@Coin said in Fanbase entitlement:
I like to think that if Cobain were alive now, and someone said "You should only be able to wear Nirvana t-shirts if you can name some of their songs" near him, they would be the immediate recipient of his saliva smacking their forehead.
Regardless of whether or not a still-alive Cobain would take action about it, I'm confident that he would think that t-shirt shaming bartender was behaving like an asshole. I could definitely see Courtney Love doing something about it. Something that probably resulted in her being arrested.
Further, talking about posers, I know a ton of people who can name every Nirvana song, own every album, know all the lyrics, and still fail to see the forest for the trees when it comes to the messages that Cobain was expressing. People who treat others like fucking crap, people who have told others to "killy ourself", pressured them to drug use, used them, abused them, turned around and blamed Courtney Love for driving Cobain to suicide and then actually gaslit their S.O., and many, many other things that, if you actually listen to Nirvana, consider their social commentary, you would know are pretty fucking incongruent with the band's general message.
Cobain was a bundle of contradictions. He opted not to tour for most of 1992, even though Nirvana was arguably the most in-demand band at that time. It's been heavily documented that fame squicked him out and that he hated the cult of celebrity idolatry, so it's possible that people wearing Nirvana t-shirts would weird him out. He'd still take the merchandising revenue, though, because he also had an intense fear of being impoverished.
I'm still confident that he'd think that bartender was behaving like an asshole.
How dare you tell people how to live their lives when they aren't doing shit to you? And how fucking lame is it to have to insult people for shit that is innocuous as fuck?
Have some perspective.
Going back to the image that prompted my initial comment, that bartender comes across, to me, like a condescending ass, which, frankly, I think is far worse than someone wearing a t-shirt. Even some Twinkie allowance needing person wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt.
At least get mad at actual idiots, like people who wear Che Guevara t-shirts but can't even revolt against their parents. "Viva la revolución, mom, now can you send me my allowance, my Twinky supply is low". Fuck.
Maybe Twinkie person does a lot of humanitarian work, or is politically engaged to champion the downtrodden, or is otherwise actively involved in ways to improve the conditions that initially radicalized Che in the first place. I'd say that person is truer to the spirit of Che than someone who doesn't have the luxury of asking for Twinkie money but who nonetheless is nothing more than an armchair radical who doesn't actually do anything to improve anything. (I realize this could very easily turn into a socioeconomic discussion about the psychological impact of long-standing oppression and why a person may or may not have the time/energy/ability to do more than gripe. An armchair radical is still and armchair radical, though, whatever the reasons.)
Or maybe that person just likes the artistry of the photo. (It's a great photo.)
As an aside, Biblia sounds awesome. May he still be rocking wherever the departed may rock.