The Internet Has No Feelings

Joel Rakes likes Sufjan Stevens. Nothing wrong with that. He and some friends saw him play in Brooklyn, and ran into him outside after the show, and took the above picture. Nothing wrong with that either.

The picture is pretty bad...the guy that was taking the picture didn't tell us he was pushing the button, which is why not many of the people in the picture (Sufjan included) look ready for the picture. We took the picture, said thanks and off we were. It was pretty quick as we didn't want to keep him from getting on with his life.

So Joel Rakes has a website, and on said website he posts a picture of the day, which he hosts on Flickr. Liking Sufjan Stevens as he does and having a picture of himself with Sufjan Stevens as he did, he made the above picture the picture of the day. The next day, it showed up on the popular music blog BrooklynVegan at the top of a post about music happenings that week.

I didn't actually find out it was on the BrooklynVegan site until a week or so later. I'd actually been to BrooklynVegan a week or so the picture was posted and I check in from time to time. However, I noticed that my photo was getting tons of hits...like over 300 views which is a lot more than normal.

So somebody stole his picture. No worries. Then came the comments. At first, a little picking on Sufjan, but for the most part, pretty innocuous stuff:

god sufjan looks like the most insufferable stick in the mud. Someone needs to smack him across the face and say "cheer up b***h you are popular and rich"
that key foods across from southpaw has some bumpin' music.
i hope Sufjan isn't trying to turn a whole generation onto the godawful goatee. that's some atrocious facial hair.

Then, 8 comments in, a commenter named Hater of Tools chimed in:

actually, I don't blame Sufjan for looking so down. wouldn't you be depressed if a bunch of tools forced you to take a photo with them? look at those people, complete tools.

And thus commenced the crap parade...

 

Anonymous commenter:

Well now to quote from the blurb on the flicker page of the guy who took the Sufjan picture
"through a series of random events we were able to go "teeny bopper" and score a photo with the elusive sufjan after the show. unfortunately, as you can tell - we weren't really ready for the picture... but i think that adds to the charm..."
Ok so that spells tool in a big way to me. Sufjan is far from elusive. I was at the southpaw event and i can understand why Sufjan is making this face.The questions from the audience after the show were pretty much ridiculous. "oh sufjan, what is your top 10 list"
Typical tool like questions. And you could see these fools and others waiting for him next to the backstage entrance after. Random my ass. Don't blame Sufjan. Would you want to be stalked by these "fans"

Hater:

You can tell from the rest of the Flickr page that it was clearly their first time in Brooklyn. I think I might have actually spoken to the heavy-set dude in the photo before and he really is a moron in real life.

Anonymous:

that b***h standing beside looks to be thirteen. he's probably pissed because a thirteen year old only likes music based on novelty (well i guess so most "hip" people) but can fathom any deeper meaning he is trying to convey in it.

37 comments later, Joel Rakes had found himself on the receiving end of a good old internet bash-fest, the type usually reserved for the rich and famous.

who ever thought a silly picture I uploaded on my Flickr would end up on a big blog and have a bunch of mean comments from random people? I was maybe a bit hurt at first, and irritated that people would say stuff like that without actually knowing anything regarding the picture or the people. But then I realized why do I care what a hypocritical snobby anonymous internet posters think? I don't.

Did it make him feel like an, um, tool?

Nah, not at all. I know how the actual photo taking event happened and I don't think there was anything particularly tool-ish about it. It was just some fans respectfully taking a picture with a favorite artist of theirs. If someone people define that act as tool-ish, so be it, I think it's acceptable.

Care to comment on any of the comments?
On the anonymous "13 year old" comment above:

Correction, Ashley is a 20 year old b***h, not a 13 year old b***h! Actually just kidding, she's not a b***h at all. Once again another assumption-making pretentious jerk comment.

On Hater's in all honesty, you should expect creative people to be jerks in some way or another. it just goes with the territory. I'm sure Thom Yorke would have stabbed those kids had they approached him for a photo:

This one really made me laugh. If someone had to stab me??? I???d be okay with it being Thom Yorke. He???s kind of crazy.

Joel says the little episode in interweb infamy has changed, in a small way, how he feels about the internet:

[It] makes me realize how fast things can blow up. How a single picture can end up attracting a lot of attention. The whole proceeding has made the internet seem a little bit ???smaller??? to me.

Be careful out there, people, the internet will chew you up and spit you out if you let it. Comment below if you wish, but please don't call Joel Rakes a tool.