Michelle Shocked

I'd never heard of this woman before, but man this audio is interesting!
Basically she started throwing out homophobic slurs in the middle of her gig in San Francisco...of all places she seriously chose San Fran.. anyway the audience begins to question her, many are confused but most of them leave half way through. Some even applaud her bold statements. It starts at around 4:15-4:30.

I didn't pay much attention to this article a few days ago when it was just a write up on how a musician said "God hates faggots" and told someone in the audience to tweet it. In fact I was confused as to what happened, and I didn't really care, the hate isn't worth listening to most of the time. What grabbed me was when this audio was released today. I started thinking about freedom of speech, and hate speech and the relationship between the two. It's my interest as a queer person that is showing you this article however I just find this audio fascinating. It almost sounds scripted. The sounds of the audience fading in and out as Shocked get's louder, and the mumbling in between mixed with her singing is intriguing to me. I like pulling it a part. Trying so hard to listen to what they're saying.

Read the rest of the article here

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"The anonymity of the Internet masks a layer of morphing human nature. The way in which we relate and communicate with each other, happens through a screen. We give ourselves new names, new faces, and a false sense of security. The game has changed and humans are changing with it. 

Have not the great Science Fiction writers of our time predicted just this; that vast advancement in technology would have incredible repercussions on the world and its inhabitants. We’re now examining ourselves through the social forums we’ve created for and of ourselves. We are living two lives at once, one in the physical and one in the digital. The question is, which foot is more firmly grounded? This, unlike other social phenomena, is not a question which can be answered by looking at a person’s age, sex, race or socio-economic status. So rarely can we predict who is living full force, in the digital world.   

A critique of our lives on social media cyberspace is made firstly through the exploration of the space itself; paring back the layers of dematerialisation to find that we are only dematerialising ourselves. "

 - Alexandra Hanna, Contextual Statement, 2012