Antiscene Superstar
In the last few weeks the so-called Church Of AntiScene stirred up a lot of fear and rage in the demoscene. Rumour has it that it was an evil sect with its only aim being the destruction of our beloved scene.
The Hugi Staff could no longer stand the frightened atmosphere and ventured into the lair of the dragon in order to find out what of all this gossip was really true. We asked the leader of the mysterious church, Reverend Red, for an interview.
Adok: Who is the "Church Of AntiScene" and what are its aims?
Reverend Red: The Church Of AntiScene is a direct reaction to the recent development in the scene. It focuses on fuckin' up all those little posers around there who happen to create an atmosphere which is unworthy for all real artists. Some people say, you know, that all the geeks outside, namely those who are constantly being sort of "indirectly fist-fucked" by both Bill Gates and John Carmack, are the ones responsible for the current bad situation of the scene, the fuzz about decreasing compo-quality, lack of friendship among the sceners, lack of interest, lack of women. That might partially be true, and the Church also thinks that those wimps should rather go home and perform some sort of sado-maso practices on Super Mario, Lara Croft and the likes, that's a fact.
It is, however, too often NOT mentioned that this group of people has almost no influence on the development of the scene. They are just henchmen and sidekicks, watching the evil games of the real sceners with a sparkle in their red and dyed-out eyes, being frustrated of being the god-blessed lamers they are. Sooner or later, most of them will die anyway, some even before they reached the age of 30. They'll die sitting in front of their PCs, either because they ripped their own lungs out as their Windows crashed once again, or just because they got so bored of Quake that they decided to eat one year old diarrhoea of elephants 'cause they heard elite's gettin' high on it. They are no real problem, as they are far too busy with themselves than they could do the scene any major harm, even if they wanted to.
The true dirty holes and dangerous creatures are (as mentioned before) those posers, the guys claiming to be part of the elite. Well, they do great demos, some people think, so why shouldn't they be allowed to behave the way they do? The answer is pretty simple: They suck, because they try to change the scene in a way which leads more and more to a scene consisting only of competition and group wars. It's this "we MUST win" mentality I personally do not like. Take a look at the roots of the scene - there was only friendship and fun. Competition was a nice side-effect, but people were intelligent enough to see that they didn't necessarily have to win a compo to show that they are good. These times, however, are gone.
Today's reality is different, very different and diffuse. In fact, it looks like the posers already achieved their goal of destroying everything in the scene which made it as fascinating as it was in the decades before. And this is the point where the Church Of AntiScene starts trying to actually open the sceners' eyes, showing them the way into a bright and new tomorrow. Well, I must admit that the ways we employ to achieve our goal are not always the nicest, but we must stick to a rather controverse concept to gain people's attention. And, after all, we do not actually play being madmen. We really are. BUT we stick to our principles, which makes us different from other (lousy) attempts of creating an opposing group to the general flow in the scene.
Adok: How many members does this sect have?
Reverend Red: First off, I don't like the word "sect" in connection with the COAS. We are no sect... we provide lifestyle and high-level education in our member program. Apart from satanic beliefs of some members, the COAS rather tries to lift the definition of religion to a different platform than warming up the same ugly shit again and again. In what we do, we rather are some sort of "political scene party", although our internal member ranking contains parallels to the infamous and f-u-c-k-i-n-g naive world religions. We like avoiding mainstream as much as possible, maybe that's the reason why some of us are into satanism. Well... that leads us to your question.
Currently, the COAS consists of five full members, all of which are true kick-ass artists and either belonged to the scene or still do. However, only two of us are responsible for the group's actions, namely Inquisitor Ryg and me, as we are the founders. And yes, we ARE willing to accept new members, as long as they are talented and got the same mentality as we have. In addition to our all-time members, we also have many supporters all around the scene who help us out whenever we could need their help. Well, we are no 30-member-foundation, we don't need all that. The COAS doesn't want to win any compos, the COAS doesn't even necessarily want to compete at all. If I want to release some good stuff, I'll rather stick to one of the two conventional groups I'm a member of, and the same also goes for the other members. COAS wants to spread its message... that's our goal. We are no demo group.
Adok: How exactly does the Church of AntiScene want to fight the current attitude of the self-called elite?
Reverend Red: That's a real problem, and I have to admit that our task rather lies in opening the people's eyes than in fighting their attitude. People have to change their minds on their own - if they do, we've been successful... if not, we still may claim that we've done our best. Well, I guess this leads us to the question how we are going to intervene. I'm not allowed to give you any details about this yet, as most of our plans are top secret to prevent suckers from developing plans against us, but I can promise that there are certain borders we will not cross when ridiculing sceners... and of course some we will cross, but that's another point.
Controversy follows us every step we take, it makes us powerful. Most people who heard of us see us as a bunch of real weirdos... maybe we're the strangest and most mysterious line-up the scene has ever encountered, and we're fuckin' proud of it, because it's a success comparable to winning a techno music competition with some death metal piece of audio. Wow - what a comparison!
But, beside that, I have to clarify that we are not AGAINST the elite. In fact, all of us are rather experienced sceners, too. It's really only the general attitude of the scene, not only the attitude of the elite, but also the attitude of many people below, which we dislike. Unfortunately, this attitude is especially spread among the elite, that's why I mentioned them first. Is everyone who fights racism a nigger? Not quite. And, as I said before... we really dislike real lamers. Their attitude might be quite the opposite of the general attitude of the scene, but they simply aren't in the position to spread their wicked thoughts, so I don't respect them AT ALL. It's definitely wrong to blame the so-called elite for one's own lack of talents. And that's exactly what the true lamers do, so we fight them as well as every other watered-down being in the scene with a destructive kind of attitude.
Adok: What kind of education do you provide for your members?
Reverend Red: That's none of your business. No comment on this one, as it's part of our strategy.
Adok: Who are your greatest enemies?
Reverend Red: Everyone. (Just kidding.) Some people more and some less. I guess our greatest enemies currently are the ones who try to fight the scene's attitude with its own weapons, just like "You hit me, so I'm gonna hit you even harder." They suck, and so does their group's name (not mentioned here on purpose, as I don't want to declare any childish war right now). We think our way of building a controverse (anti-)scene group is a better one, as we try to attack the roots, and not the results. But it's too early to make any statement about this yet. We'll better wait how things will turn out.
From my personal point of view, there are no real "enemies", as people I hate don't necessarily have to be my enemies. Well, I hate quite a bunch of guys and gals, both in real life and in the scene, I can tell, but even if I just tried to kick the asses of ALL of those people, I'd probably be busy till the end of my life, so I better save my power (and public hatred) for rather extreme cases of moral disorientation and general fuckups. I just can't stand those persons who think they simply HAVE to get along well with everyone... most of the time, they don't even dare to express any of the things they dislike, and so they unknowingly lose their characters part by part, as they always tell the others what these want to hear. In many cases, these people tolerate obviously unfair actions of others or even turn against their own friends just to protect their shiny tiny virtual world of peace and love. You simply can't rely on these guys, and that's what hurts so much. It doesn't make any sense to try to change others by directly FORCING them to change their mind - but it's even worse to let others change YOURSELF just because you're too weak. And that's about the primary message the Church of AntiScene tries to spread.
Adok: So, if you are just a normal group trying to support the scene, why did you choose the name "Church of AntiScene" of all names? It implies both that this group could be a sect and that it worked against the scene.
Reverend Red: Well, first off, the name's as serious as most other groups' names (grinning). I had the idea of choosing this name because the words "anti" and "scene" are in it... "Anti" and the ridiculous fact that we call ourselves "church" refer to the controversy we stand for, and "Scene" should be self-explanatory. That's about all I can say about how the name was invented (smiles). Actually we don't work against the scene, but rather against the scene's current attitude, so the name fits us quite well, although one can easily mis-interpret it.
Adok: How is hatred conntected to other aspects of the church?
Reverend Red: Well, hatred is very important for us... Hatred makes us do what we do, and we make hatred do what it does. That's a nice phrase to sum it all up. As we see ourselves in the role of the mighty messengers, hatred is the ultimate tool for us to get rid of about everything which gets in our way, as hatred makes the blood of our true enemies boil. Hatred is connected to many aspects of our philosophy, as it always goes hand in hand with controversy. "We love hatred", you know?
Adok: Do you really hate everybody? Why is that (not)?
Reverend Red: Oh, no. If we really hated everybody, we would also claim to be the saviours of the scene. In fact, we would even turn around and leave the scene at once, because we would feel responsible for the others' deeds. There are various aspects and people we hate, but one should differentiate between scene and private life. In private life, at least I only hate those who did or still do me any harm, that's a fact. In the scene, things are (as always) different. The scene offers a much wider base for hatred rising from smallest conflicts. It's much easier to hate people in the scene than to hate them in private life, if you understand what I mean. But also the pure definition of the word "hatred" is different when you apply it to scene conflicts. Hatred in the scene is often much more subjective than hatred in real life. One can't draw any parallels between both kinds of hatred, and especially one mustn't compare these with each other. That's the problem of many sceners, as they always mix up scene and real life. Especially guys like us always live in danger because of this, as there's a slight risk of being beaten up at parties because people misunderstood it when we said that we hate them.
Actually, I tend to express my deepest depreciation with all profanity I got to offer towards these geeks, as they probably don't have a real life, and the scene means everything to them. They're sick, as they don't understand that there are no human beings in the scene at all. Actually, there are only characters, or even figures, and in real life the people behind these characters are quite different than what they represent in the scene. So, according to this definition, there are only very few people in the scene whom I hate in both scene and real life. That's the small but important point.
Adok: How can interested people join your church?
Reverend Red: Everyone who is interested, talented and can easily identify with our ideas is welcome and might want to send his application to red@l33t3.de... There's no need to join us, though. Every email (also negative criticism, of course) is welcome, and if anyone happens to be interested in supporting us in another way than joining us, we won't stop him. Even if someone just wanted to tell us what we already know (like, how fucked-up and weird we are), or had any questions concerning our views and philosophy, we'd like to get some feedback on this interview. For interested people, I can already announce that the official antiscene manifest is to be released in the near future. You'll get to know when it's out.
- atheistodok^hugi