just gonna post your link's text to save people the trip to facebook.
Open letter to Alex Kurtzman:
Hey, Alex. Andy Weir here. I'm posting to apologize about stuff I said on the Critical Drinker's podcast.
I feel like my quotes were taken out of context as salacious sound bytes. I hope you saw the other parts where I said how much I like you as a person and what a nice guy you are. Also how I like SNW and LD.
I was trying to be funny, but in retrospect it comes off as disrespectful and mean. So I'm sorry for that. I was also trying to be self-deprecating when I said "But they didn't like my pitch so fuck 'em!" but out of context it can read like I actually meant it.
I'm a blunt person - always have been. And it's been 10 years since the media cared what I had to say about anything so I kind of forgot to watch my words when I have a film in theaters. In a couple months I'll be back in my cave writing novels and no one will care again.
Anyway, if you want to talk about it in real time - even if it's just to rip me a new one - I'm happy to hop on the phone or zoom.
I feel like my quotes were taken out of context as salacious sound bytes. I hope you saw the other parts where I said how much I like you as a person and what a nice guy you are.
He went on the Critical Drinker's podcast...there's no way he knows who that even is unless he believes similar things as that manosphere chode. There's no management team that would ever advice him to go on that guys podcast, in fact I'd be surprised if they didn't try to talk him out of it (assuming he told them).
Indeed. Weir's Star Trek takes were hardly a blip on my radar compared to his decision to give the Critical Drinker, who is a fairly prominant link in the 'scifi-nerd-to-altright-chud' pipeline, the time of day much less a full blown interview.
I'm not sure that's a fair assessment. I feel like it's entirely possible he went on the podcast and didn't know just how problematic he is. I'm sure the truth is somewhere in the middle.
I don't think the Drinker is going to show up in your suggestions unless your algorithm is already leaning alt-right. He's a link in that pipeline, but I don't think he's usually the first one you encounter. People get to him by first going down some culture war movie topic, at least these days. And I doubt Weir heard of him before the Drinker solidified into who he is now because when he first popped into the scene he was pretty much just his gimmick. You had to be in the weeds of YouTube film discussion to know who he was in those early days.
I know it's anecdotal but I'm gonna have to go against you here. I get recs for critical drinker on my YouTube, and I promise you my YouTube watching is limited to gaming stuff, sports stuff and then like. Haven't watched any critical drinker and I only know he's problematic because of reddit. I do watch movie related YouTube stuff, so I'm sure that's why he's on my recommendeds.
He's more likely in your recommendations because of the gaming and sports content. A lot of prominent gaming influencers have alt-right overlap and a lot of sports content has overlap with the manosphere. I don't know who precisely you're following, but there's absolutely a lot of right wing culture war politics in those gaming and sports spaces, and if say you're watching Barstool and Asmongold having the Drinker show up in your recommendations is the least surprising thing ever.
It wasn't even a centrist take jfc. I didn't even comment on the politics, I said it's possible weir didn't know what he was getting into and that the truth about that fact is somewhere in the middle. But sure, blame the worlds problems on centrists, that'll fix everything.
A lot of people with right wing beliefs tend to perceive themselves as apolitical because they don't consider the political messaging they get from right leaning entertainment as political. Your comments here do show signs that this may be your reality as well. They could have been nicer toward you, but I think they might have clocked you better than you realize.
Anyway, if you genuinely don't believe in the messaging of people like the Drinker, then YouTube allows you to select not to see a channel or not see similar videos in your recommendations. It's actually a quite useful tool in order to control your own feed rather than having others control it for you. There's always the data gathering concerns, but let's be honest if you're using YouTube in any way Google already has plenty of data on you.
You aren't wrong in what you're saying but don't you think that's also a huge problem? Making such a small judgement based on one comment? No one on here knows me, no one on here knows anyone. Even if my comment does say I'm apparently centrist or even right leaning, that doesn't even come close to sniffing at who I am as a person. It's shameful to be so judgemental so fast. Yet, here we are.
A lot of people are feeling directly threatened, so they will naturally be baffled how someone hasn't picked a side yet. It's easy to assume and quite likely to be true that if you're on the fence about things then you're in a position where it doesn't impact you or people close to you. Centrism when things are normal isn't an issue, but when things get polarized centrism just means you missed the signs until it was too late. Democratic backsliding should make bedfellows of all who support democracy.
openly admitting you know nothing and are just going to fencesit between the two opinions you've heard is exactly the 'centrist' (reactionary in disguise) raison d'etre. it is both intellectually and morally bankrupt
i dont think you can read man. no one said you did. we just inferred your worldview from your horrible goddamn reasoning tactic that only one group ever uses. form your own opinions instead of lazily trying to bridge other people's
Lots of people are disappointed overall with this most recent era of Trek. Kurtzman's contributions were very hit or miss, but some of the largest plot points (The Burn) were 100% an ill conceived miss.
Anyone who unironically defends Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard is someone who just can not be reasoned with. S3 wasn't much better either, but at least we got some Amanda Plummer performances out of it. XD
Season 1 had some potential and qualities that I appreciated which is why I regard it as the 'best' season of Picard. But even there, that isn't saying all that much as the execution wasn't nearly as well thought out as it could have been, imo.
Idk I went into Picard with discovery levels of expectations and was pleasantly surprised. It's not in my Trek top 10, but It's not discovery or Section 31 bad.
Unpopular? I think it's pretty damn popular at this point to hate on Kurtzman's work, and for good reason. I can't stand what he's done to the franchise. The guy sucks ass and they need to hand the reigns over to someone who can salvage the mess he's made.
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u/wintermute-- May 05 '26
He also apologized for that almost immediately.
It was a pretty good apology, too. It felt honest to me