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?
Anti-Flag.
Absolutely sucks who Justin Sane turned out to be, but the music the group made together are still absolute bangers.
Neil Gaiman. I’m afraid there won’t be a third season of Good Omens.
Yes and no. The third season plan was scrapped and reduced to one final episode to wrap the story up. We’ll see how it goes.
Oh, gosh. Details, please!
There is a line, I don’t have to love and agree with them on everything to enjoy an actor, but I refuse to support predators. Things like David Harbor cheating on his wife or the things people slammed Paul Reubens for I could really care less about, and I don’t give a fuck about their politics so long as they aren’t doing shit like J.K. Rowling and actively trying to ruin lives, however people like Diddy, Gaiman (whom I had personally loved for years), or Jared Leto can fuck off and die.
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.
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.
This is going to get buried, but I miss Bill Cosby, or rather my mental model of him before all that nastiness came out.
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
Understood. The TV show was totally hilarious.
His early stand-up was what ignited my love of the format. “Himself” is a masterclass. Such a shame.
Tell him I said suck MY dick
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
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.
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.
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
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
‘The Dilbert Principle’ is a great book. It’s a shame he threw all that goodwill away.
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.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Borns made some of the best indie pop on the radio, got in trouble for grooming, disappeared. One of the most heartbreaking losses musically for us. Then years later tried a comeback but seems to be an unrepentant whiny bitch now, the song he released was so bad. It seems to have broken him.
I still think his early stuff is so good.
Ender’s Game is a great book, and I did keep my Neil Gaiman books, the ones I already have.
I think in general (obviously there are exceptions) broken people make the greatest art, it’s hard to have that drive when you don’t have some sadness inside you, dissatisfaction, some missing part you are trying to fill. And with old guys (not Garrett Borns) they did grow up in a different time - I don’t think that excuses them, but it does explain it. My mom thought Jerry Lee Lewis marrying his 14 year old cousin was scandalous but wouldn’t have thought it criminal or really wrong.
Ricky Gervais and Norm MacDonald engage/ed in transbaiting. Which is not cool, okay, or acceptable. But they are geniuses I can’t turn my back on.
Norm will always be a comedy genius to me, but Gervais, as much as I’ve enjoyed his stand-up in the past, has become a self-satisfied insufferable dickhead imo.
That’s fine.
He was instrumental in the creation of “The Office” which is the most watched show in our household, but if he’s a transphobic POS then he deserves no respect.
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
Doug TenNapel.
Dude is a level 10 bastard. But Earthworm Jim was very influential to me as a kid.
The characters and the sense of humor; It just spoke to me in a weird and powerful way.
The games, the comics, even the short lived cartoon show was not too shabby.
Ga-roovy!
Bill Cosby is a monster, but his stand-up special “Himself” is a master class on comedic story-telling.
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.
David Byrne continues to be awesome and Terry Pratchett is a goddamn saint.
