Why I Slowed Down With Metal Elitist Videos

Why RanterInShades Stepped Away from His Metal-Elitist Series

After covering the major arguments over the years, RanterInShades feels he has run out of substantial topics for his metal-elitist video series. He doesn’t want to stretch minor gripes into videos just to keep the series going. His interests have shifted toward longer, more ambitious analyses, and he’d rather upload less often than make work he isn’t excited about.

Moving Beyond Genre Arguments

A big part of this change has been learning not to get pulled into endless arguments over genre labels or other people’s tastes. He still believes metalcore, nu metal, and glam metal can reasonably be called metal, but increasingly sees classification debates as a distraction from enjoying music.

He applies the same standard to himself: if someone dislikes a band or genre, that’s their preference, and arguing with them about it rarely helps. He also recognizes that some of his older videos—especially one about death threats—reflected a victim mentality.

A meme about “genre police” gives him a useful framework: people can move from feeling secure in their musical tastes, to getting angry when others disagree, and finally to realizing that taste isn’t an achievement anyone needs to defend online. He jokes that the growth-zone advice to judge people by who they are, not their music taste, is “very Martin Luther King,” before recommending Modern Baseball.

What’s Next

RanterInShades notes that the metal scene and YouTube climate have changed since he started in 2013, with anti-gatekeeping voices becoming more prominent. He plans to keep making other kinds of videos, including analyses and countdowns. He leaves open the possibility of one final metal-elitist video, but makes no promises.

He closes by thanking viewers for supporting the series and saying he’s ready to move on.

Personalities Mentioned

• RanterInShades
• Rocked
• Wyattxhim
• Finn McKenzie
• The Punk Rock NBA