STILL Fuck The Buried Life.

Sorry, bros.  Still not off my soapbox. 

I want to like The Buried Life.  Okay that’s actually not true, I fucking hate everything about The Buried Life.  But still, when someone forced me to watch it the other night, I legitimately tried to give it a chance.  …for about ten minutes until I told him I thought I was going to be sick.  And I meant it.

Unfortunately for me, I caught enough of the episode to get the gist of it.  As their ‘dare’ or ‘bucket list item’ or whatever you call it, TBLBs attempt to capture a fugitive.  And then as their ‘philanthropic element’, they ‘help’ an unknown band ‘get a record deal’ (superimposed font at the end of the episode tells us the deal is still ‘in progress’).  If you’re mega into masochism and want to see the whole episode, click here.

I’m not going to (re-)criticize the ‘things to do before we die’ part of their mission; if you want to know what I think about the justification of the whole show in the first place, read my original post.  But even my most charitable, devil’s advocating self just cannot hang with this.

No matter how much I hate The Buried Life, I guess I can/should/want to ‘respect’ the ‘charitable’ element of the shower.  However, I can’t even grant them that.  True to form, I’ve made a list:

1. Given the millions, even billions of people in the world in need of charity/help/philanthropy, why a band?  Sure, they’re probably living below the poverty line, but quite intentionally.  Even if music was their life’s greatest passion, there’s no reason they couldn’t work an honest 9 to 5 and then band it up on the weekends. 
2. Best case scenario, indie bands make something like 3 cents a day (cf: this pie chart I don’t feel like re-reading at the moment).  So even if you get them a record deal, have you really ‘helped’ them, or have you just prolonged their slide into eventual unemployment/lament/inevitable meth abuse?
3. They try to get this band a deal by essentially ambushing the president of Interscope or something like that in his office parking lot.  Really?  Like you’re the cast of The Buried Life?  I’m sure you could get a meeting with him via your own reputation/connections.  So why not?

There’s only one answer to Question 3, that to ‘maintain their authenticity’ or some bullshit like that they need to allow things to process ‘organically’/without the aid of MTV.  I’m sure many TBL fans will applaud them for this.  But can we think about this for a second?  That is akin to admitting that preserving your gimmick is more important than helping people.

YOUR GIMMICK IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN HELPING PEOPLE.

Literally, there is nothing else to say about that.

Except:

Fuck The Buried Life.