Bill Nye
I’m still not sold on this one. He may not be the nicest person, he may even be a jerk sometimes, but I don’t think calling him horrible is fair either in that regard.
Unless you’re a conservative and now hate science as an adult, then I can see why those people might call him horrible.
Yeah we’re in a thread with Joss Whedon, Cosby, and Elon. I know I’ve lost patience with people, I don’t think we need to go and lump something as small as this in with those assholes.
Wait, what did he do?
Seems he’s just an asshole about being famous. Doesn’t like being recognized in public.
TBH, I don’t blame him. I’ll take it over everyone else in this thread.
I used to look up to him, and met him at an astronomy symposium once. (About one of my actual heroes, Galileo!)
I dunno, he’s not horrible, he was just like, so obviously pissed that people recognized him and wanted autographs and a picture lol.
I kinda understand, and he had the patience to put up with it. He wasn’t outright mean to me or anything, but geeze man, you don’t gotta so obviously display contempt for the kids who will be carrying the torch because you inspired them.
Anyway, I forgive him. Was just a little disappointed.
I feel his frustration at sharing the world with a lot of stupid people, but he’s another one of those science communicators like Tyson, who get to a point where they get smarmy and smug and holier-than-thou.
Like damn, maybe we could be on a similar level if we could get paid to learn things too, sirs.
Tyson doesn’t try to teach us anything as much as he is intellectually masturbating in front of an audience.
Wayne Gretzky.
I honestly know nothing about him beyond that he was _really _ good at hockey. What’s the 2 second break down?
Gretzky was a Canadian icon. A source of national pride. But when Trump was threatening to annex Canada it came out that Gretzky was a MAGA guy. This caused a widespread sense of betrayal among the Canadian public.
turned conservative
He’s from Alberta, he didn’t turn, just stopped hiding it.
Except he’s not.
My bad, I was a kid during his Oilers days and I mean, look at him…
oh god please no
Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, George Soros. I had a period where I appreciated people who played the system to get rich. Before I understood the system itself is the problem.
Damn this was so sad. What kind of a bummer must your childhood have been if Warren Buffett was your hero?
What I find most interesting is that Warren Buffet has come right out said it’s weird that society will reward people into being billionaires and has publicly stated that there’s is for sure a class war going on and billionaires are winning.
I think it’s nice he’s giving most of his fortune away but disappointing he hasn’t called for the system that made his fortune to be dismantled.
because he benefited from that system that gave billionaires that advantage, of courses hes not go to bite the hand that feeds him.
Of all the wealthy people I’ve ever read about, Buffet seems to actually care about money the least. Like’s he’s in love with the process in the way that an autistic person loves their hyper focus but if he lost everything, it wouldn’t faze him.
i never saw them as rolemodels, its not really somehting that ever connected with me at all, with gates he always seem too snobby and gave off a faek vibe, now we know why.
Bill Gates
I remember him as being a scumbag going back to the 80’s. Ripping off the Mac GUI, and then going on to bully, absorb and run out of business countless smaller enterprises through strong-arm legal / financial tactics.
Amazing how many things the Simpsons got right, yet it didn’t matter.
Many already mentioned. Steven Seagal, Ultimate Warrior, Dennis Miller
Dennis Miller
He always came off to me as a smarmy, sarcastic asshole, but I thought that was part of his game. Did he turn out to be far worse…?
Oh no, don’t take The Ultimate Warrior from me…
I always didn’t like Steven Seagal, he always rubbed me the wrong way. My mother would always bug me about it: “You don’t personally know the guy, you don’t know at all what he’s really like”. Turns out I was right mom, Fuck that sleazy bastard
Shit, like half of 'em. The other half just died, like decent folk.
Hulk Hogan. I was such a huge Hulkamaniac as a kid, brother.
Same. I remember thinking he was such a hero when I was like 8. What a douche canoe.
I hate to link to the evil empire, but there was a great breakdown series (warts and all) about the guy published there after he passed. I wasn’t a fan of pro wrestling in the slightest, but found it pretty fascinating:
Neil Gaiman. I fucking loved Sandman and damn near everything else he wrote. Finding out he’s a total scumbag has basically ruined a lot of very dear memories.
Yeah, this one hurt.
Good Omens too. Can I pretend it was written entirely by Pratchett?
Read books by Tanith Lee.
Gaiman stole the idea of Death, Evil, and Madness being related from her books.
I asked for Sandman two Christmases ago, before everything came out. Im still glad I read it, it’s good, but I wish I would’ve gotten used copies so at least he didn’t make money off it
Been looking for this.
Back in the day I scored a ticket to an Amanda Palmer show, was absolutely floored when he showed up mid-act, completely unannounced. He was one of my favourite writers, a friend to Sir Terry Pratchett (RIP) , and on top of that, someone who seemed like a genuine force for good in the world. I remember that show made my year, I felt so incredibly lucky, like finding a bike under the tree when you’re 4.
Then Good Omens happened, then Sandman, and I was just genuinely happy to see him getting the accolades and recognition.
Not mincing words here, once the allegations started floating up, I felt so angry and personally betrayed. For every book or show recommendation, for every conversation where I brought him up as one of my personal heroes. I was almost in mourning, I realise that now, and I’m pretty sure my cynicism levelled up as a direct consequence of that experience.
Fast forward to last week or so, where my RSS feed pings with an article from his blog, the first since the scandal began. He’s pointing to a journalist investigation that seems to say the whole thing was a hatchet job. He tries to explain, and this being Neil, the words line up and do his bidding. And I want to fucking believe him, I do. But I can’t.
The absolute worst thing? In spite of everything, I hope he’s really telling the truth. How does that make any fucking sense?
I used to love Joss Whedon from everything he made. I grew up watching Buffy, and loved Firefly, then Marvel got him for Avengers and I was excited for him to be getting such a big break. He later Agents of Shield which I also loved. But then it came out that he was an abuser. His whole persona of championing strong women was merely a facade to hide this.
Learning that Michelle Trachtenberg (RIP) had a clause in her contract while working in Buffy (2000-3) at age 15 that she was not to ever be in the same room as Whedon alone opened my eyes to just how bad things are. Not just how bad he was, but how well it was known that he was an abuser and no one did anything about it. That’s just how things were.
I have a hard time watching Buffy or any of his works anymore, just knowing now that he was behind these things.
Yeah, it also gives me some closure with firefly being cancelled… like I the fox executive cancelled Firefly because he didn’t like Whedon, now I know why he didn’t like him. Or at least a probable reason.
And it didn’t give him a chance to be weird and creepy with Summer Glau.
Any more than he already had been.
Lest we forget she was introduced to the show naked in a box.
The man was big into the ‘born sexy yesterday’ trope.
God, the entirely of Dollhouse was the most problematic thing I’ve ever seen in retrospect (regarding the born sexy yesterday trope) and I can’t believe that past me didn’t see how messed up everything about it was. That the dolls were turned into helpless blanks between jobs and constantly sexualized in that state was so messed up.
I watched The Apprentice when I was a teenager. I seem to have blocked out my memory of how I felt about Trump back then but my aunt says I used to think he was funny. I remember the opening tricked me into believing he was a good businessman (I was a teenager and this was my first introduction to him). I wouldn’t say I viewed him as a hero but I guess I liked him as a celebrity. Now he’s ruined countless lives. It was the birther conspiracies that made me start to dislike him.
As a teenager I loved to read Lovecraft. It was a way to learn English as a nice side effect because it isn’t my native language but that also obscured the appalling racism from me which lead to disappointment when I found out later.
Lovecraft deserves some redemption. First of all he wasn’t especially racist, just the “normal” amount for his time (take with a grain of salt please!). More importantly he significantly mellowed out in his later years primarily due to exposure to talented black writers which made him realize the error of his ways.
But yeah, I wouldn’t ask him to name my void cat.
Lovecraft was especially racist by the standards of his time, though. https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/1897rk2/was_lovecraft_racist_even_by_the_standards_of_his/
No, he was really really racist for the time. But he did get better at the end.
I had heard Dr. Fu Manchu referenced places when reading as a teen so I ended up finding the books. I was jaw in the floor shocked by the casual racism when I read them.
This cereal was popular in the 1960s. They even had a kids’ cartoon with the little ‘Chinese’ boy ‘So-Hi.’
Rice Crinkles cereal
Other people have already confirmed he was a racist, but think Clinical Xenophobe is a more apt distinction. He was a unconformable around minorities, but he was also unconformable about the ocean and the color violet. And he wrote about his discomfort. He didn’t write political manifests. This isn’t a case of separating the art from the artist, but seeing the art to see the broken person behind it.
JK Rowling
I literally learned to read so I could read Harry Potter books so I didn’t have to wait for bedtime for my dad to read them to me; even though I was a “boy” I badly wanted to be Hermione Granger when I grew up
it’s really heart-breaking that she became so deranged and hateful, a lot of us loved her books growing up
I started reading for the same reason, except it was he Narnia books and my gramma 🫡
Yeah me too. I literally started to read because I couldn’t wait for mum to start reading and wanted to read past when she stopped.
I was literally sneaking away to read. My parents knew and turned a blind eye, not believing their luck that their son was rebelling by reading haha. I’ll always thank JK for my love of reading. But fuck her politics.
I hope for you you bexame what you truely are, stranger
Your hero as a child was the author and not the character?
I mean, it’s not like Harry Potter can turn out to be a terrible person as he is fictional.
Well he did peek in high school and then became a cop so…
Married his friend’s little sister.
Kevin Sorbo as Hercules©®™.
And I used to listen to the lost profits as a teenager. ultra sigh
Bah this one hurt… He didn’t just go a bit cookie… Went full nuts
I saw a guy at a music festival a few years ago that had a HUGE lostprophets tattoo across his upper back. Poor guy.
Is that the band who’s lead singer got sent to prison in Norway or Denmark for being a pedophile?
“being a pedophile” is somehow putting it lightly. He was raping actual
toddlersinfants.
a few chiro strokes, he turned into a nutty right winger, who was jealous of XENA. he even managed to ruin his own show, andromeda.
Rest in piss, Ian Watkins
Just saw he got stabbed.
Oh no.
Anyways
Lucy Lawless on the other hand is a fantastic lady and I love how she calls out Kevin Sorbo
All of them
This poor guy didn’t grow up with Weird Al.
You know what, I did and you’re right! Thanks for reminding me about how awesome he is. Grew up loving him, loved UHF, all that.
We went to a concert of his about 8 years ago and it was awesome. People of every walk of life; young, old, everything in between. Just a great positive vibe brought together by a fantastic show. He really went all out for it.
Oh awesome! Was that the The Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour or the Mandatory Fun tour? I got to see the Mandatory Fun tour but the timing didn’t work out for me to see the Vanity Tour. He’s also skipping over my city with his most recent tour, but I’m considering travelling a bit to go see him again.
It was Mandatory Fun and we loved it. He’s performing 2 hours away, gotta confirm with the wife but we must do it. Al’s not a spring chicken so we have to do this while we can.
Were you not in the age group to watch Mr. Rogers? Because he turned out to be exactly what he appeared to be: kind.
Nah, you’re right. I just answered according to my current doom and gloom attitude
I wouldn’t say horrible, but the shine definitely faded off Will Smith.
He’s made some poor choices over the years.
To me, Smith will always be a rapper first. He was right: parents just don’t understand.
My buddy worked in an area that Will Smith occasionally worked.
At every opportunity, will Smith would go out of his way to meet the people around where he was working, talk with them, get selfies, etc, when there was absolutely no need to do it. This was even later in his career when he was really well-known: he’d be walking down a hallway chatting about electrical stuff with a maintenance guy for no reason. I do believe will smith would also return a shopping cart if tested.
The thing where he assaulted someone else on live TV was either out of character, or every appearance from the years before was out of character; exclusively so.
I refuse to believe Will Smith is irredeemable yet.
He laughed at Chris Rock’s joke until he saw Jada’s reaction. Not in any way excusable for him to assault him, but it’s easy to see what the actual reason for it was.
Being all wrapped up with another person emotionally and romantically can sometimes push us to do things otherwise out of character. I think it’s pretty easy to see and understand in that particular case.
More by extension. My dad was a huge Joe Paterno / Penn State football fan. He thought very highly of Paterno as a coach, and leader. I was baffled when it broke just how much he had ignored. Just so cowardly and evil, allowing that man to rape and abuse so many kids so his football team wouldn’t look bad in a headline or two.
