Hello babybirds! It’s your producer boy Trevor with a very important announcement: next week is the last episode of the Terminus Podcast with Trevor and Jeremy as we know it. We’ll be taking the month off from posting episodes in June. July marks the beginning of an entirely new chapter in the podcast’s young life, and we’re really excited to share what we have with you.
Hosts:
Jeremy Riot
Trevor Hultner
Produced by:
Trevor Hultner
Theme music:
Police State, by Kevin Moan and the Reptiles
After a very bizarre visit from Nega-Public-Radio Jeremy and Demon Mr. Rogers, Trevor and Jeremy go on a relatively brief tear about not calling the police, and why white people especially need to stop using the police as their problem-fixers.
Hosts:
Jeremy Riot
Trevor Hultner
Produced by:
Trevor Hultner
Theme music:
Police State, by Kevin Moan and the Reptiles
So here I am, sifting through the Terminus email at 4:30 in the morning to find an email letting us know this band Runaway Kids just released a song called “Take It All.” Here’s the thing; we don’t expect much when it comes to promotional material we receive. A lot of it seems to be run-of-the-mill All Time Low/A Day To Remember soundalikes or weird pop musicians we can’t really find a purpose for (I’m a 32 year old man who listens to a lot of Crass. I am not your target audience. Please send me good music. We’re drowning in cliche over here.) All things considered, I wasn’t expecting much.
“I need a face/One that can match your name/An empty space/Is what you left to me” began screaming at me the moment I pressed play. “Okay,” I said to myself, “here’s another breakup song. This is about what I expected.” Thankfully, I allowed the song to continue on.
What began as a song about a failing relationship, to my ears, evolved in to something deeper. The relationship in question is one pertaining to the big guy upstairs. This is important to me for multiple reasons:
1.) If you’ve listened to any number of episodes of our podcast, you know of my deepest disdain for all things religious and its influence on society.
2.) Modern “punk” is oversaturated in saccharine-sweet break up songs and pointless bullshit irrelevant to anyone not spending their weekly allowance at their local Hot Topic.
3.) It’s easier to sell records, merch, and tickets when the topics addressed in the music are easier to swallow. If you’re not NOFX, Anti-Flag, or any other band who’s long established their careers in politics, good luck getting your foot out of your mom’s garage.
For me, reason three is extremely important. The community has shied away from topics that make society overly uncomfortable. The crimson skull and Black Flag bars have become as much clothing brands as any of the “edgier” Affliction lines of clothing. We traded truth and passion for convenience and crying. We traded anger, paranoia, and frustration for sexual frustration and rosy-colored angst you can also sell your “cool” mom on so she can escort you to Warped Tour because you’re also 13 years old. This is why I’ve mostly avoided any modern output by newer bands wearing the “punk” label for the past few years.
Runaway Kids are bringing something to the table the scene needs very badly, and thats pure, unadulterated honesty. Sure, their sound is much more “modern” than I’d prefer (early Sum 41 immediately comes to mind), but the message behind the music redeems it all. America’s political climate has shifted so far towards the church that society itself is poisoning itself in bible-thumping hatred for anyone who believes anything even remotely different than what they believe, and it’s imperative, in my opinion, that musicians who have the ability to raise their voices and help guide the kids in a direction that’s more accepting, more unified, and far more eager for a better future for themselves and those around them should do so. While Runaway Kids may not be my kind of music, they’re making overly accessible, modern punk rock with an old-school twist. I firmly believe, if this song is any example of their other output (I was only offered this one song), this band has the chance of aiding in building a better future by showing the kids a better way, and I’m curious enough to listen to the full album when I get the chance.
Trevor and Jeremy are overwhelmed by friend of the show Pauly Creep-O and his extensive entourage, shortly before Pauly becomes overwhelmed by alcohol. Oh and also he and director Zac Daugomah talk about the upcoming documentary, Devil in God’s Country: The Ballad of Pauly Creep-O.
Hosts:
Jeremy Riot
Trevor Hultner
Produced by:
Trevor Hultner
Theme music:
Police State, by Kevin Moan and the Reptiles
Jeremy and Trevor come back from a short break to a world in which a group of men seriously believe that women owe them sex, and want the government to force them to give it to them. No, this isn’t season two of Handmaid’s Tale, just 2018.
Hosts:
Jeremy Riot
Trevor Hultner
Produced by:
Trevor Hultner
Theme music:
Police State, by Kevin Moan and the Reptiles
Trevor and Jeremy turn in their pundit badges and go straight (news). You can thank increased government surveillance on the news media coupled with a creepy conservative news cult for this.
We’ll be back with a fuller episode next week.
Hosts:
Jeremy Riot
Trevor Hultner
Produced by:
Trevor Hultner
Theme music:
Police State, by Kevin Moan and the Reptiles
Trevor and Jeremy talk about FOSTA and SESTA, a package of anti-sex trafficking bills that serve another purpose: to shut down free expression on the internet.
In the second segment, we talk about signs of domestic violence, how to spot them, and how to get free.
Tonight’s episode is going to be about FOSTA, which is kind of an odd thing for an asexual to be focusing on since I’m not the target demo for sex workers and sex *trafficking* is obviously shitty. But FOSTA’s repercussions spread way further than punishing sex traffickers.
Lemme put it this way: Do you like watching camgirls? If the sites you like are based in the United States, they’re going to be taken down. FetLife member? They’re considering shutting the site down. Did you use Craigslist Personals? They’re already gone. Do you use Grindr, Tinder, OKCupid, Match, PlentyOfFish, or fucking ChristianMingle? Say bye-bye.
But it gets worse. Microsoft has already changed their terms of service for their cloud-based apps. This includes Skype, Office365, SharePoint and Xbox Live. Now you can’t be sexual with a long-distance partner in Skype, you can’t so much as cuss impulsively in Xbox Live and you can’t write erotic fiction or articles ABOUT sex work in Word. Microsoft reserves the right to spy on you for “investigative reasons” and purge your entire account if you’re found to be in violation. Google is the same way. Apple hasn’t said they’re making any specific changes to their TOS in response to FOSTA, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were also doing the same thing.
Twitter is purging their sex worker community. Amazon is delisting erotic fiction.
Here’s why FOSTA has already had this effect despite not yet being a law.
FOSTA changes Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which states in summary: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” FOSTA explicitly removes sexual content or “sex trafficking” from the safe harbors that Section 230 provides.
So yeah. Shit’s not great on this here internet in 2018. We’ll be talking about it.
The Terminus Podcast 