Greetings friends, are you ready to gouge your eyes out? Have you gone on social media recently to see the idiotic shitstorm of posts of people celebrating something as stupid as the end of a decade? Have you contemplated drinking drain cleaner before going on facebook so you can ignore posts about the polar bear swim, drunk New Year’s Eve selfies, people posting about being kissed on New Year’s, people posting about NOT being kissed on New Year’s? Have you considered deleting all social media, strapping on some dungarees, and joining the family of opossums in the backyard lest you have to see anymore “best of” lists where people hype overrated metal bands *cough* TOOL *cough*, or act like because Obama once put a horror movie on his best of list that’s he’s… wait for it… JUSTASGOODASTHERESTOFUSHORRORNERDS.. ONEOFUSONEOFUSGOOBLEGOBBLE. Anywho, don’t fret, because I too, am ironing my dungarees and eyeing up that nice looking possum.

If you’ve been a friend of the graveyard, you will be familiar with 6 Things That Can Fuck Off in 2016, 7 Things That Can Fuck Off in 2017, 8 Things That Can Fuck Off in 2018 and 9 Things That Can Fuck Off in 2019. It’s become something of a tradition around here in the graveyard, and even though I loathe year end anythings with a deep unending hatred, I figured I would self flagellate like that albino in the Da Vinci Code and do an EVEN BIGGER AND BETTER list than last year, hahaha! Oh, won’t I show them. Oh won’t I?

1. That posi-crew mentality that seems to permeate literally everything

Alright. I’m gonna have to explain this one, right? Because, like, no one wants to be that dickhole that’s popping off like, “MAN, I JUST *HATE* PEOPLE WHO ARE POSITIVE, WHAT BETA NORMIE CUCKS WHO DONT KNOW PAIN huehuhuehue”. That sentiment makes you sound like a total assclown as well, but let me get to that. Okay, so, what is the posi-crew mentality? Well, it’s this mentality that I’ve seen spring up in various communities and amongst various content creators where the only opinion considered to be a valid opinion is a positive opinion. On the surface, there’s nothing wrong with using positivity, say for example, finding something positive in a movie you didn’t really care for, and granted, it can be super tough depending on how your mind works. Think about the most annoying person you work with and give me a list of five nice things about them.. it’s a struggle.
The problem with the posi-crew is that it’s actually a very insidious form of gaslighting, where any differing opinions or valid criticisms are dismissed as “haters hatin”. And don’t get me wrong here, there’s *definitely* people out there who get off on hatin’ just for something to do. And really, end of the day.. who cares? Let people like and dislike things in equal measure. Just because someone hates the movie you absolutely loved, doesn’t mean that the person who is hating is wrong, and doesn’t mean that you are right. You’re both just operating from a different viewpoint and there’s nothing wrong with that at all. And for most people with half a brain and even a modicum of critical thinking, pieces like this don’t even need to be said, but for everyone else, the posi-crew mentality is especially dangerous, when you have large name content creators who are creating a community of essentially brainwashed sycophantic bobble heads, bouncing their heads up and down at whatever they’re told to like. I’ve seen these very same content creators quote tweet dissenting opinions and send their followers on a spurrious campaign of silencing “opposoing” voices on twitter. Hey friend, if someone thought that Baby Yoda looked like a shitty Gremlin, it’s not worth ruining their life on twitter over it, just chill the fuck out and move on. Literally no one cares.
And honestly, I challenge haters and lovers alike – if you’re a hater, go listen to some positive reviews about something you specifically hate – you might be shocked. If you’re a lover, find a review where someone hated something you loved, and you might see their point of view. Doesn’t mean you have to agree with it, of course.

I think the posi-crew is dangerous because it’s cult like, and it punishes thought crime in the same way that religions do. Oh, you’re concerned about how the Bible doesn’t really add up under even the most basic of scrutiny? Well, don’t worry, it’s the devil tempting you. Don’t like the new James Wan shitflick? Oh well you’re just a hater of fun. It’s a simplification of human emotion, because it makes disliking things a pathology, the ultimate disease of being a hater, and by the very name, something bad, taboo, just like a sinner.

And honestly, if someone critiquing a movie/piece of music/celebrity is enough to rattle you to your very core, like, are you okay? Seek help.

2. Drake

Could we like, as a society, please, for the love of everything that is good and holy, please be done with this creepy as fuck sad boy who clearly has extremely problematic relationships with underage girls. His music is terrible and the lyrics are usually rapey as hell, and honestly in 2020 can we please leave the fucked up sentiments about women in the past decade and ask for better of our pop idols. Please?

3. Scott Helman

Nothing sends me into a spiralling rage more than hearing Scott Helman’s “PDA” on the radio. I can hear you right now, “Why Robin,” you may say, “its just a fun pop song about kissing in public.” And here is my prompt fuck off disguised as a rebutall – the lyrics to PDA are insanely rapey and problematic and portray the very essence of toxic masculinitiy and allow me to quote them to you:

So baby I just need a memory to sustain me
‘Cause I get so crazy worried that you’ll go and replace me
So show me with an action that on the train you won’t get plastered
And hook up with some model slash actor in the bathroom
All that I need is a confirmation by making a scene in the station

So, Scott, uh.. Mr. Hellman (big fan of the Mayonaise btw), you’re in this bridge attempting to coerce your spouse into a physically romantic act that they’re uncomfortable with in public in order for them to “prove” their love to you to soothe your raging insecurity? Sounds like one fuck of a toxic relationship immortalized in song. Seek help, dude.
And when the news comes out that this dude is a creepy asshole, remember, you heard it from Uncle Robin first.

 

4. TOOL

TOOL fucking sucks. Fear Inoculum is the biggest joke of an album in 2019 that I’m half surprised that TOOL didn’t come out and say something like it was intentionally made badly to play some weird Machiavellian prank on the “lib cuck media”. But seriously though, can TOOL please get left in the early aughts where they belong?
They aren’t good. And let’s not forget the MULTIPLE accusations of problematic behaviour against Maynard Keenan. Yeah, he’s taken acid a few times and all, but I challenge you to go watch him rant about fat and poor people on the Joe Rogan podcast and not want to rip your remaining two brain cells out. The guy is a fucking boomer, and I’m kinda done with him being revered as some type of God. He’s just a short guy with short guy energy who took a few tabs of blotter and likes fractals. He’s that old guy at the rave with a crystal necklace on trying to coerce skinny hippie girls to his tent with free ketamine.

 

5. MetalSucks

MetalSucks, does in fact, suck. I’ve hesitated to put them as a whole on this list for years, as I’ve hoped, for literally years that they would get better, that their journalism would improve, and that they would, for all of their false and flaccid virtue signalling, actually put their money where their mouth is and represent the marginalized voices in metal that they claim to champion, yet can’t seem to find column space for. When they published an article comparing women to genres of metal, that was really the end of them for me. The last exhale of dusty air, so to speak. I wrote a thing about it, and got an apology from them, but, the damage was done. I haven’t been on their site since then, even though I see Ben Umanov’s tweets on my feed from time to time, it’s honestly just him attempting in vain to be funny, or more shallow virtue signalling.
They apologized, sure, but that’s all it was. Just words. Their actions haven’t changed, and neither have their bylines, and I still don’t see myself represented on their page that claims to be “by metalheads for metalheads”. And you know what, that makes me kinda sad, and not for me, I’m too old to be sad.. but it makes me sad for the young female identifying people, the queer people, and everyone else who doesn’t fit in who happen to be metalheads looking for a place to fit in, and finding MetalSucks. It’s not a good place to be. So, fuck em. Stay in the early aughts, where you belong, because your musical taste hasn’t evolved since then anyways.

 

6. High maintenance members of the Twitch community

This is like a specific fuck off, but it’s only because I’ve seen so many dillholes popping off on reddit about how they don’t even bother checking out small name channels, unless small Twitch channels have “expensive looking art, a webcam, at least 1080p, 60fps, girl has cleavage, or guy is skinny”. Like. Dude. Do you know what you sound like? Like yeah, we all have preferences, but turning yourself off to some pretty amazing content because it doesn’t have this like predetermined and arbitrary laundry list of things you seem to “need” in a stream is crazy.
Let me tell you that being ground up with a small streamer and watching them grow, learn, and get better, buy better equipment, etc is like watching something grow and not only that, being a part of it. The people I’ve met during my short stint on Twitch are some of the most genuine and wonderful people, and I feel honestly kinda bad for people who are denying themselves that only to watch super polished stuff.
And again, nothing wrong with big name streamers, polished content etc, but jeez, guys, you sound like needy babies, stop it.

 

7. The desire that the horror community has for everything to be a “franchise”

Seriously. Not everything needs to be a franchise with merch, and sequels so endless that they span on into forever until they’re jokes of themselves. Not everything needs to go on into eternity. And in a way, I empathize with the desire. It’s human nature, really. We don’t like ambiguity, we are uncomfortable with endings. It’s in the way we talk about death. We want the end to not really be the end, for life to go on in some other form. We want the characters we love to be immortal, we want their stories to continue. But the thing is, there’s something so beautiful with a story that is told and ends – because we can always wonder about what could be, what might have been, the one that got away.
But please, for the love of god.. we don’t need every mediocre horror film to be a franchise. We don’t need Quiet Place 2. We don’t need anymore Grudge remakes. We don’t need things to go until we hate them, until the very existence of the sequels tarnishes the love we had for the first film.
Stop it.

 

8. Star Wars

Alright. I’ve had about enough of Star Wars. Now, don’t get me wrong, like whatever you want, whatever gets your dick hard and everything. I don’t really care. But honestly, every time something related to Star Wars is trending, I feel like I have to nail down everything I own, lest it be carried away in the storm of crazy, and angry misspelled tweets of people going off about how the new Star Wars is the greatest thing ever, or alternately the worst thing ever, and it’s like, my guys your fandom shouldn’t fucking STRESS YOU OUT! Like, holy absolute shit, dial it back several notches.
Seek help.

 

9. Transphobia

Now that on a whole, we all seem pretty chill with gay people, the new thing people have a “phobia” about is transgender people. Can we just, like, not though? Can we just like stop it? It’s such a bad look and in ten years when we’re cool with transgender people, it’s going to make you super embarassed to look back and be like, “oh wow was i ever a shit fucker”, and please.. someone else’s gender, lack thereof, or whatever is literally none of your business. Their pronouns, genitals, gender identity, etc, has no bearing on your life. Calling a trans person their preferred pronounds isn’t going to lead to Stalinism, so like, can you please dial back the right wing screeching to a dull roar.

 

10. Cryptid “culture”

Look. I like aliens, bigfoot, Mothman, all that crap, as much as the next guy. But like, there’s this whole thing that exists around cryptids and cryptid culture where like, people, really grasp at straws around belief in this crap. Like.. seemingly smart intelligent people I know can be heard waxing idiotic about how they one time saw their grandmother’s ghost in black lingerie pouring whiskey in the basement. Like, if you’re sharing clearly photoshopped grainy pixellated photos convinced you’re on the paranormal pulse of the internet, you should probably seek help. I think there’s great anthropological significance to campfire stories and urban legends and cryptids and I think so much of it gets lost with people who “want to believe”. I dunno, it just rubs me the wrong way with a great majority of it, mostly because there’s this lack of critical thinking and deeper inquiry that goes along with so much of it, and there’s places where flimsy anecdotal evidence is held to this ridiculous standard and logical fallacies abound and it just reeks to me of pseudoscience, and seems to be one David Avocado Wolfe meme away from trying to sell me gluten free organic patchouli oil.

 

11. Instagram occultism

I had a similar incarnation of this one in a previous list, but I recently saw someone on my instagram feed sharing a picture of a bundle of sage, and refer to it as something like “smoke bundle” or “smokey stick” and it sent me into a spiralling rage. Sage is so sacred to so many cultures, including the one I grew up in, and it’s so cringey to see people adopting the trappings of these cultures without any reverence for the knowledge behind why these things are so sacred. And like, do whatever you want, wave your sage over your crystals you bought from Urban Outfitters, whatever you want, but its fucking ridiculous and you should stop it. If your search for spiritual absolution involves you pulling out a credit card and giving money to Forever 21 for a crystal necklace, you’re probably looking for spirituality in the wrong place, just saying.

I see people seemingly wearing spirituality like it’s something that can be bought. And honestly, I’m no different. I’ve done it. I’ve slapped on crystal necklaces, tattooed moons and runes on my body, and I’ve played a part I thought I was supposed to play to be woke, to be enlightened. I’ve dropped the acid, I’ve danced in the moonlight, and nothing brought me as close to my spirituality as the times I really suffered, the times I saw death, the times I almost died, the times I cried until my eyes were dry and snot ran down my face, and that’s because – true enlightenment is a lot like birth – it’s ugly and it’s similarly mucusy. It’s in the spiritual writings of the Guatama Buddha – his enlightenment granted to him after looking upon a corpse, upon disease. Odhinn gained his knowledge in suffering and in trade.
If you’re simply trading money for your spirituality, you haven’t really seen the whole picture yet. And of course, that’s okay, we all have to grow, and we are all growing. Just, do better.

 

12. Netflix dumping episodes of new shows because everything needs to be “binge worthy”

Please, and I am begging you here, can we please stop with this concept of binge worthy this and binge worthy that. it is the ultimate glorification of society’s need as a whole to be instantly satisfied and it’s become an epidemic. I love nothing better than watching an episode of a show and then having to wait painfully for a whole week to get myself crazy for the next episode. It’s anticipation. It gives me time to gossip about the episode, share the memes and build into a fandom.
The Witcher is a great example of a show that is great, but it should have been a weekly episode update and not a whole dump.
It makes the wait for season 2 even longer, and I feel like a lot of the momentum building of the show would have been lost. Please can we just have weekly syndicated shows?

 

13. People on twitter who never follow you or interact with anything you do but spam your DMs incessantly with their patreon link

This is a very specific fuck you, but honestly, it deserves mention. I can’t even count how many times I’ve had people follow me and I will follow them back, and immediately I’m carpet bombed by links that I did not ask for to their patreon, all while being assured that the fully automated messages are not from a bot, despite the fact that they clearly are, as I get them roughly once a week. It’s rude to spam people with your patreon – have a little decency. Believe me, if I wanted to support your Patreon, I would. It’s even moreso rude if we have never interacted at all and you come to me with your hat in your hand and then not just do it once, do it multiple times a week. It’s a huge turn off, and far from making me curious about your work, it just makes me not want to see what you’re up to, and I will either, depending on my mood, rage out at you and call you out or just block you.
Artists – if you have to spam people looking for money, it shows me you’re spending too much time on that, and not enough on your art. Just FYI.

And yeah, take this from someone who has a Patreon – there’s no shame in using Patreon, in sharing the link, but punching people in the face with it, is never ever a good look.

 

14. Onision

Along with his emo haircut, narcissitic personality disorder, and alleged habit for grooming underage girls, can we like please leave Onision in the early aughts where he belongs? YouTube is constantly aflutter with people roasting this red onion and honestly, my eyes are dry from the tears, so let’s stop paying attention to him. His career is over, anyways.

 

15. Instagram “Goth” culture

From the King Dude records to the Killstar shirts, to the fluevogs, to the ever present bloodmilk jewelry, to the fringe bands and bat tattoos, I honestly feel sometimes like I log onto instagram and I’m seeing fifty pictures from the same account and I’m like “oh shit, homegirl doin a pic dump” and then I realize it’s 50 different accounts posting nearly identical pictures and honestly it just makes me sad. I don’t see people who are being super edgy or unique, I see people longing to fit in with something, to belong, to identify, and it’s one of our most base human emotions – need, acceptance.
And I just wish we could all embrace the true weirdos we are and just live without the fetters of our image conscious society. Truly this goes beyond simply goths, and applies to everyone, but it’s the saddest for me with the goths. I love the goth aesthetic and I feel like I’ve been driven away from it. Where once I gained power from black shift dresses and big stompy boots, I feel confined by them, trapped, skin walking the skin of millions, rather than authentically living my own weird blob life. And this isn’t to preach. I don’t really judge people for what little they find enjoyment in, but I challenge you to live your own truth. Find your truth, first, and then begin to live it. It’s a struggle. I struggle everyday to live authentically, but once you start to peel off the trappings that you’ve programmed into yourself, you will feel this beautiful sense of freedom, and underneath that freedom, you will start to find joy. Real joy. It’s fleeting at first, and you have to keep digging, but I really challenge you.

 

16. Baby boomers

Ugh. Beyond the techno and trans phobia, the endless games of candy crush saga, and the seeming willful stupidity, could Baby Boomers please fuck right off the edge of our collective dicks. Anytime I’m reading a local news article on facebook and there’s some asshole leaving a horrible comment, it’s always either a young guy with short man syndrome whose profile picture is either him with a fish or him with a truck, it’s always a crusty boomer. The city wants to paint a rainbow pride crosswalk? Well, not if Linda has anything to say about it. Housing for people with substance use issues? Carl doesn’t think so.
Like, please. You guys can figure out how to play games on facebook and send your credit info to ozone infused water scams, can you like please do some research on how to be a decent human being. Christ.

 

17. The reluctance of the horror community to hold problematic members accountable for their actions

Oh ho ho. This is one I get real heated about really quickly and it’s one that seems to come up, year after year, after fucking year. The horror community has a problem, and that problem is it’s willful ignorance and seeming inability and refusal to hold members of the community accountable for their problematic actions. Victor Salva is a convicted child rapist, sex offender, and groomer. He brutally and savagely attacked children, filmed himself doing it, and distrbuted child pornography. He is an absolutely vile piece of shit. He’s also the creator of Jeepers Creepers, a film about a “creeper” who attacks children. So what happens? A fucking funko pop is made of his character and people buy that shit and eat it up, and fall all over themselves. Same thing with the Jeepers Creepers 3 sequel.
People fall all over themselves in comments sections doing mental gymnastics to try to excuse the fact that their fave is problematic as hell. The arguments I see brought up are as follows:

1. “But I liked that movie as a kid, it’s nostalgia for me”
You’re not a kid, and you know the implications of the horrific shit this man has done. There’s a million other shitty low rent horror movies out there made by people who aren’t pedophiles, so how about you pick a new one to orgasm over?

2. “What about all the people who worked on the movie? PAs, actors, etc? Why are they being punished for Victor Salva’s crimes?”
How about you don’t work with pedophiles? And here, I turn you over to the great Kevin Smith:

And Salva is the low hanging fruit of this whole debate, I will admit. Lin Shaye, when she isn’t sundowning, allegedly has no issue with coming out of the woodwork to tell Victor Salva’s victims to get fucked and yet she’s championed as this female figurehead of the horror genre. She ain’t it, chief. We can pick better people.
Horror hosts share bylines on white supremacist magazines and no one has said a word about that because nostalgia is king. Horror directors and producers harass fans and critics who didn’t like their work to the point of running them off social media, and no one says anything but lines up to see the sequel and it’s like, I think we can do better.   I think people pull back from this type of argument because they feel that if they are seen to like someone who is problematic, or their work, that this in turn makes them problematic, and that’s a piece with cancel culture that I do not agree with. We have all and will all enjoy things that are less than savoury, offensive, un PC, downright shitty, etc. And that doesn’t make you a bad person. However, I think to be willfully ignorant to the offenses of people like Victor Salva is a huge blindspot. Do you really need a Creeper Funko Pop? Couldn’t you spend your hard earned dollars in a way that isn’t going to line the pockets of a man who rapes kids? Theres a million horror projects crowdfunding right now, there’s a million streamers who could use a donation, find a patreon, or fuck, buy yourself a beer. Don’t support predators and people who make this world a shittier place to exist in.

 

18. People being weirdly proud for not liking something that’s popular

This might seem hypocritcal given all the shit talking I’ve done in this article, but hear me out, ok? There’s this like subgroup of people that seem to take this weird pleasure in not enjoying or even being aware of something that’s currently ragingly popular. And don’t read me wrong, here, that’s not say I think that people disliking popular things is inherently bad – I’m specifically criticizing the edge lords who take it upon themselves to just hate whatever the new thing is as a form of identity. It’s okay to like things, even if they’re stupid. And also, no one cares, Ryan, when you proudly declare over the water cooler at work that you think Game of Thrones is stupid but haven’t seen a single episode. Like, please, seek help. You’re honestly not that interesting.

 

19.  The Conjuring / Insidious “universe”

If the fact that these movies are now a “universe” isn’t enough of an abortion, we’re now facing down a movie called “the Devil Made Me Do It”. Okay, so these movies are all arguably terrible and there’s this fucked cognitive dissonance that exists with fans of this “Frachise” who seem to think that Ed and Lorraine Warren were really just the cats pajamas, nevermind the fact that they were insane Evangelical Christians who would probably hate the fuck out of all of you, were charlatans of the highest order, and champion a narrative that “evil” can be defeated by “good”, which in this case serves as nothing more than Biblical allegory. For all the supposed Satanist heavy metal hard rockers cheering *with* the Warrens, is a really weird sight to see. Also fuck Patrick Wilson.

 

20.  The weird sense of competition that a lot of content creators seem to have

This one has been percolating around in my head for a while and it’s something I’ve noticed and something that’s happened to me quite frequently, and seems to be rampant amongst small creators. One creator will start something or undertake a new project and all of a sudden here’s five other creators in the same circle taking on the same thing. It’s weird and it’s this whole creepy copy cat thing.
When it’s happened to me, it’s just made me feel weird. I don’t feel like what I do is that great, and certainly it isn’t worth copycatting, and further, do you not have enough things to do with your own content? Further, if you’re holding me up as some bastion of a content creator, boy are you fucked. Further, we should be elevating each other, working together, supporting our uniqueness. Just because I do XYZ doesn’t mean you also need to do these things. Just because you do XYZ doesn’t mean I have to do these things either.

Anyways. That’s gonna be it for me. That’s enough rage for a while. Bring it on 2020.

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