Some of you are mean as hell
Pretty common statement here. I made a lighthearted post sharing my boyfriend’s interpretations of Preacher’s Daughter. He’s not an Ethel Cain deep-diver, he doesn’t spend hours dissecting lore, and he obviously wasn’t trying to write a thesis on every song. He listened to an album that means a lot to me and tried to engage with it because he knew it would make me happy. Mind you, listened while driving without the lyrics in front of him. I thought some of his surface level takes were funny and endearing, so I shared them. A lot of you did get that and I appreciated those comments. But some of the responses were so vicious for no reason. Calling him stupid, insulting me for dating him, acting like misunderstanding an album is some kind of moral failure. it was weirdly aggressive over a harmless post.
I know this is Reddit. I know fandom spaces on the internet can get elitist. But it genuinely sucks seeing people treat art like an exclusive club where only the “correct” interpretation is allowed. Especially with an artist like Hayden whose music is emotional, personal, ambiguous, and meant to make people feel something. Not everyone is going to immediately understand every narrative detail or lyrical reference. That doesn’t make them inferior and it definitely doesn’t justify dogpiling them. Some of you have forgotten how to interact with people without trying to embarrass them for entertainment.
The irony is that PD is an album full of loneliness, yearning, shame, humanity, and wanting to be understood and some of you respond to other human beings with absolutely zero grace.
Anyway. I’m shouting into the void but wanted to say my piece before exiting this group. Be kind.