Great Praying Day

It's Thursday, and Store Bededag approaches. This is a Danish bank holiday meaning "Great Praying Day". Basically, everyone gets a day off, people treat it as an extended weekend, and hardly anyone actually prays. So there's that.
  Exams are approaching. In five days, I'll know which exams I'll be subjected to this year. R.E, German and Biology are the possibilities. I'll be having two, one or none of them. Truly terrifying.
  I'm still hooked on Eurovision. I know the choruses to at least half of the songs off by heart by now. Conchita Wurst is still my idol, but I'm also loving the voices of Sanna Nielsen, Ruth Lorenzo, Softengine and a few others. The ballads of Eurovision have been amazing this year.
  I promise this is the messiest blog post I will ever write. And the shortest. Wow. I'm incredibly conscious of what people think considering this blog has no followers.
  I'm going to film a video this weekend, either Saturday or Sunday. It'll be a cover of Rise Like A Phoenix, and it'll be great fun.
  Signing off for now, have fun.

Statistics, I Love Them

So, today has been a fun day.

I went to the result pages for Eurovision for a few Eastern European countries and snooped around. Look at the votes for Austria:
http://www.eurovision.tv/page/results?event=1893&voter=AM
http://www.eurovision.tv/page/results?event=1893&voter=AZ
http://www.eurovision.tv/page/results?event=1893&voter=BY
http://www.eurovision.tv/page/results?event=1893&voter=PL
http://www.eurovision.tv/page/results?event=1893&voter=RU

Those are five countries where the televoting for Austria was extremely positive, and yet the juries seemed to hate our dear Conchita. I find it amusing that she won securely despite this, and I find it heart-warming that the people of these sometimes extremely conservative countries have voted for her. Maybe there is hope after all, aye?

I added up the points Conchita would have gotten if it was all televoting, and it made 306. So all these people saying the whole thing was rigged with corrupt juries in favour of Conchita? That's some proper bullshit right there.

Another thing: Rise Like A Phoenix actually topped iTunes in Russia.

I love statistics and Europe. I love Conchita.

On another note, I've learned Rise Like A Phoenix. Now there's some material for my Youtube channel. I'll probably upload this weekend.

Signing off for now. Have a good Monday night.

The ESC Controversy

Hey world.
  Tonight I'd like to talk about something almost everyone has heard of by now; the well-deserved victory of Conchita Wurst at the Eurovision Song Contest 2014 in Copenhagen.
  Conchita is a stunning drag queen who sports a charming beard. Her song, Rise Like A Phoenix, went straight to the hearts of millions of Europeans and got her the top spot.
  And yes, of course her appearance helped. The controversy of it all is attractive to a lot of voters. But that was not in any way the only factor. The song was one of the best, with fantastic orchestration and reminiscent of a classic Bond theme. Her voice is flawless, not a single mistake or off note.
  And yet what so many people are choosing to focus on is her appearance. And not positively, either.
  On the comments of the Youtube videos of every single Eurovision song, I have read comments calling Conchita Wurst an abomination, an "it", a deviant, disgusting, vile, wrong, fake, "not a real woman", "not a real man"...
  And I just don't get it. Where does the motivation come from for this hatred? What is the scary thing about a gender-nonconforming drag queen with a beard? A Russian MP has called this "the end of Europe". But how on Earth does this affect him in any way? How does this negatively affect anyone? She's just a woman with a beard.
  I suppose, if I use my imagination and really try, I can find a few reasons as to why people are scared of such a beautiful performer (and yeah, I know a lot of people just call Conchita Wurst beautiful to seem open-minded, but I'm being honest here. I am blown away by how stunningly beautiful she is).

1. They are scared of liking something they've been conditioned not to like.
   Many people are brought up in a conservative environment where liking anything that isn't clearly the opposite sex and gender through and through is the biggest sin of all. When they grow up and find themselves attracted to a performer like Conchita Wurst, they become frustrated - sexually frustrated, and frustrated with their orientation and identity. This frustration is let out in the form of hate speech.
2. Simple jealousy.
   If you've never really achieved anything in your own life, it can be easy to jump on the bandwagon whenever there's a chance to hate on someone even remotely successful. This is frustration at play once again, albeit a different type.
3. Fear of the unknown.
   I'm talking simple ignorance here. The unknown is scary. For some people, not knowing the gender of someone is very scary, because they put far too much thought into gender roles, and some people have a habit of wanting to decide instantly if any given person is a potential sexual partner.
4. Homophobia.
   Here, I'm referring especially to the type of homophobia that is fear of another man treating you as you treat women. People automatically assume that drag queens are always gay (and in Conchita's case, they're right). And when the person assuming this happens to be the kind of straight man who sees women as sex objects and nothing else, that man will automatically think that all gay men see /him/ as a sex object. This brings with it the fear of rape that most women have to live with every day.
5. Sexism.
   A hell of a lot of people (especially men) have a philosophy that their gender is superior, and that everyone from the opposite gender is worth less. (These people usually don't even acknowledge the existence of non-binary individuals.) When a drag queen then comes along and challenges the border between male and female by wearing a beard while in drag, it becomes impossible for the sexist to keep masculine and feminine separate from each other, and their outdated system falls apart. The ensuing frustration leads them to spout hate.

I think that about covers why people dislike Conchita Wurst. None of these reasons are excuses for hate speech, and anyone who spouts transphobic, homophobic hate speech at Conchita Wurst is being incredibly childish, vindictive and cruel.

I'm both proud that Conchita Wurst was voted #1 by the European audiences and extremely disappointed with every single of the probably millions of people posting hateful comments about her.

That's all I have to say. Goodnight.

Hello, world.

I created a blog. Why did I create a blog?
  Because I have too much time on my hands, probably.

  The internet is a beautiful and grotesque place, much like the real world. There is a great amount of love and understanding and a terrifying amount of hate and ignorance.
  I prefer to focus on the beauty and the love as much as I can, but I will never be able to just ignore the evil. Ignorance is there to be eradicated through education. Hate is there to be quelled by love.
  Despite being maybe the most pretentious thing I've ever written, that last sentence is something I try my best to live by. When someone hates you, try to understand why. Dig into the core of the problem and do your best to dissolve it through communication. More often than not, the person hating you hates themselves even more and really just needs to be reminded that they're okay, and they don't need to lash out at the world to get a release for frustration.

  I'm off to bed, because the clock is ticking nearer to midnight every minute, and I'm tired. Remember to love when you can.

  Peace out.