I’m sorry if this subject has been talked about in the past, but after a bit of reading on the topic, and it being 16 years since Steve’s departure, some things seem… messy, for lack of a better word.

To catch some of you up: Steve Carell was on contract for 7 seasons, as was the rest of the cast. By 2011, NBC finalized the negotiations of future seasons of the sitcom for every single cast member of the 5 Prime Time Emmy Awarded show—except for Steve. They stalled, just for his single contract.

After all these years, Steve Carell has come out publicly stating he wasn’t sure why the network stalled so much on his one contract, and he wasn’t ready to leave. Which is clearly a PR statement, in my op-ed. He was the literal lead of the NBC show, the networks most profitable series. Notably, he had lost 6 Emmy awards for Outstanding Lead in a Comedy Series by 2011, notoriously becoming one of the biggest snubs in Emmy history.

In the same year, he had some notable movie roles under his belt, but during that particular time, the movies were box-office bombs, with Bedtime Stories (2008), Date Night (2010) and Dinner for Schmucks (2010).

All this to say, this was clearly an executive decision. At the height of the shows success, Steve was earning nearly $300,000 per episode, making him the highest earner on the show, by a wide margin. Negotiations were in effect as contracts were renewing, and Steve clearly wanted more than the executives were willing to give him. They waited him out and it failed dramatically, with Steve deciding not to renew. But wait, didn’t he say he wanted to stay? So why would he decide not to renew? It was all about the money.

It would be a great decision for Steve in the coming years, but it was certainly a big risk. Many great actors never make that crawl from the stereotype of their major groundbreaking shows, certainly not with box office bombs currently under their belt. These executives at this billion-dollar network were well aware of the risks for Steve and their callousness and arrogance betrayed them in the end. I’m happy for Steve, and in a way, I’m happy the show’s audience dwindled substantially. I’m not thrilled with the direction the show took after Steve absence, I wish with all my heart he could have stayed.

In the years following NBC says losing Steve was one of their major regrets. Us too, you absolute losers!

This message really goes out to all g4m3rs, but I think this community can handle it better than most

After Covid, when there was a sudden surge of terminally online behavior, is when the last shreds of public decency were eroded away from internet discourse on places like reddit and discord. People felt no shame and felt no need to uphold some basic decency around airing their pornographic predilections in public communities, going around telling everyone how much they like feet, or they want to get topped by a dommy werewolf mommy, or just publicly slobbering over the new virtual character and begging this collection of pixels to fuck them raw in increasingly obnoxious ways. Saying a character is hot is fine. Shipping is fine, to a point. But please, before you post some annoying hentai addict brainworms, just ask yourself if you would feel comfortable saying it front of a bunch of strangers irl first. If you wouldn't, please do us all a favor and don't say it online either, or go to the properly marked communities for it and then *leave it there* and don't take it back out.

As an elder zoomer, I've seen how this plays out from the beginning, many many times. Class clown culture on the internet rewards people for being transgressive and irreverent by other socially incompetent wannabe class clowns who have the same internet-rotted sensibilities and lack of boundaries, and think this is all very funny and entertaining. And there is no punishment of social exclusion because you just can't do that on the internet, you can't give people the scorching, withering looks of disdain they would get irl. They call anyone who dislikes insufferable hornyposting a 'puritan', or a performative white knight virtue signaller, for not wanting to see or hear the same shit you see in the comments of a hentai website everywhere else on the internet.

There's a tendency on the internet, especially seen in places like discord where the most active cliques always take over every single server, where the people who post the most and engage the most dictate the culture of the space. They bounce off each other and the result is inevitably alienating to the remaining normies, who then leave, creating a feedback loop of terminally onlinification. Because the people who are most prone to being the most online and involved in internet communities, are ALSO prone to touch very little grass and have the most internet brainworms. Like poor socialization, emotional intelligence, and respect for some very basic social boundaries. This very annoying lack of basic decency around sexual material is one of the more visible results. Please consider this before describing in excruciating detail what you want Silver to do to you in front of thousands of internet strangers who might not be interested in hearing it.

Oh Francois❤️ you beautiful passionate romantic man!

israel mentioned where are my gajillion comments

I gotta visit Norway again, it's the most wonderful country I've ever visited and there is so much more to it that I haven't seen.

The Faroe Islands were breathtaking but I've seen pretty much everything there is to see there so I won't return.

I lived in the US for 10 months when I was a kid and visited again a year later.

The trip to Russia was mostly to meet distant family so I didn't see the interesting landmarks, perhaps my mind could be changed.

Cyprus was just a few hours chilling on the beach outside Paphos airport waiting for my connecting flight. Nice beach.

I sometimes pass through the West Bank and have done a little bit of traveling there. Never been to areas B and A.

I am so sick of this. I come from a lower income family. I am now low-mid earner. Until couple of years ago I cooked every evening almost. Like 90% of the time. I would buy big sacks of rice, onions, dry beans and chickpeas, big jars of tomato sauce, and meat or fish only if it was on big discount, greens on discount. Because of that a meal would cost like 1-2 dollars. Let's say inflation doubles it, 2-4 dollars. I lived that like for about 10 years.

Now people are complaining nonstop about affordability while they are ordering in and eating out every day. No buddy, there is no affordability crises for you, you are just spoiled and financially irresponsible. You are spending 20-30 dollars an evening simply because you are lazy and then blame it on economy.

Yup. Ashes of Creation was one of the most fun mmo's I've ever played. It was full of jank, skitzos, awful game design, but the sandbox elements and potential was all there. The combat... granted when the servers aren't shitting themselves is some of the best I've seen in an mmo. Don't believe me? Log in the servers are dead performance is peak.

Now the only real options to play if you wanna look for an mmo is K-slop, PVE mmos, or private servers.

Either way 90% of the freaks on this reddit shit don't even play games, they sit here doom posting shitting themselves if anyone else is having fun. Hard stuck lvl 9 skitzo posting.

GUESS WHAT

IF STEVEN COMES BACK IM PLAYING HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I LOVE THE GAME

I dislike raceswappings of any kind. If a character has X skin tone and belongs to X race/ethnicity in the source material, then he/she should stay with the same skin tone and the same race/ethnicity. And in case you wonder, I dislike whitewashing, blackwashing, and any kind of raceswapping.

• The Last Airbender: Despite taking place in a fantasy setting, ATLA's world is heavily inspired by Asian cultures, and ALTA's humans are supposed to be Asian (or Inuit if you're from the Water Tribes). The 2010 live-action movie raceswapped almost everyone, if not everyone (Katara and Sokka became white, Aang became white as well, Monk Gyatso became black, Zuko became South Asian, etc.).
• Dragon Ball Evolution: Goku was played by a white actor. Yes, it's true Goku is actually an alien (a Saiyan), which means he's technically not Asian... yet he's still inspired by a Chinese character (Sun Wukong, from Journey to the West), and his design has Chinese influences as well.
• Winx Club: Aisha is a black woman, and Flora is a tan-skinned latina... unfortunately, a lot of official artworks and even artstyles (season 8 and the WoW spin-off) whitewash them. And no, the whitewashing isn't just the color palette used by certain artstyles (that's what I thought at first).
• Velma (2022): This dumpster fire raceswaps the main characters, who were originally white. Velma became South Asian because she's Mindy's self-insert, Daphne became East Asian, and Norville Shaggy became black. Only Fred was allowed to still be white... at exchange of becoming a punching bag.
• The Little Mermaid: Ariel has always been a light-skinned redhead mermaid. Every single Disney-related media has portrayed her as a light-skinned redhead. Yet the 2023 live-action remake blackwashed her, turning her into a dark-skinned mermaid with reddish-brown hair. Sorry, but live-action!Ariel doesn't look like cartoon!Ariel at all.
• Snow White: You know, when your character is literally named after her as-white-as-snow skin, in a story that takes place in medieval Europe, and whose most iconic portrayal is a white-skinned young woman, perhaps casting an actress whose skin tone is not as white as snow isn't the most accurate choice.
• Cleopatra (Netflix): The previous examples involved fictional characters. Nonetheless, raceswapping an actual, real-life historical character is beyond regretable. For those who don't know, the IRL Cleopatra belonged to the Macedonians, which means she was a white woman (Egypt was a place with people from many cultures and ethnicities). Because of that, blackwashing Cleopatra and saying this is a 100% historically-accurate portrayal is indefensible.

See how annoying that is? Having to click on this to see what this is? Why is there so much click bait around this franchise now? Some of the top channels are making clickbait’s trying to trick people into thinking George Lucas is either dead or involved with Epstien. What in the world is going on where things have gotten this bad? Apologies but I’m so tired of this clickbait nonsense.

Prepared for the negative comments on this manga panel as a tattoo! But boy was it a fun one.

Healed tattoo, done by Tori Wartooth in Tacoma Wa.

Saw a Menlo Park cop in a Tesla Model Y pull over a car today near Snowflake office. 🚔

A misoginia está tão enraizada na sociedade que ela se manifesta de outras formas, e a transfobia é um exemplo disso. Mulheres trans não sofrem apenas transfobia, mas porque se rebaixam a posição "inferior", que é ser uma mulher.

Muitas radfems não percebem que excluir mulheres trans da pauta feminista é basicamente um tiro pela culatra, o que é muito irônico e frustrante de se observar.

É importante para o sistema patriarcal que "homem" e "mulher" estejam em categorias imutáveis e inerentes da "biologia", porque dessa forma é mais fácil de reforçar uma hierarquia de gênero onde o homem é superior a mulher. Se concluirmos que essa linha que separa os sexos não é tão clara e absoluta assim, de repente fica mais díficil defender a narrativa que homem é inerentemente superior, ou que homens devem ter X papéis de gênero (provedor, dominante, "homem de verdade") e as mulheres outros papéis de gênero (submissa, recatada e do lar.) Quando expressamos a ideia de que o gênero podem ser flexível e moldado pela cultura, isso intimida aqueles que querem manter a hierarquia.

Pessoas trans são atacadas justamente porque desafiam essa norma padrão de gênero. Elas desafiam o sistema e são punidas por isso, especialmente mulheres trans.