Last weekend, this blog ran an article about Resident Advisor’s current series on wellness. I wasn’t exactly nice about it – and for good reason. The contrast between this blog’s hilst series of excoriating articles last month on the MDL Beast Soundstorm controversy and their insipid current series is something I find striking.

Well, the series must go on – and their next idea is a 90-minute Zoom. The discussion will be “Winter Of Care: Alternative Tools And Strategies To Support Ourselves And Each Other” – a title so long you’ll need a lie down after you finish saying it – and takes place at 5pm UK time next Monday.

Let me be emphatically clear here. No one is saying for one moment that mental health doesn’t matter. It matters more now than ever. I have no issue with anyone addressing mental health – indeed, it’s a subject which comes up occasionally on this very blog. But when Resident Advisor gets involved, this poses a problem.

You see, they like to portray themselves as the representatives of an entire culture. And during the pandemic, Resident Advisor has failed miserably to cover it properly. They could, for example, have used their position to campaign for better support for out of work DJs and all those being affected by Covid restrictions and closures.

But they didn’t. They were far too concerned with saving their own position to care about the culture they claim to represent. Such a campaign would have helped the mental health of many in the industry far more than a month of occasional articles about the terribly vague notion of “wellness”.

Resident Advisor could quite easily use their position to help improve the mental health of those in the industry. They have a large social media reach, they’ve been around for a long time – and they’re an increasingly well-resourced operation. But they don’t – their main priority appears to be selling tickets, for which they typically receive about 12.5% of the price.

Am I being harsh here? Possibly. But the reality is if you position yourself in a particular way, don’t be surprised when people try to hold you to those standards…