Post by adamwarlock2099 on May 11, 2015 17:20:07 GMT -5
Brent Weeks' comments are incisive, as they get to the heart of the matter: everyone likes to feel superior in some way, and most of the time the reasons are dopey and not thought out. But if you are going to claim that your s**t doesn't stink in comparison to someone else, you ought to really be able to show that your target is *egregiously* wrong.
For instance, Jeremy Renner was jumped on for making an admittedly stupid comment about Black Widow being a "slut." IMO this was so offhandedly dumb that it wasn't worth responding to; it was just an actor talking smack to get attention. In contrast, when David S. Goyer called the She-Hulk a slut, and came up with this incredibly convoluted line of reasoning about how fans wanted to fantasize about She-Hulk making it with the Hulk, I thought he deserved censure because his quote was egregiously dumb, perhaps because he tried to give a patina of rationality.
I'll vent just a little on something that happened to me last week, which relates to the Janelle Asselin/CBR crapstorm last year. I read an online essay in which the author was going on about how the cyber-threats against Asselin, as well as the attempt to hack her bank account, were a symbol of "straight white males" resisting diversity. I made one post in the comments-section, asserting only that Asselin admitted she had only circumstantial evidence to tie CBR-readers to the attempt on her account. I didn't make any attempt to claim that all CBR-readers were innocent of cyber-bullying, only that there was no public evidence that any of them were guilty of account-hacking. For that, I was called a Men's Rights Activist. At least I hope that's all the letters "MRA" meant!
It's a rant for sure, so you know I hid it ...
I think equating fiction with reality is why people now have a problem separating the two, and you have people spouting horrible bile at a real life person for the choices that they made with behavior of a fictional character. Separating the two is why I can let my son play mature shooter games at 12 years old (and it started younger) because I see his behavior his ability to realize that this is not real and something done for entertainment. I'm not the one to advocate the blame of television, video games, or comics books on the behavior people display in a negative fashion. One is responsible for that. If we hold entertainers for behavior of fictional characters for guidelines on how to live life then we have a horrible future ahead.
It is the world out there that we should be paying mind to if we are unsure on a path in life. I would go so far as to use myself as an for instance. My favorite writers, Bukowski, Miller, Burroughs and Ginsberg (who I've read not as much as the formers) all wrote fiction for the sake of entertainment. While five of Bukowski's six novels are embellished accounts of his life, they should not be my alcoholic role model. Yes, he shared not all the "good" things about drinking, and there were certainly times in his life, where alcohol did get the best of him, they were not under the microscope of non-fiction. (Though a case can be made for his poetry being in the non-fiction sections. Especially since most of poetry were nothing but short stories so to speak.) He is known for the fact, that in his much out spoken belief, that alcohol was the only thing that could keep him writing. And I don't know about those that don't drink, but when intoxicated, things aren't always remembered as they really were.
Then you take someone like Caroline Knapp who recounted her 20 year struggle with alcoholism in Drinking: A Love Story, and you see into the real mind of an alcohol. When I read that it wasn't, damn Bukowski did what ever he wanted, what a life. It was, damn I know exactly what she means cause I know the feeling myself. Even the metaphor of a love story to alcohol is apt, when you've lived it. Or when you read Vernon Johnson's I'll Quit Tomorrow, about the Johnson institute in Minnesota? A success story of a recovering alcoholic that wanted to help other people with their dependency to chemical addiction through the program that he instituted there. Reading the stories of both the people that succeded and failed is a real look at what alcoholism does to you, not the wine stained glass of fictional writers.
What do you do if you've never lived with or known an alcoholic person? How do you deal if you all of sudden have to? Where do you look for help? If people can't distinguish were the results will come from if they truly want to make changes in their home country with social ills than they may end up spending time screaming on the internet when their time could defiantly be spent better to really make a difference.
I really think the saddest thing in this example with Joss and the rest of the world, is that is even a slight outrage at all about a fiction character in a fake movie, in something that never has any bearing on the future of the human race. Not that Black Widow's gender is demeaned.
It is the world out there that we should be paying mind to if we are unsure on a path in life. I would go so far as to use myself as an for instance. My favorite writers, Bukowski, Miller, Burroughs and Ginsberg (who I've read not as much as the formers) all wrote fiction for the sake of entertainment. While five of Bukowski's six novels are embellished accounts of his life, they should not be my alcoholic role model. Yes, he shared not all the "good" things about drinking, and there were certainly times in his life, where alcohol did get the best of him, they were not under the microscope of non-fiction. (Though a case can be made for his poetry being in the non-fiction sections. Especially since most of poetry were nothing but short stories so to speak.) He is known for the fact, that in his much out spoken belief, that alcohol was the only thing that could keep him writing. And I don't know about those that don't drink, but when intoxicated, things aren't always remembered as they really were.
Then you take someone like Caroline Knapp who recounted her 20 year struggle with alcoholism in Drinking: A Love Story, and you see into the real mind of an alcohol. When I read that it wasn't, damn Bukowski did what ever he wanted, what a life. It was, damn I know exactly what she means cause I know the feeling myself. Even the metaphor of a love story to alcohol is apt, when you've lived it. Or when you read Vernon Johnson's I'll Quit Tomorrow, about the Johnson institute in Minnesota? A success story of a recovering alcoholic that wanted to help other people with their dependency to chemical addiction through the program that he instituted there. Reading the stories of both the people that succeded and failed is a real look at what alcoholism does to you, not the wine stained glass of fictional writers.
What do you do if you've never lived with or known an alcoholic person? How do you deal if you all of sudden have to? Where do you look for help? If people can't distinguish were the results will come from if they truly want to make changes in their home country with social ills than they may end up spending time screaming on the internet when their time could defiantly be spent better to really make a difference.
I really think the saddest thing in this example with Joss and the rest of the world, is that is even a slight outrage at all about a fiction character in a fake movie, in something that never has any bearing on the future of the human race. Not that Black Widow's gender is demeaned.
