It’s something I struggle with. Some bad news comes out about some public persona doing something shitty and they get cancelled. But sometimes I really struggle with giving up the things they’ve made because I like them. There are also occasions where the person has been accused of something and it doesn’t seem true to me, or I think they’re genuinely sorry and have been punished enough, and the context isn’t being considered.
What do you think? Who do you feel conflicted about enjoying?
Both of the Linuses
Sebastian and Torvalds
Sebastian because most of the shit he’s been accused of has either been fixed openly, or was proven mostly false.
Torvalds because while he can be extremely rude, he generally only does it when the person deserves to be called out. It’s not like he’s going off at random people. Society says he should use more tact, but the dude is literally responsible for creating and now maintaining arguably the most important piece of the server software stack globally. There’s also a very high chance he’s on the spectrum.
Yeah people can complain Torvalds was rude all day, but fuck me if the people he yelled at couldn’t be aggressively disrespectful in bringing half-assed work to the table and doing damage or at best wasting other’s people time.
i’ve heard Torvalds be called rude but never “cancelled”.
I think there have been attempts to cancel Torvalds after he’s slapped down some idiot in a particularly harsh manner, but I don’t think they ever stick because he doesn’t go off on people unless they really try to do shit that would compromise the integrity of the kernel and didn’t take the message to fix/bail on something when it was previously provided.
As I recall, he also apologized for the slap down, which seems like it often helps with getting cancelled
Neil Gaiman. I’m extremely depressed that he’s actually a POS, and because I loved his work so much, I’m conflicted. His work itself seemed to have well interrogated values woven into it’s fiber, but I guess you never can tell.
Edit: really fucking bummed about Red Hot Chili Peppers too
man, this was the worst. but he’s not getting another dollar from me, the bastard. at least he’s not fighting Terry Pratchett’s estate over Good Omens.
speaking of which, Terry seems to have been just a great guy and was better than Neil anyway. It’s really helped me to let Neil go.
Helllll yeah! Terry Pratchett, but also I’m keeping ALL celebrity at arms length without heavy vetting at this point
Same with his ex? Wife Amanda Palmer. I love the Dresden Dolls and she’s been very inspirational but knowing she was in on it was fucked up.
This broke my damn heart. His work seemed to have the values I hold dear and be so insightful and then… he’s getting in the bath with girls who depend on him for housing.
I am thinking that power corrupts. I came up with that but you can use that phrase if you want.
Pretty sure the Anthony Keides stuff was well known for decades. It’s in his autobiography that was published like 20 years ago or something.
He’s always been the worst part of that band
It has been! That’s why it’s even more fucking disgusting to me. It isn’t well known or talked about, fucking bastards just get a fucking pass sometimes and I hate it
I have a theory that all writers are somewhat hypocritical. As an amateur writer myself (I write fan fiction and am also working on original work I hope to get published eventually), I find sometimes the moral messages I try to weave into my work are sometimes messages that I myself am struggling to live up to and writing is a way of trying to work through that
Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert. I have several of his print books and still enjoy reading them; ditto his old cartoons. They really spoke to me years ago, as a cubicle-coder.
hey, read the books you already own all you want. that doesn’t put anymore money in his pocket.
being “cancelled” doesn’t mean we stick our fingers in our ears and act like it didn’t happen. it just means being conscientious about funding the lives of people who are actively making the world a worse place.
this is a critical detail that I think people often miss
I stopped liking dilbert when it became obvious that dilbert was becoming a side character so he could prop up PHB. Anything I’ve seen since then is just insufferable.
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Bill Cosby is a monster, but his stand-up special “Himself” is a master class on comedic story-telling.
H.P. Lovecraft
I kind of think that Lovecraft was doing about the least-worst thing he could with his absolutely massive trove of neuroses and phobias, which definitely included racism and xenophobia.
He was convinced that the universe was chaotic and horrifying and that the only thing we could hold on to for stability was racial purity, and that’s pretty fucked up, but he turned those feelings into spooky stories about interdimensional space monsters, which is certainly a lot better than writing political tracts or trying to convince everyone that the Armenians are actually to blame for all of our problems.
Therapy would have been even better, but writing spooky stories was better than some of the very real alternatives that other people were exploring in the 19-teens and twenties.
Lovecraft was my first experience with seperating the artist and the work. Since then, I’ve had to deal with it frequently but eventually you get used to it.
Those books are wild.
Turns out that the author that popularized the horror of the alien and unknown was a racist and xenophobic putz. Who would have guessed?
I don’t enjoy or like public figures. Having never met them, I cannot like them. I do enjoy the works or products of some people, and knowing the person(s) who created something can influence my chances of consuming it.
There are some people who have done, or accused of doing bad things, but they have created works that I enjoyed.
AKA, I never “liked” Neil Gaiman. But I do like American Gods.
Fair. I wish the art people made wasn’t tainted by their behaviour.
Like I have a soft spot for Vince Neil even though he killed people drunk driving, because of how his poor little daughter died and how badly it’s affected him. I can’t help it.
I can get onboard with separate the art from the artist, mostly. Especially if you’re not paying for the content, arrgh.
I find it hard to look at them without thinking of what they did, though. It’s hard for me to see past the artist to the art, when the artist is so shitty. I mean, he’s right there in my face, and I know what he did, so that’s all I’m thinking about when they’re acting.
Public people should do everything they can to keep their private lives private. Some of them are very good at it, so it is possible.
It always gets me that Matthew Broderick killed two people in a car crash and got off with a $100 fine. I love Ferris Bueller’s day off, and I think he’s really talented, but like this happened just after that movie, and he just did not seem to be held to account for it.
Oh gosh I didn’t even know that.
Die Antwoord. The music tickles a particular part of my brain, but they’re accused of some truly heinous shit.
I have a weird interest in South African rock music. I would buy SA CD compilations on ebay and discogs Nd listen to all the cool SA bands. One of them had a track by an artist called Max Normal. The track fucking slapped. No one in the US has heard of these SA artists I listen to. One day I mention my interest to a coworker and he said something like “oh man, you should check out Die Antwood.” So, I did. I’m reading about Die Antwood and I had a holy fuck moment. They were the same artist on that compilation CD. They changed their name to Die Antwood. The artist of an obscure track on a compilation CD I have went on to become an internationally known artist. I also found out they are pretty shitty people. Life is crazy sometimes.
I was talking about them in this thread because I’m also a fan, and I don’t believe a word that Tokkie said. I think they’re not great people but I think that’s all horseshit.
Do I dare ask? I have this sinking feeling it’s racism related…
Typical dodgy celebrity stuff, support young artists get them high, rape…
And then there’s Racism, and exploiting kids
I think Ninja told some girl he wanted to fuck her after he told her she looked like his daughter.
I think they were grooming young teens? Forget the details
I don’t know about that but I saw something about how they just like, kept a kid? Like in a basement? From one of their videos
This is going to get buried, but I miss Bill Cosby, or rather my mental model of him before all that nastiness came out.
Understood. The TV show was totally hilarious.
The Cosby Show is still a good classic show with a lot of humor and heart. It is tainted now though. Really creepy in retrospect that Cosby plays a doctor with exclusively female patients he sees in the basement
Ugh, that was the scene I kept thinking of when it all came out
this was my answer was well. i haven’t seen it in a while but his “himself” special was my favorite stand up ever
Al Franken
was a coordinated hit job. What he did was immature but in no way sexual assault, but they knew that releasing it at the height of the Me Too movement would cause the purity-obsessed left to chase him out of office.
I really enjoyed Lost Prophets music, but after what happened, I feel really weird about listening to it. I like it but I don’t feel like I should.
I wouldn’t recommend looking up what the singer did
I have learned a lesson today. From now on when someone says, “I wouldn’t recommended looking into this,” I think I’ll just leave it alone.
Same. I thought their album was going to change the scene. Haven’t listened to it since he was convicted. He was stabbed to death in prison this year.
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Good riddance tbh.
Genuine question, has your opinion changed now that the singer has died? In no way, shape or form is the person who sang the music benefiting in any way from you listening to it.
People often say to separate the art from the artist. In an acting role I kinda get it, because an actor is playing a different character. For music, it’s kinda the same. The music is its own thing separate from the person. Maybe?
I don’t know, not really. I feel like music embodies singers more, but I also realise that there was a whole innocent band attached to that too, that didn’t know do or condone.
Its weird, I don’t really know how to feel about it.
If you feel like you can only like things made by people who haven’t done anything wrong, ever, you’re left with Mr Rogers and that’s about it. Liking something someone made isn’t an endorsement of their actions or opinions. Unfortunately we live in a hyper capitalistic society so buying their stuff can help them with their shitty opinions, so don’t buy new Harry Potter stuff, but feel free to enjoy it.
Kurt Vonnegut and George Carlin were both amazing people that didn’t get exposed as monsters. They weren’t saints, like Mister Rogers, but they also did not have the advantage of being related to Captain America like Fred was.
Phil Spector produced some of the best music of the twentieth century, including one of a handful of bearable Christmas albums in existence. Also he’s a fucking murderer. So… bit of a mixed bag, there.
Louis CK
I’m not trying to apologize for his behavior, but in my read of the situation, he ASKED women if he could jerk off in front of them and sometimes did even without permission, but at no point does it seem like they were held hostage, touched physically or threatened. If he asked ME (hetero guy) I’d have just walked away and thought “what a weird asshole”.
The biggest problem is that he was in a position of power over those women and that makes it considerably harder to say no when the person asking could make or break your career.
I think you mean Lewis CK :)
I heard someone went on a date with him and he bought some insanely expensive watch on it. I think he didn’t deal with the loneliness of fame well.
Thanks, I noticed it was wrong as soon as I hit post. Yeah, seems like he didn’t deal with a lot of things too well. At least he seems genuinely contrite about his mistakes.
