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theritualofourexistence · 3 years

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Clarity in the Cancellation Crusade

After posting multi-paragraph comments on a couple different things that have popped up in my feed recently, it seemed like I should probably just sit down and write this out.

“Cancel culture.” Crazy shit, right?

The recent onslaught of cancellations includes Mr. Potato Head, Pepe Le Pew, a handful of Disney movies (Peter Pan, Dumbo, The Aristocats), and *audible gasp* Dr. Seuss. The Muppets also got a newfangled Disney+ content warning, though I’ve seen significantly fewer headlines about that.

The thing that inevitably happens when the news media decides to publish a headline about a children’s toy or book being “canceled” is a veritable parade of social media complaints about how sensitive people have become. I saw this particular post over 10 times in the period of a couple hours one day last week…

The question I’ve been asking recently when I see posts like that is this: “Who do you think cancel culture is?”

Because “cancel culture” isn’t real. In the majority of the cases currently making headlines, the choice to remove a character from a movie or stop publishing a book has been made by the company responsible for that character or book… and that is very much a normal thing companies can choose to do.

No one I’ve posed the above question to has overtly mentioned “Libtards,” but it’s certainly implied. People who haven’t read a Dr. Seuss book in 20 years are now suddenly all up in arms (literally?) because “the Liberals” are coming for “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.”

The Liberals are not coming for Dr. Seuss. They do not care about a potato toy. Also, nothing is happening to the Cat in the Hat. I repeat: NOTHING is happening to the Cat in the Hat.

The choices to stop publishing that book and to market a vegetable toy in a less gendered way were made by the companies responsible for producing those products… not the Liberal “cancel culture” ghoul. In fact, it’s really, really hard to find public outcry about any of the things that have been recently “canceled.” There was a single NYT article that recently discussed the problematic nature of the Pepe Le Pew cartoons… that said, Warner Bros hasn’t aired that show in decades and it is not clear whether that article had anything to do with the skunk’s scene being removed from the new Space Jam movie.

Even growing up I remember things like political correctness needlessly becoming a partisan issue. When we fall into that media trap, all we’re doing is watering the plant of an already poisonous and ineffective two-party system. Be bigger than that temptation. Push back against media intended to further divide Americans. If something stinks, it’s probably rotten. Sure, there are certain topics that fall under the umbrella of political correctness that sound alarm bells for censorship issues… but didn’t everyone’s mom tell them that if they didn’t have anything nice to say, they shouldn’t say anything at all?

Again, though, the most important thing to remember about this recent wave of “canceling” is that censorship concerns are moot. A person who owns a thing is legally allowed to do all the censoring they want. It’s not the government that has decided to stop publishing 6 books written by Dr. Seuss… if it were, we could have the censorship conversation. These changes aren’t happening because there is a Democrat in the White House. They’re happening because the company who makes these products, has for whatever reason, decided to take a different approach.

In the case of the Dr. Seuss books, Dr. Seuss Enterprises re-evaluated their choice to publish 6 books based on racist themes and images. I have only heard of two of those six. The image below is, in my opinion, objectively problematic:

The fact that a major company behind such a well-known name has seen that something is problematic and has decided to stop publishing the books containing overt racist images is awesome. It sets a great example that we can all learn from. Humans have an amazing capacity to learn… that’s one of the only reasons we are in charge here on Earth. If we fall on ice once, we are often more careful on ice the next time. When we see that something is racially problematic, it’s a good thing if we can take action to get that thing out of rotation. More on that later.

Fundamentally, what is happening right now in Media Land is gross sensationalism.

“Cancel culture” isn’t real. Should people face consequences if they say or do racist things? Yes. We should all agree on that. Should we stop publishing books that perpetuate racist stereotypes? Yes. There are plenty of non-racist books that provide an education about racial differences without the added (exceedingly inappropriate) zing of Asian characters being painted yellow and African characters being given monkey features.

If you’re not convinced that some of Dr. Seuss’s material is racially problematic, I encourage you to pop on over to Google to check out the series of ads he did for FLIT in the 1930s. Yes, it was the 1930s. In the last 90 years, we’ve learned that images like that are not okay… let’s use that knowledge to let old racist graphics die.

Still can’t accept that “cancel culture” isn’t real? Still feeling like there’s something in the air now that is different and worse than before?

Okay, then, let’s consider it further.

Things have been “canceled” by people for millennia… this isn’t new. Being all for cancel culture when Colin Kaepernick kneels for the anthem (a perfectly legal form of peaceful protest considered respectful by many veterans) but opposing cancel culture when it’s threatening to eliminate an obviously racist thing is not exactly a moral stance. Burning your Nikes in the street but then turning around and spending $400 on a copy of “If I Ran the Zoo” on eBay after Dr. Seuss’s own family has pulled it from publication due to racist imagery is… silly.

The same people who seem to be so vocal about “cancel culture” now are part of the same communities who tried to cancel plenty of things in my lifetime. Things like trick-or-treating, Harry Potter, school dances, books and movies with LGBT+ characters and themes…

History absolutely bubbles over with things that have been canceled… often for good reason! Some examples that come to mind:

DDT

the Catholic Church (see the 16th century Protestant Reformation)

doing our everyday poopin’ in outdoor holes

polio

hoop skirts

phrenology (new science cancels old science like every damn day)

Ford Pintos (not to mention cars without seatbelts)

telegrams and rotary phones (replaced by easier and better ways to communicate)

lead paint

asbestos

Four Loco

Y’all remember when we all did the ice bucket challenge to cancel Alzheimer’s?

Learning that something is problematic and moving past it is LEARNING… not cancel culture. Learning and growth are good things. We all benefit from them.

Another thing worth commenting on from that Cat in the Hat post that circulated in my Facebook feed: why do we consistently demonize sensitivity? Racism feels like something we should all be sensitive about. If being sensitive about something results in meaningful change and a less hateful country, isn’t that… good? Why do so many Americans seem to place so much value on their “freedom” to hurt others?

And don’t get me started on comparing this stuff to Cardi B. It boggles my mind that that’s happening at all. Why is there suddenly so much outcry about one song that features female genitals in a literal ocean of songs that feature male genitals. I grew up knowing every word to songs about sex well before I even knew what sex was. Your kids are only desperate to listen to WAP because they know it makes you squeamish. And take a second to think about why it makes you squeamish. Genitals are human and scientific and we literally all have them. If you have more of a problem with WAP than with any of the other 10,000 songs about dicks and sex, you need to spend some time examining why that is.

Here’s another post I’ve seen bouncing around the social media feeds:

Something about this is just plain hilarious to me. Like what are racism and rape culture if not THE REALEST issues? This country’s problem with systemic racism runs so, so deep and is reflected very plainly in centuries of cold, hard numbers. It’s not that I *think* systemic racism is a problem. The data very clearly shows that regardless of what white people think about race in this country, systemic racism absolutely IS a problem. Racism and rape culture, arguably at the root of the most recent canceling spree, are not just real issues, they’re real American issues. They’re cultural issues. And solving cultural issues is not easy. We know that these issues have been passed down through the generations so maybe changing children’s toys and books and shows isn’t such a bad thing to try. There is SO much work to do to address racism and rape culture in the United States, but small steps are still progress.

If choosing to stop airing a show that blatantly perpetuates rape culture means one less young person is stalked or assaulted or raped, that’s worth it, no? What if that one young person who doesn’t become a victim is your daughter?

If choosing to stop publishing a book with racist themes and images leads to even one kid understanding more about the nuance of race in America and the breath-taking extent of white privilege, that’s worth it too.

Would I rather the media spend time and money to bring American attention to bigger issues associated with this nation’s racism and rape culture? 100%. There are ENORMOUS fish to fry. Dr. Seuss is not an enormous fish. Potato head toys are not enormous fish. Pepe Le Pew is not an enormous fish. They’re not even big fish. They’re small. They’re tiny fish. They’re anchovies. But frying some fish is better than frying no fish.

Canceling Pepe Le Pew is not hurting anyone. Warner Brothers owns Pepe Le Pew. Warner Brothers owns nearly everything; they are not hurting for money. And canceling Pepe certainly isn’t hurting American kids. There are plenty of other kids’ shows to watch that are significantly less problematic. Just because you watched Pepe Le Pew and went on to be a properly respectful adult doesn’t mean there aren’t other kids out there who did internalize a harmful disrespect for consent. No, Pepe Le Pew probably isn’t single-handedly responsible for anyone’s decision to stalk or rape anyone else. But could a show reinforce the groundwork that ultimately leads a kid down a path where he is unable or unwilling to respect the boundaries of others? I mean, it’s not the craziest thing I’ve heard this week.

Canceling six total Dr. Seuss books that are already pretty obscure is not hurting anyone.

Changing the name of an already genderless potato toy to reflect that genderless-ness is not hurting anyone.

A brief recap: racism and rape culture are very real, very American issues.

If the decision to stop doing a thing doesn’t hurt anyone and may even save someone some hurt, why does that decision bother you?

Also, in all your frantic Facebook posting, make sure you are differentiating between “cancel culture” and consequences. When the media tosses around the phrase “cancel culture” it has this tone of finality that is, plainly, not realistic. Fads and trends move so quickly in the internet age that the idea that a group of people could “cancel” something permanently is just not possible. People who do or say racist things, though, should face consequences. People who do or say transphobic or homophobic things should face consequences. Consequences are one of the only ways we learn to do better. And again, that’s not my opinion, it’s science.

One of the consequences that can have the most impact is, you guessed it, losing money! In this capitalist hellscape, money talks. Boycotting and choosing how we spend our money are some of the most engaging ways to combat racist and homophobic garbage. When you have your temper tantrum because the company who owns a book with overtly racist imagery decides to stop publishing that book, that speaks volumes about your priorities. If you respond to that company’s decision by buying the book in question on eBay for $400, that speaks even louder volumes. What are you doing? WHY are you doing it? I’m guessing you don’t even know, and you should probably spend some time thinking about it before you flush away a chunk of your stimmy on a freaking RACIST KIDS’ BOOK.

All actions have consequences. All of our choices never affect just us. How we vote affects other people. How we spend our money affects other people. Spending our money on things that are problematic perpetuates the problem… whether it be racism, rape culture, homophobia, or transphobia… or so many other things this country desperately needs to address.

It’s human to not like change. Change is going to happen, though, regardless of whether or not we’re comfortable with it. In the information age, we have a remarkable opportunity to steer that change. Leaving behind racist relics is change, so it may be inherently uncomfortable. But change that moves our country away from racism and rape culture is GOOD change.

I am begging you. Use critical thinking… if you’re seeing a headline about something being canceled, look up WHY. Some of these headlines are absolute bunk… they’re shared just to get people all riled up and create American division. However, just like we *should* cancel lead paint, a children’s book with overtly racist images shouldn’t be published anymore and it’s weird if you disagree with that. Disagreeing with that decision, as silly as it may seem, perpetuates racism. I know how triggered y’all can get when someone suggests you might be perpetuating racism, but it is what it is. Do your research. Don’t spend your money on racist garbage. Be better.

I feel like this post is me just barking the exact same thing in different ways, but I also feel like there is so much more I could say.

I’ll leave you with this:

What will it take for Americans to weigh the threats of racism and homophobia the same way we weight the threat of lead paint? If it’s a matter of costing lives, well, the numbers speak for themselves.

#cancel culture #cancellation #racism #rape culture #the muppets #pepe le pew #dr. seuss #seuss #consequences #change #mr. potato head #potato head #cancel culture isn't real

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bookishardor · 5 years

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Today something amazing happened

What is the opposite of an existential crisis? Is there a term for it? I don’t know, and Google isn’t feeling my vibe, but it’s that feeling of experiencing a moment as a whole, and then thinking of every previous moment that led up to it. Where you can sit and trace your path all the way up to a culminating event. Destiny is probably the closest thing. Or chance. Or just life being the mysterious thing that it is.

This probably sounds incredibly melodramatic to most reading it, and you’ll probably be let down with my story, to be honest, but I don’t care. I’m just writing like the wind to collect my current emotional state into words that might somehow relay how utterly—well—emotional I am right now.

Back in 2008 or 2009 I picked up a random book from a box my aunt was giving away. It was The Ape that Guards the Balance by Elizabeth Peters. The 10th in the Amelia Peabody mysteries. I didn’t know it was the 10th one right away, but kept reading it anyway. If you know me, and to make a long story short, that series is my most favorite set of books ever written, and the author my most favorite ever to grace us with her writing.

Amelia is an Egyptologist in the late 1800s-early 1900s. I was already on my way to loving Egypt, but this set of books really helped steer me right into the Obsession. I majored in Archaeology/Art History and did an independent minor in Egyptology. I have books and books and books on the subject, every Elizabeth Peters book (and every book under her other penname) written, and doubles of several of them. I even have a signed one—but I’m jumping ahead.

After college was when I really sat and finished reading the series. I found fellow fans on Twitter and we still chat about and agonize over the books today (agonize mainly over who should play the characters in a show if ANYONE ever gets around to making it). Most of my collection of her books came from Wonder Book in Frederick. Elizabeth Peters (real name Barbara Mertz) lived in Frederick and frequented the store, and befriended the owner. Here’s a checkpoint in our little journey.

She passed away in 2013. I was devastated. I only had four or five more books to go in the Amelia series when I learned of her passing, and threw myself into the story with even more vigor than before. Eventually her daughter joined Twitter and provided fun updates about Barbara’s life and works, and interacted with us. She still does, and that Twitter community I’ve found myself in has been one of my favorite things about social media. And, ultimately, she led me to a nearby auction where I purchased some of the books Barbara owned—a moment that gave me a thrill that is surpassed this day.

And then one day her daughter said something about a posthumous book. I don’t think I need to tell you how excited I was if you’re still reading this. The news would come and go, ebb and flow. Go silent, sometimes. We knew another author was finishing the story. We didn’t know when or if it would ever be really finished. But we waited.

Finally, we got a date. July 2017.

The wheels started turning. I knew Barbara had lived in Frederick. I’m not sure if I knew that she visited Wonder Book often or knew the owner. I can’t remember—I might have known the bare basics. But I contacted her daughter about possibly doing some kind of book launch there, since I knew they were doing some out in Chicago (where Barbara went to school at the Oriental Institute). She put me into contact with Chuck, Wonder Book’s founder and owner. Another splendid checkpoint.

Fast forward. We do the launch. A fun crowd turns up to buy the book and here stories from two of Barbara’s Egyptologist friends who actually bought her house after she passed. There are pictures of the event on my Facebook somewhere. I dressed up as Amelia, of course. The Frederick News post interviewed me before the event and did an article on Barbara and the event. It was mind boggling then.

And then a few years pass, in which I keep in some contact with Chuck. I’ll abridge this part because you all already know: my hours get cut at my job a few months ago, so Chuck comes to the rescue and I work at Wonder Book now! Something that I always kind of knew I’d try to do, because, let’s be real. We all know how much I love books and that company.

What truly has me sitting here in my current state of emotion is this: Today I was invited to go to Barbara’s house to tour it and the gardens before the Egyptologists, Ray and Jay, leave for Egypt this weekend.

Okay. It’s been several seconds since I wrote that and sort of just…stared into space. I went to Barbara Mertz’s (ELIZABETH PETERS’S) home. I saw her rooms. I saw some of the furniture that is left. I saw her gardens and her space and in some ways her life in the hour or so I spent there.

The house was built in 1820. It is a historic farm house, all stone and age and character (quite literally, as it was the basis for many of the gothic homes featured in the books under her Michaels name). She named the estate Lorien, after Lothlorien, and one can honestly see the resemblance. My guides included Chuck, Ray and Jay, and Ray’s sister, Carolyn. All of them were unfalteringly kind and excited to share the history with me. The things Barbara had owned—such as a landline telephone and the chair beside it patterned with martini glasses—and the parties she would host in the gardens with her author friends.

And the real kicker for me—the singular moment that had me admittedly tearing up on the way home—was that I got to sit at her writing desk. Ray still has it held in her library for her family, and uses it for his own work. He took a photo of me, little old me, sitting at Elizabeth Peters’s writing desk. Where every August she would seclude herself to work on the next book. Where the majority of the Amelia Peabody books were birthed.

I sat on a throne, today, for about a minute, and haven’t been the same since.

So all those instances just piled up on me when I got home this evening. All these things that have happened over the years. Meeting people who knew Barbara best and hearing about her life and work. Starting a job with Wonder Book because of a shared joy of her stories and of books in general. Meeting Egyptologists who’ve kept her spirit alive at Lorien. And to sitting at the Queen’s djeser djerseru—her Holiest of Holies—this evening.

All thanks to a book I pulled out of a box in 2008.

#amelia peabody #elizabeth peters #mpm #barbara michaels #barbara mertz

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graduationemmasep · 4 years

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'I like the way MDMA gives you a deep sense of connection to your friends'

I'm no fiend. Most nights I'd rather share a bottle of wine with some friends than stay up till 6am getting sweaty and boggle-eyed on a bender. But while I associate alcohol with talking about past experiences, I associate drugs with making new ones. Party drugs can often make a stranger feel like a confidant; a simple trip to a town centre feel like an Enid Blyton escapade.

I probably take class-A party drugs such as MDMA or cocaine once a fortnight, and have done since I was 16 (I'm 27 now). I like the way cocaine gives you a new lease of life, like a mushroom in Super Mario, to carry on with a night out. I like the way MDMA softens the edges of reality and gives you a deep sense of connection to your friends that you can never get when you meet them for dinner and they moan about their jobs. I like how when you're coming down from a pill another person's touch has a comforting, almost electric capacity. If you're suffering from exhaustion, anxiety or stress, recreational drugs can give you a bit of a leg-up.

Drugs can also be a total pain. Ecstasy can make you feel like you're floating in a cloud, but just as often it's an admin nightmare: you come up at different times from your friends; only half the people in a group remembered to get sorted and there's endless hassle at a party trying to get more. Even when you're having a great time, there's a self-doubting internal monologue running through the whole process: Have I done enough? Am I coming up? Do I look like a prick?

I would just like to have that conversation about drugs being sometimes brilliant and occasionally annoying. Yet I feel like there is no one who is willing to talk about drugs in those terms.

When children ask their parents where babies come from, they get a white lie – a stork delivers them, you find them in a cabbage patch, you order them from Ocado. That's the closest thing I can think of to explain the difference between the perception and the reality of drug use by young people in the UK. There is a societal stork myth that is propagated by the media and popular culture to hide a basic reality. Even users themselves are entirely unwilling to talk about drug-taking honestly. Everything in the drugs world tries to stifle this conversation. Take nightclubs. It doesn't take a genius to work out that staying up till 6am listening to dance music at an ear-splitting volume would not only be unenjoyable without some kind of mind-altering stimulant, but a painful test of endurance. Most people in big nightclubs are on drugs. The clubs know that: that's why they charge so much for entry and, often, for bottles of water. They know that not many people will be buying drinks. Most of them have in-house dealers too, so they can sort out their DJs. Bigger DJs put requests for drugs on their rider. "We just put it on expenses as 'fruit and flowers'," a promoter at a major nightclub told me this year. But there's still a stork charade, with the venue covered in posters promising to eject drug users and bouncers searching punters – but not too thoroughly. The pretence is that this could all be above board.

I suppose the reason for this false picture of drug-taking is that most people don't take drugs. The statistics show that only a small fraction of the UK population are regular drugs users, and a smaller fraction still do anything harder than weed. But drug use is not spread evenly across the country, nor across age groups. In my demographic – under 30, living in London, job in the creative industries, disposable income – almost everyone is a recreational drugs user.

Where I grew up in south London, it was pretty uncommon to find someone who didn't at least smoke weed. The children of more middle-class parents were taking cocaine, ecstasy, ketamine and mephedrone almost every weekend. These were not reprobates ruining their lives: they were intelligent, bright people who got three As at A-level and went to good universities.

We would go to raves in places such as Camberwell and Hackney Wick, to warehouse venues where almost no one was over 18. White powders flowed as freely as the Fanta Fruit Twist and Malibu we were drinking. Festivals played a big part, too. Parents, even quite strict ones who wouldn't dream of letting their kids out past midnight, were happy to send their kids to music festivals, perhaps because of the reverent music-focused coverage in the media.

If you go to somewhere like Reading or Benicàssim, almost everyone is under 20. Half of them barely leave the campsite. Festivals are drugs playgrounds where teenagers experiment with copious amounts of uppers in presumably quite dangerous combinations. Some of the best moments of my life took place going to festivals as a teenager. I remember one muddy year at Glastonbury, racing down the hill arm-in-arm with a bunch of people, all off our faces on MDMA, feeling happier than I had ever felt. Another year, I remember taking mephedrone with a girl I fancied during Blur's headline set, both weeping with joy at a band we'd grown up with our whole lives.

Again, everyone knows this; no one thinks the thousands who watch the sunrise at the stone circle in Glastonbury every year are just on a high from seeing Mumford and Sons. But the festivals keep up the pretence that they are drug-free zones. Even a recent BBC3 show, Festivals, Sex and Suspicious Parents, which was supposed to show parents what their kids really got up to at festivals, ignored the fact that as the cameras panned around the festival, many revellers were plainly as high as a kite, their jaws swinging back and forth like pendulums, a side-effect of taking ecstasy. The voiceover just kept talking about people being "drunk".

I am also part of the first generation of people whose parents are likely to have been drug users. Of course, some adults would be outraged, like the parents on BBC3, to see what their kids got up to. But many more knew only too well – plenty of people I know would smoke weed or share dealers with their parents. In some families drug use had less stigma than smoking.

I thought all this was normal, but at university I met, for the first time, young people who totally abstained from drugs. They mostly came from outside major cities, or outside the UK, and many shivered in horror when they saw the rest of us dabbing our gums with mysterious white powders. I thought there would be a rift in social lives, an us-and-them situation, but it was around that time that mephedrone happened. Known by literally no young person ever as "meow meow", mephedrone was a legal high that changed attitudes towards drug-taking. Polite do-right kids who would never dream of taking illegal drugs were happy to chow down on bombs (self-made wontons of mephedrone powder wrapped in Rizla) like they were no more risqué than chocolate liqueurs.

Mephedrone was incredibly cheap – about a tenner a gram – and incredibly available. You could order it with next-day delivery to your university PO box. Mephedrone was a drugs phenomenon of which I have never seen the likes before or since. Everyone started doing it. I remember visiting a friend at Leeds University during this period. We went to a club and the queue for the men's bogs was at least 70 people long. When I finally got inside the place stunk of mephedrone, you could hear everyone loudly sniffing.

On nights out during this time, everyone would be raging – making out with one another, dancing with total abandon. But the comedowns were immediate and severe, far worse than ecstasy. By 4am people would be lying on the floor sharing the most intimate and personal shames and secrets, as if the drug was somehow compelling them to be honest. Some people called it a truth serum. Friendships were forged in the hot irons of that emotional exposition, as were the most horrendous hangovers.

Mephedrone was banned within two years of it taking off. People talk a lot about one legal high being banned only for another to take its place, but the real legacy of mephedrone was to numb the stigma of harder drugs. By the time I left university, many of the drug abstainers who had tried mephedrone became relaxed about most illegal drugs, too.

Ecstasy and mephedrone make it pretty hard to get much done in the days after taking them. You can't regularly use them and be a successful, functioning adult, so they become a rarer treat once you leave student life. In their 20s most people are overworked: they have second jobs and work incredibly long hours. If they're going to go out on a Friday night they need a pick-me-up. And that is why cocaine remains the young professional's drug of choice.

I see cocaine usage almost every weekend wherever I go: clubs, pubs, people's houses, dinner parties. At fancy celebrity parties, the sort you see on Mail Online, cocaine is so prevalent that it's almost boring. Everyone does it – butter-wouldn't-melt TV presenters, wholesome pop stars adored by your mum, people who would immediately lose their job if anyone found out. Those tabloid stings where they catch someone doing cocaine are kind of hilarious in that respect. If you followed any celebrity around with a secret camera on a Friday night you'd be almost guaranteed to find them doing coke. But cocaine users are like hipsters in the way they will vehemently deny they are one, and cast aspersions on others. "It was just full of self-aggrandising wankers doing coke and talking about themselves," someone will say about a party where they did cocaine and talked about themselves. Most of my friends are cocaine users, but I've never heard them say one nice thing about cocaine.

No doubt some people will have read this piece and think that I am just a monstrous twat, that this has all been little more than infantile boasting in a vain attempt to try to sound cool. But that, too, is part of the cover-up, that any open discussion of using drugs or enjoying them is necessarily a boast. We can talk about great food, great films, great sex, but if we talk about great drugs we immediately sound like we're engaging in some teenage bravado. That's why the biggest taboo surrounding drugs today isn't taking drugs, but saying that they're fun.

I'm not saying that people are lying about the negative effects. I have, of course, seen lives ruined by drugs. Rarely has this been because of an overdose or because someone has ruined themselves financially because of addiction (although I am only 27 – that may yet come). Far more often I have just seen people become dulled through regular drug use: their youthful spark extinguished by a never-ceasing quest to get on it; brains frazzled by overheated synapses. There are friends I want to slap every time I see them doing another line, but I can't because that would be hypocritical.

I also appreciate that's it's easy to be blasé about drug use when you're a well-adjusted middle-class white guy who has never been stopped by the police and has a distant non-social relationship with their drug dealer. For many people, drugs aren't something they can dip in and out of and separate from their lives. People entangled in the economic and legal realities of drugs – dealers, those convicted of possession, addicts – don't have the luxury of my relaxed attitude.

But until we stop pretending that getting high is inherently bad – that drugs can never be brilliant, can never enhance human experience for the better – how can we properly deal with people whose lives have been made worse by drugs? At some point, kids grow up and learn the facts of life. I think it's time we all had the talk.

#research

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migleefulmoments · 5 years

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@ajw720...I wrote a thing

Oh you misguided little CCer. Yes, let’s talk about the video from 10/30/15.

(scroll down to watch the video.)

Ajw says: “Let’s Talk About that Video from October 30, 2015 shall we? I am really glad I was reminded of this this AM as it truly highlights how much he LOVES Chris. But it is also an excellent comparison to the manner in which he talks about his girlfriend of 10,572 years”.

The video doesn’t highlight how much Darren LOVES Chris Colfer. It is a few random comments- stories he has told over and over and over again because Chris hates being talked about and these stories are already been told so they are safe fodder. You read too much into things and ignore what they are actually saying.

“In this segment of 4 minute and 10 seconds (prior to the song) Darren mentions the word(s) Chris or Chris Colfer a total of 8 times (I think the end is quick) as he recounts for what I believe is the 4thtime in a span of about 10 months the story of their first date. A night he remembers in detail. (funny, I have never once heard him talk about his first date with M as the fact remains, no one even knows when they actually started dating and the recent push is that it may have been even before he went to Italy, yet again changing the timeline)”

He won’t share his first date with Mia for several reasons- 1. it’s private and why should he 2. it was a first date, probably not that exciting 3. when would that come up in an interview? People care about the first time two costar spent time together. They don’t care about when Darren met his fiancée.. . and again It’s private. Why the hell would he share that with us? Nobody SHOULD know the story or the date. That isn’t our business.

People wanted to hear about Glee especially as it was ending. They were coworkers in a job that was very significant to Darren’s current status as an entertainer making the story interesting to the audience Repeating Chris’s name or saying his entire name is inconsequential to anything...it certainly doesn’t mean love.

“And remember, this show was 10 months after the last time he “publicly” saw one Mr. Chris Colfer. A man he allegedly hates and only “kind of sort of hangs out with.” (sorry Chris but that quote is going to remain one of my favorites)”

The “Man date” story is safe ground to cover because it has been told over and over and over. Darren likes to deflect from how own talent and talk about other people. He likes to set the stage for how generous Chris was when meeting Darren-a nobody- who was a nobody walking on to the set of a huge show.

“Interesting. Let’s see. I believe, and correct me if I am wrong, I have heard him utter his lovely lady of many, many moons name publicly 3 times. The first time was in a radio interview right before Elsie 2015 which coincidentally aired about 3 or 4 days after the Alan Cumming version of mandate aired. The 2nd on her Birthday during a live stream with Paul from Broadway.com. And the 3rd on his snapchat during Cats when he said she was taking over his phone as his battery had died. This is the grand total over the 10,572 years they have been dating. (But willing to bet we hear it again soon after they read this).”

You missed “My Darling MIa....” and also the time he posted in Insta that he is getting married to MIa and that he and Mia opened a bar baby.

“What did Darren have to say about Chris in 4 minutes and 10 seconds:

The date he started filming he put together that “he would be linked to Chris Colfer’s character.”

“I went to Chris” (and asked him to go see Sutton as his friend “dropped out”) and when he described how his man agreed to go, Darren said “Oh Thank you, I was so touched he wanted to come along.”

We went to see Sutton Foster, me and Chris Colfer.

Darren next describes how he realized, on day 1, when he didn’t even know what would happen between Kurt and Blaine, that if the story took off “Chris and I will never ever go out in public together ever again” so Darren “needed to embrace the opportunity.” It is AMAZING how Darren was able to foretell that. I mean at the time he was only signed for a limited number of episodes. There was no actual plan for Kurt and Blaine to date. But Darren, being the fortune teller he was, knew he had to take this opportunity to take Chris on a date as he knew they would never be able to go out in public again.

“I love telling that story about Chris because I like telling how generous he is even though he was years younger than me. He was a big TV star, he like won a Golden Globe and I’m this new guy.” Ok, so Darren actually does get one fact wrong, but I think its because he is so in awe of Chris’ accomplishments that he forgets that Chris did not in fact have a Golden Globe when they met. That happened a few months later.

“Very cool, I have nothing but good things to say about Chris Colfer.”

Darren messed up, claiming that Chris had a Golden Globe when they met because time had gone by and it didn’t matter that much to him- simple error. Time has a way of doing that.

He claims he knew he couldn’t hang out with Chris if their characters dated- that isn't something he knew at the time but something that makes the story juicer. It gives context to the fact that they don’t hang out at all because the fans made it hard. It’s just amping up the story.

“And then, when Seth next asks him about singing live with Chris, he says (the beginning is quick so perhaps not 100% accurate) “Me and Chris, well Chris hates, hates when you talk about him. He hates singing live, he hates it, he hates singing live. Doesn’t like it.” That is a lot of knowledge about Chris Colfer that Darren has considering, again, he had not even seen the man in months and that are not even friends.”

I don’t know Chris Colfer and I Know that he hates singing live and that he hates when people talk about him. He has said so many times. You see, while YOU are paying attention to matching details in photos like they both wore plaid suits in 2018 and explaining TrueLoveAlways because they both like Harry Potter and Star Wars...I am listening to what these actually people say-using words- and I respect what they say because that is what grown ups do.

“Let’s see what has he said about his girl over the entire course of their relationship as opposed to in 4 minutes 10 seconds:

“She’s a big girl, she can take care of herself.”

Darren would NEVER criticize fans in a goofy radio interview or a short fun entertainment setting. He knows his audience and he knows when the time and place is appropriate to talk about horrible fans who attack his fiancée.

“She is a very lovely lady I have been with for many, many moons.”

It’s private and I am not going to give you specifics about my private life.

“My partner in crime.”

he is endearingly calling the person who he lives his life with his “partner in crime”. He is making the analogy that his “life” is the “crime” here. I don’t know why you can’t understand this simple thing. It is mind boggling that you won’t let this go as if it means something devious.

“I’m a ball and chain kind of guy.”

Again he is defecting from speaking about his private life with a reporter. He’s calling himself the ball and chain... aka he’s a one woman man, old morning couple, you don’t care about us, move on to next question.

“She works at Fox” stated almost one year after she left their employ. Yes, they have tried to fix that and have since allowed her on set to fetch coffee and snap about 3 times since Darren made this statement, but she was not employed by Fox when this was stated, as proven by her own LinkedIn account and her going away party many months prior”.

Literally you are going with “proven by her own LinkedIn account” who updates their LinkedIn? We have no idea what special projects she was doing for Fox. What this really means is ajw wasn’t privy to the private life of Mia Swier. Boohooo. Newsflash: You can’t find everything on the inter webs. The fact is-I know that Darren was there and there was NO reason for him to be there so if he says he was there because Mia was working for Fox then I have no reason to doubt that.

Has mentioned her wearing heels on multiple occasions. Ummm…..no, barely ever Darren.

Seriously? OMG the heels comment was a fucking ad. How stupid can you be- Darren didn’t write that. THAT was a literally written by either the magazine or Darren’s PR team. She wears heels every time she goes to a red carpet event. Just because the photo doesn’t show her feet doesn't mean she doesn’t have feet....or heels on. You get that right?

Has stated how he has asked her not to share things on social media. Which she does all the time.

No, she doesn’t put anything on social media anymore. A few pics get posted with her in them...there is NOTHING in those photos that are private. Being in public places and at public events and posting a picture isn’t private life. I know you want it to be so you can bitch but you sound unhinged when you do. The truth is we don't know if Darren asked her to post or not to post. we have one story about one photo from Becca’s horrible podcast. Darren would NEVER share an actual private moment with us. Mia’s IG is private-I know that PISSES you off so much. She rarely posts to Snapchat when they are going out to an event. Clearly Darren is in the picture and knows she is posting.

I mean, I could go on and on and on. There have been many quotes, most of which have not been very kind. None of which have ever been loving. None of which have ever been gushing. None of which has made him revert back to the High School Darren talking about the person he has an enormous crush on. And none of which have been said while so much love is emoting from his entire persona.

I am sure you could go on forever and ever. but none of it is important or factual or shocking. At the end of the day and your latest rant, the only thing that matters is that they are living their lives without you and you don’t matter to them. They are engaged and I know this because Darren Told us he was and his behavior has been consistent with a man who is about to get married. Shall we review: they had a bachelorette weekend and a wedding shower that Darren attended. He has talked about planning a wedding many times. Lea acts like he is engaged. Three is nothing to suggest that he is lying.

So you tell me. What is the truth here? I think we all know

Yes we all know the truth: you are a conspiracy theorist who looks for patterns and makes up a ton of shit to fit your trope with no regard to how much you make Darren sound like a complete douche.

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