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when u manage to land a gig , even if you bomb, hand out custom bottle openers, stickers, or business cards if need be. (preferably the former, something that isn’t easy to throw out. but IS easy to pocket or add to a keyring.) make sure nobody leaves the venue without a piece of you - this method helps me hack my crippling social anxiety. the pretense of a gift or offering acts as a shield in the face of dread and uncertainty, allowing me to approach people in a way which often feels impossible.
this is inevitably not viable for a lot of creatives. you are taking a net loss in the hopes of creating a personally memorable moment for the people in your scene.
you could call it a percbuddy psyop, but i also see it as proactive realness.
May 28, 2025
Related Recs
local music scenes often suck because everyones trying to sell you something. A band is trying to get tiktok famous, a promoter is trying to make money, clout has poisoned the well that art drinks from.
Just find a spot, ask friends to bring amps and drums, tell everyone to get there at 7 and listen to your buddies play music. literally anyone can do it. it can be alot to manage and be responsible for but its worth it
May 14, 2025
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the best concerts i've been to alone are ones where i accidentally made temporary friends. i know the anxiety defeats this rec a little bit (i usually am in & out silently when i go to shows alone, so this is rare) but i recently went to a show by myself and made a few friends in line and it made the experience so much more enjoyable. sometimes the anxiety stems from feeling like ur standing/staring in a place where u feel totally isolated as if u dont belong there, but learning even the bare minimum about the ppl around u can sometimes eliminate that. talking to strangers is hard all the time but the lucky thing about concerts is that u definitely have at least 1 thing in common :) butt into some conversations. compliment someone's outfit. it gives u someone to vibe with/talk to for a few minutes or hours and then, if u want, u can disappear and never see them again!
Mar 3, 2024
show up to a local ass show for a band/artist/dj you barely know, if at all. bring a little sketchbook and have fun! you get practice drawing movement (while moving) and interesting lighting (while under interesting lighting). for a moment you might feel dumb, but if you own it, then people might start coming up to you and telling you you’re sooo cool.
these are some of my sketches from something in the way fest in boston, i went in only really knowing the bigger bands and had so much fun moshing & sketching the openers
Apr 2, 2025
Top Recs from @percbuddy
content warning, i’ve never talked about this online.
Percbuddy is a chaotic avatar of cathartic self-expression and an intravenous connection to the internet.
“wanna be my perc buddy?” was a question given to Ethan Cooper by a young woman after a group rehab meeting in 2019, and it was the catalyst for my adoption of the name Percbuddy. I co-opted this name to create a character through which i gained the confidence to experiment with genre and songwriting.
two weeks before i planned to visit him In late 2022, Ethan had his life taken by a fake pill, reduced to a statistic in the nebulous “fentanyl crisis” when we were both 18.
He was a creative beam of light who inspired me endlessly- He gave me the name and was always my biggest supporter. It turned my life upside down, but it also gave so much more weight to Percbuddy and what it represented.
it’s difficult to articulate the feeling of the sudden and permanent absence of my best friend. it was a violent rug pull, and i lost all vision of my future.
the desire to completely destroy myself had never been more intense than at this point, but it somehow also never held less power over me. half of me begged to be snuffed out, while the other half clung onto life harder than ever before.
all i can do is live, and hope he can see me wherever he is, which is tough when the brightest light in my life was taken so young, giving me a million reasons to hate whatever higher power would be careless enough to let him die. He had written 3 feature films and a massive collection of short films. He had struggled in the past but was at the healthiest point in his life.
i’m truly hoping for an ascension to the 4th dimension when we die, allowing us to move across time as effortlessly as we move through space. I hope Ethan is omniscient, i hope he can read my thoughts, i pray to gods i don’t believe in that Ethan can still hear my music.
Ethan Cooper was stolen from the people who loved him, stolen from a world which could have been a better place with his work in it.
the emptiness he left behind can never be filled. Art and Music are my coping mechanisms , pop music is how i distract myself , and creating through percbuddy is how i keep his memory alive.
May 29, 2025
🥰
bc this reminds me of friendproject🫶
May 28, 2025