These last few days I experienced an overload of Babymetal. On Tuesday, I attended the Japop-meets-metal sensation's first NYC show and yesterday I had the pleasure of interviewing the three incredibly polite girls for one of the most surreal, yet fun, interviews I've ever done.
And yet, whenever I would post about it on social media, there were some really nasty comments directed at them. Besides the typical "I wish they would go away" comments, a few veered into the wild world of racism, misogyny and pedophilia:
This is just a sampling. I get it, some people don't "get" Babymetal. Others might "get" it but still think it's terrible. Some people are offended by their sheer existance. But with Babymetal in the news cycle these last few days, all I kept hearing was something to the effect of "Oh, these older dudes like Babymetal, they must be pedophiles." The train of thought is "The music is so bad and I don't like it, and don't get how anybody else could like it so obviously the only reason this person likes them is out of sexual desire." Or maybe people just have different tastes, open minds and aren't offended by pop sensibilities entering the metal realm.
Beyond that, all the tentacle porn jokes, the "love you long time" (wrong Asian stereotype by the way) and other jokes just make everybody look bad.
How is metal supposed to be taken seriously when anytime something comes along that isn't just four dudes from the midwest, it's mocked, criticized and stereotyped? Much like with Shayne's Stop Using the Word Faggot rant earlier this month, it just makes us all look bad.
In conclusion, don't like Babymetal? That's fine. Just try to come up with a better knock on them than pedophilia or racism. Or, you know… just move on and don't say anything at all. I'm not trying to be a social justice warrior here, I'm just trying to tell you to come up with more clever insults. I'm clearly not the only one who noticed this either.
