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?
michael jackson made incredible music. i don’t even know how much of the stuff about him is true but it does feel weird listening to his stuff now, even though it’s extremely well made.
mj was something special if very fuken weird, but the maker of his best jams was quincy jones. if you don’t know him, spend some time investigating his catalog.
The fact that he had to pay a family hush-money was incredibly suspicious enough.
I don’t give a shit about Michael Jackson. Except maybe his upbringing with his piece of shit father has had something to do with how he’d later behave. Glad Joe is dead.
If you’re a slightly creepy odd duck with large amounts of money, it’d make sense to pay a settlement rather than letting a case go to trial even if you’re innocent, because juries can be wayward, especially in civil cases, and the reputational damage can easily cost you more than the settlement. So I don’t buy the no smoke without fire theory, especially with the proven cases of shakedown artists abetted by contingency-fee slimebag lawyers.
I lean towards the view that MJ was a wrong 'un, but also wouldn’t be surprised if it came out that he was just a twisted, damaged, traumatized, socially isolated guy.
I don’t think we’ll ever know. I have a feeling he actually wasn’t a pedophile at all, but just felt close to children because he had Peter Pan syndrome or something. He seemed very infantile to me is the only real sense I got of him. Strange person. But without question he did make some r really iconic music.
yeah that’s my impression as well. being a child star really fucks you up mentally.
then again i haven’t seen the documentaries.
I agree, and the thing is we can never really know what someone is like all the time even if we get to know some aspects of them well.
I’ve been shocked by things that some people I knew did, that I would never have thought they were capable of.
I hope that is not the case for MJ, but it might be. And we’ll likely never know.
Ehhhh, I’ve seen some pics of him being happily surrounded with people known for being sex pests/pedos so idk. Two things can be true, you know, he might have been mentally and developmentally different but he might have also touched some kids, sadly.
happily surrounded with people known for being sex pests/pedos so idk
He worked in the recording industry and Hollywood. It’s pretty hard to avoid in those businesses.
Fair and depressing.
I’ve heard rumors that he was either physically or chemically castrated to keep his beautiful, pure singing voice.
If that is the case, then it would kind of explain how fucked up he is, or how fucked up he was.
Oof. Didn’t he have kids though? Or is there a form of castration that doesn’t affect one’s ability to reproduce? Regardless, yeah, it doesn’t absolve him of his sins but let’s just say they’re attenuating factors for his judgement.
None of his kids are genetically his as far as I know.
Oop. Okay, yeah. Hurt people hurt people. 😕
Wasn’t this the dude that dangled a baby out of a window?
He was an incredibly talented artist. I think his father deserves most of the blame for Michael’s bizarre behavior. Most adults would struggle with the pressures of fame and performing that he spent his whole life under from the time he was like 10 years old. Joe recognized that his kids were talented and then proceeded to squeeze every last red cent he could out of them. No wonder Michael snapped.
Removed by mod
This one hurts because he really pushed an art form.
Cartoons were not at all well respected as a method of storytelling back in the day. And Walt threw himself into the fire pretty often to strike success and build the Disney empire.
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.
Al Franken
Kevin Spacey. ‘K-Pax’ and ‘Swimming With Sharks’ were so good.
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.
Tarantino.
I just know the guy’s a dickhole.
Kanye can be as insane as he wants to be, it doesn’t make Yeezus and TLOP any worse. 🤷 TBF I live a somewhat minimalistic life and I don’t buy albums or anything, haven’t gone to a concert in almost two decades… but a bop is a bop.
i love kanye sm i really think he has some bad mental issues. which doesn’t excuse his actions esp since he seems to not try and get help. but like dude was/is going through some serious shit and is an addict and it’s just sad especially since he’s so talented
Diddy just wanted to party.
It’s a struggle sometimes, but I think it’s the only real control we have.
It’s a case by case basis for me. Some actor being in a movie I like isn’t a big deal to me, but when someone has like huge creative control over something it’s like a visceral repulsion to me. I don’t want to take a piece of media into my experience with the subtext that the author touches kids or something. It’s not even just that I know these people do bad things, it’s that personal views shape how people make stories etc, and I’m not fond of putting that into my psyche. If they do some fucked up shit in the book, I want to be able to know it’s because this character is evil, not because the author is saying this is a normal healthy thing to do.
RHCP sucks because I think it’s pretty good music, and I was really into them when I was a teen, but given everything I know about them now it makes it impossible to enjoy their stuff now.
The Vornheim City Kit is a great resource for urban RPG, even though the author is cancelled.
TBH I tried to understand why, and when I did, stuff was still going through courts. I’m too wary of extrajudicial condemnation to take a side, but his associate, the LotFP guy, always have the ick for his edginess. So I’ll continue to enjoy the book I got long ago and forget about them.
I mean, I didn’t throw out my Harry Potter boxed set just becsuse Rowling is a dumb fucking TERF. I just don’t continue buying shit she profits off of, and can see tons of questionable things in her work that I didn’t question before knowing her thoughts on things.
The Harry Potter universe is bigger than her to where we can love the universe for what it is and can cut her out easily.
Except for buying anything new. That’s not cutting her out.
I understand people’s feelings towards her, but to call her transphobic seems a bit harsh. She doesn’t show hatred for trans people, but a need to show that they are different than woman born as female. Although this might be ignorant in some ways. . . I don’t see it as a form of hatred or fear towards trans people. We as a society have a hard time looking at nuance.
Just because she doesn’t outright say I hate trans. People doesn’t mean that she uses her fame her money and her businesses to help incorporate and promote anti-trans policies in the UK and also promote those ideas in the world ideas that trans people aren’t people. How is that not the definition of hatred just in a different way you need to stop being so ignorant because you really are and I’m only saying that to help you open up to reality.
Doesn’t anything HP give her a cut?
It’s the reason HP is banned in this household.
I feel conflicted about reading and writing Harry Potter fan fiction. The negative side is it draws attention to the franchise. The positive side is it helps people enjoy Harry Potter content without benefiting Rowling.
i don’t blame you for your choice. she’s alive and using money from the franchise to actively fund initiatives that hurt people. but let me copy my comment from elsewhere in this thread (about Scott Adams and old Dilbert books)
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
Getting rid of things you already had before it became known she was a transphobe doesn’t take the money away from her.
there is an argument to be made for preventing further money being made by giving it to someone who will otherwise buy it new, but then you also have to consider additionally exposure if you give it to someone who wouldn’t otherwise have bought it…
After being burned by a dozen creators, I find it safer for my own emotional well-being to just assume all things beautiful and evocative are made by someone who is secretly a terrible person.
Saves me from the disappointment of finding out later.
I’m constantly surprised when it turns out someone famous isn’t getting up to some bad shit.
This is going to get buried, but I miss Bill Cosby, or rather my mental model of him before all that nastiness 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
I wonder if you know what you mean when you talk about people being canceled. Looking at all of the answers, I see all of these people who have done things that raised some public pressure against them and yet many of them are still active in public life. So they didn’t get canceled?
Seriously, can you give me a list of people who actually got canceled, where they had to abandon their entire career and never got it back? And who weren’t close to retirement age at the time? Of course, let’s exclude the people who got locked up in prison because that’s about being convicted of a crime, not about social justice.
