Before I get into the blog post, here are the essential videos to watch:
I decided that I want to start posting my guitar on Youtube, but I’ve been procrastinating doing it. I’m someone who’s extremely shy and introverted, so the thought of putting myself out there for the whole world to see at any time without my control scares me. It scares me out of using this blog. I want to hide away from the world for the rest of my life because I have been rejected and treated poorly for my entire life because of who I am. I don’t want to put myself out there at all, but at the same time I want to be recognised. I want to get feedback and criticism. I want to have people tell me that I’m doing well so I know I’m doing well and not just listening to my own overly self-critical thoughts. Also, I feel selfish keeping everything to myself sometimes, you know? It’s hard because I don’t have friends I can share with and nobody in my family really understands the technical side of the things I do. It either ends up with me ranting to a wall (someone who doesn’t understand anything I’m saying) or mumbling to myself just to get it out.
(I’m realising this makes me sound like a loser. At least I’m not Giacomo Turra right now.)
Anyways! To paraphrase, I’m severely introverted and I know A Lot about A Lot Of Things and that knowledge is sitting in my head. It’s overflowing out into the world against my will. Except nobody is receiving.
One of my worries is that once I start sharing videos of my guitar progress, I’ll feel pressured to play perfectly all the time. If you’ve never experienced the anxiety spiral, then I’ll explain how it will likely go for me:
I record at least 20 takes -> I hate all of them -> I go to post the one I hate the least -> I realise I didn’t record video -> I mime playing along to my own playing -> I post the video -> I’m paranoid about the take -> I rewatch the video obsessively analysing all my mistakes -> I cry because I suck and threaten to quit and sell all my guitars -> I look for approval I will never receive in comments and cry -> I delete my Youtube account.
Rinse and repeat. I did this with Instagram multiple times because I used many different accounts with different niches. My current one is a struggle to keep active because I want to delete it since it’s ugly and inactive. The self-comparison I do with people who 1) are much more experienced than me and 2) are good enough to make money off what they do is completely irrational, yet I do it. It consumes my every thought and pushes me away from the different arts I love. I even stopped writing because I felt like my writing wasn’t as good as this person, or that person because I write how I speak. Scripted and blunt. People who have read my writing say otherwise, but I have Imposter Syndrome. So…
Even if I get past that, now I have to worry about everything I do being stolen, and nobody noticing because… I’m a nobody. Nobody cares about the hard work and effort that goes into creating anything, so they steal it. They know it takes a lot of brain power, skill and effort to do it. Effort they’re not willing to put into the thing they supposedly like so they resort to stealing. Someone else does all the heavy lifting, and they profit. It’s insidious. It’s evil. It’s a genius business model. Minimal effort, high returns. Isn’t that the way it’s meant to be?
Except that’s not what life is meant to be. It’s demoralising to see art be treated this way. In a time where AI is used to replace everything that makes humanity what we are, replacing what differs humans from the other animals on this planet, nobody wants to work anymore. Nobody wants to do anything for the joy of doing it anymore. What makes learning guitar fun is the learning. It’s the effort I put into nailing a song. It’s the hours spent playing the same lead lines until I get them without mistakes, even though my fingers are swelling. Even through the pain. As someone with a disability that affects my fine and gross motor skills, learning guitar is more intensive work for me to do. I don’t get things as fast as I would like because my fingers don’t work the way I would like them to. I don’t write often because I can’t write for long without being in severe physical pain. I quit guitar the first time I picked it up because I couldn’t handle the pain. Now I love it so much that I pushed through it enough so it doesn’t. There’s people who play guitar while missing fingers. There’s people who play guitar while missing a hand. There’s people born with no arms who play guitar. There are people who work full-time and are so mentally exhausted they can do barely anything for themselves, yet they make time to play and get better. There’s people who have been playing for years and can’t figure out anything other than the basic open chords. Yet all these people have a genuine love for their instrument and a bigger backbone than Giacomo Turra.
The pressures of social media force people to perform a version of themselves that will never exist. In recent years, the internet has become a hostile environment in ways it hadn’t been previously. Instead of the loving community with a few bad eggs we were used to, the inclusion of normality and introduction of social standards has taken away the freedom that came with being a person online. People are meaner and more selfish in a post-lockdown world where people pretend that the mass-disabling and deadly virus COVID-19 is just the flu (which also kills people?) but a bit worse. Nobody has enough money to make rent, food and bills. Nobody can afford to do anything more than survive. The climate of the world is unstable, and the average person doesn’t have much hope that it will be fixed within this lifetime. Everyone is miserable, so instead of spreading joy and life, they spread misery because in being bullies, they can pretend they’re not socially inept losers. They are the Mean Girls. They are Regina George. They are desirable, cool, loved, and what they say matters!
I understand why people fake their guitar videos when this is the kind of people after them if they so much as make a mistake. I understand it, but it’s not an excuse. Stealing other people’s intellectual property because you lack the skills to do what they can is lazy. It’s lazy, illegal, and highly immoral to profit off the works of those who you know don’t have as loud a voice as you do. I’ll make another post on AI and it’s negative and positive sides because that’s something I can go into more detail about there, but until then, just know I think the way people use AI is lazy and a waste of the beautiful human brains we were given by God to use. People are so afraid of criticism and harassment that they would rather pretend to be something they’re not than face it head on. Internet losers would rather waste their time and energy harassing strangers instead of doing something with their lives and building themselves up. It’s pathetic on both ends, but moreso on the keyboard warriors. Does it feel good to spend all day in a room, your phone is quiet because nobody reaches out to you except for when people fight you back, your clothes unwashed, your room a mess, day in and day out, doing nothing productive? Instead of using your free will to be a good person, spread joy, spread love, improve the lives of others and yourself, you want to bring others down? Should everyone be a miserable person because you’re miserable? Pathetic.
Overall, I think Giacomo was lazy. I don’t think he did anything he did by accident, or lacking malicious intent, because everything he did was harmful. Targeting small creators so nobody would notice him stealing, selling their hard work as his own, not treating small businesses who sponsor him fairly… extremely darksided and insidious behaviour. There’s no two ways about it, and there is no way that he could make himself out to be an innocent person who repeatedly made the same “mistake” that he promised he would stop. Time and time again, he said he wouldn’t steal anymore. Yet he did it. In the time he has been posting guitar videos on instagram, he could have actually become a solid guitarist who is able to do the stuff he does on insta live! If he put in the hours, the effort, the blood, pain and tears that the people who he stole from put in, then he wouldn’t need to fake his videos and steal from others. Stealing is wrong, and on top of that, he disrespected guitar as an art form. It’s disgusting.
The joy in art is in the process of creation. When you finally improvise that solo that sounds good. When you figure out something new in a key that you like. When you create a melody. Striking that first chord. Being able to do what your guitar heros can do. That’s what is important. That’s why people who suck at guitar keep at it, even though they don’t grow at the rate they would like to. When you put your happiness and satisfaction on the final result, you’re sucking the life out of art. Art is to be creative. You use your head to come up with something and then bring it out into the real world. You turn a thought into something tangible that can be shared with the world and it’s beautiful. It’s amazing. I love all forms of art, and I’ve created different formats of art. I’m terrible at painting and drawing, but I do it anyways. I try my best to write more often, because I love it. I sing and play guitar because I love to recreate and reimagine what I see and hear around me. There’s so much that can be done and figuring things out is one of the most beautiful aspects of art that is undervalued these days.
I don’t want perfectly polished guitar. I don’t want perfectly polished anything. I love when I’m hearing a life performance and there are mistakes here and there, because humasn aren’t perfect. We can never be perfect on our own, and that’s something to be celebrated. In our imperfection, we seem more real. I hope you know that I type out everything I write from my own thoughts and my own thoughts only. It wouldn’t make sense for me to do that considering this is the only place I feel I can be 100% authentic as I hide behind a pseudonym, and I want to share the hidden side of myself. Even if only one person sees it. Even if nobody sees it. The point is that I, with my two hands and my brain, translated the half-baked thoughts that clouded up my brain and brought them into reality. That’s what matters. That’s what is important. I have a voice. I have something I want to say. It’s not perfectly wordered, it’s not poetic, it’s just me. I think if we were all like that instead of chasing an imaginary perfection that can never exist, it would be better.
It would be nice if the guitar world rewarded the simple and open chords players as much as the virtuoso players. It would be nice if those players didn’t feel pressured to play extravagantly all the time, or feel pushed to do more and more things they can’t do. I wish people were kinder to these people, like Ichika Nito and Tim Henson. I love the simplicity of power chords, I love open chords, I love simple riffs. If it sounds good, isn’t that all that matters? If someone worked hard? Giacomo Turra had all the time in the world, all the chances to change, and not once did he do it. Instead he wanted to portray himself as this amazing guitar player, meanwhile his improvisations aren’t even in the right key. There was no need for any of that. Imagine if he documented his journey and progress instead of stealing and pretending to be this amazing stellar guitarist? How did all these Youtube muscians collab with him not be able to tell that he couldn’t play? Would you not know when you met him? Played with him? There’s no way you didn’t know, but he had internet clout and that’s what mattered. There’s no way he was having off-days every day, but whatever. People are attracted to whatever is flashy and satisfies their non-existent attention spans. It pushes more Giacomo Turras, more people who will believe they need to spend a ton of money on expensive equipment and pretend to be a better guitarist than they are… for clicks and views. For validation. Those who work hard deserve support. They deserve respect. They deserve to be given room to grow.
(I think rather than just hating on the guy, Youtubers and other CCs should talk about the issue and why it’s wrong. I also don’t like that people are defending him and/or focusing on insignificant details. Be kind!)
Overall, I think we should value the process more. From the initial thoughts to the finished project, or whatever that final stage is, the art is beautiful because it was made by a person. Even if the recording sucks, or the solo doesn’t match up to the quality of a longtime professional player, or the video sucks, it doesn’t matter. What matters is you did something. We need to value the process more than the end product. Appreciate the little things. Enjoy the growth. Smile even when you mess up. Work hard. There’s nothing that comes by people without effort and hard work, and it’s doable. Some people are gifted in areas, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy it , even if you think you’re painfully average. Don’t you still find it fun? Do it anyways. Learn. Study. Enjoy it.
Perfection is a barrier. Don’t allow it to be a glass ceiling that stops you from reaching the heights you can reach.
