Corey Taylor (Slipknot, Stonesour) has released a small snippet from his upcoming book “You’re Making Me Hate You: A Cantankerous Look at the Common Misconception That Humans Have Any Common Sense Left”.
The book will be Taylor‘s third and will be released on July 07 through Da Capo Press.
“Music, TV, movies, internet, books (those are what you download on your Kindle Fires kids), everywhere you look it’s like the entertainment is falling down under the weight of its own trash. I’ll paraphrase Michael Bay, who summed it up best when he told his critics he didn’t give a shit what they thought of his latest Transformers instalment because, “You’re all going to see it anyway.” He was right; it was the first film of 2014 to cross the $100m mark in its first weekend in the US. Bay could keep making these fucking flicks until he has his body frozen to outlive the future. It won’t make any difference. The lemmings are going to head for the cliff with nothing on their minds other than feeling the whoosh of the wind cross their fuzzy faces as they plummet towards the canyon floor. That’s us: we’re the lemmings. Depending on how you look at it, our sense of entertainment is either the wind in our faces or the ground pushing our faces back through our skulls. Either way, we’re really fucked.
The saying used to be “Shit happens”. I added to it in my own way: “Shit happens – Just don’t let it happen all over you.” Now, with the way of the world and the world in the way, it’s time for a new saying: “SHIT SELLS.” That’s right – you all love your shit. From your derivative music to your shiny hollow movies, from those videos displaying your idiocy on the internet to your addiction to fake reality on TV, that saying is a fucking fact. Shit sells and it sells really well. That’s because the people slinging that shit around know their audience. They know that you’ll buy, watch and listen to shit if it’s shiny enough. They all think you’re dumb and it doesn’t bother them in the slightest. They will suck content and intelligence out of their products happily, keeping the costs low, so they can get a deeper yield from their product. That’s all it is: product. No art, no heart, no goals and no soul – just straight unadulterated garbage for your pleasure. If I were you, I’d be insulted. I’m not insulted because I don’t buy their shit. I boycott it.
You want to feel better about yourselves? You want to prove that you’re all not eating shit? Then grab a placard, stand your ground and boycott as well. Make a statement that has nothing to do with voting for some shit-kicker on The Voice. Choose carefully when looking for movies – don’t just rush into the latest YA (that’s “young adult”, parents) movie that sucks so hard the actors all have Lemon Face. Avoid crotch-shot vids and YOLO comps on YouTube Vine Insta-crap. Feed your brain something other than vacuous chaos and mediocre drivel. Challenge yourself to read a book with no pictures in it. Find a show that has some substance that might actually make you think. Listen to some music that doesn’t just repeat the word “Baby” 23,457 times. Your brain and intellect, these things are a lot like your body. If you feed it well, it blossoms and grows and gets stronger. If you feed it nothing but empty fast food calories, you’re gonna find yourself breathing through your mouth and dragging your knuckles on concrete as you make your way to the unemployment office.
Ask yourself this: after we’ve killed each other off or we’ve reached a point in our technology where we can leave this planet and populate the universe with our nonsense, when the aliens come to sift through the wreckage of our civilisation in the eons to come, what do you want them to find? Do you want them to judge us by Bach or Bieber? Do you want them to read Victor Hugo or The View’s Summer Cookbook? Do you think they’ll assume the greatest of us all was Stephen Hawking or Johnny Manziel? Based on what they find, will they come to hunt us down so we can’t spread our buffoonery across the cosmos? Or will they simply look around at all the garbage left behind, contemplating the shit we used to distract ourselves with, scratch their tentacles, look at each other and say, “Really? THIS is what they thought was good?”
Yes, I worry about what the aliens will think of us. I’m no ancient astronaut theorist. I don’t think we’ve been visited by a more advanced species. I don’t think they’re plotting to come invade. I think if they’re watching, they’re doing the same thing I am: wondering why the fuck you people are mesmerised by all of this half-assed entertainment. They’re sitting in their spaceships watching our habits and they’ve come to the conclusion that we’re all apes in designer clothes. They think we’re fucking dumbasses. They are amazed that we can feed and shelter ourselves with all the stupidity we involve ourselves with. Worse yet, they believe our stupidity is contagious. They think that if they come here to make contact, they might catch our “dummy” virus. It scares the living … well, whatever they call their poop, that’s what gets scared out of them. And these amazing beings, beings beyond our capacity to understand, are leaving us alone. They have quarantined themselves from us. They ain’t coming back until the house is empty and the lights are all off, and only then they’ll wait to see if there’s still any “stupid” blowing around in the wind. They’re keeping their distance, which is a disappointment to me. That’s because I really wish they’d come back to pick me up and take me with them. With all the brain damage in the world today, you can’t blame me.
The world’s IQ is approaching single digits. The looks in people’s eyes are glassy and glossy, staring past the person next to them and out into the distance, at nothing in particular. The bastard thing about it is I’m getting too tired to fight it.
Who will help me?”
