I used to think Musk was ok.
I didn’t know anything about him other than he was investing in EV’s which I felt the world desperately needed, at a time when it felt like big oil was squashing the uptake.
I feel like I was fortunate that as soon as I came to understand there was alot of buzz about this guy I wanted to understand why, did some research, and found out that he got lucky twice with corporate mergers making him alot of money.
Same, I thought he was out to try and save the world from climate change. For me the illusion shattered when he tried to kill California HSR because he would make less in cars. It was never about the environment, it was about being “cool” and then cornering the market.
Yeah for me it was the Thai kid submarine fiasco. He offered a dumb idea in a life threatening situation and when it was rejected by professional underwater cave diver rescue guy Musk accused the guy of being a pedo.
That one was full mask off. Couldn’t be explained by someone trolling. Couldn’t even be explained by a profit motive. Just an attention seeking child.
The way he smeared that teacher reputation… Disgusting.Talk about projecting…
If HSR isn’t “high-speed rail”, it may be fun to once-again dereference your initialisms on first use.
Neil fuckin Gaiman.
The monster went from my favorite author to a name that elicits rage and disgust.
Neil Gaiman. I fucking loved Sandman and damn near everything else he wrote. Finding out he’s a total scumbag has basically ruined a lot of very dear memories.
Been looking for this.
Back in the day I scored a ticket to an Amanda Palmer show, was absolutely floored when he showed up mid-act, completely unannounced. He was one of my favourite writers, a friend to Sir Terry Pratchett (RIP) , and on top of that, someone who seemed like a genuine force for good in the world. I remember that show made my year, I felt so incredibly lucky, like finding a bike under the tree when you’re 4.
Then Good Omens happened, then Sandman, and I was just genuinely happy to see him getting the accolades and recognition.
Not mincing words here, once the allegations started floating up, I felt so angry and personally betrayed. For every book or show recommendation, for every conversation where I brought him up as one of my personal heroes. I was almost in mourning, I realise that now, and I’m pretty sure my cynicism levelled up as a direct consequence of that experience.
Fast forward to last week or so, where my RSS feed pings with an article from his blog, the first since the scandal began. He’s pointing to a journalist investigation that seems to say the whole thing was a hatchet job. He tries to explain, and this being Neil, the words line up and do his bidding. And I want to fucking believe him, I do. But I can’t.
The absolute worst thing? In spite of everything, I hope he’s really telling the truth. How does that make any fucking sense?
Yeah, this one hurt.
Good Omens too. Can I pretend it was written entirely by Pratchett?
Kevin Sorbo as Hercules©®™.
And I used to listen to the lost profits as a teenager. ultra sigh
Lucy Lawless on the other hand is a fantastic lady and I love how she calls out Kevin Sorbo
Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, George Soros. I had a period where I appreciated people who played the system to get rich. Before I understood the system itself is the problem.
Bill Gates
I remember him as being a scumbag going back to the 80’s. Ripping off the Mac GUI, and then going on to bully, absorb and run out of business countless smaller enterprises through strong-arm legal / financial tactics.
What I find most interesting is that Warren Buffet has come right out said it’s weird that society will reward people into being billionaires and has publicly stated that there’s is for sure a class war going on and billionaires are winning.
I think it’s nice he’s giving most of his fortune away but disappointing he hasn’t called for the system that made his fortune to be dismantled.
because he benefited from that system that gave billionaires that advantage, of courses hes not go to bite the hand that feeds him.
Of all the wealthy people I’ve ever read about, Buffet seems to actually care about money the least. Like’s he’s in love with the process in the way that an autistic person loves their hyper focus but if he lost everything, it wouldn’t faze him.
As a teenager I loved to read Lovecraft. It was a way to learn English as a nice side effect because it isn’t my native language but that also obscured the appalling racism from me which lead to disappointment when I found out later.
Other people have already confirmed he was a racist, but think Clinical Xenophobe is a more apt distinction. He was a unconformable around minorities, but he was also unconformable about the ocean and the color violet. And he wrote about his discomfort. He didn’t write political manifests. This isn’t a case of separating the art from the artist, but seeing the art to see the broken person behind it.
Lovecraft deserves some redemption. First of all he wasn’t especially racist, just the “normal” amount for his time (take with a grain of salt please!). More importantly he significantly mellowed out in his later years primarily due to exposure to talented black writers which made him realize the error of his ways.
But yeah, I wouldn’t ask him to name my void cat.
No, he was really really racist for the time. But he did get better at the end.
Lovecraft was especially racist by the standards of his time, though. https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/1897rk2/was_lovecraft_racist_even_by_the_standards_of_his/
I used to love Joss Whedon from everything he made. I grew up watching Buffy, and loved Firefly, then Marvel got him for Avengers and I was excited for him to be getting such a big break. He later Agents of Shield which I also loved. But then it came out that he was an abuser. His whole persona of championing strong women was merely a facade to hide this.
Learning that Michelle Trachtenberg (RIP) had a clause in her contract while working in Buffy (2000-3) at age 15 that she was not to ever be in the same room as Whedon alone opened my eyes to just how bad things are. Not just how bad he was, but how well it was known that he was an abuser and no one did anything about it. That’s just how things were.
I have a hard time watching Buffy or any of his works anymore, just knowing now that he was behind these things.
Yeah, it also gives me some closure with firefly being cancelled… like I the fox executive cancelled Firefly because he didn’t like Whedon, now I know why he didn’t like him. Or at least a probable reason.
And it didn’t give him a chance to be weird and creepy with Summer Glau.
Any more than he already had been.
Lest we forget she was introduced to the show naked in a box.
The man was big into the ‘born sexy yesterday’ trope.
God, the entirely of Dollhouse was the most problematic thing I’ve ever seen in retrospect (regarding the born sexy yesterday trope) and I can’t believe that past me didn’t see how messed up everything about it was. That the dolls were turned into helpless blanks between jobs and constantly sexualized in that state was so messed up.
I wouldn’t say horrible, but the shine definitely faded off Will Smith.
He’s made some poor choices over the years.
My buddy worked in an area that Will Smith occasionally worked.
At every opportunity, will Smith would go out of his way to meet the people around where he was working, talk with them, get selfies, etc, when there was absolutely no need to do it. This was even later in his career when he was really well-known: he’d be walking down a hallway chatting about electrical stuff with a maintenance guy for no reason. I do believe will smith would also return a shopping cart if tested.
The thing where he assaulted someone else on live TV was either out of character, or every appearance from the years before was out of character; exclusively so.
I refuse to believe Will Smith is irredeemable yet.
He laughed at Chris Rock’s joke until he saw Jada’s reaction. Not in any way excusable for him to assault him, but it’s easy to see what the actual reason for it was.
Being all wrapped up with another person emotionally and romantically can sometimes push us to do things otherwise out of character. I think it’s pretty easy to see and understand in that particular case.
JK Rowling
I literally learned to read so I could read Harry Potter books so I didn’t have to wait for bedtime for my dad to read them to me; even though I was a “boy” I badly wanted to be Hermione Granger when I grew up
it’s really heart-breaking that she became so deranged and hateful, a lot of us loved her books growing up
My mother. Turns out she’s a narcissistic, fascist Trump-loving Norwegian, who’s only been to the USA twice. Last time we spoke, she defended the killing of Good and Pretti, stating that innocent lives can be taken in order to get the Somali fraud.
I don’t talk to her anymore.
Hulk Hogan. I was such a huge Hulkamaniac as a kid, brother.
Same. I remember thinking he was such a hero when I was like 8. What a douche canoe.
Wayne Gretzky.
