[Serious] What's Going On In Your Life

[Shell B]

I miss my dad. That's pretty much it.

I'm sorry.

[Rev. Rye]

Things are going pretty well in my life at this point; I managed to get an A in my Business 101 class, my internship is going well, and I'm finally starting to feel better.

But I figure I may as well get this off my chest. There's a cinephile Youtuber I've been following for somewhere in the area of five years. And in the past few years, he's been getting... political. Granted, those political views tend to align with my own, and the rise of fascism in all but actual name in America is certainly something to be alarmed about. However, I've made abundantly clear that, as much as I consider myself a leftist, the state of the left online has led me to despair, and he's started to embody everything wrong with it: reflexive outrage, condescension, thin-skinnedness, and an utter refusal to acknowledge that those same things essentially turn the cultural landscape into a never-ending ouroborous of outrage that essentially ends with the left and right feeding off each other's hatreds, that often comes at the expense of actually being accurate about the films in question. One early example involved his being outraged at Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac for generally being an apologia for the director's edgelord sensibilities. A fair enough reason to dislike it, but at one point he acts like the film is pro-pedophile because A) at one point, the protagonist says a pedophile is laudable (he pointedly failed to mention that this laudability is specifically because the pedo in question REFUSED TO ACT ON HIS URGES), and B) because she seduces a 15-year-old girl and point-blank refusing to acknowledge that such things may actually be legal in other countries (including two of the three countries IMDb lists as filming locations; also, a rewatch shows that, no matter how ethically questionable the relationship in question remains, and it still does seem like she was grooming a girl a third her age, it is specifically stated to have become sexual after she reached the age of consent.) Things have gotten even worse in the year and a half since then, with him getting increasingly hung up on any potentially non-PC subject matter in a film, like spending an entire video talking about how Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri was borderline racist due to the joke about "the nigger-torturing business" and not once considering that maybe that joke was a commentary about how we're more concerned about the way we're perceived and not whether what we're doing is wrong (see Frankfurt's On Bullshit), and not just a way to make light of black suffering, and blatantly misinterpreting Dixon's character arc and trying to paint it as a normal unearned redemption arc when the reality is a lot more complicated than that. He does not really engage with viewpoints that differ from his own, instead just re-affirming his views and denouncing people who argue otherwise as fascist (if he doesn't just block them from his Tumblr or Twitter). I think the last straw came when he did the trailer for next year's reviews and it included titles like Thanos Was Wrong: Eugenics and Overpopulation (despite Thanos' M.O. specifically being random culling, pretty much the exact opposite of eugenics), and Rethinking Fahrenheit 451. I unsubscribed after that, because, honestly, it's getting in the way of producing insightful content. And the fact that his subscriber count is growing as he panders more to the perpetually triggered, in addition to his attitude, does not bode well for the prospects of his changing for the better.

The Fahrenheit 451 thing bears some explanation. I can remember Beatty's monologue about how book-burning grew out of people objecting to the content of certain books, “Coloured people don't like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it. Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book.” But bringing in mind this change of attitude, well, it didn't take a genius to figure out out where it was going. Just looking at his Twitter feed confirmed my suspicions. It was another casualty of his "personal growth." He has taken to talking about how he's grown to dislike/hate things he used to like that seemed problematic , whether it's the work of directors like Edgar Wright, Wes Anderson, or Quentin Tarantino; shows he previously praised like Rick and Morty; or even movies like Ghostbusters (the 1984 version, not the recent remake). Not once, in all this talk of growth, has he used it to talk about things he used to dislike but now has grown to appreciate (except perhaps for The Purge trilogy, which was over two years ago, long before he got this insufferable.) I talked with my therapist about that, and she said "that's not growth." Dad disagrees; after all, cancer is technically a growth that acts that way. For whatever reason, the thought of what has happened started to get to me in the last few days of the last year, including giving me severe indigestion (which went from a knot in my stomach to mere heartburn to a simple belly ache; today is the first day in a while I haven't felt any stomach trouble, and I think finally talking about it with my therapist and my dad was a crucial step.) It could just be that this is the first time I've ever unsubscribed from a Youtube channel (I actually have a few subscriptions from channels that were banned that I refuse to clean up.)

Honestly, I've been putting off talking about this because, quite frankly, listening to myself talk about it, I don't know whether I'm just cutting off a former friend I used to legitimately respect because his attitude is becoming so toxic (even if it is toxicity on the side of the angels), or if I'm just as triggered as he is.

[Shell B]

I get it. There is such a thing as swinging too far liberal. You swing hard enough, you go right over the top of the swingset and wind up sound like a conservative or maybe it's the other way around? Whatever the case may be, there's nothing helpful about making everything political.

[Rev. Rye]

I get it. There is such a thing as swinging too far liberal. You swing hard enough, you go right over the top of the swingset and wind up sound like a conservative or maybe it's the other way around? Whatever the case may be, there's nothing helpful about making everything political.

It's definitely more swinging so far to the left that he sounds right-wing. A few months ago, he made a video about Christian movies making claims like "people are only atheists because they want to sin." Meanwhile, he's pretty much saying the exact same thing about people who identify as left and don't think the exact way he does. Before and after making that video.

[Angrboda]

Not much. The daily routine of coffee, forums, and news. I'm getting out a lot more than usual, sometimes to go shopping, other times to talk about stuff with other godless heathens. I'm planning to start regular fitness classes at the YWCA soon, but I haven't gotten my new insurance information yet, and I'm going to have an ILS worker help me make it there at least once a week, and that's still in the process of being set up. My disability status is up for review with Social Security, and I have been waiting over a month to hear from them. They will either approve my disabled status, or require a medical interview to determine whether my disability status will continue. No need to panic right now, but I'm still nervous. Losing my disability status would result in a lot of difficult changes, and I would just rather continue on as I have. I'm not even sure I would succeed at leaving disability, as I have significant handicaps, not the least of which is a 20 year gap in my work history.

[DodosAreDead]

College apps and essays just never seem to end. Somehow managed to send the bulk of them through the craziness of a 5 day wedding in the family, only to realize there are 4 left. *sigh*

[energizer bunny]

So, I wanted to give this serious thread thing a test run. I'm surprised/not surprised that no one has taken advantage of this opportunity to be civil.

Snark aside, we have a few threads like "What are you doing?" and "Can I just say?" that let you get things off your chest. However, neither has the added protection of being [Serious]. Also, we don't really have any threads that cover what's going on in your life rather than what you're just doing right now, so what's going on in your life? Big project taking up your time? Going through a divorce? Changing careers? Kids driving you crazy? Need to get it off your chest and and talk about it without the risk of it backfiring? Well, this thread's for you.

Haven't been on much so i'm pretty clueless as to what's going on in the forums. But i like the serious thread idea. 

My life is interesting. Like a wild roller coaster ride. But at the cost of fun i sometimes put my own future at risk. I live passionately yet recklessly. 


So much more goes on internally than i care to express openly.

[Brian37]

That's great, ignoramus!

The house is coming along great. We got a quote (too steep, still looking) today to open up a doorway so I can hang a barn door I'll be building. I'm going to put a couple of deadlights in the middle of it, so we can see through to the kitchen. I may add some to the galley doors going into our dining room as well. Continuity, bitch. We've also got a solar installation set up and some insulation projects down the pipe. Somewhere in-between that, we're starting the remodel on our kitchen. Walls and cabinets. We'll go after the rest of it later.

I didn't really talk about what's going on in my opening post because my personal life has sometimes been fodder for in-fighting, and things have taken a bad turn very recently. I didn't want anyone to bring it up in their diatribes about me elsewhere, but fuck it. Who cares, right? My mom was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a few days before Christmas. She got sick really fucking fast, and spent the four days after Christmas in the hospital. She's been home for a few days now, and sleeps most of the time. Three, four weeks ago, she was perfectly fine. Tibs and I are currently trying to schedule all of her appointments to give my dad a break. Tomorrow, I'm going to try to get her to eat more. It's really taken over our lives. Not a complaint-just the reality of the situation. Cancer stops everything. The only reason I've been able to continue with some of the renovations is because I had last week off. I spent most of it in the hospital. The family area is a great place for dealing with phone calls with contractors. Tons of fun.

Anyway, yay, 2019. I guess.

Sorry to hear about your Mom, boy do I know the feeling. And yea, that kind of diagnosis stops everything. I can only hope for your mother and you and Tibs as much comfort and as little pain as possible while dealing with that. Your mom has great family that is for sure. Try to stay strong Shell and Tibs.

[LastPoet]

My inlaw died on the first. He was always a good friend and it came suddenly. Support to my wife I have been doing, last of her parents.

[Shell B]

That's rough. Sorry, LP.