I share an HBO Max subscription (now just called Max) with my dad and I often look up "best movies on HBO" and one of the most well-known titles is the Joaquin Phoenix movie "Joker." Very scary movie, although it's not meant to be scary in the traditional horror movie sense of jump-scares and supernatural monsters, etc. The scariest thing about Joker is exactly what most horror movies don't have: the sense that there are a bunch of people in the real world who are like "Arthur Fleck," or the main character of the movie who goes on to become the Joker. Joker came out in 2019, a summer that was fraught with a ton of mass shootings and gun violence, seemingly every weekend there was stories about gun violence somewhere. Joker was so timely in depicting someone who fit the profile of those type of mass shooters, someone who'd been bullied his whole life, who felt like an outcast from society, and gradually devolved into madness. Not excusing his decision to start murdering people, but the movie lets you see the triggers for him ultimately just breaking after holding on for so long. At some point there's something that breaks the camel's back, but we as a society can pay attention to those straws that come before the last straw, whether it's the kids in the beginning who steal his cardboard sign and beat him up in the alley, or drunk businessmen who mock and beat him up on the subway. These are symbols of people in today's society who look down upon others and use social media to "troll" or harass others who otherwise don't mean harm, but are gradually irked and pushed into psychopathy. I've often said that social media and our society's emphasis on heaping praise on the most beautiful, the most physically gifted (sports, best actors, etc.) and those people get way more credit than they deserve, where just one of those "congratulations" or "attaboys" could be used to make the day of someone who no one ever gives credit to, who is struggling in society, who needs some love. Stop hitting "like" on the most popular things on your newsfeed that thousands of people have already liked; it's often that one lonely post that no one likes that actually needs the like or some sort of support. "Capitalist" is the word I think best describes today's attention-seeking culture: the top 1% get the most attention and because of all that attention, get even more attention, like a black hole sucking up all the light and energy around it, where there are people in the dark nethers who never get any attention but actually crave it and need it, just to feel wanted or loved. It's a shame; mass shootings aren't only caused by this kind of culture, but it's definitely a big cause, and mass shootings aren't the only side effect of this attention culture; it's also low self-esteem, caring too much about what everyone else thinks, more and more kids declaring themselves LGBTQ/trans when they're actually not (only doing it because it's cool and you get more attention for it, etc.). I'm pretty over it now, but when I was in high school I cared A LOT about what everyone else thought, and if the cool thing was to declare myself LGBT and I saw others who did it be praised, I'd do it too).
I recently started re-watching a bit of Breaking Bad; it's got a similar story arc as Joker: relatively good guy Walter White trying to do the right thing at first, but eventually because of his pride and ego he gets sucked into bad things: the gradual deterioration of someone who wasn't valued by his peers, and that bruised ego and chip on his shoulder eventually caused him to become a drug kingpin and brutal murderer. I really hope we can reduce the number of Arthur Flecks and Walter Whites in the real world.
Maybe motivated in part to trying to help society be just a little better for people, I tried to donate blood today, but alas my iron count was too low! Yup, in addition to having to drink plenty of water the previous day, not have had a tattoo, not had an accidental needle stick, solicited money for sex, had a whole list of diseases, etc., in order to donate blood you need to have a certain minimum hemoglobin level (iron in your blood), and I did not meet that low threshold. Guess I didn't eat enough leafy greens and/or iron-rich foods the last few days. Doh! I tried to help but all I got to show for it was too needle pricks on my typing fingers that I can still feel now (fingers are the most sensitive parts of the body). Gotta pump more iron like Arnold Schwarzanegger!
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