Welcome to the weekend!
Fair warning, though. This edition is going to be a bit darker than our usual entries on this topic. Today, I wanted to step back and cover the fall of a comedian from the 1990s, a cautionary tale of self-destruction that happened out in the open for everyone to see.
Those who lived in that time remembered the 1990s as an era of rebels, how cool people were here and who they didn't take no guff from anyone. We'd lived through the stock times of safe pansies and The Jocks, and now we were going to redefine not only what Normal was, we were going to reach that utopia of alcohol and pills, and all we had to do was check our boxes, dot our i's, and cross our t's along the way. It was all so simple.
All you had to do, was look away from the ugliness. Just pretend it wasn't there and it would just fix itself.
The above story is a perfect example of the hidden darkness of that era. There you will see that the so-called Edginess of the 1990s was the precursor to the PC era it also brought in due to the abject cowardice lying at the heart of the mainstream. Just ignore it, man, it's just a joke. He'll learn his lesson next time. Don't take everything so seriously. What are you, some kind of ist or phobe? Very little has changed except to replace the vapid coolguy posturing with vapid shrewish librarian-level lecturing.
As a result this long documentary also feels like it highlights the death of the 1990s and where it all ended up, showing the logical progression of the decade of Not Caring and rebel posing. The main subject aside, it also highlights the failure of peers, an entire system, and even the legal system, as they just stand by and let a man self-destruct and take down anyone he wants along the way. As I said, there is a sickening cravenness at the heart of things from back then that I don't think we've fully explored yet.
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| Only those who were kids at the time miss this era |
Of course, one must also mention the staple of Current Year entertainment: the grifting. You cannot escape it. Mindless Mammon worship is everywhere and so blatant that it tends to come across so bluntly and without even a hint of shame.
You even see how internet streaming plays into the "drama" for fifteen minutes of fame to profit off the self-destruction and even throw fuel on the fire. The documentary covers just how far this world has decayed since its peak back in the 1990s where poisoning yourself was cool and knocking down others along your way was worth a hearty chuckle and a shrug. It's all just silly, so don't worry. He will obviously figure it out himself!
But, of course, that isn't what happened. The only memories of the 1990s left are those trying to throw the era under the bus to keep the cultural Eye of Sauron away from them, and those who want to return to it as some era of bootstrapping paradise where everyone was left alone to implode and that made things better.
The truth is that the decade was neither and it was only not noticeable because the pining party was either too young or lived in an isolated area where the destruction and decay had not already set in. Looking back now, however, all the signs are there and it all logically lead to the mess we are in today.
There is no going back to that time, no matter how much you miss the entertainment or your sixth grade classroom.
The fact of the matter is the past century has mostly been spent, not so much going in the wrong direction, but alternatively barreling downhill and letting our foot of the gas to let the momentum take us instead. And now we're paying for it with death worship, misery, and general mistrust, in place of the values we used to understand so intimately.
In fact, now that I think about it, I'm not so sure the above is a cautionary tale so much as a sum up of what the past three decades have logically brought us to. The worship of vice, the dehumanization of our neighbors and the desire to be Left Alone, the loss of trust and general hope for better days, and the craving of fame at the cost of self-respect and fulfillment. It's just the story of where we ourselves have let things decline to.
Make no mistake, there is more this than the self-destruction of one minor celebrity from his peak a quarter of a century ago. It's also the story of how cowardice and emptiness was allowed to fester, eventually eating the insides until nothing was left but the shell--that same shell being used as a skinsuit to lecture you today.
As a bonus, enjoy the segment where a supposed edgy shock jock gets infuriated and offended over being called an offensive name despite the depraved acts and disgusting things his dirty hands and stained soul have profited off of over the years. How dare you offend him! As mentioned before--this downfall isn't only about one man's destruction. There is much more going on, as there always is, which lead us to this point.
And that's where I will leave you for this week. Today's subject might be a little dark, but you have to remember that it's simply the bottom of a downhill slide we've been on longer than many readers of this post were even cognoscente of life itself. This means little for the future as long as we take stock in these failures and correct them in the times ahead.
This isn't meant to be a downer, a way to say there is no future ahead but bleakness. The above is some objective fact of life being miserable and hopeless but that it is the obvious endpoint of a time that merely squeaked by on momentum and the hard work of others to sustain themselves. Now that this era is over, it's going to require a mindset shift and the effort of everyone to push hard on the other direction--to forcibly build instead of allowing decay to fester on.
It's going to take some time, but it can be done. We're just going to have to learn from the past for once instead of ignoring or demonizing it.
Don't ever forget the mistakes we made, otherwise we can't even begin to fix them. And it's something we can no longer afford avoiding.
That's all for now, and I will see you next time.
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