SJ0

Unfortunately, any parent can tell you that once your kid likes a certain movie, you're gonna see it a lot, and my son really likes 2 movies that I've seen a lot. So I figured I'd write a bit about them since I've seen each probably 100 times more than a typical movie reviewer. I'm not watching it again to review it so this is from memory.

Elemental

Characters:

The protagonist is Ember, a snarky cunt who gets really angry and then destroys everything in the room. She's a fire elemental.

Her dad is super racist against water as on of his main character traits, he's one of the most likable characters in the film. In many scenes, his line read is angrily saying "WATER!!!"

Her mom is a woowoo crystal lady who does fortune telling.

Wade is a water elemental. At first he looks like a giant loser, but he's hiding his power level and is actually a gigachad looking for an Asian girlfr--oops, spoilers.

Wade's family shows up in three scenes, only one of substance, it's a bigger family. His dad is dead, meaning he could have been an anime protagonist but instead decided to be in this movie. I probably would have chosen the former, but I understand the allure of being in a Disney movie.

General plot:

The movie starts with Ember's family entering the city as new immigrants, and then being rejected from many apartments because they're made out of goddamn fire and even set one of the places on fire just by touching it. Eventually they buy a rotted out old building. It shows the family building a store and living in the building, and ember growing up next to her dad. He seems like a great guy. Some water guy comes in and starts breaking shit and she and her dad chase him off. She asks a bunch of times for the old man to give her the shop. It shows her growing up until it reaches the events of the movie. In this scene her dad lets her run a lady through the till. She get so mad she sets everything on fire, blowing out the glass in their display case (which she repairs using her fire), and setting a bunch of stuff on fire in a fire store, showing us her biggest character flaw, her bad temper.

Her dad wants to sleep in so he says she can run their big sale of the year. She goes off and does a bunch of deliveries saying she wants to beat his record. A plant kid tries to hit on her but he's like 12 and she's a six foot tall plume of flame, so she sets the flower he gives her on fire. She says "elements don't mix!" There's a big sequence of delivering things. Then she gets home, and her dad is sleeping at the counter. She puts him to bed and finishes.

The next day is the big red dot sale. She gets so mad trying to mind the store she's about to explode like a hand grenade, so she goes into the basement and does so, setting everything on fire in the process. Have you ever worked a minimum wage and not set off an explosion destroying the place after one day? Congratulations, you are officially more competent than this dummy. This sets off a water leak through a water pipe. The entire place is full of water (which WILL kill her -- she has half her face blown off, no I'm not kidding it happens a few times to fire people in this show). but she uses her water to weld the pipe shut (I still don't know -- would that work? I feel like the water would soak up all the heat). A water guy slides in through the pipe and starts writing city citations. Is this even legal? It feels illegal. Anyway, she tries to chat him up to stop writing tickets but only tells him he really needs to write a lot more tickets. Then there's a big chase scene through the city because she wants to burn the tickets. There's a cool scene where the water and fire slide through a crevice between buildings, and eventually they end up at city hall. She rushes ahead and sets a giant fire to stop him but he slips past her.

He goes in and she's sitting there suicidally depressed, talking about how her dad is going to lose everything because of her, and when she's suicidally depressed she does this glowy thing and water guy thinks it's pretty lit, but he is convinced but has sent the stuff off the be processed, so they go visit the plant guy who does the processing to try to convince him to stop and in the process she loses her temper burning everything in the room including the plant guy to cinders(He's fine, just needs to grow all his leafy body hair back). That's now score 2 for the explosive temper that literally destroys everything in the room.

Ember goes home and her dad is fighting off the leaks she caused, and her mom lays this guilt trip on her about how they had to leave the old country because of a big storm destroying their shop there. We also get to see some fantastic racism from her dad against water. I think he secretly believes Hotler was right. They also talk about the cultural significance of this blue flame thing.

The next day we see Wade walking by a door (I don't know what's going on here, the door is just a door not the big city hall doors we just saw, maybe a back entrance?) and he sees something that looks like it's on fire and it sets his man-purse on fire so he starts to stomp it out and she's like "hey stop stomping on me" and then he's all awkward like "you're so hot" and she's all judgmental -- hey lady, you set his man purse on fire chill out. Turns out she was there hoping to talk his boss into not putting the tickets through. She invites herself to a sports ball game since wade and his boss are both going.

At the sports ball game, Ember sounds like a skeezy used car salesman trying to convince the boss who is a wind elemental to tear up the tickets and fails miserably, getting into a slur-off. I'm pretty sure she called the boss an n-word, and the boss called her a different n-word right back, but then wade makes everything better by riling up the crowd so hard the home team wins the game.

After the game, the boss who is happy now because her team won listens to ember who has a real gift for gab and upon hearing about the leak ember caused says she definitely needs to shut down the store and tear it all to pieces (great work, Churchill), but thanks to Wade the boss gives them one chance to find and fix the leak and it's all good.

The next day, ember sneaks out to meet with wade, and she just randomly destroys a bunch of city infrastructure up on a roof to build a hot air balloon (as one does), and they take off. They see a couple plant elementals banging or something. Wade almost dies from the heat because it's a 6 foot tall walking talking fire3 spell, but he keeps it together because the power of water boners is stronger. There's a big exposition dump about how there's this special tree she wanted to see but wasn't allowed because her and her dad are giant walking talking nightmares of hot plasma, but then the place got flooded so now she can never see it ever how sad don't you feel for her? Me neither.

They find the spot, it turns out there's a broken wall. There just happens to be a bunch of sand bags right there, so with Wade doing the placing, they put a bunch of sandbags down to stop the leak. While in the air Wade mentions that sometimes you're just mad because your brain is just trying to let you know something you aren't ready to hear yet.

I think at that point he asks her on a date because he's got a death wish and evaporating is an actual thing that can happen. At that point there's a whole montage of dating (I think? I might've gotten the sequence wrong, it could happen after this?)

A while later we get to see her dad being racist against water (I think he wants to send them all to Washwitz), it's wholesome fun for the whole family (as long as your family isn't water). there's a flower delivery. She rushes it to the basement and the water in the vases reconstitute into wade. Turns out the sand bags aren't holding and the crew that was supposed to fix it won't be doing any work because Wade screwed up and trapped them all in cement. Then the dad shows up and he's about to stab this water guy he found in his basement (I don't know, would that even do anything?), but Ember calms him down. Wade claims he's a food inspector so her dad gives him a bunch of super hot food and he explodes (he got better), and then Wade makes like a tea with the hot food and gets banned from her dads shop. Really great showing here.

They end up meeting at a beach to try to dig sand bags but they realize it's not going to help and so she's suicidal again, and she does that pretty lightshow she does when she's suicidal. Wade instantly perks up (He's got a thing for suicidal pillars of flame), and also points out that she made glass. They go to the leak and she turns the sand into glass, sealing the gap. They need to get the OK from the boss the next day, so they'll meet then. He tells her to meet his family for dinner so they can wait for the call.

When she gets home, her dad tells her that because of how well she handled the water guy he's retiring in 2 days and giving her the shop and he even made a sign.

The next day she sneaks out, and her mom smells love (it's her fortune telling thing), so she starts shuffling off to find it. Ember has dinner at wade's place, and uses fire to fix a water jug that got broken, and everyone is very impressed. The boss calls up, the glass is an ok fix. Wade's mom tells Ember about an internship in a glass company.

Ember's mom gave up and stumbles away before dinner ends.

Ember leaves dinner and seems mad (because she always seems mad or depressed, that's her 2 modes), and wade goes with her. They drive really fast on a motorcycle and nearly die a bunch of times. She admits that the reason she's so mad is she doesn't actually want the shop (she probably shouldn't have asked 100 times when she was younger then, but what do I know?), but doesn't want to admit it. They go back, and Ember's mom shows up and lays some fantastic racism against the water boy, but they go into her place to do a fortune telling. Embers mom doesn't think it'll work since you need fire, but Wade cleverly uses his refractive body to form a lens to set a fire using the light in the room. Embers racist dad wakes up and Wade has to leave in a hurry. Ember's dad lays on the "I'm your old dying dad, I'm so glad you're taking over the shop" routine.

The next day she goes to his place and gives him a glob of glass she previously made because she's breaking up with him. He doesn't take no for an answer and tells her to come with him to see something. They go to the place with the tree she wanted to see. Wade's boss is there (I call my boss out regularly to save my relationships, don't you?), and uses the wind elemental power to prepare an air bubble. Wade swims into the water with her in the air bubble and they see the tree, and it's a whole nice thing, then the air is running out so she nearly dies but is pretty stoked that she got to see the tree, even if she did die. Wade knows she's weak in the knees from near death and it's time to shoot his shot -- he asks her to touch, and it turns out they don't die, so they were pretty excited about that. Then he holds her and is all like "I'm so happy I have you" which turns out to be her trigger word and she flees in terror. She says something about "And the fact you don't understand is a reason we can never be together"

The next day is the shop getting handed over to her, it's a big thing, and wade crashes the party. He goes "You said this was the reason we can never be together" which is not what she said you slimy sleazeball water -- no wonder embers dad hates you you're filled with lies and water. He tries to apply the rizz and instead only manages to seduce her dad... into not retiring. She isn't impressed. Sometimes you roll a 1.

The next day he's about to leave and she's doing deliveries and then her glass thing starts to crack. Then it breaks, and takes half the city with it. Ember bravely drives like a maniac to warn everyone in firetown. Wade sees what happens and leaves the airport.

Her dad begs her mom to let him go to save the blue flame, but I don't know what he's going to do -- he's like 2 feet tall and wider than he is tall. I don't think you can just be racist to a flash flood and it'll help (it's him though, so maybe?) Ember, being like 6 feet tall and having the acrobatic skills of a lifelong circus performer flips in and tries to save the shop. Wade shows up and Ember is like "You came back! After all I said!" and you know that bodes well for the future. "Oh, you this whipped, huh? I'm gonna enjoy this..."

The water breaks through and she tries to make glass to save the blue fire but it didn't work last time it didn't work this time.

Ember is tossed into the back room which is now covered in debris. She's upset about losing the blue flame but Wade got it (It seems to me he's saved her ass at every juncture). She seals up the entrance leaks with her fire, but wade is starting to evaporate (yeah, because he's in an enclosed room next to ifrit the destroyer). They try to leave through the chimney but the flooding destroys and plugs up the chimney. He's evaporating and she becomes suicidally depressed which is really his thing but he evaporates.

A while later everything is cleared and they let her out, and water guy is dead (how happy was the dad? They never got into it but I'm sure to him the only good water is a dead water). But then they make water guy cry and he leaks into a bucket at the bottom of the chimney.

Because it's pretty difficult to imagine exactly what their future would be like, her line of triumph is something "I love you Wade... I want to....have you, FOREVER.... in my life...." it's an awkward line coupled with an awkward line read because it sure looks like "happily ever after" is existing a couple feet apart at all times.

Then he's back and they kiss and that's basically the end of the movie after some extra scenes showing she didn't need to take over the shop.

The moral of the story:

You don't need to control your explosive, destructive anger, you're only mad because you aren't getting your way.

Filial piety is for the birds (or don't worry it'll turn out you don't even need to carry on your fathers dream anyway you DISAPPOINTING FAILURE)

I think a third theme of the movie is miscegenation, but honestly I don't know what I'd say about race mixing in the film that would mean anything, just like the in the movie -- most people don't literally destroy one another in each other's presence and consider that a good candidate for a life partner. One of them is literally fire and will be put out by water, and one of them is literally water and will be evaporated by fire. Like... They say that 'love is all you need', but I feel like the other thing you need is not being antimatter to one another.

Why do kids like it:

It's really pretty. The whole thing is just excuses for the animators to create really beautiful scenes with the characters as brushes.

What do I think:

I'm not a fan. The moral is weak, the story is weak, it's all spectacle and no substance. The main character never needs to improve herself, the world seems like it could be really interesting but doesn't really get built all that much, it just seems pretty sparse. The fundamental story is also sort of self-refuting since being alone in a room literally kills the co-protaganist.

I'm an anime watcher, so plot contrivances don't bug me that much, such as the bizarre idea of a city manager asking a rando to fix a leak and making canceling a bunch of tickets contingent on fixing that leak. They're stretched pretty tight here though, for some people the illusion might just snap.

Given the themes of filial piety and a few other things (including the link between dragons and flame), I tend to think the fire people are coded as mostly Asian, and the water people are coded as mostly white Anglo Saxon. Not that it actually matters, since in a lot of ways it doesn't end up mattering. The conflicts are against a water leak on one end, the main character's roid rage on the other, and in between there's a romance between a roid raging explosion factory and a gigachad who constantly fixes everything for her and gets dumped on at every opportunity. Any themes they hoped to explore were lost in the maelstrom.

Although filial piety is set up as one of the antagonists, I like Ember's dad. He seems like a decent hard working guy who wants to do right by his family. After seeing this movie approximately 9001 times, hearing him scream "WATER" in anger and fear never gets old with me.

Do you want to watch this movie 9001 times? No no oh Jesus lord god no. It's the sort of thing you see once, go "oh that was neat" and move on with your life, probably to never think about again. It's pretty and insubstantial, like cotton candy, and about as healthy for your kids. If you think your kids might want to watch this 9001 times, don't even mention it because it's not worth it.

As a contrast, we watched Bolt recently, from around 2008. In that movie, the main character had an arc where he had to come to understand the authentic world as it is and separate out the fantasy elements, to piece out the real from the fiction, and in the process came to realize he wasn't a dog with superpower, he was just a regular dog and he needed to learn to cope with being a regular dog and not an actual TV superhero. In spite of that journey, when his owner was in peril he went into a burning building and nearly died saving his owners life with the last few gasps of consciousness before being overwhelmed by smoke himself showing that despite learning he wasn't a superhero the relationship he had with his owner was real and worth risking his life to protect. That's a movie whose message I'd like to see again and again.

Bolt's side stories also had important moral lessons, such as the deceptive network exec laying a guilt trip on the little girl despite the fact that we saw earlier all she cares about is ratings, and the story of the agent pushing her around. Those side stories I think contributed to the story's moral fiber.

Unfortunately, any parent can tell you that once your kid likes a certain movie, you're gonna see it a lot, and my son really likes 2 movies that I've seen a lot. So I figured I'd write a bit about them since I've seen each probably 100 times more than a typical movie reviewer.

Encanto

Characters

The protaganist of this movie is a frumpy girl with a big nose. This is plot relevant because she sticks her nose in everyone else's business. She has no magical powers other than the power of autism

Abuela is the elder matriarch of the family. I don't know exactly what her magical powers are, she doesn't explicitly show anything but we'll get to that.

She has a fair skinned aunt whose mood affects the weather. Her husband is a simp.

She has an uncle named Bruno. We're gonna talk about Bruno, don't you worry.

Her mom is probably the most reasonable and normal person in the entire family. Her power is her cooking is a cureall, immediately heals all injuries. Her husband acts weak and his entire contribution to the film seems to be one scene where he makes a funny face and another scene where he goes "I'm worried about MY DAUGHTER"

She has a younger male cousin who is just coming of age, his power will be talking to animals.

She has a slightly older male cousin whose power is shape shifting. This guy is basically a Checkov's Gun that goes entirely unfired. He appears in scenes, but other than comic relief his entire character could be removed and nothing of value would be lost.

He has a female cousin about the same age whose power is extreme hearing.

She has two sisters, one is a brute with super strength, the other is a princess who can make flowers appear and works really hard to appear perfect.

Main Plot:

The movie starts with a retelling of the story from Abeula fleeing the war and gaining a magical miracle. They have a candle that never goes out, and an enchanted land that has terrain that keeps out invaders, and a magical house that is alive.

Next there's a musical number explaining all the family members. One thing that's really notable in these pieces is whereas in some films there's continuity in musical numbers to a degree, it really doesn't look like it here. People show up in numbers to do something or sing something then minutes later act like they had no idea the musical number happened. Doesn't really matter, but it's noteworthy for people who are vainly trying to follow the narrative. The number is also an attempt by frumpy to deflect from questions from the kids of the village about what her magical gift is. At the end of the number, abuela is wondering what the hell she's doing and the younger cousin tells the kids she has no magical gift. One of the villagers comes over with a big basket and makes a big deal of her not having a gift.

They're preparing for the gift granting ceremony for the youngest.

She goes into the house and her aunt is causing rainstorms and her simp husband is trying to calm her down. Princess Sister comes down on a swing made of rose vines and gives everyone flowers, and snipes verbally at frumpy who then storms into the kitchen.

We see her mom and dad. (Her dad is covered in bee stings which we saw in the musical but not other stuff from the musical... It's just a show, don't think too hard about it). Her mom makes him a small piece of food to cure the bee stings. Her dad tries to talk to her about not having a magical gift, but doesn't do a very good job, and ends up just trying to say exactly what her mom says in the end and then makes a funny face for some reason. Her mom tells her she's just as special as the rest and that she doesn't need to make up for anything.

She's putting a nice little decoration next to everyone's room when abuela shows up and says "don't mess this up" basically.

She has a scene with the young cousin who she's sharing a room with, luring him out from under the bed with a present (a leopard). They go out of the room and into the party.

They show the party for a bit, then eventually it's time for the ceremony. The young cousin really wants frumpy to come walk with him because he's scared. After a bit of coaxing she does, and they walk towards a magical door, and he puts his hand on the doorknob. A toucan flies out and lands on his arm and it's obvious that they're talking and then a bunch of animals show up and his room opens and it's a big animal and nature themed room. After the excitement they get everyone with a gift together to take a photo, and in the flash of the photo a new musical number starts where frumpy whines about not having a miracle. In the process of the song, she goes to a part of the house where nobody is, and she sees a broken ceiling tile, and the house seems to be scared and shaking. she picks up the ceiling tile and it shatters slicing her hand clean open, (I'm not sure the mechanics of this... She's hold it with her fingers then her hand is sliced open) and she can see giant cracks forming everywhere. She rushes to the party and stops everyone to warn them but when they go back everything is fine, so the party continues.

She has a talk with her mom about how hard tonight must be on her (mom isn't wrong) as she cooks a magical healing bun for her hand.

In bed, she hears abuela talking, and worrying that they're going to lose everything and wishing that abuelo (grandfather) was still there to help her.

The next day, she's trying to talk to the cousin who can hear really well but ends up talking to the shapeshifter instead who is shapeshifted as the cousin who can hear really well, so that's a joke and then the hearing cousin comes up and says "Nobody was talking about this but you... and the rats in the walls... and your big strong sister, her eye was twitching all night"

They have a family meeting and while abuela is trying to hold a meeting frumpy is interrupting everything trying to find out what her big strong sister knows. We learn that princess sister is going to be married off to some big guy and the propsal is soon.

After the meeting frumpy meets up with big strong sister, who then sings all about how much pressure she's under because she's so strong . After that, big strong sister suggests looking for uncle bruno's final vision in his room.

She goes to the room, and finds the shards of glass that fit together to make a vision. She barely escapes because gathering the shards for some reason causes the main chamber to be destroyed. She takes the shards to her room.

Abuela finds her in the hallway and is about to ask about the sand in her hair when big strong sister comes up distraught because she felt weak. In the commotion, frumpy runs off.

There's a whole musical number about how we don't talk about Bruno because he makes prophecies that tell you bad things.

In the end of the number, she finally pieces together the vision and sees that the house is cracking behind a vision of her.

Her dad comes in the room and is shocked to see the vision slab. Frumpy immediately says everything in about 2 seconds. The dad says "we don't tell anyone", but the cousin with hearing heard everything.

It's the night of the proposal between princess sister and big guy, and all kinds of contrivances occur where the hearing cousin blabs to everyone who blabs to everyone, and it becomes a self-fulfililng prophecy -- the marriage proposal fails miserably and everyone's powers are acting up.

Frumpy sees a rat taking one of the pieces of the glass vision shard behind a painting. It turns out it's on a hinge. She goes in and wanders across. She runs into Bruno who "saves" her from a very shallow pit. He lives in the walls it turns out. She tries to convince him to have another vision, and eventually with the help of the young cousin who talks to animals (the animals told him everything) they agree to have another vision. During the vision, they find a new clue, a butterfly that leads to the revelation that to save the miracle she needs to hug her sister. This pisses off frumpy because she thinks her sister is a primadonna. Bruno explains that it isn't about his sister, it's about her, she's the key to saving the miracle, and he slinks back into his picture.

Frumpy enters Princess Sister's room. Princess demands an apology, and Frumpy gives a half-hearted apology she immediately takes back. Ultimately Princess says she never wanted to marry big guy and was only doing it to help the family. A cactus pops up, which Princess had never done before. It starts a whole musical number asking about her limits if only she wasn't limited to the perfection the role she percieves herself to be trapped in. By the end of the musical, she's using her powers in brand new ways representing her new way of thinking of the world, and the two hug and the magic candle burns brighter than we've seen it.

Abuela comes into the house, and is livid. The house is a mess, Princess Sister is a mess, the proposal is ruined, and Abuela is trying to pin it entirely on frumpy. Frumpy is trying to explain what she did is helping and it's good but abuela won't hear it. Frumpy gets really mad, saying nobody in the house will ever be good enough, and giving her an earful causing the house to be destroyed by cracks. She tries to save the magical candle and heroically succeeds, but the candle has gone out by the time she gets to it.

Her mom checks if she's ok, and afterwards frumpy runs off to a lake far from the village and the now destroyed house.

Abuela comes and starts to explain the full history of the miracle, starting with meeting Abuelo(grandfather). They meet, they fall in love, they get married, they have triplets. There's political turmoil in the city they live in, and eventually they flee. Soldiers or something on horseback are chasing them, and Abuelo decides to go back to I guess trade pokemon cards? But obviously he doesn't have any good ones so they cut him down where he stands, and in that moment Abuela is emotionally crushed and the magical miracle occurs, the candle wiping the bad men away and changing the landscape to save everyone, and building their house.

After hearing this story, frumpy realizes that it was actually pretty hard for abuela and explains how she recognizes the pain and hardship they faced, and their periods sync up or something and suddenly they're both better and everything is better.

Bruno shows up and is like "It was me! Don't take it out on frumpy!" but Abuela just hugs Bruno.

When they get back, there's a brief thing where Bruno is reunited with everyone, and frumpy sings a song about how "stars don't shine they burn and constellations shift", presumably talking about how a status quo can't be maintained forever. Then the villagers show up to help rebuild the house. There's another musical number about working together to rebuild the house, and the wisdom their ordeal has granted them.

The last bit was the family singing about how special frumpy is and how hard she worked and how much she suffered, and the front door doesn't have a doorknob, so she has to put it on. After watching this movie 9001 times, it occurred to me that these silly mexicans don't even know you aren't supposed to install the door and close the door before you put the doorknob on! You can't just smoosh a doorknob onto the hole and expect it to alll... you know what? It's just a show, I should really just relax. Anyway, she puts the doorknob on and the house is magically restored to a magical house, and the movie ends.

The Moral of the story:

So there's an intended moral, I think.

The intended moral is about the hidden cracks caused by the misunderstandings between the family members and the undue stress being put on everyone by abuela's high expectations, and how frumpy brought everyone closer together.

One thing I do like is that Abuela constantly says that they must work hard to be worthy of the magical miracle they were given, which isn't wrong, even if within the context of the story she was setting the bar to asian parent.

The real moral is a lot more complicated.

Frumpy's main superpower is being too autistic to just go with the flow like everyone else.

One question I haven't been able to answer is whether frumpy actually did cause this. It seems like the cracks are a visual manifestation of the emotional distance between the different family members, and they started when she was feeling distant from her family because they all had gifts and she didn't. The cracks formed again because she brought the vision shards back together, and the house finally collapsed because she had a temper tantrum at abuela. It's like, great job breaking it hero.

All the men in this movie are impotent losers. You have a simp who only fawns over his wife, the weak man who can't even finish a speech without just repeating what his wife said, the emotionally fragile prophet who runs away and hides in the walls because people are mean to him, and the shapeshifter who does so little the story could have existed in its entirety without him. Abuelo's defining characteristic is basically dying while trying to trade pokemon cards with the soldiers. Big guy was just a macguffin for princess sister and later hearing cousin.

I feel like if the men had been more masculine then much of this story would have been avoided. None of the 5 living men in the main story exhibited masculine strength, and so that's were I interpret the women breaking down because they don't have those pillars in place. Great, Strong Sister is physically strong, but she's carrying a bunch of weak men and there's nobody there to support her emotionally. Great, Princess Sister is emotionally strong, but big guy let himself be a Macguffin putting all the burdens on her, barely existing as a person. Uncle Simp obviously cares for Weather Aunt, but as a simp he's micromanaging her mood instead of being the sort of pillar so she didn't need to be so neurotic. Frumpy's dad finally found his balls in one scene, but it was too late -- the time for him to act with strength was long before the house already collapsed.

And then there's Bruno. Let's talk about Bruno. He let himself be dominated by his mother well into his adulthood to the point that he let himself be bullied by his mother, bullied by the town, bullied by everyone. The way he talks is weak. The way he stands is weak. If he had found his own strength which in a masculine sense is doing the right thing regardless of what others think, then this whole story would have been different. In some ways, frumpy needed to take on the weight he refused to lift.

I can see a number of criticisms of Abuelo as a failure as a man. He was busy making googoo eyes at his girlfriend and wife instead of keeping his ear to the ground of potential hazards which resulted in only realizing far too late that there were problems, and when those problems manifested he had no ability to use force to protect his family -- no weapons, no weapons training, he just walked towards them with his hands up like he was going to trade pokemon cards with them. I'll say he was certainly courageous walking back unarmed to confront armed warriors on horseback, but courage alone was a death sentence for him and but for the magic miracle would have been a death sentence for his wife and three children.

Honestly though, I don't think all that was intentional. I think the writers of the story actually want men who are like the ones in the story so they can feel like they can step in.

Of course, in a postmodern age it's not necessarily true that traditional gender norms are desirable, but clearly my argument is that in the complete absence of men with traditionally masculine virtues, we can see the facts empirically in front of us that there is a massive stress put on the women who suddenly have to be both the men and the women. Even if abuela was the head of the household, strong men would be pillars she could rest her burden upon and that clearly was not the case.

Why do kids like it:

No doubt, it's the music. The music in this movie is great, and some of it even charted on billboards. The big musical numbers are also really decent. There's also some really nice visuals. I particularly liked the bored eyes on the donkeys during strong sister's song.

What do I think:

This movie is deeply imperfect. The climax of the film in particular is not earned in the least. Frumpy tears the family apart, knocks their house down, and one story from Abuela later everything is all better? I don't care how nice the music in that scene was, it didn't make any sense. As I discussed at length in the last section, the men were weak losers and that was required to drive the story forward.

But you know what? It's acceptable. Unlike Elemental where I felt it was deeply flawed and had no redeeming characteristics, I like the theme of family on display (even though the family is dysfunctional), I like the idea that being granted a miracle you have a responsibility to be worthy of that miracle, I like the music, I like the underlying concept of empathy where it turns out Strong Sister and Princess Sister weren't perfect or strong and once you got to know them just a little better you'd realize that.

Modern Hollywood has a serious problem depicting healthy families because so few people in Hollywood come from healthy families. You have to think there's something like a T-Rex in the rearview mirror for such peopleto run towards something so horrifying as Hollywood so wholeheartedly.

Moana is another Disney film with family as a theme, and while the father and Maui were both imperfect characters, they were both people with a measure of masculine strength. The father in that movie was trying to protect his daughter and his tribe, and Maui was somewhat childish, but still exhibited many masculine virtues. Moana was interesting as well in that despite disregarding the wishes of her father, she was honoring the sprit of her ancestors, which in my view maintains filial piety.

In the past, it wasn't unusual to see a family in a story, but even in anime which tends to try to portray more traditional values than postmodern hollywood, there's graveyards of dead parents so they don't get in your way while you go on your adventure.

Would I want to watch it 9001 times? Well.... At least the music is nice.

"My bills are past due

my looks are real bad

I'll comment on your shoes

And ask about your dad!"

I wrote this reply to a post on one of those shite reddit alternatives, but I doubt it'll be productive there and regardless I'm happy with the work I put into it so I thought I'd repost it here.

The OP was saying that concerns about the left trying to make kids gay or trans are caused by Christianity.

The mental model those guys are working off of is completely wrong.

Not much direct research has been done, but the impression I get is that a surprising amount of the post-2016 right aren't lifelong Christians (or even Christians at all even now, belonging to factions such as libertarianism which isn't tied to religion at all), and aren't even lifelong conservatives. A lot of them vocally supported Obama in 2008 if they're that old. the support for gay marriage among Republicans has approached 50%, which is a massive increase over the previous support near 20%. Moreover, you may be surprised to find that not everyone who is concerned about what's going on is a conservative or a republican either. Protecting children from people who hope to cause them harm is a universal human value, and likely is derived from instincts far before that.

It's really important to understand the recent history of conservatism, because it's a rapidly changing landscape. On one hand, you have traditional liberals who are now considered conservative for not rushing headlong enough into the latest thing, and on the other hand you have openly far right factions and they aren't hiding their open contempt for other factions for not being extreme enough, and they aren't hiding their opinions on things like women, black people, and jews. In that respect, I see a lot of people working off a playbook that's out of date and coming to wildly wrong conclusions on a wide variety of topics from that false model. After the Republicans got crushed in 2008 they had to go back to the chalkboard and find new strategies that would work in a new world. People made fun of some of the attempts such as the tea party, but that resulted in a lot of new ideas and new blood coming into the party. Many other conservative parties around the world needed to do the same thing because they faced similar defeats. As a result, around the world parties that were considered completely outside the overton window for being conservative are gaining ground. AFD in Germany, Fratelli d'Italia in Italy, and even the far right populist PPC got more votes than the green party in Canada in the recent election, and in the next election the Conservatives are on track to win a massive majority. This isn't happening because they're telling the same stories they were 15 years ago, it's happening because they're finding new stories to tell while their left-wing opponents are just quadrupling down on the stories they told 15 years ago that don't represent a reality in 2024. Conservatism isn't just Christianity therefore, it's a much flatter, much wider thing including a lot of the cultural consensus from 15 years ago and a lot of stuff that would be considered literally unspeakable 15 years ago.

If you want to blame someone for making people think they're trying to make kids gay or trans, you should probably blame all the idiots who were recorded saying they wanted to make kids gay or trans. You should blame people who use the phrase "not so secret gay agenda" positively in describing what they're doing in their work on kids shows. You should blame the people who put out musical numbers singing "We'll convert your children!". As well, you should blame the people who have decided that starting to transition children in schools while explicitly keeping it secret from parents is a hill they want to die on. In some of the cases I'm referring to they claim to be just joking, but it is the contemporary left that drew the line in the sand that if you joke about anything you're advocating for the most extreme thing you can imagine with respect to that thing. If you care deeply about your kids, and someone is "joking" about doing something you find unspeakable to your kids, why take a chance and why not just believe them?

In the 1970s and 1980s, there was something called the "Satanic Panic". The police questioned kids about certain things and eventually they got stories from these kids that led to the arrest of dozens of people. The problem at that time is it was all false. One kid claimed the cultists killed and ate and forced him to eat his friend (who was very much alive). Police scoured airports looking for airplanes that could land secretly in a residential neighborhood, fly a child to mexico to be molested, then returned to the same neighborhood in the same day. Another kid spoke of a complex series of tunnels under a town that the cultists used for their satanic rituals, and when it was checked there were no tunnels. In the end, it turned out that all the people accused ended up being innocent, and what we learned from that is that we need to be very careful when trying to figure stuff out from kids because they want to tell us things we want to hear. Today there's a completely different method of questioning children in criminal cases exactly because we know kids are impressionable and we need to be careful about finding the truth and not just the answers that are convenient to us. In the same way, to be responsible we need to be extremely careful about giving kids drugs or surgery that permanently modify the path of their bodies solely because they tell us they are something.

Compare the way "trans kids" are being treated by politicans and the media, and even if you assume good faith and that it isn't intentional, it's impossible to see the behavior as anything but manipulative and dangerous from a completely secular viewpoint. Telling kids that if they assume a certain characteristics that they're so loved and so wanted and so supported and they're being mistreated by everyone around them that just doesn't know how special they are and giving the same message all the time -- of course a bunch of kids will go "oh, well if that's what the important adults want me to be then that's what I'll be".

Now, one important piece of the puzzle with respect to "trans kids" is that someone who questions their sexuality isn't going to ask anyone to surgically alter their bodies, which would be why that piece of the puzzle is particularly contentious.

Different studies of kids trans kids showed that between 60 and over 90% of kids who expressed confusion about their gender identity ended up the gender identity of their birth after 18 without treatment. If nothing else, that should raise serious questions about whether treatment of any kind before the age of 18 is ethical, considering you could potentially end up causing needless harm to 9 kids for every 1 kid you help. There is certainly a lot of research disputing these findings, and in fact the number of articles saying "nuh uh" absolutely dwarfs the actual claims, but as a politically charged issue there's an obvious concern about politically induced bias here, which makes me want to believe the older studies from before this was such a front and center topic. You can disagree, but I'm sure my skepticism of "new study shows everything political movement claims is true" is not so unreasonable. If I'm not going to believe creationists when they spit out a flood of studies 'proving' the world is only 8000 years old, why would I believe trans youth ideologues when they spit out a flood of studies seemingly solely in response to being challenged politically?

There has been an explosion in the number of kids identifying as trans. Now, it could be that we're just living in the gayest, transest time in the history of the world, but when we're dealing with numbers increasing by many orders of magnitude, it's equally possible that there's an element of social contaigen. Some people might claim that social contaigen is absurd and wouldn't cause people to do something as extreme as this. The thing is, it is uncontroversial that there is an element of social contaigen in cutting, anorexia and suicide which are both purely harmful, and recreational drug use which can be quite harmful.

Given the basis of the Hippocratic oath, medicine should be politically Conservative but practically conservative and be very careful about implementing new treatments, particularly on a very large scale, particularly when the effects of those treatments are so overwhelmingly dire. Fundamentally modifying and fundamentally damaging sex organs and primary and secondary sexual characteristics is something we have to be very careful about doing and nobody should be jumping for joy at the idea that it's something that we have to do, in the same way that no one should be jumping for joy at the idea that they should need an organ transplant.

Another important thing to remember is that there is a solid history in the 20th century of medical ideologies or technologies that become wildly popular and end up proving to be somewhat evil. Tommy Douglas, the founder of Canadian healthcare, was a vocal proponent of eugenics. The prefrontal lobotomy eventually ended up coming to be considered an example of barbarism but when it was first invented was considered a miracle cure. Prior to the 20th century, cocaine was considered so fantastic that Sigmund Freud himself wrote a book called on cocaine which was about how much he thought cocaine was a beneficial drug. All of these are cautionary tales about simply accepting the current orthodoxy on a current medical treatment.

You'll note that none of these are religious arguments. You don't need to believe in any God to look at the above. You can be a hard atheist and look at the facts above and be concerned because you don't want people hurting your kids for their political ideology. If you think that it's solely due to christianity that someone would look at the above and be concerned then you're fundamentally misunderstanding people around you.

Now to give everything a broad view, just because something ends up being bad in the way that it's implemented doesn't necessarily mean that it is entirely bad. Eugenics taken to it it's extremes horrible and immoral, but some individuals with major genetic diseases choose independently not to have kids because of the risks involved. Prefrontal lobotomies as a carry-all for anything that could heal you is obviously absolutely horrific and terrible, but it is still very occasionally used for very specific situations. I believe that even cocaine has legitimate medical applications, and if it doesn't then certainly it's cousin opiates or something that are quite dangerous and should not be thrown around thoughtlessly but have incredible levels of therapeutic benefit. I would even go so far as to say that there may be situations where very early intervention in transgender cases could be tremendously beneficial, but I think that the data is clearly showing you have to be very careful and being a political topic the way it is I don't think it's being treated very carefully.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-gay-marriage/

[2] https://ballotpedia.org/Pivot_Counties:_The_counties_that_voted_Obama-Obama-Trump_from_2008-2016

[3] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/des-moines-public-schools-teacher-targeted-after-joking-of-forcing-students-to-be-gay/ar-AA1jU8Nt

[4] https://boundingintocomics.com/2022/03/30/disney-executives-admit-they-are-pushing-not-at-all-secret-gay-agenda-actively-removing-gendered-greetings-and-a-whole-lot-more/

[5] https://www.tmz.com/2021/07/09/san-francisco-gay-mens-chorus-convert-your-children-controversial-song-backlash-death-threats/

[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/22/us/gender-identity-students-parents.html

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic

[8] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/31/us/satanic-panic.html

[9] https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/06/23/satanic-panic/

[10] https://twitter.com/theJagmeetSingh/status/1753190259343708432

[11] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/you-are-loved-white-house-press-secretary-tells-lgbtq-youth-2023-04-06/

[12] http://www.sexologytoday.org/2016/01/do-trans-kids-stay-trans-when-they-grow_99.html

[13] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21216800/

[14] https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/958742?form=fpf

[15] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207262/

[16] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0004867413502092

[17] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23387399/

[18] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3926100/

[19] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/hippocratic-oath-today/

[20] https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/tommy-douglas-and-eugenics

[21] https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-55854145

[22] https://www.vice.com/en/article/payngv/how-cocaine-influenced-the-work-of-sigmund-freud

Dostoyevsky was an author in Russia who lived in the mid-1800s. He is famous for the novels Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, which both looked at the idea of rationalism and the dangers of unalloyed rationalism being the guiding force for humanity. I'll be talking about another of his works, Notes from the Underground.

Notes from the Underground is set up as the diary of an unnamed narrator who lives in in St. Petersburg, Russia in the mid-1800s. Some people who talk about the book refer to this narrator as "The Underground Man". The book is separated into two sections, the first is filled with his musings, and the second filled with a variety of stories from his life.

The Underground Man introduces himself with the words, "I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor about it and never have, even though I have a respect for medicine and doctors."

He paradoxically claims he believes in medicine because he is superstitious but he is educated so he is not supposed to be superstitious, one of many sets of paradoxes in his life (and one of many times where he lies to us because he lies to himself).

He describes himself as having spent time working for the civil service where he intentionally abused his power. He claims that in the rationalism of Europe he has no freedom because a Laplace's demon sort of creature could predict his every move and he doesn't want to be controlled by predictability so despite the fact that such actions may be perfectly rational he would strive to be irrational just to be able to say he is truly free and that man is not a piano key. So once he earned a small inheritance he decided to do nothing.

This first half is quite intellectual and the underground man showed himself to indeed be quite educated. You might even as I did come to like him based on his words and the ideas he presents. You can tell besides being educated, he uses the latest French terms (in the 1800s France was a center of philosophy, art, science, culture). He does warn us that he is not a good person many times, but it's easy to ignore at that point since he's so superficially polite, calling the readers "Gentlemen" and humbly accepting that perhaps there is even nobody reading his notes.

In the second part, he shows that he is acutely aware of all imagined slights, because he relies on his feelings of superiority as a core part of his being. This is why he treats people badly as a civil servant, because he must feel superior to those below him and resents those who are above him.

He sees a seedy bar and imagines that he could get in a fight in such a bar and finds it a grand notion, but instead of getting in a fight, an officer from the army just moves him aside to walk in instead of getting into a fight. The Underground man is a coward, and doesn't start a fight. Instead he obsesses over the officer, stalks the officer, tracks down the officer, and plots his revenge -- to brush past him. He borrows money to prepare, sells his scarf for a much nicer looking one that would fall apart soon, all for his revenge of.... brushing past him in the street without clearing the way for him.

Later, he invites himself into a meeting between some people he went to school with because he's so lonely, but it is a disaster. He resents his old schoolmate for being his superior in many ways, and he spends the entire night storming around making an ass of himself. As a reader, it's deeply uncomfortable reading this loser who thinks so well of himself so awkwardly making a scene.

That night, he goes to visit a brothel, thinking the others would do that. He's wrong, but he decides to go in anyway. The girl he gets looks miserable, and that makes him feel good. He uses her and then falls asleep for a time. When he wakes up, he paints her a terrible story of her eventual being used up by the brothel and then dying ignobly, but also paints another picture in words of a story where she leaves that life and tries to do better and becomes an impossibly perfectly loved wife somewhere out there, giving her his address before he leaves.

Afterwards, he is terrified but excited that the prostitute might come to his house. He imagines how they might run off together in love and live happily ever after, but still he dreads it and hates the idea of her coming around.

During this time, he describes the antagonistic attitude towards his servant. Despite his status as a superior to his servant, he hates his servant for having innate self-confidence. It describes in details the petty games he plays to try to get his servant to submit to him so he can feel good about himself.

Just in the middle of such a game, the prostitute arrives, and he viciously attacks her verbally. They have a tender moment but he can't handle the idea of being vulnerable so continues to attack her, and she leaves. He runs after her, but loses her in the falling snow and doesn't bother to further pursue her.

The story ends, and it's 20 years since that moment, the underground regrets what happened, but won't do anything about it.

The book ends suddenly, claiming he continues to ramble for a long time afterwards but it's best to stop there.

Before I continue, I need to lay something else important. It may seem unfair to characterize an entire website's userbase in one way. After all, there are many users, and they are individuals. Such an argument can certainly be made.

I would counter-argue that when that website is designed to min-maxx conformity, the userbase necessarily ends up as a community of conformists, and anyone who doesn't conform is likely to either leave or to stay as a shunned outsider, not a part of the community.

Reddit does in fact operate in ways to min-maxx conformity. Those who conform will be upvoted and be given privileges through reddit gold, perhaps even becoming powermods. Those who do not conform are downvoted and highly downvoted posts are hidden from normal view, having posts deleted by mods and if you don't conform enough many subreddits will refuse to let you post because you don't have the karma, and ultimately you may be banned from subreddits and ultimately from reddit, and if you're part of a non-conforming group, your subreddit can be deleted and your community scattered like desert sands. On many platforms, the worst that can happen is you are ignored or argued with, but on reddit you can get significantly more direct feedback that people don't just not like what you wrote -- they hate it, so much they seek to punish you for it.

You see it. On major subreddits, some posts which conform the best get thousands of upvotes, some comments get thousands of upvotes, but those which do not conform may be downvoted into oblivion, with dozens or thousands of people crawling over each other to silence the discord. You know when you're chatting with redditors as well because you'll see the same arguments used over and over again, like religious mantras.

You can also see it in the way that redditors treat themselves. Earlier, more liberal versions of themselves must be rejected, castigated, disavowed. Just to imagine being a more fun, less conformist version of yourself as you once were is an original sin you can never fully atone for.

The subreddit for the president of the united states was deleted. They might say it was for bigotry, but that's obviously not true -- you can be a bigot all you want as long as it's against acceptable targets. I'll elaborate on that point further in a bit.

To begin with, reddit's users start off appearing very much like the first half of the book. The site appears to be highly educated, and at first it might even seem like there is no problem here. They're all well-versed in the latest academic trends and language, and part of their community is indeed to at least appear very well-mannered at first. The reason for the stereotype of the fedora tipping redditor (which honestly is likely somewhat out of date) is someone trying on the trappings of class so they might feel like they are someone with class despite lacking the skill set required to play the part.

In the 19th century, the growing class of nouveau-riche had books filled with all the classical education they lacked to try to fit in with the upper class of society who had been educated in a completely different way than the commoners. One could learn every letter from every book, but no book would eliminate your working class accent, mannerisms, attitudes, behaviors. Blue blooded aristocrats could see a nouveau riche from a mile away, and all the money in the world couldn't change that. Indeed, that was part of the famous novel The Great Gatsby, where Gatsby was brilliantly wealthy and held all the best parties, but at the end of the day he was still from where he was from and all the trappings of wealth couldn't change that.

In a similar way today, luxury beliefs are the latest craze among the upper classes to show how they aren't like the other classes since it's considered poor taste to show off your wealth through clothing, jewelry, sports cars, and fancy palaces. You express views that are trendy and would absolutely destroy the lower classes if they were to live by them, and in so doing you show how high class you are today. If you're fabulously wealthy and powerful you don't need to be married necessarily, you can hire help, but for a poor person it's a little piece of how to live a good life and the data supports that. There are many attitudes the wealthy claim to hold because it shows how wealthy and powerful they are while not overtly being so.

In the same way, these luxury beliefs have like a fedora tip and "milady", percolated into this group, but just like the fedora tip and "milady", a few trappings of class cannot hide the fact that these people aren't part of that class. Sometimes the façade breaks and we get a glimpse into the lives of some redditors, and just as the underground man uses French terms occasionally to show how cultured he is but lives in backwards St. Petersburg, the redditor expresses the trappings of modern luxury beliefs while living in destitution.

The redditor is a picture of contradictions. They hate /r/atheism, but for certain they are militant atheists and reject Christian ideas (or at least think they do given their surface level understanding of the topic). They preach tolerance, but have a list of people they absolutely hate and would perhaps even support having killed (but not doing the killing themselves, because like the underground man, the redditor is a coward whose revenge might be something so petty as not moving aside on a sidewalk -- thankfully it's rare for anyone to be killed on behalf of a redditor since besides being cowardly they are also poor). They are more likely than the person in the street to be a virgin, but will hate the incel, but far more hate the consumer of the pick-up artist who would better themselves by any means to achieve their goals. Most importantly, they claim to be liberal, but want everything they see, hear, touch, feel, controlled tightly.

Unlike the Underground man, who understands rationalism and actively rejects it, the redditor claims to embrace rationalism and science but passively rejects them by refusing to countenance ideas that are not part of their strict orthodoxy. "Sciencism" thus becomes an irrational religion with the trappings of rationality, an unscientific thing where you are given a set of tenets to obey and have faith in disconnected from the truth of the world independently of your understanding of that world. The redditor may laugh and scoff at the salem witch trials, but will happily call for the disenfranchisement of people who refuse to take their experimental vaccine or wear a mask.

Part of the idea of rationalism and science especially is a sort of intellectual humility, and that is directly contradictory to the idea of a strict orthodoxy. If you're sure you know the answers, it seems to me you are either overwhelmingly arrogant (which isn't rational), or overwhelmingly sure you have the truth (which isn't scientific)

Once you get past the superficial exterior presented, then the reality becomes immediately apparent.

If you want to see who the redditor hates the most, look to the enemy of the Underground Man, the officer who never really wronged him in any way. Stick around the site long enough and you'll see that sort of one-sided seething resentment and anger. You'll come to understand there's a list of acceptable targets and they all happen to be people who generally don't care about the redditor's existence, just like the officer barely acknowledged the underground man.

The redditor injects themselves into things to feel important, but knows they are disconnected from anything but their website and so it doesn't matter. If someone somewhere else is having fun, they seethe in anger and have a tantrum similar to the underground man stomping around while his old school mates have a nice night together. Once they arrived on the Fediverse, their favorite word was "defederate", because they thought themselves important and powerful and that if the wrongthinkers could only be deprived of them that their absence might be like the absence of God is considered Hell in some religions, but in reality, while they stomp around everyone else continues to have a good time without them. They make spiteful little lists because they're petty, but in the end it only really hurts themselves.

The redditor has a strange relationship with women. Even the reddit feminists hate real women who have opinions they can't control, and reddit is filled with porn subreddits, but if a feminist subreddit shows up with opinions not allowed they will surely be banned. Ironically for a group whose ideology lambastes the "madonna whore complex", even the sex worker is considered a saint, but a woman who wants a simple traditional life of a marriage and kids is a whore in their worldview. The latest academic research will be shared (the source of many of these inhuman beliefs of theirs), and if you say something as simple as "men like women and women like men" people will sound the alarm for your hateful conduct.

All the people reddit swears to protect must, to achieve said protection, be avatars of exactly what reddit wants them to be. Women who have the wrong opinions, black Republicans, trans people who think feminists have a point sometimes, they're no longer what they are, instead they are the avatars of evil and can be treated to any level of hatred. "Can you believe the nerve of Clarence Thomas being black and not having my exact opinions? We should get him removed from the supreme court."

We are in the beginning of the end of the book now. Many of these redditors aren't 20 anymore. The oldest are in their 40s, and if nothing changes, the website is all they'll have. Many living with their parents will soon find themselves alone in a house they inherited only to find that far from the landlords being evil, houses take a lot of effort to upkeep. Much like our Underground man, it'll mean a long, drawn out, ignoble end while the end of the story stops suddenly in the middle.

To conclude, I call on anyone who thinks they're in a toxic echo chamber to get out into the real world. Volunteer doing things. Get a job if you can -- any job, even if it's for free. Fjord's Theorem remains in effect -- those who are online stay online and those who stay irl stay irl. Next, try not to just jump into another echo chamber, but to find spaces with diverse conversation. If you see people you agree with and people you strongly disagree with, that's probably a good space. You never know, those people who you disagree with might make good points and help broaden your horizons. The reality of real people's opinions and the diversity of non-echo chambers is such that you might find your current opinions are actually broken (but you might find those opinions you pretended you didn't have being in an echo chamber aren't so crazy after all)

https://www.youtube.com/@WhatifAltHist

Lots of people don't like his work, but it's one of my favorites, and a few of his videos hugely changed the way I look at the world.