5 Reasons You're Not Happy and Successful

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5 Reasons You're Not Happy and Successful

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Sat Nov 14, 2015 6:35 pm

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-reasons-youre-not-happy-successful/
There seems to be a subliminal message within this article, but I can't quite put my finger on it.
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Re: 5 Reasons You're Not Happy and Successful

Postby Crimson847 » Sat Nov 14, 2015 7:34 pm

"Winston Rowntree isn't happy?"
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"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
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Re: 5 Reasons You're Not Happy and Successful

Postby ghijkmnop » Sat Nov 14, 2015 9:16 pm

Redacted
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Last edited by ghijkmnop on Mon Mar 18, 2019 4:29 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: 5 Reasons You're Not Happy and Successful

Postby Askias » Sat Nov 14, 2015 9:57 pm

... so anything below that is probably doing you a disservice if you spend too much energy on it. Or think of it this way: If everything you've ever said can be blinked out of existence by a browser extension, then you may not have that much of a voice.


And if the only point of what you've written can be made worthless by another, your heart is probably not in the right place.
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If there be here lesson or moral, it lies beyond the competence of him who wrote this post.
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Re: 5 Reasons You're Not Happy and Successful

Postby A Warrior Bunny » Sat Nov 14, 2015 10:21 pm

Never would have thought the reason I'm unhappy is because I have the ability to post my thoughts on an article in a neat little section made solely for such thought posting.

That means it's all your fault, TCS, for giving me a platform to express my thoughts!

Man I used to like Rowntree's articles. Sucks to be me, I guess.
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!!! THIS POST BROUGHT TO YOU BY BITTERNESS, DEPRESSION, AND ACUTE INTERNET EXPOSURE !!!
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Re: 5 Reasons You're Not Happy and Successful

Postby Krashlia » Sat Nov 14, 2015 10:41 pm

... so anything below that is probably doing you a disservice if you spend too much energy on it. Or think of it this way: If everything you've ever said can be blinked out of existence by a browser extension, then you may not have that much of a voice.


Then you better keep it freaking open and make a freaking way so i could navigate my freaking posts and extract my freaking words!
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Re: 5 Reasons You're Not Happy and Successful

Postby SandTea » Sat Nov 14, 2015 11:33 pm

This article only made me think of all the artists/scientists/writers/etc. who were hated during their lifetime and miserable throughout it only to be recognized as the heroes, pioneers and geniuses they were after death. Still, what roundtree wrote just makes me said for people who think like that....

...and the ones he decries in the article. ;)
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"Draw me not without reason; sheath me not without honor."
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Re: 5 Reasons You're Not Happy and Successful

Postby williamthallis » Sun Nov 15, 2015 12:20 am

SandTea wrote:This article only made me think of all the artists/scientists/writers/etc. who were hated during their lifetime and miserable throughout it only to be recognized as the heroes, pioneers and geniuses they were after death. Still, what roundtree wrote just makes me said for people who think like that....

...and the ones he decries in the article. ;)


Chatterton produced things that will stand the test of time, even if many people still don't know who he is. Keats coughed himself to death in Italy when he was barely out of his juvenilia phase. He is among the finest of English poets even then. Funny thing is, I don't remember any of their famous works being long whining tracts about reasons everyone else is unhappy but they are happy.

I wish there were some sort of author blocker on Cracked at this point, as I almost missed Bucholz's writing today, and I find myself looking at the author's name before reading the articles more and more. I have a list of 'do not read, waste of time'. Anyone game to write a Firefox extension?
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“Ever since you’ve joined this PC thing, you just bully people, and wait for people to say anything improper so you can just jump down their throats for whatever words he or she used.”
“‘He or she’ is an agender phobic microagression, Sharon. You are a bigot.”
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Re: 5 Reasons You're Not Happy and Successful

Postby reallifegirl » Sun Nov 15, 2015 6:05 pm

Man, I'd like to think I'm not a particularly cranky person, but an article hasn't bugged me this badly since Jason Iannone tried to rename vaginas in the name of feminism.

Maybe I just have a particular rage button for who treats personal unhappiness as a moral failing. I doubt Rowntree considered it like this, but it's along the lines of people who say "Well, if you're poor, why don't you have a better job?" It's assuming everything about your personal circumstances is within your control, and that is not possible to simply be unhappy because of things completely beyond your ability to change.

This kind of naive, sweeping paternalism is usually what you find on Thought Catalog being written by students who are young and sheltered enough that they don't know better. I don't actually know how old Rowntree is, but he's been working for Cracked for 6 years. You'd think he'd have the experience to know better.

At least when Wong did his 5 Harsh Truths article, it was focused self-improvement and making yourself more likeable/valuable. The article had flaws, but the focus made sense for what he was saying. Maybe Rowntree could have retooled the article into "How to Push Yourself to Be More Creative" or something and taken out the whole comments section bite-the-hand-that-feeds section, and it'd probably have gone better.

Or hey, maybe he's right and my commenting here is the sole reason I haven't written the Great American Novel. ...you jerks.
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Re: 5 Reasons You're Not Happy and Successful

Postby williamthallis » Sun Nov 15, 2015 6:17 pm

reallifegirl wrote:Man, I'd like to think I'm not a particularly cranky person, but an article hasn't bugged me this badly since Jason Iannone tried to rename vaginas in the name of feminism.



:shock:

What? I don't read his columns because the way that he writes with as many clauses that are unnecessary and draw the sentences on too long causes me to have some sort of headache that is really bad after even attempting to read one of his sentences since they are so long and contain so many words that are redundant and unnecessary while barely saying anything at all with one of his sentences that are long and are also convoluted.

What the fuck did he say about renaming vaginas?!?!?

Also, the author, Winston Roundtree, reminds me of Seth MacFarlane. He takes on targets he's not qualified to with a self satisfying smirk that only those who are truly oblivious to how far below their talent is compared to where they imagine it to be can have, without falling into a seizure from the cognitive dissonance. He drew one of his little cartoons about the Sgt. Pepper album (and about music in general) that showed his head was so far up his own ass in terms of knowing anything about music that 'being productive' in the sense of creating content and 'being productive' in the sense of having content worth creating are not the same thing in his mind.
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“Ever since you’ve joined this PC thing, you just bully people, and wait for people to say anything improper so you can just jump down their throats for whatever words he or she used.”
“‘He or she’ is an agender phobic microagression, Sharon. You are a bigot.”
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Re: 5 Reasons You're Not Happy and Successful

Postby reallifegirl » Sun Nov 15, 2015 6:36 pm

williamthallis wrote: :shock:

What? I don't read his columns because the way that he writes with as many clauses that are unnecessary and draw the sentences on too long causes me to have some sort of headache that is really bad after even attempting to read one of his sentences since they are so long and contain so many words that are redundant and unnecessary while barely saying anything at all with one of his sentences that are long and are also convoluted.

What the fuck did he say about renaming vaginas?!?!?


Oh, it was a clusterfuck. In the article 5 Ignorant Jokes From the Last Comedians You'd Expect, he called out Louis CK for a bit where he joked that 'cunt' seemed like too strong of a word for vaginas because he thinks of them as pretty like a flower. Jason said that it was patronizing, basically, and implied vaginas were only for men's pleasure.

Then turned right the fuck around and decided that it was not patronizing for him to give vaginas a new name, and decided to propose the idea of "the Iron Box" because of their baby-pushing power. Because it's wrong to imply vaginas are only for pleasure, but fine to imply they're only for baby-shoving, I guess.

None of the women in the comment section (that I saw, anyway) were thrilled by this.
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Re: 5 Reasons You're Not Happy and Successful

Postby williamthallis » Sun Nov 15, 2015 6:46 pm

I swear to God, half the shit on Cracked by people like him is the exact same bullshit I had to hear at my all boys Catholic high school, except instead of being homophobic and cliquish, it's self righteous and cliquish.

Some skinny white guy in his 30's wearing an ironic t-shirt and stupid tattoos defending the dignity of women and minorities on their behalf. Thank god the Justice Battalion has come to the rescue, so you ladies and the colored folk can finally make real progress.

Has he offered to show you how your vagina works yet? It might be too confusing for you lady folk to figure out on your own and need a man who writes articles about lame tv shows to show you the way.
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“Ever since you’ve joined this PC thing, you just bully people, and wait for people to say anything improper so you can just jump down their throats for whatever words he or she used.”
“‘He or she’ is an agender phobic microagression, Sharon. You are a bigot.”
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Re: 5 Reasons You're Not Happy and Successful

Postby reallifegirl » Sun Nov 15, 2015 7:06 pm

williamthallis wrote:I swear to God, half the shit on Cracked by people like him is the exact same bullshit I had to hear at my all boys Catholic high school, except instead of being homophobic and cliquish, it's self righteous and cliquish.

Some skinny white guy in his 30's wearing an ironic t-shirt and stupid tattoos defending the dignity of women and minorities on their behalf. Thank god the Justice Battalion has come to the rescue, so you ladies and the colored folk can finally make real progress.

Has he offered to show you how your vagina works yet? It might be too confusing for you lady folk to figure out on your own and need a man who writes articles about lame tv shows to show you the way.


Yup. It's such horseshoe theory nonsense. "Let me talk over women and minorities to defend women and minorities". But with a dose of more self-righteousness to make it even smarmier.

I admit, I am curious if I or any other female commenters ever cross a line and get banned or smack-talked by a male writer for not agreeing with a male Cracked writer's opinions on women and feminism. As far as I know it hasn't happened yet (and I would prefer they have enough self-awareness not to) but I wonder.
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"I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not."

Encyclopedia Dramatica wrote:Reallifegirl: Is supposedly a girl in real life, but we all know that's false. Gets highest comment roughly 75% of the time, and has never had a single red-thumbed comment. Ever.
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Re: 5 Reasons You're Not Happy and Successful

Postby Askias » Sun Nov 15, 2015 7:33 pm

reallifegirl wrote:I admit, I am curious if I or any other female commenters ever cross a line and get banned or smack-talked by a male writer for not agreeing with a male Cracked writer's opinions on women and feminism. As far as I know it hasn't happened yet (and I would prefer they have enough self-awareness not to) but I wonder.


Well Wong personally spat on a recovering alcoholic when she had different ideas on how to treat alcoholics than he had. But that's Wong, and maybe for women and feminism they'll have the sense to say you're just 'not aware' of just how incredibly sexist everything is.

Back to this writer. I disliked the first page of the article. I know these Cracked articles well enough by now not to click 'next'.
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Last edited by Askias on Sun Nov 15, 2015 7:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 5 Reasons You're Not Happy and Successful

Postby thatindianguy » Sun Nov 15, 2015 7:37 pm

Rowentree like a lot of Internet folk, seems to think that his experience as a middle aged, fairly successful creative professional gives him pin point insight into the lives and inner workings of all people.
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