Gultchy Amore and a group administrator from the Kansas City punk rock group on Facebook managed to piss off the entire KC punk scene. Or, more accurately, a loud little corner of it.

It started with two pictures. One was an AI image I made that riffed on a T.S.O.L. design. I told Jack, the singer of T.S.O.L., about it. He said it wasn’t his design and he didn’t care. The other was a fake flyer for a fake Drug Apostles show at a ridiculous place, with fake bands on the bill. The Drug Apostles don’t play live. That was the joke.

I posted them in a KC punk Facebook group without realizing how strongly some of its DIY crowd felt about AI. They let me know. One person said the work wasn’t fit to wipe their ass with. Fair enough. Nobody has to like a picture. I tried to talk about it, acknowledged their concerns about AI and its environmental cost, and explained that I make my own designs too. These two were something I’d thrown together for a laugh.

The insults kept coming, so I started giving them back. I compared one guy’s image to an unsolicited dick pic. He didn’t appreciate the review. An administrator suspended me.

What that administrator didn’t know was that I’d already talked with the group’s creator, who had offered to make me an administrator. I told her I’d been suspended, waited it out, and came back. Then I got suspended again. She wanted to be fair to everyone, so she didn’t immediately restore my administrator privileges, but she did let me post.

I posted again. The crowd came back again. By then, it felt like hundreds of people were lining up to have a go at me, and I was answering as many as I could. All this over a T-shirt image and a flyer for a show that didn’t exist.

As the argument went on, some people suggested I should have paid somebody to make the flyer. I explained that I’m disabled and live on a fixed income. Paying a designer for a joke flyer wasn’t an option. Apparently that answer wasn’t good enough.

And that was the part I couldn’t get over. I’m doing virtually all of this without help or money. I make the music, the designs, and the rest of the project on my own. I came up in punk when you made your own clothes, your own flyers, and whatever else you needed. I still enjoy doing it and live by it. The Drug Apostles’ motto is “by any means necessary.” I swore I would make this band happen using whatever means I had available.

I understand the arguments about AI, including its environmental impact and the ways people can use it for nefarious reasons. That’s why I use it as little as possible. I’ve used it to make images and flyers as jokes, or to make an image I couldn’t make myself. If you counted up the art connected to the band, AI would amount to a couple of images on the website. I make my own designs too, and I think you can tell the difference. I have way too much ego to pass off AI work as my own art. If I ever put a T-shirt design into print, it’ll be one I made myself.

I also saw some hypocrisy in being told how to do DIY by people who appeared to buy their buttons, patches, and safety pins. I don’t know where every person got everything they wore, but looking at their Facebook pictures, I doubt they made it all themselves. Telling a disabled guy on a fixed income to pay someone else to make his fake flyer is a strange place to draw the DIY line.

Despite all the fighting, the group’s creator thought the joke was funny and had allowed the posts to stay. I eventually took them down because the whole thing had gone far enough. That didn’t end it. People kept passing around my shirt image, asking, “Would you wear this shirt?” That was practically my joke in the first place. Someone put their own band name over my design, so I made a design for them. Suddenly, using somebody else’s image wasn’t so funny.

Then some of them turned on the group’s creator. She had seen me acknowledge my part in the fight, and she didn’t think the pile-on was fair. She paused the group for a week. When it reopened, people started making pictures of her and talking about her by name. She got fed up and shut the group down.

That group had been a useful place for DIY punk in KC. It’s a shame it ended that way. I know I fired back and made the fight bigger. I also know the whole KC punk scene wasn’t involved. It was one group, with a few people who seemed very comfortable dishing it out.

I even got hate mail afterward. I talked with one of the people who sent it, and they changed their mind. They offered to buy me a beer if we ever ran into each other.

I’d still talk to anyone about what happened, as long as they’re willing to talk like people. Until then, the fake show remains canceled, the shirt remains controversial, and another chapter of pissing people off is complete.

sorry not sorry love and kisses,

Gultchy Amore 

Kansas City’s The Fall-Offs have pulled off something remarkable. Their songs sound familiar the first time you hear them. Four tracks of punk rock that know exactly where they came from and seem perfectly happy to stay there. Check them out.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MvNaPMCeEw

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