The Metal Lair Complaint Department 004

Written By Lemmy Chillmister

THE METAL LAIR COMPLAINT NO. 004: THE WEIRD EGO TRIP OF BANDS THAT FOLLOW NOBODY

Complaint: Bands treating Instagram like a one-way fan-delivery system.
Status: Unfollowed.
Severity: Main-character syndrome.
Corrective action: Follow somebody, Your Majesty.

There is a very specific species of social media behavior that deserves immediate review by the Metal Lair Complaint Department.

You know the account. Unsigned band. Maybe 742 followers. Two singles on Spotify. One local support slot six months ago. Instagram bio packed with fire emojis, pre-save links, merch links, streaming links, a Linktree containing seventeen additional links, and probably the phrase “FOR FANS OF” followed by three bands considerably more famous than they are.

Followers: 742.

Following: 0.

Excuse me?

At the same time, this band would very much like you to stream the new single, save it, add it to a playlist, comment on the teaser, share the reel, pre-save the EP, subscribe to the mailing list, buy the shirt, tag a friend, tell your cousin, alert the neighbors and possibly interrupt Thanksgiving dinner to announce that their lyric video premieres Friday.

But apparently clicking “follow” on another human being is beneath them. Social media is supposed to be a network, not a throne room.

Yet somewhere along the way, “following zero” became a strange little prestige signal. It projects the idea that attention travels in exactly one direction: toward us.

We receive attention, we do not give attention. We are the sun. You are miscellaneous orbiting debris.

When Metallica follows almost nobody, nobody is sitting around wondering whether Metallica has heard of networking. They have been one of the biggest bands on Earth for four decades. Their social media presence is effectively corporate infrastructure at this point.

But when GraveDirtButtFurnace from suburban Milwaukee, formed eight months ago, follows nobody while posting “SUPPORT UNDERGROUND MUSIC” every three hours?

Sir, sit down.

Because this is where the whole thing becomes ridiculous. Underground music survives almost entirely because people participate in it.

Bands support other bands. Fans support bands. Venues support scenes. Photographers document shows. Promoters take financial risks. Labels amplify releases. Writers interview artists nobody else has bothered to cover yet.

Independent radio hosts play songs at midnight to audiences who might actually care. Somebody buys the cassette. Somebody shares the Bandcamp link. Somebody drags three friends to a Wednesday-night show with twelve people in the room.

That ecosystem only works when attention moves in more than one direction. And no, this does not mean every band should follow every person who follows them. Nobody is arguing that either.

Following ten thousand random accounts because some social media guru told you it “boosts engagement” creates its own swamp. Follow-for-follow culture is usually meaningless, transactional muck dressed up as community. The point is not numbers, it’s participation.

Follow the bands you tour with. Follow the venue that keeps booking you. Follow the photographer whose images you repost. Follow the label releasing your record. Follow the promoter putting your name on flyers. Follow the publications writing about you. Follow other bands in your scene. Have some fucking loyalty for the people in your ecosystem that are working their asses off behind the scenes.

Maybe, radical concept incoming, follow some of the fans who have been showing up for years and buying your shit. You do not have to turn your account into a digital phone book.

Just act like you exist inside a community instead of floating several thousand feet above it.

The strangest part is that the bands doing this are often the same ones talking endlessly about how difficult it is to get noticed. And yes, it is difficult.

The internet is an industrial-strength attention blender. Thousands of bands are releasing music every week, algorithms are fickle, organic reach is miserable, and everybody is fighting over the same exhausted pair of eyeballs.

Which makes deliberately refusing to interact with anybody even stranger.

Imagine walking into a local show, standing silently against the wall, refusing to acknowledge every other band, ignoring the promoter, declining to speak to fans, then walking onstage and yelling:

“WHY DOESN’T ANYBODY SUPPORT THE SCENE?”

That is what the zero-following account feels like. There is also something psychologically fascinating about the performance of status involved.

Somebody somewhere decided that important people follow fewer people than follow them.

And technically, yes, follower-to-following ratios can create the appearance of status. But there is a difference between having status and cosplaying it.

If Beyoncé follows twelve accounts, nobody assumes she is trying to look important. If a band whose biggest gig was second opener at Paddy’s Rib Shack follows zero accounts, the illusion becomes slightly harder to maintain.

Prestige cannot be reverse-engineered by deleting your following list. You do not become mysterious. You become the guy at the party who keeps checking whether everyone is looking at him.

This is especially irritating in underground metal because the entire culture constantly invokes ideas like community, loyalty, independence and supporting the scene.

Those words have to mean something beyond “please buy our hoodie.” Support cannot permanently flow uphill. Attention cannot permanently flow inward. Community cannot mean an audience surrounding a brand.

So, bands, relax.

Nobody is going to mistake you for less important because you followed the drummer from the band you toured with.

Nobody is going to cancel your record deal because you followed the photographer who spent three hours crouched beside a monitor wedge getting decent shots of you.

Nobody is going to revoke your metal credentials because you followed the publication that interviewed you before most people knew your name.

You may even discover that social media becomes slightly less miserable when you treat it like a place containing other people.

The Metal Lair Complaint Department therefore finds the defendant guilty of unnecessary digital aristocracy.

Sentence:

Follow somebody, Your Highness.

Court adjourned.

Now go support the scene you keep asking to support you.

– Remmy Chillmister
The Metal Lair Complaint Department

“That’s how you know it’s real. Yinyo.”

Missed last week’s Metal Lair Complaint Department? Find it here.

Metal Lair Complaint Department artwork featuring an overflowing complaint box on a rusted filing cabinet with drawers labeled Gatekeeping, Ticket Prices, Algorithms, Posers, Pit Etiquette, and Metal Elitists.

The Metal Lair Complaint Department is a Metal Lair® Original Series.

SUBMITTED COMPLAINTS

Name: Double_p666
Complaint: “Hey Remmy, this column sucks and so do you.”

Remmy responds: “Another drive-by hit & run? Happy, happy, joy, joy.”

No explanation, no constructive criticism, not even a typo to argue about. Just a tiny digital brick through the window and off you go.

Name: TheBionicPersonality
Complaint: “Can we please stop pretending every opening band deserves a 45-minute set? Some of us have jobs.

Remmy responds:

“Some of us have jobs” is not a compelling argument against live music, but I admire the confidence.

Opening bands are there to open. That is literally the assignment. Forty-five minutes is not exactly Wagner’s Ring Cycle.

If your bedtime is in danger because the local support act played six songs instead of four, perhaps the problem is not the set length. Perhaps the problem is that you are spiritually 84.

That said, if there are four opening bands, each with a 45-minute set, a twenty-minute changeover, and one guitarist who insists on soundchecking his entire pedalboard in real time, then yes, I understand. At that point the headliner is less a concert and more a hostage negotiation.

Name: Anon
Complaint: Why do metal bands keep releasing seventeen vinyl variants of the same album? I just want the record, not a Pokémon side quest.

Remmy responds:

“Stop your sniveling. Just because you can’t afford to buy them all doesn’t mean the band has to stop making them.

Nobody is forcing you to collect every piss-yellow, blood-splatter, glow-in-the-dark, limited-to-300 pressing like some deranged vinyl dragon guarding a Discogs account.

Buy the one you like. Leave the other sixteen alone. Problem solved.

Honestly, this sounds less like a complaint about vinyl variants and more like a complaint about your own lack of self-control.”

FILE A COMPLAINT WITH THE METAL LAIR COMPLAINT DEPARTMENT

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File it with the Complaint Department. Remmy may investigate your grievance in a future installment.

Selected grievances may be investigated, mocked, dissected or otherwise subjected to the questionable judgment of Remmy Chillmister in a future edition of The Metal Lair Complaint Department.

Submission does not guarantee investigation. Remmy has a substantial backlog of things that piss him off.

About The Author

Remmy Chillmister survives on beer, bad decisions, and one functioning ear since ’79. Banned from three metal festivals, countless venues, and one nursing home for excessive honesty. Nobody knows why he still has a press credential, including him.

The Metal Lair Complaint Department

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