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JohnOfOrdo3 posted:Classic. From the sound of it though he's obviously got some mental problems, since he's been given a school laptop he may well have dyslexia. From the way he acts and how baffled he is I wouldn't be surprised if he had much worse things too. We all had laptops, actually. They were given to us a couple years back after our school was destroyed in a natural disaster. Most kids didn't treats theirs too well, but Brony Kid was one of the few who used his laptop as basically a boombox with a huge screen. I know that is father is a cop, and that he lives in a very affluent neighborhood - he's got enough money to pay for whatever inane pony poo poo he wants to get. I have friends who work at the local Hot Topic who would complain to me about how he'd come in and hit on the cashiers if they tried to make small talk. Fantastic. He also stalked a blonde dance squad girl (who was always disinterested) and complained about the generic friendzone poo poo until he, by miracle, got a girlfriend. His girlfriend is a very sweet girl and I'm wondering what she sees in him.  Every day at lunch, I would be a lonely kid and sit in the art room with our art teacher. Often Brony would sit between us and butt in awkwardly when we were discussing movie trailers or video games and the like, by wanting to show our teacher his art. Now, that's not really a bad thing. It's art class, art teacher, he helped me learn a few things about anatomy and inking so hey ask him stuff!! Except Brony Kid's questions were quite... off the wall. They were often about if a drawing of a certain weapon looked scary enough, and then he'd talk about the logistics of it. Say he asked about a mace. Teacher says, yeah, that's intimidating. Brony Kid goes on a tirade that lasts half the lunch period about how satisfying it would be to own one and use it on people. That's lunch time conversation, alright. Talking about killing people! Like I said, we told him eventually to quit it. His reply? "But... war is awesome! I can't see what's NOT fascinating about all of this!" *continues drawing a strong Viking man overtaking a Native group* I'm going to elaborate on the drawing black people with pitch black skin. You see, our cartooning club would hold a fighting tournament where we entered in characters we created, and then make comics showing how we'd win against each other. The semifinal was me and him - and I had a character who was black on my team of characters. Brony Kid just... Colored him in black. With a black sharpie. Pure black. When he presented it about 3 people said at once, "Oh my god, he's so black!" He got defensive of this, and stated that it was just his style for drawing colored people. Also gonna elaborate on the world domination thing. He was very serious. He often wore parts of military uniforms to school, along with helmets or masks. He's make quips to himself about taking over the world, and I'd frequently hear him mutter to himself what he'd say in a speech to the world, chuckle darkly, and quickly write it down as if he were preparing for the day already. He was eternally smug and this just made him seem even more smug. He never ever brought up Pony Porn, thank god. But I believe he was also homophobic. He saw in my music folder I had a song called Rainbow Dash Likes Girls (some beatcore a friend gave me, I don't listen to it much) and he blew up very loudly about how NO, RAINBOW DASH DOES NOT LIKE GIRLS!! I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE MAKE THE PONIES LESBIANS and although this doesn't sound like much, keep in mind his statement about being gay being just as hard as being a brony, and how very openly transphobic he acted towards me (he tossed around slurs sometimes, and when confronted said I should just suck it up because he had to suck up the insults people gave him because he was a brony. No, kid, they're two radically different things). He has posted a single page of his art on all of the internet, but I'm unsure if I can post it or not. Probably not! But I'll tell you that it involves his self insert, who is a robot and also a captain in the Air Force, with a war place and lots of weapons around it. Yup. Maybe I'll try and draw a reproduction of the masterpiece. EDIT: Spelled about as good as Brony Kid (he might be dyslexic to be honest) Zeah fucked around with this message at 09:37 on Jul 9, 2013 |
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Jul 9, 2013 09:13
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Oh crazy person thread, how I missed you. 
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Jul 9, 2013 12:11
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I am both sad that there is still a need for the thread, but also glad because there's something incredibly fascinating about the crazy we come into contact with.
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Jul 9, 2013 12:46
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I wonder what these people did before the internet. Did some people take "Fans are Slans" so seriously they went to try breeding them for example?
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Jul 9, 2013 12:51
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Mind Loving Owl posted:I wonder what these people did before the internet. Did some people take "Fans are Slans" so seriously they went to try breeding them for example? Question 1: What on earth is 'Fans are Slans'? Question 2: Do I really want to know?
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Jul 9, 2013 13:08
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Arashiofordo3 posted:Question 1: What on earth is 'Fans are Slans'? Eh Slans were a fictional post human race of uber-people in Slan. It's your standard nerd power trip/X-Men precursor. The term "Fans are Slans" were a way science fiction fans in the olden days expressed solidarity.
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Jul 9, 2013 13:22
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Mind Loving Owl posted:I wonder what these people did before the internet. Did some people take "Fans are Slans" so seriously they went to try breeding them for example? Why, yes. Mimeographed rants circulated through the mail were pretty much a slower, slightly less sweary version of the Internet.
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Jul 9, 2013 19:19
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I already posted this in the Awkward thread, but one of my colleagues took her children to the My Little Pony movie and mistook a group of bronies for a mentally-handicapped group outing. Thread content: This is super long, but I think it's interesting and gives some kind of insight to the development of the kinds of delusions we've been posting about here. I just attended my best friend's teenage brother's 15th birthday party. It was basically a two-runged party--kids in the pool and on the deck, and a bunch of adult family and friends of the family mingling inside. Pretty fun. The birthday boy is your garden-variety teenage boy, not the captain of the football team but not a neckbeard shut-in either, and his friends were mostly the same. Except for one kid. This kid--we'll call him Andy--showed up with his brother and his dad, both of whom looked embarrassed and awkward as they scurried away from him as soon as they entered the house. And for good reason. The brother and father looked normal, if a little nerdy, and were appropriately dressed for the occasion. Andy was wearing those fake Harry Potter glasses that were sold as promos with the movies. You could tell they were the HP ones because, well, they said Harry Potter on the sides. Okay, whatever, we all wore stupid poo poo as a kid. But he was also wearing a huge, baggy khaki trenchcoat, covered in stains. Okay. A little weird. He took it off and hung it up in the coat closet when he arrived, revealing that, underneath the trenchcoat, he was wearing a full polyester gray suit from the 1970s that didn't fit him at all and was also covered in stains. To a pool party. In July. In the Deep South. To be fair, he did change into a regular swimsuit after his father nagged him for about 20 minutes, but seriously. That wouldn't be so bad, just incredibly weird, but Andy WOULD NOT stay out on the deck with the other kids. One by one, each of the adults fell prey to his nonexistent social skills as he cornered each of us, regaling us partially with the complete discography of Barry Manilow (seriously), but mostly with the doings of his alter ego, who we'll call "Meyers." Meyers lives in the early 1970s, "when everything was perfect because we had none of today's technology, good manners, proper dressing, a good economy, but none of the racism of the 1950's." Meyers has a job and has to make sure to dress properly for it every single day, hence the suit. Meyers also doesn't understand cell phones or computers because "computers are the size of buildings." I asked about the Harry Potter glasses and was told that those are "mine, not Meyers'." Finally the combined efforts of his father and the lure of pizza got him out to the deck with the other kids, to our immense relief but the obvious discomfort of the kids. After Andy and his family left, I asked my friend's mom about him. Apparently Andy is not 16-17 like I thought, but 22--his younger brother is 16 and is the one who is actually friends with the birthday boy. Andy finished high school, but has never applied to college or had a job of any kind, and that he doesn't have any friends of his own and has never had a girlfriend. Andy's mother apparently has a blanket policy that if his brother is invited anywhere, that means Andy must be invited too, which both explained his presence at the party and made me feel horrible for the brother since that has got to be a strain on his social life. Andy goes with his little brother to the movies, to the mall, and to parties, regardless of whether or not he's wanted. That poor kid. If the brother resists, his mother cries and makes a scene about how awful it is that he doesn't love poor Andy and doesn't want to make him happy. My friend's mom has apparently known Andy's family for about seven years, and she said that Andy was always a little off, but the main problem was that Andy's mother refused to let him go to counseling or to a psychiatrist because "nothing was wrong with him." Every time Andy was teased or excluded, she would tell him that the problem wasn't that he only wanted to talk about himself, or that he wore filthy clothes, or that he couldn't tell the difference between fantasy and reality, but that it was everyone else's fault for not "looking within" and accepting him as he was. She encouraged the whole Meyers thing, telling him that he was a brilliant boy with a wonderful imagination and that if anyone didn't accept Meyers, they didn't accept him and that was their fault. The dad would try to talk to him about social behavior, but the mother would tell Andy to just ignore it because if someone doesn't accept you the way you are it means they don't really care about you. Speaking of Meyers, according to my friend's mom that whole bit started a few years ago as a fairly-innocent interest in vintage fashion, which Andy was allowed to harangue people about at length without any remonstrance from his parents. He started showing people pictures he'd drawn of himself in vintage clothes, then started wearing them everywhere and refusing to wash them because it would damage them. He started using his allowance to comb yard sales and junk shops for vintage items of any kind, no matter how commonplace or useless or in poor condition they were, treating them all as hallowed treasures simply because they were old (I got a whiff of this when he saw my lovely Oldsmobile and told me I should keep it forever because they're special because they aren't made anymore). Then he started pretending to be actually living in the past, and the imaginary landscape became richer and more detailed, and eventually his imaginary job and friends and lifestyle coalesced into Meyers, who he began just talking about but now often speaks as, writes as, and posts on the internet as. My friend's mom believes that he already thinks Meyers is real and that one day soon he'll be Meyers full-time. She also told me that Andy's mother told her that when the younger brother goes off to college, they're considering renting an apartment for him that Andy can live in too so he can have the whole college experience. (She told her that that was a terrible idea, for the record.) I was completely shocked and I feel horrible for Andy and his family (except the mom). Andy's brother is a perfectly normal, if slightly nerdy kid, and if Andy's parents had gotten him some help when he first started acting weird and obsessive they probably could have nipped that in the bud and Andy would probably be a more-or-less normal college student with friends and a part time job and a girlfriend or something. Even if they hadn't gotten him counseling or psychiatric help, they could have helped him by teaching him basic social skills and not letting him go off into an imaginary world. I wonder what kind of life Andy is going to have--he is in absolutely no way equipped to live on his own or even with roommates. He'll probably live at home until his parents die, drifting deeper into Meyers-land.
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Jul 9, 2013 21:57
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So we've had wolves, dragons, aliens, vampires, anime characters, elves, and now a 1970s business man. I'm not sure if this is weirder than the rest or just par for the course.
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Jul 9, 2013 22:22
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Brightman posted:So we've had wolves, dragons, aliens, vampires, anime characters, elves, and now a 1970s business man. I'm not sure if this is weirder than the rest or just par for the course. I just love the choice of the seventies. It's just hilarious, because it's (presumably) within living memory of immediate family members. If I had a kid who suddenly at the age of adulthood decided to start dressing like MY parents dressed during the 90's, I would find that pretty disconcerting. It's like he's pretending to be his own grandparent. Fascinator, I think a lot of these cases are the result of parents/guardian figures either intentionally or unintentionally encouraging or condoning the behavior. It's like they're so afraid their kid will stop loving them or turn into a hateful drug addict or something that they can't identify the line between "accepting your child's individuality" and "letting your kid run hog wild out of the range of normal societal behavior."
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Jul 9, 2013 22:44
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sweeperbravo posted:I just love the choice of the seventies. It's just hilarious, because it's (presumably) within living memory of immediate family members. If I had a kid who suddenly at the age of adulthood decided to start dressing like MY parents dressed during the 90's, I would find that pretty disconcerting. It's like he's pretending to be his own grandparent. He probably picked the 70s because it's still possible to find 70s clothes. I've dealt in vintage clothes. The 70s stuff is made like iron and wears forever, so long as it's properly cared for. Sounds like Mom needs to convince Meyers that his suits need to go to the cleaners. And I know what you're thinking--just don't pick them up--but that would make things much worse. No, go to the cleaners with Meyers, and make sure he understands just how much it costs to properly care for the clothes. That right there might motivate him to find work. Hell, it might be possible to steer him to work at a costume/vintage clothing shop, or even run his own. Maybe he could even learn tailoring. Or, you know, he's a waste of oxygen.
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Jul 10, 2013 00:40
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^ That's what I was thinking too. With Andy's mom, too much emphasis seems to be placed on accepting people for who they are. Which is great in theory, don't get me wrong. I was raised with the complete opposite doctrine (you must behave in a proscribed manner at all times or else) and it did a ton of damage. But I really don't get this whole concept of changing yourself being akin to selling out or betraying yourself or something, or the idea that someone who cares about you would never ask you to change. When someone has the occasional problem with being teased or excluded, letting them know that they can be themselves and that true friends don't expect you to change for them is the right thing to do. When someone is being constantly excluded and ostracized and doesn't seem to have many (or any) friends, it's virtually always because they're behaving in a way that really puts people off, and it doesn't do them any favors to tell them that changing themselves is a bad idea. Andy should have been told straight up by his parents or by another trusted confidante that you have to be attentive to other peoples' interests when you talk to them, that nobody wants to hear someone babble about tweed for an hour, and that talking about your imaginary friends is off-putting and creepy. I have no idea if Andy is autistic or has some other mental problem or if he was just spoiled horribly, but even if he is autistic his problems would have been considerably lessened if his mother hadn't basically poisoned him with the belief that he never needs to change and that anyone who wants him to is actively against him. I also find the choice of the 1970s to be hilarious. Especially his glorification of the manners and the economy of the period. I'll give him points for realizing that the fifties sucked for anyone who wasn't a middle-class white guy though.
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Jul 10, 2013 00:42
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Fascinator posted:^ That's what I was thinking too. With Andy's mom, too much emphasis seems to be placed on accepting people for who they are. Which is great in theory, don't get me wrong. I was raised with the complete opposite doctrine (you must behave in a proscribed manner at all times or else) and it did a ton of damage. But I really don't get this whole concept of changing yourself being akin to selling out or betraying yourself or something, or the idea that someone who cares about you would never ask you to change. Let's see. Meyers is what, 22? So, born 1990. Mom was probably born in the late 60s. Her folks probably raised her with the "Everything is Beautiful" mindset. It's not a big step to 'don't do anything to hurt my precious boy'. Seriously, though, it sounds like it wouldn't take a lot of encouraging to get him into being a real vintage fashionista. There's a lot of call for that, between theatre and vintage collectors.
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Jul 10, 2013 00:49
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As much as the idea of a reformed Andy/Meyers becoming a real vintage connoisseur is appealing, I have to unfortunately lay that one to rest. Having never met Andy before the party, everyone hastened to fill me in after he left, and reports from my friend and her family indicate that Meyers has never exhibited any actual interest in informed vintage collecting. He has simply fixated on the past in general and the 70s in particular as having what sounds to me like more of a symbolic/fetishistic importance. He isn't interested in 70's garb because of its workmanship, or the fit, or the social phenomena it spawned or was spawned by, or anything of the sort. He doesn't care if the clothes he buys fit him, or are in good shape, or anything, as long as they're old enough. He simply collects anything more than 30 years old solely because it's more than 30 years old. He doesn't have any interest in whether or not it's rare, in good condition, valuable, of historical/social significance, nothing like that. You could give him a mint condition haute couture 1970s suit or a beat-up chipped promotional coffee mug from the same era and he'd be equally happy with both simply because they're both from the 70s. By all reports, his "collection" is simply a pile of random unrelated crap culled from Goodwill and yard sales, almost none of which are interesting or in good condition, with the sole unifying factor being their age. We're talking ripped polyester shirts from Sears, old Reader's Digests with coffee stains, pieces of faux wood paneling, that sort of thing. My friend has been collecting vintage clothing for years and since their families are close she's had the opportunity to talk to Meyers about vintage dozens of times and reassures me that he has almost no actual knowledge, little to no discernment, and zero interest in cultivating either of the former.
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Jul 10, 2013 01:17
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Someone should hook this kid up to Macklemore.
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Jul 10, 2013 02:06
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Fascinator posted:"...but none of the racism of the 1950's" Tell that to my mother, a freshman at Lew Wallace High School in Gary, Indiana in 1974-75, who had the opportunity to be picked up by her long hair and flung halfway across a gymnasium during the outbreak of a race riot when Muhammad Ali 'assisted' a campaign for the election of a black mayor. The school closed for three days while students roved in small packs among their own skin color like some sort of prison yard.
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Jul 10, 2013 03:07
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TunaSpleen posted:Tell that to my mother, a freshman at Lew Wallace High School in Gary, Indiana in 1974-75, who had the opportunity to be picked up by her long hair and flung halfway across a gymnasium during the outbreak of a race riot when Muhammad Ali 'assisted' a campaign for the election of a black mayor. The school closed for three days while students roved in small packs among their own skin color like some sort of prison yard. And the race riots here in NJ as well  I think Fascinator agrees that the 70's were no walk in the park for minorities despite the progress from the Civil Rights Era, and was just including it as a comment on Andy Meyer's Delusion. Fascinator posted:You could give him a mint condition haute couture 1970s suit or a beat-up chipped promotional coffee mug from the same era and he'd be equally happy with both simply because they're both from the 70s. I feel bad for how hilarious this is to me. Clearly the kid has a true problem and here I am laughing at the minutiae. (Then again, that's what this thread is for, sin't it?) It's weird. I can appreciate the love of old things just because they're old, but my "collection" is relatively small and doesn't intrude on my life (and I intend to keep it that way). In addition it's mostly stuff from my grandparents so I have an actual sentimental connection. My aunt has an antique store she's been running since before I was born so I appreciate old weird stuff pretty much as second nature. I think the most worthless things I have are some old thermostat pamphlet from when our house was built in the '50s, some dumbbell workout instruction paper from the *~*SEVENTIES*~*, and a postwar RCA Victor television instruction manual. I guess Andy/Meyers is a look at what I could have become if I fell off the deep end and my parents reached out to continue pushing me instead of pulling me back to safety.
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Jul 10, 2013 03:19
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The especially awful part of it all is that the mother is basically guaranteeing that her younger son will resent his brother, and when she and her husband die he probably won't feel spectacularly motivated to take good care of Andy. It seems like the kind of thing where there's no happy ending for anybody concerned
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Jul 10, 2013 04:10
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RazorBunny posted:The especially awful part of it all is that the mother is basically guaranteeing that her younger son will resent his brother, and when she and her husband die he probably won't feel spectacularly motivated to take good care of Andy. It seems like the kind of thing where there's no happy ending for anybody concerned Why did I harbor hope? 
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Jul 10, 2013 04:20
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Yeah, I definitely don't think the 70's was some kind of magical harmonious wonderland  Sorry if I gave that impression!I feel terrible for the younger brother (let's call him Will). Imagine being a teenager and never getting to go anywhere without taking your insane older brother who thinks he's an accountant from 1972 with you. According to my friend's little brother, most kids only invite Will out once or twice and then never again and I don't blame them. Apparently he openly stares at Will's female friends, tries to dominate the conversation with Meyers' doings and the glories of old console television sets, and complains to their mother if Will and his friends were mean to him or ignored him. I really really hope that their mother doesn't follow through on her idea to make them live together when Will goes to college.
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Jul 10, 2013 05:08
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Fascinator posted:I really really hope that their mother doesn't follow through on her idea to make them live together when Will goes to college. That would be a terrible thing to do to both of them and would probably end pretty badly, regardless of Will's patience. The mother sounds absolutely obnoxious and toxic though. I'm pretty lucky I guess. The most thread-worthy person I've ever known was the brother of a friend-of-a-friend who I talked to a grand total of once. He had a bizarre fixation on ruling the world and latched onto me like a leech because I had ~job experience~ and was ~in college~. I just told him to apply to a few colleges and did my best to not validate his weird fixations.
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Jul 10, 2013 05:19
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I read somewhere that a lot of illusionary states are surprisingly mundane. Anyone know anything of this? Is thinking you're a 1970's accountant "normal" for crazy people?
Mind Loving Owl fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Jul 10, 2013 |
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Jul 10, 2013 05:27
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Fascinator posted:Yeah, I definitely don't think the 70's was some kind of magical harmonious wonderland And all the while Andy Meyers has been taught "Brother is there for you. You can, and will, always go with Brother." Like he's not a person, just some android playing the role of one. It adds up to kind of a solipsistic worldview for Andy Meyers. I keep picturing him being Gene Hackman's character in The Conversation. Except that guy was at least interesting because he was a secret creepy surveillance dude. Is the name Meyers anything close to the actual name he uses? Is it just another last name?
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Jul 10, 2013 06:24
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God, poor Will. If I was him I'd be sneaking out every single night. I hope that when he moves out, he leaves home without notice and leaves no forwarding address.
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Jul 10, 2013 07:01
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Fascinator posted:Yeah, I definitely don't think the 70's was some kind of magical harmonious wonderland Nah, you're good. Just me thinking about how sad it is that his own parents couldn't (or wouldn't) tell him about the major social issues that occurred in their own lifetime. I realize that the riots in Gary and New Jersey mostly impacted those particular communities and most of America just went on with their mundane lives, so racial tension elsewhere wouldn't even register for a then-teenager in the deep south where racism has always been A Thing. The best thing his brother can do is study his rear end off, get a full ride to a school in an expensive area, and try to ditch Meyers due to absurd cost of living. But chances are the mother would just force him to go to a rural craphole with cheap rent and poo poo programs just to accommodate Meyers' delusions. I've seen plenty of good students forced to go to bad schools just because someone couldn't cut the umbilical cord.
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Jul 10, 2013 08:36
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Mind Loving Owl posted:I read somewhere that a lot of illusionary states are surprisingly mundane. Anyone know anything of this? Is thinking you're a 1970's accountant "normal" for crazy people? Meyers seems to be a businessman, not a mere accountant. Mom has never faced Meyers' problems. Or maybe she has, and it's far beyond anyone's reach. I mean, what if--what if Meyers is actually a reincarnated 70s businessman?? 
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Jul 10, 2013 09:11
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Khazar-khum posted:Meyers seems to be a businessman, not a mere accountant. Then the question is what killed him?
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Jul 10, 2013 09:44
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I'm having trouble processing the logic behind Meyers. I mean, one decade seems too short a time to base a whole identity on. What will happen to Meyers in ten years from now? Will he become an 80's businessman? What about 30 years from now, when our present becomes the nostalgic past? I guess this puzzles me because my father was a typical 70's businessman, and now he is a typical 2010's businessman. It's not two different people. Edit: Has Meyers told what line of business he's in? Hex Vision fucked around with this message at 10:06 on Jul 10, 2013 |
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Jul 10, 2013 09:57
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Mind Loving Owl posted:Then the question is what killed him? Reagan.
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Jul 10, 2013 12:42
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Fascinator posted:...that nobody wants to hear someone babble about tweed for an hour... Why is this so loving funny?
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Jul 10, 2013 14:16
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I did a bit of theorizing in the Ugly/Awkward thread about why geeks and nerds drift towards fedoras and older clothes. My theory was that it was an attempt at appearing masculine when you're aware you can't quite keep up with the average male, be it social anxiety or just oddball interests that alienate. I would imagine their image of a successful male is the cliche jock / frat. Something they're well aware they can't remotely match as they lack the self confidence to fit in or are terrified they'll be seen as a horrid person. The only other masculine image they can think of is "the noble gentleman" in which they become attached to the idea of knowledge, class, refinement and pistols at dawn. Likely based off their grandparents who no doubt have bemoaned about the kids ruining the world. They assume that by dressing up in the image of class people will come to respect them for holding open doors. The irony is that despite the wealth of material on the Internet they mix and match styles with painful results; baggy white tie at a wedding. The other version are the ones who actually do it well, wear contemporary clothing that fits. However suits are almost all they wear out in public and they just look out of place, even at the family BBQ. I knew people who would wear suits to places like a LAN party. It was a sort of desperate bid to appear better than the rest of us in cargo shorts and t shirts. Didn't help they acted snobbish to boot. The overlap with steampunk acts on the connection between "I'm a geek" vs the idea of being a Victorian era geek, complete with foresight into the miraculous new technologies at the time. While it's partially dress up, you can't help think when you see a guy in regular business wear with a bowler hat that, has non functional goggles in place of a hatband - that he's an IT drone who hates his life. Who dreams of constructing giant mechanical spiders to destroy the office and win the heart of the woman on the front desk. I suspect one of Meyers' problems is that he - through nature or nurture - cannot connect with people of his age and creates an alter-ego as a coping mechanism. Then in an honest effort to get people to relate to him, churns out factoids about tweed in the hopes of gaining understanding. The 70's business man implies he wants a life of success and stability because the archetype is so clean cut and straightforwards. His particulars over that decade ties into some self-perpetuating fear that he doesn't want to be seen as a wife beating racist. I can't help shake he'll become some Patrick Bateman, out of a frustration with the world not going to his internal plans.
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Jul 10, 2013 15:56
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So how does Andy frame Meyers? Is he a reincarnation of him? Does he "take over his body", does he claim to speak for him. Or most disconcerting at all, just randomly start pretending? Reminds me a little of Captain Tripps from Wild Cards.
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Jul 10, 2013 17:57
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A lot of it definitely seems to be a reaction against what could be thought of as the popular opinion. Why there's that whole thing of 'Swag is for boys, Class is for men' that they seem to love. They're so busy trying to set themselves apart from all of those that they consider jocks/lesser people that they're completely loving themselves up. It's definitely not helped by their internet hug-box or real life hug-box in the case of Mathers. It's kinda systematic of a larger problem which ultimately set's them apart from people who they could have been friends with otherwise. They consider other people below them, but at the same time see themselves as the victims. I'll be honest, when I was in my early teens, I held that exact thought process. I was convinced of my intellectual superiority to my surrounding classmates. Which in truth was a coping mechanism to deal with the psychological problems and trust issues my year 6 teacher had installed within me. It didn't help that I'd recently discovered I had dyslexia and had been told I had to work %110 harder then everyone else to keep up with them. Which challenged the notion of being smarter then everyone else. All of it led to a loss of any real social skills and a huge sense of paranoia and panic when around anyone who I didn't know. Hell I might have ended up exactly like Mathers or any of the other crazies we've seen in this thread. Were it not for my best friend who actually helped me deal with some of this poo poo and helped turn me into a normal person capable of holding a conversation with another human being. So from my perspective, I've seen the spiral from the inside. I know exactly how it starts. Alienation, and a lack of normal social contact leads to developing behaviours that only lessen the person's chance to make actual friends. Anything which reinforces these behaviours is clung to desperately. Until the person starts loosing basic human empathy, or the ability to understand others. That, in my mind at least, is why so many of these shut in neckbeards hold such horrifying opinions on rape or sexism. They've only got their own perspective to understand it from, and react badly when these positions are challenged. Arashiofordo3 fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Jul 10, 2013 |
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Jul 10, 2013 18:14
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Meyers is not the real name, nor is Andy. Meyers' real name is simply another surname. I changed it because my friend's brother told me that Andy posts online as Meyers, at least using Facebook and I don't know where else, and this kid and his family have enough problems without goons digging them up. I'm also unclear about exactly what kind of work Meyers does--when I said accountant I just pulled it from thin air. This is probably related to the fact that Andy has never had a job or considered having a job, and both of his parents are blue-collar so he has absolutely no idea what goes on in an office. Actually the entire general concept of Meyers seems to be pretty poorly articulated. I asked some of the same questions you guys are asking and nobody could come up with an answer. Meyers, like the vintage collection, seems to not be fully fleshed out. On racism, the general consensus of Andy's family's demographic seems to be that racism is very bad, but it's limited to actual Klansmen using the n-word and it's pretty much been over since Martin Luther King Jr, so yeah, nobody is going to tell him that racism didn't end by the 70s and he probably wouldn't believe you/care if you did. Tunaspleen, I hate to crush your hopes and the hopes of everyone else in this thread, but I don't think Will is going to go to an expensive college on the other side of the country and never see Meyers again. The general idea among Will/Andy's parents and their social circle is that college is a utilitarian object, so you go to the cheapest, closest one because they're all the same and if you go somewhere far away it means you hate your family. Also, Will's parents are frankly not equipped to help him find scholarships or apply to colleges, and neither his high school nor his record are spectacular. He will probably either go to the local community college for two years and then transfer to the regional state school an hour away, or start out there. I'm not knocking community college/state schools, but IMO you go to the very best school you can reasonably handle financially, not the closest school or the cheapest school. (I know all this because a) I'm a professor so every single person I meet feels the need to tell me in detail their opinion of higher education and b) my best friend went to an expensive school far away and continues to get poo poo/bewilderment for it.) Webdog, I'd be willing to bet that that thought process or a similar one contributed to the development of Meyers. From what I understand, he's always been excluded by other kids, and seems to idealize the past as a time when people were more genteel and wouldn't treat him badly and he'd be able to fit in. I'm going to ask my friend if she knows anything else about this business.
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Jul 10, 2013 18:23
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Fascinator posted:Webdog, I'd be willing to bet that that thought process or a similar one contributed to the development of Meyers. From what I understand, he's always been excluded by other kids, and seems to idealize the past as a time when people were more genteel and wouldn't treat him badly and he'd be able to fit in. I think that describes a lot of these people, actually. If only they could get to the right place and time, they'd fit right in. That's why weeaboos fetishize Glorious Nippon as the place where their anime obsessions will make them part of the mainstream. People like Meyers are desperately lost and lonely, and no time machine would ever help them.
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Jul 10, 2013 20:50
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Khazar-khum posted:I think that describes a lot of these people, actually. If only they could get to the right place and time, they'd fit right in. That's why weeaboos fetishize Glorious Nippon as the place where their anime obsessions will make them part of the mainstream. People like Meyers are desperately lost and lonely, and no time machine would ever help them. They wanna go where everybody knows their name, and they're always glad they came.
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Jul 10, 2013 21:15
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Khazar-khum posted:That's why weeaboos fetishize Glorious Nippon as the place where their anime obsessions will make them part of the mainstream. I think the sad thing about that particular idea is they'd be just as ostracized over there and treated as otakus. Which, if my casual knowledge of japan is anything to go by, is a bad thing.
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Jul 10, 2013 23:22
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WebDog posted:The other version are the ones who actually do it well, wear contemporary clothing that fits. However suits are almost all they wear out in public and they just look out of place, even at the family BBQ. I knew people who would wear suits to places like a LAN party. It was a sort of desperate bid to appear better than the rest of us in cargo shorts and t shirts. Didn't help they acted snobbish to boot. At the art school I'm attending, there was this one kid, 17 years old, who wore a full suit and waistcoat and tie. With greased hair. And he carried his stuff around in a briefcase. There's another kid in the class who went to the same high school as him, and she told me that he wore suits every single day at school. The funny part is that everyone else in my class is 30+ years, and nobody is impressed by his mature suaveness... just slightly confused. I can only assume this was the reason that after several months, he suddenly switched over to wearing regular clothes, like t-shirt and jeans. He looks a million times cooler and more approachable now. JohnOfOrdo3 posted:I think the sad thing about that particular idea is they'd be just as ostracized over there and treated as otakus. Which, if my casual knowledge of japan is anything to go by, is a bad thing. The average Japanese person (women especially) is even more disgusted by otakus than people are over here. e. I also remember some dumb little interview thing where they asked Japanese women about the top ten most off-putting things for people to have as cellphone wallpaper. #1 was 'a photograph of yourself', and #2 was 'anything anime'.
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Jul 11, 2013 01:58
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Corridor posted:The average Japanese person (women especially) is even more disgusted by otakus than people are over here. Well I never, I knew they weren't well respected but I had no idea it was that bad. Poor dumb anime loving nerds, they just can't catch a break. I guess we can only hope they grow out of it and become more productive members of society, at least for their own sakes.
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Jul 11, 2013 08:53
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Corridor posted:e. I also remember some dumb little interview thing where they asked Japanese women about the top ten most off-putting things for people to have as cellphone wallpaper. #1 was 'a photograph of yourself', and #2 was 'anything anime'.
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Jul 11, 2013 09:39
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