Matt LeMay: evaluation

Transcript context

…Say more. ... for the review I wrote of Liz Phair's self-titled album. I wrote this review when I was 19, when my worldview was toxic, and very much in progress. It was a really condescending, arrogant review, written from a place of unearned condescension and arrogance. Not that condescension and arrogance should necessarily be earned, but it felt righteous at the time, in a way that is dangerous, right? That toxic righteousness where you're like, "I'm fighting something bad." But then you realize that what you're fighting is not actually bad. You're actually punching sideways and down, but you don't have the wherewithal and the maturity to realize that you are not where you think you are, in relation to people and culture, and yourself. So I apologized for that review in 2019, and Liz Phair and I actually had a really nice little Twitter back and forth. This was back when Twitter was still a place where this kind of thing could happen, and it was nice to wrap that up in that way. I still don't feel good about it, because it was playing into some really toxic and hurtful dimensions of discourse. But what can you do, if not look back on it and say, "Yeah, I was wrong. I was just flat-out wrong, and beyond being wrong, I was being a jerk." Somebody posted this, a meme creator on Instagram, posted that review a couple months ago, with a caption, " Matt LeMay, you will be dealt with." And I was like, "Yeah, yeah. If I read that now, I would probably say something pretty similar." So I think, as I said, I'm a conflict averse people pleaser. I went through my kind of edgelord phase. And I don't think it did any good for me, or for anyone else. Wow. That was a much more profound answer than I expected. I can't believe people are still referencing this review from a long time ago. How many years? How ...…

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