my mom compared elliott smith to…charlie kirk?
starting off by clarifying that this is not a mislabelled shitpost. nor is it an attempt to stir up political discussion. this post will probably get removed anyway but i had to get it off my chest. and i know this sounds like the most random thing ever but there’s a story behind it i promise.
so tonight i (f18) was setting the table to eat dinner with my mom (f56). i am autistic and have vocal stims as a result, and one of those stims has recently become the charlie kirk ai meme song that’s been going around. my mother claims to be a political fencesitter but is definitely republican imo, and she was quite outraged over charlie’s death last september, so i knew it wasn’t the wisest choice to sing this song. but i obviously can’t really control my vocal stims so it came out anyway.
as soon as i finished singing the titular verse, she turned around, looked me dead in the eye and said “what?” with a look of disgust on her face. she then went on an entire tirade about how people have no sympathy for charlie and no one knew who he truly was as a person, and i tried to gently explain that it was just a meme and i still considered his death tragic in a sense. to which she then rebutted with “how would you feel if people started making memes about the death of elliott smith?”
now this struck me as a completely insane and out-of-left-field comparison. she hasn’t even sought out elliott‘s music, just heard the iconic songs like say yes and angeles on the radio. she primarily knows as much about him as she does because i became a fan around three or so years ago and have a shirt with his blue heart motif. i was hyperfixated on him for a bit, so i told her all about his life and lore including the speculations around his death. i didn’t expect her to remember it but apparently she did, and it fueled this random and borderline disrespectful comment.
it just struck me dumb for a minute because they’re truly in no way comparable. elliott was a musician who never really had a chance from the start and still had empathy for so many other people. whereas charlie was a ”political figure” who sowed hate in impressionable young men and had a normal upbringing that gave no explanation as to why he would do so. and overall, some podcaster who only got famous because insecure teenage boys were clinging to his every word is nowhere on the same level as one of the greatest and most influential musicians of a generation.
again this isn’t a shitpost. just had to share this because it stuck with me in a really irritating way, and i figured all the music nerds over here would understand what a crazy comment that was.