Need a plate of generic, insipid platitudes with a giant helping of bad science and misogyny?

  • MediumRareChicken@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I used to like him. I fell for the crap. To my 16 year old brain what he said made a lot of sense. He had a handful of good points, and it made me believe the rest of the shit he peddled.

    I see him now, I look back on how I hung onto his words like a lost lamb, and I can only facepalm.

    I realised that the only thing he is good at is marketing, not psychology…

    • Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Being 16 is the best excuse you could have for believing anything that cretin says. You’re good bro.

      • fosforus@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        He has some good advice (and some batshit crazy certainly), but not anything stoics weren’t saying 2300 years ago. And he sprinkles on top of that a weird religious-adjacent theories that are perhaps due to his psychedelic use. People seem to confuse that rambling with wisdom, like they usually do with cult leaders.

        Still, I think it’s quite probable that he was a fine psychologist and was completely capable of helping individuals in whatever their struggles were. It’s his moving to a youtube stardom that caused all the problems.

        • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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          1 year ago

          As the maoral-less L. Ron Hubbard would say…
          “You don’t make money selling a book, if you want to be rich, start a religion”

          Peterson is just running a dumb cult of generic (kinda bad for most people) advice that hinges on the shared identity of sad lonely boys.

          Peter Pan in the books is sad as shit, advice to never grow up and never try to be better just makes people more lonely and miserable.

          • fosforus@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            Peterson is just running a dumb cult of generic (kinda bad for most people) advice that hinges on the shared identity of sad lonely boys.

            Peter Pan in the books is sad as shit, advice to never grow up and never try to be better just makes people more lonely and miserable.

            Isn’t Peterson’s advice exactly the opposite of Peter Pan’s, though?

        • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          Meh, all of the good advice he gives you can get from some other internet guru that isn’t such a grifter.

          “clean your room” and “wash yourself” really aren’t that profound.

          • fosforus@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            I dare say that we have plenty of men (and some women) who need advice as lowly as that. If Peterson reaches them, it could be a net positive. Too bad there’s a lot crap in his advice as well.

    • WaxedWookie@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s understandable - back in the day, he had some reasonable points and an academic veneer. If course, what he was saying tended to have a strong bias, and didn’t stand up to scrutiny, but it’s hard to fault a 16 year old looking for guidance for falling for it. Hindsight is 20 20 - particularly when the negative tendencies ratcheted up rapidly over time.

      Since his Russian benzo coma (remember, kids - clean your room and don’t criticise others or systemic issues unless your life is perfect… pay no attention to my crippling addiction as I peddle that advice), things took a hard turn. I honestly think he suffered non-trivial brain damage. He’s far more erratic, bursts into tears at the drop of a hat (while trying to sell “traditional” masculinity, his takes have lost their academic veneer and are self-evidently stupid. There’s a reason he may be stripped of his accreditation.

      TL;DR: Peterson went from being a pseudo-intellectual preacher to a lolcow, and (to me) the benzo coma seems to have been the catalyst for that shift.

      • MediumRareChicken@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I didn’t know about the benzo thing. And that was the advice from him I appreciated; the clean your room, etc.

        I didn’t realise he was a walking blackout the entire time.

        And I think his as following grew, so did his ego, and he began to think he knew way more than he actually did.

        Ah well. An oversized ego is as bad as a termite infestation - if you let it grow it’ll eventually make things collapse…

        • constantokra@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          Oversized ego is generally a problem with people who take it upon themselves to give advice to society in general. Sometimes you can work around it. The guy has some interesting things to say, and he’s an eloquent look into the rationalization certain people give for the problematic beliefs they already have.

          You just have to learn how to approach these people without thinking they have some special right to think and you don’t, because a little thoughtful examination shows much of what he says for the bs it is. That ability frequently comes with age and self sufficiency, which is probably why ye targets the people he does.

        • WaxedWookie@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yeah - it speaks to his long-term lack of principles and integrity, but that’s not on you as a teenager. I’m just glad you grew from it, acknowledged when you were wrong, and grew from it - that’s no easy thing to do.

    • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I’m still pissed that because he badly quotes and misinterprets Jung all the time, people assume Jung is bullshit by association.

    • Send_me_nude_girls@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      I didn’t believe him, I believed the positive messages he send and implanted. I don’t care about him nowadays, but I also don’t regret internalizing certain stuff he preached. It wasn’t totally bullshit of what he said, until a point where he completely drifted off.

      Thankfully I stopped watching any of his stuff quite a while before that happened, so I dodged this whole mess and only saw the burning ship wrack from the distance. I understand the hard feelings of others who are more involved in this topic though.

      To agree, that something someone said, was correct, isn’t a bad thing. Even if the stuff that follows is off the mark.

      To regret that, would also mean regretting failure, but without failure there’s no progress.

    • Acters@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I did what I did for everything, and I took it with a grain of salt. This had the unfortunate side effect of just not following others and keeping up with the latest trends. Oh well, I feel happier than ever before

  • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Never take advice on personal responsibility from a guy who intentionally put himself in a coma to avoid taking responsibility for his addiction to a narcotic with zero medicinal properties.

    • Foofighter@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      It’s so weird for me that he seemed surprised that benzos are, in fact, highly addictive with severe withdraw symptoms. Isn’t he a psychologist and potentially someone who is allowed to prescribe such drugs?

      • amelia@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        Fortunately only psychiatrists can prescribe drugs and they’re actual physicians.

        • troutsushi@feddit.de
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          That’s an important distinction that too few people understand:

          Psychiatrists: medical doctors with a specialization in mental health who can prescribe drugs

          Psychologists: trained professionals with an academic degree who provide mental health care by (generally) talking with you

          Both are important health care providers, but they generally do very different things, and in a mental health crisis you best have one of each at hand.

      • flucksy_bango@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Your ignoring 2 facts about him. He’s a liar and he likes taking drugs. A simple Google search will tell you how dangerous it is to abuse. J-dawg didn’t care because he likes taking drugs.

        The fact that he got addicted to an antianxiety medication when his personal philosophy involves fighting monsters and dragons is hilariously pathetic.

        Also, I dare you to Google “Jordan Peterson Grandma”.

          • flucksy_bango@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            You couldn’t torture that shit out of me. St. Peter could ask me to admit to it to get into heaven, and I’d walk straight past him into hell.

  • Nobsi@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    Oh god, this is so embarassing for us as a society. Young men look for guidance, and all they find is Rape Tate who tells you to be an alpha male by just being obnoxiously “superior” to others.
    John Peanutbutter who tells you to be an alpha male but with science in your brain
    fresh and fit who tell you to be alpha males but by figuratively just shaming women
    and on the opposite side you have nothing for a while and then you have destiny and hasan who try to make you debate like highschoolers.

    Is the world just full of grifters now?

    • Nerorero@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      There are great people, the top Spot for me is healthy gamer gg.

      F D is peak as well.

      There are a lot of people, but non of them have the quick and simple solution that attracted lost boys and men.

    • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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      The grift of giving some free advice that may or may not work, to get them hooked so you can sell bad advice that when it doesn’t work they say it didn’t because they didn’t believe enough or try enough and there is yet another book for them to buy which then locks these people into a spiral of buying only their advice…

      Is such a long running and stupid grift for people to still be falling for this strongly.

      We are right back around to people selling blank books for you the reader to fill out with the great plan that’s gonna work. But people feel directionless and scared of the future so idiots will seek comfort anywhere they can.

    • rjs001@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      They are just the new versions religious preachers. Really the same thing fubdamentally

    • I’m usually up to date on the field of grifters. (understanding dipshits is a specialty of mine) but I’m not sure who john peanutbutter is supposed to be. Can anyone translate?

    • Flax@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      They need to look to Jesus as their rolemodel instead

  • amelia@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    I would have appreciated if the bottom right panel said “Hold my benzos” instead.

      • Seeker of Carcosa@feddit.uk
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        “Depression is a myth; tidy your room. Also, I’ve been clinically depressed for my whole adult life and I shamble from one crisis to another.”

    • PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca
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      And then he had to do physical therapy afterwards for months to recover from the medically induced coma that only Russia allows since the rest of the world doesn’t allow the procedure since it isn’t backed by any science.

      That guy.

  • electric_nan@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I just want to say that if you are/were a young man, and found some value in some of what this guy was saying to you…thats’s OK. Don’t feel bad, or embarrassed or mad at yourself or whatever. We are all learning all the time, and doubly so when we’re young. Never think that you can’t take what is useful and reject what isn’t. Fuck knows there is plenty to reject about what this dude says!

    • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      Something something broken clocks.

      “Clean your room, bucko” is advice many people’s moms tried to give them but too many of them had to hear it from a cryptofascist crank LARPing as the world’s father figure before they listened to it.

      • electric_nan@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I get it. I’m actually thinking of a particular friend of mine. He lost his father at 14, and his mom isn’t the greatest parent. He told me Peterson was kind of exactly what he needed at a tough time in his life. Fortunately, he’s always been a smart kid, and saw through the toxic shit. Five years later and he’s a queer communist! I guess I’m just saying that if you really needed to hear “clean your room” from a father figure, and it helped you… don’t feel bad that Peterson was the guy who filled that role at the time. Obviously I’m speaking to people who have grown to see him differently now.

    • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
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      I don’t know if it’s a new trend or something, but lots of people have something interesting to say, and say lots of hogwash besides and everyone gobbles it all up including the hogwash. You don’t have to go all in when reading someone’s work. For example, I read Freud and it was quite interesting. Most of it was horseshit (although historically interesting), but he still made the point that we don’t do all that we do consciously , which was hugely important.

      Ideas and memes (in the original sense) are there to be examined and weighed against one another, not followed blindly.

      So Petersen (I’m not really sure who that is), why not, he might have some salient points, even though he seems to be a controversial figure, apparently rightly so.

    • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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      You need to find yourself, you try to let someone else find you for you and you’re inviting trouble.

  • M68040 [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    I hate it when people bitch about the left “not having gurus to help lost young people” or whatever when the right’s so-called gurus are worthless sacks of skin like Peterson. Also I’m here because I - in very emphatic terms - do not want a guru.

    • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]@hexbear.net
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      it’s really annoying because personal growth is not even remotely relevant to politics. The left can’t “make you a man” because that’s something you do on your own. It implies a specific set of ideas about maturity, relationships, and various other things which are your own problem. The right wants to fit you into the hierarchy, so they’ll make you a certain thing to fit. We don’t, so it’s your job to figure out if you want to be a man or a woman or something else, and what it means to reach that. We don’t give leftist dating advice because it doesn’t make sense, we’re not writing a script for you to follow. Just respect potential partners and maybe one will become a partner you respect. Whether you start a family or find someone isn’t our political project because we don’t want to make you pump out kids for the factories that obey authority.

      • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        because that’s something you do on your own

        It may also be something best done with others, because isolated insulated alienated individuals tend to become reactionary too.

        • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]@hexbear.net
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          Although yes, it should be done as a group, and it would be better done with a group of leftists because they’re more likely to have a positive view of women, minority, work, mental health and so on, it’s just not something that needs to be done as a political project. Like, religious leftists should pray together, or leftists with children should share child care tips, but that doesn’t make it a leftist goal, y’know?

          • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            It doesn’t, and it doesn’t have to be a “pure” leftist goal for it to matter at an intersectional level. How good is a community if it’s made up of atomized individuals lacking in connection with each other? How much “pure” leftism is possible with a bunch of “I am the Main Character, everyone else is NPCs, fuck you got mine” contamination?

            • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]@hexbear.net
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              I don’t see your point. Yeah, that’s not great, but it’s not a political project and there’s not a way to provide specifically masculinity from a leftist perspective. I see a big part of leftist change in society to liberate people from the alienating idea that they’re supposed to grow up into anything in particular.

              • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                What you’re demanding isn’t possible by the very boundaries that you demand that it must fit in. If you’re stifling my case, the same limitations make yours basically impossible.

                You’re saying it must be a “political project” in some rigid way but at the same time you want some sort of “make boys feel better about themselves” thing which if isolated and non-intersectional is not a political project goal.

                • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  “make boys feel better about themselves”

                  I don’t want something like that, I think inherently the goals of leftist liberation make people feel less pressure to correctly present a gender role, so the utility of a guru like JBP vanishes. You don’t need to learn to play your role, because you decide what it means to be you. So we don’t need to teach boys how to act, we’re by our actions creating an environment where that won’t be a problem. The interrim between current world and that world won’t be flawless, but that’s something best addressed by non-explicitly leftist groups. It’s not something “the party” or whatever needs to work on

      • Grumpy@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        That’s precisely why the left will keep losing men. And as I see it, left is going to lose men faster as time goes on unless something changes.

        People can’t figure out life on their own. That’s reality. Especially with the current state of economy where the young men are doing very poorly in droves. And then the left just tells them: go figure it out on your own. Well fuck.

        Meanwhile, the right will say shit like: go work out, improve yourself, do this and that to make more money, and you will get your life together, you will own a home, you will get a wife, etc. You’re right, these advices aren’t even political. But they are real advices, which people like JBP gives. And for the majority of their main points, they are actually good messages, crazy ones aside. Sure, the political right isn’t actually gonna do shit for men, but they have real advices. Things people can follow and have hope. It’s surely more enticing than what the left preaches.

        The rebuttal from the left is often absolutely terrible messages and say things like “just don’t rape women” or “just respect potential partners” which just drives people away further. These are not real advices. These only make sense if you view men already in a negative light. It’s not actionable advice if they’re not a horrible person already. Left demonizes men, like you just did, whether you realize it or not. If a man views themselves as a good person already and the message they get is “just respect potential partners” which they already do, and still clearly achieving nothing. You get two outcomes. At best: you helped nobody. At worst: they now think you think they’re horrible because the reward isn’t coming with the advised action. So one side says you’re horrible and the other side says you have a future. Who will they stick with? Seems obvious to me.

        Imagine the gender flip of that message. “Just don’t be bitch.” How would that message be perceived by women?

        Even Andrew Tate has objectively better actionable messages for the men than the left. He constantly says stuff like go to the gym and work out. Does that actually help in the goal of dating? Fuck yeah. Actual cause and reward. These are real advices for men.

        You can’t expect people to write their own script. Vast majority clearly can’t. They need guidance. And left has none to give. Until that time comes, people like JBP and Andrew Tate will continue to sweep in the young male audience, especially in an era where fatherless boys are more bountiful than ever.

    • Thetimefarm@lemm.ee
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      The gurus normal people trust have this pesky tendency to have advanced degrees and call themselves things like “doctors” and “therapists” as if either is better than being screamed at by a car salesman in a room full of sweaty divorces.

      • 25thNight@lemmy.ml
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        The problem is the sell outs. The vaccines cause autism guy, scientists who publish about global warming being fake, Peterson himself has multiple degrees. Unfortunately in this day and age you even have to vet people with qualifications to make sure they arnt the jack ass who disagrees with the remaining 99.99% of the scientific community.

        • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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          Chopra has a PHD and is a doctor, he’ll never tell you that it’s in endocrinology and not Quantum Physics however…

    • Comment105@lemm.ee
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      Whatever your opinion on it is, the fact is that young guys are lost to right wing patriarchs. And the left doesn’t really want to outcompete the right for their attention, because the left knows they can’t outcompete the right on this without abandoning some highly treasured principles.

    • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]@hexbear.net
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      Yeah, the lifestyle coach is an inherently evil breed. Unhappy young people don’t need a talking head to tell them to buy the book and listen to the podcast, they need friends. Even just a discord where you can get relationship advice from people who have actually been in a healthy relationship is way more valuable.

    • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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      The closest the Left has to a guru is the Spirit Science guy (He’s surprisingly progressive for someone who thinks jews are from space), and I still can’t recommend that in good concious unless you need a short cartoon to explain a supernatural concept. The show’s decent on Spirituality, it’s tying it to Science that causes the problems…

      It’s almost like Religion and Science are entirely different concepts exploring different ideas, and shouldn’t be merged together into one unified force anymore than my keyboard and my dresser!

  • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I get that Gus Fring look every time I hear “Hey, have you heard of Jordan Petersen? Let me show you one of his videos”

    • WaxedWookie@lemmy.world
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      Just show them the “up yours woke moralists (…) I’d rather die than delete my tweet” video.

      If that’s not enough to out him as a lolcow, whose brain was damaged by the Russian coma that was induced to get him past his benzo addiction (while he was peddling self-help books telling people not to criticise external issues until their house is in order), there’s little hope for whoever you’re talking to.

  • spez@sh.itjust.works
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    It’s the worst kind of job. Taking advantage of developing teens and their self-issues to make money like that.

    • AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de
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      Realistically, half the economy runs essentially on that.

      Fashion, large parts of tech (Facebook, Tinder, Pornhub,…), entertainment, …

  • frankfurt_schoolgirl [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    Most of his fans have never really read his more academic works (like the one with the grandma sex dream). So, I guess they like his vibe. But his vibe is weepy alcoholic. What’s so great about that?