My friends, I have encountered a problem. One which requires your advice. You see, Elizabeth recently told me that she doesn’t feel part of the MCRmy, but that she feels she has a duty to defend it.
My initial reaction was “Of course you want to be a part of the MCRmy! We’re awesome!” but then I thought about it and realised that she has a point. What the hell is the MCRmy?
Well, by definition on the official website, it is a group of dedicated My Chemical Romance fans who support each other and the band. How far do you have to go in order to be ‘a fan’? Should you own a record, buy a piece of merch, know the names of songs on Bullets, have been to a live show or just enjoy Na Na Na? I can tick all of the above boxes, but I know people who don’t own physical copies of albums and don’t know all the songs but who are quite definitely My Chem fans… Whether you’re happy to bop along to Teenagers or you have tattoos of Famous Last Words lyrics, it’s none of anyone’s business if you consider yourself a fan or not.
Considering yourself to be a member of the MCRmy, however, seems a bit different. Dedicated. What, standing in the rain for five hours before a show starts to get to the barrier, or stalking the guys’ wives on Twitter? I’ve never done either, yet, but I do consider myself a member. I have a Zone 6 account, I got Twitter because I thought Mikey Way was funny – and before you ask, I’ve seen them live twice, once dressed as a Killjoy. Frequent readers of this blog are familiar with Elizabeth, Ruby, Isobel and Ellen, all people I know either through school or because we got chucked in the same cot as babies. I wouldn’t be nearly as close with any of them if we hadn’t all been MCR fans though… There’s nothing like a debate over Gerard’s stupidest hair colour or an evening planning ludicrous Killjoy outfits to bond with someone.
Basically, I do not give a shit whether you like one song or all of them, whether you own limited edition merch or have a Killjoy name. Neither does the band. The fact you like that one song, or wanted to buy that merch, or briefly fantasised about how fun it would be to run around the desert with a raygun, is enough. Sadly nowadays I can’t browse Zone 6 or My Chem’s YouTube channel without being bombarded with declarations of how hot Gerard is, or how depressed a person is, because their life is so completely shite.
I must admit, Gerard is quite easy on the eye. Doesn’t mean I want to drown his wife in a ditch and handcuff him to my bed. I’ve also been depressed, but I don’t feel the need to tell the entire Internet (seriously guys, if I ever start emoshitting on here please slap me).
All of the emoshitty blogs I’ve read have been by teenagers who should know by the age of fourteen that crazy hormones mean bipolar disorder for seven years. The world might be crashing down on you today, guys, but there’s always tomorrow. Your declarations of how badly you’ve mutilated your wrists does not make you a My Chemical Romance fan. I know someone with a genuine self harming problem who isn’t even into rock music. Self harm is in no way something to joke about. One scratch you’ve made in your hand because your friends like The Black Parade does not deserve a trip to a therapist’s office (incidentally, if you think that The Black Parade glamorises death, you should fuck off, the MCRmy doesn’t want you). Please do not insult people with actual depression issues with your whining.
Abuse of My Chem doesn’t end there, however. Last week I heard LynZ Way called a whore by someone who thinks she wants to marry Gerard. She has never met Gerard or LynZ… Even if she had, surely if she’s that infatuated with Gerard, she’s happy for him? You only have to see pictures of them together to see how in love they are, after all. Any person who ‘properly loves’ any celebrity is lacking substance in their lives, and doesn’t actually have a clue about what love is.
On Twitter today, not long after I talked to Elizabeth, Frank posted this on Twitter:
I don’t follow many My Chem fans on Twitter, and I was shocked that this is even an issue. Of course you don’t know Frank. You simply like what he does for a living. If you did know him, you probably wouldn’t even want to marry him (no offence dude). What the guys in the band do when they aren’t being a band is none of our business. Since they aren’t in the tabloids getting stoned every night, they clearly want their private lives to be private. They deserve to be left in peace after everything else they’ve done for us.
Back to the MCRmy. Elizabeth thinks that what the MCRmy stood for, learning what’s right and wrong and helping one another through, has disappeared into a cloud of ‘GEE’S SO FIT’. I really, really, don’t want to agree with her. I want to think that the ‘old’ MCRmy still exists; just look at #SINGItForJapan, people like Cassie Whitt and her work. Look at all the fans who can genuinely say that having My Chem’s music in their lives has made their lives more sociable, more fun or simply more interesting. It feels like there’s two MCRmies: the one for the kids who love the music and respect the guys for making the music, and the one for kids who think they love the guys.
Sadly, the latter gives the former the motts and a bad reputation.
To the untrained ear, does ‘MCRmy’ mean shrieking, stalking fangirls and bitching over the Internet, or does it mean a family of people who are proud to say that My Chemical Romance has had a positive impact on their lives? And, more importantly, is Lizbeth right about the MCRmy disappearing? She shouldn’t have to feel she should defend the band against kids who turn ‘I’m a Killjoy’ into ‘I’m a headcase who needs attention and masses of respect even though all I do is make Tumblr accounts about Mikey Way’s arse’.
Should she?
Update 1: About half an hour after I originally posted this, this caught my eye. I thought, please, someone, tell me it’s a bad joke and the world isn’t going to shit. I had hoped My Chem-related ignorance had been left in 2007, or in the sad hands of Glenn Beck. The MCRmy has agreed on something and signed the petition telling its creator to go fuck himself, it seems. I am not going to sign and comment, however, because that would give the sad old fart who created the petition what he wants: a reaction. The best way to retaliate is to ignore it completely… Eventually the person will bugger off (although I have to say, I agree with the comments that My Chem would go to prison with Frank and get busy reenacting Prison. Heh heh. Sorry).
Update 2: When I logged on to the stats page of WordPress and my Twitter, the day after posting this, and saw how many people are agreeing with what I’ve written, I almost fell off my chair in surprise. Then I scrolled down my Twitter timeline and saw that while I was offline some serious shit had gone down between members of the MCRmy. I don’t have a Tumblr so cannot say for sure, but it seems like some perfectly nice My Chem fans have tried to say what I did, and got told to go kill themselves. Cassie’s right. If you call yourself a member of the MCRmy, please start acting like one. It’s starting to sound like everyone’s forgetting what this fan base is. ‘MCR’ and ‘army’. The moment we forget that we’re a united front which is there for anyone who needs it, we may as well give it up… because we’re doing My Chem, and one another, a disservice.
One-Year-Anniversary-Update: I wrote this to say thank-you.
