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Neil deGrasse Tyson Gets Into God Debate With Terminally Ill Child in Make-A-Wish Gone Awry
(thehardtimes.net)
this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2024
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I don’t get why it’s so popular to hate on him.
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.
That's fair, it's not my interpretation though. It's been a while and I don't remember the specifics well by now, but I definitely came away feeling like he was an egocentric asshole just in it for the attention. To be fair, a far more interesting and useful egocentric asshole than most! But I ended up not liking him...as in, I don't just have some complaints about unpolished moments, I would actually choose not to hang out with him if given the chance. And I came to that opinion after starting off absolutely smitten with the guy.
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.
Becsuse the way he says similar things in interviews influences how we read the words in his tweets. They don't sound like someone being funny and clever, they sound like someone being smug and pompous.
I used to enjoy his "but awkshully" take ok things, but sfter a while it seems like his popularity went to his head and now it comes across as mean. It would probably help if he was a littke self depricating once in a while.
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?
You seem defensive.
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.
All of those tweets just seem ... Not worth reading? Like it's either his opinion (feel free to share, whatever) or a fact, but not a very enlightening one. Just block him and move on.
I have a special dislike for mass audience "science" stuff but I recognize that people like it and just ignore it when I see it.
not reading it because I don't give a fuck about Twitter. show me something real he's done wrong
The discussion is around him being an insufferable overly pedantic know it all, who often enough,just gets it wrong.
I've loved worse
You can do much worse than NDT. His heart is very much in the right place.
Lemmy/redditors hate the smell of their own brand.
That one stung friend...
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.
You misunderstand what the poster means. It's not people foaming at the mouth at seeing a black guy be successful, it's people applying harsher judgement than is warranted to someone because on some level they're perceived as an outsider.
Just think of how many smarmy, condescending famous people exist and how few have the same level of criticism leveled against them.
As far as crappy famous people go he shouldn't even register, he's not indicated in corruption, child sexual abuse, spouse beating, slavery, wanton consumerism etc. People single this guy out so unreasonably because he's not perfect at his job.
Nah. When he first became popular he presented himself as the new Carl Sagan. The one who would continue his legacy. Those are big shoes to fill and he did not live up to it because the fame got to his head. He's getting the appropriate amount of hate as far as I'm concerned.
To my knowledge he's not getting death threats and people aren't trying to get him fired or put behind bars. People want him to cut the weird shit out and be a better science communicator. You don't have to do illegal or immoral things for the public to dislike you.
For example, to my knowledge, Brian Cox seems to be a perfectly normal guy and a good science communicator and people still say that he gives off a weird vibe. Literally people don't like him because of a vibe.
In terms of their work output and clarity of explanations could you highlight some cases where NDT is deficient when compared to Brian Cox? They seem very similar to me, possibly I would say Cox is a bit worse at explaining the technical side of things. They seem similarly pleased with their own appearance on camera too. Cox is a little more moderate with his religious stuff, and much less outspoken politically but it's not clear to me either of those are necessarily virtuous.
I'm not arguing that he is, so I won't be doing that. I didn't say Brian Cox was a better science communicator, only less of a cringelord.
Unrelated,
Those things definitely matter to me and to other people. There are ways to broach those subjects that don't paint you in a bad light - for example only when prompted or in the rarest occasion.
Ah, an enlightened centrist
Lol. Lmao, even.
I think it mostly has to do with how dominant he has become in social media algorithms. Once he is in your feeds he doesn't go away and he is everywhere. While most other Twitter twats are only on twitter.
But I think you still have a point. And again, I think the social media algorithm has a lot to do with it. His interview with Joe Rogan make him part of the rabbit hole that leads to all these right wing nutheads. I always try hard to get rid of Joe Rogan, Piers Morgan, and Jordan Peterson from my feeds. But whenever NGT pops up it only takes a while for them to reappear as well.
Which makes me believe he will appear in the feeds of people who do like this right wing content. And they probably will judge him harsher for being black.