If you were extraordinarily unlucky last week, your Twitter feed might have subjected you to a weird new hair metal music video. For the first 0.005 seconds, it might have seemed like it maybe had potential to be cool? Like a new grrrl riot band was on the scene and this was their first tentative outing into the big wide world, with a brand new song and a video editor who knew how to do animate effects? But then you noticed a weird lack of energy in it, as if the women weren’t actually dancers or musicians. And then you noticed that the song was some kind of cover, and they were singing about cryptocurrency and NFTs. And then some helpful rando in the replies let you know that the lead singer was Randi Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerberg’s sister.
And then you wished you could tear out your own brain and slingshot it into the Sun.
What on Earth is going on here? How did this monstrosity come into being? Does anyone involved in the making of it actually believe in its message, or is it 100% a cynical attempt to sell more crypto? Here’s everything we were able to dredge up.
A “Rallying Cry” for Millionaires
The song is a spoof of Twisted Sister’s classic “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” which is about throwing off the shackles of forced conformity and rebelling against a society that hates creative expression. As we all know, the people in the absolute best position to critique society are the richest and most powerful people, so the song seems a fitting choice to plug a rich person hobby like cryptocurrency. Zuckerberg has changed the lyrics to “we’re all gonna make it,” which is a slogan among NFT folks, and in the video, she and two other women dance around a stodgy-looking businessman, daring him to be total renegades like them by … investing in crypto. She has “NFT” written on her shirt, which is, of course, how you know someone is super punk rock.
In the tweet accompanying the video, Zuckerberg says that the song is a “rallying cry for the women of Web3” (Web3 being the version of the internet dominated by blockchain technology). She also says that the video is meant to be a fun way to explain crypto jargon to people unfamiliar with it. The video contains cameos by various women involved in the tech and NFT scene, including Maliha Abidi, Lisa Mayer, Sara Baumann, and Mai Akiyoshi.
It turns out that Zuckerberg has been making a bunch of these spoof music videos, and all of them revolve around crypto and NFTs. Does she genuinely believe that crypto is just the coolest thing since sliced bread, or is she hustling hard to make as much money off of it as possible? A quick look at her Twitter feed, which is oozing with plugs for this or that NFT or currency, reveals that it’s likely both. After all, it’s easy to fall in love with something when it’s pumping money into your bank account. (Or investment portfolio? I don’t know what rich people keep their money in, besides Scrooge McDuck towers.)
Twisted Sister Responds
Luckily for our collective sense of a cohesive and logical reality, Dee Snider, lead singer of Twisted Sister, has emphatically come out against the video.
There was even a bit of an emotional roller coaster, as Snider initially felt helpless to try to do anything about the atrocity, then decided to talk to his lawyers, and then found out that his initial belief was correct and he is powerless to stop it.
I mean, I’m glad that fair use is as broad-reaching as it is, but that still doesn’t remove the bad taste in my mouth.
Why Does This Video Suck So Much?
Well, first off, the video is just not well-made, interesting, or entertaining. Zuckerberg says she once sang “We’re Not Gonna Take It” on Broadway, but … big whoop. Accomplishments like that are vastly easier if you’re rich and well-connected. There’s a lot of content on the internet that’s made by amateurs using only their phone and some rudimentary video-editing knowledge, and a lot of that stuff is infinitely more funny and clever than this. Good content isn’t about production value, but talent.
More than the quality, though, the video is a reminder of just how stunningly clueless and self-absorbed tech people are. Listen to any rich guy prattling on about crypto or personalized bored apes or Metaverse raves, and you get the sinking feeling that they actually believe this stuff is revolutionary and that they’re rebelling against … something. But they’re not! Every new blockchain toy is just another rich people game being played by rich people! It’s just the same kind of pointless money hole that millionaires (and now billionaires) have always poured their wealth into when they had too much of it.
To put it another way, when Twisted Sister says, “Oh, you’re so condescending/Your gall is never ending/We don’t want nothin’, not a thing from you”? The Zuckerbergs are the exact kind of people they’re talking about—the kind of people who spend tens of millions of dollars on jpegs and vanity projects while children mine the minerals that go into their computer batteries. The kind of people who are literally building secret bunkers and planning Mars colonies so they can escape when they’re finished burning the world down. And remember: mining crypto and creating NFTs both burn horrific amounts of carbon!
This is part of what makes Zuckerberg’s “rallying cry” so insulting to women, despite the cameos she made sure to include. It’s white feminism at its worst: unlimited wealth for the women who are already unimaginably wealthy, and a scorched Earth and poverty wages for everyone else. When she says “we’re all gonna make it,” she doesn’t mean you or me. She means the women rich and shameless enough to mint and buy NFTs and then make money off of others by convincing people to buy into their high-tech pyramid scheme.
If Zuckerberg’s crypto music video is now stuck in your head because of me, I apologize. To cleanse your palate, why not watch the original song by Twisted Sister? It is just so much better.
