I’m writing this post about the music I’ve made and have been making since 2017, because it’s been a journey. A journey of learning, mastering my style and skill, and even continuing to learn (you never stop doing that). It’s also been a journey of loss, and hate, and sometimes anger, and after coming out the other side, it all continued.
I’ve debated changing my music name from Eyeshadow 2600 FM to something else, but I haven’t yet decided if that’s a good idea, or not.
To start fresh, from zero.
But all those years ago (four now, I believe), I think that’s what they wanted to happen, wasn’t it?
I’m writing this because, despite the bestseller status that my album, Ride Eternal, once achieved on its release, you can’t even find it within the first twenty pages of Bandcamp dark synth.
I’m not saying this is the result of some stealth cabal on the leftover dredges of Twitter-synthwave, but more because I spent about three years having decided I was going to give up. I was going to stop. And then after that three year term, I released Dissolution Protocol.
In relation to Twitter-synthwave, I’ve talked about these people before. I think I’ve written about them on this very website. Czarina (who once supported me on Patreon, and then tried to hang that over my head when I asked her friend to rescind a transphobic comment, and then began a campaign of hate that would never stop), Nightride.fm (who once played my music, and then joined in on said campaign, while they hid in their Discord channel exchanging snide comments), and those connected to them, the hate campaign they went on against me for my status as a trans woman at the time–the blacklisting, the blocks that were thrown at me from other streaming channels on Twitter, the people who didn’t even know me, or what was happening, tossing their own nasty words into the ring. Words based on an image they had in their minds of someone they didn’t even know.
It would be an understatement to say, at the time, that I was undergoing some heavy mental turmoil, and to have that exploited by an exclusionary club of men on Twitter who think themselves the dominant masters of Synthwave, when in reality they’re nothing more than a forgettable group of nothing, on a now dead social media platform.
It all happened at the cusp of what I thought to be my music career, when I’d spent four previous years struggling to make money after having lost my job to, yet again, harassment, exploitation, and transphobia.
It’s always a thing that goes around in circles when you make yourself open, and known.
But the thing I can’t ever let go of, is that these dead-website-hate-mongers thought that they could stamp out my voice, and my work. They didn’t. I’m still here. But they did this all to me at a time when I was struggling, when I was quite literally losing my mind. Isolation will do that to a person. And even especially the ones that put on a fake smile for social media, Julian, especially, knew this, and still added fuel to that fire.
In hopes of what? That I would disappear? Starve? Perish in a gutter somewhere?
The biggest offenders still haven’t apologized, and I don’t think they ever will. Narcissism has a way of convincing you that what you’ve done is a-okay, no matter what it is, and that leading a campaign to deprive someone of support isn’t a big deal if you disagree with them. If you don’t think transphobia is a big deal, or that the musician you rub elbows with was just joking when he said something disgusting with a digital sneer across his lips.
But I’m rambling now, I’ve written about this, I’ve washed my hands of it. I’ve made sure they never have to hear from me again, no matter how I decide I identify in the future, or where I end up falling with my self identity (which is far too unclear at this time).
Most of these people are ghosts in the machine, and they’ve done this to countless other transgender people since 2020, of which I have verifiable proof, through a transgender woman I’ve been in-touch with for over a year.
I’ve convinced myself there will never be justice, and these people, if they’re still out there, will go on, believing themselves to be decent people. Decent people who deserve good things, and all the best in the world.
But I just keep thinking, if I write about it enough times, put the word out, and repeat these things enough times, maybe they’ll have one consequence for what they’ve done.
And then I can be happy again.
By the way, this was, in fact, me.
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