Comment on Dolph is prime human
bear@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 hours agoIs there some controversy around Bill Nye that I haven’t heard?
He has been a leading science communicator covering hundreds of topics for many decades, and is only human, of course there are going to be shortcomings.
Having personally interacted with him more times than I would like, and it was only 3, he’s just a massive jerk, and a self assured belittler.
He doesn’t respect people. I’m not sure he respects anyone other than those that can make his image better, and then it’s conditional and stops when they aren’t useful.
That’s disappointing.
His AMA was pretty bad.
How so?
It’s been a while and I don’t feel like going back there to refresh my memory.
Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone 16 hours ago
He has a reputation of just being an unpleasant dick and difficult to work with. Nothing super problematic to my knowledge, just a bad personality.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
I’ve also heard that he gets a lot of weird people who are overly attached to the idea of him getting their fantasies crushed when they meet him. Realize that a lot of those “I met him and he was rude” people might not be completely honest about their encounters. Think along the lines of Paris Syndrome, but for a person.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 11 hours ago
Fwiw Nye does seem to be very chummy with Neil de Grasse Tyson, and that guy’s issues are far more well attested to. From the smug poor media literacy, to reports of being professionally hard to work with, to his sexual harrassment allegations. I’m not especially inclined to give Nye the benefit of the doubt given the company he chooses to keep.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
I had to look up the sexual harassment stuff. That’s from 2019 and it was either cleared or never substantiated.
Even if Tyson is a bit of a lolcow on twitter, there are far worse things to be.
I’m just really suspicious of how popular it is to discredit science communicators while anti-intellectualism is so pervasive in society. It’s far easier to tear something down then it is to build something.
CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
I saw Tyson take such a dismissive attitude toward the threats of something like AI, specifically, AGI/ASI with the flippant “but we’d just shut it off!” kind of thing, it really grinded my gears.
However, I guess I’m falling into the same trap that so many do - expecting this guy to be all things to every aspect of anything that smacks of “science” and that’s just not a realistic expectation. I’ll stick with him on things like the re-make/update of Cosmos and ignore his random hot takes on virtually everything else. Probably also when he’s putting pen to paper vs. the hot take kind of thing on a talk show. He seems to be a frequent guest on talk shows and I remember a few being quite cringe at times.
I seem to remember a certain kind of person (usually your local WELLAXKTUALLY guy) getting butthurt about the way Sagan was being held up (in their view) as the arbiter of science or something, repeating “he’s not a real scientist he’s just a generalist” as a constant refrain.
Fuck it, who cares. If guys like this are good at getting whole generations of people interested in science, more power to them…science could use all the PR it can get in the age of Idiocracy.
CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Hm, never heard of Paris Syndrome; guess you learn something every day, thanks.
Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone 11 hours ago
Definitely possible, it’s just a little too consistent for me to think it’s all people meeting their hero and nobody just trying to do their job and getting treated poorly.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
I mean, I got the info about other people being weird around Bill Nye from a fan who went to one of his talks. According to her, lot of people who asked questions were asking him questions they were hyper specific to their chosen field that Nye would have no way of knowing unless that was the field he was working in. His specific field is education and science commutation. Without preparation, he’s only going to be able to answer in depth questions in that field.