Despite today's embedded video, I'm not here to examine, ridicule or otherwise dissect The Insane Clown Posse's newest stain on the art of hip hop, "Miracles". Doing so would be fairly redundant. Pointing out all the ways that ICP sucks is akin to pointing out that lemons are tart or that cows sure do moo a lot. The problem is that the video I want to feature today has embedding disabled, so I'm just going to have to link out to it the old-fashioned way. I keep saying that media like Youtube has the potential to connect people as they have never been connected before, to increase our understanding of one another by giving everyone, no matter how isolated, a platform form which to speak uncensored. That's why today's featured citizen is a budding young man calling himself TwiztidAsh.

TwiztidAsh is a teen super-fan of the Horrorcore genre of what I suppose I have to call "music". His love of the genre has gone beyond that of the rank and file Juggalo by embracing not just ICP but other face-painted groups like Twiztid, as our young host's moniker suggests. In "Thoughts on 'Miracles' video", young Mr. Ash does us a great service by providing a downright expository example of what makes a Juggalo and why anyone in their right mind would subject themselves to some of the worst music on the planet.

Let's get one thing out in the open from the get-go: Ash is not an idiot. It would be so much easier if everyone in the Juggalo scene was just some mental deficient who is incapable of discerning good from bad, right from wrong, and paint chips from candy buttons. Sadly, there's something a bit more complex at work in the world of Horrorcore fandom. TwiztidAsh reveals himself to be a reasonably intelligent, thoughtful and sensitive young person, but as his 7+ minute video drags on he reveals the fissures in his still-forming worldview.

Juggalo-ism, like so many subcultures, is informed more by ignorance than abject stupidity. It's not that these people are incapable of enjoying more respectable art or higher thought processes, it's that they're simply not aware of them. Ash spends a couple minutes in his video contemplating the interconnectedness of life by way of the famous Indonesian "Treeman" and the dubious nature of the pharmaceutical industry. He reveals that he believes Dede Kosawa, the Treeman, actually grew bark on his skin and reasons that synthetic medicine has divorced modern people from nature. I'll give Ash a break because he's a kid and he obviously doesn't have anyone in his life who can tell him about Mr. Kosawa's now-diagnosed immune deficiency condition and pervasive HPV infection, or the way modern scientists still use naturally occurring plants to create medicine.

Perhaps (though it's not too terribly likely) a commenter on his Youtube video would have pointed these things out to TwiztidAsh, but alas he has disabled comments just like he disabled embedding. This is the real heart of the troubled, misinformed teens who call themselves Juggalos and Juggalettes. They not only suffer from the same ignorance as the rest of their peers, they also self-impose isolation and exile so that things will never get better for them. Like the Treeman's immunodeficiency, the Horrorcore scene creates the perfect conditions for continued infection. Kids feel angry and ostracized, so they become Juggalos. By dressing like white trash, painting their faces like clowns and listening to awful, awful music, they give the bullies around them all the more reason to be mean to them. So, even though ICP can't stop talking about all the beautiful things in the world, it doesn't change the fact that they need a demographic of perpetually troubled teens to buy their records.

So, to TwiztidAsh and all the other 'los and 'lettes out there, I want you to know that there are better ways to excise your frustrations. Make some art, listen to some good hip hop and forget all the jerks who treat you like crap at school by studying hard enough to get into a good college far away from your disgusting home town.