“Ian, are you saying metalheads are too dumb to go to college?”
No. I’m not saying metalheads aren’t smart enough to go to college or even that they shouldn’t go to college. I went to college myself. And I, like everyone else who has attended college know that it is much more than simply a place to learn (by the word “college,” I mean a four-year university, usually residential). There are plenty of ways and places to learn that are not college, many of which are less insanely expensive and can grant their students the same results if they have the aptitude and work ethic.
Yet college enrollment is still incredibly widespread. Why is this? There are several reasons, but the reason I’m going to cover for this article is cultural. College is a cultural institution just as much as it is an academic institution. Metalheads are their own culture, and the two do not mix well together. Check out these six reasons why metalheads do not belong in college:
- College exists to reinforce the status quo. Metal exists to destroy the status quo.
Why did your parents tell you to go to college? Why did your high school teachers tell you to go to college? Your guidance counselors? Your coaches? Practically every adult authority in your life as a high school student and before told you you needed to go to college for the same reason: so you can acquire the skills to get a good job with a reputable employer.
That’s right, Mr. Badass Brutal Metalhead, you need to do what everyone else is doing by attending college. There, you will go to your regularly scheduled classes week after week, day after day, attentively listening to your professor and taking notes so you can regurgitate that information onto a final exam at the end of the semester. You will even do this for your general electives you have to take, even if they have nothing to do with your major. This will teach you to be good at listening and following orders, an invaluable skill for when you get that coveted nine to five cubicle job. How metal. But don’t fret too much, you’ll get to occasionally shoot the shit with Craig about the game last night at the water cooler.
- Even when college kids rebel against the status quo, it’s not metal.
Now you may be thinking that last reason was an overly cynical, unfair take on the college experience. “College kids reject the status quo all the time!” you might say. I agree, there are some ways college kids reject the status quo, and that’s not just because most of them remain unemployable even once they get their degree.
Let’s start with the obvious: college isn’t just going to classes and studying in the library. College kids party. College kids party. They drink underage. They engage in illegal drug use. They engage in premarital sex while under the influence of aformentioned alcohol and drugs. They destroy university property. They injure themselves. They injure each other. Hell, a few of them even die each year from partying too hard. Sounds just like a metal concert, right?
WRONG!
Tell me, what kind of music are they playing at these parties? They’re not playing any metal music are they? Even one song? If these parties share so many characteristics of a metal concert, how would the guy in charge of the Spotify playlist react if you requested Slayer? How would everyone else at the party react if you somehow managed to play it? You already know the answer to these questions.
“But Ian, you said metalheads don’t belong in college because of a cultural difference, not just a difference in music. This seems culturally similar to me.”
Okay, Mr. Metalhead: why do you attend metal concerts? You attend metal concerts because you enjoy the music, first and foremost. Even at major festivals like Wacken that are more about the experience than the lineup itself, the “experience” still revolves around metal itself. All the other things you do at the concert that are supposedly similar to college parties (get drunk, injure each other, etc.) are to demonstrate your appreciation of the music.
Now why do you attend college parties? It’s certainly not for the music, even if you like the music they’re playing (I sure hope not). Maybe you like getting drunk or stoned. Fair, but not the main reason you go to college parties. You just use those as an inhibitor for the real reason you go to college parties. It’s the one thing you can do at a college party you absolutely cannot do at a metal concert: have a chance at getting laid.
Don’t try to deny it, that’s why you go to college parties. That’s why any guy goes to college parties. That’s why I went to college parties. Every other aspect of the party (drinking, drugs, intoxicated shenanigans, etc.) are all part of the hilarious and sad song and dance of trying to get laid. No one goes to a metal concert to get laid because they are sausage fests. Even if you were somehow successful at getting one of the three girls at the show to go home with you, you would have to leave the show early, making you a total poseur. Either way I’m still right. College parties are not metal.
- College campuses even accept other subcultures, just not metalhead subculture.
“Okay, I just go to college parties to get laid. But there’s still plenty of alt people in college. Go to any college campus and you’ll see students wearing drug rugs, white people with dreadlocks, people with unnaturally colored hair, and tattoos. If they belong in college, why don’t metalheads?”
Most of those alt people you described are all some sort of hipster variant, who are so common at college campuses these days they’re hardly worth mentioning. Given how it’s a requisite of hipsterdom to be a pretentious know-it-all, it would make sense they’re in college. Much of that knowledge may be useless when it comes to real-world employability, but they teach it in college nonetheless. Don’t get me wrong, metalheads can be pretentious elitists as well; I’m probably one of the worst of them. But I didn’t acquire my wealth of useless metal knowledge from going to college, I learned it from reading stupid metal blogs like this one. Hipsters belong in college, metalheads don’t.
- Even if you’re a metalhead who accepts the status quo, the status quo still won’t accept you.
There is also an undeniable connection between many of these alternative looks you just named and left-wing politics. Those who reject the socially conservative view of how people should present themselves typically reject other forms of conservatism as well. They’re challenging the status quo with their Che Guevara t-shirt, right?
You might be able to make that case for the American culture as a whole, but on a college campus, absolutely not. These so-called fringe radical leftists are very much the norm in college and they have the wholehearted endorsement of their professors, deans, and university presidents. The entire institution of academia is dominated by leftists, and has been for over 70 years, as Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek observes. You’re hardly fighting the status quo when you’re repeating everything the status quo says, regardless of how you dress. And like I said in reason #1, metal exists to destroy the status quo.
“But Ian, what if I’m a left-wing metalhead? Wouldn’t I belong in college then?”
Your politics would belong, your music wouldn’t. Even if some of your favorite bands agree with your feminist studies professor, try repeating some Napalm Death or Cattle Decapitation lyrics in class and see how well that goes over.
- Metalheads don’t even fit in with students that colleges actively demonize.
“Well, if the status quo won’t accept me, maybe I should join a club in college that the administration, gender studies professors, and left-wing students all paint as the bad guys. Maybe I should join a fraternity or sports team they all label as having ‘toxic masculinity’ and other leftist buzzwords. Frats and men’s sports may get a bad reputation on college campuses, but there’s no denying how quintessential they are to college life and campus culture. If I’m going to get hate as a metalhead in college, I may as well join the other hated students. Strength in numbers, right?”
I already covered the primary reason frats and men’s sports teams get bad reputations in reason #2: they party hard so they can get laid, which is not metal. But even if I were to ignore that, you still wouldn’t fit in with them, Mr. Metalhead. Are you even athletic enough to walk on to the team? Extensive mosh pit research leads me to believe the answer is “no.” Even the jacked metalheads I see in the pit have absolutely zero coordination, which is just great when they come careening into me.
So your only choice is to rush. You are now going to be someone’s bitch for at least a week, and your long hair and all black clothing will provide a wealth of hazing opportunities. These are the same guys who bullied you in high school, many of whom were jocks who also couldn’t cut it at the college level. They are absolutely devoted to their frat, and will either stomp anything out of you that makes you look like an outsider or bully you out of pledging. In the former situation, you will no longer be a metalhead. In the latter, the frat boys won’t accept you since you’re not their brother. Just because they have a bad reputation doesn’t make them metal and doesn’t mean you’ll fit in with them.
- Metalheads don’t fit in with students that colleges treat with utter indifference.
“Okay, Ian. Maybe trying to blend in with hipsters, athletes, and frat boys won’t work as a metalhead, but there are other clubs in college that have a lot in common with metalheads. Look at the outing club; they exist to appreciate nature by going hiking and camping, just like plenty of black metal bands do to inspire their lyrics. Even the outing club at your alma mater painted a giant pentagram on the floor of their house.
“Campus culture doesn’t demonize outing clubs like they do frats and men’s sports, they usually just ignore them like they ignore metalheads. Politics wouldn’t be an issue either, since outing clubs have members from across the political spectrum. Progressive hippies join to be ‘one with nature,’ conservative mountain men join so they can do manly outdoorsmen stuff, and apolitical science nerds join so they can identify different species of woodpecker or whatever. Surely metalheads belong in an outing club?”
I’ll admit, this is the best case for metalheads belonging in college. But let me ask you this, Mr. Metalhead, why do most of these black metal bands use nature as inspiration for their lyrics? Is it for any of the same reasons people join the outing club? Not exactly. These bands go into nature to feel a quasi-spiritual connection with their viking ancestors and a sense of, ahem, identitarian pride, to put it lightly. If the other outing club members realize you just joined to LARP as some pagan warrior, the progressive hippies will reject you for being a nazi, the conservative mountain men will reject you for being a heathen, and the apolitical science nerds will reject you for believing pseudoscience nonsense. There goes your best chance of being accepted in an institution of higher learning.
Metalheads do not belong in college.