Create a netzine and alienate people

Hi. My name is Patrik Lindström and I created this netzine you are on right now. I wrote every single character in the 10,000 rows of code that hold this webpage together. Back in the days, Fredrik Croona was with me for a while as well, guess he figured out it's more chicks in having a band than writing reviews, I sure don't have any groupies.

Yeah, I know, most of you guys think of Nick Quarm when you think Brutal Resonance, but don't worry, that's okay, and there's a reason for it. You see, I'm not much of a people person. I just want to listen to the music and write code. When code breaks, it's usually logical (sometimes it seems not though), people... not so much. Nick is much better with people, I'm glad to have him onboard.

Way back in 2002, I started a netzine called Neurozine.com. When I started it out, in my very early twenties, I wanted to make friends with everybody. The labels, the artists, the other netzines, the readers and my writers, and YOU, yes, I would never forget you.

At first, things went well in my quest for making friends. It actually went great for several days, until I wrote my first review with a grading less than 7. Then I started to notice something was a bit smelly. I've always been told by everyone involved in some way that "we do it for the scene"... is that so?

Reviews are a funny thing. It's one person's personal opinions based on taste, experience and culture. Still, I always hear that a review should be unbiased. How can one's opinion be that? How could you write a review without adding personal opinions in a review? Is not a review just a bunch of words describing an opinion? If not, I guess it's writing an instruction sheet.

All your complaints about the site end up in my mailbox, and I read them all. If one person complain about Brutal Resonance, I really don't care that much. If a couple of people complain about the same thing, I start notice. If a bunch of people are complaining, well, then I better get my ass out of the wagon and do something about it.

For me, it's not that far from reviews. If one reviewer think the albums sucks, well, why care? If all the magazines out there say the same thing, perhaps it's time to rethink your strategy. Failure is a part of learning, so perhaps making it your soul quest to flame forums on fake accounts is not the right way to go? I'm sure nice grades are awesome, I love when I get good response on the stuff I do, of course, we are human. But is not a honest review worth even more? Perhaps only sending promotional material to the magazines that always give you good grades is not the way to go? It might offers a change to look upon your work with different eyes, and might stop you from being baffled when your customers don't come back for the second release?

As soon as you publish your first review, you are going to piss people of. If you write a high graded review, your readers that don't agree with you will think you wasted their money. If you write a medium graded review, the label and artist might complain on why they did not get a 9 or a 10. If you write a low graded review, you can be sure you'll get kicked out from their promolist and/or receive hate mails and/or upset mails from the band/label/fanboys. My purpose with my site has always been delivering true and honest opinions... oh.. I mean reviews; they are so alike I often mistake them.

The funny thing is that we don't have a netzine vs label/artist/readers kind of a battle. No, we had to go and make it even worse. We had to start battle between the netzines as well. If a zine always give high scores, we talk crap about it, saying it's been bought off by the labels, if a writer actually writes his opinions, we simply say he sucks and don't understand the genre. Small birds whispers in my ears, so I know some of what is being said about my baby (Brutal Resonance that is, I don't have any babies... I hope). But since I only weight 55kg, I'm not in the physical form to go and smack people around, and I'm not that keen on forum fake accounts, so I rather try to see if there's any substance in it, something I can gain from the pile of poop. Make it a fertilizer perhaps.

I'm not sure where and when in all of this something is being done for the "good of the scene". For me, it sounds more like we all put up fences around our own turf. Nothing strange about that, and we all try our best, of course we do. Perhaps we should try to do our best, together, instead? A little understanding have never hurt anyone (hope Jesus isn't reading this).

Did I have any real conclusion or a red line here to follow? No, don't think so, but during my days on the internetz and blogs, I've figured out it's far from mandatory. Was it a rant? I hope not. Was anything of this directed towards someone? Not at all. Did you enjoy the reading? Great! If you did not, I spent five seconds making that drawing of a mammoth with spikey hair for you as comfort.