Segregation

Us and them

They and me

The line. One side us. The other side them.

Cliques and mini-cliques

Hackers vs Makers. MakerHackers vs HackerMakers

Tech vs Art vs Writing vs Tech vs Art vs Art vs Art vs Writing vs Poetry vs Critique Group vs Spoken Word vs All the Average Joes Waiting for Us to Stop Talking So the Band Can Come On

Who the hell are we if we can’t work together?

We are working together, you say

We’re working with OUR together, over here. You go work with YOUR together, over there.

UGA welcomes students of all disciplines! Sports! Music! Art! Sports! Science! The Science of Sports! All are welcome to join the big melting pot of UGA. All are welcome… All… Yes, I said all… Shoo, townie, shoo. All are welcome! Dammit, local musician go crawl back into your Flicker Bar. No, student! Don’t follow the townie! Those ingrates carry diseases. You have everything you need right here! We spent millions on studio space, so you’d spend millions coming here. Local arts scene? What local arts scene? There’s campus where you work and bars where you play.

Nothing else. Ignore the sound of Indie Rock coming from down the hill. It is only an illusion.

See: Indie Rock Roger. Indie Rock Roger spends most of his time tending bar at Hendershot’s and playing guitar on open mic nights. Instrumental. He can’t sing. Roger won't go up the hill, because that's where all the booze-chugging, women-hating bros hang out, getting into fights in their khaki shorts and backwards ball caps.

Now see: Ben the Bro. Ben the Bro spends most of his time getting wasted and scoring chicks at Cutters, when he isn’t at home feeding his dog and singing to an empty room. A capella. He doesn’t play guitar. Ben won't go down the hill, because that's where all the dirty, tattoo-covered, unshowered hipsters hang out with their beards and fedoras and faggy, skinny jeans.

See, what the bro doesn’t know and what the hipster has missed here is that both drink the same shitty beer. Both go after the same girls on OkCupid. They both went through a Rage Against the Machine phase in high school. They both love their moms. They could make beautiful music together. But since one thinks bicycles are for queers and the other thinks pickup trucks are for rednecks—never the twain shall meet.

I can’t even make a Romeo and Juliet metaphor here, because if I did, the Capulets would be fighting with other Capulets, and the Montegues and would be split into two Montegue groups, each of which thinks they came up with the name Montegue first.

There's a hell of a lot of art in this town.

There's a hell of a lot of art groups. 

There are tech groups and music groups and theater groups and writing groups and hip hop groups and dancing groups and fucking clown groups and Why the hell have we not turned into Art Voltron yet and stomped across the east coast, showing the world how it’s done? 

Because hipsters are dirty,and bros are gross, and old people are boring, and young people are irresponsible, and black people are loud, and white people are lame, and the only people we want to be around—the only people we want to make art around—is OUR friends in OUR bar. OUR team. OUR side.

We're all on the same damn side, Athens. Just think about what we could do if we all sat down in a room together, put down the stereotypes. Set down the xenophobia. Picked up a pen and paper, a guitar or a laptop—and just started dreaming.