Before we even play this video, and this is part of the reason I want to talk about this, I want to inoculate you guys to this propaganda because this video is actually being shared on the account of a very famous, paid, influential, far-right tweeter and talking head who I don't want to get into it. He's a real fucking douchebag and a disingenuous piece of shit. But it speaks volumes that he is sharing this video on his platform.

Now, Billy [Corgan] is no stranger to platforming or at least flirting with far-right platforms and ideologies. This is a guy who has famously appeared on an episode or two of Info Wars with Alex Jones. But yes, he makes a bit of a point here about rock music, and its dialing down in the culture, in the midst of this podcast interview. It's not so much rock music didn't have a rise and fall in popularity and relevance in popular culture– that's not really the debate.

The debate is, and what makes this video dangerous, as you will see, is the framing that Billy brings to it. We're not talking about the broad stroke occurrence that we're all noticing, which is what gives credence to what Billy is arguing in this video. It's more the conspiratorial framing that he lends to it that makes me concerned and the rabbit hole that goes down.

Corgan: Rock has been purposely dialed down in the culture.

Conrad Flynn: When would you say that began? In the 2000s?

Corgan: Late '90s. I think the first... And again, this gets, Wizard behind the curtain right? Somebody's going to say, 'Well, how do you know or who was the Wizard behind the curtain?' All I know is I saw the gravity shift. If you were at MTV or around MTV, 1997, '98, suddenly they decided rock was out when rock was still very, very high up in the thing.

And Billy says, "And it was replaced by rap."

I have things – I find the way he phrased that, "rock was very high up in the thing," you see, they really started "dialing" rock down, even though it was so high up in the thing, the thing where it's high up. I mean, you have to play to the thing. When something is high up into the thing, you have to play to it. Otherwise, there has to be some kind of a conspiracy going on.

I don't want to comment too deeply just yet because he's not finished making his point. But again, I feel like the lack of specificity really speaks to the validity of the argument he's trying to make when you're literally not drilling down much into what you're saying. You're like, 'ey, man, how come MTV is abandoning rock? Look at the thing! Rock is still so high up in the thing!' But here we go. Let's continue.

Corgan: Still very, very high up in the thing. And it was replaced by rap. They immediately changed the way– their standards and practices immediately shifted. So, now that things that weren't allowed were suddenly allowed, people were waving guns. Some people assert that the CIA was involved in all that, again, above my pay grade. But I saw it happen. I did witness it happen. Okay. Of course, great music came out of it. It's not a barren wasteland where something was pushed in that replaced something. Qualitative things and great artists came in, but there was this overt shift. I saw it happen. Then now, as you pointed out, rap seems to be waning in terms of its cultural influence. Pop is completely dominant. Rock is probably the most dominant ticket selling thing in the western world, and yet there's almost no representation of rock in culture. So why do we have that schism? I think they purposely dialed down the ability of rock stars to have a voice in the culture.

A lot to go over there, a lot of stuff to touch down on. Yes, as you just made a point there, Billy says, "It's above my pay grade," and yet he is literally making these points and continues to assert this point of view that rock was, as it were, "dialed down" in the culture.

The final argument that he makes there that rock shows are selling the most tickets, and yet rock is not represented in culture, whatever Billy views culture to be. One would need to really go into the metrics of all of that. But just off the bat, I could maybe find an argument or two as to why that may be, if in fact, that is true. I mean, these days, ticket sales are through the fucking roof. A lot of popular rock acts that are selling tickets, and lots of tickets in major stadiums, are legacy acts that most likely have audience members who can afford those ticket prices, not younger fans who maybe don't have the hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars to afford some of those very costly tickets.

And also, you can only fit so many people into a space, even a stadium space, which is not necessarily representative of the amount of motion you need on the internet as far as streaming, as far as hits, as far as general traffic online, in order to really move the needle and draw people in your direction. Just because a lot of people buy tickets to go to a show, a legacy act or something like that, doesn't mean that that artist may be getting quite as much motion as maybe a young, up and comer who a lot of people are talking about and buzzing about and are excited about, like a PinkPantheress or a Zara Larsson right now who you see all over the internet.

"Rock shows aren't as expensive as others." [from chat]. It really depends on the band. It depends on the band. It depends on the venue. It depends on their cultural dominance in the past. Of course, I could tell you tons of rock shows that are very affordable and very cheap to go to, but it really does depend. Yeah, the Geese tickets, especially right now, have been expensive because Geese is at a really weird point right now, culturally, where they're really hot, they're really popular, they're super in demand, but simultaneously, they're still a budding indie band in a lot of respects. So it's created a lot of situations where they're not quite selling out the biggest venues out there at the moment. So because of that, there's a limited amount of tickets that you're going to have access to when going to a Geese show, especially considering the culture of scalping on the internet currently.

But that's another example of the fact that supply and demand and online scalpers have completely fucked up the ticket game for pretty much everybody. Now, Billy says rock started to really get dialed down in the late '90s, early mid-2000s. That was the time span in which all of this was happening.

Now, what I think is very funny about that is that that is around the time frame that Smashing Pumpkins was not quite as relevant as they were toward the start of their career. So not only does this line up with eras in which Smashing Pumpkins were no longer really at their peak. But also on top of that, I think between me and everybody in chat, late '90s, early 2000s, we could probably between all of us, and let's go ahead and do it, I think we could probably name some pretty huge, massive, popular, just, probably platinum selling rock bands that were putting up some big numbers exactly around this time period.

Red Hot Chili Peppers, definitely. I would say Creed. Creed. I would say Linkin Park, who for a time, did they not have the best selling debut album ever for quite a while? System of a Down. Radiohead also stayed quite popular around this point in time. You laugh at Trapt, but the thing is, during this period in time, you did have this influx of nu metal and groove metal bands that were absolutely huge on the radio. We look back and laugh at a Trapt. We look back and laugh at a Papa Roach. But as somebody who was literally there for all of that shit coming in, a Limp Bizkit on top of it, as somebody who was there during that time period, these bands were rock bands, and these bands were huge. These were massive cultural forces. Limp Bizkit had fucking DJ Premier and Method Man on the fucking second album because they were literally that huge.

Weezer was still putting up hits. In fact, Weezer stayed pretty relevant into the early internet era, "Pork and Beans" and all that shit. Puddle of Mudd – and that's the thing: the whole post-grunge movement that came after the '90s. Puddle of Mudd, Nickelback, Green Day, Incubus – yes, Green Day had fucking American Idiot during this time period.

So again, think about what Billy is saying here, the way that he's talking, you would think that while Smashing Pumpkins was coming out with Adore, that like, rock was just on its fucking deathbed.

Meanwhile, we're literally talking about some of the biggest rock acts of this era. Oh, also, let's not forget, during this time period, Blink 182, too. Yes, you're getting to exactly what I'm talking about. During this era, we saw the commercial rise and peak of emo. You had Blink 182 going crazy. You had Fall Out Boy going crazy. Offspring, of course, which also brings me to this argument over here because Billy talks about MTV, there being a little bit of a shift in terms of them playing certain videos and so on and so forth and emphasizing certain artists and certain genres, so on and so forth. I say 'so on and so forth' so many times.

Look, I'll give you guys the answer because I was literally there, teenager, eighth grader, watching TRL [Total Request Live] pretty much every day when I came home from school, which if anybody knows what that is, it was a live request music video show hosted by Carson Daly, would play every day on MTV after school, and you would basically go on there and call in to support your faves, and you would see what the hottest music videos were. Can anybody think of why maybe during this time period, even if rap music wasn't as hot on the radio as rock music was, which a lot of songs were, can anybody think of why rap videos might do better than some rock videos during this period of time?

Video vixens? Absolutely. Was definitely a huge point there.

And look, that was not something that was specific to hip hop music. MTV, specifically during this time, pretty much realized that it had that young hormonal teenage audience just on lock. And a lot of the music video content that was released, regardless of genre, that was super popular, super hip, talked about quite frequently and did really well on TRL, played to exactly that selling point, be it either a rap video that had video vixens, be it either a pop diva video. And also there were rock videos.

Oh, and also for the ladies, you had the boy bands because, of course, they were watching the NSYNC and the Backstreet videos for the cute one that they liked the most.

But to bring back the Offspring, look, the Offspring have come out with some great records. I love Smash. Excellent album. I believe the best-selling independent album of all time, like a record on an independent label, at least. What I'm saying here is there are rock videos that also played to that angle. And at the time, the Offspring's most popular song, though, was, "Pretty Fly (for a White Guy)".

This song, this music video, I don't know if you guys have seen this, but this video over here was so fucking popular on TRL that they literally needed to just decommission it because it spent so many weeks at number one. Between this goofy ass dude over here who has an identity crisis or whatever going on, and all the girls dancing throughout the video and the note of comedy to the whole thing, and just the constant moving action shots. For white dudes who were watching music videos on a regular basis on MTV, and even for people who weren't into this style of music, this fucking song, this music video was crack.

People go crazy for this scene. They would always play shorter versions of the music videos during TRL, and they would always make sure that when they did this shit, they had the pool scene worked in there. You had to have the pool scene. It's not that from what Billy says, that there was this... He even frames it as a CIA psyop! There's someone behind the scenes at the CIA deciding that rap needed to be more popular than rock, and they were destroying the culture and taking rock out of the culture, even though it was very popular.

So rock died out. Rock was very high up in the thing. Standards and practices changed. People were allowed to wave guns around, which it honestly... There's some racist framing here. Billy does say, 'Yeah, there were some good artists that came in, but all these videos, most of these videos were just people waving guns around. There were just guns all over the place. People were just doing guns and gun stuff.' Billy also talks about rap dying in relevance and pop rising up.

And another thing about this argument here is it's very much, and when anybody brings it up or talks about it, it's very much like a rap/rock dichotomy, and nothing else is addressed. Pop music is still very much relevant during this time period, before this time period, and after this time period. Pop music is somehow completely erased from, I guess, the dialogue here, especially considering the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, came before all this and stayed very relevant throughout this time period. Figures like Madonna also came before this, who is mercilessly ripped off to this day. Pop music is popular, believe it or not. Really tough to square, but it is in fact true.

Pop music has actually been dominant for a very long time. It's not like rock music was always at the top of the hill there. And quite a bit of rock music that has been at the top of the hill is fused with pop music, which is why it sells so well commercially, which is part of why when bands like Smashing Pumpkins were popular and were doing well on MTV and on the radio, they were referred to as "alternative rock" because they were the alternative to what was actually much more popular, pop music and rock music that had pop music infused into it.

Billy, whether he wants to or not, I feel like for the most part is dog whistling here. Ironically, the next video that I want to show you guys that is making a lot of the same arguments that I saw immediately after this video. I even saw many comments on this video saying, 'Billy Corgan was saying a lot of the same stuff that you're saying.' A lot of what Billy is very lightly gesturing towards is being said very loudly in this next one over here, this realjasonwhitlock character, he is very much a clown and has some interesting points to make in this similar video here he's putting out there.

realjasonwhitlock: His largest brand of music.

Okay, so he says, "rock music was America's largest brand of music." I don't know what time period he's referring to. Maybe the '80s because he's showing us some '80s hair metal hard rock type video. I don't know if this is something he himself is like, this is his frame of reference or maybe the frame of reference of his boomer editor. But let's look further at this point.

realjasonwhitlock: And they ran it out and they destroyed it and they deemphasized it. They replaced it with poor, uneducated, desperate, criminal black men.

Okay. That's a dose of racism right there. They replaced rock music, America's most important, significant genre of music, not pop or anything like that. It's rock music. They replaced rock music with dumb, criminal, hedonistic rappers. When again, keep in mind here, within the first few frames of this video, the point of reference is '80s hard rock and hair metal. I don't know if anybody is getting the irony or the joke here, but that whole scene was literally nothing but coked-out skinny white guys who were fucking as many bitches as they could, just stacking as much cash as they could. They were writing hedonistic devil music. If there ever was such a thing as hedonistic devil music.

If rappers are making hedonistic devil music now, the '80s hard rock scene and hair metal scene set the fucking tone, man. I'm sorry, is "Hot For Teacher" an allegory for one's relationship with Jesus? You're telling me that rap music is dumb and hedonistic and doesn't mean anything, and they're meant to psyop you into thinking that, 'Oh, you should be materialistic, and you shouldn't care about anything, and you should be nihilistic, and you should be violent,' and so on and so forth?

But look at the content of many an '80s hair metal and hard rock band. That's literally all the shit that they sing about. And again, on top of it, these guys were snorting mountains of coke every single day. That was literally the lifestyle all these guys were leading. Did Lil Baby ever write, "she's only 17" ? If you're acting like rock music, especially during that time period of the '80s, was somehow way more meaningful and significant and deep and more important than anything a rapper could possibly be saying today, not only is that propaganda, but it's a racist point of view meant to sow division and make you feel like, as a white person, something culturally has been taken away from you. 'Remember when you as a white guy were relevant? You could be just like, strumming a guitar, have a mullet, be singing about how she's only 17. But now you can't do that anymore. It's the rappers who people want to see on the TV and on the social media. What happened to the days where you could sing about how she was only 17?'

So again, try to understand the framing that this video is trying to put out there, that you as a white guy, as a right winger, need to be worried that your culture is being erased and taken from you, and you are being phased out in favor of these criminal idiots who are stupid morons that don't know anything. Not like all of those smart '80s rockers who were just snorting piles of cocaine.

realjasonwhitlock: America's largest brand of music. And they ran it out and they destroyed it, and they de-emphasized it. They replaced with poor, uneducated, desperate, criminal Black men as the voice of American music. Rappers help degrade the culture. Now that their job has been done, they have degraded the culture. Rap is now starting to decline. They targeted desperate criminals, idiots. Most of them have an IQ in the 70s, maybe 60s. I know, what do you mean? Jay-Z is a genius. No, he's not. He's a clown that was installed and his music was promoted. If you've actually listened to what is being said and how satanic, what is actually said, you would not think Jay-Z is some sort of genius. He's someone that cut a deal with the devil. I don't know.

I would put money on Jay-Z being smarter than this man. And again, it's a case of superstitious thinking because you're thinking like there's some grand conspiracy about what makes rock music popular, what makes rap music popular, as if there's a zero-sum game here. Rock music can only be as popular as rap music will allow it to be and vice versa, when in fact, there have been numerous points in American popular culture where rock music has thrived, where rap music has thrived. But because of the increasing consolidation of media across all platforms, you're seeing like, dumber and dumber shit in all genres rising to the top because the lowest common denominator is what sells, is what moves streams, is what moves traffic on the internet. It's not music that's challenging.

It's not music that lasts more than two minutes. It's not music that has a third verse. It's not music that has a lot of deep and difficult lyricism regardless of genre. It's whatever is the simplest, just inject it straight into my veins, like Pablum, that you could hand people on a Spotify playlist that you could possibly come up with, which is now just driving us to this race to the bottom in terms of quality across all styles of music.

And that's why AI is thriving right now, because it's easy for AI to come up with the dumbest, most easy to regurgitate shit possible, because it doesn't need to put any thought in anything. It doesn't need to worry about or concern itself with artistry. All it needs to do is copy whatever formulas are pre-established as having worked, and then just copy and paste over and over and over and over and over, and that's it. And also, as somebody mentioned earlier, this top comment is insane, but it goes to show what kind of person is being drawn toward this video and this argument, this type of commentary.

I also like how these arguments also erase two other super relevant points that are going on or happened and are happening. Number one, they make it this rap-rock dichotomy, white versus black, so on and so forth, when in fact, white music, white artists are more popular than they've been in a long time. But it's happening through the country pipeline because Morgan Wallen is really hot right now. Post Malone is really hot right now. Jelly Roll is really hot right now. We can name several others as well.

White people are all over the charts at the moment. So you're really stoking the fires of nothing, throwing this argument out there, making white people overly worried like, 'Oh, man, what happened to white people being able to make music that people cared about?' Well, I mean, there's some very popular artists right now, and they're pretty fucking white, to be honest. People are acting like a white boy can't get any motion in the music industry these days. Tom MacDonald? Oh, Taylor Swift. You can't count Taylor Swift because she's a woman. She's a woman. And this type of video appeals to men, appeals to men who are fearful and insecure and want to play a riff. They want to rock. They're like, 'Oh, man, why can't I just rock?'

The other thing that you need to appreciate that gets glossed over during this argument, this shift they're trying to portray in terms of like, 'Oh, man, you had the rock and you had the hip hop, and they made hip hop popular to erase the relevance of white people.' When a key factor in the popularization of hip hop music over that '90s, 2000s transition, can anybody tell me? Starts with an E. As a white dude in the '90s, it was very uncool to listen to hip hop, or you would be called a certain word for doing it. It started with a 'W,' you know what it is. Until Eminem. But as good as Beastie Boys were, as big as Vanilla Ice was and so on and so forth, Eminem made it actually acceptable, at least among our own generation.

Boomers were still very – Eminem wasn't convincing any boomers that hip hop was the way forward. In fact, boomers fucking hated Eminem. Eminem made it cool amongst all white people, or normalized amongst all white people, to be into hip hop and to be into rappers and to even be rappers and to just be a consumer of hip hop in general. You weren't questioned for it anymore because literally, it became to be the case that the top selling rap artist of all time was a white guy, which I believe is still the case to this day. Eminem is still the top selling rapper, is he not?

Eminem for a lot of white people and just for music radio stations, music fans across the board, expanded the hip hop listener base because there was just this influx of people getting more into hip hop that just would not have otherwise, if not for a white guy saying 'it's okay,' much in the same way that Elvis made it okay for a lot of white people to like rock music.

Of course, there were white people who liked rock music before Elvis, but seeing a white guy do it and be successful at it and get accolades for doing it, that puts something in the head of certain white people that just would not have been otherwise, just as outside observers enjoying it, or being somebody who's involved, but isn't necessarily as commercially successful as some of the more important or influential artists in the style. We know that in the way that the music industry works today in the United States of America, you need to have white people listening to you in order for you to be commercially successful.

I will say that dynamic is starting to shift quite a bit as we are seeing that streaming is taking the consumption of a lot of different artists internationally. And regardless of the amount of American engagement, there is a really huge international appeal for a lot of K-pop artists. And of course, also, we need to mention the B-word: Bad Bunny. Because Bad Bunny, a lot of his streams, yes, he does have a lot of fans and a lot of passionate supporters in the US, but also a bulk of his traffic and popularity comes through from Latin America and makes him obviously no less legitimate of an artist.

But it just goes to further display how dated and backwards and old world this perspective is, because you're looking at it merely from the standpoint of a Black versus White cultural dynamic, American music market, and things have broadened out so far past that point. Really, all this serves is to, again, make very insecure white guys feel as if what was once theirs was ripped away and taken away, and they were prevented from having passed down to them the right to get up on stage and rock and have their dick sucked for it. "If you need to come up with a whole CIA plot to explain your cultural trend, you're probably just out of touch" [from chat]. Yeah, and you're probably also trying to push something that, knowing it or not, is a little covertly racist.

So there you go. Billy Corgan, bit of a dummy, unfortunately. But what are you going to do? Just is what it is.