O.L. Design

Suppose you are a hobbyist music producer, have a couple of releases behind you, and perhaps somewhere deep inside you wish to some day be able to make a living out of it. You don’t have any fanclub or anything like that, and you haven’t been seen or heard of in any of the big outlets like radio or the newspapers. Let’s just say you’re not a very famous musician, but rather making music because it’s fun.

That’s me, kind of. I don’t have any what you would call “fans,” but still, through out the years during which I’ve produced music and made it available to the public, once in a while I’ve gotten an e-mail from someone who’ve heard some of my songs and really liked them. That’s always appreciated and really gets your inspiration going.

There are two categories of fans. The regular casual fans, who have a record or two by the artist they like, maybe have seen one or two live events, and that’s about it. Then, there are the stereotypical psycho fans that you see in the movies all the time, who are completely obsessed with the artists they worship. I think I’ve just had an encounter with one belonging to the latter category.

It all started about three or four years ago, when MP3.com had its peak, and I had an account there, where I could easily make my music available for others to download and listen. I started to get fan mails from this guy who really liked my music, and was trying to become a musician himself. I was of course happy to receive his mail, and we started to exchange messages on a weekly basis or so. This went on for about a year, the mails became longer and longer, mainly because of him asking lots and lots of different questions regarding music producing, hardware synthesizers and various other things. Kind and good willing as I am, I patiently replied to his quiestions as thorough as I could.

Then, this really intense period arrived in school, where everything had to be done in time before graduating, and spare time was becoming a somewhat precious privilege. I soon stopped replying to my only fan’s e-mails, because I simply had no time to do it. And so, a month or so later, there it was. An e-mail, from my one and only fan, filled with so much hate that satan would’ve been proud of him, his model citizen (no, I’m not religious). Besides making me fall off my chair, the e-mail really annoyed me. It was filled with stuff like “I thought we were friends,” “I’m really dissapointed with you,” and I could just see the sentence “Why don’t you love me anymore?” coming (though it luckily didn’t).

Was this guy completely obsessed with me? Had he become so attached to me just by exchanging e-mails that when I wouldn’t reply, he would act as if this happy relationship filled with love had suddenly come to an end? I don’t know. But I did reply to that e-mail, and before I knew it, everything was fine and back to normal again, and he was happy. The whole thing started all over again, with me answering all his questions, encouraging him to make some music of his own.

Now, you can call me an ignorant and selfish bastard for saying this, because all this guy wanted was to be my friend, but after while, I just got pretty damn tired of answering all those questions all the time. It got to a point where I just couldn’t make myself sit down to write a reply. This was about a year ago, and I’ve received a couple of mails from him, asking why I don’t reply, and if I’ve gotten his messages. The lazy ass that I am, I have still, up to this day, not replied to any of his mails.

And that’s the end, or so I thought, if it wasn’t for this stubborn fan of mine. Yesterday, as I was peacefully surfing around on the web, I suddenly got an ICQ message from someone I had never talked to on ICQ before:

Hey… its me ****! and I want to say one thing… you are the BIGGEST ASSHOLE EVER! have a nice life faggot…. I could give you some more nice words but…. you wouldnt even read them lol…. cya!

Well, what can I say? That message made my day, and for that, I will be forever grateful. As a friend of mine said when I told him about the situation, and that I was thinking about drilling my fan with some unpleasant questions: “He’s already called you a faggot. Is he really worth your time?”