Should Joe Bonamassa Quit Social Media?

Okay, I was out with my friend Rick Biotto and we were talking about something that happened yesterday. Yes, our friend Joe Bonamassa announced that he is leaving

social

media

. And at the time we're recording this, it seems to be true, so this. comes from a Guitar World article saying that Joe Bonamassa left

social

media

and quoted I'm afraid of being provoked into saying something. I might regret the blues. Ace expressed remorse for allowing him to quote some clowns to get him to come on stage angry in a Now I deleted the Instagram post and you can read the article for more details, but essentially someone appeared on a post Joe had made on Instagram and started to make some really rude comments about her physical appearance and was getting ready to go on stage, yeah, yeah.

It's not a time where you want to be in a negative headspace, you probably don't want to read comments before you go on stage, yeah, but I mean, I'm guilty of it, I've done it. before concerts its interesting on my channel once i had a live stream it was pretty funny actually someone said rick uh the overhead light you need to lose 20 pounds or something the overhead light isn't doing you any Please, I was right, yes. I have recently had comments about my weight. I crashed my bike a little over a year ago. I stopped riding my bike and gained a few pounds and it started showing up in people's comments saying, Oh, you need to. to eat better you need to lose weight you look fat oh now that I see you without a guitar in front of you I didn't realize how fat you were you know really I usually send those comments to red when I read this it brings Increase the conversation about criticism versus hate .

I think that criticism in many cases is and can be a good thing, even if it is not expressed in Good Nature. I can speak from my own personal experience and have been working on YouTube for almost five years. I received a lot of criticism. Frankly, a lot of it is justified and it's things that have made me grow and improve, although right now a lot of the critical comments or critical responses would hurt me. I mean, it hurts to be criticized, especially for your work and something that you put a lot of effort and time into or your perspective or your point of view, but a lot of times when your work is criticized there is an element of Truth there and there can be a point of view. growth in a learning experience, one of the things that for me I've had, I've actually had to engage more in the comments recently because of all the Bots that have been on my channel, yes, and on everyone's channel outside of control, but I usually stopped participating. with the comments from years ago um because Rhett and Aaron uh would say you can't say those things because I used to troll people and I'm like well I'm having fun and you say yes but you can't you can't.

I can't do that you can't do that what gets me and will make me respond or want to respond is when someone tries to make a judgment about who I am or my personality or my motives based on what they saw on a video I have yet to catch me or Tilly He'll tell me no, no, you can't say that, don't do that, stop, don't answer, just ignore it, it's hard, man, it's really really hard, but it's normal. course with what we do, I mean, if you're going to go out and put yourself online and put your work and your opinions and your point of view online, you're going to get this kind of stuff.

I'm worried about friends of mine who want to get on YouTube, I know from experience that the comments section can be pretty treacherous at times depending on what topic you're talking about and I feel sorry for people who aren't used to doing that or don't have I have a thick skin to deal with it because I know some professional musicians, well-known musicians who are off social media because of it because they can't, they can't accept it. Joe is a perfect example and to be honest, I'm not. I blame Joe for taking this stance. I don't think he made the wrong decision.

I think when that kind of thing happens, it can have a negative impact not only on the Creator but on the community at large. I think someone like Joe Bonamassa decides to walk away. of social networks is clearly negative for our community. I agree because Joe is a great educator. I have learned a lot watching Joe Bonamassa. I don't always agree with him. I don't always think he's right, but I think generally the presence of him. and his opinion is clearly positive for the online guitar community. This is interesting because Instagram is different from YouTube and this is particularly an Instagram comment.

I mean, my personal thing is that when people say those things, they're just projecting things onto themselves that I don't like that and I feel bad for them because well, this is really about them. I think a lot of times people leave these comments thinking they'll never see this or they know there's this kind of separation and them. You're just expressing a frustration, but sometimes you read it and it just hits you in the wrong place at the wrong time. I imagine the men's room line at Rick's shows came just for a rushed gig, laughs, that's pretty funny, so he quotes it later in the article.

Joe from the Instagram post said this is not what I signed up for eight years ago. Social media has become a huge distraction for me. This place feels like it has the maturity of a high school and I feel like I'm going to be provoked one day to say something I might regret, so I leave this wonderful place to the influencers and the hotties, enjoy it before it destroys your soul. I'll see you in real life somewhere down the road and in Riverside tonight. Any post about this. The page going forward will not be mine, thank you for the eight years, so it seems to Joe in particular that this is not a positive thing, it is not a positive thing and it seems like this has probably been going on for some time. and this comment was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back, I don't know, but that's what it seems like, one of the things I do when I interview someone, that's when I really look at the comments because I don't want the person I I've interviewed, if you're watching, see some outrageous comments about them, terrible comments about them and I'll just block people when they do those things and, yeah, I did something similar with Shane, the contractor and the builder, who came with the build of the studio before we agreed to do the work together.

I told him, I said, look, I'm going to make videos about this. You will be on the YouTube channel, are you okay with that? He said yes, is his team okay with that? Everyone said yes and I said, look, someone is going to get up there as a quarterback and try to analyze what we did and tell us we're idiots for doing this this way and that way. You know, anyone who knew what they were doing would do something completely different to how we do it and you have to be prepared for that and also realize that they don't have the full picture because if I can't show every single reason behind the decisions that We take for everything and that's why it's very easy for someone to sit behind a keyboard with a random username and say that, well, if you knew what you were doing, you would have done it this way or none of that is true. you're only seeing a small portion of what we're working on in narrative form.

I'm trying to create a story and trying to create an arc that's interesting, so when we put out the video, I'm sure a handful of those comments came in and we talked about it and Shane was super positive about it and was in a really good place, but it can be a lot, especially for someone who's not used to that, that's the word, what we do, I mean. We deal with these things every day, yes, but for someone to just jump into it it can be really overwhelming, you just realize that people can say anything and that's it, but I will say that YouTube is the best platform, No doubt about it.

The best platform, people, I don't even consider it a social media platform. How long do you think it took you to get to the point where you weren't reading all the comments and you can separate yourself from all of them? Those things, well, a lot of them were at the beginning of my channel, when Aaron was working here and he told me that he doesn't respond to comments like that, just don't respond and, um, it makes me look bad if I do that. I blow up people's shops because I write sarcastic responses and all because that's just who I am.

I'm a sarcastic Italian, yes you are the instigating little brother, certain sarcastic Italian, which in a personal setting is just part of your interaction with your friends, but taking that to a public forum like a comments section, yes, it's not Well, it's not appropriate and then you miss the new thing, it's like texting when you text people you can't, sometimes you lose the context of the things that took me, you know? again, I've been doing this almost five years, it probably took me three and a half years, I would say, to get to the point where, like you, I posted a video, read the first few comments to make sure everything was okay.

Well nothing is actually happening you don't have any interruptions in the video or anything like that yeah it's usually when you find these things something happens on loading but after that I have to check it because I was the person for a long time reading all the comments and reading all the things that have had a really negative impact on my mental health in my mood for a long time. Do you think that's because you did a lot of gear and gear demos? reviews and people like to repeat things that they've read elsewhere and they won't agree with you or they'll say things that, oh, you don't know what you're talking about in this, is it really that or whatever that there are certain types of videos who are more prone to those types of comments, yes, people come out of nowhere and are loaded because with that in particular, people's identity is wrapped up in the equipment that they buy and what they play because we spend a lot of time. money on the things you're going to buy a guitar, you may have worked three six nine months to save up and buy that guitar, that is, and it's hard not to wrap part of your identity in the type of guitar you play or the type of the music you like or your favorite musicians or whether or not you believe that wood affects the tone of an electric guitar or not, it's so easy to give up.

I've done it, it's very easy to get carried away, but that's where I think a lot of things come from and I think they also come a lot from the Forum culture, like this kind of back and forth interaction where you only have one name. random user and you can say whatever you want without any consequences spilling over into videos that are about teams and I used to worry a lot about this but long before YouTube I had read about a lot of teams. Pro Audio's forms of equipment were honestly the worst. I never read guitar shapes, but Pro Audio equipment shapes are always your own. you know that every hundred posts you can find something useful, most people just repeat things they have read elsewhere, you know this and they have never done it, they have never had the equipment to read those things well.

It just made me not want to read them because it was just useless information but it's interesting. I've never heard that term forum culture. I mean, I don't know if that's a good description, but it is a good description. Yeah, I just think when it comes to comments and interacting with each other or with people online, there's kind of this pervasive idea that it's like you know you're shooting in the dark and no one is going to read this stuff and that's just not true, I mean we see these things and in Joe's case I mean it led him to take a pretty big step which is to get off social media completely, which again I don't think is the wrong choice for Joe, I think if that's what will alleviate the stress and anxiety that comes with being on social media and he will be happier and better prepared for his concerts and in a better state of mind to make his music than of course. do the right thing for yourself and your family first, but like we've said, I think this is a loss for the guitar community and it came from something that can't necessarily be prevented, we're not going to stop people from, you know, trolling , No.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments section below. Follow Red on his channel here, yes, and follow Rick on his channel. By the way, you have a new video course. Yes, yes, your guitar course for beginners, check it out. okay thanks man