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.
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.
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.
Also, ‘Don’t Do Drugs’.
Don’t forget the voice for McGruff the crime dog got caught with 1000 pot plants lol
Oh man, this makes me think of Hulk Hogan. Talk about a guy who aged like milk.
Getting there is not half the battle.
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.
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
deleted by creator
Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew on Loveline.
HOLY SHIT… Did those two unimaginably broken people take, at first different, but eventually converging, paths to the deepest part of hell.
Both irredeemable pieces of garbage.
I listened to that every night as a teenager. Seemed like I was really learning something, but the amount of opinions and broscience that they threw around was awful in retrospect.
Adam did come up with good handyman tips now and again like:
If you have a door that seems warped and sticks or won’t close all the way, try tightening the screws on the hinges before you start shaving it with a plane.
Not sure what “broscience” you’re referencing, but there structure of the show was very transparent -Drew was an actual doctor, board certified addiction treatment specialist and got his start volunteering in hospitals during the aids crisis. That’s when he was told about loveline and he wanted the opotunity to spread awareness.
Adam was unapologetically an unqualified comic relief. But of course, his role was to represent the unqualified “everyman” with Drew there to moderate and correct back to empirical fact and best practice. But he also listened and learned over the years. With time he did better saying the actual right thing a lot of the time through shear repetition. But that was part of the problem.
Eventually, like the problem with smartphones in general, he started to think that simply because he HAD certain knowledge, that he had actually EARNED it. He got more popular than Drew, I think that ultimately crushed Drew’s spirit because, along with a lot of good, he was a BIG narcissist. Realized he couldn’t get the respect or pay that Adam did after 20 years of schooling, sacrifice and he just checked out and became a turbo grifter.
Adam gradually removed anyone from his life that would criticize or remind him that he wasn’t an expert (literally documented day by day in his radio show and podcasts) and he finally became a monster on an entirely different level. Genuinely think with him the change was so abrupt because of CTE. He played a lot of football in the valley in the 70s/80s where nobody carted about safety, and then he boxed in the same era. He just must have had so many head injuries. I hope they study his broken brain when he dies so there can be a little relief in framing his 180.
I used to listen them on long drives home at night when I was younger too, I honestly cannot remember anything about the show at all other than freaky callers with obviously made-up stories and Adam and Drew would sometimes stop the call to listen to the caller’s chirping smoke detector.
It was a simpler time, we didn’t build whole ideological movements around a couple of goofballs on the radio, most people didn’t take it seriously so the show was bad, but harmless. Like much of the media of the 80’s-90’s.
Somewhere along the line we started outsourcing this kind of entertainment to interactive forums and message boards and from there people started festering and ruminating on this shit because suddenly they had access to thousands of different voices to find someone to validate their feelings, and that just curdled all of society and turned the most innocuous bullshit into weapon’s grade social manipulation. Now everyone hates each other because everyone only looks at absurd exaggerations of reality and then isolates themselves from even proving themselves wrong.
Can I say Dr Oz, sort of? Seriously, many of the women in my Moms generation were huge Oprah fans, and really loved Dr Oz. While his expertise was always questionable, his advice seemed relatively harmless and wholesome. For conservative folk with no interest in following medical science, they watched listened, and learned, including some actual good advice.
Now I just can’t even answer with some of the shit those same relatives bring up
I think we have that with dr Mike on youtube now. He’s still in the pre-enshittification stage where he’s responsibly saying “I know things but I’m a YouTuber. Please ask your actual doctor.”
But pressures change people over time so I have no doubt he’ll be shilling supplements eventually.
Grant Harding, the pharmacist in 3 or 4 states, seems like a solid guy with a fun angle.
Yes, I’m a big fan of his so far
Vaporeon
Back when I started getting an interest in tech back in middle school I looked up to Bill Gates
In high school I used to think highly of Elon because of all the promises he was making with Tesla, space X, etc
I think it’s safe to say those opinions aged like milk
Bill Gates is probably the only one on the list I have a positive bias for cuz he’s spent sooooooo much money buying goodwill.
He owns Goodwill?! That probably explains why their prices have become exorbitant, no longer thrifty. And all the best donated items aren’t even available for in-store customers to buy. The best items get set aside to be posted to eBay for maximum profiteering.
You serious rn? I’m talking about the Melinda Gates foundation and I’m using the meaning of “good will” that Good Will based their name on fyi
Not so much an evil person, but moreso a fool that fell for conservative and techbro propaganda, John Carmack is insanely smart and intelligent bookwise, but i think his social skills are zilch.
Sandy Petersen is another one i really used to enjoy but the amount of times he’s scammed people out of crowdfunded boardgames has turned me off from anything that has to do with him.
Thankfully John Romero is a great person (afaik) who overcame his ego, probably after Daikatana failed to sell.
He didn’t even make his bitch. Disappointing.
Marilyn manson
Oof. Lot to unpack there.
Somewhat related but I had to stop listening to Lostprophets once I found how shitty the lead singer was.
Not really “heroes” but several pastors / youth leaders from when I was young got caught in sex scandals and embezzling. My childhood bully became a youth paster and got convicted of sex crimes against minors.
None of them, really. Mr. Rogers was genuinely as awesome as he seemed. As a young adult, John Von Neumann, Grace Hopper, and Claude Shannon became my heroes. None have anything particularly bad that I’ve seen.
There are some people whose work I admire whom I don’t like, e.g. Harlan Ellison was famously an asshat. But they’re not my heroes, and the work is not the creator.
Never had heroes because basically this. Almost all people in a spotlight let you down eventually. Something about being rich makes people into depraved cunts.
Maybe not Dolly Parton. She’s been consistently good. Mr Roger’s too. But still, not many people on the list.
