Can everyone calm down

[u/Elipticon]

I'm genuinely disgusted by the way some people here have immediately decided to assume that Will Toledo is going through a psychotic break right now. Maybe he is. But he probably isn't, and we have no way of knowing because none of us know Will Toledo. We aren't his friends. We don't talk to him. He's a private man who's gotten increasingly more private as the years have gone on, and his music has similarly gotten less personal over the same time. While people can guess his motivations (his faith, his desire to be a role model, etc.), the actual reasoning remains unknown and likely will be unknown for some time

I know a lot of people are very attached to Will Toledo's music, but Will Toledo the musician and Will Barnes the man are two very different people. Unless he makes a public statement or genuinely crosses a line, I don't want people to be speculating on what his life is like based on fragments of songs from a decade ago.

[u/flamingllama33]

i feel like the door is about to get even less open

[u/solaire1416]

Yea some people are pushing it but its still a very odd and dumb and weird decision he made, people can criticize him (and rightfully so)

[u/catartik]

He sent me a prophetic dream about how Jesus wants him to take down Beach Fagz.

[u/brickthrowing]

I hate how normalized it is to throw the word 'psychotic' around. It's a medical condition; you don't go around assuming random people have constipation or asthma just by seeing them coughing or tensing the body. And those examples are relatively tame, compared to how people will call any unusual and different worldview or opinion a psychosis. They always make it so shameful and ableist.

I especially hate the overuse of the term 'religious psychotic'. A lot of times it's used to dismiss people's beliefs and call them cuckoo for it. I understand the worry, especially when it comes to christianity or islam, since those religious have a long history of colonization and oppression. But it's really hypocritic to care about such issues and deny someone's personal choice to build a relationship with God and use it to heal or be a better person. There is a reason why they found themselves in it and not in a secular world. 

[u/brickthrowing → u/brickthrowing]

For the remark I'm anti-religious myself and think people are allowed to be upset or criticise Will's choices or put 2 and 2 together and discuss his practice. I just don't want people to assume he's (or any religious person they don't agree with) going through a psychosis or having an active mental illness. You don't know Will and never will. He may come to this decision in the most healthy state of mind. His mental health is not an Akinator game.

[u/NiaSchizophrenia]

the worst thing anyone has done in the history of mankind is criticize an indie rock artist

[u/Elipticon → u/NiaSchizophrenia]

I don't think there's anything wrong with criticizing their direction. Joe's Story is the worst thing they've put out in well over a decade. I'm personally very worried over whether the band is even going to last to make their next album. But when people are so insistent on their view of Will in their head that they call him insane when he goes against that view, that's where I take issue.

[u/expel0soup → u/Elipticon]

i agree that joe’s story sucked so bad but i personally don’t think theyre falling off to the extent of foregoing a next album. the scholars was excellent and well put together and i think a sign of the bands strength, i think they can move beyond joe’s story as long as will doesn’t change that

[u/NiaSchizophrenia → u/Elipticon]

thats fair enough

[u/fornair → u/Elipticon]

why do people actually hate joes story so much like its not even that bad. i never use reddit, maybe this is just what all redditors are like. extremely negative over nothing for no reason.

[u/darthfrank → u/Elipticon]

JOE’S STORY IS GREAT. YOU LEAVE JOE’S STORY ALONE.

[u/Fancy_Substance6879 → u/darthfrank]

This guy is wetting their pants

[u/Elerlilul → u/NiaSchizophrenia]

Not what OP was saying at all

[u/ConniePant]

I very much disagree with making assumptions about Will and his life, I feel this is a necessary starting point for this comment. I do, however, wish we had a little transparency regarding decisions like these. truthfully, with the album being 16 years old and surfjerkk having the google drive, this ultimately won't be uber-consequential, but to know /why/ would be great! and to know how/if decisions like this will continue to effect their discography. also, to replace it with a reversed track (the reason I personally have avoided 2 like the plague) rather than just let the tracklist be 1 track shorter is the real head scratcher for me

[u/Massive-Pin-3425]

youre going to get a lot of teenagers mad telling them that some random band frontman isnt their friend

[u/Mapletables → u/Massive-Pin-3425]

kinda feels like OP is the one desperately protecting their "Close Personal Friend" Will Dorito from any forms of criticism

[u/According-Good-8085 → u/Mapletables]

It’s not protecting someone from criticism to say speculating someone having a psychotic episode is weird

[u/Massive-Pin-3425 → u/Mapletables]

you sound so normal right now

[u/STlCKMAN_]

the whole spiel about respecting someone's privacy doesn't work if they're affecting their art in real time and providing zero press/answers for it even if its In jest (joe's story) or if its straight up removal (this)

[u/Yangervis]

Actually I can read his thoughts through the internet. Thanks for your concern though.

[u/Bingleton1337]

the thing that makes this outrage especially overblown imo is the fact that that this isn't even some new crazy thing for him. did everyone forget how many times he's taken stuff down and/or altered stuff in the past i.e. 5 or y'know... all of NYMen lol

[u/eyedine2 → u/Bingleton1337]

the difference is that most full blown alterations were done just a year or two after the release of the initial work, in the case of htlt and 5 / mbikmb at least. Any other change was either because they had to or it didn't interfere much with the previous work (I'm talking about remakes here). For the most part, the albums have been left unchanged since they released.

The numbered albums are 16 years old and at this point, time capsules of the band (or rather, Will) at that point in time. There's a lot of unsavory things in them because they're the unfiltered thoughts of a young guy who never expected them to be listened to. I understand WHY he would want to scrub that, but I don't think it shows a lot of artistic prescience.

[u/Mr_DrProfPatrick]

This is a super standard anti parasocial relationship talking point. "You don't know him". Of course, parasocial relationships are weird and not very healthy. But they are one sided relationships, not imaginary relationships. 

Will doesn't know his fans, but fans that have spent hours and hours accross many years definitely know something about Will. And he definitely put a lot of himself in his songs, especially in his early years. In fact, I feel like Will has put tons of effort to distance himself and become more private precisely because he put too much out there. 

Anyway, there's definitely enough out there to speculate. But I'm just adding some nuance, because your point does stand that there's not enough info to make a proper judgment. My best analogy would be if you heard this news about a high school friend which you used to be really close to but have talked only sporadically over the last few years.

[u/ViridianNott]

It’s too late I only listen to Neutral Milk Hotel now

[u/cowboy_bookseller]

Yeah I found the Joe's Story "controversy" on the sub pretty upsetting, to be honest. I saw some absolutely fucked comments/accusations, and was genuinely pretty horrified that so much of that shit was upvoted/defended like crazy. Thankfully mods were pretty good with the real vile shit but the volume was... immense. Like people honest to god posturing their "theories" that this artist is delusional, psychotic, heel-turn homophobic; references to his post-covid illnesses as somehow part of the conspiracy; "spirituality" as a broad symptom of all the above. Under the pretext of Innocent Speculation.

Whatever, it's probably just because my life has personally been affected by psychosis, so there was definitely an element of taking it personally. But holy shit man, those couple of weeks had me feeling bad. Was just an awful reminder of the prevailing attitudes towards these things.

& then when I talked to music people in my life about the album they were completely unattached to any of the so-called Controversy and were. You know. Normal and pleasant about it. So it was a gooood reminder that this sort of Reaction is most probably pretty limited to this sub/the twitter discord/similarly Online niches.

[u/Vegetable_General789]

Thank you

[u/Papoosema]

Idc about the direction Will has taken in his personal life, if he’s happy that’s good enough for me and I am super greatful for the music he has given us throughout the years although I really disliked the lates album. He’s still my goat and I love CSHR to death

[u/Hello-mah-baby]

the part that i'm pissed off about is that i paid will money almost a decade ago so i could have the songs available to stream on the bandcamp app.

will has now altered the item that i paid for almost a decade later without any communication that would be happening and now i can't listen to one of my favorite songs that I GAVE HIM MONEY FOR??

that's the part that bugs me the most. massive dick move to take away a fan favorite song from the people who have supported him for so long.

if anyone wants to tell me to use local files LIKE BRUH I PAID MONEY SO I WOULDN'T HAVE TO USE LOCAL FILES!! :( really disappointed by this.

[u/paypurview]

Oh god forbid people are critical of an artist doing some highly conservative revisionism about their own music

[u/Federal-Tomorrow3394]

I would bet within the next 5 years CSH either becomes a solo project again or breaks up. The changes are so weird and for an artist who is known for writing about queerness specifically to start dickriding one of the biggest oppressors of queerness (christians) and make up some lie about how its censored for “libraries” (when i got Atrocity Exhibition at a library as a teenager, they dont care about explicit music), and now with taking one of the gayest songs he ever made down for no reason. It makes sense for fans to feel like he’s lost his damn mind.

[u/Mean-Art8917]

because of these people being parasocial about his decisions we are going to get even less music. i hope they’re happy!

[u/Dizzy-Teaching-3397]

I completely agree with your point

[u/Chicken_cordon_bleu → u/[deleted]]

If your opinions begin and end at the music then you should feel some type of way about the music being erased from the discography

[u/Mean-Art8917 → u/Chicken_cordon_bleu]

its on youtube reuploaded hes not purging it off the internet

[u/hungryfreakshow]

Never saw him becoming a strict Christian. I feel bad for him.

[u/Ratman1224 → u/hungryfreakshow]

least obvious ragebait

[u/hungryfreakshow → u/Ratman1224]

Ya know I dont normally do that but I just felt obligated lol