Keanu Reeves, I used to really like the guy when the matrix trilogy came out but then he said and did all these super nice things like saying “I don’t want to be part of a world where kindness is perceived as weakness”.
Nah just fucking with you. The dude is solid!
Oof, got me panicky for a moment.
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.
Oh yes, the “I elected a garbage human being because I thought he would be better for the economy despite bankrupting more businesses than any known man alive”.
Sad to hear about you Grandmother, but she betrayed so many people by siding with the Nazi.
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. :/
Bill fucking Cosby. That guy was a generational idol.
Back in the '00s, he used to give speeches down at college campuses around the country that supposedly promoted ethics and social values for young men. The most famous of these, the Pound Cake Speech, was given out during the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision at an NAACP Legal Defense dinner, ffs.
He was this pinnacle of Respectibility Politics. This Model Minority. The quintessential American father figure. An intellectual. A charismatic icon. A pillar of the community.
Oops. Fuck. Oh well…
Oof that speech did not age well. Basically a ignore systemic racism and just pull your bootstraps extra hard coming from a wealthy person is about as hollow as you can get.
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.
Not so much a hero but I admired
his workthe projects he is associated with: Elon regarding Tesla & Space X.I had heard that he was a bit of a nightmare to work with but I just chalked that up to the usual tech CEO being a bit of an arsehole but still delivering the vision. So admired the projects but wouldn’t personally work for him.
The first time I came across something that gave me the impression something was off with him was when he called one of the Thai cave divers a pedo after the diver rejected using an unproven single person extraction canister Elon proposed.
It was just so uncalled for. Then the more I read and saw stories about him my opinion of him wained further down to a spoilt nepo-baby cosplaying as a design engineer who’d do best to get out of the way of the actual engineers trying to do the work.
Now I think the world would be better off without him and I hope the talented engineers currently work for him leave to find fulfilling employment elsewhere in the space and electrification industries as soon as possible.
Same with Musk. I was teaching engineering courses at the time of the first falcon heavy launch. I actually stopped my class so we could watch the launch. When those boosters landed in a perfect synchronous ballet, I told my class it was “engineering as poetry.”
Why couldn’t Musk just stay the fuck out of politics?
$$$$
He felt big buying a president.
when he called one of the Thai cave divers a pedo
I think that was when he exposed himself widely to be a garbage human.
He actually won a court case saying he didn’t defame that guy by calling him a pedo, so I’ve been calling him pedo elon for awhile. But then it turns out he’s all over the Epstein files, so he was actually a real pedo all along. Guess I have to start calling him a double pedo or something.
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.
Oh man, this makes me think of Hulk Hogan. Talk about a guy who aged like milk.
Also, ‘Don’t Do Drugs’.
Don’t forget the voice for McGruff the crime dog got caught with 1000 pot plants lol
Getting there is not half the battle.
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”
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.
Jobs was an interesting man in that he’s a prime example of an environment creating a person. If you haven’t read the biography it’s a fascinating read. The TLDR is that personality didn’t appear in a vacuum.
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.
A big hero of mine is/was “Weird Al” Yankovic. I feel like out of all celebrities that exist, he’s the one that I probably don’t have to worry about turning out to be a horrible person.
You may have misread the instructions for the project.
Nope! I read correctly. I just wanted an excuse to talk up Weird Al, honestly. 😁
Just paniced by the name. Please tell me he hasn‘t done something bad.
He became Serious Alfred last month, but no nothing bad has come out about Al.
And here I thought Al was the reason my RAM is ten times the price it was 3 months ago.
Serious Alfred unseen for weeks on a math binge.
Regular Albert
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.
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.
Probably the earliest celebrity from my childhood who turned out to be a POS. I loved Fat Albert.
One of the reasons that Cosby was such a betrayal was because he had such an appeal to children. We didn’t discover him in our teens or adulthood, we followed him as little kids, and his humor became part of our psyche. We had invited him into our minds as a friend, only to later find out that he was a genuine monster.
You have noticed you don’t see much Fat Albert these days?
I haven’t seen much of it since the 80s!
It was around in the early 90’s but it was soon gone. I don’t remember any controversy it just aged out and well fat shaming had become a thing.
Yup. Tis sad as a lot of that stuff was funny.
Yeah, the Bill Cosby As Himself set got quoted a lot in my household growing up.
“To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With,” was my favorite. It was a long, epic story of him and his brother goofing around at bedtime, and their father getting increasingly angry. Still hilarious to this day.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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
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
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…
