Hello readers, perhaps you can help me with something that’s been bothering me for weeks. It has to do with the band PUP. I feel like a lot of my followers probably found me through PUP. Or maybe they found PUP through me. I don’t know how things like this work anymore. In any case, the band and I are linked through years of me covering them positively and them making fun of me on Twitter, and so I have a question for you about them.
Earlier this summer the band played two nights a row in Los Angeles, on a Thursday and Friday night. I caught both shows (guestlist both nights NO BIG DEAL) and while Thursday night was pretty good, the kids really went tf off on Friday night. So, pro tip: a show’s proximity to the freakin weekend will dictate its go-off capacity. Anyway, later that week I found myself at an ice cream shop nearby. The young dude taking my order was wearing an apron adorned with a bunch of enamel pins. Most of them were characters from whatever weird Japanese cartoon that is like Pokemon but whatever the new version of Pokemon is that American kids are into these days. But in the center of them, there was one black bar pin that just said PUP.
So I pointed to the PUP pin and said, “I like your pin.” He said thanks. Then I asked, “Did you see them the other night?” I don’t know why I did this. I hate talking to people, generally, so why I voluntarily tried to strike up a conversation with another human is beyond me. Maybe I was hoping to get some free ice cream or something like some sort of secret society handshake. But weirdly, after I asked him if he had seen them, he furrowed his brow, as if he realized he was talking to a very stupid person (partly true), and said, “Uhh, it’s not a them.” And then asked for my order as if he could not move this interaction along fast enough.
PUP is not a them? Wha?? This confused me so hard that I fucked up my order and got some dumb flavor I didn’t like. This brings me to my question: Is there another PUP, aside from the Toronto rock band that I mistakenly assumed was being repped on this man’s apron? Is PUP the name of a character in that neu-Pokemon show? Is PUP some kind of furry? I’d really like to know because I don’t want to go around wearing a PUP shirt if kids are gonna think it means I’m some brony pervert who cosplays as a friggin Charmander or whatever the fuck.
Any clarity vis a vis this whole imposter PUP situation would be appreciated.
A terrific photo I took of (the real) PUP at 30 Rock, NYC.
LANA DEL REY
Alright, now that we’ve talked about PUP, I would like to talk about Lana Del Rey. WAIT WAIT HANG ON DON’T LEAVE IT’S NOT REALLY ABOUT LANA IT’S MOSTLY ABOUT SAYING THE WORD FUCK ON THE INTERNET!
I don’t have any firm opinions on Lana Del Rey one way or the other. I see she’s been sparking some music critic infighting over an NPR review lately, which I fully support. I think I would actually enjoy her music if I gave it a more sincere listen but I’m always too put off by the types of people who love her. Laniacs or whatever they’re called. They’re the type of people who, immediately upon meeting someone, want to know their astrological sign instead of something more telling about their personality like what their favorite PUP album is (Morbid Stuff). They’re the type of people who think juuling and owning crystals are a personality. Anyway, I’m sure they’re fine. I don’t really care about them. They’re welcome to do all the benzos and red wine they want on their side of the internet. What I do care about is language, specifically in the realm of saying awful words like “fuck.”
Lana titled her new album Norman Fucking Rockwell and I admire it if for no other reason than that it puts the publications that cover her in a bit of a catch-22. I’m generalizing here, but websites that cover pop culture tend to rely on clicks and web traffic so that their brand/sales people can show their traffic numbers to advertisers to prove how popular their website is. Their brand guy can close The Big Account with L’Oreal by saying “as you can see we reach eleventy kabillion millennials each month across all social platforms now please give us 3 million dollars so that I can continue to make a six-figure salary while our writers stretch a single Popeye’s combo meal across lunch, dinner, and the next day’s breakfast.”
So to stack those very impressive figures, editors who run culture websites know that they’ve got to play the game a bit and cover A-listers, people with name-brand recognition, to bring in traffic. It’s why Drake can sneeze on Instagram and 12 Complex blog posts fly out of his nose.
At the same time, websites will also sometimes try to game the system by cleaning up for Google, Facebook, and the two other tech companies that basically run the world’s information. One of the easiest ways to play by their rules and improve SEO (Search Engine Optimization, for the non-nerds) is to eliminate the dirty words that Google might flag to protect their delicate users’ eyeballs. “Fuck.” “Shit.” “Asshole.” Those are just some examples. “Blowjob.” There are others. “Cocksucker.” That’s another one. “Tits.” The list goes on but you get the point. “Jizz.” etc.
I was even once told by one website to keep the word “nudity” out of a headline. Nudity! The word! I guess “clothing challenged” would be optimal. Don’t believe me that Google is trying to whitewash news language? Here’s what happens when you start searching Lana’s album in Google and let autocomplete take the wheel:
WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR BEAUTIFUL “FUCKING”?? The suggested results omit that pesky f-word in the middle, even though it’s part of the actual title of the album. I’m sympathetic to Lana here as I’ve been on the receiving end of this. My name is on the cover of a book with an extremely no-no word as its title. Important emails about it routinely get it routed directly to spam folders. Comes with the territory, I guess.
Personally, I’m morally opposed to sacrificing headline language to appease the Google Gods. Sometimes it’s a necessary part of the information at hand, like Norman Fucking Rockwell, but sometimes… it’s just funny! Some of the most popular headlines I ever wrote for websites started with things like “Some Fucking Genius…” or “These Assholes…”. Readers. Like. This. Shit. It’s why Gawker was so popular when it was around. People enjoyed their abrasive, no-bullshit headlines. That, and because straight media folks loved to indulge in the occasional lite homophobia of dragging celebrities out of the closet.
Some publications have longstanding editorial policies prohibiting this kind of language. The New York Times has such a policy, which has been hilarious to watch disintegrate as they apply it to covering an administration that has offered the national discourse phrases like “shithole countries,” “grab them by the pussy,” and “try to suck my own cock.”
So therein lies the dilemma: To get those coveted clicks, popular, divisive artists are a must-cover: Lana, TOOL, Post Malone. Pretty much anything these people do is “newsworthy.” (For example, please see this post devoted entirely to the revelation that Lana, uh… likes The National?) But her album title has got a bad word in it, not to mention its single was called “Venice Bitch.” Hmm. What to do?
So, just out of curiosity, I ran a Google search to see who played it safe and who let their Fuck Flag fly. Why did I do this? I dunno. Just wanted to see who’s afraid of the F-bomb so we can shame them for chasing some arbitrary algorithm reward they’re never gonna get. Some, I found, went Full Fuck, others avoided it all together, and the lamest of them ran with some f*cking censored f—ing version. Let’s go to the results...
Pitchfork, AV Club, The Guardian. All stamped their passports to Fucktown. Nice.
TIME throwing in the three dashes. F---ing laaaaaame.
Vulture going all in on this driving metaphor. Very fucking good.
The LA Times throwing in some confusing censorship. Now it sounds like the name of the album is Norman Fuck Rockwell. Censorship complicates things!
And Consequence of Sound and NME add to the dazzling/shining pile with some f-bombs. Very good. Oh, and I should mention, the aforementioned NPR review Lana took issue with omitted it from the headline and used Norman F****** Rockwell in the copy, as seems to be NPR’s f****** editorial policy.
Anyway, Lana, if you’re reading this, please don’t yell at me online. I’m on your fucking side here! Also, I have no job and a lot of free time during the day, do you wanna go to the beach or something?
ORCHID
And lastly, I recently ran a very niche and scientific poll asking about the best Orchid album. Only 128 nerdarinos felt brave enough to vote in it and the results were fairly narrow, with Chaos Is Me coming out on top with 42%. Not even a majority win. I’m not saying I agree with the results, but what I am saying is that now that I’m thinking about Orchid and Lana Del Rey at the same time, it’s fucked up that Lana had an album called Ultraviolence and Orchid didn’t.
Thanks for reading.
—Dan Fucking Ozzi