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1 minute ago, Twig said:

literally nobody said dan advocated against people seeking professional help

 

Seriously dude? That is clearly the undercurrent of all of the angry comments on here. That Dan is selling this worldview for profit. You can argue semantics if you want but the point I was trying to make still stands.

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So, like, yeah, a hundo percent, the question I'm asking after reading this thread, is does Dan, intentionally or not, use his platform to promote dangerous ideas. I can pretty much rule out intentionality, but, I'm not convinced that excuses it  Yeah, I'm not going to get a cut and dry answer, but, this is going to be on my mind for a while.

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HEY ZEUS, I ALSO LIKE DAN RYCKERT.

 

Like, I can 100% see why some of the things that he says are problematic, but I give him credit for gradually figuring out his shit and becoming a demonstrably better person over the years that he has worked at GB. I really didn't like him at first, but it has actually been incredibly impressive and affirming to watch him grow as a person and become so much more than he was. He is an intelligent and open-minded person who, yes, believes some backwards shit. The thing is, he used to believe so much MORE backwards shit and his open-mindedness has actually given me a lot of hope for the site and for gamers in general. His specific advice on dealing with anxiety and depression is bad, I agree. It is also painful to me as someone who is in a 10+ year relationship with a woman who has struggled with these things since she was 13, watching her go through medications, programs, therapists, etc etc etc.

 

BUT

 

on so many things that troubled me about him, he has started to come around. He has become much more progressive, and (despite GB having no explicit political view) the times that it has been necessary to say something he has. GBEast is a lot more political than West (thanks, lingering influences of Patrick and Austin!), and he seems to have actually taken up some of that as well. Some of the reason that I like him probably comes from our starts in life being so similar (I was also a gifted kid in a small town that didn't know what to do with those, then got into a prestigious school program by accident by going to the wrong homeroom on the first day of 8th grade and having them make the audible call that I was bright enough to stay. So, y'know, lucky, intelligent, but also kinda dumb). I had the open-minded switch thrown on me a few years earlier than him so have had more time to make progress, but a lot of what I see in him tracks to my own awakening to societal responsibility and expanding world-view. I think Dan is far from perfect, and certainly not a great source for advice, but damn if I'm not encouraged by him and think that, as a human being, he is on an impressive journey and I'm enjoying watching him take it.

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30 minutes ago, Zeusthecat said:

 

Seriously dude? That is clearly the undercurrent of all of the angry comments on here. That Dan is selling this worldview for profit. You can argue semantics if you want but the point I was trying to make still stands.

yes, seriously

 

8 minutes ago, Spenny said:

So, like, yeah, a hundo percent, the question I'm asking after reading this thread, is does Dan, intentionally or not, use his platform to promote dangerous ideas. I can pretty much rule out intentionality, but, I'm not convinced that excuses it  Yeah, I'm not going to get a cut and dry answer, but, this is going to be on my mind for a while.

yes he does, not intentionally (i mean, as far as i know)

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40 minutes ago, Twig said:

literally nobody said dan advocated against people seeking professional help

 

I actually am arguing that Dan refused to seek professional help, things worked out for him anyway, and he wrote a book about the whole experience that he's selling on Amazon for $13.10. Maybe, even though it's for sale in the "health, fitness, & dieting" and the "self-help" sections, he doesn't actually mean for people to emulate his irresponsible and privileged example, but regardless of whether that's true, it still typifies the blithe "Well, it works for me, so it's fine" attitude that makes me dislike him as a games journalist, internet personality, and role model for the Giant Bomb community. I'm glad that other people find him inspiring, but it can hardly come as a surprise that that feeling's not universal.

 

And Zeus, I like you, but you seriously need to work on how much you process this criticism of Dan as criticism of you and your tastes. No one's out to get you, certainly not me. It was not my intention to criticize anyone but Dan, and criticism of Dan isn't implicitly meant as criticism of you or anyone else except Dan, because I know we all have problematic faves. That's how the world works.

 

However, what I am going to criticize, now that we're throwing around phrases like "unhealthy levels of hatred" and "vitriolic backlash," is that some people seem to believe that, so long as Dan means well and conducts himself humbly, his know-nothing attitude is totally fine and that anyone who takes overt issue with it is being at best a killjoy and at worst... well, all the things that have been implied of me thus far by you and electricblue. Honestly, I'm stunned at how people who are fans of Dan are reflexively dismissive of or even hostile to sustained criticism of him, especially when there are plenty of perfectly obvious reasons to dislike or even resent Dan, many of which have been covered in this thread. It's like you can say that you don't like Dan, but then you're supposed to drop it, else you're harshing everyone's buzz. In light of all of this, the fact that you repeatedly imply in your latest posts that there's no compelling reason for anyone to genuinely dislike Dan and that his detractors, me in particular, are putting it on out of a desire to make you feel bad about yourself really, really disappoints me. I feel like I've worked hard on this forum to be more than branded a "hater."

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7 minutes ago, Spenny said:

So, like, yeah, a hundo percent, the question I'm asking after reading this thread, is does Dan, intentionally or not, use his platform to promote dangerous ideas. I can pretty much rule out intentionality, but, I'm not convinced that excuses it  Yeah, I'm not going to get a cut and dry answer, but, this is going to be on my mind for a while.

 

I really don't think so. You could even potentially say that his backwards views and willingness to say dumb things has the opposite effect since he has a room full of people telling him how stupid he is and why he is so stupid whenever he brings those things up. Especially considering how willing he is to admit he is wrong. A lot of people share a lot of the same backwards views he does and you could see it as a good thing that there is a platform out there where those things are brought up and dissected by a group of less backwards people.

 

And I agree @miffy495! Dan has shown a propensity for change that you don't often see in people like him. Having grown up isolated in small religious towns, I can sympathize with how he came to see things the way he does and it's great to see how far he has come on so many things.

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2 minutes ago, Gormongous said:

And Zeus, I like you, but you seriously need to work on how much you process this criticism of Dan as criticism of you and your tastes. No one's out to get you, certainly not me. It was not my intention to criticize anyone but Dan, and criticism of Dan isn't implicitly meant as criticism of you or anyone else except Dan, because I know we all have problematic faves. That's how the world works.

 

To be fair, you didn't just offer up a criticism of Dan, you continuously beat me over the head with it by responding to every post I made with increasing aggression. If we're giving advice to each other now, maybe you could work on sometimes just accepting that people have a different opinion than you and not trying to tirelessly educate them on why they are wrong. I don't appreciate being talked down to like I am some naive idiot who doesn't seeing the whole picture like you do.

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19 minutes ago, Gormongous said:

 

I actually am arguing that Dan refused to seek professional help, things worked out for him anyway, and he wrote a book about the whole experience that he's selling on Amazon for $13.10. Maybe, even though it's for sale in the "health, fitness, & dieting" and the "self-help" sections, he doesn't actually mean for people to emulate his irresponsible and privileged example, but regardless of whether that's true, it still typifies the blithe "Well, it works for me, so it's fine" attitude that makes me dislike him as a games journalist, internet personality, and role model for the Giant Bomb community.

oh he definitely implicitly and/or explicitly puts forward the idea that one doesn't need to seek professional help, because he didn't need to, but i would argue that he doesn't actively advocate against it

 

but... it's a fucked up situation either way and how anyone can stand by and act like it's harmless when he still shills for his fucking book to this day is beyond me

 

...

 

tell you what, he takes that book down so nobody can buy it anymore, we'll talk. bonus - he can keep the book if he rewrites it to explicitly tell people not to follow his example of ignoring the professional advice he received

 

dan isn't a bad person, not in the traditional sense, but people make mistakes all the time, including him, including you, including me, no matter if they're good or bad, and no amount of "he's trying" or "he's making progress" is going to change the fact that some of the message he still puts out is harmful

 

ps you go back earlier in this thread and you'll find me defending dan for exactly the same reasons people are defending him now, so fuck you if you think i'm not giving him a chance

 

yes i'm still fucking mad

 

10 minutes ago, Zeusthecat said:

 

To be fair, you didn't just offer up a criticism of Dan, you continuously beat me over the head with it by responding to every post I made with increasing aggression. If we're giving advice to each other now, maybe you could work on sometimes just accepting that people have a different opinion than you and not trying to tirelessly educate them on why they are wrong. I don't appreciate being talked down to like I am some naive idiot who doesn't seeing the whole picture like you do.

you came into this thread after some people had criticized dan for expressing ignorant ideas on issues that are personal and real and not trivial shit about pickles or taco bell with an "i like dan so y'all need to chill the fuck out"

 

mannnnnnnnnnnn i also like you zeus but this isn't the first time i've seen you get super defensive because other people criticized something you like - if you don't want to talk about it, just don't say anything? or stop responding? that's what i do

 

in other words, as a certain someone would say: "grow up"

 

YES i'm still fucking mad

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Seriously Twig, fuck right off. This place has gotten so goddamn hostile to any point of view that isn't shared by the Idle Thumbs hive mind. It's fucking sad. I agree with you guys on so goddamn much but as soon as I show any disagreement with anything, it's a fucking dogpile. So many decent people have been chased off of these forums because of pathetic shit like this.

 

And since me putting any perspective out there that isn't shared by the hive mind seems to bother people so much, I'll just stop posting. What else can I do really? At least it will make things more pleasant for the rest of you.

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27 minutes ago, Zeusthecat said:

To be fair, you didn't just offer up a criticism of Dan, you continuously beat me over the head with it by responding to every post I made with increasing aggression. If we're giving advice to each other now, maybe you could work on sometimes just accepting that people have a different opinion than you and not trying to tirelessly educate them on why they are wrong. I don't appreciate being talked down to like I am some naive idiot who doesn't seeing the whole picture like you do.

 

Three posts of a few sentences each, over the course of several hours, were hardly beating you over the head with anything, especially when the longest one was about the book in response to you saying that you hadn't read the book and knew only hearsay about it. The rest of your comments were dismissive of my opinions ("I find him entertaining and am not bothered by the things other people are bothered by") or my reasons for having them ("I don't see the need to judge someone based on their potential as a role model"), which was why I kept engaging.

 

Anyway, I'm sorry you're frustrated over me disagreeing with you in the way I did, because obviously you're unhappy about this entire interaction, but I'm not sure why you inserted yourself in a conversation about Dan's issues in the first place, if you weren't interested in engaging with people who didn't already agree with you that those issues don't matter. I've learned a lot about Dan from you and others, although not enough to change my opinion of him, but clearly you don't see anything that you can learn from me, which is a bit of a bummer.

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so i got curious because of your continued assertions that people were being overly hostile to you

 

the only one directly talking to you early on was gorm - everyone else was just talking in general

 

i jumped in because electricblue's comments pissed me right the fuck off, and wasn't even talking to you until i said "literally no one blah blah blah", which was only one of two posts where i directly responded to you (i guess this makes a third)

 

so, (almost) two people talking to you and you increasingly getting more and more angry about it (even before me, the actually angry one, jumped in)

 

god i just don't know, man

 

i guess i'll fuck right off now :fart::fart::fart::fart::fart::fart::fart::fart::fart::fart::fart::fart:

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I don't even know what the Idle Thumbs hive mind thinks. The hive mind thinks Dan is evil? When did we decide? Are there meetings where the hive mind's decisions are made? I never get invited!

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On all matters, the Idle Thumbs Hive Mind advocates for ambivalence.

 

It can be hard for me to track Dan's growth because I listen to a lot of back episodes of Giant Bombcast as a sort of non-offensive white noise when I don't want to emotionally engage with the world (the one show I know will almost never get political!), so I'll hear a modern Beastcast where he seems not so bad and contextualizes his dumb questions (questions that I, by the way, am also dumb enough to have) in a way that is fun and self-deprecating and even, goddammit, charming. But then I'll listen to an old Bombcast where he gets mad at anyone asserting any food could ever be better than Taco Bell. 

 

So part of my ambivalence towards Dan comes from that achronological approach of mine. But the college thing proved to me how easily he can still slip into Old Dan, starting a story with "I know now why this makes people mad, I don't want to get into it" but ending up cracking up and all the ways everything falls into his lap. And just knowing that potential to regress is there makes me want to not listen to the Beastcast.

 

Anyway, it makes me super mad that Ben has been at GB West for months and they haven't managed to pull together one new Ranking of Fighters, which is one of my favorite series they do. 

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When this thread first started - it was me drunkenly copy/pasting an email I wrote  advocating for Dan as President. I really liked Dan and his goofball antics. So, I was surprised when this was met with fury from a lot of regulars. Then it dawned on me through the subsequent posts of what a privileged douchebag he can be and how damaging that is (even if I was being stupid about the President thing, I genuinely found Dan very charming).

 

To say that Dan is not a role-model, or that he shouldn't be viewed as one, is not true, I'll bet there are plenty of younger audience that make the logical step from 'he's a cool fun guy' (like I did), to 'he is someone I want to be like'.

 

I still like Dan, but now I see him through a different frame and it is important to me that this was clarified by people on this forum. I think I would have ignored a lot of it otherwise, and ignored that same bullshit in my own demeanour.

 

 

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I count myself in the "I like Dan but find him problematic" crowd.  I find Dan to be enthusiastic and entertaining in a way that most of the Bombcast crew weren't before he moved East.  That bit of improv he did a few weeks ago was maybe one of the funniest things I've heard on the Beastcast.  And I derive a not-so-guilty pleasure at seeing corrections aimed directly at fixing the dumb things he says.

 

All that said, I recognize the issues that others here are finding in him.  As I previously stated, I don't think he's a bad guy and he isn't out there with the intent of purposely misleading people.  But he does give a lot of advice* from a place of ignorance that is at best bad and at worst harmful.  That he often admits he doesn't know what he's talking about is good but it's not an excuse that exonerates him.  And I am absolutely guilty of this sin myself so I'm not trying to place myself above him.  The difference is he has a very public presence and I know a lot of people aren't going to hear the part where he says he doesn't know better and just remember the (bad) advice.  At least that's what worries me.

 

I'm not saying he can't have or express his opinion or talk about his own life experiences.  I'm not even saying that he shouldn't.  What I am saying is I wish he were more aware of it (and to his credit he does appear to be trying) and maybe try to educate himself more rather than relying on his immediate peers (who also probably don't know significantly more than him) for answers.  There isn't an immediate answer if one even exists at all.  But I think its worth pointing out and discussing the issue instead of ignoring it one way or the other.

 

*I don't necessarily mean regarding anxiety, I honestly don't know what his book says or really remember what he himself has said in the past.  I'm fortunate enough to have not had that issue in my life (at least to the point of needing medical help, I certainly have anxiety about plenty of things) so I can't personally speak to how good/bad his advice is.

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I think SAM has pretty perfectly summed up how I'm feeling. I totally respect the feelings of people who see problematic behaviours as swinging their opinion of the man to negative too.

 

I feel that you can talk about how media might be problematic, even agree that it is, and continue to enjoy that media. It seems pretty rude to attempt to dismantle the explanations for why someone feels something is problematic. If you're not starting your statement with "I respect that you feel that way", what are you achieving? 

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For the record, and to repeat myself, I don't hate Dan. I even find him entertaining, sometimes. I think he makes the Beastcast worse, but he isn't a reprehensible human being.

 

I think that some of the things he does out of ignorance are shitty. He's getting better but that doesn't mean he's flawless or that he doesn't deserve criticism. In fact, it is precisely because he's criticized that he gets better. He's not reading this thread, obviously, but I am, and I express my opinions because that is what people do. The only time I get actually upset is when people dismiss my and (what happened here) other people's criticisms as if they are unimportant.

 

In other words I also completely agree with SAM (besides the liking Dan part :getmecoat... mostly).

 

I think he was better on the Bombcast than the Beastcast because he brought the Bomb up and brings the Beast down.

 

I'm no longer angry.

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I personally don't think he brings the Beastcast down but I do agree he brought the Bombcast up.  The Mario Party Parties alone are proof of that.

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4 hours ago, SecretAsianMan said:

But he does give a lot of advise* from a place of ignorance that is at best bad and at worst harmful.

'Advise' is the verb :) 'advice' is the noun (you probably know but I couldn't help it because you starred the word and everything :P)

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You are technically correct.  The best kind of correct.

 

Normally I'd leave my goof up there but now that you've brought it to my attention I am irritated to no end and it must be corrected.  Also the other two times I fucked up.

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I think Dan has become a lot better at podcasting since joining the beastcast. I was often tired of his whatismayonnaise bit at GB West but he mixes it up now and plays along better with Vinny's antics

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I'm personally struggling with crippling anxiety and a lot of mental health issues, and yeah, I find Dan's perspective on the matter pretty frustrating. Professional help has had mixed results for me too and I think a LOT of mentally ill people who have a hard time with doctors/therapists end up sort of finding their own way or own method to cope. That doesn't give him or me the credibility to advise someone else on their own very serious mental health issues. It's one thing to give advice to a friend you know personally and contextualize that in "Hey, I'm not an expert but this is what worked for me. Keep that in mind but also seek professional help" but it's another thing to enter this self-help bullshit market. There is so much shame associated with mental health problems and I feel that it's easy to think "Something is wrong with me because I can't cope on my own like my role model X did and that makes me weak, I don't wanna be on pills and use that as a crutch etc etc etc"

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I'll start out by saying this isn't a response to therealdougiejones, but more a response to the heated discussion above. I've dealt with comparatively minor anxiety/panic disorder for a lot of my life, and each person has a different road to travel. I can see how Dan's often flippant attitude can be a turn-off, and it is for me when he's talking about certain subjects.

 

I tried to jump into this conversation a couple of times earlier, since I've actually read the book in question. I really wonder how many folks on each side of the argument here have actually read any of it. You can read on the first few pages of the free preview available at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25155937-anxiety-as-an-ally  that he immediately cops to being "as far removed from being a doctor as (he) could possibly be" and also that he tried many types of professional help over his time struggling with anxiety. In his introduction he states that the book is basically a chronological history of his struggles with anxiety, and really it doesn't offer much in the form of direct advice. What it ended up doing for me was making me realize some of my personality quirks that I developed over the years were anxiety defenses, and how to leverage them. It also gave me a few easy-to-read pages that I could hand to someone and say "this is how I feel" when I'm having a hard time describing things.

 

I think it has the same inerrant problems as any book that is categorized "self-help." It's going to work for some people, and not for others. Some folks with more severe problems might take the book to far but, for others that are suffering at the same level as the author, it can be a big help. I don't see people rallying around "10% Happier" with torches, and that was written by a Nightline anchor who likewise has no professional knowledge of the subject. (Full disclosure, I've only read a few pages so I'll be a lot less able to debate that book.)

 

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I don't rally around 10% Happier with a torch because I'd never heard of it until now and the person who wrote it isn't someone I follow or even know who it is. Dan is someone in a podcast I listen to every week who has told more than one story about intentionally doing something he knew was bad for himself.

 

So that's why I call him out and not this Nightline anchor.

 

Obviously, I can't speak for anyone else.

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