I feel like Ellen probably falls under the category of not interesting enough of a bastard. Like she did shitty things but they don't feel like they go beyond the typical shittiness that you see in show business
Gotta agree with the nerd. Showbusiness is known to be the most hostile working environment. She was practicing gross negligence but that's not bad enough to stand out too much compared to literally every other show running
I'm older than all of you but younger than your parents, and when I hear you talking about your mom watching Oprah every day, I think you might be missing part of what was happening. I worked full time after high school, and finally went to college full time about 8 years later, in 1984. I finished college in 1988 and went back to working full time, but I had always been too busy with life 'out in the world' to watch any daytime TV. That changed when I had my first baby in 1989 and decided to be a "stay-at-home-Mom" while my kids were little. Compared to my former life, I often felt lonely and frustrated, tethered to the house during those early years, which is when I started watching first Oprah, then Donahue almost every weekday afternoon. For me, watching daytime talk shows was similar to modern-day parasocial relationships a lot of people have with their favorite social media content creators. For me, watching daytime TV is tinged with sadness because it came from a place of loneliness - SO GIVE MOM A BREAK!
Thank you for sharing your insight! I understand that MLMs preyed on people in similar situations because it would provide more social interaction and occasionally money (not fair compensation but enough to keep people coming back) I think you made an excellent point about parasocial relationships then and now.
Yes, this is a fantastic point. I would also point out that I can determine by you listening to this video they are definitely not talking about you or people who are genuinely somewhat introspective and self-critical. Back then it was probably also much easier to get into a content loop watching the same people habitually rather than branching on the modern internet. Unfortunately the Internet was continuously becoming more open through about 2012 and then forums began to close themselves off and even replaced in 2015-2016 with discord.
That's a great point. Especially in a time before regular internet for general population, that's important. However, it was more dangerous because only the government and freaks without scruples completely dictated what people thought. But what's even sadder is that the latter got even more powerful despite such ready access to truth within seconds.
I think something missing from the literacy discussion is that the way that kids in America are taught to read *literally has changed*. The standard curriculum has changed from teaching phonetics to this concept of "whole word reading", which is more or less teaching every word individually and not the underlying rules that would help someone learn words they have never seen before, and this is provably reducing literacy skills.
Yes, it started in 1927, but then was disproven to work in 1940, but then Lucy Calkin wrote a book in the 90s that brought us back into the whole word reading method, which further reduced literacy rates when they were beginning to increase. And in some other places in rural America, they used even worse teaching methods of reading which effectively made most of these students illiterate more so than those that grew up on the whole word method. America has had a big problem teaching children to read, more so than many other countries. It’s no surprise that today, the average adult has the reading ability of an 11-12 year old child, which could also explain why so many adults believe and fall for misinformation and hardly make it past a headline or do zero research of their own, refusing or unable to read difficult parts of a text.
When I was in high school, a local news show interviewed a bunch of students about slang. Then reported in a way that rather suggested a _complete_ inability to figure out which students were telling the truth and which were deliberately messing with them. (They were _somewhat_ suspicious of the "speaking without consonants" bit.)
Growing up it was actually little me who liked Oprah. My mom hated her. I remember her saying something to the effect of "there are NUMEROUS black, female journalists out there who do good and Oprah isn't one of them." I was a curious kid and Oprah interviewed everyone 🤷🏼♀️
I REMEMBER THE JELLY BRACELETS! Like folks joked about that but I don’t recall it being that serious. Like this is so weird? Adults think teenagers are way wilder than I remember teenagers being when I was one.
I don't remember them ever actually meaning anything. And also immediately after they made news as being "sex bracelets" the one goth girl in my school who wore a lot of black ones started getting called a whore a few dozen times a day. Hadn't even clocked that as one of Oprah's doings.
That's always been the way of adults. This teenage generation is actually the mildest I've known. It's as though they've read, heard and seen so much via the internet, that they don't bother actually doing or trying any of the stuff we did .
My favourite Deepak Chopra quote is "No skeptic, to my knowledge, ever made a major scientific discovery or advanced the welfare of others". That's some denial of reality shit right there!
We had to fight to get a truer estimate for the BP disaster leak. The fines led to billions of dollars for ecological restoration, and millions of migratory birds being born
Ugh my whole upbringing was surrounded by people like M. Williamson, self sacrificing to people in direct contact but with outward views that would hurt many of them. It's almost worse.
32:56 The amount of money ready and waiting to convince us that cancer is on the rise cause of "bad vibes" instead of the industrial scale pollution we've been putting out for ~200 years definitely made her rise that much easier.
I remember my sister giving me an Eckhart Tolle book for my birthday one year, and I think I read maybe a chapter or two before I set it down never to pick it back up again, thinking “Why the fuck did she give me this and why is this guy so stupid and pretending what he’s saying is profound and not just complete nonsense?” I’m a pretty avid reader and read anywhere between 30-40 books a year, and that was by far one of the worst and most useless ones I’ve ever opened up, aside from the creationist book Darwin’s Doubt, which was also quite nonsensical. One thing I dislike worst than creationism is the whole new age self help, cultish guru stuff, my sister got sucked into that pretty hard for a good decade and a half.
Damn, that name is a blast from the past. I was also suggested Tolle, and his credentials seemed to be that he was a beach bum that found enlightenment and we should all listen to his pseudo-scientific Toxic Positivity. Like you said, it was just nonsense and "Why don't you just be happy?" fluff.
If you thought that was bad, try "None Dare Call It Conspiracy", or the other John Birch Society conspiracy books my well-meaning religious friends recommend to me.
"They [Young People] have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things -- and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning -- all their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They overdo everything -- they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else." -Aristotle, 4th century BC
Last comment: some guys are healthy, non-creeps that happen to like interacting with children. I have a dozen nieces and nephews, but most people are so damn irrational that you're weird for smiling at obvious cuteness from a safe distance.
I had to text and ask my mom about the rainbow parties and rainbow bracelets because this started when I was in highschool. Mostly because I couldn't remember her asking me about them at all, so I wanted to know if it was something she had been concerned about. Her answer: "I didn't panic. I didn't imagine you giving blow jobs at the time. You wouldn't put fruit in your mouth, I didn't think you'd accept a penis." Apparently my lack of lipstick ownership was another reason she wasn't concerned. My mom knew me too well.
23:46 I went to church camp as a very non religious child cause it was cheaper than non church ones… I did that and it just got me in the most confusing trouble I’ve ever been in.
Sure, but she demonstrates parallel competencies. I don’t see how you get a billion dollars by being this open-minded and credulous. Philosophical razor: Principle that allows one to eliminate *unlikely* explanations
Chopra came from the TM movement. I was raised in that movement, and the idea that you don't need to treat mental illness is widespread. The results are not good - lots of repressed emotions and unprocessed traumas, to very bad - psychotic breaks, detachment from reality, schizophrenia, at least once resulting in a murder.
So, regarding your entire spiel at the begining of the video about how every generation thinks the ones coming after them are somehow "worse"; this has been going on since literally ancient Greece. For example, Socrates made several statements/quotes lambasting the youth of his time: "Our youth now love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders, and they love to chatter instead of exercise." "Children nowadays are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannise their teachers." "What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. The ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?" "If the whole world depends on today's youth, I can't see the world lasting another hundred years." Etc. This has always happened and will always happen until the end of time. I implore any Gen Z who cringes at Gen Alphas who enjoy Skibidi Toilet to recall the dumb shit you were into at that age. r/blunderyears
"new age woo that she is putting out and clotting our national arteries with which leads to the fatal stroke we're going to spend the rest of our lives living in" is a hell of a line
"Here's a quick tip for figuring out if a journalist is not a good journalist" says the journalist who also said "I don't know people" in regards to Mackelmore and Kendrick 🤣
I have to say, it is pretty brilliant for Oprah to see her tiral taking place in a beef capital of Texas - jury is stacked against her favor - and decide to bring the show down and make the town love her.
As someone who used to be super into New Age spiritual stuff, a lot of it isn't stupid so much as a need for control over life which ultimately would be better served by confronting this need to hide and actually fixing shit. It's notable I'm a Quaker now, a practice that's very grounded in the world and is all about fixing systemic issues.
@@goodun2974 Well, we were (and are) not always on the same page on a variety of topics, and whaling used to be just a thing to keep the world turning in most people's eyes. Not an excuse, more of a caution about what we might consider necessary that might be deeply unjust.
@@milsthechaos Isn't it crazy that people think they can't evolve through time/society unless they latch on to something "perfect and pure"? It actually is like a sort of liberal-individualism behavior itself because it basically ignores that we are all attached to a historic fabric made of terrible atrocities and we benefit and live on top of them too. Obviously this isn't meant to justify bad things, but to me it seems a bit silly to completely throw something out due to lack of "historical purity". I'm aware that taken to the extreme, this idea can actually go really really wrong.
@ I agree with that, and I'm concerned that Current Situation is absolutely aggravated by the lack of (1) balancing how bad things actually are, and (2) lack of historical context. Also our belief is that human beings are spiritually equal and thus worthy of a far more just world than we have, not necessarily other creatures (although I personally think we do need to be careful with our fellow creatures). Just to add that context.
My mom used to listen to Oprah daily. This series has given me a deeper understanding as to why my mother acts the way she does. Even if she never outright believe it, I think watching might have primed her to be more accepting of the more recent psudoscience-y things that have become popular.
I think a missing piece around 24:00 when they're talking about the Secret/prosperity gospel/law of attraction is Christian Science. That culty website passage reminds me of Eddy's writing in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. All about disease and bad things in the world not existing because God did not create bad things. There's a great Knowing Better video on Christian Science if anyone's interested.
Omg, Bridgett's example of moms at Walmart assuming people looking at them are perverts after their kids happened to me on boxing day. Our local Walmart has video games in a display case that needs an employee to open it, so I had just been up at the counter asking for help getting out a couple of the Switch games on sale. I see people are in the isle, and I have a cart so I go a different route than the clerk, because I don't want to plow through a crowd of people. Unfortunately when I get to the isle there's a mom and her kid standing right in front of the Switch games, and I don't want to be rude, so I look down at the kid, and then up at the mom, and I'm thinking, "do I let them ask for their game first, or do I tell them to get out of the way?" so I have this look of bewilderment on my face, but then suddenly the mom grabs her kid, and high tails it out of there, but as she passes me she says "Creepeeey" in this super accusatory tone. So then I spend the next 20 minutes as I am in line waiting to pay stuck in my head being bothered by her reaction, and thinking about what I should have responded with; doing the catty "no biaatch, I came for a copy of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom! you were in my way! What the F? I had no interest in you or your kid, I was just trying to figure out if I should be polite and let your kid pick out her game first." Needless to say that moment bothered the crap out of me. Far be it from me to consider being polite. Next time I just walk up and be rude and say "MOVE!! Your in my way!" Uhhg!!!
I actually knew somebody who tried to do a Rainbow Party. She got the idea from watching Oprah. She went to a different school (I walked by her school on the way to mine, and she would call me over to pester me a bit). She even offered me something like Purple or Violet or something Nobody showed up to the Party. It was literally just her, and the silent friend that seemed to be her shadow. Literally everybody thought it was a terrible idea. Like that was the resounding response was, "uh... no... that sounds really messed up and terrible. I think I will skip doing that" So no, kids were not doing it--even after hearing Oprah talking about it. The kids were all, "Wow... glad I'm not doing that. How bad I am, is nothing compared to that"
I grew up with the "The Secret" type stuff abt changing your mind to change your body and "the kingdom of heaven is here and God will give you health and money too." Its prosperity gospel that also gets into this, and my mom bought into it fully (although she believes in medicine thank God.) Its fucking wild, I will say, and there are many ppl who believe in it.
My (already quite wealthy) dad recently "found God" and started listening to that prosperity gospel shit and almost fell into it. We had to publicly shame him until he changed his mind. Sometimes it's the only way 🤷♂ (I can see why he found it alluring though. For somebody who made their money by stepping on others, it's probably nice to hear that "the real reason" you're wealthy is because you were super kind and totally deserve it, despite the truth being closer to the opposite)
The battle of britain is an interesting comparison for the war on reason, because as close as The Battle of Britain felt at the time, the germans... basically spent it all getting spanked? Like, analyses looking at it after the fact found that the RAF came out with more pilots and planes, and the Luftwaffe was smashed in a way it never recovered from. And that's not just the end result, that's the kind of result you saw week after week. But the british sincerely thought they were losing for most of it, and the germans were sure they were on the cusp of victory for it. It _was_ traumatic for the people who lived through it, of course, and it's still /war/ so plenty of innocents died.
You're isolated, locked inside your home looking at screen all day, bombarded by fear and by false ideas of success, the outside is bad, the others are evil, every form of community that we used to rely on (the neighbors, friends you actually see in person, coworkers, colleagues, school mates) is a distant idea, everyone is locked in their homes like you tied up to a screen being bombarded by the same distorted information. You can't possibly change or control what happens outside in the world, what are you going to do? You try to change and control yourself, you diet, you get up at 4 am, you learn trading or coding or whatever is eveyone else trying to learn to try to save themselves, you fail, you start over and over. It's on you. You're alone. This is how we've got here, when historians look back at this period of time and try to find explanations for how we got so fucked over, this is it.
Youre not wrong, two other solutions not mentioned though are rather than striving to succeed and failing repeatedly you just give up and attempt to divorce yourself from the issues of the world while cultivating a sense of apathy and learned helplessness or you are one of the very few who are guaranteed by the nature of statistics to be lucky enough to find some amount of success after attempting to personally improve, and after youve found some form of success you become an example for others to follow as people try and fail to replicate the steps you took. Both options feed into the cycle we find ourselves in today, those who give in to the defeatism and apathy make no impact, the minimal amount who are somehow lucky enough to see some level of success are raised up as an example whos choices are to be mirrored despite the astronomically unlikelihood that anyone else who replicates their choices will ever see any form of success.
@@danielgyte8460 sure, but it will actually take a ton of bodies to do now. Be it violence or starvation. It's already too late without collectivism, and Americans are too coddled, narcissistic, selfish and cruel for that at scale. The ones who know how to work with or off the land have been captured and pit against the ones who don't. I don't care if i'm considered "defeatist." All i EVER wanted for the last twenty years is a decent enough job to keep a roof over my head and left alone, while the job _also_ respects me being a person. Can't even get that humble goal, so screw it. I didn't ask for much at all, and i never asked for anyone else to get dragged down except those with enough money to last 65,000 years of life. I didn't fight to screw anyone over. Ya'll didn't fight to save anyone. So now we all get to watch our ships burn.
@Virjunior01 I empathise with your perspective and while we can all agree such an attitude doesnt help the situation, it is an understandable and cogent response given the breadth of the current situation. You arent to blame for the current circumstances of the world, it shouldnt be your responsibility to fix it, unfortunately that is the only avenue open to any of us for any real change. Not believing that change is possible is a position that I cannot form a cogent arguement against given that all evidence seems to point towards that being the case and I have no roadmap to achieve any real change myself. Defeatism doesnt fix it and any solution I or anyone else puts forward probably wont fix it either. Im gonna keep trying until I give up, i doubt it will have anymore impact than doing nothing would have, but seeing as i am likely to end up with the same results anyway i dont see any reason to rush the likely inevitable path towards defeatism i am already on. A cynic is just a failed idealist afterall and most of my failures still lay ahead of me.
21:46 that sounds a lot like Christian Science... Which is its own thing, having little to do with Christianity and nothing whatsoever to do with science.
"don't take your antipsychotics" is always gonna be an easy sell since most of them have pretty unpleasant side effects. i like my current one okay but some of them were fucken miserable.
Great book on the death of reason: How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World (A Short History Of Modern Delusions) Author: Francis Wheen Published 2004 I'm reading it again now. It is hilarious and painfully prophetic
Glad I was 10, so I was unaware of the rainbow parties. I remember the jelly bracelets too but no one did that lol. I think kids were snorting pixie sticks though 😂
We tried snorting pixie sticks, but we also we snorted Lucas (which is pixie sticks with added lime and chili salt). Kids are dumb but I don't think that's news.
I'm glad that you touched on Eckhart Tolle. If you ever wondered about a meritocracy, the fact that he can be worth half a billion dollars regurgitating shit you said in college while stoned should make you lose faith in the incentives of capitalism.
To pick at the contradiction in Marianne's track record with AIDS, and Bridgette's observation of her Power of Positive Thinking schtick as a useful ideological tool, it's worth noting how demobilizing the sort of terminal diagnosis that AIDS in the 80s can be for some people. So I can see how the beliefs of someone like Marianne, who does seem to care acutely for gay men, could be something that she wants to offer as a way of imparting a sense of control and agency back to people who might feel very disempowered by circumstances legitimately outside their control. Like, the beliefs are still vile and monstrous in their conclusions, but I think this is how someone who evidently cares about gay men as much as Marianne does gets around to suggesting that AIDS is a problem of personal negativity.
I did in fact buy the first thing advertised in the second ad break and when I died I heard the trumpet. Followed by a little bit of Monica in my life...
@@dylanrodrigues15i love everything Margaret does. What I think would be really good is a slight variation of the “Bastard” format where we cover a genre of modern bastard, like “Guys” but for bastardry, maybe singling out an exemplary celebrity scumbag.
56:30 There are certain adult social clubs that use the coloured band system for many things. Single, couple, couple looking for M, couple looking for F, etc.
I have never respected Robert more than when admitting to just atrocious levels of obliviousness. & i will point out that all the while our parents worried about high Vs & rainbow roads... we were getting goatsed & worse. Eyes were completely on the wrong ball
Millenial teacher teaching 6th graders. The Oprah crowd would have their brains BLOWN with how Gen Alpha talk. Lmao Means next to nothing in reality. 😂😂😂😂
As per what happens when a child says something doesn't make sense... that child is then said to be a trouble maker, trying to cause issues and is "being difficult" On top of being told that it does make sense, and you need to reread it
How can you not know Kendrick Lamar, granted more from a talk about a song about his transmen uncle and reflecting on his own bias and how he was pretty , yeah he/she was always there for me depending on the kid vs adult perspective, and hey, i will stand up for him to the preacher, even reflecting on the confusion on what to gender to, and at the end he was there for me. that matters., He was always there and same person,. No preacher you are wrong there. And yeah auntie is a man now, yes, leave him alone.That seemed to be a discourse. Anyways Kendrick based , and better than Drake. And can there be an episode extra wher eRoberts just has to answer popculture questions? It could be fun.
I live in BC, and when I was teen we used to see hippies (around Gen X age, because I was a millennial) going out into the back country deep in the woods for something called a "Rainbow Gathering" which as far as I am aware was a type of music festival, and not a type of orgy (although I am sure there were orgies at the rainbow gathering, I don't think that's what they were for), but when you said rainbow party, and then described it, I momentarily had to question if that's what was happening out there. Thankfully I just looked it up, and they were a kind of hippy music festival, but you had me going for a second. Gotta wonder if they ever had a rainbow party at the rainbow gatherings? It certainly was never a thing as far as our generation was concerned, but there were a number of gen X degenerates I knew growing up that could have seen being into something like that. Actually maybe my generation too. There was always an orgy tent somewhere at Shambhala when I went, though I was never cool enough to get an invite into it... lol.. Actually the only time I ever even got laid at Shambhala is the year I brought my girlfriend. Was always slightly jealous of how many people were supposedly hooking up while they were at it and other nearby raves. Was never my experience. 😞
The rainbow party thing even leaked out over into europe and my mom brought it up once as something she'd heard. We always have had a pretty relaxed relationship talking about sex and identity and stuff and my first reaction was 'so wait, you say there is supposed to be like, 20 girls going down on one guy. Regularly. As a thing. Why would they do that?' She paused for a few seconds and immediately saw that it made absolutely no sense from the pure logistics of how sex and orgasms work. This whole thing and all like it lives so hard on 'I don't know why anyone would do that, but it's kids so they might!". The easiest public service you could probably do is to keep reminding parents more that yes, kids are dumb. But few of them are actually downright unreasonably explain. If a kid does or doesn't something, there is usually very obvious very basic reasoning for it :D
18:20 what is it that the good reverend doctor scribbled in the margins of a newspaper in a Birmingham jail cell? “Lack of understanding from people of good will hurts more than outright hatred.”? Yeah, that line goes hard. With the context (us, my fellow white Christians, it’s us!) And without it. 😢
Oh my god. I had a hard time letting that Jordeci shit go but mistaking Kendrick for Macklemore is WILD. That's like confusing Tupac and Vanilla Ice, bro
52:00 Now I'm with Robert: I was very surprised to find out who Kendrick Lamar and Drake were last summer, even more surprised to know they had been famous forever.
This episode has made me question how I feel about Marianne Williamson. I remember I voted for her during the democratic primary and all I knew about her was she was in favor of universal health care and I heard she was helpful during AIDS epidemic. Never really got into the spiritual side of her.
i love Behind The Basstards, not just because it has "ass" in the name, but also because it has "behind"
👏
uncle xeno joke but you made it come "back".
Also has Bass for all you fish and musical needs
Yay! 😂 I am 4 again!
Hitting all the low notes
Can't wait for the 8 part special on Ellen with twice as many guests
I feel like Ellen probably falls under the category of not interesting enough of a bastard. Like she did shitty things but they don't feel like they go beyond the typical shittiness that you see in show business
Gotta agree with the nerd. Showbusiness is known to be the most hostile working environment. She was practicing gross negligence but that's not bad enough to stand out too much compared to literally every other show running
and please get Dakota Johnson as guest
@@yourlocalnerd7788 😅 true, true
Ellen never had anywhere near the impact on society that Oprah did. Joe Rogan is the main comparison now.
I'm older than all of you but younger than your parents, and when I hear you talking about your mom watching Oprah every day, I think you might be missing part of what was happening. I worked full time after high school, and finally went to college full time about 8 years later, in 1984. I finished college in 1988 and went back to working full time, but I had always been too busy with life 'out in the world' to watch any daytime TV. That changed when I had my first baby in 1989 and decided to be a "stay-at-home-Mom" while my kids were little. Compared to my former life, I often felt lonely and frustrated, tethered to the house during those early years, which is when I started watching first Oprah, then Donahue almost every weekday afternoon. For me, watching daytime talk shows was similar to modern-day parasocial relationships a lot of people have with their favorite social media content creators. For me, watching daytime TV is tinged with sadness because it came from a place of loneliness - SO GIVE MOM A BREAK!
Thank you for sharing your insight! I understand that MLMs preyed on people in similar situations because it would provide more social interaction and occasionally money (not fair compensation but enough to keep people coming back)
I think you made an excellent point about parasocial relationships then and now.
Yes, this is a fantastic point. I would also point out that I can determine by you listening to this video they are definitely not talking about you or people who are genuinely somewhat introspective and self-critical. Back then it was probably also much easier to get into a content loop watching the same people habitually rather than branching on the modern internet. Unfortunately the Internet was continuously becoming more open through about 2012 and then forums began to close themselves off and even replaced in 2015-2016 with discord.
That's a great point. Especially in a time before regular internet for general population, that's important.
However, it was more dangerous because only the government and freaks without scruples completely dictated what people thought. But what's even sadder is that the latter got even more powerful despite such ready access to truth within seconds.
I think something missing from the literacy discussion is that the way that kids in America are taught to read *literally has changed*. The standard curriculum has changed from teaching phonetics to this concept of "whole word reading", which is more or less teaching every word individually and not the underlying rules that would help someone learn words they have never seen before, and this is provably reducing literacy skills.
Yes, it started in 1927, but then was disproven to work in 1940, but then Lucy Calkin wrote a book in the 90s that brought us back into the whole word reading method, which further reduced literacy rates when they were beginning to increase. And in some other places in rural America, they used even worse teaching methods of reading which effectively made most of these students illiterate more so than those that grew up on the whole word method. America has had a big problem teaching children to read, more so than many other countries. It’s no surprise that today, the average adult has the reading ability of an 11-12 year old child, which could also explain why so many adults believe and fall for misinformation and hardly make it past a headline or do zero research of their own, refusing or unable to read difficult parts of a text.
wow, I did not know that. Yeah, that seems really dumb.
No “probably” about it. It’s absolutely a contributing factor.
@MiraBoo provably, not probably, as in one can prove that it is reducing literacy
Thanks, Bill Gates!
During the grunge era, record company employees trolled a national magazine by giving them fake grunge slang and the magazine published it as fact.
Just over here rocking on with my wack slacks and my plats.
When I was in high school, a local news show interviewed a bunch of students about slang. Then reported in a way that rather suggested a _complete_ inability to figure out which students were telling the truth and which were deliberately messing with them. (They were _somewhat_ suspicious of the "speaking without consonants" bit.)
@@M_M_ODonnell Aaaaigh'
Growing up it was actually little me who liked Oprah. My mom hated her. I remember her saying something to the effect of "there are NUMEROUS black, female journalists out there who do good and Oprah isn't one of them." I was a curious kid and Oprah interviewed everyone 🤷🏼♀️
I am really appreciating the video format. Thanks BTB.
I REMEMBER THE JELLY BRACELETS! Like folks joked about that but I don’t recall it being that serious.
Like this is so weird? Adults think teenagers are way wilder than I remember teenagers being when I was one.
I think that generation was wilder
I don't remember them ever actually meaning anything. And also immediately after they made news as being "sex bracelets" the one goth girl in my school who wore a lot of black ones started getting called a whore a few dozen times a day.
Hadn't even clocked that as one of Oprah's doings.
That's always been the way of adults. This teenage generation is actually the mildest I've known. It's as though they've read, heard and seen so much via the internet, that they don't bother actually doing or trying any of the stuff we did .
With the number of trumpets among the angels and saints etc. I can certainly believe that Ska is God's Favorite Genre.
LOL I never thought about it like that. Now I'm going to picture God in a fedora and checkered pants 😂
Ska is the devils work. God loves bigband!
@@simonw560 hail satan
This came out just as I have to put a new bed together. Big thanks. ❤
I was listening to it as I was doing prep work for replacing a defective expansion tank on my wellwater system.
My favourite Deepak Chopra quote is "No skeptic, to my knowledge, ever made a major scientific discovery or advanced the welfare of others". That's some denial of reality shit right there!
We had to fight to get a truer estimate for the BP disaster leak. The fines led to billions of dollars for ecological restoration, and millions of migratory birds being born
Ugh my whole upbringing was surrounded by people like M. Williamson, self sacrificing to people in direct contact but with outward views that would hurt many of them. It's almost worse.
Oprah is the patron saint of "Prosperity Gospel."
Struck by the similarities with Rogan, y'all should do an episode on him
32:56 The amount of money ready and waiting to convince us that cancer is on the rise cause of "bad vibes" instead of the industrial scale pollution we've been putting out for ~200 years definitely made her rise that much easier.
I remember my sister giving me an Eckhart Tolle book for my birthday one year, and I think I read maybe a chapter or two before I set it down never to pick it back up again, thinking “Why the fuck did she give me this and why is this guy so stupid and pretending what he’s saying is profound and not just complete nonsense?” I’m a pretty avid reader and read anywhere between 30-40 books a year, and that was by far one of the worst and most useless ones I’ve ever opened up, aside from the creationist book Darwin’s Doubt, which was also quite nonsensical. One thing I dislike worst than creationism is the whole new age self help, cultish guru stuff, my sister got sucked into that pretty hard for a good decade and a half.
Damn, that name is a blast from the past. I was also suggested Tolle, and his credentials seemed to be that he was a beach bum that found enlightenment and we should all listen to his pseudo-scientific Toxic Positivity. Like you said, it was just nonsense and "Why don't you just be happy?" fluff.
If you thought that was bad, try "None Dare Call It Conspiracy", or the other John Birch Society conspiracy books my well-meaning religious friends recommend to me.
"They [Young People] have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things -- and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning -- all their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They overdo everything -- they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else."
-Aristotle, 4th century BC
translation: "I am old and bored and have forgotten what it means for something to feel important."
Would love to see Josh Johnson as a guest
Second that
Gianmarco Soresi too!
Josh Johnson would be great. He's always a good time!
Came here to say this. Beat me to it 😂
I agree wholeheartedly
Last comment: some guys are healthy, non-creeps that happen to like interacting with children. I have a dozen nieces and nephews, but most people are so damn irrational that you're weird for smiling at obvious cuteness from a safe distance.
I had to text and ask my mom about the rainbow parties and rainbow bracelets because this started when I was in highschool. Mostly because I couldn't remember her asking me about them at all, so I wanted to know if it was something she had been concerned about. Her answer: "I didn't panic. I didn't imagine you giving blow jobs at the time. You wouldn't put fruit in your mouth, I didn't think you'd accept a penis."
Apparently my lack of lipstick ownership was another reason she wasn't concerned. My mom knew me too well.
"you wouldn't put fruit in your mouth, I didn't think you'd accept a penis" absolutely SENT me 😂
23:46 I went to church camp as a very non religious child cause it was cheaper than non church ones… I did that and it just got me in the most confusing trouble I’ve ever been in.
Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence. Hanlon's razor.
Sure, but she demonstrates parallel competencies. I don’t see how you get a billion dollars by being this open-minded and credulous.
Philosophical razor:
Principle that allows one to eliminate *unlikely* explanations
These episodes have been some of the fastest listens I've experienced.
The Macklemore thing is wild, but I will say Mack gets credit for being loudly pro Palestine.
Chopra came from the TM movement. I was raised in that movement, and the idea that you don't need to treat mental illness is widespread. The results are not good - lots of repressed emotions and unprocessed traumas, to very bad - psychotic breaks, detachment from reality, schizophrenia, at least once resulting in a murder.
Hearing you describe the kind of toxic positivity that marianne williamson brought to the table really reminds me of Christian Scientist bullshit
Gen X may be the only generation whose parents admitted we were smarter than they were because we could make the VCR stop flashing 12:00
So, regarding your entire spiel at the begining of the video about how every generation thinks the ones coming after them are somehow "worse"; this has been going on since literally ancient Greece. For example, Socrates made several statements/quotes lambasting the youth of his time:
"Our youth now love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders, and they love to chatter instead of exercise."
"Children nowadays are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannise their teachers."
"What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. The ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?"
"If the whole world depends on today's youth, I can't see the world lasting another hundred years."
Etc. This has always happened and will always happen until the end of time. I implore any Gen Z who cringes at Gen Alphas who enjoy Skibidi Toilet to recall the dumb shit you were into at that age. r/blunderyears
Gen Z and Alpha are the funniest generations.
Conlave is such a banger movie! 🎉 I did not expect the sudden positive intersex message but i was pleasantly surprised
"new age woo that she is putting out and clotting our national arteries with which leads to the fatal stroke we're going to spend the rest of our lives living in" is a hell of a line
"Here's a quick tip for figuring out if a journalist is not a good journalist" says the journalist who also said "I don't know people" in regards to Mackelmore and Kendrick 🤣
I have to say, it is pretty brilliant for Oprah to see her tiral taking place in a beef capital of Texas - jury is stacked against her favor - and decide to bring the show down and make the town love her.
Jesus, Oprah built her own Truman Show around herself.
I’m a latter day millennial and the only time I ever heard about rainbow parties in HS was some skater guy saying he had totally been invited to one.
We had parties where things were consumed that made us see rainbows! !
As someone who used to be super into New Age spiritual stuff, a lot of it isn't stupid so much as a need for control over life which ultimately would be better served by confronting this need to hide and actually fixing shit.
It's notable I'm a Quaker now, a practice that's very grounded in the world and is all about fixing systemic issues.
There's just one thing I find hard to reconcile with the non-violent Quaker ethos: they were once heavily involved in fishing for whales.
@@goodun2974 Well, we were (and are) not always on the same page on a variety of topics, and whaling used to be just a thing to keep the world turning in most people's eyes. Not an excuse, more of a caution about what we might consider necessary that might be deeply unjust.
Interesting. Completely forgot there are modern-day Quakers.
@@milsthechaos Isn't it crazy that people think they can't evolve through time/society unless they latch on to something "perfect and pure"? It actually is like a sort of liberal-individualism behavior itself because it basically ignores that we are all attached to a historic fabric made of terrible atrocities and we benefit and live on top of them too. Obviously this isn't meant to justify bad things, but to me it seems a bit silly to completely throw something out due to lack of "historical purity". I'm aware that taken to the extreme, this idea can actually go really really wrong.
@ I agree with that, and I'm concerned that Current Situation is absolutely aggravated by the lack of (1) balancing how bad things actually are, and (2) lack of historical context.
Also our belief is that human beings are spiritually equal and thus worthy of a far more just world than we have, not necessarily other creatures (although I personally think we do need to be careful with our fellow creatures). Just to add that context.
Robert does not at all look like I pictured him from the Spotify podcast. It’s a little uncanny but I’m processing it.
He looks like the exact opposite of his voice
Always wild seeing someone you've only ever heard 😄
Winfrey's trial was in Amarillo. She filmed her show at the Amarillo Little Theater.
My mom used to listen to Oprah daily. This series has given me a deeper understanding as to why my mother acts the way she does. Even if she never outright believe it, I think watching might have primed her to be more accepting of the more recent psudoscience-y things that have become popular.
48:00 I had never heard of "Rainbow party" before, so I assumed it had some kind of gay interpretation. ... I was not prepared for that. 😅
I kind of remember them but only because they showed up in a law and order special unit episode.
🙌 I'm here for the throws to ads!!!
I think a missing piece around 24:00 when they're talking about the Secret/prosperity gospel/law of attraction is Christian Science. That culty website passage reminds me of Eddy's writing in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. All about disease and bad things in the world not existing because God did not create bad things. There's a great Knowing Better video on Christian Science if anyone's interested.
Williamson has explicitly cited Eddy and A Course in Miracles. She is a follower.
Omg, Bridgett's example of moms at Walmart assuming people looking at them are perverts after their kids happened to me on boxing day. Our local Walmart has video games in a display case that needs an employee to open it, so I had just been up at the counter asking for help getting out a couple of the Switch games on sale. I see people are in the isle, and I have a cart so I go a different route than the clerk, because I don't want to plow through a crowd of people. Unfortunately when I get to the isle there's a mom and her kid standing right in front of the Switch games, and I don't want to be rude, so I look down at the kid, and then up at the mom, and I'm thinking, "do I let them ask for their game first, or do I tell them to get out of the way?" so I have this look of bewilderment on my face, but then suddenly the mom grabs her kid, and high tails it out of there, but as she passes me she says "Creepeeey" in this super accusatory tone. So then I spend the next 20 minutes as I am in line waiting to pay stuck in my head being bothered by her reaction, and thinking about what I should have responded with; doing the catty "no biaatch, I came for a copy of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom! you were in my way! What the F? I had no interest in you or your kid, I was just trying to figure out if I should be polite and let your kid pick out her game first."
Needless to say that moment bothered the crap out of me. Far be it from me to consider being polite. Next time I just walk up and be rude and say "MOVE!! Your in my way!"
Uhhg!!!
God damn, a Tim Ballard shoutout from Robert was excellent. I’d love to see some episodes on him someday
High five and hoovering killed me.
I actually knew somebody who tried to do a Rainbow Party. She got the idea from watching Oprah. She went to a different school (I walked by her school on the way to mine, and she would call me over to pester me a bit). She even offered me something like Purple or Violet or something
Nobody showed up to the Party. It was literally just her, and the silent friend that seemed to be her shadow. Literally everybody thought it was a terrible idea. Like that was the resounding response was, "uh... no... that sounds really messed up and terrible. I think I will skip doing that"
So no, kids were not doing it--even after hearing Oprah talking about it. The kids were all, "Wow... glad I'm not doing that. How bad I am, is nothing compared to that"
Is this the final episode??? Can I watch them all now without being disappointed?
Holy crap, that whole bit about the sexual lingo of Millennial kids was truly cringeworthy.
I grew up with the "The Secret" type stuff abt changing your mind to change your body and "the kingdom of heaven is here and God will give you health and money too." Its prosperity gospel that also gets into this, and my mom bought into it fully (although she believes in medicine thank God.) Its fucking wild, I will say, and there are many ppl who believe in it.
My (already quite wealthy) dad recently "found God" and started listening to that prosperity gospel shit and almost fell into it. We had to publicly shame him until he changed his mind. Sometimes it's the only way 🤷♂
(I can see why he found it alluring though. For somebody who made their money by stepping on others, it's probably nice to hear that "the real reason" you're wealthy is because you were super kind and totally deserve it, despite the truth being closer to the opposite)
The trumpet meant is Gabriel's who sounds the horn to signal the apocalypse.
The battle of britain is an interesting comparison for the war on reason, because as close as The Battle of Britain felt at the time, the germans... basically spent it all getting spanked? Like, analyses looking at it after the fact found that the RAF came out with more pilots and planes, and the Luftwaffe was smashed in a way it never recovered from. And that's not just the end result, that's the kind of result you saw week after week. But the british sincerely thought they were losing for most of it, and the germans were sure they were on the cusp of victory for it. It _was_ traumatic for the people who lived through it, of course, and it's still /war/ so plenty of innocents died.
Also I don't think we're doing that well, but it gives me a bit of hope.
With that line about being "full of good advice, once a month" I think I could see him trying to build the joke in his head before giving up.
1:19 Ayo my Assyrian brothers you gonna take that 😂
You're isolated, locked inside your home looking at screen all day, bombarded by fear and by false ideas of success, the outside is bad, the others are evil, every form of community that we used to rely on (the neighbors, friends you actually see in person, coworkers, colleagues, school mates) is a distant idea, everyone is locked in their homes like you tied up to a screen being bombarded by the same distorted information. You can't possibly change or control what happens outside in the world, what are you going to do? You try to change and control yourself, you diet, you get up at 4 am, you learn trading or coding or whatever is eveyone else trying to learn to try to save themselves, you fail, you start over and over. It's on you. You're alone.
This is how we've got here, when historians look back at this period of time and try to find explanations for how we got so fucked over, this is it.
Youre not wrong, two other solutions not mentioned though are rather than striving to succeed and failing repeatedly you just give up and attempt to divorce yourself from the issues of the world while cultivating a sense of apathy and learned helplessness or you are one of the very few who are guaranteed by the nature of statistics to be lucky enough to find some amount of success after attempting to personally improve, and after youve found some form of success you become an example for others to follow as people try and fail to replicate the steps you took. Both options feed into the cycle we find ourselves in today, those who give in to the defeatism and apathy make no impact, the minimal amount who are somehow lucky enough to see some level of success are raised up as an example whos choices are to be mirrored despite the astronomically unlikelihood that anyone else who replicates their choices will ever see any form of success.
@@danielgyte8460 sure, but it will actually take a ton of bodies to do now. Be it violence or starvation. It's already too late without collectivism, and Americans are too coddled, narcissistic, selfish and cruel for that at scale.
The ones who know how to work with or off the land have been captured and pit against the ones who don't.
I don't care if i'm considered "defeatist." All i EVER wanted for the last twenty years is a decent enough job to keep a roof over my head and left alone, while the job _also_ respects me being a person.
Can't even get that humble goal, so screw it.
I didn't ask for much at all, and i never asked for anyone else to get dragged down except those with enough money to last 65,000 years of life.
I didn't fight to screw anyone over. Ya'll didn't fight to save anyone. So now we all get to watch our ships burn.
@Virjunior01 I empathise with your perspective and while we can all agree such an attitude doesnt help the situation, it is an understandable and cogent response given the breadth of the current situation. You arent to blame for the current circumstances of the world, it shouldnt be your responsibility to fix it, unfortunately that is the only avenue open to any of us for any real change. Not believing that change is possible is a position that I cannot form a cogent arguement against given that all evidence seems to point towards that being the case and I have no roadmap to achieve any real change myself. Defeatism doesnt fix it and any solution I or anyone else puts forward probably wont fix it either. Im gonna keep trying until I give up, i doubt it will have anymore impact than doing nothing would have, but seeing as i am likely to end up with the same results anyway i dont see any reason to rush the likely inevitable path towards defeatism i am already on. A cynic is just a failed idealist afterall and most of my failures still lay ahead of me.
@@danielgyte8460 thank youtube or whatever zciontist "handler" I have for erasing that comment I made, unless you can still see it
21:46 that sounds a lot like Christian Science... Which is its own thing, having little to do with Christianity and nothing whatsoever to do with science.
"don't take your antipsychotics" is always gonna be an easy sell since most of them have pretty unpleasant side effects. i like my current one okay but some of them were fucken miserable.
One of the many reasons why i voted for Nader 3 times.
"If we were just like dogs everything would be fine" new tshirt idea
We need a national poet AND a national cynic.
And a court jester who gets to mock the president to his face once a day on television.
Great book on the death of reason:
How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World
(A Short History Of Modern Delusions)
Author: Francis Wheen
Published 2004
I'm reading it again now. It is hilarious and painfully prophetic
Thank you for your work.
Glad I was 10, so I was unaware of the rainbow parties. I remember the jelly bracelets too but no one did that lol. I think kids were snorting pixie sticks though 😂
We tried snorting pixie sticks, but we also we snorted Lucas (which is pixie sticks with added lime and chili salt).
Kids are dumb but I don't think that's news.
I'm glad that you touched on Eckhart Tolle. If you ever wondered about a meritocracy, the fact that he can be worth half a billion dollars regurgitating shit you said in college while stoned should make you lose faith in the incentives of capitalism.
To pick at the contradiction in Marianne's track record with AIDS, and Bridgette's observation of her Power of Positive Thinking schtick as a useful ideological tool, it's worth noting how demobilizing the sort of terminal diagnosis that AIDS in the 80s can be for some people. So I can see how the beliefs of someone like Marianne, who does seem to care acutely for gay men, could be something that she wants to offer as a way of imparting a sense of control and agency back to people who might feel very disempowered by circumstances legitimately outside their control. Like, the beliefs are still vile and monstrous in their conclusions, but I think this is how someone who evidently cares about gay men as much as Marianne does gets around to suggesting that AIDS is a problem of personal negativity.
I did in fact buy the first thing advertised in the second ad break and when I died I heard the trumpet.
Followed by a little bit of Monica in my life...
"Severance" as cave shadows took me out.
It took me a minute to realize that Robert’s reference to “The Eye of Horus” might not be about Warhammer 40K.
Great video!
I got a good clip to send to my friend who's into ska so good episode
Hear me out, a spinoff series called Glorious Basterds about people who dont suck. You can probably find one or two people to make an episode about 😂
Mr. Rogers (the neighborhood one) is the least bastard-y human that I'm aware of, but other people have already made a bunch of stuff about him.
For when you desperately need a hit of podcast daddy while also needing to avoid more reasons to have never been born
I concur wholeheartedly
Oh, so like the podcast “Cool People who Did Cool Stuff”? Or the Christmas Non-Bastard episodes?
@@dylanrodrigues15 That is the answer. Magaret Killjoy needs all of the love.
@@dylanrodrigues15i love everything Margaret does. What I think would be really good is a slight variation of the “Bastard” format where we cover a genre of modern bastard, like “Guys” but for bastardry, maybe singling out an exemplary celebrity scumbag.
The way Marianne Williamson is described in this video she gives me strong Mother Theresa vibes.
56:30 There are certain adult social clubs that use the coloured band system for many things. Single, couple, couple looking for M, couple looking for F, etc.
I have never respected Robert more than when admitting to just atrocious levels of obliviousness.
& i will point out that all the while our parents worried about high Vs & rainbow roads... we were getting goatsed & worse.
Eyes were completely on the wrong ball
Millenial teacher teaching 6th graders. The Oprah crowd would have their brains BLOWN with how Gen Alpha talk. Lmao
Means next to nothing in reality.
😂😂😂😂
As per what happens when a child says something doesn't make sense... that child is then said to be a trouble maker, trying to cause issues and is "being difficult"
On top of being told that it does make sense, and you need to reread it
52:00 I also dont know who people are and thought Jay Leno and J-Lo were the same person well into adulthood.
You should do an Anti-Bastards Episode about Johnny Appleseed
Im not sure he gets antibastard treatment. I'm pretty sure he was a land speculator and a major force in land settlement during manifest destiny.
Opher has been around for so long, we get another round. 🍻
Orpah
“Wop wop wop wop wop, I’m gonna pop some tags, only got 20 dollars in my pocket” - Robert, probably, maybe, allegedly.
The problem is that when you are balls deep, insanity seems quite sane...
Also in this case you should have linked the Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil episodes in the description
In other words, beware of Mean World Syndrome
At my school there was a rumor that if you snap someone's bracelet they have to have sex with you. That stuff was absurd.
Are these all filmed on the same afternoon or so?
How can you not know Kendrick Lamar, granted more from a talk about a song about his transmen uncle and reflecting on his own bias and how he was pretty , yeah he/she was always there for me depending on the kid vs adult perspective, and hey, i will stand up for him to the preacher, even reflecting on the confusion on what to gender to, and at the end he was there for me. that matters., He was always there and same person,. No preacher you are wrong there. And yeah auntie is a man now, yes, leave him alone.That seemed to be a discourse.
Anyways Kendrick based , and better than Drake.
And can there be an episode extra wher eRoberts just has to answer popculture questions? It could be fun.
1:00:24
No, dude. "Hi" "V."
"High-four" would be "HIIV."
Come on 🤦🏾♂️
What's getting a car?! What's getting a car?! Not you if you can't afford $7000
I live in BC, and when I was teen we used to see hippies (around Gen X age, because I was a millennial) going out into the back country deep in the woods for something called a "Rainbow Gathering" which as far as I am aware was a type of music festival, and not a type of orgy (although I am sure there were orgies at the rainbow gathering, I don't think that's what they were for), but when you said rainbow party, and then described it, I momentarily had to question if that's what was happening out there. Thankfully I just looked it up, and they were a kind of hippy music festival, but you had me going for a second. Gotta wonder if they ever had a rainbow party at the rainbow gatherings? It certainly was never a thing as far as our generation was concerned, but there were a number of gen X degenerates I knew growing up that could have seen being into something like that. Actually maybe my generation too. There was always an orgy tent somewhere at Shambhala when I went, though I was never cool enough to get an invite into it... lol.. Actually the only time I ever even got laid at Shambhala is the year I brought my girlfriend. Was always slightly jealous of how many people were supposedly hooking up while they were at it and other nearby raves. Was never my experience. 😞
the bracelets thing was a worldwide shitshow, I remember it very clearly
I still remember the influencer who unironicly called the whole manifistation philosophy thing 'manifest destiny
The rainbow party thing even leaked out over into europe and my mom brought it up once as something she'd heard. We always have had a pretty relaxed relationship talking about sex and identity and stuff and my first reaction was 'so wait, you say there is supposed to be like, 20 girls going down on one guy. Regularly. As a thing. Why would they do that?' She paused for a few seconds and immediately saw that it made absolutely no sense from the pure logistics of how sex and orgasms work.
This whole thing and all like it lives so hard on 'I don't know why anyone would do that, but it's kids so they might!". The easiest public service you could probably do is to keep reminding parents more that yes, kids are dumb. But few of them are actually downright unreasonably explain. If a kid does or doesn't something, there is usually very obvious very basic reasoning for it :D
18:20 what is it that the good reverend doctor scribbled in the margins of a newspaper in a Birmingham jail cell? “Lack of understanding from people of good will hurts more than outright hatred.”? Yeah, that line goes hard. With the context (us, my fellow white Christians, it’s us!) And without it. 😢
4:35 omfg, Ralph! Sit down!
Oh my god. I had a hard time letting that Jordeci shit go but mistaking Kendrick for Macklemore is WILD. That's like confusing Tupac and Vanilla Ice, bro
How dare you point out that Joe Rogan is Oprah for men. OMFG! I can't unknow that.
52:00 Now I'm with Robert: I was very surprised to find out who Kendrick Lamar and Drake were last summer, even more surprised to know they had been famous forever.
1:03:29 Oh You don't know how BIG influence JP2 had on Poland. (also great subject for an episode)
Part 4 and we still havent talked about the bee incident
Oh yeah, my mom sat me down after school to ask about those stupid bracelets.
This episode has made me question how I feel about Marianne Williamson. I remember I voted for her during the democratic primary and all I knew about her was she was in favor of universal health care and I heard she was helpful during AIDS epidemic. Never really got into the spiritual side of her.
Macklemore is indeed terrible and I'm happy Robert knows that now