ragebutt

the big turning point I remember was a combo of popups and interstitial ads

Popups we all know and hate as they still exist and are disgusting. They were obviously gross and ate up ram and stole focus and shit

But the interstitial ads were also gross. You’d click a link and then get redirected to an ad for 10 seconds and then redirected to content. Or a forum where the first reply was replaced with an ad that was formatted to look like a post

Like adblocking was a niche thing prior to the advertising industry being absolute scumbags. The original idea that allowing advertising to support free services like forums and such wasn’t horrible, put a banner ad up, maybe a referral link, etc. but that was never enough for the insidious ad industry. Like every other domain they’ve touched (television, news, nature, stores, cities, clothing, games, sports, literally everything a human being interacts with).

The hardline people that blocked banner ads way back when and loudly complained allowing advertising in any capacity on the internet would ruin everything were correct. We all groaned because no one wanted to donate to cover the hosting bills (which often turned out to be grossly inflated on larger sites by greedy site operators looking to make bank off their community) but we should have listened

Are you carrying excessive mental load or are you hypervigilant and dealing with undiagnosed anxiety? Sometimes the people around you aren’t pulling your weight, sometimes you’re holding yourself (and by extension everyone around you) to unrealistic standards

I never use a vpn with torrents. Private trackers in my experience have been enough to be fine. The only times in 20 years of torrenting tons of shit I’ve gotten isp letters were once I downloaded a Pokémon rom from a pubic tracker, which was stupid, and once I had a roommate that downloaded some shitty movie from a public tracker

Alternatively usenet

They were big on usenet groups and loved talking about 90s children cartoons. Alt.tv.animaniacs and alt.tv.tiny-toon.fandom were notable and are still archived and browsable, though if you’re using something like Google groups you have to either search for key terms or be ready to flip past the 25+ years of spam posts that have been made since the groups were active in the 90s

https://www.animaniacs.info/ata/ - an old school poster still runs a faq on the animaniacs one. The person hosting this animaniacs site has to be 50-60+ years old. Note that another section of the site shows the show had a reference to adults obsessively documenting the show: https://www.animaniacs.info/pppgalf/ which was because the network was very much aware of them because they were sending cease and desists over erotic content like fanfic and ftps with porn

https://antifandom.com/tinytoons/wiki/The_World%27s_Biggest_Tiny_Toon_Fan tiny toons also had a similar reference, apparently, because of similar problems including tress macneille getting threatening letters and rule34 of her character mailed to her (though in those days it was just called fanart)

Like most things it seems like the majority of the group was probably fine, just super into a cartoon, and a few bad actors crossed the line which allowed the whole group to be painted as dangerous obsessive freaks. But back in the early 2000s this was one of the bigger examples of “furries are creeps” style punching down that was everywhere on the internet (and pretty much still is tbf)

When I was a younger more insecure clinician, about a decade ago probably, his impact was still far reaching. I had many pediatric clients that had parents that would consider those wholly unregulated abuse farms he regularly advertised on his show. The ones where they’d like fake kidnap you and then basically have a random guy with no credentials or training play army boot camp (and maybe molest you). That’s another whole different post though. And they wanted military school, and the idea of reinforcement based parenting over punishment was just a concept that simply wouldn’t connect (and still doesn’t for many)

I despise the man, he is representative of a disgusting part of our culture that glorifies celebrating toxic masculinity and emotional suppression. A charlatan. The fact that he is worth half a billion dollars and myself and many of my colleagues are still struggling to pay my student loans and have no health insurance is absolutely disgusting.

Dr Phil is a piece of shit

Here is his disciplinary file: https://www.scribd.com/document/318570481/Dr-Phil-s-Texas-Disciplinary-File-Full-version-produced-to-LawNewz

Of note that the woman (SJM who is identified by full name in the document and who was 19 years old, Phil was 38-39) is identified as being in a dual relationship. Phil had her as a patient for some time and then brought her on as an intern.

This is grossly unethical and as you can see he was reprimanded by the board, as in this was founded and he was guilty. In later interviews he said the rectification to keep his license forced him to close his practice, as he was required to pay another psychologist to supervise his practice. As someone who runs a private counseling practice I can say this would essentially bankrupt you, the margins aren’t enough for a dead weight staff unless you run a large practice with 12+ people under you (at which point the board would probably take this far more seriously, I assume he was practicing independently).

Fast forward to 2006: Dr Phil surrenders his license. Kind of a strange thing to do. As someone who is licensed even if you never use it it’s almost always worthwhile to keep it active as it’s usually a huge headache to reactivate it whereas keeping it active is just like paying $100-150 a year and taking a few continuing education classes. Especially by 2006 this could all be done online for free; in the 1990s I get it more because CE meant you had to give up a few saturdays and pay even more money. However, people do it.

Fast forward again to 2009: 2 articles come out in the national enquirer. 1 accuses Dr Phil of being regularly unfaithful and abusive to his wife as well as hitting a man over the head with a beer mug, the other is an account from SJM accusing him of sexual assault back during the 1980s charges described above. Dr. Phil sued for defamation with 250 million dollars sought, which he eventually dropped. Most references to sexual assault article have been scrubbed but some remain and the original articles are gone. The original article on radar was widely reference when posted though so even 16 years later there are still some articles that basically repost the key points

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dr-phil-sues-national-enquirer-over-spousal-abuse-articles/

https://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/monster-dr-phil-accused-of-molesting-young-patient-32064780.html

Of note: an ethics board now, let alone in 1988, would likely not necessarily investigate sexual assault as that is a criminal manner and difficult to prove. They would likely wait for the outcome of a criminal investigation and move forward based on that unless there was evidence the criminal process was somehow compromised or something. This also is dependent on whether SJM disclosed the abuse in 1988. While it is clear from the file that SJM filed the initial complaint it is unknown to the extent of which her report was detailed. She may have been upset and simply disclosed the inappropriate dual business relationship, she may have disclosed the sexual abuse and was ignored. It is unknown

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Even giving Dr Phil the benefit of the doubt and assuming this woman is lying and the reports that he is violent, serial adulterer, etc are false we can still surmise that his practice ability is tainted, at best.

He clearly and willingly entered into a dual relationship with a patient at his suggestion. This is like the biggest ethical thing. It is because of therapists like him that when I was in school 30 years later ethics class was pounding in “dont do dual relationships” for like 2/3rds of the semester, because a ton of the stupid boomers in his generation abused their power and fucked their clients like total scumbags. You cannot be friends with your therapist. Your therapist cannot be impartial. Your therapist has a power differential over you. It is fucked up if your therapist says “let’s hang out”, “come work for me”, or whatever. If you say it and your therapist accepts equally bad!

The timing of surrendering his license is hella sus. His tv show started in 2002 so it’s like I guess he just figured he was finally good without it right? Yeah, maybe, except he hadn’t been in actual clinical practice since like 1990. After the whole SJM issue he went into courtroom consulting which led to a tv show about that which connected him to Oprah which led to the show we all know him for. But this meant he was now a prominent figure, especially a few years into it when it was clear that it was popular and going to stick around. Conjecture: he dropped his license because he feared SJM (or someone else) would pop back up and it would result in a board hearing, which can be public (thus the pdf above). The standards are lower for initiation than criminal charges, especially by 2006. He also may have done this out of fear of being called out for a practice engaged in on his show but this is less likely considering the practice did not occur in the state of Texas (where he was licensed)

His practice style is garbage. Therapy in the 1990s and early 2000s was far more confrontational, breaking you down, and “fixing you” and he was a key player in this fucked up trend. 0 evidence for it because it was based in nothing, it was farmed for spectacle of daytime tv. Your emotions were obstacles to overcome. Send your kids to bootcamp. Look at how weird these people are. This shit is rooted in AA and NA, which is a whole different topic of toxic “tough love” bullshit. He was not alone though - Jerry springer, Montel, sally jesse Raphael, the demon oprah (before the you get a car she was right along with these people), all portrayed dysfunction for theater with a thin veneer of “therapy”. Dr Phil legitimized it because he was the only one with actual credentials, despite surrendering his licensure.

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As a result of all this he legally cannot call himself Dr. Phil, psychologist. This is a frequent point of debate and he is a frequent example. Words like “professional counselor, psychologist, surgeon, lawyer, judge, etc” are protected titles. You can face legal consequences for advertising services if you don’t have the proper credentials to back it up.

But in the modern mental health landscape we have dilemmas here: what about a therapist? A life coach? These are not. They are general. Anyone can call themselves a life coach. There appears to be effort amongst life coaches to formalize the title. To the laymen this is confusing though. Who do you trust? We already added a bunch of new shit in the early 2000s for masters level clinicians: licensed clinical social worker, licensed professional counselor, licensed marriage and family therapist. And these vary by state slightly plus there are some states with extras for trainee versions! It’s a lot to ask a laymen to understand all that when most of my clients don’t know the difference between psychiatrist (md) and psychologist (PhD)

And then you get to the Dr Phil dilemma. He has surrendered his license. Or maybe someone in his case has lost it through malfeasance even, say he did sexually assault that woman in the 80s and the board investigated that. Neither of those things change the fact that he still attended graduate school, completed coursework and dissertation, and was awarded a doctorate. But to the laymen, “Dr.” is the professional identifier. So do you strip him of that? Very controversial! I don’t know. I do know what Dr Phil is doing feels disingenuous though. He is portraying himself as a tv psychologist

Respectfully disagreed but it appears we are at an impasse. The discussion of ideas was in the rest of the post that you apparently refused to read per your own words. I point out the documentaries not because I think you got your ideas from them (maybe you did, I don’t know) but because that is what has popularized the villainization of fentanyl (which is why I literally said that and did not say that you got your ideas from them). Nice job ascribing motive and intentionality to my words to portray me as a villain. I don’t have a fun pop psychology word for this though

My final attempt to expand upon this will be to say that your rhetoric of focusing on fentanyl as a big spooky drug and pouring more resources into an endless fight of prohibition, which has been attempted and is literally already the policy, is foolish. I apparently have to put on kid gloves here and say that I do not necessarily think that you are dumb because I am attacking your position, because you apparently cannot differentiate someone attacking your stance between someone attacking your intellect

The idea of continued focus on fentanyl prohibition is the policy of people who are invested in perpetuating systems of oppression and preventing systemic change. Drug addiction is vile and most people hide away from it. I know because I have worked in rehab centers, mobile therapy, and homeless outreach. But it makes for salacious content and easy views, and by extensions makes for easy “quick fix” political solutions. “Why are these people on the street?” “Fentanyl” “well we should do something about that!” It is a stupid and short sighted way to approach the issue that we have tried time and time and time and time again, only to fail miserably.

This is why I do not simply ignore you. Your rhetoric is frustrating and sets us back. It enables our political leaders to deflect onto “the fentanyl menace” rather than address the underlying societal rot that creates unsafe use and cycles of addiction. It further stigmatizes use. All the bad things

Also please dont ever get surgery bc fyi they will 100% give you spooooky fentanyl, sometimes in fairly heroic doses relative to recreational dosages. I promise you wont get instantly addicted or die.

I will note that I did not personally attack you, I did say that your point of view is bullshit and based on fearmongering, but you’re the one that has taken this to personal attacks and name calling.

Attack ideas, not people

Okay, keep vilifying substances instead of systemic issues because someone wasn’t kind enough about it

Heroin can be lethal the first time you try it. People were dying of opioids because of heroin long before fentanyl was on the streets and people were dying from oxycontin too.

Does fentanyl kill more? Yes, because again I am not disagreeing that it is far more powerful, that there are scumbags who mislabel supply or purposely adulterate drugs to make them seem more potent, etc

I’d just argue that your point of view is a war on drugs bullshit take that only started to give a shit about the addiction crisis once vice and youtube dummies starting making fentanyl a buzzword. It’s overly myopic and ignores the systemic factors that drive people to use.

So you regulate supply. Then what? Fentanyl is already regulated. It still doesn’t address the fact that 95% of the people on the streets in Kensington are seen as utter trash and society is waiting for them to die. It still doesn’t address that someone on their way to that place has no real support if they don’t come from a rich family (and honestly even then it’s not great?)

I do absolutely agree with you that safe access to regulated drugs is absolutely necessary. If addicts could get pharmaceutical grade heroin, fentanyl, cocaine, etc it would ensure safe reliable dosing in a monitored site that could support overdose if it occurs (remember that overdoses are not inherently fatal), it would essentially completely disarm the cartels (unless they fully shift to avocados or whatever), and it would allow you to regularly connect with addicts to encourage treatment and connect with resources like housing and welfare

But whenever these programs get trialed (just the clean needle stuff, no way the dea lets the drug part happen) the conservatives go nuts and the libs let out their inner NIMBY conservative so they get their funding cut and often shut down, even when data supports their existence

Yes I’m aware. fentanyl (it’s in my post) is derived from petrochemicals but still acts on the opioid system. The whole “being derived from petrochemicals” thing is what makes it “fully synthetic” which is just a creepy spooky nonsense weasel word that anti science nutjobs use to promote shit like anti vaccination. The fact that it is synthetically derived doesn’t make it any more or less dangerous, the fact that it’s significantly more potent does, but even with that to an experienced user it’s just a far more intense heroin, which is similar to how heroin is a far more intense morphine

Tbf I could’ve probably used the noun instead of “it’s” but I feel like the context is pretty clear if you read past the first sentence

It’s derived from petrochemicals but it works on the same receptors. And 50 years ago people were screeching about heroin, a completely unnatural man made synthesized drug far more potent than opium (which is roughly 10% morphine, heroin being around 2-3x stronger than pure morphine), in much the same way they are screeching about fentanyl now. “It’s a scourge, it kills people, it’s destructive” etc

All of those things can be true and fentanyl is absolutely far more dangerous given its potency (though giving someone with 0 opioid tolerance heroin isn’t necessarily safe either).

The real enemy is addiction, and the real real enemy there is a lack of resources and empathy. A lack of supports, a lack of housing, a lack of meaningful jobs and supportive welfare, a lack of healthcare, a lack of a society that doesn’t focus on punitive incarceration efforts over rehabilitative treatment and equitable respect

But keep focusing on the fentanyl boogeyman. Or tranq. That’s the problem. Just get that off the streets and it’ll all go away