Yeah sorry about my armchair philosophizing on this lovely Sunday evening or morning depending on where in the world you are right now.
I think the most frustrating thing about attempting to live by this balanced philosophy is that nothing is ever balanced for long. As a perfectionist, this is probably gonna be the most challenging lesson in my life, personally, but at the same time, it does keep life interesting.
Art = scaring parents for centuries.
My dad was also convinced that my group of friends would get me into drugs which is fucking hilarious. I tried so many times to explain to him and my mom that my friends were all socially awkward nerds who unironically did Naruto runs when no one was looking. We were cringe as fuck and most of us were former bully victims who lived sheltered lives and and just really liked watching animated movies and shows. Many of us had never really had friends before either, so having interests to bond over was pretty cool.
But because we also dressed in black, some dying their hair in crazy colors and we listened to metal, we had to be criminals. I am in my mid 30s now, still listen to metal and I have yet to do drugs and violent crimes. Any day now, though!
Not diagnosed with ADHD, but yes. Very, very relatable, haha.
Tbf, the new movie was kinda mid. I know I watched it too, but I also forgot most of it afterwards. Not saying the original Blade Runner was the best movie ever made, but it's at least memorable and I just assumed people would at least know what it was.
I don't think people would think of replicant being associated with Blade Runner in a vacuum either, but when paired with a picture/a gif of Rachel, then I would assume people at least knew that it's a blade runner reference.
I dunno. When I was young on the internet, there was a ton of popculture - especially American popculture - that I know nothing about because I'm not American, but I learned a bunch of it, as well as slang etc to get a basic understanding of the "language" people spoke on the internet. Which is 80% memes anyway.
I guess I find it weird that there are people out there who don't do any kind of research to understand contexts in conversations online and end up assuming weird things when most contexts are a simple search away.
I also refuse to believe there are people who don't know what Harry Potter is xD
I dunno what to tell you but women can be nazis too.
Besides, every hobby has assholes in it. But because there are a few pieces of shit in metal, doesn't mean all of metal is racist or sexist. That's like saying people who like science fiction are nazis and misogynist because Wernher von Braun wrote Project Mars.
And last I checked, metal didn't embrace nazis. There are fringe nazi sympathizers in metal, but metal as a whole is repulsed by nazisism. They just can't control what some people do. Just like how punk can't control of there are a few nazi punk bands out there no matter how much they try to reject them.
It genuinely pisses me off how such a small group of assholes can get so many people to act like metal as a whole is racist. It was no different back in the 2000s where my parents also wanted me to stop listening to it because my dad found one article about a guy who beat up his girlfriend and he apparently liked Metallica.
This is the blaming video games for school shooters argument all over again. And back then, metal was blamed for that too.
I don't know where this is coming from because I grew up in the era of Marilyn Manson, the Murderdolls and Dir En Grey (etc.) Where gender was some fluid shit and everybody vibed with it.
Even though I don't like them, I also remember Rammstein playing around with gender expression.
Overall, my personal experience with metal since teenhood in the 2000s is that metalheads are extremely chill and open minded and the bigots are some fringe groups here and there that nobody likes to talk to anyways.
Metal was about challenging the status quo and trigger the sensitive puritans who wanted everybody to conform one way of living and being. Most metaheads and metal artists were social rejects who didn't fit in and weren't accepted and they rebelled against the social structure at the time for that very reason. A couple of examples of the artistic expression in metal at the time:
Pretty sure Manson even brought on a trans icon in his video for The Dope Show which itself was a critique of the creative industry and how it uses and abuses people and forces them to be someone they aren't.
Lol, your comment reminded me of when I got to confirmation age and I was the only one in my class who chose to not get confirmated. The priest would come to me in class a few times to convince me to join in on Bible studies and I asked him several questions that pissed him off enough to leave me alone. One of them was: do you believe in Satan?
And he said no.
And I said: do you believe in Jesus?
And he said yes.
"How can you believe in one and not the other when they are part of the same religion?"
Only said in a 13 year old way of speaking so probably a lot more clunky. Anyway, I kept pushing him to admit that if he believes in the good he also must believe in the evil because they belong together and one without the other is just lying to yourself and making yourself vulnerable to evil - but again, in a 13 year old clunky way of saying it.
He got mad and never spoke a word to me again.
I still believe in this sentiment even though I'm not religious. I am painfully aware of the evil inside of me and how I must be observant and aware of how I affect the world and how the world affects me. If I turn a blind eye to evil, I will open myself up to it. That is how people end up in cults and I know I have a high chance of becoming one of those, so there's a lot of talks in the mirror and reflections on my own behavior.
13 year old me was nowhere close to understanding the complexities of the conversation I was trying to have with the priest back then, I just wanted him to not be a hypocrite and admit that if he believes in God he also must believe in the devil even if he disagrees with his teachings. You cannot be good if you ignore evil.
I can't tell if there are actually people put there who don't know what Blade Runner is. I may be getting too old to follow along with the youth of today, but to me, Blade Runner is as much a part of popculture as Star Wars and Harry Potter.
Blade Runner, at its core is about a dystopian future where artificial humans, called "replicants" have become part of society, yet are seen and treated as lesser. This is a very simplistic description, but there's a lot of philosophical discussions about what it means to be human and whether or not we can dehumanize artificial humans if what they sense and feel is real to them despite their bodies, brains and memories all being artificial.
In essence it is about empathy.
Sadly, a lot of people who watch blade runner fail to understand its message and just see a protagonist be an unempathetic pos to replicants in several scenes and deem it a misogynistic and bigoted work, which is certainly a take one can have if they insist on being complete media illiterate, but on a deeper level, the movie is definitely wanting people to consider what humanity is and what makes someone human and that everyone deserves empathy. Else we will end up with a cold, brutalist society where you can meet someone and question their validity as a human.
I remember thinking they wouldn't vote for trump the first time and when they did, nothing since has surprised me. Well, maybe the speed with how Trump has taken on his second term was a bit of a surprise, but other than that, I fully expected America to turn their backs on Europe when (not if) they elected trump again.
My boyfriend told me that they would never elect trump again because of what he did with the abortion stuff and I just shrugged and said that they don't give a fuck about women's productive rights over there. They already have decades of religious indoctrination and an anti solidarity/anti social way of treating citizens and the citizens vote for that systematically.
I don't know the intricacies of American politics at all. I just call a spade a spade when I see it.
As for the UK... well, they are their own mess. The rest of Europe has started to skew far right too and I hate every fucking second of it. I hate extreme politics. I feel like there has been no normal, level-headed discussions for the past ten years. I am just buckling down for a shitty ride the next decade or so.
Sounds pretty gay.
In case you aren't joking: Blade Runner
It isn't for me, tbf, but I'm glad if you enjoy it 🤗
My German teacher traumatized me with Christiane F when I was 15. Not like I wanted to try anything before then, but that movie fucked me up lol. Same teacher had a mental breakdown when they found out one of my schoolmates had been secretly sniffing lighter gas in her room for months. I will never forget the heartbroken face of my teacher. I always think of her whenever drugs come up in any context. I just can't do that to her.