Ask Lemmy

Rupaul’s Drag Race. I was super turned off by the idea of watching a show about drag queens. I mean, what can be so great about a bunch of men dressing up like women, right?

And during the earlier seasons there were clips and memes circulating online that were, frankly, entertaining and really made me curious so I decided to give the show a try. And wow, I could not believe how easily it made me realize how much internalized homophobia and transphobia I had even as a gay man! The show really opened my eyes to the side of a community that I claimed to be a part but knew absolutely nothing about. Even my partner who refused to watch the show with me for the longest time and finally gave in expressed the same thoughts and realizations that I had.

It also helped me understand how easy it is for someone who is LGBT-phobic to remain so prejudiced and hateful if there is no exposure or education about the communities and cultures we’re not a part of.

I honestly found peace as a gay man that I didn’t know I was missing. And that may sound a little dramatic but it completely changed how I live my life

Everything Everywhere All At Once changed my outlook on life, no joke

It didn't exactly change how I saw something, but Get Out really showed me in an unapologetic way how black people are talked down to by so many white people in this country and it's made me try to be more aware of my own prejudices when it comes to being a white person. Kind of weird that a horror film did that.

The Good Place. I watched it during an existential crisis to confront my fear of death. It totally changed my mind! Now, I am too comfortable with the idea of death, and sometimes want to end it faster. I'm getting too tired and depressed to watch climate change slowly consume the world.

Atypical really gave an amazing insight into how neurodiverse people experience life and what their challenges are. One of the very best shows I have ever seen. Refreshing to have the main character be neurodiverse but no the butt of the joke like other shows used to deal with the topic most of the time.

It also showcases the many issues around someone with such a different life.

Helped me to be kinder to myself just as much as simply being more considerate of people around me. I don't know them. I don't know what is going on in their mind and why they act like they do. While I always attempted to be respectful of everyones reality, getting such an intimate and respectful glimpse was pretty important.

Heroes changed the way I look at writer's strikes...

Dark waters https://m.imdb.com/title/tt9071322/

DuPont company and teflon. I have thrown out most of my old frying pans and replaced it with ones without harmful substances that are causing cancer.

Frying pans should be labeled as PTFE, PFOA, and PFAS free.

My real answer is a book: Slaughterhouse 5. The movie Arrival pretty much does the same thing, though.

It really changed the way I think about my place in time and space, and the meaning of memories. Made me way less sad about death and entropy.

Monty Python's Life of Brian. When I was younger and starting to question things, it just kind of struck me how religions are mainly people interpreting things through their own filter and then fighting others who don't filter reality in the same way. It made me decide to try to do away with filters altogether, as much as is possible. Hence, I am non-partisan, non-religious, and simply try to see things from as many angles and taking as many factors into account as I can.

Six feet under changed my propective on death for the better too.

I'm not the same person as I was before I watched(and later read) Annihilation, particularly in how I think about trauma

American History X

This movie made me realize, hate is taught. Yes, some people are inherently just evil human beings, but racism for the most part is taught, vulnerable people taken advantage of at an early age, they’re sense of reality warped.

Don’t give me wrong I think after you reach adulthood you are responsible for your own way of thinking but it certainly opened my eyes that it’s REALLY fucking hard to detach from that belief/mindset when it’s been hammered down to you since childhood, even in the most subtle ways.

Edit: I think this movie should shown at school.

An Inconvenient Truth.

Quite staggering to see how relevant it still is today.

Adam Curtis' documentaries like HyperNormalisation, Bitter Lake, and the series Can't Get You Out of My Head were a big one for me. He has full access to the BBC's news archive and cuts all this really obscure footage together really creatively. His music cues are great too.

HyperNormalisation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzqDMnUG4kk

About war: Grave of the fireflies About drug: Requiem for a dream These two movies leave a scar.

Saving Private Ryan. I can’t see war or violence anymore without comparing to how realistic that was.

Battlestar Galactica (the 2004 tv Series). Every time i rewatch it there are always more insights about society, politics, religion and family than anything else i have watched.

It has changed my understanding of human nature dramatically

"Dead Man's Letters"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Man%27s_Letters

Since I watched it, it made me fear the future forever and after.

The Barbie movie showed me we are only against big corporations when they don't align with current ideology. Mattel proved it otherwise, imo. But hey, if the pharmaceutical industry has been shafting us since the 70s, why wouldn't the toy industry?

(this has nothing to do with being pro or against feminism)

Station Eleven helped me get through a lot of change I went through over the past few years. Some marriage stuff in the last year and a half, some personal shortcomings I've struggled with for a long time, overwhelming anxiety at every little injustice in the world. I've watched it all the way through more than 5 times since it came out. It didn't directly address any one of the things, even though it's a show about a pandemic the real pandemic itself wasn't really a huge "problem" for me (though, it not being a problem to me, is what triggered the marriage stuff), there's just something about the show that usually helps me deal with whatever I'm working through, there's so many characters to draw inspiration from.

I know Zeitgeist was mostly made up, but at the time it changed the way I thought about society and how everyone is lying to me. I’m still very cynical about lots of things.

Pose is a great series that really helped me get over the residual homophobia and transphobia from my upbringing. It's a great show that helped me rethink my masculinity and how I love and support people around me. 10/10 recommend if you want to be rewarded for trying to keep an open mind

I've seen multiple movies that taught me to observe society as a collective to see how it influences members of a society and distance myself from that influence

And to look at how society works in the frame of thought of how something could fail and what do you change so it doesn't fail and iterate from there

The Hunt (2012)

Pretty sure Contagion made me a germaphobe

The doc "Ivory Tower" really got me interested in alternatives to traditional higher education, i.e. the kind that will get you the same income without $100000000000000000000000000000 in debt compounding at a rate of 100% daily. Fuck colleges man, honestly.