My childhood heros were the cartoon heros of the 80’s. And they all turned out to be lieing to us the whole time. Saying things like “evil never wins”, “crime doesn’t pay”, and all that. They were really just trying to reduce the competition.
Vaporeon
Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew on Loveline.
HOLY SHIT… Did those two unimaginably broken people take, at first different, but eventually converging, paths to the deepest part of hell.
Both irredeemable pieces of garbage.
My grandma. She always seemed the sweetest, kindest lady - freely sharing, donating time and her resources to charity. Yet when Orange Shitler was running for reelection, and she shared campaign propaganda with me after I repeatedly asked her but to, and I then shared with her the already overwhelming evidence of his malfeasance, pedofilia and rape, she simply responded that those things didn’t matter to her because she thought “he’d be good for the economy.”
I haven’t spoken to her since.
My childhood heroes were Optimus Prime, dinosaurs, and a big bin full of LEGO.
As they say: “never meet your heroes”. Two out of three ain’t bad.
Steve Jobs. There was some magic to him, but also an extremely dark side. I had a corporate bio from the early 90s that made him and Woz seem like superhero partners, when in reality he shorted Wozniak and Esposito and only really looked out for himself. He seemed like a countercultural LSD dropping hippie, and he was some of that, but when it came time to get rich and get his, he went down that path too. Shitty father, terrible boss. None of the things I would say my own life aspires to now.
he got killed by his own hubris, when he was diagnosed with a rare pancreatic cancer, PNET. it was treatable, but he went on a fruit diet to treat it, and plus he paid to be on the top of a list of A LIVER transplant only to waste it with his “fruit diet” it allowed the cancer to spread and kill him. this pancreatic cancer is rare , unlike the common this is much more tretable and slower growing, while the normal ones are usually more aggressive(adenocarcinoma vs PNET) AND USUally ad advanced stage when discovered in patients.
Neil fuckin Gaiman.
The
manmonster went from my favorite author to a name that elicits rage and disgust.OJ Simpson, Scott Adams, Joss Whedon, friends and family that are MAGA
Tim Sweeny
Back when Epic was Epic Megagames I played a shitton of their shareware catalogue - ZZT, Jazz Jackrabbit, Epic Pinball, Jill of the Jungle. As a teen I loved Unreal and Unreal Tournament. After Tim sold Epic to Tencent and became a vocal piece of shit I actively avoid all Epic software.
I was a big Bill Cosby fan, back int he 60s. I had several of his albums, and I’d take them to friends’ houses to listen to them.
I started hearing crazy stuff in the 90s, and then it all turned out to be true. I was heartbroken.
Yeah, the Bill Cosby As Himself set got quoted a lot in my household growing up.
Yup. Tis sad as a lot of that stuff was funny.
Hulk Hogan. Also, not really a hero, but his work had a log of influence on me- Orson Scott Card. The reasons I liked it so much are kind of cringe looking back as an adult anyway though.
he had PR because vince gave it to him, because Hes is a union breaker, he often snitch on other wrestlers if they were trying unionize or complain. so he get goodies from daddy vince. Also jesse ventura dint make things better, since he abandoned the wreslters because they couldnt unionize for the fear of retribution from vince McMahon if they attempted to unionize.
What about the anti-theist and leftist public intellectuals like Dawkins, Kraus, and Chomsky who turned out to be somewhere between anti-feminist and full-blown sex-offender? Even NDTyson has some pretty credible accusations for those who remember. Dennett seemed like the only one of the “Four Horseman” who could be considered a decent human being, but nope… he’s flying the Lolita Express.
But nobody has fallen farther than Richard Dawkins. Fame did to Dawkins what the One Ring did to Smeagol.
noam started peddling for PUTIn of all people, putin likely had krompromat. Norm too, he shilled for trump before he died.
This is true for me as well and kinda hurts. Dawkins in particular was quite a big part of my radicalisation pipeline/growing up. His books also helped me go through some stuff when I was questioning faith and my beliefs. I still think his books had a very positive impact on me and my approach towards science. But yeah, it’s heartbreaking to see him (and the other horsemen) turn out be a bit of the very thing they swore to destroy
Duh, even the opposition is just there for someone else to get to power.
Man if those are your childhood Heroes you must have had a shit childhood.
Fuck I’ll stand by it man that’s a sad kid. 8-year-old comes up to me and says their hero is Noam Chomsky then that kid needs a hug.
lol. “My little angel loves blazers and Ayn Rand”
I reserve ‘cunt’ and ‘dumb bitch’ as especially strong, disrespectful expletives to call a woman.
When I say “Fuck that dumb bitch TERF cunt JK Rowling” it carries the hurt and ire of a broken childhood love of Harry Potter. The series itself was incredibly important to me and provided a world I could escape to when the real world was overwhelming. The hate and bigotry that cunt has shown breaks my heart and sullies too many childhood memories to describe.
I was deeply inspired to pursue engineering after watching the first Falcon 9 boosters land themselves. I was enamored by the idea of using my little blip in humanity’s timeline to assist our expansion to another planet. I wanted to contribute to something important, something that turned many brilliant minds towards an achievement that would eventually benefit the entirety of mankind.
I even hopped on the Tesla train; I recognized the existential threat that carbon emissions bore as well as the damaging, restrictive nature of building a society that scorns public transportation and promotes individual car ownership.
I didn’t worship Elon so much as admired the causes he was advancing. That admiration withered over the years but my dream of contributing to the colonization of Mars helped me push through the ten years it took to earn my four year engineering degree. As details of his derangement came out, as he acquired twitter and more overtly spread his billionaire propaganda, that dream started to fade. The fascist salutes at Trump’s inauguration crushed those dreams and ground them into a dust too fine to even attempt a rebuild.
My jaded ass still wants to benefit humanity so I’ve set my eyes on climate science, even as the country I was born in denies the havoc and damage our relentless consumption has wrought. Not just denial, but outright derision and contempt for the future of our world. Thus I hope to take my dreams elsewhere, hoping to find a culture with a clearer view of the consequences we must face and the changes we must make to preserve our planet.
some people eluded her books as part of her way of expressing her bigotry.
I love watching Harry Potter fans get mad over JK Rowling.
It was always trash and they always had no standards. It’s nice to see that crowd have to separate mediocre art from mediocre artists.
She wrote books for children. 500 million+ copies have been sold globally. It’s obviously not trash, and she’s obviously very talented author in that genre. I get that some people have an irrational hatred towards her, but denying reality that strongly is certainly going to cause some psychological damage.
I think your use of the term “irrational” there says something potentially undesirable about you. People hate her for a very good reason, regardless of the contents of her books.
It’s sad if you think that means it’s not trash.
Lots of things are sad, like your having psychological damage.
Lol. Everyone who thinks harry potter is trash has ‘psychological damage.’
You need help.
No worries, I can help myself in this case quite easily by blocking a person who will obviously never contribute anything worth reading. Bye.
Nobody mentioned God?
I was raised Christian. Never deeply religious, but had all the bible study stuff, religious school, etc. Religion was comforting.
Then I got older and started seeing the fanboys for who they were. Hypocrites of the highest order. Assholes that armored themselves with being “Christians”. Trying to game the system or to buy their way into heaven, making it transactional. Heaven also seems like a shitty place; an existence locked into worshipping a deity while in a drugged out euphoria and never being able to learn, grow, and experience things again. A “Matrix”-like place. A God that is psychotic, manipulative, and a classic narcissistic abuser. Jesus would probably be a cool guy, but nobody actually gives a fuck about him. A book full of contradictions and other awful things that are constantly rationalized and massaged to mean whatever the needs of the individual might be. Just generally how awful any religion is, how it’s used to control people, do shitty things, and consolidate power and money.
Yeah, if you’re formerly religious, you get it. I’m an scientific atheist now.
Ironically, thanks to modern “christians”, I’ve found myself citing scripture to shitty people who claim to be religious to point out their hypocrisy, idolatry or whatever, and occasionally listening to religious people who point out how awful and un-christian these people are.
Jesus would probably be a cool guy
I’m an atheist but I fucking love Jesus. As an idea he represents so much good in humanity; selfless love, mercy, helping those in need, humility, even self-sacrifice for greater good. If you take him away from all the crap christianity has accumulated, there’s so much you can learn from his example. He’s even imperfect, just like all humans are
Same here. He could do ANYTHING, start a time loop until everyone makes the right choice, NOT create life you know will be damned.
But no, he tortures us to make us break, then punishes us FOREVER for it.
Also, all the animals who don’t go anywhere, and can’t sin, but suffer anyway.
I don’t want to hear the justifications, they are all bullshit.
Sounds like we had a similar upbringing. Do you still find yourself humming the old hymns sometimes? Like I’ll be doing the dishes and suddenly I’m whistling Love Lifted Me.
No, not quite, but I definitely get a “trigger” when I hear them.
If the Christian god was a person and he moved next door, i would move out of town. Can’t trust that bastard.
I can’t think of any artist more divorced from their work than Orson Scott Card
He was such an amazing writer. Some of his books and themes in those books broaden lots of horizons around peace, acceptance, gender, and even race. It was clear, at least to me, that when ender used the n-word he was rebuking the other boy for his use of a Chinese slur. That was a positive message in my childhood.
And yet later he goes quite racist with that shit essay about the Obamas, and obviously homophobic in a bunch of his other activities and works.
That being said, In a way I almost don’t blame him for it, he was raised as a member of the LDS Church. While some people break out of the Mormon church, it’s not easily done. The only thing that made his standard Mormon views on these topics “important” or “special” was that he is more famous than most members of the church.
I disagree with him on most things, but he’s been programmed to act that way well beyond anything I experienced in my childhood and had to overcome.
Disappointed is the better word for my views on him.
