It’s a good thing I wasn’t talking to you, then :)

Hate to be that asshole, but antisocial = psychopath. Asocial = not into hanging out with people. There is a difference and unless I’m misinterpreting your comment, I don’t think you belong in the former category.

I’m glad I don’t live in North Korea because I wouldn’t want to traumatize their poor government with pics of my face and body in the morning. There are limits to cruelty.

Yeah, I see what you mean! In that sense, I don’t think we disagree all that much, actually :D

What things in the books have you noticed? I only read the first 4 and got stuck in the 5th - twice. My latest read was ten to twelve years ago, so I’m a bit fuzzy on the details. I just remember being incredibly unimpressed with the writing and story during my last read while still enjoying the world and atmosphere. Didn’t pick up on any weird views and beliefs back then, I think.

Oh, Vance was like that? Haha explains a lot, lol. How sad for him. That man was never on my radar until he start insulting my country and passing on Zelenskyj on international TV. The vibe I got from him is that he’s the type of guy who will suck up to everyone and stab everyone in the back the minute he sees the benefit to himself. Makes sense if he used to be super liberal.

As for Rowling, I honestly think most of her strange behavior has less to do about personal beliefs and more to do with wanting admiration and being incapable of admitting fault. I wrote a longer comment to someone else about how I see Rowling and while it’s all speculation, I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be how she functions.

With people who behave like that, it is rarely about the cause itself and more about something deeper. I believe Rowling is addicted to attention and is terrified of being wrong. Those two are a very bad combo. Especially when you have spent 20 years being praised as the queen of children’s literature and has been beloved and idolized like a god where people take everything you say and turn them into inspirational quotes on their social medias and tell you how you ARE their childhoods etc. Suddenly being confronted with pushback when you have been riding a high for years must be kind of startling. Especially when all you have in your tool box is doubling down and making strong statements on social issues, lol.

If I had infinite time, I would genuinely love to dissect what the hell her psychology is, why she is the way that she is and how we got here because I only have the cliffnotes version and my vantage point and I just see a pattern of behavior that goes way, way deeper than political issues and activism.

Giving someone the benefit of the doubt isn’t the same as being an apologist.

I think that there are aspects of her personality that sadly lends itself to her ending up in situations like this, but I see the trans stuff more so as a symptom and not a belief she’s held strongly and evily her whole life.

The things I have noticed about Rowling’s character is that she seems to love being praised like a hero or an icon. I think she wants to be a role model because she kinda became one when she wrote her books. I think it gave her a high she hasn’t been able to feel since.

I have also noticed that Rowling tends to double down on things she say. When she started retconing Harry Potter and making everyone retroactively black and gay, she became very aggressive toward anyone who disagreed or questioned this depiction of hers. Back then, people didn’t care as much because she was PC so while she was obnoxious, she was still perceived to be somewhat well-meaning, if in a performative way.

I think she is a massive perfectionist who’s terrified of being wrong or less perfect. I think she retconed her characters because she wanted the credit of being ahead of her time. It wasn’t enough to have written the most popular book series for kids and teens, that changed the landscape of children’s literature. No. She also needed the credit of being PC before it was cool. Even if that wasn’t the case.

She also started calling people fascist on Twitter, pewdiepie being one of them and she never backed down from that statement despite being entirely misinformed and ignorant about the situation with him. I vaguely remember similar instances where she would barge in to discussions on Twitter and make statements that were foolish and uninformed and never apologizing for anything or taking the L.

When the trans stuff happened, it just makes sense to me that she would double down on that too because she cannot be wrong. Personally I don’t think her initial comments on the subject were all that wild, but the things I have heard her say and do since sounds pretty extreme and to me is in line with her pattern of doubling down and going to the extremes to be right before ever admitting fault or backing down.

In that sense, I agree that the pattern of behavior probably was a reoccurring thing for many years, but I don’t believe she hated trans people always. I also don’t believe she cared about PC stuff until it became popular. All those things are mere symptoms of a deeper character flaw of someone who yearns for validation and to be right. But this is just me armchair diagnosing here and I don’t know enough about her past nor about how she is as a person, but based on the things I have casually observed her do for almost two decades, I do believe that this current behavior of hers was cultivated and nurtured rather than being how she was day one. I think she gave in to her negative traits and the fact that she ended up clinging to trans issues, to me, is more down to chance than the core motivation for her. It could have been anything else, honestly, but it became trans stuff.

And no, I am not apologizing for her because I have always found her behavior fucking cringe and misguided. I just don’t believe she has always been a trans hater. At the end of the day, I do kind of feel sorry for her in the same way I feel sorry for Musk and Trump and all his lickspittles.

What hole must you have inside to feel such an urge to self-destruct and actively hurt other people when you feel the smallest bit of pushback or rejection? That must be a very sad existence.

I don’t think you read my comment.

I don’t know what happened to her, but all this bs began after she finished the books. For years she was desperate to not fade into obscurity and first tried to cater to the pc crowd and then it slowly turned to hate and harassment against people who weren’t pc enough. Then the trans bs started and while I have not kept up with her since she called pewdiepie a fascist, I can tell that she’s sticking to her MO of doubling down on something even when people try and tell her to let it go. I don’t think she started out as a bad person, but I think all the wealth and attention kinda fucked her up. It’s almost like witnessing an addict going from recreational usage of drugs, to becoming a meth addict on a street corner who is willing to do anything to remain relevant in any way.

But wtf do I know. All I can say is that it’s kinda nice to finally be able to say that the writing in the Harry Potter books was mid af. Ten years ago ppl told me to kill myself, lol. I still think it’s a fun world and the worldbuilding is great as long as you don’t start asking questions, but the actual writing and storytelling? Pretty amateur in my humble opinion. I have felt this way since I lost interest in the series around 2006 and I still feel this way. Still haven’t managed to finish the books because I hate the fifth one with a passion. The editor was on vacation when she wrote that drivel.

I assumed they did. Maybe not all, to be fair, but I am pretty sure they have produced audio recordings of books in the past(?)

Maybe I’m just tripping, I dunno.

Dude, I know how you feel xD back in 2009 I bought an audio recording of the first Twilight book because I was curious about ehat the fuss was about. It was in Danish, as I am Danish, and the narrator, bless her, had a very Danish way of pronouncing the word “flirting”. In Danish we don’t have a modern word for flirting so we just use the English one with English pronunciation, but this lady, who already sounded like she was in her 60s, just went full Dane on that word and it completely took me out of the story and had me yell at my ghettoblaster “FLIRTING” everytime she pronounced her mutilated version of that word. I don’t even know how to write a phonetic version of what the fuck she said, but I’ll try.

Fleert-eh

Fuck me, it’s been almost 16 years and just spelling it out made my skin crawl.

I also hated that book, but that wasn’t really the narrator’s fault. Had to pause the fuck out of it several times and rage clean my apartment. Nobody had told me about how it romanticized abusive relationships and I had JUST gotten out of one of those so to say I was triggered was an understatement. The mispronounciations of flirting were just the garnish on top, lol.

Sure, but it is still lame for a company like Audible to expect people to pay for their service and then they decide to cut costs by switching to AI voices. They can afford to hire actors to read their books. They have no excuse to go do that.

Meanwhile what you’re talking about if books and stories that may not get to be picked to be narrated and well, I can see where ai voices could be a benefit in those cases. Especially for people with dyslexia.

I just disagree with a company that sells itself on narrated books and then they go and have robots read their shit? Why should anyone pay for that? Because I’m sure their prices wouldn’t go down either.

And when all is said and done, personally, I just prefer that a human being is reading to me. Especially if it is fiction.

I prefer listening to real people. No matter how good AI voices become, I still like knowing that the one reading the book to me understands what they are saying.

Makes sense! I tend to prefer good films too. I can watch a bad horror flick now and again, but I do prefer movies that want something from me. I have a few people I used to refer to for movie recommendations on youtube. Not because I agreed with their tastes always, but because they were pretty good at finding movies I hadn’t heard of and since I knew their tastes I would also know approximately what I would think about this or that film. Haven’t really kept myself updated on the horror landscape in recent years because life is busy. That has bit me in the ass a few times.

Most recently, I goofed and drug my boyfriend to the cinema to watch The Monkey because I had heard that it was super scary and very creative. I must have been trolled because that film was probably the worst Stephen King movie I have seen since The Dark Tower. Holy shit. If it wasn’t for the fact that we had bought tickets to see it, we would have left after the the babysitters funeral. Holy shit it was awful. It was the worst kind of horror comedy. I’m sure you know what I mean.

Nice! Reminds me a bit of the later seasons of The White Vault. First two seasons: masterpieces. Everything after that starts to over explain a little too much. Still enjoyable, but it just explains too much and kinda cheapens the universe. Have you listened to the White Vault? It’s a radioplay/podcast that takes a lot of inspiration from The Thing. It’s really good! Well… the first two seasons are. XD

You sound a lot like one of my colleagues who has an endless love for shit tier horror movies. XD the worse they are the happier he is. If the movies are worse than Manos: The Hands of Fate, he is in heaven xD he used to make movie nights at work where people could join and watch horrible horror movies on a big screen. Man, I miss him xD

Cool! I just looked it up and I had no idea they made an actual Creep TV series. That’s so cool. XD would you recommend it? I guess you would since you mentioned it haha.

I actually wrote you a long message with recommendations and then the comment crashed because I wrote too much (I guess?) So I’ll just stick to just movie recommendations this time. I’ve tried to stick to lesser known horror movies that I think are either brilliant or interesting or both. There are some movies I’d like to put on the list, but since you say you are well versed in horror, I assume you know those already as they are pretty mainstream. I will make a few exceptions along the way, though, as I may consider some of them mainstream, but they might still be movies that someone could have missed.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1920 - surreal horror

Possession, 1981 - surreal body horror

Felidae, 1994 - animation

Perfect Blue, 1997 - animation

Snow White: A Tale of Terror, 1997 - fairytale horror

Audition, 1999 - horror drama

May, 2002 - horror drama

Rabbits, 2002 - surreal horror (David Lynch)

A Tale of Two Sisters, 2003 - mystery horror

The Signal, 2007 - anthology horror

Wind Chill, 2007 - popcorn horror

Lake Mungo, 2008 - found footage

Eden Lake, 2008 - survival horror

Pontypool, 2008 - surreal horror

AM1200, 2008 - horror short

Thirst, 2009 - vampire movie

Triangle, 2009 - psychological horror

I Saw the Devil, 2010 - crime thriller

Beyond the Black Rainbow, 2010 - surreal horror

The Strange Thing About the Johnsons, 2011 - horror short

Silent House, 2011 - psychological horror

Evidence, 2011 - found footage

Grave Encounters, 2011 - surreal horror

The Skin I Live In, 2011 - psychological horror

Don’t Hug Me, I’m Scared, 2011 - surreal internet horror series

Resolution, 2012 - mystery horror

Maniac, 2012 - psychological horror

Excision, 2012 - psychological horror

Chained, 2012 - psychological horror

American Mary, 2012 - popcorn horror

Afflicted, 2013 - found footage

Proxy 2013 - surreal horror

The Borderlands, 2013 - found footage

The Voices, 2013 - surreal horror comedy

Starry Eyes, 2014 - body horror

Creep, 2014 - found footage

Human Form, 2014 - horror short

Housebound, 2014 - horror comedy

Black Mountain Side, 2014 - mystery horror

The Invitation, 2015 - mystery horror

The Boy, 2015 - psychological horror (the one with the boy with antlers and fire in the background on the poster. NOT the one with the doll)

Maggie, 2015 - horror drama

The Silenced, 2015 - mystery horror

Deathgasm, 2015 - horror comedy

The Balckcoat’s Daughter, 2015 - mystery horror

The Devil’s Candy, 2015 - popcorn horror

Southbound, 2015 - anthology horror

Demon, 2015 - horror drama

Bone Tomahawk, 2015 - horror western

Krampus, 2015 - Christmas horror

The Eyes of My Mother, 2016 - fairytale horror

The Wailing, 2016 - folklore/crime horror

A Dark Song, 2016 - mystery horror

Berlin Syndrome, 2017 - psychological horror

The Evil Within, 2017 - surreal horror

Zygote, 2017 - horror short

Lords of Chaos, 2018 - horror/crime drama

Elizabeth Harvest, 2018 - mystery horror

Climax, 2018 - surreal horror

Suspiria, 2018 - surreal horror

Come To Daddy, 2019 - horror comedy

The Night House, 2020 - mystery horror

His House, 2020 - psychological horror

The Invisible Man, 2020 - psychological horror

Run, 2020 - horror drama

All My Friends Hate Me, 2021 - horror comedy

Blood Red Sky, 2021 - popcorn horror

The House, 2022 - stop motion anthology horror

Something In the Dirt, 2022 - surreal horror

Men, 2022 - folklore horror

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, 2023 - horror comedy

When Evil Lurks, 2023 - dystopian horror (Evil Dead vibes without the haha’s)

The Conference, 2023 - horror comedy

Abigail, 2024 - popcorn horror

I think that is all for now. Hopefully there will be a few films on this list you haven’t come across yet. They aren’t all masterpieces, but I tried to pick films that I found entertaining and/or interesting and that I think deserve more recognition.

Read the fucking comment from Charles Darwin that I replied to initially. He was bringing up wokeness and I just joined in on that conversation. YOU are the one trolling and trying to sow chaos in a calm conversation.

You are unbelievably illiterate.

If you were literate, you would be able to discern that the comment that I was originally replying to, in fact brought up wokeness and DEI themselves. You are spreading lies and false narratives to stir up drama where there wasn’t any.

Removed by mod

Oooh, I haven’t seen Mad Men, but I remember it being all the rage back in the day. Sounds like it deserved all the talk it got.

It’s very interesting to hear about your experiences there! We have a very toned down version of that here in Denmark too. Folks living in rural areas tend to skew right wing and people in the cities are more left. Granted, here left and right is different from America. To us, the Democrats in America would also be very much right wing. Farmers like liberals here because they fight for the farmers to have all the money all the rights and none of the responsibility that comes with it. The left wants to force farmers to take responsibility and they don’t like that. Our liberal party recently changed their tune a little bit when it comes to farmers because we are literally killing our ecosystems right as we speak because of the farmers but now the farmers are crying that they don’t get to ride the gravy train anymore. The good news is that younger generations of farmers seem more interested in changing for the benefit of the environment so in a few generations things might look a bit better for everybody. But currently we are dealing with a very spoiled generation og farmers who are welfare queens, possess at least 60 to 70% of the land to grow food for their pigs and then export all that meat to other countries, contributing a whopping 2% to our BNP when all is said and done. They also take the second place on the podium of the biggest polluters in Denmark, only outdone by transportation (planes, trucks, cars).

I grew up in a rural area too and was raised in a very leftwing family and that wasn’t fun when my peers got old enough to understand politics, lol. People I grew up with mostly seem to have stayed in their local area and taken blue collar jobs, which is perfectly fine jobs. I have no contact with any of them and couldn’t tell you how they are doing, but I spoke woth one former classmate some years ago and she told me that the people we used to know and the town is very small town, small minds vibe. Which I can totally believe. No idea how anyone votes, but wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of them were on the right. And again, our version of the right wing is a lot tamer than yours. American Republicans are considered extreme and far right in my country. To an almost comical degree. We have a few extreme right wing parties but the only one that has any real traction nowadays is LA = Liberal Alliance which is basically a manosphere party. I can’t stand them lol. Never could. That party is such a shit show.

I also agree with you. There are definitely some goofy opinions held by city people too. I’m in this weird position of holding many left wing views and values, but I also see city people as a bit snobbish sometimes. I have noticed in this thread alone that some Americans on this platform struggle to pin point what type of a person I am and assume I’m a right wing fascist for using the word woke to describe some things. I guess my boyfriend was right that America is currently so polarized that people like me will be whatever they hate and deem the enemy since I don’t fit neatly into this black and white world view. It is very foreign and weird to me how extreme politics is in America and how much worse it has gotten in recent years because where I live, we are still able to communicate and share ideas across the political spectrum without turning it into a bloodbath. It’s very weird talking with people here who seem entirely deaf to anything you say and just label you a fascist because you used a word they don’t like. It’s like they forget there is a world outside of the US that has its own views and impressions on what is happening around it.