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.
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
Yeah me too. I literally started to read because I couldn’t wait for mum to start reading and wanted to read past when she stopped.
I was literally sneaking away to read. My parents knew and turned a blind eye, not believing their luck that their son was rebelling by reading haha. I’ll always thank JK for my love of reading. But fuck her politics.
I started reading for the same reason, except it was he Narnia books and my gramma 🫡
I started reading in other languages for her. To which I credit a lot of my English skills. I couldn’t wait for fifth one to be translated so just started reading books in English.
My mom got me onto them though.
I hope for you you bexame what you truely are, stranger
Your hero as a child was the author and not the character?
I mean, it’s not like Harry Potter can turn out to be a terrible person as he is fictional.
Well he did peek in high school and then became a cop so…
Married his friend’s little sister.
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.
Yeah, this one hurt.
Good Omens too. Can I pretend it was written entirely by Pratchett?
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?
Read books by Tanith Lee.
Gaiman stole the idea of Death, Evil, and Madness being related from her books.
I asked for Sandman two Christmases ago, before everything came out. Im still glad I read it, it’s good, but I wish I would’ve gotten used copies so at least he didn’t make money off it
Used to love watching the Cosby show and watching his stand up specials…
When I was a kid I had one of his stand up specials on cassette and I regularly listened to it to fall asleep.
Fatherhood was a great book, and I say this as someone that won’t be having any kids.
He had that bit about being in trouble so much as a little kid he didnt know his name was bill, he thought it was Jesus Christ. Too bad hes a predator of the highest degree.
It’s worse for GenX, we watched Fat Albert and learned about things like drugs and prejudice from it. The Cosby Show happened during my cynical, anti-wholesomeness teen years so I didn’t watch that so much.
This is where it’s hard. I still enjoy his work even knowing he was a scumbag.
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.
I hate to link to the evil empire, but there was a great breakdown series (warts and all) about the guy published there after he passed. I wasn’t a fan of pro wrestling in the slightest, but found it pretty fascinating:
@master_of_unlocking@piefed.zip
I heard that his lawsuit against Gawker (which destroyed the company) was actually paid for by Peter Thiel
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.
Amazing how many things the Simpsons got right, yet it didn’t matter.
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.
i never saw them as rolemodels, its not really somehting that ever connected with me at all, with gates he always seem too snobby and gave off a faek vibe, now we know why.
Yeah because, if the system worked as it ideally should and wasn’t corrupt, none of those men would’ve been where they are today. They’d be down on earth with the rest of us, equally.
Damn this was so sad. What kind of a bummer must your childhood have been if Warren Buffett was your hero?
Kevin Sorbo as Hercules©®™.
And I used to listen to the lost profits as a teenager. ultra sigh
Bah this one hurt… He didn’t just go a bit cookie… Went full nuts
Lucy Lawless on the other hand is a fantastic lady and I love how she calls out Kevin Sorbo
I saw a guy at a music festival a few years ago that had a HUGE lostprophets tattoo across his upper back. Poor guy.
Rest in piss, Ian Watkins
Just saw he got stabbed.
Oh no.
Anyways
Is that the band who’s lead singer got sent to prison in Norway or Denmark for being a pedophile?
“being a pedophile” is somehow putting it lightly. He was raping actual
toddlersinfants.
a few chiro strokes, he turned into a nutty right winger, who was jealous of XENA. he even managed to ruin his own show, andromeda.
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.
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.
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.
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To me, Smith will always be a rapper first. He was right: parents just don’t understand.
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.
Why the fuck does a Norwegian care about fraud in the US?
The million dollar question I cannot answer…
That is not good. I am sad to hear MAGA is alive and well in Norway. :-(
I rarely spoke to her because of her views, but the statement that killing innocent people can be justified? Fuck that.
Oh, and she supports Putin to remove all the Nazis in Ukraine.
And by “Nazis” she probably means their Jewish president
Sorry to hear about yours (and the others in here), mine too, she used to be a clever, kind lady - or I thought she was - now I reflect and realize she fed me poison, abused me, and has no perspective outside of her own shallow little life. I couldn’t get her into therapy, and when she started pushing fundraisers for the Good’s murderer, I cut her out for good. In response she told me she “won’t let” my adult brothers speak to me anymore - yeah that’s what I’m talking about, mom. FFS
Honestly, same. She’s not as radical as yours, but I had this idea that my mum was clever, sensible, and capable of critical thought. She used to read a lot, made better political arguments compared to my dad, and somehow managed to raise her children into smart individuals. The combination of me growing up, her getting addicted to Facebook, and the pandemic warped my perception of who my mum really was. She forms emotionally-driven opinions, she jumps to conclusions, she’s gullible, and she’s close-minded.
I don’t think she would ever justify killing someone, but she’s suddenly anti-vax, she’s anti-choice and would vote for anyone who vows to maintain that culture, she’s obsessed with drag queens and transgender people, and she gets her news from Facebook. All of her comments involve the phrase, “I’ve seen the comments on Facebook.”
In 2024, I decided to cut contact with her because she kept spreading misinformation and sharing petition links to ban gender-affirming care. And in addition to that, she was preaching about the Olympic ceremony being blasphemous and “woke.” My reason for going no-contact with her was that I couldn’t bring myself to maintain a relationship with someone who made other people’s lives dangerous. Everyone took her side and accused me of causing a drift and being immature because I couldn’t handle other people’s opinions, apparently.
I ended up talking to her again after a couple of months because I visited my family and I couldn’t avoid her. She was going through a tough time and she was crying so I gave in. I still have a relationship with her but only because I actively choose to live as if I don’t know those details about my mum. She’s otherwise a good person; she donates to charity and she cares about democracy, the environment, and her children. But whenever I remember the kind opinions that she has, I get angry all over again. It sucks because she was indeed more sensible, but her brain got rotten by social media…
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.
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.
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/
No, he was really really racist for the time. But he did get better at the end.
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This cereal was popular in the 1960s. They even had a kids’ cartoon with the little ‘Chinese’ boy ‘So-Hi.’
Rice Crinkles cereal
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.
Wayne Gretzky.
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Gretzky was a Canadian icon. A source of national pride. But when Trump was threatening to annex Canada it came out that Gretzky was a MAGA guy. This caused a widespread sense of betrayal among the Canadian public.
turned conservative
He’s from Alberta, he didn’t turn, just stopped hiding it.
Except he’s not.
My bad, I was a kid during his Oilers days and I mean, look at him…
oh god please no
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
Not only that but “what would Jesus do” has a valid answer of “flip tables and chase money lenders with a whip”. The ideal of “love one another” is always welcome as well.
If the Christian god was a person and he moved next door, i would move out of town. Can’t trust that bastard.
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.
“Jesus was probably cool, but nobody gives a fuck about him.”
Around here, if I meet someone that talks about God, then maybe they are cool. Maybe not, but they are probably the normal amount of religious. If they talk about Jesus, they are hundred percent batshit. They think trans people and gay people are the same thing, and both are a threat to children, unlike their pastor, who is not allowed to let children sit on his lap anymore because he fell to temptation that one (4!) time(s!).
I watched The Apprentice when I was a teenager. I seem to have blocked out my memory of how I felt about Trump back then but my aunt says I used to think he was funny. I remember the opening tricked me into believing he was a good businessman (I was a teenager and this was my first introduction to him). I wouldn’t say I viewed him as a hero but I guess I liked him as a celebrity. Now he’s ruined countless lives. It was the birther conspiracies that made me start to dislike him.
Neil fuckin Gaiman.
The monster went from my favorite author to a name that elicits rage and disgust.
A lot of his works are still good. I just won’t buy new ones, I won’t give him any profits.
Perhaps in a purely academic limbo of examining the writing techniques, but that’s not the world any of us actually live our lives. “Death of the Author” is a cop out, especially when the author still lives.
Fundamentally I won’t ever be able to pick up my teenage favorite Sandman again without seeing the parallels between Neil and Morpheus rape, entrapment and abuse of the women who they lord power over. My own personal emotional connection to any of his character, worlds or stories is irrevocably shattered. I can’t view that as a character flaw, but more of a self-insert to Neils personal fantasies.
It sucks but that is where we are at now. :/
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.
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.
noam started peddling for PUTIn of all people, putin likely had krompromat. Norm too, he shilled for trump before he died.
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”
