Website / The Hard Times

"A very real punk news site" ^{Click for Hard Drive Logo:}

"Punk News Comin' Your Way"

The Hard Times is a satirical fake news website along the lines of The Onion with a focus on pop culture. The main Hard Times site focuses on music, in particular punk and other hardcore music, thought they also parody mainstream news. As such, many of their articles spoof music tropes and various subcultures.

Officially, the magazine was founded in 1976 by "a group of punk and hardcore kids from all the different sub-genres of the DIY hardcore scene", though it actually dates back to 2014. In addition to their main satirical arm, they also have a Hard Noise, a serious music journalism site focused on reviews and interviews on hardcore music.

They also have a Spin-Off site founded in 2017, Hard Drive (motto: "The Only Ethical Gaming Journalism on the Internet"), which focuses on video game and nerd culture content, in a similarly satirical bent. Hard Drive is notable for creating Ace Watkins, a fictional character who ran for President of the United States in 2020 on the platform of being the first gamer president. Hard Drive describes themselves as explicitly left wing in their politics.

In 2019, the site launched The Hard Times Podcast network, which hosts a number of comedy and music podcasts ranging from serious music journalism to complete silliness and everything in between.

In 2020, the founders launched another Spin-Off site, Hard Money (now defunct), which parodies financial news and finance bro culture.

You can visit The Hard Times at thehardtimes.net.

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Punk Tropes comin' your way:

• Air-Vent Passageway: "Evil Villain Ensures Lair's Air Vents Extra Wide", large enough to accommodate one adult man or a pair of sexy lady ninjas. The same villain also installs a Laser Hallway.
• All Drummers Are Animals:
  • Investigation: Does This Drummer Even Own a Shirt?
  • Band Takes Drummer on One Last Day of Doing All His Favorite Things, which treats a band letting their drummer go like pet owners getting their dog put down. Apparently, the drummer's favorite things include playing outside and eating peanut butter and dry food.
• Author Filibuster: The tendency of hardcore punk musicians to interrupt shows with long, political rants is a frequent subject of parody:
  • Frontman's Perfectly Nonsensical Political Rant Ruined by Short Bursts of Music
  • Jello Biafra Sells 45-Minute long Politically Charged Birthday Wish Video on Cameo
  • Hardcore Frontman Running Out of Generally Well-Accepted Beliefs to Share
• Bait-and-Switch: "I Find it Statistically Unlikely that Both My Dads Are Gay". The author of the piece is shocked and surprised that the two men who raised him together are in fact gay and in a loving romantic and sexual relationship with each other. The punchline indicates that he also has two moms.
• The Band Minus the Face: "Rules for Replacing a Lead Singer" instructs band members on how to deal with the situation as gracefully as possible... sort of. For example: "Pack up all their stuff in the practice space beforehand—And be thorough. You don’t want them wandering back to your next rehearsal claiming they forgot their Nirvana poster."
• Cheerful Funeral: "Funeral for Ska Frontman Surprisingly Upbeat". The titular frontman's friends spend the funeral dancing and singing to upbeat ska music to honor his memory, resulting in some wacky antics when they knock the coffin over with enthusiastic skanking.
• Clickbait Gag:
  • Terrifying: This Writer Is Willing to Hate Any Movie for Just a Few Thousand Clicks. A clickbait-style hyperbolic title that discusses the topic of clickbait itself, specifically the phenomenon of articles with controversial hot takes on media designed to get clicks by pissing people off.
  • 7 Pictures of Ian MacKaye in Silly Hats (You'll Never Believe Number 4!) The whole article is pretty much what the title claims, but is full of hyperbole about how amazing number 4 is. Turns out it's just Ian MacKaye in the Queen's hat, which isn't espcially silly. 5 is also just a normal hat.
  • Inverted with "We Look Back on Reel Big Fish’s Cameo in BASEketball Because We’re Trying a Reverse SEO Thing" where the writer deliberately engineers an article that no one would would ever click on, or find through a search engine.
• Commitment Issues: "Don't Let This Face Tattoo Fool You, I'm Actually Terrified of Commitment"
• Continuity Creep: Inverted. Older articles had a number of recurring characters, including the bands Gutter Sluts and xClearlyxStraightx, and running gags, like the existance of a Hard Style subsection of the magazine, but those were phased out over time in favor of a purely single-gag style.
• Conveniently an Orphan: Parodied and defied in "Anime Mom struggles every day not to die for her child's tragic backstory", which describes the various ways the titular Mom tries to avoid dying in service of the plot and the protagonist's journey. Such methods include learning karate and removing her Motherly Side Plait.
• Defend Pop Punk: Parodied in a few articles, such as Local Militia Prepares to Defend Pop Punk, in which a bunch of pop punk kids build a barricade in Boston.
• Disneyland Dad: The Hard Drive article Divorced, Disheveled Bill Gates Announces Everyone Is Getting A Free Xbox puts a newly divorced Bill Gates as the world's overindulgent dad blatantly trying to curry favor with the kids and spite his ex-wife by giving everyone an Xbox.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: During the 2020 Presidential Election, Hard Drive posted the article "Gamer Sick of Two-Console System," about a gamer who finds it pointless to choose between Sony and Microsoft ("At the end of the game, they're both just angry old men who want to kill stuff") but can't go Take a Third Option with Nintendo because all the games are made for the main two systems so it's basically "throwing your gaming away." It also features an "independent gamer" who insists upon playing on Nintendo and the Raspberry Pi to make true change in the gaming industry.
• Drowning My Sorrows: "Depressed Straight Edge Woman Tells Bartender to Leave Bottle of Grenadine". Parodied, the woman in question doesn't drink alcohol so she deals with sorrow by drinking excessive amounts of alcohol-adjacent substances like grenadine.
• Epic Rocking: "Metal Song Not Even Close To Being Over". A punk accidentally wanders into a metal show and is overwhelmed by their 12+ minute songs. The same article ends with a punchline about how all hardcore songs are <90 seconds.
• Everyone is Jesus in Purgatory: invoked Discussed in "'They're Actually In Purgatory', Reports Every Single Fan Theory", in which interviewed fans claim that shows from SpongeBob SquarePants to Lost only make sense if you interpret that they take place in purgatory.
• Fanwork-Only Fans: "Huge Earthbound Fan Excited to Play It for First Time" features a hardcore fan of EarthBound that did nothing but write a blog about it for years until finally deciding to play it. As a parody of this phenomenon, he only started to like the game by the point it had already become a Cult Classic, and envies the people who managed to get it for cheap when it came out.
• Female Rockers Play Bass:
  • "All-Male Band Just Waiting to Meet the Right Girl Bassist". The three male musicians in the article don't know any women other than their ex-girlfriends and family members, but are convinced that they need a "princess of funk" or "four-string femme fatale" in order to attract interest in their band.
    "Our songs are unique, but let's face it: without a mysterious-looking girl in our rhythm section, we have zero hope of any real exposure."
  • "Female Bassist Suddenly Realizes Love Song is About Her". The song very clumsily ties together the bassist's "female" and "bassist" attributes.
  • "Member Of Band Female, Notes Flyer": The band in question highlights the unusual fact that their sole female member is a guitarist on their flyers, to the surprise of one of the interviewees, who says that "Weird that she's playing guitar. Usually they're the bassist."
• Food Porn: "Man Only Watches Anime for the Food"
• Gratuitous Japanese: A Hard Drive opinion piece attributed to the Netflix producer in charge of anime sprinkles every sentence with Japanese words, and refers to the author as "Netflix Producer-chan".
• Hated Hometown: "Pop Punk Band Feuds with Country Band About Whether Hometown is Good, Bad". The Pop Punk band in question writes most of their songs about how their hometown sucks and they can't wait to leave, while the country band writes about how much they love it.
• High-Class Cannibal: The spinoff Hard Drive has "Wealthy cannibal conflicted on 'Eat the Rich.'"
• Ho Yay: invoked Discussed in this article, where the punchline to an article about speculative fan theories, where the ultimate fan theory is that "every pair of attractive male characters secretly want to fuck each other" for every single piece of fiction.
• Hurricane of Puns: "Our Editor Is on Vacation, so Here’s All 311 Ska Pun Headlines He Rejected This Year"
• Ironic Nursery Tune: Parodied in Hard Drive's "Movie Trailer Editor Struggling to Create Menacing Rendition of ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’, where attempts to give the nursery rhyme the Moody Trailer Cover Song treatment go south.
  “When people see this trailer, we want them to have nightmares about it,” said Lionsgate marketing head Damon Wolf. “There is absolutely nothing more terrifying than hearing the song your mother sang to you every night, but like, scary. You’re going to piss your pants the next time you walk into a daycare, just wait and see.”
• Jaded Washout: "It Gets Worse" Organization Aimed at Popular Kids Post-High School. The organization is led by a divorced, overweight, middle-aged former quarterback, and aims to teach popular kids social skills that will help them later on in life.
• Nobody Loves the Bassist: Bassists being a Butt-Monkey is a Running Gag throughout The Hard Times, which regularly takes digs at them in a variety of ways:
  • "I Don’t Care How Many Hits He Wrote, Paul McCartney Is Still a Fucking Bassist and I Will Never Respect Him
  • "How to Tell Your Bassist None Of Their Takes Made It on the Album", which assumes the bassist is childish and prone to violence.
  • "Bassist Accused of Sexual Misconduct Just Happy To Be Named in Article for Once
  • Irresponsible Musicians Leave Bassist in Hot Van
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: "Heartbreaking: Man Too Good at Fighting Game to Enjoy Playing Against Friends But Not Good Enough to Play Competitively".
• No True Scotsman:
  • One article parodies the gatekeeping arguments about what is and isn't punk by claiming punk only existed for six months in 1977, before permanently ending.
  • Also combined with their long-running hatred of ska, resulting in an editorial arguing that Streetlight Manifesto is actually a good band, so they must not really be ska.
• "Not So Different" Remark: "United by Love of Beer, Punks and Jocks Finally Make Peace". In the article, longstanding arch-enemies punks and jocks hold a peace conference after they realize they both like beer (and trucker hats, and went to the same schools, and were basically the same exact person just in different clothes).
• Porn Stash: Goth Hides Stack of The Cure’s “Pornography” in Woods, in which everyone treats the album titled Pornography as if it were an actual porno magazine.
• Portmantitle: Parodied in this article, where a fan of Metroidvanias applies the same naming logic to every other video game genre: his favorite Mariosonic is Celeste, his favorite Chronofantasy is Dragon Quest, his favorite Halodoom is Goldeneye, and his favorite Harvestcrossing is Stardew Valley. On the other hand, even he thinks that Soulsborne is a dumb name.
• Puddle-Covering Chivalry: Old-Fashioned Crust Punk Lays Buttflap Over Puddle for Date
• Rule-Abiding Rebel: Office Worker Subverts System by Wearing Vans in Cubicle. The woman profiled in the article identifies as a punk and rebel against the system, but is a model worker whose acts of rebellion, like secretly flipping off her boss or wearing punk shirts under her work shirt, are too minor to be noticed by anyone.
• Running Gag:
  • Snark towards Ska fans, bassists, and Pop Punk frontmen.
  • The "bad interview article", usually formatted with a title along the lines of "We Sat Down with X because [mundane excuse unrelated to X's music]" in which the interviewer picks the wrong person, is totally unprepared, or happened upon the interviewer by accident. The template is used over and over again, like this one: "We Spoke With the Guy from Smash Mouth Because We Randomly Ran Into Him at Shake Shack and Felt Too Awkward Not Too"
• Single-Biome Planet: Parodied in the Hard Drive article "Tatooine Weatherman Running Out of Things to Say", about an exhausted weatherman for a Star Wars desert planet:
  "It’s gonna be hot again! Tomorrow too, same as yesterday! I’m sorry, do I really need to keep explaining this and showing doppler radar? Folks, if you’re making weekend plans, please try to remember we live in a harsh desert climate with two damn suns shining all day, everyday. Wear sunblock. It’s gonna be hot. Why do I have to wake up so early to do this?"
• Slumming It: The idea that many/all punks are actually just rich kids pretending to be working class and deliberately living in squalid conditions is frequently parodied. This article is one example: Panicked Punk Calls Parents to Find Out Status of Trust Fund
• Smug Straightedge:
  • "God Frantically Skims Bible For Reason to Reject Dead Straight Edger from Heaven". God admits the dead Straight Edger did nothing objectionable in life and shouldn't really be barred from heaven, but he's just so annoying and overbearing to everyone around him that God doesn't want him. Satan doesn't want him either, for the same reasons.
  • The whole joke behind "Straight Edge Man Attends Show on High Horse" is how smug and condescending the title character is.
• Snot Bubble: "Sleep Study Finds 40% of People Produce Giant Inflating Snot Bubble During REM Cycle". The article asserts that this anime trope occurs in real life, and is illustrated with a side-by-side photo of a sleeping man, compared to a still from One Piece.
• Stereotype Flip: Male-Fronted Hardcore Band Proves That Guys Can Rock Too. While the stereotype is that most people in Hardcore Punk bands and scenes are male, the article presumes the opposite and uses the same tropes typically applied to women in the scene on men. The article and the people interviewed in it focus excessively on the men's appearance and speculate that they only got their position due to dating or sleeping with important people.
• Straight Edge Evil: Not Evil per se, but "Straight Edge Friend Total Scumbag in Every Other Possible Way" describes a Straightedge guy who refuses to pay his friends back, takes advantage of women, etc. while abstaining from alcohol and drugs.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: The "About" page assures you that the website is a "very real video games news site that you should not question. Just absorb the information as truth and move on."
• Take That!:
  • The site spends a lot of time making fun of various bands and genres, but few get more hate than Ska:
    • "We Teleported to an Alternate Dimension where Trump Isn't President but Ska is Cool So We Came Back". The paper, which has a consistently left-wing, anti-Trump stance, declares in the article that ska being mainstream and popular is worse than Donald Trump.
    • "Opinion: Streetlight Manifesto Isn't Ska -- They're Good
    • "Mixed-Bill Show Creates Opportunity For New People to Meet, Share Ideas, Fist Fight. In the article, a bill that combines Hardcore Punk, Skinhead Punk, and Ska Punk results in a brawl, but the hardcore kids and skinheads team up to beat up the ska fans.
  • A number of articles also make fun of Pantera fans for supposedly being brainless thugs. E.g. "Friend from 11th Grad Who Loved Pantera Still In 11th Grade".
  • Another frequent target is Pop Punk, especially in regards to the genre's issues with the age of consent.
• The Talk: "Punk Dad's Birds and the Bees Talk Graphically Describes all Three Sex Positions" The dad in question gives way too much detail for his seven-year-old son to handle or understand, and most of his sex advice is really an allegory for guitar playing.
• Three Chords and the Truth: The use of only three power chords is parodied in several articles that expand this to other scenarios:
  • When a Punk dad gives his son The Talk, he tells them there are only three sex positions that should be played as fast as possible.
  • "Punk Lawyer Only Knows Three Laws"
• Transparent Closet:
  • In "I Accept My Son's Homosexuality, I Just Don't Buy Him as a Top", the conservative father wasn't surprised at all when his son came out to him, having seen the signs for years. In fact, the son's Camp Gay status is so obvious that the dad insists his son must still be in the closet and lying to him about being a top (since according to him only Manly Gays can top).
  • I Wouldn't Suck a Dick for a Million Dollars or a Chance at Being Happy. The guy in the article makes it very clear that he's gay and miserable about it, but is insistent that he will never acknowledge this openly or come out.
• [Trope Name]: "Disgusting: [NERD PROPERTY] Fans Are Boycotting Because It Features Some [MARGINALIZED PEOPLE] *TEMPLATE*" Satirizing just how often that particular controversy pops up, here's the template they allegedly use for writing articles about it.
• Two Decades Behind: Parodied in "We Spoke With Rivers Cuomo About What It's Like Being a Teen Growing Up In 2021". Cuomo, who as the article points out is in his 50's, talks at length about "teen things" more relevant to that era than today, like using AOL instant messenger or just wanting to party.
  Is that stuff still happening to you? Why are you so frequently around lockers? Wait, that’s not important. What about mass shootings? We literally have kids bringing guns to school and killing their classmates.
• Two-Timer Date:
  • One article has a music equivalent: a guitarist who's in both a hardcore punk and a metal band, and has to run back and forth between them because they're playing at the same time. The guitarist manages to sneak away while the hardcore frontman is giving a long speech about scene unity, and applies his face paint while running between venues.
  • Deconstructive Parody elevated to new heights in "We Scheduled an Interview With Henry Rollins and J Mascis on the Same Day at the Same Time at the Same Restaurant and I Know This Is Crazy but I Think We Can Pull This Off". The writer in the piece deliberately tries to invoke the trope but gives away the game immediately, as both Henry Rollins and J Mascis immediately notice the other and are barely placated by the writer's transparent excuses. The writer proceeds to horribly mangle the scheme by changing shirts at the wrong time and asking the wrong people the wrong question. Ironically, both artists say they'd be ok with doing a joint interview, but the writer's dogged insistence on carrying out the trope leads to both storming off, offended.
• Unknown Rival: ""Rival" Band Totally Indifferent to Your Existence". The band Gift Horse deeply hates the band Weed Killer, and are constantly playing pranks on them and trying to sabotage their success, which always backfires. Meanwhile, Weed Killer consider Gift Horse to be nice guys that they dimly remember meeting once.
• Word Salad Lyrics: "World War 2 Code Breaker Asked to Decipher Pavement Lyrics". And even the codebreaker thinks the lyrics are nonsense.
• Yoko Oh No: In "Modern Day Yoko? This Woman’s Boyfriend Is in a Shitty Band" they interview a woman who has a negative reputation and is frequently compared to Yoko Ono purely because she has a boyfriend in a band. In a critique of the trope, the article makes it clear that she is much cooler than her boyfriend or his band.
• Youtuber Apology Parody: "Twitch Releases Mad-Libs Style Stock Apology for Popular Streamers". The template includes an apology for saying a slur, pledges to donate to and meet with various social justice orgs, and references to friends who are members of the affected group.

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