TL;DR MC Frontalot has a new album out, and it’s all about his disenchantment with the Internet, and it’s good. I enjoyed it.
For those who don’t know, MC Frontalot is a nerdcore rapper; one of the originals who started the genre, in fact. I started listening to his music really early on because he was one of the first who spoke to me; his songs were about being a dork. He’s never been a programmer or a full on science geek but more of a “geek enthusiast” who loves playing old text-based video games but has enough style and grace to perform on stage as a rapper. A winning combination in my book.
His most recent album, “Net Split”, is a series of stories about a man who has fallen out of love with the Internet. He’s arranged it as sort of a “break up” album, leaning heavily into the metaphor of a relationships that’s on the rocks. In “Never Read The Comments” (a great song title by the way) he writes “Guess I might \ have had enough \ of these posted fisticuffs \ to discuss with the posters \ their and my shared neurosis”. He correctly puts his finger on the worst thing about the modern internet; the tendency to focus energy on negativity. “A single toe dipped in the fester-hole subjects to undertow, as if to know your worth itself became debatable, as if anything could be wonderful enough to be unhateable.” That’s the thing, right? Nothing on the internet is unhateable.
This is a concept I can relate to. Obviously I still love pieces of the Internet, we all do. But many of us who were around in the early days; the BBSs, Usenet, etc., kind of miss the way the Internet was. Frontalot plays with this concept, though, exposing the hypocrisy in songs like “Internet Sucks”: “you were made of everyone everywhere. \ Or so I imagined! Actually, just a bunch of me-types”. Boy is that ever true. The uncomfortable truth is that one reason the internet seemed so, well, civil is that it was a giant circle-jerk.
But, still, one can’t help but feel that something has been gained but something has been lost. Yes, it’s a much more inclusive place, and that’s good, but it’s a much more angry place, and that’s not so good. So excuse me while I boot up my Hayes modem and dial into this CD.
