• Blue and Orange@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Once upon a time I actually liked Russell Brand. Thought he was intelligent and quite in touch with the ways of the world despite his eccentric character. He truly lost the plot when covid came around, although it wasn’t the first time he’d talked absolute shite.

    In hindsight, it’s not really a surprise that he’d be this kind of person.

    • ZeroCool@feddit.chOP
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, I know a lot of people thought he was a reasonably smart dude with some interesting insights. But when you think about it he’s always been very superficial. There’s not much depth to any of his takes. He’s just charismatic and speaks like he keeps a pocket thesaurus in his jacket.

      • ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        He a junkie you would see rambling at a bus stop incoherently. The difference is an expanded vocabulary and a he’s been on TV.

        • GladiusB@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          He was funny at one point. But he never grew past the need for the attention and didn’t branch out of teenager years.

      • SailorMoss@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        When I was poor and I complained about inequality they said I was bitter. Now I’m rich and I complain about inequality they say I’m a hypocrite. I’m starting to think they just don’t want to talk about inequality. —Russell Brand

        Still one of my favorite quotes, it’s unfortunate that I won’t really be able to use it any more.

        Brand used to be a legit socialist back in the day. The longer he had money, the harder I think was for him to continue to understand the struggle of the common people. Either that or its audience capture like what happened to Dave Rueben.

        The YouTube channel the Kavernacle has done some good coverage on his drift to the right.

        • DessertStorms@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          He definitely didn’t come up with that line, I’m sure you could find an attribution to something virtually identical said a century ago, and several times since.
          I just watched a program about this, and he was a creep from the get go.
          A guy vaguely understanding class struggles doesn’t make him a socialist nor a good guy.

          • SailorMoss@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            I’m pretty sure he described himself as a socialist once upon a time. I’m not one to gate keep what people call themselves.

            But yeah just because he’s a socialist that doesn’t make him a good person. Marx probably had an unclaimed child with his servant girl.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Marx was an utter piece of shit in many ways. He just had some very good ideas. I’ve always wondered how many of them can be attributed to Engles though.

            • DessertStorms@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              Hitler called himself a socialist too, that’s a pretty low bar… 🤦‍♀️

              All you’ve done so far is attempt to derail the conversation about Brand being a rapist…

              • SailorMoss@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                I’m sorry that’s not my intention. Do you think it would be best if we delete this thread?

                I was just working through how my perception of him had changed over the years. I don’t want to downplay his alleged crimes.

                • DessertStorms@kbin.social
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                  1 year ago

                  I appreciate that you didn’t mean to, but making it about him and whatever good he supposedly did, in a conversation about the several women he raped (and however many more he “just” assaulted), is at best highly inappropriate (and at worst is a well known derailing tactic used by those looking to defend a rapist and/or discredit his victims). Deleting the thread probably won’t do much, but learning from this for the future will.

                  Part of rape culture is the massively false idea that “nice guys” don’t rape, ignoring the fact that many rapists and abusers are experts at manipulating everyone around them (rapists “infiltrating” leftist circles, especially feminist ones, to gain access to victims, as well as the language to disarm their defences, is sadly not at all unusual).

                  I would highly recommend watching the Dispatches episode that aired about this last night if you can. In several of his performances/appearances he basically admits to putting an act on to get people to ignore how shitty he really is (as well as graphic descriptions of what we now know were some of his assaults, which he used as part of his comedy routine).

      • OhNoMoreLemmy@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        This is shit he was doing more than ten years ago.

        You can’t blame this shit on lockdown, he’s always been a failure of a human being, it’s just now we’re finding out details.

    • Chariotwheel@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I never liked him much, and that’s not a “I knew he was out there raping”, that I didn’t know. But personality-wise he was basically an egocentric rockstar who thought he knew it all and everyone not agreeing with his views and sense of humour were just too stupid.

      And turns out, he is behaving even more like a 80s rockstar than I thought.

          • ZeroCool@feddit.chOP
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            1 year ago

            Yeah, it’s also why his movie career (at least as a comic lead) started in 2008 and was dead by the middle of 2011. He’s got no range and audiences were only willing to pay to see Russell Brand being “Russell Brand in a different outfit” so many times before he wore out his welcome.

    • takeda@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I noticed that people who are using recreational drugs are disproportionally concerned about vaccine safety, which I find quite amusing.

    • BedSharkPal@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      I’m just waiting for the study that shows COVID infection makes certain people less empathetic and more paranoid. There’s just too much of it happening to not be biological IMO.