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Topic: Guilt?  (Read 35849 times)

agentanalogue

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Guilt?
This one is aimed mostly at the readers, but I'd love to hear other people's reactions too.

Do any of you feel guilty about any of the episodes? I'm not saying you SHOULD, but there are a few that have given me a pang or two just for listening to over the years.  As we've clearly established, not all subjects are equally unlikeable after all.

Acierocolotl

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Guilt? #1
Is there anything I'm supposed to feel guilty over?  Because, honestly, I don't feel the slightest iota of it.  I'm aware of the concept of guilt, but nothing in this show has provoked it.

The closest thing that would come to provoking guilt would have been reading the juggaromance on Facebook, and that only because they were such painfully witless people without, perhaps, the slightest iota of recognition that this woefully white trash tragi-romance was made the butt of a half hour of the Internet-at-large's amusement.  It comes close because they were such clearly gormless people, squabbling in public, that it became clear to me during that reading what all those centuries-old English authors were getting on about with the snobbery and patronization of the lower classes.

And then Isfahan made a wisecrack explaining "tht" and what vestiges of proto-guilt I might have been in danger of feeling were washed away in a bright peal of laughter.

Chaz

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Guilt? #2
I feel some slight guilt over the Asexuality episode and the Quicksand episode, in both cases because people I personally know were read on those episodes and (hopefully) have no idea that they were read in silly voices.

OwlSaint (Who was read by STOG - "OCCUPY LIVING ROOM!"), as I mentioned in the Irregular episode about the same subject, is someone who I know because they were a regular player (and later DM) of various D&D campaigns which various AVENites took part in, including myself.

Vandercat (Who was read by Lemon in his AARON TANK voice) happens to be a friend of mine, and we still chat fairly regularly. I don't know if he knows about the episode or not, but he hasn't said anything about it to me yet.

As a matter of fact, I feel a slight pang of guilt about the quicksand episode in general because a couple of good friends of mine are quicksand fetishists, but at least one of them has said they thoroughly enjoyed the episode, so I don't feel quite so bad about it.

Isfahan

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Guilt? #3
Not really guilt, but I guess the closest I've come to sympathy was seeing horribly unsocialized people trying to be social and not quite making it, though mostly that was just from embarrassment on their behalf.

I was about to say most of the exhibits in the furry dating episode were somewhat sympathetic, but many of them had damning qualities to them. The gargoyle-wannabe was too lazy to work out and get the muscles he wanted, the hyena-girl just blatantly wanted money for being female, the Scottish skunkbear was into diapers, the wolf-guy from Maryland was trying too hard to come off as edgy, and the Most Extreme Furry in the World, Seriously wanted someone he could leech off of while "pursuing his life's work."

That said, I wish Hinaru (the fox temp from Yorktown) and the Certified Faguar the best of luck in finding romance.

Isfahan

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Guilt? #4
Chaz, the source of your guilt is coming from a different place because you're associated in some way with everything you've listed. agentmonster cockogue is trying to find out if there's guilt even with detachment from the subject matter. You're not detached from asexuals or sinking fetishists, so of course it's going to sting a little for you when their slide comes up on the Powerpoint.

fruit power

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Guilt? #5
I know it's a popular episode, but Angry Angry Hippos was difficult for me to listen to. While I can't directly relate to their specific problems, body shame is something I have a hard time laughing at. The person who escaped the dr's office through a window just made me really sad.
« Last Edit: February 11, 2013, 09:35:14 pm by fruit power »

Alpha Starsquatch

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Guilt? #6
More often it's secondhand embarrassment. I still can't listen to the Hetalia fanfiction portion of the Sissy Kiss episode because I enjoy Hetalia, insofar as the concept of nation avatars, and the fandom just horrifies me in new and astounding ways every day.

An example of somewhat humorous guilt, I feel like a bad person for laughing at Dream of the Rood in lit class. It's an old poem about the crucifixion told from the point of view of the tree that became the cross— and everything about it reminds me of that one story told from the perspective of cling film.

agentanalogue

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Guilt? #7
I know it's a popular episode, but Angry Angry Hippos was difficult for me to listen to. While I can't directly relate to their specific problems, body shame is something I have a hard time laughing at. The person who escaped the dr's office through a window just made me really sad.
fruit power, February 11, 2013, 09:27:27 pm

I know what you mean.  I do think the Ridiculists did a good job up at the beginning of distinguishing between having a healthy perspective on being happy at any size and the sheer "Fat Supremacy" attitude that seemed replete in the content they read, but even so, these people are just so sad it's easy to slip into some feeling-sorry places.

Still one where funny overwhelmned guilt by tons (no pun intended) for me.

Delcat

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Guilt? #8
I've found that with every episode I feel nervous about going in, I'm comfortable and laughing as soon as it starts.  The asexual episode worried me because I have asexual friends (two of which were in the following Irregular, hi Chaz), but the first reading made me go "Oh, THOSE asexuals".  Size acceptance is a big (hurr) thing for me because I spent sixteen years being told I was unhealthy and needed to exercise more/go on a diet by doctors, when the truth was that I had an enzymatic disorder keeping me from digesting food properly--especially since I had to be hospitalized with an ovarian cyst the size of a chicken egg for them to take a second look at me and diagnosis me correctly.  But as aforementioned, the fat activist episode made a clear distinction between being happy and healthy and being in denial, and the other weight-related episodes did the same thing, as well as pointing out the inherently dangerous, codependent dynamic of the feeder/gainer fetish.

Every time an F+ episode has focused on a community, it's focused on the worst of that community, and I think that's what sets it apart.  It's also never truly mean-spirited, which I think a lot of people don't get about snark.  The majority of the stuff you make fun of, you don't truly hate, it's just mockable and funny.  There are exceptions, like RooshV, where you honestly want the guy locked up and eating live jellyfish for the rest of his life, but those are reasonable exceptions.  If you're hurting people or facilitating people being hurt, it's not a roast, it's a point being made.

Cyberventurer

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Guilt? #9
I like the crazy Louisville lady episode, but when I stop to think about it I can't help but feel bad for her.  Despite how irrational her conspiracies are, her fears are still very real to her and she has to live with that every day.  Kinda like how Morgellons disease sounds totally absurd, but the people who think they're afflicted by it are scared of something they don't or can't understand.

It's a little different with the anti-Polio vaccine people from Mothering.com, though.  That one annoys me because they're involving children into it.

Isfahan

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Guilt? #10
I've thought about Connie Marshall for a bit and I have to wonder about how her crazy balances with her ability to function at least somewhat in society. I mean, she lives in a house, has Internet access, and has had things like cable in the past, which means she's got it together enough (and has enough money) to pay bills, right? I'm thinking the crazy must hit her in phases and then go away later, leading to some selective memory and confusion when she drifts in and out. This is all complete layperson guessing, but debilitatingly crazy people would have difficulty maintaining a stream of income.

Well, there's also Mai Trang-Thai Nguyen, and she's living in one of the most expensive cities in America, so I guess all bets are off.

JT

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Guilt? #11
How do we know she's the one paying the bills, though? Could be that she's living on the dime of a family member or someone else close to her. My mom is a bipolar schizophrenic who hasn't had a job in decades, but she has her own apartment in a suburb on the north shore of Long Island. A decent lifestyle doesn't necessarily imply an ability to get along in society.

fruit power

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Guilt? #12
A lot of people who are paranoid or have ocd (or a mix of both) are really good employees because they have excellent proficiency at focusing and performing tasks. That is as long as the job doesn't interfere with their obsessions anyway.  If their boundaries aren't crossed, they can turn off the crazy long enough to get through a work day. These are people who spend all waking hours focused on survival. Keeping a steady paycheck is often important to them.

Runic

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Guilt? #13
I've got to say, I did feel sorry for the gangstalking people way the fuck back when there was an episode on them.  Some of those people are probably not crazy but suffering from genuine mental illness.

Zsa Zsa

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Guilt? #14
What does crazy mean to you exactly, certified crazy person?