rAw TiMe: What An Untouchable ’90s Goth Can Tell Us About Dealing with Web Trolls
The counterculture of ’90s-2000s America is a fascinating thing to look back upon. And the media gems it left behind are even more interesting. After all, it’s the era that gave us the paradoxical mainstream arrival of alternative rock, weird and wonderful early websites, violent talk shows, the golden age of Hip Hop, adult cartoons, and millions tuning in to watch grown men in tights hitting each other with steel chairs on Monday nights.
Arguably, no station of the era better catered to Generation X’s adolescent fascinations than MTV. Where else could you watch the latest music videos as presented by the likes of Beavis and Butthead? Nowhere, that’s where.
But, if you were living in Austin, Texas, at the time and had a late-night craving for that kind of alt-niche production, one show on public access television had you covered. That show was rAw TiMe.
rAw TiMe was a music video show that was as hip, cynical, unfiltered, cheaply produced, and chaotic as the stylized lettering and connotations of its name suggested. Between the music that ranged from Bewitched to Ramstein and Bjork, the program featured an array of equally eclectic hosts who took calls from viewers.
Let’s be absolutely clear, though: rAw TiMe was “not a f*cking requests show.” Rather, the idea (presumably) was that the hosts and the callers would chat about music and life.
But of course, if you’ve ever seen a public access television show before, let alone one that aired late at night, you’ll know that was never going to be the case. Instead, the rAw TiMe hosts were subjected to a near-constant wave of asinine, vile, and pointless prank calls.
In a way, I think such was always expected and maybe even the intention of the people behind the show. I really couldn’t say for sure. In any case, the hosts were all champs when dealing with the trolls. Yet none were quite so adept at managing them than Tinarina.
We don’t know much about Tinarina. However, we can almost certainly say that her real name was not Tinarina. Nor was it “Tiffy” or any of the other pseudonyms she used on the show.
Why the fake names, you ask? Because Tinarina was underage — only sixteen by some accounts. What on earth she was doing hosting a late-night public access show at that age is anybody’s guess. But it didn’t stop her from being subjected to some of the most lurid and slimy calls ever heard on television.
From women calling her a “trailer park s**t” to grown men sexually harassing her, or people trying to play ear-piercing noises through the phone lines, Tinarina found herself facing a barrage of nonsense any time she hosted the show. Yet, through it all, she remained seemingly untouchable.
With witty comebacks, great comical timing, and a trademark nonchalant smirk, Tiffy blasted through rAw TiMe’s incoming calls without ever giving the slightest hint that anything much fazed her.
The result seemed to draw only more ire and calls as the late-night audience tried ever more convoluted attempts to get under Tinarina’s skin or trick her into getting worked up. Yet they always failed. Tinarina just kept skipping through callers, putting down losers, and playing music videos.
Yet, unbeknownst to Tinarina, her short stint on the show wasn’t fated to be lost to the archives of dead public access shows. Instead, it was destined to find a whole second life online.
In 2004, Tinarina made a post to her personal website saying she was working on a project and joked that it “will probably happen around 2021,” before disappearing from the public eye. Ironically, that’s around the same time the web did its thing and rediscovered her rAw TiMe segments.
In the age of the web troll, online tribalism, and fire-stoking politicians with Twitter accounts, people found Tinarina’s attitude inspiring, with many commenting that they wish they could be as “badass” at dealing with trolls as her. And for those who dress, look, or act outside of society’s norms, she gained instant cult status.
In my gut, I suspect Tinarina may not have been as always unfazed as she made out. I’m also all too acutely aware that people — especially young girls — shouldn’t have to be “badasses” who “deal” with the obnoxious behavior of mostly male adults.
Nonetheless, there’s no denying that Tinarina’s attitude and demeanor understandably draw envy. She reminds us that we don’t need to engage. We don’t need to explain ourselves or our choices to those who only seek to provoke. And we also don’t have to give weight to words from passing strangers.
Unfortunately, it also reminds us that some people have always been a bit deranged.
It’s as ironic as it is sad to me that while reading about her online, I didn’t have to look far to find dope’s still trying to put her down, share their incel-like views, or comment that she was now “probably a flabby stay at home soccer mom” or a “drug addict.”
I guess people really are just as classy as they’ve ever been.
Yet the truth is that nobody knows what happened to Tinarina, and she hasn’t felt the need to return and explain herself. And in some ways, I think that’s a fitting last ‘F-U’ to the trolls, for her to leave us with nothing but worn-out VHS tapes of a teenage goth who doesn’t give a damn about you, your words, or your awful taste in music.
After all, life is not a requests show.