https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83THdyVTONc

That’s not funny.



I know Disney is in a rough spot or is, in fact, a rough spot in and of itself, but writing jabs that predict terrorist attacks on things we don’t like is enough of a mental channeling tool to foment that sort of thing into reality. All those books that cherish and endorse the power of positive thinking come with warnings about how you shouldn’t use that power for wholly evil ends. If Disney World is engulfed in flames, innocents might get hurt or killed. If the company tanks under the weight of market forces after being left to blow in the wind, so will its employees whose only crime was working for a company. Vietnam veterans don’t get that degree of slander, but it’s very much alike; once they returned home, the political debates surrounding the war redirected their ire towards a new target in search of an outlet for a conversation without end.

If you’re going to poke fun, don’t write deceitful articles about the company’s literal physical disaster response. It’s like those doctored images of news articles that twist the truth about a physical hazing assault upon a journalist as his fault, like what happened to Andy Ngo. They tossed around pictures of faux-articles that defamed victims even further, calling them the real perpetrators of an imaginary attack upon a crowd acting in collective self-defense, knowing full well that random average bystanders don’t bother to check sources as readily for lack of time or devotion–or conviction.

The end of Mark Millar’s cinematic vehicle comic book Kick-Ass has the wimp wannabe superhero getting cuckolded by his defiant and embittered-by-deception ex-girlfriend, who then indulges in sending him revenge porn of her fellating her new boyfriend. That’s not fiction–that’s the author of the palace-burning anti-fan fiction news article. And everyone who laughs along with it is culpable to a lesser degree of mass shaming and hazing. In most cases, attempts to play superhero or vigilante or school shooter or corporate mogul are just cries for help from someone deeply troubled–help that you are apparently holding back out of spite.

I’m not trying to defend Disney’s past actions, but you should consider how they considered trying them to begin with. Are they just really dull-witted and mean or are there underlying neuroses that make people turn away from what makes a given company great? It’s a fascinating topic for me, considering I’ve started to take the plunge as an entrepreneur at some level and feel as if people, somehow on impulse, resent private enterprise of any kind no matter what. For a while, my prospects were limited and my hesitation to post in a blog rampant. So, what did I do?

I applied to work at a convenience store chain. No kidding.

I rejoined the regular workforce and have gotten ill often, perhaps twice separately or once for a protracted period, not from walking in the cold since I don’t mind it, but trying to serve a public that I have not interacted with in a while. I get exposed to a litany of mutterings and callous disregard whenever I botch something. Regardless, one of the things I reiterate as part of any job is to never assume malice in the face of ignorance. Some guy asks to play lottery without using cash, betting a bank card is all you need because a nearby store is fine with electronic transactions for lottery. This holds up the line as our store doesn’t do that, possibly for security or infrastructure reasons, and must now struggle with a guy who assumes every business is the same.

The only major reason I’m there is to relearn what it takes to serve someone and solve problems while making bank. I doubt there’s anything being solved by dragging Disney through the mud for not doing likewise. The movie Shrek was meant to be a satire of its business and artistic directions, but its resultant franchise indulged in the same behavioral patterns and quirks without any sense of irony of shame. People believe that derision and mockery are good for cleansing the psyche and destressing. That’s an ill assumption. Meaningful derision and mockery, which knows when to let up and not gang up simply because we assume “they’re big–they can handle it!” without really thinking about what we’re saying, are good for cleaning the psyche and destressing.

I don’t expect people to read through this and I’m willing to bet any replies will be for me to stop overanalyzing a precious moral concept, but the only reason people ever get the inclination to censor others’ content is when the content they have seen refuses to provide anything useful and defines our reality as not just full of, but literally comprised entirely of greedy impostors out for an easy quick buck. That level of pessimism takes a greater toll than working at a convenience store, or trying to escape a burning building. Imagine if someone acted on this fiction and made it into reality. Do we really want to justify Jack Thompson and say he did, in fact, have a point about school shootings?

To put my whole spiel on the subject of maligning Disney into perspective, I will leave it to Razorfist to shine some levity with an old if laudable anecdote:

https://youtu.be/dtPcq_uzCxY?list=PL4F467A0D0621C775&t=560

Oh, and here’s an old but still respectable take on Iron Maiden in the same video in case you want a palette cleanser:

https://youtu.be/dtPcq_uzCxY?list=PL4F467A0D0621C775&t=434

In short, it’s sort of not accepted wisdom regardless of its sagaciousness: don’t slander and mock anybody even if you want to bust negative emotions through schadenfreude. Do what any self-respecting human being would do in the face of horrible news that didn’t happen to him or her and just back off for a spell. That is the central conceit and method behind every anti-cult deprogramming technique: stop investing yourself in the tiresome, habitual refrains designed to draw attention and nothing else. Even I understand how close to the brink this post is from being treated similarly, but I don’t write it to mock you–I want to help you understand something about the glories of proximity. Two yapping dogs who leave their masters’ grips will pause and consider throwing barbs because there is nothing different about them and the fallout from furthering their grudge is too high a risk without their masters holding them aloft.

Disney handled and weathered actual disasters and even worse threats over the years than some stupid CEO who subscribes to the trappings of Blackrock out of fear of losing the bottom line. The founder of this company went after communists. Need any more on that? So, what sort of disaster did the author of this hit-piece spoof article personally survive? I’d like to know. Yet, the hoods lurking in and around the digital community think turnabout is fair play. And what better way than to claim an amusement park is currently burning in effigy! Do you want to know the real reason this article got any traction?

Everyone on social media is FUCKED!

Nix your stuffy little Tiktok and X and Facebook accounts–find local chicks, make new friends in and out of your workplace, just don’t fault Disney for trying everything under the sun to make a profit when the blogs fueled by venture capital don’t even bother to try. If those digital venues can’t get you laid with a ring and maybe some babies on the side, then they are fifty times more deficient and dysfunctional than 4Chan. Even Anonymous and Something Awful goons saw the writing on the wall about terminally sarcastic recovering Catholics such as the founder of their very own insufferable little crawlspace; Katawa Shoujo popped the balloon of gaming journalism before the name Jonathan McIntosh or the name of his callous mouthpiece was ever uttered amid polite company, and 4Chan was responsible for orchestrating its creation in full defiance of the stereotypes that mire its public image.

Digital communication at large has worsened and disabled more people out of the lack of writing skills borne from handwritten notes. And it has only escalated with the advent of bulletin board systems such as Newgrounds.com–and yes, I said it loud and clear: we were better off tossing rocks into ponds since at least then, you might be able to have a civil conversation with someone you can verify as human. And Newgrounds was founded before the turn of the millennium as a schizophrenic shrine dedicated to a really overpriced niche video game company and console. Alien Hominid eats for conceiving a movement composed of nothing but store brand fruit pies–worse than the endless parade of vending machine chicken salad sandwiches that conquered the galaxy by falling upstairs at warp speed by not thinking.

If you have read this far, I take a bow to your patronage. Anytime, friend. Never weaken, don’t let charlatans pick on everything that’s not theirs, and good hunting. Disney: you’re jerks, but we’re cool and you shouldn’t worry so much about public sentiment so long as you can entertain us on purpose, not by accident. Please don’t die, and laugh off your detractors. Only, don’t give them any excuses or justifications for their irrational, incessant criticism. For the rest of us, dream and pray for good weather and fond memories. Set your traumas aside. Try your hand at entrepreneurship and see how hard it is to resist the sort of temptations that even bastions of culture must suffer through. Or go play a scratch ticket. It might not win you any cash, but at least you’re not staring at your phone 24/7.

Special thanks to Razorfist for making me laugh and Clownfish TV for pointing out how companies address disasters. It isn’t like they turn them on like in Sim City.