The Opinion Nobody Asked For

(I’m reading over this and I notice I switch tenses a lot, probably because I’m tired but also because I’m trying to differentiate between “alleged circumstances”, “what I believe happened”, “things that are true if my suppositions are correct”, blah blah blah.  In short, sorry for the poor grammar.  I hope the internet forgives me.)

TLDR: Mike Lombardo: I think that he did it, in every important sense, and everybody needs to stop blaming the victims.  

Oh hey, I have a tumblr.  And wow, are there are a lot of pictures of nearly nekkid Sherlock Holmes on my feed….

Speaking of inappropriate nudity, I was really going to avoid talking about the Mike Lombardo fiasco (no link provided, as I think the whole internet has heard about this one by now), but I guess… I am anyway, because too many things have been percolating to leave it alone any longer. 

The important questions seem to be:

1. Did he trade naked pictures of himself to his fans?  

2. Were any of those fans underage?

My answers: 1.  Yes, I think he did.  The reason I think so is that people I trust more than Mike Lombardo have told me so.  And for the record, this was not a “I know a guy who said” or “I heard so many rumors about” type of situation.  These are first hand accounts, from two different friends of mine — Mike asked them for dirty pictures of themselves.  

2. This one I don’t know for sure.  Possibly they weren’t, all I’ve got is hearsay.  Maybe every anonymous (and a few non anonymous) poster I’ve seen isn’t telling the truth!  It seems unlikely, but in terms of empirical and/or first hand evidence I don’t have any.  

Here’s the thing though.  I don’t care.  Because just because the girl was of legal age doesn’t mean Mike wasn’t manipulating them.  I’ll let the FBI and the justice system, should it come to that, sort out the legalities.  I already have enough, for my own personal peace of mind, to file anyone who did what Mike is accused of doing as a 1) sad human being who needs serious help or 2) a manipulative jerkass who doesn’t deserve my pity (or probably even the amount of attention it’s taking me to write this post).  

I have a real problem with guys who treat women (or, as appropriate, girls) like toys.  And I believe, pretty solidly, that this was not a case of “guy likes girl, they get up to some shenanigans on the internet” sort of thing.  I would get that, and not have a problem with it (so long as everyone involved could legally consent, obviously).  Intimacy in the age of the internet is a brave new frontier.  We don’t just have phone sex now!  We’ve got video and MMS!  Oh, technology!

But no, this was not that, in my opinion. This was “guy engages multiple girls at one time, possibly/probably while openly dating someone else, and asks them to do a bunch of degrading stuff, and then discards them when he grows bored (ie. almost immediately)”.  

Adding to my I-don’t-give-a-damn-about-this-guy instinct is the fact that (prior assumptions proving true) he was (is, I suppose) lucky enough to have -fans- who admired him for his music, and this is how he repaid them—in the most disrespectful, degrading, manipulative, and just otherwise unethical way possible.  It just makes me think he had no idea how lucky he was and definitely had no respect for his fans.  Not that I’m saying he didn’t work for his success.  He sure as hell didn’t handle it carefully once he had it, though.  

As a musician who thinks it would be totally cool if somebody other than his immediate friends and family gives a damn about his music at some future date, I’m taking this as a master class in “how not to do it”.  The ’70s ended, guys.  Like 30 years ago.  The groupie thing is over, sorry.

There has been talk to the effect of, “but these girls were old enough to know what they were doing”.  

Maybe. I doubt it.  There might have been a few who completely and fully understood what was happening.  We are probably not hearing from them.  Girls that will engage in this kind of behavior are almost by definition inexperienced, lacking self-esteem, and in general just wanting somebody to want them.  In short, they are teenagers.   If Mike is anything like the sensitive and socially aware liberal he likes to appear as on Twitter, and in that one video where he cried all over that internet celebrity, this is something he knows.  And exploited. 

Yes, teenagers sometimes have sex.  Usually with other teenagers.  And usually neither of them have any idea what the hell they are doing (I’m talking in the emotional sense, here), and hopefully they both learn something from it.  

If you were completely worldly wise and sexually experienced at 18, hey, great for you.  You wouldn’t have been fooled, probably.  Not everybody is going to have that benefit.  

The last three paragraphs are perhaps not my original thoughts.  I got most of them by reading things that women have written (some in response to this same issue), because I know that I know absolutely jack about how teenage girls work.  Because teenage girls are humans, there is going to be some variance there.  But for Deus’ sake, if you, like me, are a male in your mid-late 20’s please, please CAREFULLY consider before you make definitive claims that you have any IDEA what the hell a teenage girl in 2010-2012 is/was going through, how “mature” they should be, and so forth.  There’s a just fantastic chance you look stupid. My claim is not so much that I’ve come to any understanding, but that I can’t begin to imagine how difficult it must be for them.

On a final note: Temptation is a harsh mistress. And anyone can fuck up.  Despite what you might be thinking at this point, I don’t really harbor any further ill will for Mike (I’ve just had my long-held position of not having as little as possible to do with him justified).   Even now, I’m sure this is going to show up on a background check and that means that his life is probably near-ruined even if he’s cleared of all charges.  

But sympathy?  Nah.  I just can’t muster any up.

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As a quick note to people who know both Mike and I through the Song Fu/Spintunes/TMA communit(ies):

I broke ties with Mike around a year ago, over an incident in which he said something patently false on Twitter, I pointed it out to him, and he became incredulous (and unfollowed me, basically as a result of disagreement/misunderstanding).  For someone who likes to tweet all the time about how wrong people are, he sure did hate it when someone called him on it.  That is the type of person I generally have little time for.   It wasn’t dislike, just a simple (and basically mutual) decision that we weren’t going to be able to sustain a friendship (not that we ever had one, really… which I guess is kind of the point).

Shortly after this incident was when I heard about the aforementioned friends who had these bad experiences.  That cemented my decision, you might say.  So if anyone had been puzzled at my occasional brief statements to the tune of “I’m don’t dislike Mike, but I’m done with him”, hopefully this fills in a blank or two.