my mind that night, and it will probably go down as one of the best hardcore shows I’ve ever seen.

Sure, it would be easier to find blog post topics if I still had Twitter. I might even make a few new friends from across the world. Still, if I ever feel like I’m missing something by not being on Elon Musk’s internet, I’ll try and remember Friday night of More Reality, when the most connected I’ve ever felt to hardcore was with my phone firmly in my pocket.