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this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2024
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Its not just me right? This guy is insufferable. Like he got to take Carl Sagan's seat but he has none of the humility that comes from the sense of awe that Sagan was able to inspire through his understanding of the universe.
I don’t get why it’s so popular to hate on him.
Its not a matter of popularity but a matter of how he conducts himself.
Here are about 20 examples: https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dmkgz/neil-degrasse-tysons-tweets-are-so-bad-and-he-needs-to-go-away
The writer of that article seems over the top angry about NDT’s tweets. Enough so that he titles the article “Neil Degrasse Tyson Shut The Fuck Up”.
Maybe its justified though, let’s look at some examples:
-NDT tweeted that “Marriage Story” should’ve been called “Divorce Story”.
-NDT tweeted chunks of asteroid in the movie Armageddon conveniently hit all the major cities of earth.
-NDT tweeted that the aliens in the movie Arrival would’ve had to write backwards to communicate.
…Seriously this doesn’t explain the hate for him. It just makes the writer seem like he has a chip on his shoulder.
it’s cinema sins but with the “he’s an astrophysicist so he must know what he’s talking about”
when an otherwise smart guy spends his time nitpicking…movies?…he comes across as the friend you wouldn’t want to go to the movies with, no?
you can argue that the hate might be “over the top” (and i tend to agree), but that mfer comes across as straight insufferable - in that if i had a choice i wouldn’t want to be around him - so i can empathise.
edit: i’m sure there’s more, but i’m struggling to come up with any other scientist who spends their time saying “haha that ben affleck movie about oil drillers isn’t scientifically accurate!?!?” instead of, you know, positively impacting/selling their field of study.
Comparing it to cinemasins is ridiculous. Cinemasins just straight makes shit up, doesn't pay attention, is deliberately obtuse, and nitpicks to stretch out video run times. They do it for ad revenue.
NDT's tweets may annoy some people but they're still at least helping to educate. He's using movies as an opportunity to inject some scientific facts into the space. He could be doing it smarter and less obnoxiously, but it's still just him doing his job. It doesn't make him deserving of anywhere near as much contempt as he gets on the Internet.
And again, he is not the only celebrity that acts pompous and makes incorrect assertions on Twitter. Yet this is all anyone talks about when it comes to him.
There are a lot of people I wouldn’t want to go to the movies with. But I wouldn’t write an article about each of them telling them to shut the fuck up.
That reaction just doesn’t make sense to me.
Becsuse the way he says similar things in interviews influences how we read the words in his tweets. They don't sound like someone being funny and clever, they sound like someone being smug and pompous.
I used to enjoy his "but awkshully" take ok things, but sfter a while it seems like his popularity went to his head and now it comes across as mean. It would probably help if he was a littke self depricating once in a while.
You're spending your time nitpicking a guy who nitpicks movies. He's allowed to have a life outside of astrophysics
I mean those all seem like pretty decent examples of some one being a pedantic, pompous, "trying to constantly appear smart", tool-bag.
None of which unusual on Twitter from celebrities.
Why does he get chewed out for it specifically?
You seem defensive.
I disagree. I’ve had many times where people call out plot holes in movies just because they stand out to them. Not because they are trying to appear smart.
It happens a lot on the Star Wars and Star Trek communities here on lemmy but I don’t see it getting the same reaction.