Howdy, y'all!
This post may be a little jumbled and ranty, but I wanted to make my first piece for this blog something I think is super important. For those of you who know me (and hello to those who don't, I'm Hunter, pleasure to meet you!), I have a tendency to talk about problematic behavior in the scene as a whole, maybe too often. And I've been noticing some very, very problematic behavior, from one Bryan Stars.
Now, for those of you who don't know who this lovely gentleman is, let Papa Hunter learn you a thing. Stars was born Bryan Odell on May 22, 1990, putting him at a tender 25 years old. In the late 2000's, while attending college in Nebraska, mister Odell (sorry, Stars) dropped out to focus on his budding YouTube channel, also known as BryanStars. Original, poignant, and absolutely creative genius. His channel became known quickly for his off-the-wall style of interviewing bands, such as questions like "What would your Porn Star name be?", and "why is your band the best band on earth?", and my personal favorite, "What do you look for in a hot girl?". Helping aid his rise to the top would be some of the alternative music scene's biggest acts, such as Black Veil Brides, Memphis May Fire, and Blood on the Dance Floor, as well as arena rock bands like Korn, Creed, and Slipknot. 2011 saw Bryan's channel grow exponentially, to the point where he was able to fund the first ever BryanStars tour, featuring acts such as Ghost Town, Modern Day Escape, and Rocky Loves Emily. It is on this tour that he met close friend and future partner on My Digital Escape, a man named Johnnie Guilbert. The two would become the best of friends and start the aforementioned channel, My Digital Escape.
Now that we're all caught up on the basics, let's talk about Bryan these days. Seemingly out of nowhere, Bryan's popularity started to rise again. This seems to be due to his massive social media presence (despite his YouTube subscriber count being somewhere around 750,000. Which, admittedly, is still very impressive.), most notably, his Twitter and Facebook. While this may not seem like anything to write home about, I'd like to clarify- this is not an attack on his platform, nor is it an attack on his character. This is simply my observations of his interactions with fans. As stated before, Bryan is 25, nearing 26 years old, and his audience is primarily girls aged 13-18, or somewhere about there. Basically, this dude has an army of young, underage girls as his audience. So you'd think he'd be more responsible and tone down some of the more, ahem, adult themed topics in his tweets.
Well, that isn't the case. While he does post the typical motivational quote or picture or talk about how cute the band members are, he has a habit of posting very sexual, very inappropriate tweets, generally about getting laid and drinking heavily. I'm gonna put some links to his twitter at the bottom of this article. Trigger warning: this dude makes a lot of awful jokes.
Now, the problem I have with the guy is simple. He has a large social reach. He's affiliated with numerous, well known, internationally recognized acts. He has two YouTube channels, a slew of Facebook pages, and a Twitter that gets A LOT of traffic. And what does he do as a music journalist? The answer isn't talk about music. He regularly puts out tweets to band members talking about sleeping with them. He is not queer yet uses his sexual ambiguity to bring in more views, which is detrimental to anyone who actually identifies as not cisgender and heterosexual. In between his trite posts about not giving up and saying "fuck you to the haters", he makes rape jokes, uses the queer community as a punchline, and talks to his younger fans VERY inappropriately. The kind of talk that ruins a band's career. Yet, for some reason, his fans seem to want to justify his behaviors any way they can. And that, at least to me, is unacceptable. What irks me especially are his tweets about depression and anxiety, using mental illnesses as a way to get a bigger audience. As if having a mental illness is cool and fashionable. Regularly he posts tweets such as "thumbs up if you support gay marriage!" while carelessly using slurs, especially f*g and all of its equally gross variations.
Bryan, here's the thing- You aren't a bad person. From what I can tell, you have a genuine passion for what you do. Your early videos honestly were what got me started on wanting to do music journalism. Your early interviews, while totally silly, were equally as informative and professional. I wish you would continue that style. However, for whatever reasons, you've taken a break from interviewing and started to become a sub-par "edgy and relatable (I probably spelled that so incorrectly)" fan service twitter page. You exploit a sexuality that isn't even yours for views and re-tweets, you make absurdly uncouth and inappropriate jokes (to minors, nonetheless), and you insult anyone who criticizes you, attacking their integrity as a music journalist. "Do not email me again. I am surprised with your attitude that you have a job in the music industry. Clearly you have a lot of growing up to do." is NOT the way to handle criticism and still be taken seriously, Whatever your reasoning behind your new persona is, it had better be something good. I don't see your fan-base staying loyal to you if this keeps up. You're almost 26, it's time to stop acting like a 16 year old. I know you can do better. I know you can use your platform to actually help people and impact lives and contribute to your scene! Hell, you used to take completely underground bands, put their latest single on your channel, and give them access to a world they never thought possible beyond the local circuit. You've failed as an honest journalist. You've failed as a positive role model. If you see this and you have issues with it, contact me and tell me your side. I hope you get your act together, you could seriously tour on that EP for a long while. You aren't a dumb teenager. Time to start acting like it.
LINKS!!!!
(NOTE- I spent a solid hour searching through his twitter feed to find most of the tweets in question had seemingly been removed. if you're still curious, feel free to look for yourself.)
http://www.twitter.com/BryanStars
youtube.com/bryanstars
youtube.com/mydigitalescape
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