Gatekeeping can be a pretty tricky concept. On one hand, you want to share a great thing with as many people as possible. On the other hand, though, people are liable to ruin it in a variety of different ways. Consequently, they enjoy it quietly to themselves and become gatekeepers.
With music, this can be a good and a bad thing. If an artist like Tyler, the Creator has a devoted enough fanbase, they can succeed. However, other artists might get stuck and never grow to bigger heights because they don’t have enough support.
Tyler, in particular, doesn’t mind gatekeeping in the slightest. In fact, he encourages more people to be okay with FOMO and be content in their bubbles. In an interview with The Cut, he stressed that it’s okay to be left out.
Tyler, the Creator Encourages Gatekeeping… just Not With Music
“Love gatekeeping. Everything is not for everyone, and that’s okay. People have to stop wanting to be invited into everything,” Tyler, the Creator said. “It’s okay to not be into something, bro. It’s cool, it’s chill.”
When it came to music, he was a little looser with the concept of gatekeeping. But he noted how influencers will share something on TikTok and will cause regulars to get priced out, or sold out, of what they love.
“Certain restaurants that some people really love can get f***ed up because someone makes a TikTok and now everything is sold out. This small thing they loved and enjoyed is no longer available for them to enjoy because everyone wants in on this new thing to feel like they’re part of something. That’s when I’m like, no, f*** that, gatekeep your restaurant,” Tyler, the Creator stressed.
Everyone doesn’t need to know everything about you, as Tyler sees it
So, how do you combat people pressing you for information? When you share something amazing online, what do you do when someone asks about it? Tyler, the Creator emphasized extreme boundaries between them and the things you love.
Ultimately, he believed that not everyone can pull it off, so why force it? “When people are like, Where’d you get that from? We good. ID on Tyler’s so and so? No, we good. Let me have my thing; you might not look that fire in it.”
All of it stems from his love for individualism. All he could want is for people to be themselves, just like how he is with his sense of fashion. “There are people who hate how I dress, but I don’t ever want to look like them because they’re dusty to me,” Tyler, the Creator added. “So what they say does not matter, and I’m happy they have their opinion.”
The post ‘Everything Is Dead’: Why Tyler, the Creator Is Fine With Gatekeeping (And Why the Gate Doesn’t Even Faze Him) appeared first on VICE.
