1y ago

TikToker who debunked Jason Aldean's 'Try That in a Small Town' video receives racist, violent hate mail

www.nbcnews.com TikToker who debunked Jason Aldean's 'Try That in a Small Town' video receives racist hate mail

Since countering Aldean's claim the video only contains "real news footage," Destinee Stark has received a wave of hateful messages from defenders of the song.

182 comments

Stomp on the flag and light it up
Yeah, ya think you're tough.
Well, try that in a small town.
See how far ya make it down the road.
Around here, we take care of our own.
You cross that line, it won't take long.
For you to find out, I recommend you don't.
Try that in a small town.
Got a gun that my granddad gave me
Flag burning is 1st Amendment protected free speech and he is threatening gun violence which is an actual crime.
- It's very telling that they thought this song was in defense of and promoting small towns. It's the exact opposite.
  For one, I doubt many small towns are having liberal protests. Largely, I imagine, because two, they're proudly declaring they're close minded and violent. This song is just "patriotic" violence porn over imagining someone protesting for equal civil rights. Frankly it just reminds me, a non-white person, to stay the hell away from small towns.
  Is it too cruel to suggest that we let small towns fend for themselves completely if they're so proud of it?
  
  I'm white and it tells me to avoid small towns. These hickabilly cousin fucking dipshits scare me.
  
  And it's not like we haven't let towns die before. There's so many along railroads in the middle of nowhere that just stopped existing because people didn't need to take trains everywhere anymore.
- Flag burning is 1st Amendment protected free speech
  Were you under the impression that he was going to call the cops on them? Because whoosh
  he is threatening gun violence which is an actual crime.
  Saying you own a gun is not the same as threatening to murder someone.
  
  What a wild two statements to make back to back. Yeah, my entire problem with it is that it is a call for illegal vigilante violence, against someone exercising their constitutional right. As a political statement, it's a messed up thing to be promoting.
  And right after you "correct" me and tell me no, the people in the titular small town are not going to call the police, aka they are taking care of things themselves illegally, you try to also claim they're not threatening the hypothetical flag burning person with a gun? They are obviously violently threatening repeatedly, and the next line is about a gun. If you want to claim the mentioned gun is not necessarily being brandished, I see why you're saying that but "this is a man with a gun who is threatening physical violence...he never explicitly said he is threatening GUN violence" is such a weak point. Fine, remove the word "gun" from my point. He is still threatening violence which is an actual crime.
- You got it wrong.
  The implied threat to use a firearm comes after that, in regards to trying to take the firearm in question, not in regards to the section quoted.
  If you're going to point out hypocrisy, point to the accurate hypocrisy :)
  
  See how far you make it down the road because he has a gun... which he will use as a pointing device to politely direct you elsewhere.
  
  Flag burning is protected and threatening gun violence is a crime. What the gun violence is a reaction to is irrelevant.
  
  Really speaks to Republicans actual priority when the only take they can apply to anything in society is "It's my god given American right to ensure everybody at all times knows exactly how hard my dick gets thinking about murdering them"
  
  The fact that this is down voted... hey guys maybe listen to the actual song so you can hear how this is very obviously an entire new verse, and the gun is not related to the flag burning? Why do we care more about bashing the song than being actually correct?
  
  No, that's not what it implies at all. No one was talking about 2A or taking guns away. He's literally mentioning the gun in direct response to the last infraction (burning the flag). Read it again.

Last week Country Music Television, which initially aired the video, pulled it from rotation. But after Aldean defended the music video by stating that "there isn’t a single video clip that isn’t real news footage," Stark said it was easy to prove him wrong
In a TikTok video that's gotten at least 1.5 million views, Stark found that two of the clips in the video came from stock footage. One showed a woman flipping off police at at labor day event in Germany and another was a commercial stock clip of a molotov cocktail.
Lying about it and then getting caught.
Stark shared screenshots with NBC News of hateful messages she's received since posting her videos about Aldean's song, which included racist slurs, fatphobic remarks and death threats.
Just bizarre.
- It’s not bizarre, the right wing are terrorists. This is how they respond to anyone who challenges their fiction.
  
  That's a very bias comment, there are hateful people on both sides. And calling a whole group of people terrorists isn't going to do anything but divide people more.
- Don't you see? Since the whole video is news now, by definition all footage contained in it is news footage. Check mate
- @MicroWave
  A representative for Aldean did not immediately respond to a request for comment from on Monday.
  Ofc they didn't. 🙄
- Bizarre? It would only be bizarre if the insecure losers didnt do this

Newsflash: unironically listening to modern country like Jason Aldean or any other arena country act, makes you an idiot. It's a bad song, with bad lyrics, with bad music, sung by a millionaire larping as working class. Everything about Country is a lie.
- That was a scarecrow.
  
  🎶I write songs for the people who do🎶 🎶Jobs in the towns that I’d never move to🎶
  
  I put my hands on your body... it feels like hay, IT'S THE FUCKING SCARECROW AGAIN!
- Modern Pop country can go to hell. Want to listen to country, go look up Bluegrass or Folk Punk.
  
  Or, you know, discover the roots of it all and actually come to recognize that modern music was largely ripped off non-white artists. 🤷🏼‍♂️
  
  I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE bluegrass.
  
  Seems I need to broaden my folk punk knowledge, all of the stuff I've listened to is more ska punk-adjacent, like Syke! Life Is Awesome by BTMI.
- Everything about Country is a lie.
  What about Swedish horror country?
  
  I love this band so much!
- I wouldn't go far enough to say that for the reason that enjoying the instrumentals (unsure if the correct word, but I mean the melody from non-vocal sounds) is a personal taste. Most people don't care for my taste which is mostly electronica genres not much lyrics usually, but to each their own.
  Personally country music sounds like nails on a chalkboard but I wouldn't ever say enjoying a certain sound makes someone an idiot. I have read about this story and as a whole it does sound like someone scoring points on an ignorant (and false) view that I have no interest in checking out, for more reasons than just being country and annoying to personally listen to.

Basically proving everything people are saying about the awful things that song stands for right.

Someone with better video editing skills than myself (none whatsoever) should remake this video but exclusively use footage from the January 6th insurrection.

"No shirt
No shoes
No Jews......
Strike that last one"
- "You didn't hear that"

Don't know what he debunked. Video is racist as fuck.
- She debunked that ""there isn’t a single video clip that isn’t real news footage," as Aldean said in defense of the music video. She showed that some of the footage was from a an event in Canada, and a protest in Ukraine, as well as some stock footage. The article explains more.
  
  Oh I thought the racists were saying that they had debunked the claim that the video was racist.
- The title "TikToker who debunked Jason Aldean's 'Try That in a Small Town' video..." is a little silly and confusing but the TikToker, Destinee, was pointing out how racist the music video is and also debunked Jason Aldean's claim that all the music video footage is exclusively real American protests.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKkjJAIFGNE
  there are a bunch of black people in this reaction video saying it isn't racist. watch the reaction video then come back and let me know what you think about the reaction video.
  Edit: I like how people are downvoting me. I wonder how many of them are white. Watch the reaction video, then come back and let me know you actually watched the reaction video all the way through. Also let me know if you are black or white. What I’m trying to figure out is what percentage of people that are pissed are they white or black. The more knowledge we have the better off we are.
  When I first started hearing about this song, and they were people feeling was racist, I thought maybe I should start asking is it racist or not?. I am a middle-aged white guy, so I’m probably not real well qualified to determine what it is or is not racist towards Black people. I can make an assumption of how people, Black people, might view it. But I’ve never walked in the shoes of a black man or a black woman.
  I’ve never been pregnant and I’m not a female so there’s no way I can know what it is like to be pregnant. Nor can I figure out what it is like for the emotional stresses of what a female goes through. I can make an assumption or a guess that a certain situation might be stressful or that a certain certain situation a female might not like, but I am not a female so I cannot know it for a fact. So I would have to go talk to a female.
  I’m not a Marine so there is no real way for me to know what a Marine goes through.
  So I thought the best way to figure out of what do Black people think about this video is effectively go online and look at YouTube videos of Black people responding to the video. That is why I am encouraging those who are down voting this to go watch that video and then come back and respond and tell me what do you think of that video. And also to state are you black or white. for example if I get a bunch of Black people come in here and tell me yes it’s racist as hell, well then obviously that’s where Black people are at and I need to listen to that.
  
  That's a terrible way to judge it. Part of the effect of systemic racism is that it obscures itself. Part of the tactics of white supremecy is to gaslight and deny. The people who chose to shoot this video at the site of a lynching and race massacre know that this video is racist as fuck, but they deny it and obscure it. It's dog whistling and it's not even that subtle.
  I'm sure if it ask Kanye or Clarence they have no problems with the messaging in the video. Maybe it's because they are tokens or maybe it's because they don't recognize the symbolism of lynching black people at a courthouse.
  What do academics and social scientists say, students of history and anthropology?
  The video says that in small town, the law will not protect you from extrajudicial murder if you burn a flag, which is a lawful, First Amendment protected activity. Any attempt to deny, excuse, or justify this messaging is yet another act of complete, unironic ignorance, or is intentional gaslighting.
  
  I clicked on the link and literally none of the top comments are from black people, they're from white people, so something is certainly wrong here and I don't think it's those downvoting you
  What's happening here is very typical with marginalized communities, pandering to White Supremacists to gain some semblance of respect. It isn't the first time this has happened. Shall we take a walk back down memory lane to the time Malcolm X sat beside George Rockwell?
  
  When I first started hearing about this song, and they were people feeling was racist, I thought maybe I should start asking is it racist or not?
  If you read the article and watch the TikTok video a person of color is telling you that she considers it racist. It's fine if some other PoCs disagree. But the discussion here started with the opinion of Ms Stark.

You mean people from small towns have an enfeebled ability to tolerate rhetoric that isn’t their own? I’m shocked.
- Enfeebled implies the feeble was applied to them. They were born feeble. It's in the water.
  
  While true, I feel their born feeble nature is then further cultivated into further feebleness in these small towns.
  
  Fair enough

At this point I only know I'm right when I get death threats. We should wear em as a badge of honor at this point.
- Probably not a good idea. People being proud of upsetting others is how we got here. And we have all seen how slippery that slope is.
  
  It is not only okay to upset intolerant assholes, it is a service to society. Bigots literally get offended over other people's existence. They are the ones causing the problem in the first place, and they should be made to feel unwelcome as they do to others.
  There is no way for LGBTQ and minorities to live in certain communities in this country without being offensive to the white Christian Nationalist hivemind. Just the fact that they exist and want to live their lives and have their own culture is enough to upset these types.
  Look up the tolerance paradox in case you somehow haven't heard of it. We must not tolerate intolerance if we want to live in a nice society.
  
  People who make death threats are garbage people who deserve to be upset. Nothing wrong with being proud of upsetting them.

He didn’t even write the song.
- So? He chose to record it. Pretty sure he understands English at at least a rudimentary level, and the choice of setting for the video was NOT a coincidence. He deserves all the derision he’s getting.
  
  I agree, I’m just a bit baffled as to why he would choose to do this song. I mean, it would be bad enough if he composed it, but to hear it and think “yes, I want to say that” is just beyond understanding for me. It’s almost like setting a trump speech to music. So. Weird.
  
  All the derision like being #1 or #2 on all the charts?
  Guess you can’t cancel someone in a small town either. 😂
- Almost none of them do. They’re just mouthpieces for the Nashville pop trash machine.
  
  And their fans don't give a shit. I've lurked on some Facebook posts about this in the last week and I want to barf.
- Was he forced to perform it? Record it? Defend it?
  
  He knew there's enough idiots who will take it up as their anthem as he rakes in the cash and laughs at how gullible his trash fans are
- No different than every other samey sounding auto tuned pop star
  Country..hah, they wish. A pop artist having an accent and tickling the lizard parts of uneducated people's brains doesn't make you a country singer
- It's all AI, these days. Or at least most of it sounds like some garbage an AI would write
  
  With how garbage the lyrics are it's definitely AI. If I had no moral scruples and was asked to write a song like this, I could do a far better job.

I lived in conservative california and that sounds about right. Only thing that kept us alive was that my spouse happens to be a vet and we're asian so we get a pass. We lived there for a while until my spouse got a job after covid. They literally think that it's a warzone out there. So much bullshit spread about the city. Of course the news just fans the flames.
This lady I knew never went to the fashion district in LA because she pretty much believed that her blond and blue eyed kids would be snatched off the streets by minorities. The ironic thing is that we lived off the I-15 which is a huge human trafficking corridor so the kidnapping would have more likely happened closer to where they live. Also phelan is full of meth heads but you know, that doesn't matter.
The song is about sundown towns and that makes it racist AF.

derka deherpa derr

There's no such thing as "violent" hate mail. It's words on paper.
- And in person death threats are just spoken words. They're both dangerous and unacceptable.
  
  Threats are already illegal and words aren't violence.
- You're being disingenuous. Violence doesn't have to be a physical threat to be considered violent. If colors, coughing, and arguments can be described as violent, hate mail most certainly can. Especially if it's threatening someones life or livelihood.
  US Department Of Justice: "The "crime" in hate crime is often a violent crime, such as assault, murder, arson, vandalism, or threats to commit such crimes. It may also cover conspiring or asking another person to commit such crimes, even if the crime was never carried out."
  Merriam Webster's definition of violent:
  1b: extremely powerful or forceful and capable of causing damage (e.g. violent coughing)
  4a: notably forceful, furious, or vehement (e.g. violent argument, a violent denunciation)
  4b: extreme, intense (e.g. violent pain, violent colors)
  
  You’re being disingenuous. Violence doesn’t have to be a physical threat to be considered violence.
  Words aren't violence. And threats are already illegal.

182 comments