People in Banana Costumes at Hardcore Punk Concerts

what is your take on this vital issue

https://stereogum.com/2501693/end-it-concertgoer-in-banana-costume-tears-hardcore-community-apart/news

C-Man no longer posts so the foremost authority on this topic can not weigh in.

personally i get why people at hardcore concerts would be annoyed at people being "wacky" but when fans get all territorial and aggro against people who aren't causing any real harm, it makes them look like cops. i wouldn't wear a banana costume to a hardcore concert but i also wouldn't listen to a band who got that upset by some jagoff wearing a banana costume at their show. it's not like he was fuckin' abbie hoffman or anything.

WWNWD?

baltimoreans can be pretty aggro

are we sure this guy isn't a character in a Tim Robinson sketch

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HKKeLdxXkAABgvs?format=jpg&name=large

Egg punk vs chain punk turns violent

While, policing what people wear?

i want to say that i don't care, but ultimately i have to side with bananaman unless something surfaces where he was being confrontational etc

aggro punks espousing radical leftism but acting like cops though is a story as old as time tho

can you see the band over the top of the banana costume?

Everyone complaining about this is such a fuckin hall monitor.

You’re laughing. A man’s banana costume is destroyed and you’re laughing.

Gen Z is pretty hall monitor-ish in general compared to millens y/n

hardcore punks once again turning out to be conservatives

This is real "let them fight" territory

One side is bullying and threatening violence and the other side is wearing a banana costume.

Team banana obviously.

“Asking people to destroy a banana costume is violence, actually”

Come on, of course it’s violence

It’s just that in this instance, the violence is kind of funny

^ this

generally I am on team egg punk here tho, the band were being dicks and the venue is pissed as well since the dude was a regular

still a world away from the "beat up the longhairs for real" stuff happening in the early 80s

“Asking people to destroy a banana costume is violence, actually”

― EsBeeKid (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, June 9, 2026 1:28 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Did you miss the "Now everyone here has to kill you"?

I’m in the morally suspect position of agreeing that this attack was wrong but also giggling every time I think about it

You guys sound like the MAGA dudes who claim BLM was “violent” because they burned a car a car or whatever. Destroying a banana costume is not violence.

Watch your fucking mouth

They still have Hardcore punk shows? Fucking losers.

Trashing a banana costume isn’t violence. Getting a load of amped up punks to trash a banana costume while the guy is wearing it looks a lot like violence to me.

pretty much, yeah

The guy standing near the stage at a hardcore show must have been quite surprised when things got a little rowdy!

Post through it, it’s the only thing you know

Fucking loser

People have been trying to dim my sparkle my entire life. It sucks, but I'm used to it.

lol c'mon there's some difference between going to a hardcore show and being part of the camaraderie of smashing into people vs. being the target of the band and the entire audience. For the record I also think it was funny.

i just don't understand how being the guy in the banana costume doesn't lose its novelty after the first 10 minutes, especially if you're going to see music that involves a lot of movement.

if you insist on being the main character, well sometimes bad things happen to the main character

That shit-ass band incited violence against a fan in order to police his clothing before *checks notes* yelling without irony "fuck the police."

And yes, it was violence. Tearing clothing off someone is assault.

Wtf is with all this conformist "main character energy" bullshit being used to justify violence? If someone is being a bit of a dick but not actively bothering anyone, just ignore them.

Guy in a banana suit tripping balls somewhere on the lawn at Dead show: sure, why not.

Guy in a banana suit at a hardcore punk show in a tiny club: gtfoh, dude.

what's punk all about if it's not sticking to a rigidly defined uniform and encouraging violence to any weirdo who breaks ranks?

gtfoh with “violence”

0 people got hurt

Judd Apatow says Will Smith ‘could have killed’ Chris Rock in #Oscars slap. pic.twitter.com/C5Ai06TqrF

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) March 29, 2022

“Asking people to destroy a banana costume is violence, actually”

― EsBeeKid (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, June 9, 2026 10:28 AM

they're just paying tribute to those who came before them

peel slowly and see

thank y'all for bringing the snark to this thread. my friends were all "god how could those people be such dicks" but also i think a lot of my friends think these guys are hardcore punk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-HKqN3WM54

like i feel like it would be unusual if _nobody_ wore a banana costume to a sex machineguns concert

anyway seriously thank you because my brain is hopelessly nuance-pilled and i can't think of a controversy _less_ deserving of nuanced takes than this one.

everyone== he’s a dork but he didn’t deserve that
whiney==dorks get swirlies
kate== ????

Punk is truly dead if you can’t dress up as a Velvet Underground album at a show.

loooooook

honestly i'm on team djp

i'm probably _supposed_ to be on the side of "egg punk", which apparently did _not_ get its name from the way that people who play in egg punk bands tend to look like every fucking egg i have ever seen, but c'mon dude. dude. why the fuck are you gonna dress up like a banana at a hardcore punk show. were you hoping they would invite you up on stage to rap about pizza? i'm in favor of tolerance and diversity and even cringe but look. ian mackaye wouldn't have done anything like the people in this boring band did, but also i can well imagine ian mackaye saying something _completely_ eviscerating about this dude and i'd fucking applaud him for it.

Punk is truly dead if you can’t dress up as a Velvet Underground album at a show.

― The Quaker Gurvitz Army (President Keyes), Tuesday, June 9, 2026 5:45 PM (four minutes ago)

no see this is my point

if this dude was a REAL punk he'd be wearing a penis costume _under_ his banana peel costume

ok it was literally a pink banana but c'mon. it's 2026. wear the fuckin' penis costume.

^^^ the best answer

bananaman obviously a dork who wanted to bait people but the End It guy is 100x dorkier for taking the bait, people used to whip glass bottles & batteries at hardcore singers and this drip is triggered by a polyester banana, absolutely corny af

whether or not its violence its just lame letting a banana run you like that, turn in your hardcore card

The banana that defined a generation

Savage Banana Republic

Whiney what's with your alternative facts? Zero people got hurt? Except in the original Reddit post banana guy was reported to have said he "was beat up and sore." Time to stfu.

Kate I expected better of you. If anyone knows what it's like to be singled out for being different, I'd expect it to be you.

Singled out for intentionally showing up someplace dressed like an annoying dumbass

having a compulsive need to be the center of attention is not "being different" in any kind of form that i can condone

do they have a tiktok?

I'm not defending banana guy. He's an idiot. Doesn't mean he should be assaulted.

But I do have to push back on the "centre of attention" assertion. The guy is a regular at shows in the banana costume. That makes him more like wallpaper than the centre of attention. Further, how is he being the centre of attention when there's a band on a stage that literally everyone is looking at?

The only person who made him the centre of attention was the band.

Y'all are losing your common sense and your humanity over a guy in a banana costume and it's pretty pathetic.

First they came for the bananas

"Further, how is he being the centre of attention when there's a band on a stage that literally everyone is looking at?"

nbd im just a guy in a banana suit please don't pay any attention to me

i tried to get clarification on the height of his banana costume earlier, that might make it hard to see????

i mean it's not like my mechanic who would go to raiders games looking like a gd transformer or whatever

if people start going to hx shows dressed as various fruits, okay, that's fine but why would you wear a banana costume to a public event if you DIDN'T plan on being a distraction?

sorry for all the posts, i don't want to debate this anymore.

if you find that the costume of a member of the audience is too much of a distraction from your hardcore punk band then maybe the problem is on the stage rather than off it

Hardcore is literally about dissolving the line between performer and audience!

WWIMD

we do indeed, like styrofoam, release our poisons

I was rightfully kicked in the back of the knees at several shows before I got the hint that I was too tall to stand in front of

never see a green banana or a brown banana at a hardcore punk show.
just sayin

they are into SOFTCORE PUNK

Kate I expected better of you. If anyone knows what it's like to be singled out for being different, I'd expect it to be you.

― The Ghost Club, Tuesday, June 9, 2026 8:23 PM (yesterday)

i am truly, genuinely sorry to disappoint you

i'm in favor of difference. i'm opposed to fucking lame-ass "punks" calling on the audience to beat the shit out of someone in the audience, even if it's a fucking cop. banana peel man is not a cop.

that said, yes, i do know people who behave different in all sorts of ways. i make a distinction between identity and behavior. i don't see this man as a brave advocate for human diversity. i see him as someone acting like a fucking clown (in the "wacky" sense, not in the "serial killer" or "extremely gay" sense). i do think people should have the right to be fucking clowns in public and not get beaten up for it. i'm also going to be pissed off if i go to... hell, not even a punk rock show. if i go to see, say, the beths, and there's some dude there dressed like a banana peel, i'm not gonna say anything to him, but i'm gonna be like "what the fuck, dude. what the fuck are you doing. why are you dressed as a banana peel."

well, i am gonna talk about this in specifically queer terms, because this _is_ the sort issue i _do_ run into in queer community. am i in favor of, say, kink at pride? hell yes. absolutely. do i think it's necessarily appropriate for someone to walk into a mcdonalds wearing a diaper over their clothes with a binkie in their mouth? no. no, i do not. even if it's _not_ a kink thing, because it _isn't_ necessarily a kink thing. you gotta wear a diaper, wear it _under_ your street clothes. you need a stim, there are plenty of things you can use as stim toys that aren't going to attract attention like a literal pacifier in your mouth.

i understand if that disappoints people. anybody has a right to judge me, and i got a right to judge anyone else. as someone who is singled out for being different, one of the first things i learned to do, basic survival skill, was learn how to _read the fucking room_. that's not to say that he's in any way responsible or that anything he does reflects poorly on "the community" of banana-peel-costume wearers or any of that bullshit. just. dude. what the fuck. why you gotta wear a banana peel costume to a hardcore punk concert. why. i mean of all the hills in the world, this is the one he's like, i will fight and die on this hill? wearing a banana peel to a concert by some hardcore band with sticks up their asses?

bottom line, i respect this guy's right to self-determination, but i'm not gonna invite him to my next movie night, and i'm _certainly_ not gonna suck his dick.

no one asked you to

exactly. so why should he care what i think of his banana costume? why should anyone care?

no reason. i figure if we're talking in hypotheticals, i might as well make it a hypothetical about something i enjoy doing.

Do I have abnormally high banana tolerance or something? I'm not seeing what is so deeply annoying about the banana costume.

If I saw him at a rock show, I would probably think "Hey, that guy is wearing a costume," and then move on with my life.

Lost on the way to the Fruit of Loom fan convention.

this incident is deeply fascinating to me because i feel like it puts two unassailable truths in opposition: 1. making your whole personality wearing a banana costume to concerts is such deeply corny behavior that it deserves to be called out 2. calling out a person in a banana costume from stage and telling the audience to tear it off is not a good idea. i feel like larry david outside of the palestinian chicken restaurant

the guy in the costume has posed to us a fundamental question about life: should we ever be attempting to dim someone's sparkle? should all of us sparkle on uninterrupted to the extent of our hearts' desire?

calling out a person in a banana costume from stage and telling the audience to tear it off is not a good idea.

I mean, it's probably not a *good* idea because someone might get hurt, but in this specific scenario, no one got hurt so I think it's Net Positive.

Play Banana, Get Peeled

if it’s not hurting anybody else

xp

Let's also not forget that maybe a black frontman should be able to sing his songs about fascism and police brutality without some main character drama kid flapping around in "peanut butter jelly time" cosplay, let alone with a bunch of ILXors harrumphing "Why don't you pay attention to what's on the *stage*, sir. Triggered much?"

it's probably not a *good* idea because someone might get hurt

sure but i want to move past the physical aspect and to the emotional part. by dimming this man's sparkle has his life irrevocably changed forever? possibly. is that a good thing? as a hater and critic i say yes, but some could say no, and i'm not sure what my argument back would be except "corny people should be reprimanded for being corny." but why? because they should! but why?

it sort of drills down on a core tenet of my life that is probably indefensible on a moral level but which i am unwilling to relinquish

xxpost I bet a bunch of people left that show wondering if End It like cops or not, since that banana guy totally stepped on their importmant message.

but in this specific scenario, no one got hurt

Why do you keep saying this, dude? He obviously got hurt.

he may have suffered superficial physical injuries but that's not what we're talking about here, really

if someone had peacefully cut off his banana costume w/ scissors and removed it w/o leaving a trace on his body we would still have to approach the deeper question of when it is okay to dim someone's sparkle

He said he was "beat up and sore" and if you've never been beat up and sore after being in the pit of a hardcore show, you're welcome to post on the 7,000 other threads about "main pop girls" and "Rex the Dog" or whatever

sweet jesus

Though I do feel J0rdan on the intricacies of sparkle-dimming

If you can't see the difference between joining a mosh pit and being beaten and stripped by a mob of knuckle draggers I think you should probably join a pre-1980s police force or something

who specifically is the knuckle dragger in this scenario is kinda the heart of the question now isn't it

If you think Taco Bell-endorsed hardcore band End It's crowd is knuckle-draggers then you really need to get to more hardcore shows

on ilx, we are all wearing the banana costume

When I wear the banana costume I carry my AR-15.

Like there's a minor pandemic of "crowd-killing" at deathcore shows right now. Bananaman getting his little peel ripped is getting off incredibly easy

as far as I can tell the banana guy’s only crime was wearing a banana suit. No one’s alleged that he violated the norms of the pit or was otherwise being actively a jerk. if you think otherwise harmless people you personally find annoying should be beat up or publicly reprimanded or something you’re a fucking fascist.

like we’d be having a different conversation if this was “band calls out same sex couple from stage”

I really love that this is now the SECOND post in this thread to equate wearing a banana costume to being trans or queer

bananx

PHIL COLLINS: Here tonight is the man who inspired my next song, "Fat Shithead Clogged My Toilet."
[spotlight tracks me as I head for Exit]

— For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn. (Baby is dead.) (@LeHarrumph) May 17, 2014

some people are annoyed by same sex relationships

yeah i think we can definitively draw a difference between people who wear banana costumes and people who have historically been discriminated against...

as far as I can tell the banana guy’s only crime was wearing a banana suit. No one’s alleged that he violated the norms of the pit or was otherwise being actively a jerk. if you think otherwise harmless people you personally find annoying should be beat up or publicly reprimanded or something you’re a fucking fascist.

― The Immortal Bird of Avon (Boring, Maryland), Wednesday, June 10, 2026 2:31 PM (fourteen seconds ago)

this is really getting to the heart of it. i do think otherwise harmless people i find personally annoying should be publicly reprimanded ... beat up i can't get w/, but reprimanded... i have been that person! now, i have never been that person on stage at a concert i was performing at, however i have definitely thought before about how one of the hardest parts of being a musician would be having to pretend that nobody who shows up to my shows is a massive cornball who should potentially be reprimanded from stage for being corny at my show

where do fursuits fit on the banana costume to LGBTQ+ spectrum

Like Death Grips probably doesn't perform anymore partially because their dipshit fans show up in propeller beanies and lollipops. You need to cut banana guys out at the root.

Another variation of this I've seen is "naked guy"

I met a lot of American punks when I was living in Central Europe and many of them were culturally conservative and judgemental in a way that European punks* were not, they were suspicious of queerness, they hated "techno" (a term they apparently used to refer to all electronic music genres) and I'm positive they would have beaten up anyone wearing a banana costume.

*apart from the nazi skinhead punks, who obvs can all fuck off.

always amused by what hardcore crowds consider normal, being so famous for their unaffected & non-attention-seeking modes of dress. why couldnt he have just worn something less weird, like a piss-stained battle jacket & bullet belt or something

Like Death Grips probably doesn't perform anymore partially because their dipshit fans show up in propeller beanies and lollipops. You need to cut banana guys out at the root.

― EsBeeKid (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, June 10, 2026 2:47 PM (two minutes ago)

for sure. i think something i react extremely negatively to in general is the meme-ification of IRL, people so into meme culture that they dress up in ironic costumes to attend events probably do need to be straightened out, even if by force. this is what i mean when i say i can't locate my own opinion on this topic

If you go see grindcore you can come as a goat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC0oN0BVgZ4

*frank zappa voice* Everybody in this room is wearing a banana costume, and don't kid yourself

probably do need to be straightened out, even if by force.

This is fash casual.

never wore a banana costume but i used to go to DC hardcore shows in my normie work clothes sometimes and people would occasionally give me static. i'd be like yeah dude i'm not gonna go all the way home and change into my special magic outfit and come back, sorry if my shirt doesnt have mickey mouse with a hitler moustache or w/e would make you more comfortable

Like Death Grips probably doesn't perform anymore partially because their dipshit fans show up in propeller beanies and lollipops. You need to cut banana guys out at the root.

― EsBeeKid (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, June 10, 2026 2:47 PM (two minutes ago)

for sure. i think something i react extremely negatively to in general is the meme-ification of IRL, people so into meme culture that they dress up in ironic costumes to attend events probably do need to be straightened out, even if by force. this is what i mean when i say i can't locate my own opinion on this topic

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, June 10, 2026 1:52 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

what if you're so into meme culture and irony that you make the cover of your album an uncensored erect penis

Like Death Grips probably doesn't perform anymore partially because their dipshit fans show up in propeller beanies and lollipops. You need to cut banana guys out at the root.

― EsBeeKid (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, June 10, 2026 2:47 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't know that much about Death Grips - what is the origin of the beanies and such?

tbf even when they were still performing, they sometimes didnt perform

I read this whole thread and then looked up the video, and now my only thought is: are hardcore shows normally that brightly lit?

No, that's the sparkle.

*eminem voice* nobody listens to hardcore

what if you're so into meme culture and irony that you make the cover of your album an uncensored erect penis

― frogbs, Wednesday, June 10, 2026 3:07 PM (ten minutes ago)

irony is one thing, meme culture is another. sometimes they cross over, but not always

all I'm saying is a lot of the biggest dipshits I know are huge into Death Grips in large part because they love being confrontational and they really seem to love showing that album cover to everyone they can

that's just provocation, though, in my estimation. a portion of their fans planning on reddit to show up to the concerts in dumb costumes -- that is meme culture. much different to me, personally

the dick cover art is ironic it was also genuinely transgressive. people dressing up in silly kid costumes to go to concerts and movies and such -- not the same

Seems to me the obvious thing to do would be to simply ignore banana suit guy, but I'm not attuned to the finer points of hxc show etiquette

thankfully it's faded away but the stupid cowbell people really ruined some blue oyster cult shows in the years after that stupid sketch

Moreover, the whole "if we leave banana guy alone it will create a slippery slope that will ruin the scene" argument is even sillier than showing up to a concert dressed as fruit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJZJsKgtbd8

I used to live about a 15 minute walk from this venue, I wouldn't even dress up as an orange or a cluster of grapes on Bloor St.

Things are about to get entertaining — or should I say bananas? — in Toronto as the Banana Bar Crawl makes its way back to the city this September.

After so much success last year — a total of 1,500 people dressed up as bananas took over the downtown bar scene in 2024 — the Banana Bar Crawl is making its return, and if last year's chaos was anything to go by, things are about to get...interesting.

https://blogto-production2-baselayer-display.blogto.com/articles/20250827-banana-bar-crawl-toronto.jpg

Saying people who do things you don't like should be "straightened out, even if by force" is a fucking wild thing to say out loud.

well what i said is that might be true for people who show up to events in stupid costumes as a method of propagating meme culture

is ilx experiencing a banana punk rightward drift?

I too am very annoyed and irritated by people walking around in "look at me! look at me!" costumes but I firmly believe that they do not need to be straightened out by force. Pretty easy line to draw imo.

there was a guy in a banana costume every year i went to fest and even then i couldn't begin to care about whether he was there or not or whether he was wearing a banana costume or not. ok there's a guy in a banana costume. moving on to watching the show i'm here for

the ashtray that Warhol apparently ripped off for the album cover

https://cdn1.dangerousminds.net/uploads/7/images/Ashtrayxxx.jpg

ILX should follow that ashtray's advice.

where do fursuits fit on the banana costume to LGBTQ+ spectrum

people in fursuits come to my shows. they often find the most in-the-corner place to be because they are used to feeling scared in public, but they want to experience the show in their persona. I feel proud when I see one in the middle of the crowd noticing that it's safe at my show. I guess to Whiney this seems soft and unmasculine, and that those people should be given shit, or that if they get it, hey, you showed up in a furry costume? but I don't share that view. I think if they were obstructing other people's view, that'd be another matter, and banana guy really seems like "fuck the people behind me, I gotta wear my banana costume" is part of his deal. if a singer is annoyed by a person's costume my counsel to that singer is remember that you're the entertainment and it's not really your party, but again if there's an obstructing-view issue the singer's within his rights to say "bro. people cannot see past the banana and it is bumming them out."

this concludes my brief remarks on the matter of the banana costume and its tangential relationship to the question of furries at shows.

the only person i ever physically assaulted at a gig based solely on what they were wearing was Georgio the Human Carpet, and that was only because he was hiding on the floor rolled up in a carpet

is there no room for furry critique. could someone on this board not raise concern abt the quality of the public performance -- not that dressing as a banana has no place in our society, but that it is as all gestures are open to aesthetic or socio cultural criticism....

what does the gesture tell us!! is a banana an interesting manifestation of sparkle. does it move the public discourse

is it violence to consider a banana costume a banal expression of a mediocre sensibility

one thing that's kinda funny is that none of this discussion is new to hardcore, at all. "you ain't hardcore cause you spike your hair / if a jock still lives inside your head" (dead kennedys, 1981) but like...now is not then and I don't think the "be how you want" sentiment really won out.

Banana Punks Fuck Off

the only person i ever physically assaulted at a gig based solely on what they were wearing was Georgio the Human Carpet, and that was only because he was hiding on the floor rolled up in a carpet

― waste of compute (One Eye Open), Wednesday, June 10, 2026 2:20 PM (one minute ago)

yeah if there's a line "dude LARPing The Creeping Terror" is pretty damn close to it

jclc that's really sweet of you. the people i know who go to shows in fursuits _aren't_ doing it to be obnoxious or to cause trouble. they're sweet, kind, often shy. wearing fursuits to shows, in my impression, isn't about disrupting or distracting from a show. it's a mark of respect, of trust, of vulnerability, honoring someone who often helped inspire them to be, well, kinder and more accepting of themselves.

i don't really get the impression that "end it" are that kind of band. i'm not saying that as a judgement on banana suit guy.

just lumping this round of bad banana jokes into one post here:

sure but i want to move past the physical aspect and to the emotional part. by dimming this man's sparkle has his life irrevocably changed forever? possibly. is that a good thing? as a hater and critic i say yes, but some could say no, and i'm not sure what my argument back would be except "corny people should be reprimanded for being corny." but why? because they should! but why?

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, June 10, 2026 11:15 AM (three hours ago)

oh, wait, are we talking about cringe discourse? nah you lose me there, i'm strongly pro-cringe. extending "call-out" culture to public wearers of banana peel suits is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over the line.

Another variation of this I've seen is "naked guy"

― EsBeeKid (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, June 10, 2026

can't get behind you there, i'm out in Oregon, we stan Pole Guy round these parts

When I wear the banana costume I carry my AR-15.

― The Quaker Gurvitz Army (President Keyes)

when i hear the word "hardcore" i release the catch on my banana peel costume

I really love that this is now the SECOND post in this thread to equate wearing a banana costume to being trans or queer

― EsBeeKid (Whiney G. Weingarten)

third. if it counts when they do it, it fucking counts when i do it.

You need to cut banana guys out at the root.

― EsBeeKid (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, June 10, 2026 11:47 AM

oi look at harry belafonte over here

Like Death Grips probably doesn't perform anymore partially because their dipshit fans show up in propeller beanies and lollipops.

and thus whiney became an accidental ally of banana suit guy

what if you're so into meme culture and irony that you make the cover of your album an uncensored erect penis

― frogbs, Wednesday, June 10, 2026 12:07 PM

if i had a nickel for every time a guy tried to defend himself by claiming it was an "ironic" dick pic, i'd _still_ have way too many dick pics

like, dudes, i can't suck off a picture. trust me, i've tried.

Moreover, the whole "if we leave banana guy alone it will create a slippery slope that will ruin the scene" argument is even sillier than showing up to a concert dressed as fruit.

― feed me with your chips (zchyrs), Wednesday, June 10, 2026 1:08 PM

what, you've never seen someone slip on a banana peel?

After so much success last year — a total of 1,500 people dressed up as bananas took over the downtown bar scene in 2024 — the Banana Bar Crawl is making its return, and if last year's chaos was anything to go by, things are about to get...interesting.

― The Quaker Gurvitz Army (President Keyes)

is that a real banana or is that a sears banana

Let's also not forget that maybe a black frontman should be able to sing his songs about fascism and police brutality without some main character drama kid flapping around in "peanut butter jelly time" cosplay, let alone with a bunch of ILXors harrumphing "Why don't you pay attention to what's on the *stage*, sir. Triggered much?"

― EsBeeKid (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, June 10, 2026 11:13 AM

ok, breaking kayfabe here, serious post. at the risk of making this a bigger deal than it really needs to be, look, whiney. from one white person to another - this shit isn't cool. you did this with dave chappelle too. nobody's asking for us to fucking play white knight.

are hardcore shows normally that brightly lit?

the kind of hardcore that End It play, yes they often are. iirc it's so you can see who you're crowd killing better, easier to pick someone who's smaller than you

it seems like people in this thread are a bit confused about what sort of band this is - references to battle jackets, bullet belts, chain punk etc. this isn't a leather jackets and spikes band. it's a tough guy hardcore band. people will be wearing sportswear. baggy shorts, baseball caps and shirts and stuff not like "punk" clothes and mohawks

has anyone asked Taco Bell what they think about this yet?

Apparently End It deleted their Facebook page and was dropped from the Hatebreed/Life of Agony tour.

Peel Slowly and Find Out

if this results in people dressing as solidarity bananas that will be so fucking funny

Apparently End It deleted their Facebook page and was dropped from the Hatebreed/Life of Agony tour.

both "seems harsh to me" and "If I'm Hatebreed or LoA any extra drama is very unwelcome"

when I heard Turnstile described as 'hardcore,' I stashed my denim vest in the closet... we had a good run

the kind of hardcore that End It play, yes they often are. iirc it's so you can see who you're crowd killing better, easier to pick someone who's smaller than you

it seems like people in this thread are a bit confused about what sort of band this is - references to battle jackets, bullet belts, chain punk etc. this isn't a leather jackets and spikes band. it's a tough guy hardcore band. people will be wearing sportswear. baggy shorts, baseball caps and shirts and stuff not like "punk" clothes and mohawks

has anyone asked Taco Bell what they think about this yet?

― Colonel Poo, Wednesday, June 10, 2026 6:40 PM (forty-seven minutes ago)

Thanks for answering that. I am not at all familiar with this scene, so the video was genuinely not what I was imagining when I read the stereogum post. The lighting, but yeah also the clothes as you described and the crowd behaviour. Banana guy does stand right at the front (and looks to be fairly tall, but also the stage is pretty elevated so I'm not sure how annoying it would really be, esp given no one at the front is standing and watching) so seems poised for crowd action, but obvs not for what happens.

so reading up on LoA I guess the main guy transitioned and then detransitioned and is now militantly anti-trans? idk anything else about End but if I'm them I'm very happy to be off this tour

wowwww this plot is getting so thick

He said he was glad Donald Trump won the 2024 United States presidential election due to his campaign promise to ban sex reassignment and cross-sex hormones for minors.[41]

so in conclusion the punk band that screamed "free Palestine" is touring with a pro-Trump band??? what is even happening here

Is this music even real hardcore? The bands on this tour seem like some Headbangers Ball guys trying to “go punk”

Life of Agony and Hatebreed are longtimers in the scene.

Wiki describes LoA as "alternative metal" and Hatebreed as "metalcore," and to my ears End It also sound more "metal" to me than "hardcore punk" but I am far from an expert and also my sense of what constitutes hardcore punk is almost entirely informed by the classic '80s groups or else local bands who pretty much sound like that strain

This thread: “This is how hardcore bands should act”

Also this thread: “Who is Hatebreed?”

End It being kicked off a hardcore bill for some bullshit while Life of Agony can call for violence against trans ppl. Something something holding Black ppl to a higher standard. 🙄 https://t.co/eL66m9d7ms

— Raz 🇵🇸🇨🇺🇮🇷🇮🇪📕🔜 AC, MGPLX(?), Furpoc, (@RazLikesRocks) June 11, 2026

Ding ding ding

This thread: “This is how hardcore bands should act”

Also this thread: “Who is Hatebreed?”

― EsBeeKid (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, June 11, 2026 4:43 AM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's almost like there are different posters expressing different viewpoints. Also, go fuck yourself

Fucking loser

― Whatwhawhawhaehawhahwawhawwww (DJP), Tuesday, June 9, 2026 7:07 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

the real crime here was being filmed getting mad at a dude in a banana suit, that's the sort of thing that goes viral on the dead internet these days

don't really agree that the dude was asking for it but shows like this can be kind of a lawless place, prob worse shit going on every day that is not going viral because it doesn't involve a banana man

colonol poo: ftr my chain punk ref was in jest

Frontman previously accused of violence by an ex-girlfriend.

https://i.ibb.co/chV6CQhf/Screenshot-20260611-015931-Facebook.jpg

I'm on team "fuck this", the banana costume thing has been more of a thing at metal shows but while I would certainly cheer on calling on your crew to take out the trash if someone showed up with a sunwheel tattoo or a MAGA hat, this is just a dude being a goof. And he probably was there to see Terror, the headliner, anyway.

If you've never been publicly humiliated or been made a target for hundreds of amped up people to pounce on to where you go into fight or flight mode, it might not make as much sense....but yeah.

I don't really wanna juice up the jock element of the scene, nor a bunch of overstimulated punks being directed to attack and complying via a creepy show of group think. There's a time and place for that, it ain't a guy in a banana costume

"If you've never been publicly humiliated or been made a target for hundreds of amped up people to pounce on to where you go into fight or flight mode, it might not make as much sense....but yeah."

i do agree it makes no sense to wear a banana costume in public if you're trying to not be publically humiliated

also, i am a fucking loser!

nobody here is actually in favor of phyiscally harming this banana man, get a fucking grip

Also Whiney as a dude that likes you, you're using cheap devices to try to win this debate on moral grounds when it's clear you really just liked a goofy dude getting clowned.

Like the Caputo heel turn is something I've been following for a while. It's heartbreaking and gross. I don't think anybody itt is suggesting Bananabeatdown 2026 is as bad in scope as Keith betraying and selling out his trans audience. And they should have received blowback from it that instead of being allowed to more or less tour business as usual with heavies like Jasta/Hatebreed.

But the reason they ain't getting booted off this tour is *it's their co-headlining tour*, am fairly sure Jasta was already aware of the controversy when he booked the tour and it wasn't enough to get him to nix it, which is disappointing in and of itself.

It's a bit of a weird gotcha to pull itt too because, like with Hatebreed, one could also be asking why a hardcore punk band like End It preaching inclusion would voluntarily accept a gig opening for LoA (unless they simply weren't aware). Yea, LoA shouldn't have the gig, but why did you sign onto it to begin with? Bands are boycotted in the punk scene for far less.

Also LoA being allowed to perform or not has no bearing on whether it's cool to target an audience member with violence (which i know you insist didn't happen). Both things can be wrong.

The other thing? This wasn't their show, they weren't even the opener directly before the headliner (Terror). When you're invited on a tour by a hardcore band, generally they're going to expect you to not harass or alienate their fans unless you have a good reason (i.e. BEING A NAZI, preferring the wrong Husker Du album).

I have no idea how Terror feels on the matter, being macho jock hardcore, they probably found it funny. But other bands see that as a liability.

Just because the guy and his band have opinions I agree with on police, fascism, and Palestine doesn't mean nobody should call them out for shit behavior.

This will wind up being a barely remembered footnote a year from now and End It will eventually be able to move on from it, possibly even for the better with the extra notoriety they got from it. The problem with the internet is every controversy gets biggerabd stupider than it should because everyone is "too online" in the post-COVID times world.

brimstead, as someone who likes you...fucking cool it

Also for those speculating on the nature of his injuries, like...why does it matter. If you see someone get slapped on the street for doing nothing at all, do you shrug and say "aw who cares, it doesn't look like it hurt much".

Like I got crowdkilled at a Nails show once where I got both punched and kicked in the stomach by some asshole in quick succession by no one near the pit, nothing resulting in more than short term soreness, but it ruined the show for me and I left early as a result. It isn't fun.

Also everyone being weird about hos outlandish the behavior is, maybe it's because I'm a metal guy and go to a lot of festivals but I've seen people come dressed as:

-Jesus
-chickens
-bananas
-dinosaurs

Hardcore is a different scene, esp this brand, but given how many Hardcore kids I know who spend an hour working on their Mohawk, deciding between which of their three obscure Hardcore tshirts will make them look l33t, and deciding on accessories, all while practicing their spin kicks in front of a mirror. the whole base needs to get over themselves.

This is real "we're a culture, not a costume!" energy

(And with that I've just "firmly taken a side in the internet controversy of the moment " after saying i wouldn't do it so...hooray)

What if banana guy was doing a racism all along

I have been wanting to make that point this entire thread. Bananas being chucked at black people (especially at football matches) is canon British racism

It could even be argued that pointedly wearing a banana suit right in front of a band with a black frontman is implicitly racist due to this 'tradition' and my guess is that said frontman saw it that way and responded accordingly

Serious: imago, that occured to me yesterday. Surprised I haven't seen the idea in any online discourse about the incident.

Also serious: WGW, what if the guy had been wearing a Kool-Aid Man costume?

I thought I heard that dude was a regular at the venue who wore a banana suit all the time

Yes, the guy is a regular at the club, and known for his banananantics. But I think imago's point is that, as a musician passing through, it's possible that the End It singer wasn't aware of that. And as a black musician who sings about racism, could have interpretted it as racist taunting a la Italian soccer fans.

I'm just going off of what the frontman said in the clip, but I don't see any evidence that this is how he was interpreting the banana costume.

Neanderthal brutally otm once again

ime an unaddressed dynamic in these spaces is that a lot of macho jock type hc guys hate cops bc they themselves are bad guys

I am certainly not going to speak for all Black people in North America, but I will say from my specific Black North American perspective I would not expect a Black man fromBaltimore to see a man in Toronto dressed up in a banana costume and immediately jump to “this is a racist attack”

Even if that did come up, I would not be surprised if it was subsumed by “this is so stupid”; dressing up as a banana to racially taunt someone falls squarely into my “is that really the best you’ve got” zone and I feel like that can’t be a uniquely me reaction

more details I found on Life of Agony if you needed more context on Neando's post as I did

https://www.reddit.com/r/Hardcore/s/HMAf5Gdv3C

wrt Life of Agony and trans fans

I have been wanting to make that point this entire thread. Bananas being chucked at black people (especially at football matches) is canon British racism

― imago, Thursday, June 11, 2026 5:45 AM bookmarkflaglink

That's a bit of a reach. For one, they weren't even a headliner, they were like the third opener, seems a bit weird to wear a costume for an entire show to insult one guy in one specific band.

It's also not even clear whether banana guy was aware of who End It were before the show, and people dressing as bananas is just "a thing" - they did it at a Primus show here once.

Additionally the band's comments didn't address this and seemed focused on him seeking attention.

Great posts up there Neando, think that's all there is to be said IMO

xpost Also quite a difference between wearing a costume and throwing things at people.

Fair enough. Felt it was worth noting as a potential factor, but feels tangential here yes

On one of the 3000 Reddit threads about this, one of the posters pointed out that the bass player, AJ Hoenings, who basically directed the crowd against another banana costumed person weeks earlier when he played in No Pressure, though not in as hostile a fashion. He's white.

He deserves more share of the blame rather than just the frontman taking the hit, since he was the one who gave the directive to beat on the guy. And that's a fair callout...

the funniest part is they have basically guaranteed they are going to see banana suits in their crowds for the rest of their career

lol

time for the band to accept the inevitable and don banana suits themselves

sonned by a canadian in a banana beef... tragic

This might have a chilling effect on bananas

lol OEO

Can we turn this into a Ralph debate somehow?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m1h0Hf5uMs

Wait til they start having hen FAPs at shows

https://scontent-lhr11-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/720227290_10238633704318679_2244219543020615494_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_tt6&cstp=mx720x523&ctp=s720x523&_nc_cat=111&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=aa7b47&_nc_ohc=lrgjxRkI74YQ7kNvwEWllOR&_nc_oc=AdrSGpGqyDIK9hryyfYj_Ac2Q87bQ9CuHCLR7xKNC1g-4zZClTc5tNtgWP6m_PyvAG_ycqv7N7z8ADnrlH9grJ6q&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-lhr11-1.xx&_nc_gid=idNy_Vm6UCvlaE6UsvGQyQ&_nc_ss=7b2a8&oh=00_Af9KC1osmdWAnXTNh0r-T0o9puOBccn2bQzkGUmB0AQjVA&oe=6A3095BC

Four banana, three banana, two banana, one
All bananas playing in the bright warm sun
Flipping like a pancake, popping like a cork
Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and Snork

Won’t somebody think about the sanctity of meme culture?!

An incredible coincidence I don't see anyone mentioning in the media is that my user name comes from a woman who dressed as a pickle

halfway bravely risking getting crowdkilled by whiney

the imago posts in this thread are absolutely incredible. restoring old ilx feeling

my friend is a guitar tech for bands and was on a tour that sebastian bach was on

he was walking backstage and sebastian's dressing room door was open and he was shirtless, looking at how his ass looked in leather pants and screaming along to hatebreed at top volume

just felt like that anecdote belongs on this thread

Fwiw Hatebreed is actually a good example of the the scene's short memory and the ability to move on from controversy. The Chris Bickel incident in the 90s, where he wrote an article criticizing Victory Records and the entire band surrounded him in public, threatening him amd tossing every homophobic slurs known to man at him, then after Chris called them homophobes, Jasta left a death threat where he stated proudly he was a homophobe. It's why for years I refused to even sample their music or go to a show that had them on it.

From what I've heard, including from Bickel himself, Jasta's changed completely since those old days and he uses his platform and calls out transphobia and homophobia regularly, and that incident was far worse than Bananarama 2026, which will probably be forgotten as soon as a brawl breaks out at a beatdown show when someone shows up wearing suspenders and a dickie.

Someone on FB today posted a July 1994 schedule from the club I used to hang out at, and I realize that I probably did attend a LOA show back then.

Whitfield Crane if Ugly Kid Joe was briefly the singer but didn't appear on any albums

okay that's a fun fact

Still some live footage from the era he replaced Crane. He actually acquitted himself pretty well

*replaced CAPUTO

well i just discovered this thread, somehow. wonders never cease.

what's the best costume you saw during your DJ gig time?

(or the most annoying)

There’s a joke somewhere here about the debate that would break out if olivia rodrigo wears a banana suit in her next video

i can well imagine ian mackaye saying something _completely_ eviscerating about this dude and i'd fucking applaud him for it.

I saw you eating a banana split, pal. Don't deny it! Banana split-eating motherfucker that's what you are!

Unforgettable

the thing in all this that is interesting to me, that's sort of more general, is that the banana guy is bringing a note of levity & silliness to a scene that collectively doesn't really want that. it's fair to say of that scene that it's very self-serious and uniform and intolerant of deviation, but that's also something the scene has long known about itself and doesn't seek to change. a hardcore show is a place to be Like This, it's a group exercise in being Like This. when Mr Funny Guy insists that we're also being funny tonight, it's an imposition: it harshes the vibe, takes the wind out of the sails, and you can't really just tune out Mr Funny Guy, he has worn a big suit specifically so that he can be part of your night. now, you can say "if your vibe is so rigid then it needs to be fucked with some," and fair enough, but it's maybe a useful exercise to ask: does a communal space (which a hardcore show is; yes, anyone can buy a ticket, but usually, it's people who are into hardcore who buy those tickets) have a legit grievance if people decide unilaterally to reject its norms? how can they air that grievance? not by ripping off somebody's clothes, imo, but really this becomes a problem of scale. if banana guy does this at a Rites of Spring show during revolution summer he would never forget the half hour lecture he got from some rando after about how it felt like he was making fun of something beautiful, and next time he thinks "the fun of the suit was really not worth having to tough out the lecture."

I've been reading hardcore fans fight each other on this and came across this take, which generated a 300 post argument between old and new guard:

"Hardcore was built on violence.

If you have a problem with that, maybe this just ain’t for you?

All you kids that got here through Turnsitle, Knocked Loose, and Drug Church…. We are happy to have yall, but to act like things should change to make you feel more welcome and safe is honestly a laughable take.

You use to get jumped for dancing funny, you’d get jumped for looking like ya didn’t fit in, you’d get jumped for wearing trip pants.

We’ve come a long way.

But the line has to be drawn somewhere.

And apparently that line is Bananas 🤷‍♂️"

and in a separate post, he lamented how what he deemed genre tourists were disrespecting the scene he helped create, etc.

But this wasn't some hardcore OG who saw Bad Brains shows at the height of their chaos or threw elbows at Government Issue shows, this was a guy in his 30s who was a kid when like 90s hardcore was taking off.

There were several on his side (including one Groyper, which is what made me leave the discussion), but almost all of them were talking about hardcore as the beatdown/toughguy core was the 'default version', the Genesis.

Much of the OG crew or the people between his age and the OG crew pushed back, though there were some OGs who concurred, but the OP and his cronies weren't really interested in talking about the late 70s/80s origins of the genre despite multiple attempts to take that conversation there.

Then I went on Reddit and found that r/punk and r/hardcore really do not linked each other and frequently take potshots at each other.

Which made me wonder, is there a version of the hardcore scene that considers what hardcore is now to be completely decoupled from what was called hardcore in the 80s, i.e. that they're not the same and that any throughlines are coincidental?

From my perusing of r/hardcore and r/punk, i found a lot more homophobia, ableist slurs and apolitical and/or right-wing political content in r/hardcore than I did r/punk...and a lot of snickering that r/punk was too woke/boomery.

I'm also aware we tend to Golden Age the origins of hardcore punk and pretend that homophobia (or hell, Nazi infiltration) didn't exist at all in the scene when of course it wasn't all a singular, unified scene, scenes in different cities were all different.

It just seemed weird like there's this faction of the hardcore scene that more or less considers 80s hardcore to not be where the scene started, that they're called the same thing but aren't the same thing (i.e. "hardcore punk" vs "pure hardcore")

I own a lot of punk and hardcore albums but I've never been part of the scene and don't profess to have a deep knowledge of these things (metal is my gatekeeping arena)

*do not LIKE each other

It’s true but it’s also not that uncommon in scenes, see also “dubstep”

xxp Neanderthal that was kind of what I was getting at with my post upthread about this - this is a "hardcore" band not a "hardcore punk" band. there are people on r/hardcore who try to remind people that hardcore is short for hardcore punk but yes that subreddit is mostly full of people who only like beatdown hardcore and metalcore (original definition) - I do like some of that stuff but not so much some of the attitudes that come with it. those guys usually think hardcore started with Agnostic Front.

I don't really get on with r/hardcore or r/punk, I got fed up with the latter because it's so repetitive, endless posts about how the Sex Pistols were a boy band, and they mostly only talk about the bigger bands from the 70s or Fat Wreck Chords type shit. r/hardcorepunk is much more my kind of thing but it's quiet.

He might find more acceptance on Paul Weller's next tour

Thanks Colonel, that was helpful

TSOL was sort of a precursor to this mindset. In John Doe's oral history of the LA scene, Jack Grishmam says something like "asking me about songs is like asking me about which brick I threw through a window", he was very adamant that the punk scene was an outlet for his own violence and sociopathic behavior and the music was just what you had to do to be a part of it.

So in some senses, I think the hardcore was founded on violence guy isn't totally wrong.

hardcore was not founded on violence

like idk there’s a reason most of the major architects of the scene changed their music so the scene would shift away from violence. i don’t think violence is part of its soul. it’s a response some people have

it’s ironic the ice cream eating motherfucker monologue got brought up because that was about a guy who was being too violent to the people around him

“hardcore was founded on violence” also sounds like some boys club shit. i know some women can be ruthless in the pit, but still

I imagine it doesn't matter what people who were into hardcore in the 80s/early 90s think about the HC scene today. I doubt a large number of the folks who were at Fugazi shows with me in 1990 are still jumping into mosh pits weekly.

ok yeah that’s true but “hardcore was founded on violence” is still wrong to me

i can only scan this thread at this point and my only thought is that everyone should show up to the parts and labor shows this summer in banana suits

“hardcore was founded on violence” “hardcore was founded on breakdowns” “hardcore was founded on really stupid looking dance moves”

who looks more ridiculous at hardcore shows, a guy in a banana suit or slamdancers

Has anyone considered the dangers of banana peels in the moshpit?

“hardcore was founded on violence” also sounds like some boys club shit. i know some women can be ruthless in the pit, but still

― ivy., Friday, June 12, 2026 9:49 AM (thirty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

hey ivy i should have provided more context, so really a major theme of that John Doe book (made up of individual chapters written by people who were in the scene: Doe, Jane Weiland, Chris D., Watt, El Vez etc), and really the main theme was the original Hollywood scene of punk was far more arty, more female, more multi-racial that was sort of ended by the hardcore scene and bands like TSOL (who really did seem to move as a youth gang)....the real "hinge" bands were Black Flag and Germs who were friends with and admired by the Hollywood bands but started it moving to a much more violent, more macho, more white male thing.

So when I made that comment I was trying to tie back to what Neanderthal was saying, that there was a strong element in hardcore even as early as then where being a venue for young males to act out violence or a least a kabuki of violence was really inherent to the whole thing, as much in a lot of cases as the music.

I remember going to a place called the Bomb Shelter on Lake Street when I first started going to see bands in Minneapolis and the guys were out on the outside of the pit just punching people and throwing them back in the pit if they tried to get out. I did not like it at all and never went back.

to be clear, this is not my idea of punk or hardcore and I don't really like anything that's descended from NYHC or the whole Cro Mags, Harley Flanagan tough guy shit. But in terms of End It or Hatebreed or whoever, I do think it might be smart and Neando said to realize it has very little to do with whatever I think of as punk.

it’s ironic the ice cream eating motherfucker monologue got brought up because that was about a guy who was being too violent to the people around him

― ivy., Friday, June 12, 2026 9:46 AM (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is also a great point I was going to talk about and forgot but Fugazi was really active in trying to protect people at their show from this type of shit.

re schism between hardcore and punk - Sam McPheeters (Born Against) talks about this in his book Mutations - he went to see Youth Of Today support GBH in about 1987, and Ray Cappo launched into an on stage rant denouncing punk rock, and sees this as the point where hardcore began to see itself as something separate to punk. he says this also brought in a load of conservative attitudes to the scene

Also Hare Krishna attitudes

well yeah. I do like 108 but that's despite of that

oh yeah i totally agree with that ums!!!

and i’d also think i’d characterize my experience at good, recent modern hardcore shows as one of “positive aggression.” “take care of your people in the pit” etc.

I still remember this asshole going to an Obituary show in 2015 and trying to crowdkill the front row for a solid half hour, including a woman who had screamed to knock it off. my friend grabbed him with one hand and threw him to the ground.

No punches, no fight afterwards, nothing other just showing the aggressor enough humiliation that he got the fuck out of dodge and left everyone alone.

I also recall an Incantation show where people were launching full, 20 pound steel reinforced bar stools at each other in the pit. Amazed nobody was hit in the head

I got headbutted once at a Cannibal Corpse show and a big muscular guy pulled me to safety. In my youthful naivety I went to go back into the pit and I felt his hand on my shoulder pulling me back, wagging his finger at me acting as my protector

Then Whitney Houston "I Will Always Love You" came on

aren't Incantation a panpipes band?

Ray Cappo launched into an on stage rant denouncing punk rock

ha I remember thinking all the bullet belt/liberty spike bands were total poseur has-beens back then... and then Rancid brought all that shit back

I think its interesting that at least according to banana guy's post, his motivation for wearing the suit isn't to fuck with the vibe or tweak the over-serious sensibilities of uptight hc guys, but as a kind of safety signal to first-time or non-veteran showgoers that he's not a toughguy, the idea that someone can spot him and quickly discern that he's probably not going to suckerpunch you or kick your knees out. Now, he might be spinning to make himself look good and/or he might not be entirely self-aware about his own motivations, but still an interesting detail imo.

I know folks that have suffered life-changing injuries at hc shows, not from tragic-accident type stuff but from intentional acts that in any other context would earn the perpetrator an easy 7-10 years, and the amount of "condolences but what do you expect at hardcore show, stay home if you cant handle it" type responses from the community eventually made me pretty much never want to be in a hc crowd again. The inevitable debates about what this or that band, behavior, or type of fan have to do with the nature of punk or the ideals of hardcore always end up in academic "no true Scotsman" territory for me

>i can well imagine ian mackaye saying something _completely_ eviscerating about this dude and i'd fucking applaud him for it.
oh absolutely. Have you listened to Fugazi live shows or seen them live? Ian has no problem picking fights with the audience about lesser stuff than this.

I think calling him out was a bit far especially when he's a valued local but I also totally get an artist being frustrated with how endlessly ironic and meme-y shows have to be nowadays. We were all so stoked on the Death Grips return to touring and then it got ruined because the fans wouldn't stop showing up in banana costumes or propellor hats and throwing glowsticks on stage and the guys got fed up and re-retired. I'm sure that, to guys who take their craft really seriously, people showing up and making such a joke of it felt like a real slap in the face. I don't find it particularly surprising that a hardcore band would also take it that seriously.

yeah, there's absolutely something pernicious about this particular sort of obvious memeing that goes well beyond innocent whimsy, it's one short leap from this to dicks out for harambe style trumpjugend pageantry, even if it isn't directly racist it's a sort of bad-wacky irony poisoning that i fucking detest on instinct and i'm really surprised the thread has defended the banana guy so staunchly, if i saw him at a gig dressed like that i wouldn't attack him personally but any non-physically-injurious comeuppance he received would be inwardly or perhaps even outwardly cheered, world doesn't need cunts like that imposing their own moronic and almost certainly disgusting narrative onto others' art

perhaps i go too far - perhaps the guy isn't actually a horrible person with disgusting politics - but he's playing with the same aesthetics that the new right are, with absolutely no sense of deconstructive or personalised remove, and that makes him a fellow traveller in my book. it's probably he's just an idiot. 'dim my sparkle' lol fuck off

corollary to all of the above: i am a bit of a prick tbf

don't put yourself down, you're doing all you can to fight the rise of fascism, rolling your eyes at people in costumes at gigs

You are really reaching here. Lame or not, the banana costume thing pre-dates the existence of the alt-right significantly and has more to do with goofy cosplay than anything pernicious. It's no different than the guy I used to see at Maryland Deathfest who was dressed as a chicken.

It's just that this particular hardcore scene is a bit hyperserious, gatekeepy, and attracts an element of toxic masculinity to their shows.

Perhaps most telling to me was watching where the cheering was coming from regarding banana beatdown in hardcore discussion group threads. Alt-right kids, "anti-commies", people who use homophobic slurs, misogynists and people mock safe spaces were some of the loudest voices.

I'm not one of those "guilt by association" guys when it comes to the spectrum of views on a topic and I'm not saying by any means that there weren't also people who objected on your grounds or more neutral reasoning, but just saying many of the people I described regularly go to shows and are really not the type you want hearing someone on stage issuing an attack command.

A lot of this version of hardcore isn't even particularly political, End It were probably the anomaly of the lineup from what I can see. And there's a heavy NYHC influence in this scene and that was a scene that was more right wing than other hardcore.

So alls I'm saying is have a chuckle at banana guy if you want, but I'm much more concerned about the idea of weaponizing some of the scenes less stable fans, even if this time it resulted in a shredded costume and some soreness at worst

I guess I don't really know the scene that well, and none of this reflects well on anyone involved really. Including me, so I'll be off