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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.
Neil fuckin Gaiman.
The monster went from my favorite author to a name that elicits rage and disgust.
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.
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...
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 used to think Musk was ok.
I didn't know anything about him other than he was investing in EV's which I felt the world desperately needed, at a time when it felt like big oil was squashing the uptake.
Same, I thought he was out to try and save the world from climate change. For me the illusion shattered when he tried to kill California HSR because he would make less in cars. It was never about the environment, it was about being "cool" and then cornering the market.
Yeah for me it was the Thai kid submarine fiasco. He offered a dumb idea in a life threatening situation and when it was rejected by professional underwater cave diver rescue guy Musk accused the guy of being a pedo.
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?
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?
What about the anti-theist and leftist public intellectuals like Dawkins, Kraus, and Chomsky who turned out to be somewhere between anti-feminist and full-blown sex-offender? Even NDTyson has some pretty credible accusations for those who remember. Dennett seemed like the only one of the "Four Horseman" who could be considered a decent human being, but nope... he's flying the Lolita Express.
But nobody has fallen farther than Richard Dawkins. Fame did to Dawkins what the One Ring did to Smeagol.
Used to love watching the Cosby show and watching his stand up specials....
My mother. Turns out she's a narcissistic, fascist Trump-loving Norwegian, who's only been to the USA twice. Last time we spoke, she defended the killing of Good and Pretti, stating that innocent lives can be taken in order to get the Somali fraud.
I don't talk to her anymore.
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.
I reserve 'cunt' and 'dumb bitch' as especially strong, disrespectful expletives to call a woman.
When I say "Fuck that dumb bitch TERF cunt JK Rowling" it carries the hurt and ire of a broken childhood love of Harry Potter. The series itself was incredibly important to me and provided a world I could escape to when the real world was overwhelming. The hate and bigotry that cunt has shown breaks my heart and sullies too many childhood memories to describe.
I was deeply inspired to pursue engineering after watching the first Falcon 9 boosters land themselves. I was enamored by the idea of using my little blip in humanity's timeline to assist our expansion to another planet. I wanted to contribute to something important, something that turned many brilliant minds towards an achievement that would eventually benefit the entirety of mankind.
I even hopped on the Tesla train; I recognized the existential threat that carbon emissions bore as well as the damaging, restrictive nature of building a society that scorns public transportation and promotes individual car ownership.
I didn't worship Elon so much as admired the causes he was advancing. That admiration withered over the years but my dream of contributing to the colonization of Mars helped me push through the ten years it took to earn my four year engineering degree. As details of his derangement came out, as he acquired twitter and more overtly spread his billionaire propaganda, that dream started to fade. The fascist salutes at Trump's inauguration crushed those dreams and ground them into a dust too fine to even attempt a rebuild.
My jaded ass still wants to benefit humanity so I've set my eyes on climate science, even as the country I was born in denies the havoc and damage our relentless consumption has wrought. Not just denial, but outright derision and contempt for the future of our world. Thus I hope to take my dreams elsewhere, hoping to find a culture with a clearer view of the consequences we must face and the changes we must make to preserve our planet.
Hulk Hogan. Also, not really a hero, but his work had a log of influence on me- Orson Scott Card. The reasons I liked it so much are kind of cringe looking back as an adult anyway though.
Nobody mentioned God?
I was raised Christian. Never deeply religious, but had all the bible study stuff, religious school, etc. Religion was comforting.
Then I got older and started seeing the fanboys for who they were. Hypocrites of the highest order. Assholes that armored themselves with being “Christians”. Trying to game the system or to buy their way into heaven, making it transactional. Heaven also seems like a shitty place; an existence locked into worshipping a deity while in a drugged out euphoria and never being able to learn, grow, and experience things again. A “Matrix”-like place. A God that is psychotic, manipulative, and a classic narcissistic abuser. Jesus would probably be a cool guy, but nobody actually gives a fuck about him. A book full of contradictions and other awful things that are constantly rationalized and massaged to mean whatever the needs of the individual might be. Just generally how awful any religion is, how it’s used to control people, do shitty things, and consolidate power and money.
Yeah, if you’re formerly religious, you get it. I’m an scientific atheist now.
Ironically, thanks to modern “christians”, I’ve found myself citing scripture to shitty people who claim to be religious to point out their hypocrisy, idolatry or whatever, and occasionally listening to religious people who point out how awful and un-christian these people are.
Jesus would probably be a cool guy
I'm an atheist but I fucking love Jesus. As an idea he represents so much good in humanity; selfless love, mercy, helping those in need, humility, even self-sacrifice for greater good. If you take him away from all the crap christianity has accumulated, there's so much you can learn from his example. He's even imperfect, just like all humans are
Not only that but "what would Jesus do" has a valid answer of "flip tables and chase money lenders with a whip". The ideal of "love one another" is always welcome as well.
I was a big Bill Cosby fan, back int he 60s. I had several of his albums, and I'd take them to friends' houses to listen to them.
I started hearing crazy stuff in the 90s, and then it all turned out to be true. I was heartbroken.
Steve Jobs. There was some magic to him, but also an extremely dark side. I had a corporate bio from the early 90s that made him and Woz seem like superhero partners, when in reality he shorted Wozniak and Esposito and only really looked out for himself. He seemed like a countercultural LSD dropping hippie, and he was some of that, but when it came time to get rich and get his, he went down that path too. Shitty father, terrible boss. None of the things I would say my own life aspires to now.
he got killed by his own hubris, when he was diagnosed with a rare pancreatic cancer, PNET. it was treatable, but he went on a fruit diet to treat it, and plus he paid to be on the top of a list of A LIVER transplant only to waste it with his "fruit diet" it allowed the cancer to spread and kill him. this pancreatic cancer is rare , unlike the common this is much more tretable and slower growing, while the normal ones are usually more aggressive(adenocarcinoma vs PNET) AND USUally ad advanced stage when discovered in patients.
Not so much a hero but I admired ~~his work~~ the 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.
I wouldn't say horrible, but the shine definitely faded off Will Smith.
He's made some poor choices over the years.
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.
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.
Just paniced by the name. Please tell me he hasn‘t done something bad.
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.
Kevin Sorbo as Hercules©®™.
And I used to listen to the lost profits as a teenager. ultra sigh
My childhood heroes were Optimus Prime, dinosaurs, and a big bin full of LEGO.
OJ Simpson, Scott Adams, Joss Whedon, friends and family that are MAGA
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.
Only ones who dissapointed me were Star Trek: Voyager actors. Its the only thing I got attached to as a kid.
Robert Beltran - Commander Chakotay
Roxann Dawson - B'Elanna Torres
Both transphobes and trump supporters who won't shut up about no one wanting to invite them to Star Trek stuff anymore.
I used to feel bad for Rob because he got such a shit treatment in ST:V in terms of writing and because his character fell victim to Jamake High water's grifting (look him up if you want to see why 90's native american characters kinda suck).
The two worst actors and actresses in the show too, tbqh. Chacotay couldn't act his way out of a paper bag.
At least Picardo is loudly and proudly anti trump and seems like a good person from what I've heard.
I can't think of any artist more divorced from their work than Orson Scott Card
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.
Tim Sweeny
Back when Epic was Epic Megagames I played a shitton of their shareware catalogue - ZZT, Jazz Jackrabbit, Epic Pinball, Jill of the Jungle. As a teen I loved Unreal and Unreal Tournament. After Tim sold Epic to Tencent and became a vocal piece of shit I actively avoid all Epic software.