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The Worst Types of People on Music Twitter

We at Noisey have an unfortunately earned expertise in all types of trolls on Music Twitter, and have taken it upon ourselves to compile some of the worst archetypes you’ll encounter.

When people aspire to work in the music industry, it’s because they remember the first time their parents ever played them a Motown cassette; the first time they stenciled lyrics from an emo band into the margins of their notebook; the first time they recognized a sample’s source track; the first time they waited all day with their friends for a box office to open in our pre-Internet days. They’re thinking about what inspired their love of music, and righteously so. Unfortunately, in today’s industry, it’s essential for most working professionals to use Twitter in some form or another, to absorb news, spread their own work, or simply to fuck around, blowing off steam in an industry that even if is a dream, can turn into a high-pressure nightmare. Because being active on Twitter is like going to a party that anyone can crash at any time, this means you’re going to have to slog through an ocean of bullshit. We at Noisey have an unfortunately earned expertise in all types of trolls on Music Twitter, and have taken it upon ourselves to compile some of the worst archetypes you’ll encounter. Hopefully, you identify with none of them.

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VOLUNTEER FACT CHECKERS

People whose favorite movie is Love #ACTUALLY, who love to scuttle out unasked from the woodwork like leper termites to correct whatever they see as an unimaginable slight against the realm of Unimportant Things That Happened in Music. “Chinx Drugz is only on three Mac and Cheese 3 songs, not four,” they type. “Mike Will has a production AND a songwriting credit on ‘Body Party,’” they burble. “Chuck D is wearing a New York Mets starter jacket in that archival performance of ‘Don’t Believe The Hype,’ NOT the Knicks,” they leak from all of their orifices like a colostomy bag after acupuncture. Listen, if you want an editor to pay attention then collect all of your corrections in one email, print it out, eat the paper, and get poisoned by the cyanide-filled ink cartridge I put into your printer while you were too busy digging out the liner notes from one of the few unpulped copies of Diggy’s debut record.

HUMAN BRANDS

You, Human Brand, are “About” “Things.” What these things expressly are do not necessarily matter as long as you are unabashedly express your opinions about them. Whenever you see conversations even tangentially related to the things you pretend to care about, you jump into the conversation, say the most “you” thing imaginable, and then derail the conversation with the lumbering bombast of an Amtrak sliding into a ditch, horribly maiming all involved parties.

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PEOPLE WHO USE THE FOLLOWING UNFUNNY TROPES

Tweeting links to your own articles in a parody of Upworthy headlines because you’re too insecure to be confident in your own work (You Won’t Believe How We Know The Shift Button Works On Your Keyboard). See also: Sext:, “Same,” “Selfie” (followed by a thing that is not a selfie), “If You’re Wondering How My Life Is Going,” and “So I Know It’s Real.” So we know WHAT is real?!?! Everything on this godforsaken rock is real, idiot. Furthermore, narrating your mundane domestic activities while listening to rap music does not make them amusing or quirky. You had 1017 Thug on repeat while zesting a lemon for your chicken marinade? It’s great you couched your incessant livetweeting of your existence in a micromeme, really. Wow. Such clever. Many non-forced. Now go drink battery acid.

PEOPLE WHO SERIOUSLY THINK "RAP TWITTER" IS A THING

If you believe that the majority of discourse regarding rap music is directed by a group of 400-800 “journalists” active on Twitter, you a) don’t understand how journalism works, b) don’t understand how reality works, and c) have ignored literally millions of people who dedicated their lives to hip-hop and its surrounding culture decades before Twitter existed. Pro tip: your understanding of rap music will be strengthened once you stop following the Hamburger Helper account, and that rap pun you have as your display name is microcephalic. It’s fine that you learned slang terms like “bae” and #staywoke from @THEKIDMEROand @desusnice, but just imagine if you ever said that out loud in front of them and then the endless laughter that would ensue at your expense.

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“MEDIA INSIDERS"

Backwash-gargling humpdicks who treat their Twitter feeds like they’re text message group threads, piling every poor schmuck who only followed them out of a sense of sycophantic obligation into a minivan on the world’s grimmest, packed-est road trip along a death march of narcissism, sycophancy, inside jokes, and plans you’re meant to feel creeping FOMO over. Don’t point this out the inherent shit-eating, eaten-shit-shitting, and re-consumptive-of-own-self-shit nature of all of this, though: the Media Insiders will cry foul and accuse you of judging in bad faith when they’re just trying to conveniently interact with their friends! All of whom happen to hold positions at relevant publications and therefore create a system in which they will always find work even if they’re hacks whose only true skill is leeching off of their associates! Who are probably also leaching off of them! Besides, isn’t it presumptuous to think the unwashed brand-less care even a little bit about what their media overlords in New York City are doing? And then they will post 27 Instagrams in a row of them hanging out at a Bushmills-sponsored party with Mac Demarco at Converse Rubber Tracks, and you will say a silent vow to stake them in the heart next time they appear in daylight.

DIE-HARD STANS

Eminem fans who just can’t believe you liked the Migos/Future/Lil B/Mellowhype/Lil Durk/French Montana/Atreyu/Tootsie/Norm from Cheers mixtape more than seven minutes of Slim Shady calling people gay and then doubling back to insist, “But wait, I’m not homophobic” like he just popped out from 2001 via one of those Sliders wormholes. These people seem to have a Google Doc of every positive word you’ve ever typed in favor of an artist they consider inferior to their champion, and since they can’t wrap their heads around the idea of enjoying different things for different reasons, they get mad when you refuse to reduce the entirety of music to a tight/wack binary. They are the only people who will ever unironically say the phrase “haters,” as in “you haters are just mad because [INSERT HERO HERE] is rich and you’re not.” Buddy, do you think we’d be in this line of work if that was the case?

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PEOPLE WHO ARE STILL ARGUING ABOUT PITCHFORK SCORES

We’re desperately clinging to our high school years too, but goddamn, dude, get a grip.

PEOPLE WHO GET REALLY EXCITED WHEN A REAL LIFE "FAMOUS PERSON" ENGAGES WITH THEM

Nice. That Raider Klan-affiliated Internet rapper from Nome, Alaska likes your 200-word writeup of his unintelligible mixtape that you can only download if you log in to Livemixtapes or take to the sewers of Tumblr like Streetwear, the forgotten Ninja Turtle. You know which mixtape we’re talking about, the one you called a “brilliant sonic pastiche, a reification of the zeitgeist’s most salient trap aesthetics.” Too bad MVCK XXxxXXX already tweeted some variation of “THVNKS BRVH” to 7,000 other bloggers today and will invariably unfollow you in a week.

RELENTLESS OPINION HAVERS

Yeah dude, we're also confused as to why “My Hitta” charted higher than “R.I.P.” and “Im Different.” But also, who fucking cares, because DJ Mustard got paid off of all of that while you grew a neckbeard contemplating Soundscan metrics that matter to market researchers and no one else. What’s that? You think TM88 from 808 Mafia has had a really good year? Great! we’ll be sure to cite you in the Wikipedia article he doesn’t have.

BULLIES

Cool, you wrote a 33 1/3 book and memorized the Pitchfork review for Sung Tongs, that doesn’t give you the right to be a dick to people just because they express their enthusiasm about music in a way you find underinformed and inferior. Not everyone has the kind of free time that accompanies crippling loneliness which you’ve used to absorb inordinate amounts of culture. Hope you’ve passed on some of the jaded cynicism that’s built up over a lifetime of watching your more-talented colleagues jump to writing about non-niche topics to the next generation there, you joyless Sith Lord (more like shitlord!), you.

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PEOPLE WHO TWEET THEIR PERSONAL YEAR-END LISTS

Hey, thanks for posting your top 50 albums, your top 100 singles, and your top 863 ringtones, one at a time. Now we know what your iTunes play count for 2013 looks like, with Haim strategically ranked below Perfect Pussy to show us that you should only be humiliated for your shamelessness rather than your overly-mainstream tastes. Whatever you do, don’t include any actual written criticism on your list (not that anyone wants to read it, but still). I’m sure your parents are very proud that you can do the work of a content aggregation algorithm all by yourself.

ANYONE WHO SERIOUSLY USES THE SHITTY MEDIUM OF TWITTER TO ARGUE

You, motherfucker. You, sitting on your computer on a Saturday night looking for reasons to get mad about whether Lorde is racist, whether Beyoncé is a feminist, whether Kanye is a narcissist; you, who’ve forgotten how to have a real conversation with a real person in lieu of spouting tryhard Captain Saves-a-cause rhetoric accomplishing nothing but a slight uptick in your Klout score as dozens of other cretins skitter to their MacBooks to click “fave”; you, the straight male who loves patting himself on the back by pointing out how terrible other straight males are (never mind all the women you slept with and subsequently ignored because it doesn't count if they don't have a Twitter to complain to your peers about it); you, the white person making jokes about how “white” things are even though your privilege is triply reinforced every time you draw a waking breath; you, Tweeting questions that normally adjusted people would just ask their friends; you, who thinks that think pieces are read by anyone other than the people getting paid half-a-cent per word for their entry level critiques and those who desperately want to be them; you, who has said the phrase “think piece” out loud; you, approaching 100,000 Tweets of unfiltered sewage, which by our rough math is the same word count of the unfinished novel or screenplay you keep telling yourself you’re going to put to paper one day (don’t worry, it’s unreadable and unnecessary); you, bound to 140 characters and emojis and punchlines because you’ve destroyed your capacity to love; you, whose follower count, no matter how close to 5,000 it gets, will never be able to fill the gaping void in your heart. You, who will die unsatisfied and unloved.

EVERYONE

Fuck all of you. Seriously. Go stare out a window. See you on Twitter, though?