Across the Muse-iverse

Okay, so funny story... My all-time favorite band, Muse, is set to release their 9th studio album a week from Friday, entitled, Will of the People. As has been the case ever since I first heard the band in 2008, I feel like a kid a week before Christmas. Unlike when I was a child, though, I now have the ability to celebrate, or perhaps commiserate with fellow fans of the band (Musers), as we all anxiously await the coming album.

For whatever reason, I decided to venture into new social-media avenues this album cycle. In previous such cycles, I simply took to Facebook, Twitter, and the band's homepage. This go-round, I decided to give Reddit and Discord a chance. It's been an interesting experience, to say the least.

As ardent readers of mine should know, I've long held a strong love/hate relationship with social-media. I was one of the last people in my circle to switch from MySpace to Facebook, and I'm only on the latter anymore to better keep in touch with out-of-state relatives. It was only when I learned I could use it for business purposes I decided to stick to Twitter (not literally). I'm still without an Instagram or TikTok account. So, while I tend to give in to a lot of social-media trends, for personal and/or professional reasons, it should be pretty obvious by now that I see just as many cons as I do pros with regard to social-media, and it tends to take me longer than most to acknowledge enough pros to warrant a sign-up. Regardless, I've never been coy about poking fun of social-media - often times through satire.

So, that brings me to my Muser social-media experience. The band's homepage was at one time, pardon the pun, rockin'. It's now, as Muse lead-singer Matt Bellamy might sing, "Dead Inside." Seriously, while the band's Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and Discord sites are all quite active - with multiple messages being posted each and every minute on average, the band's homepage may receive a single post a day. Sadly, I've all but abandoned said site, because what's the point? If I wanted to talk to myself, I'd...nevermind. On Twitter and Facebook, the band tends to just post updates on their music, perhaps live clips, new videos, deals on memorabilia, photos, etc. There the band sets the narrative. That's not the case on Reddit and Discord. There the fans dictate the discussion-points. What I've learned is the members of both sites tend to be approximately a college-age average. So, yeah, they're youngins. While both communities are largely Muse stalwarts, the way in which they engage in discussion is different. Reddit is like a message-board. So, members can post a message pertaining to the band; will likely receive responses; and the back-and-forth ensues as such. Sometimes the responses come within a couple minutes. Other times you won't receive a response for hours, even days. Discord is more like a chatroom. The replies are immediate. If you post a question and leave for a couple of minutes, odds are you'll need to scroll up when you return. 

Having either partaken in or simply spectated the aforementioned Muse sites, I thought it might be fun to satirize the experience by creating a fictitious dialogue between them. Between the conspiracy-theorists on Facebook to the trendsetters on Twitter, from the dead-as-a-doornail-named-Elvis to the old-school Musers on Reddit and frat-boy jokesters on Discord, I thought self-deprecating humor could help lighten the pre-album anxiety.

So, I posted this:

Due to my excitement for the upcoming album, I’ve been venturing into Muse social-media more regularly of late. While I haven’t posted much, with Reddit being the exception, I have read more posts than I’d care to admit, and thought I’d concoct a satirical dialogue on how I feel a conversation may go between members of these different online communities. This is not meant as an attack on any single person or group of people. As my mama always told me in church when I was young, “Boy, if you can’t laugh at yourself, the good Lord will f*cking hate you!” Okay, so she may or may not have said that, but I digress. From this point forward, I’ll abbreviate the aforementioned online communities as follows:

-        Muse Reddit (MR)

-        Muse Discord (MD)

-        Muse Site (MS)

-        Muse Twitter (MT)

-        Muse Facebook (MF)

 

Across the Muse-iverse

MS: “Is this mic on? Testing, testing, 1, 2, 1, 2… Hello?!?”
MD: “They said testes…”

MR: “That’s SO immature! Anyway, does anyone else think ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ sounds EXACTLY like ‘Creep?’ I love Muse, but cut it out with the Radiohead crap!”

MD: “Revolt > Stockholm Syndrome”

MR/MD: “Based!”

MT: “Hey, why is #leak trending? Is the album out?!? Did it leak?!?”

MF: “Naw, man. Biden intentionally poured water all over himself to hide the fact he wet his pants. It’s all over Sh*tStupidPeopleBelieve.com, so it has to be true!”

MT: “That can’t be true! I just saw the picture! It was photoshopped!”

MF: “If you ever liked Muse, you’ll know that it’s true!”

MT: “WTF are you talking about?!? Matt called Trump a ‘Nazi c*nt!’”

MF: “Maybe he’s got a thing for Laura Ingraham. No judgment here.”

MD: “Whoa, subject change! Okay, so ‘Citizen Erased’ has to be the worst song the band has ever written, right?”

MR: “Um, okay… Cringe!”

MD: “I was obviously kidding. Get a sense of humor!”

MR: “I’ve got one, thank you very much!”

MD: “So, you wanna hear a penis joke?”

MR: “No!”

MD: “You see? No sense of humor.”

MD: “Based!”

MS: “Is anyone there? Hello? Must be a connection problem…”

MF: “They must be after you too.”

MS: “Who?”

MF: “Them”

MS: “Who’s ‘them’?”

MF: “You know, people.”

MS: “Which people?”

MF: “Them”

MS: “It feels like we’re going in circles.”

MF: “That’s what they’d like you to believe.”

MS: “For the last time, who’s ‘they’?”

MF: “Just look at this.”

MS: “That’s just a meme, saying, ‘Everybody’s coming to get me,’ with aliens, politicians, and a Jimmy Hoffa zombie chasing after a stick-person.”

MF: “Exactly. That’s ‘Exo-Politics.’ Listen to Matt’s words here. He’s like the Neo of the real-life matrix.”

MS: “I think you’re taking his lyrics WAY too seriously.”

MF: “Fine, you do you, but don’t come crying to me when you’re getting probed on Planet Something or Another. I was probed once. By a ‘doctor.’ It was not a fun experience. They had to remove all kinds of sh*t from my ass!”

MS: “I think that’s called a colonoscopy.”

MF: “Whatever. Fake words.”

MD: “Can we get back to talking about Muse please? This is a Muse page, right?”

MR: “I’ve listened to ‘Will of the People’ in full. Here’s what I heard: the ‘Halloween’ song sounds kind of spooky, almost Halloweeny; Matt sings in ‘Ghosts,’ ‘Liberation’ features piano thingies; there are swear words in ‘We are F*cking F*cked;’ ‘Euphoria’ may or may not feature the word ‘euphoria’ in the song; and ‘Verona’ sounds different than all the other songs on the album.”

MD: “Ooh, did you see this new post on Reddit? Someone claimed to have heard the album, and he sounds right on the money!”

MT: “Let’s allow the people to decide. ‘Like’ this post if you don’t think the person listened to the album; ‘Retweet’ if you do; and regardless, click on this link to watch me rap Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ on my TikTok page.”

MR: “A mime rapping ‘I Will Always Love You’ > everything post-‘Black Holes and Revelations.’”

MD: “I think you mean everything before and after ‘Origin of Symmetry.’ Any Muse fan who doesn’t only love, worship, and cherish ‘Origin of Symmetry’ can’t be a true Muser. Full stop. Period. Exclamation point. Other punctuation sh*t. Mic drop. Boom.”

MR: “Cringe!”

MD: “Based!”

MS: “Hello?!?”

MT: “Leak!”

MF: “Biden!” 

 

I prefaced the piece by basically saying, "Please, no one take this personally; I'm just joshing around." I was poking fun at the social-media sites themselves just as much as the content posted in them, if not more so. In any case, the post was almost immediately removed, due to complaints. Ironically, here's how the email notification read: "Your post was removed for breaking 'Quality' rule on /r/muse. Read full rules here. Try r/musecirclejerk." Yes, I had a post removed, and was told to try "r/musecirclejerk." You can't make this stuff up.  

Hilariously, many of the fictitious quotes from my satire quickly came to life on social-media sites - Discord in particular. A few people talked about it, said "Based" and "Cringe" ad nauseam; penis jokes were shared; politics/conspiracy theories were discussed; lyric-misinterpretation as well; leaks, etc. Apparently, they were so deep in the joke, they couldn't see the joke for what it was. Sad.