I realize how my reblog could come across as defending UQ but that was not my intention. My intention was to clarify the costume situation that souryogurt was describing in order to say what really happened. It was not her story to tell, and I feel there are many other examples to showcase their behavior that are not that one. Her using my story to try and show how UQ screwed people over and getting the details completely wrong could easily lead to people not believing the other points she made in that post. I do believe UQ should be held accountable for their actions in regards to the rest of the post, and the costume story does not relate to that.
Also my biggest issue was not even with the story, it was the fact that I was called a girl, even though souryogurt had been corrected before in private conversation. Mistakes happen and we haven’t been in contact for a year or so, but that doesn’t change the fact that I was upset at being misgendered.
Kind reminder that I firmly believe swmrs/all those related to the whole shebang should go fuck themselves, so please find your way out of my askbox with accusations.
i just got into ultra q a like two months ago and i knew about swmrs, but what did they do? i don’t want to support them if they’ve done anything bad
ok i dont think ultra q are like, cancel worthy or a menace to society or unsafe or anything, but i find their behavior and even more so the behavior of their fanbase to be offputting and it was enough for me personally to stop liking the band. i dont really care if other people like the band or not, and i have friends that are still fans, but i also am a huge bitch with a big mouth and a "straight up clown" so here we go
1. jakob was Literally In Swmrs. i find it distasteful that jakob was touring with a band during tours where their drummer he was sexually abusing or creating a hostile work environment for an underage girl their drummer sexually abused, and never addressed it. the band was also on their record label
2. jakob was best man in joeys wedding
3. their ex-manager, evan brussell, was a serial pedophile (in his 30s going after 15 year olds) throughout his career and chris malaspina, their drummer, asked ultra q fans who evan brussell had been in the process of grooming to take down posts tying evan brussell to ultra q, as many of his victims were groomed while brussell managed new politics.
4. kevin judd, their bass player, supposedly allegedly had a secret girlfriend in 2018-2019ish. myself and many other fans were aware of the alleged supposed girlfriend, and i heard from several people that the reason she was a secret was allegedly supposedly because she was "too young." i have no idea if this is true or not, or even how old the girl was, or how old kevin was at the time. however, i found it concerning that post-shittening, multiple people DMed me and asked me about it
5. one of their past tour managers, steve rowe, allegedly made fans extremely uncomfortable by being sexually aggressive, allegedly including towards underage girls, and i heard several unsubstantiated rumors that he was involved with a 15 year old girl that starred in the swmrs "lose it" video. i personally witnessed steve pursuing women in ways that made me uncomfortable to watch, and he made my friends uncomfortable. joey, evan, and steve constitute a pattern on their management team, a pattern that they never addressed.
7. chris malaspina, their drummer, dated/is dating a fan who i heard is allegedly around 4 years younger than him and they began dating when she was allegedly 18ish. its not illegal or necessarily inherently problematic, but i find it weird and distasteful solely for reasons i will later elaborate on
8. said girlfriend sent anonymous hate to myself and other individuals who posted on personal social media accounts that they no longer wanted to continue to be fans of ultra q-- she called me a clown and made fun of me for liking almost famous. oh, she also followed me for awhile and when she unfollowed me, she reblogged a post about how toxic "callout culture" is.
9. said anon hate his girlfriend sent me contained many easily verifiable inconsistencies. first, she claimed that ultra q did not release music on uncool records (swmrs' record label) following their contract with DCD2 records. its public information on spotify that they released "in a cave in a video game" via uncool records-- pre shittening. secondly, she claimed that they created gargoth records pre-joey callout, when gargoth records only began releasing music post-joey callout in august, and had released music in april on uncool. thirdly, she claimed that only one fan approached ultra q about their manager being a pedophile, when chris had **admitted while convincing a girl to take down their posts about being groomed by their mid-30s manager while underage** there were two girls-- and who knows if he was telling the whole truth.
10. personally, i dont think she had any reason to lie to me about that stuff when it was so easily verifiably false. i think the band was lying to her, which i find even worse
11. in 2017, some girls i shared a hotel room and was in a group chat with told me that they were very upset because allegedly chris malaspina and enzo malaspina had asked them to purchase very expensive halloween costumes for uncool halloween, and had been supposedly promised a bunch of merch in exchange. they were allegedly never sent the merch and the band was not responsive to DMs about it, though they allegedly received and wore the halloween costumes. i have no idea if this was ever true, and i dont talk to these people anymore, but joey would frequently do similar things so i wouldnt be surprised.
12. this isnt with the band, moreso with the base-- many fans, some of whom claim to know or have worked with the band personally in the past, have begun saying that jakob wasnt on the berkeleys on fire tour, the tour where swmrs were bullying lydia after joey was no longer able to sexually abuse her, forcing her to drop. this is not true and such a stupid lie and everyone saying that knows theyre lying. jakob was there.
13. hello yello and ultra q, the two male fronted bands on uncool records, immediately were picked up by the same management agency following the dissolution of uncool, while kuromi, the only nonbinary/female fronted(?) band on the label, were not. this isnt necessarily the fault of the band, but i dont like it especially as the label positioned itself as an oasis of feminism in the world of pop punk
14. again, not with the band, moreso with the base, but much of their base continually harasses destroy boys on social media. regardless of your opinion of destroy boys, its glaringly hypocritical that their base is doing that while letting a touring member of swmrs off scott free.
15. finally, swmrs personally sent me a letter in february 2021. when i didnt initially reply, they emailed again and asked to speak to me over zoom and then ghosted. the letter was extremely manipulative and took zero responsibility for their actions, and was part of an obvious attempt to test the waters for a comeback and convince me to go along with it by telling me how special i was.
after that last incident, i just dont want to be involved with any of that anymore and would rather go back to recreationally blogging about geriatric raging misogynists. i dont really think ultra q should be cancelled or care what other people do
however, from 2017-2019, i received dozens of messages about joey and lydia being in a highly inappropriate relationship among other things involving steve rowe's sexual misconduct, swmrs' manager chris georginn's sexual misconduct, etc. that pretty much all turned out to be true in july of 2020. i had not believed what i was hearing due to it all being "rumors" and out of a false sense of loyalty to a band that claimed to be feminists and were quite literally passing out zines about consent on a tour where their drummer was routinely coercing an underage girl into sex. i seriously regretted not posting about any of the shitty stuff i heard, so im not going to extend the same courtesy to ultra q, even if many former swmrs fans are continuing to fall into the same patterns.
PS ALSO…. they ripped their entire aesthetic from 2018-2019 off of another band called black midi. i have no idea what their aesthetic is now, but they had this bright red early 00s computer core type aesthetic on their merch and on their website/instagram. i was really impressed by it and thought it was really cool, but they copied black midis instagram/site/etc pretty much exactly, except they made theirs bright red when black midis is bright blue.
1. This was not “allegedly”, I have plenty of screenshots/pictures as proof (that I will gladly share) Chris tweeted that he needed help from a Houston fan, I (as a few others did) replied, and he said he needed the jumpsuit that Enzo wore to Uncool 2017. They never needed multiple costumes, and Enzo was never directly involved with reaching out.
2. Once Chris told me what he needed he said (and I quote) “I have a reward of 30 bucks on top of the price of the jump suit and shipping.” Chris never promised merch in exchange for the jumpsuit, only payment for it, which I received once I told him I shipped the package.
3. The only time merch came into the equation was later on, and he asked me what size shirt I was to send me one of the Mt Eddy Halloween shirts. When I never received it I made jokes to friends (which I thought we were) but never messaged him/the band about it. The last message I sent to Chris was “I saw some videos from Uncool and Enzo looked great in the jumpsuit!!”
I know I haven’t posted in a long time, but I cannot and will not be silent about this.
Fuck swmrs.
We all deserved better, especially Lydia.
I’ll be occasionally checking this tumblr so if you need to vent I’ll be on every now and again. Other than that, I will no longer be posting on this tumblr.
So mine and Lauren’s experiences are slightly different than most because we’re on more familiar terms with the guys. We are generally a bit more patient and wait until they finish with other people before talking to them bc we know they’ll save time for us.
“You are the most y’all people I’ve ever met. I started saying y’all because of y’all.” - Max Becker to Lauren and I last night when we told him Joey thought we were from Florida
“You are the most y’all people I’ve ever met. I started saying y’all because of y’all.” - Max Becker to Lauren and I last night when we told him Joey thought we were from Florida
