Well, it’s September now, and some people still suck. It’s Smokey Goretooth here with another “Do I Suck?,” MetalSucks’ version of “Am I The Asshole?” where we take real life horror stories and bring them to our readers to decide if the OP sucks for some bullshit they may or may not have done.
This week, we’ve got a submission from a user who thinks their friend is becoming an asshole because their follower count increased. Good grief, let’s read on…
I’ve been friends with Zach (not his real name) for about five years now and something he’s always been into are those dudes who do online reviews of albums and stuff, like that bald Fantano guy and whoever else. I’m not a big social media person and I don’t much follow many music critics, but for years he’s been talking about how he wants to get into doing that stuff, too. More power to him I guess, because earlier this year he made TikTok and YouTube accounts specifically for this purpose.
At first it was innocent enough. I think he started with that Paleface Swiss EP that came out in January and at some other point he did the new Oathbreaker as well (idk, I don’t really keep up with it since I prefer to just ask for whatever his opinion is, if I want to hear it at all, in person). Those got a couple of views, which only encouraged him to keep going. It made him happy and that made me happy, but nowadays, he’s become one of the most insufferable pieces of shit to be around sometimes, and he hasn’t even cracked like 3-or 400 followers TOTAL.
It’s not the fact that he thinks the general public gives a shit about what he has to say — that’s why people record and post themselves crying or whatever. What makes him the worst is how he now thinks and acts like he’s the coolest big dick dog in the goddamn yard, and tries to insert his “rising internet fame” into conversation whenever he can with me and our other friends. We’ll be talking about some record or going to some show, and he’ll say things like “In my field, we describe it like this” or if we’re in the middle of a conversation instead of just engaging with us about it, he’ll pull out his phone and say his thoughts right into the camera to clip and use later. How is that not the most annoying goddamn thing ever?
All of this has been steadily building up until I eventually lost it one day last week, and I’m surprised it took me this long. I was talking with another friend of ours about that Militarie Gun album that came out a few weeks ago when Zach decided to interject and say something to the effect of, “Well, you guys don’t really know what you’re talking about because you’re not really a part of music discourse.” Obviously, this pissed me off, so I hit him back with something like “Shut the hell up, dude, no one cares about your stupid opinion. You’re not a part of any discourse as barely anyone even watches your dumb fuck videos.” He hasn’t talked to me since.
To me, he had this coming for acting like he’s some expert on metal now because like five people have chosen to watch him talk about it, and for saying that me and our other friend DON’T know what we’re talking about because we choose not to post about it for attention.
Do I suck for being honest with him though? How do people actually stay friends with influencers, even if they’re failed ones?
What do we think, y’all? If I’m being honest, I probably would’ve had the same if not a worse reaction as our frustrated friend here.