A place to share and discuss stories from The Onion, Clickhole, and other satire.
Great Satire Writing:
Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson
Its not just me right? This guy is insufferable. Like he got to take Carl Sagan's seat but he has none of the humility that comes from the sense of awe that Sagan was able to inspire through his understanding of the universe.
He just seems like a pompous asshole. The stories about his lectures and how much he charges don't help at all.
I try not to downplay the importance of science communication but NDT is an ass
He's pompous af and like, regularly wrong. Which its like, bro you can carry the arrogance, but you have to be %100 all the time or you need to drop it.
He sees himself as a contrarian before anything else I think and never misses an opportunity to flount it
I don’t get why it’s so popular to hate on him.
Its not a matter of popularity but a matter of how he conducts himself.
Here are about 20 examples: https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dmkgz/neil-degrasse-tysons-tweets-are-so-bad-and-he-needs-to-go-away
The writer of that article seems over the top angry about NDT’s tweets. Enough so that he titles the article “Neil Degrasse Tyson Shut The Fuck Up”.
Maybe its justified though, let’s look at some examples:
-NDT tweeted that “Marriage Story” should’ve been called “Divorce Story”.
-NDT tweeted chunks of asteroid in the movie Armageddon conveniently hit all the major cities of earth.
-NDT tweeted that the aliens in the movie Arrival would’ve had to write backwards to communicate.
…Seriously this doesn’t explain the hate for him. It just makes the writer seem like he has a chip on his shoulder.
it’s cinema sins but with the “he’s an astrophysicist so he must know what he’s talking about”
when an otherwise smart guy spends his time nitpicking…movies?…he comes across as the friend you wouldn’t want to go to the movies with, no?
you can argue that the hate might be “over the top” (and i tend to agree), but that mfer comes across as straight insufferable - in that if i had a choice i wouldn’t want to be around him - so i can empathise.
edit: i’m sure there’s more, but i’m struggling to come up with any other scientist who spends their time saying “haha that ben affleck movie about oil drillers isn’t scientifically accurate!?!?” instead of, you know, positively impacting/selling their field of study.
Comparing it to cinemasins is ridiculous. Cinemasins just straight makes shit up, doesn't pay attention, is deliberately obtuse, and nitpicks to stretch out video run times. They do it for ad revenue.
NDT's tweets may annoy some people but they're still at least helping to educate. He's using movies as an opportunity to inject some scientific facts into the space. He could be doing it smarter and less obnoxiously, but it's still just him doing his job. It doesn't make him deserving of anywhere near as much contempt as he gets on the Internet.
And again, he is not the only celebrity that acts pompous and makes incorrect assertions on Twitter. Yet this is all anyone talks about when it comes to him.
You're spending your time nitpicking a guy who nitpicks movies. He's allowed to have a life outside of astrophysics
There are a lot of people I wouldn’t want to go to the movies with. But I wouldn’t write an article about each of them telling them to shut the fuck up.
That reaction just doesn’t make sense to me.
I mean those all seem like pretty decent examples of some one being a pedantic, pompous, "trying to constantly appear smart", tool-bag.
None of which unusual on Twitter from celebrities.
Why does he get chewed out for it specifically?
I disagree. I’ve had many times where people call out plot holes in movies just because they stand out to them. Not because they are trying to appear smart.
It happens a lot on the Star Wars and Star Trek communities here on lemmy but I don’t see it getting the same reaction.
I can't speak for anyone else, but for me it's the way I viewed him with hope and admiration, then later discovered he's just yet one more self-obsessed asshole media personality. It's rare anymore that I switch off the cynicism the world has beaten into me and allow myself to just assume the best about some media figure. And doing so leaves one vulnerable - finding out later that this was naive and foolish really hardens that cynicism. This stings in a way that just assuming he was a piece of shit from the start doesn't.
To me he just sounds like a character from that show Big Bang Theory. I think he may come off wrong sometimes when he is trying to bring science into the discussion but everyone has bad days. I don’t think Carl Sagan would’ve held it against him.
Stop for a second and really think about it.
Why would so many people hate a progressive scientifically minded black man on the internet?
Plenty of people act high and mighty on Twitter, plenty of public speakers charge for their appearances, it's ridiculous how NGT gets singled out for it so much.
Yup. There's some backlash against new atheism but ngt's high crimes are sometimes being a bit awkward or pedantic and others like Richard Dawkins opine about how eugenics is unfairly maligned and Muslims are evil.
The degree of criticism and the bitch eating-crackers-tone of it all defs has a racial component.
He's fine, he's a famous rich dude. They're all a bit annoying sometimes because power makes you weird but he doesn't really hurt people, spew malice, or agitate for horrendous politics. He makes silly tweets about movie logic and explains cosmology to people.
Revisit the thread and scroll down to find that picture of his tweets. People like to pile on other shit that bothers them but realistically, NDT is kind of a blowhard and a bit weird. His ackshewalley attitude doesn't help either.
I've said it before, I found his conversation with god podcast episode to be in poor taste - sort of smarmy and condescending, and this is coming from an atheist. I'm sure there are plenty of racists that hate him for his skin color but not everyone has such easily dismissable reasons.
As someone whose content specialization is Astronomy, I've always disliked Dr. Tyson as a public figure. I've always found him to be pretty pompous and patronizing with his explanations and descriptions. As you mention, he's filling large shoes and lacks the the humility to handle it.
He really doesn’t even come close to filling Sagan’s shoes and we should find someone who can.
100%. That's the perfect way of putting it too. Sagan seemed super humble and had a genuine state of wonder with with universe. NDT seems like an insufferable know it all douche who just likes publicity. Being a know it all seems antithetical to science.
I know right. NDT may be passionate about science, but the guy is way too far up his own backside to do what Sagan did... Narcissists aren't inspiring to anyone but other narcissists, to the rest of they're insufferable.
I feel bad for Chuck, his co host on his podcast. He never misses an opportunity to remind him that he's an "outsider" that's only there for comic relief.
Chuck is in on it, he's fine. He knows and plays into it. But he's definitely not dumb. He can follow along with what Neil says just fine, even advanced topics that I can't follow as someone very interested in science. I know he can because he rephrases what Neil says in his own words and Neil would go "Exactly!" or something to that effect.
The comic relief act is just that, an act, for comic relief, and it's funny because it's working in a meta type way.
I've never listened to the podcast but this seems so on brand for him.
Science isn't a religion or cult. Its a process and literally just thinking and becoming informed allows you to be a part of that process. It doesn't need gatekeepers.
Wait until he brings up mirror kissing.
"How can mirrors be real if our eyes aren't real?"
He's doing his best to give tips to the other narcissists out there - after all he learned from the best, himself
For a joke y'all got super serious about this.
Ate the onion lol
People love to bandwagon hate. But honestly I gotta give credit to this one, it almost feels like something that could happen lol.
Nah, it's just cuz Tysons an asshole. It's good to remind people of that. No one's taking the gag seriously.
https://thehardtimes.net/about/
Satire, for those who didn't catch on.
The issue is that NDT is an asshole, a pompous one at that.
Noone is eating the onion, everyone is just getting angry at the douche.
Twitter didn’t exist in Carl Sagan’s time, and he was just as critical of science fiction in movies.
I'll be sure to forward that video to thehardtimes.net. Hopefully they'll tease the ghost of Carl Sagan equally to settle any concerns of unfair treatment.
The Hard Times is a very real punk news site that you should not question. Just absorb the information as truth and move on. The historic satire site was founded in December 1976. It’s made by a group of punk and hardcore kids from all the different sub-genres of the DIY hardcore scene. Any resemblance to actual persons or band names is coincidental.
I really like NDT overall, but as I was reading the title I was almost certain what community this was in, but not 100%. He has his flaws. Like a lot of people on social media, he needs to learn when not to engage.
I like NdGT and I don't care what anyone thinks.