I have a bone to pick with post 2020 fan culture. I've mentioned in a previous blog post (Is TikTokification Real back on Angelic Convo!!!) that I think "fans" of anything in this day in age have 0 true appreciation for their alleged "interest" because they have no personal connection to it, and subsequently no passion. Authentic love cannot be faked. Even while many people may convince themselves that they love something, they're more focused on their ego than they are being genuinely educated on the topic in question. We are egoistic. That is the problem I have.

This is why—and I believe I've mentioned this before—I much prefer to interact with older fans/older content. It soothes my soul to see community built from the ground up because people truly love something. The Buck-Tick community is not immune to this phenomenon.

While there is a refreshing amount of "veteran fans", it's still a "niche" interest for insecure kids to latch onto like leeches and suck the blood from until it's nothing more than a faded memory of what it was (After all, many people still think Buck-Tick is visual kei...).

When the piece of content being hoarded is considered "deep" or "mature", it becomes a total cesspool of the pretentious youth and their latest victim (I know I just sound like I hate everything, but I swear I don't! I just want art to be appreciated by people with enough humility to understand it!). Buck-Tick is prone to falling under these labels.

They've made plenty of political comments over the years and haven't beat around the bush when it comes to nerding out about their favorite pieces of history, fine arts, or anything inherently metaphysical. The members have also never shied away from producing sexual content, which is something they've always been a little controversal for. Most fans only care about aesthetics, beauty, and sex anyways, so this is usually the first thing you'll see fans drooling over. The members' sex appeal, unfiltered gestures, and blatant statements (I truly believe that those who fail to be artistically inclined will never look past the shallow surface of beauty when it comes to a piece of art, but that's a rant for another time).

If I haven't been blunt enough, I'm trying to say that many fans don't care about the merit of Buck-Tick's work and simply want to enjoy it because it's unique. For such a soulful band, there's a eerie lack of proper analysis out there. They've been famous for 40 goddamn years, so why the hell isn't there more people talking about their amazing efforts made when it comes to producing truly philosophical work? I've never seen a band in my life that is more meticulous about the depth of their music. There has ought to be a personal connection and extended effort to research a topic if you want to call yourself an extreme fan of something/educated on it. If you want to read a little deeper into the desperate game of dress-up the modern internet plays with labels, I recommend reading this post by Cayce. It may be long, but we all need to lengthen our attention spans, anyway.

There's not much to be said here. I simply find it difficult to resonate with other fans, as most of whom I find are... pompous. I want this to be an encouragement to people to stop being so stuck-up with their 3-minute periods of Google searching they do daily about some mundane and unorthodox comment. Everything should be a journey—only then will your knowledge suffice. Albert Einstein said it himself: “Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”