I do not understand why he thinks he would be anywhere on the ladder of "CEOs that people would be happy to see shot in the street". The fuck has he done that he thinks it will even be a possibility.
I
Section A: why I believe it is possible I could becomeunited healthcare ceo
I do not understand why he thinks he would be anywhere on the ladder of "CEOs that people would be happy to see shot in the street". The fuck has he done that he thinks it will even be a possibility.
If you google my name, the fourth result has over 800 upvotes. People I’ve never met or done business with routinely:
- lie about who I am
- make up things I have/have not said
- accuse me of doing business in an underhanded way without evidence or firsthand experiences
- upvote & pile on on those threads
the top upvoted post in the first few google results for my own name are from people rooting for my business to be found a scam. they aren't accusing my business of being immoral. they aren't people who are salty about a negative experience that they personally had with me. On macrumors, there are people in 26 page threads discussing how I scam customers because I put screws in a bag that I placed on their keyboard. these posts are not from random fucktards, they are highly upvoted & created by respected regulars. They shit on my work, question my dedication to my craft & customers, & imply I've made a business out of scamming my customers.
I advocated for Apple to repair design flaws under warranty so their customers wouldn’t have to pay me for repairs. I wanted those consumers to save money and be better off as a result of a company taking responsibility for their screwups, as I have for mine. Consumers of those products routinely assassinate my character on almost every Apple news/discussion forum, and it’s usually cheered on.
i put in over 100 hrs of my own time writing guides on my website for a non-profit that has paid me $0 in four years. This is never mentioned; rather, it's that my content is purelyself serving & not an attempt to help others. spending almost $30k so people in wheelchairs can get less fucked rather than spend all of my money lobbying for my own industry vertical probably isn't even on the internet. Ironically, when I started posting all this free information, people in my industry called me an idiot who was sabotaging his own company by producing the content people now claim I was posting to ride a selfish gravy train. Who could watch my early, 2012-2013 era videos and imagine those
increasing the reputation of ANY company???
I'm not saying this to get a "woe is me" pity response. I am fine! Life is good; but accepting reality is important. It's to make the point that I'm not unreasonable to assume that someone will eventually want(or try) to do the same thing to me they did to that CEO. it's really easy to villainize people you've never met, especially people who have an abrasive personality.
Eventually other people pile on because it’s an outlet for their
frustrations on how we all get fucked every which way in our everyday lives. The way they pile on is an “acceptable” outlet for that rage, in a way that the edgy humor on this website isn’t. I believe for those of you who just went down the edgelord+autism rabbit hole, you post the way you do here for the same reason; it’s just that the way you do it is a less societally acceptable outlet. What fuels people to make things up about me & spread it is justifiable & understandable rage at how they are getting fucked within a culture that erodes consumer rights, has lower trust, lower relationship satisfaction, is increasingly isolated, has shittier economic outcomes than prior generations. People need to take that out somewhere. They take it out on people they hate.
It is much easier to take out that(very justifiable) rage on someone they perceive as a total asshole than it is to research whether or not I’m the villain they think I am. And there’s no incentive for the latter – since it takes away that frustrated person’s outlet, that they need to let off steam that lets them return to their normal(often shitty) life.
i get that there are probably a large group of people that feel about me the way that guy felt about that ceo. it's just that they haven't acted on it yet. saying that is accepting reality. i accept reality regardless of whether i believe it to be fun or fair. accepting reality is key to staying sane & navigating life in a way that allows it to make sense and be worth living. Not accepting reality leads you to hell. Accepting reality doesn’t mean you can’t work on
changing it. Accepting reality simply means you’re mentally grounded & live in the real world.
Section B: I failed at most of what I tried to accomplish & should get raked over the coals for it. i deserve & earned a fuckton of criticism
1. I wanted people's stuff to be more repairable. I tried to do this by showing them how to do it, by making it FUN & interesting rather than dry & boring. 12 years later every device I work on is less economically viable to repair than when I started when you look at much of the supply chain limitations.
2. I tried my best both in my actions, my own business' practices, & in educating others in my field to get into it, to create a world that treated customers the way I'd want to be treated. in spite of that the consumer has less rights & control over what they buy and pay for now than any time in the past fifty years.
3. when i got funded by that billionaire for my non-profit, i thought i could break the culture in my industry of technicians hoarding repair information in silos. I wanted more repair shops to feel confident in offering economically viable repairs to customers so customers had a better impression of repair & would support our cause.
difficult repairs can take 40-120 hrs to figure out, that isn't worth it unless your shop is going to see that same repair 10000+ times, so that info gets silo’d at specialty shops. i thought encouraging this sharing this would grow the industry too. in reality i have had so many instances where i literally offer a tech $10,000 or tell them to name their price to share basic info & they say no, or never get back to me. the industry is filled with people that still widely hold this belief that they are better off trying to have a larger slice of pizza rather than increasing the size of the pie.
my attempt to instill long-term thinking on how we can all benefit each other was mostly a meme. my wiki's top contributors are me & 1 other person.
I accept those failures & should get shit on for them. i'm a garbage activist and i wouldn't dare sit here and publish some non-profit pretty report claiming i won at everything posing with trees/green sustainability shit so i can collect more money. I suck the life out of the room by being the “go to right to repair guy” which at this point is keeping others from having access to the attention/resources that would allow them to have the positive outcomes I have failed to achieve. When my non-profits run out of money I'll pass the mantle onto others who will do a better job.
but that's not what I get shit on for - it's stuff that makes no sense at all, that's completely antithetical to any of the evidence.
The top google results for me aren't about any of the positive I've tried to do for the world, nor are they about any of my
real failures, which they'd be right to rake me over the coals for. It's fabricated ones.
My attempts to bring people together through repair, host meetups where anyone can show up & be treated well, allow any random fuck to come into my shop and use $15,000 of tools without even knowing their name to work on their own projects? I doubt that’s even on google, much less mentioned. It’s multi-thread pages debating whether I’m a nazi because I responded to a thread under my own name on a website about famous creators. I’ve kept right to repair from becoming a partisan issue, and worked to get people to put aside their interpersonal disputes on what car to buy/phone to own/political views, to bond over understanding of how their consumer rights are being violated, so they do something about it that actually enacts real change(which isn't posting on fedi/twitter).
does this matter? Not at all.
there'll be a psycho who feels the same way about me as that hooded dude felt about that healthcare ceo. I haven't hurt people the way brian thompson did. he was the chief executive at united as they implemented AI health insurance claims processing that had a 90% error rate, that likely lead to the wrongful deaths & worsened lives of tons of people. but it doesn't mean I'm immune from the same vitriol that led to his shooting. It’s important to accept that reality.
Section C: you sick fucks.
i know many of you are complete pieces of shit that i would not let pet my cat, much less want to talk to/meet in person.
there are also people here who hang around to discuss their creators in a manner that resembles the
"old" internet, the pre-web 2.0 internet. the internet before myspace & facebook, back when people commonly believed that putting your credit card into into a website to buy something was a scam(and they were right). nobody dared use their real name on a webforum even when the content of their posts were G rated & boring. With regards to the edgy humor and cutting nature of sites that resemble the pre-2004/myspace internet; i am not naive enough to believe that every single person here is a nazi in real life. i am also not retarded enough to believe that none of you are. that type of environment lends itself to allowing the worst among us to cloak themselves as one of the
"i was just meming" crowd.
I also remember being a kid growing up on that internet, and remember what well behaved classmates, kids beloved as the golden boy by their parents & teachers said in IRC when given complete anonymity on the internet. Most of them grew out of it. There are the people who say these things who believe them, and attach their names to their beliefs. There are people who believe these things and don’t attach their names to them. There are people who do not believe these things, and don’t attach their name to them. There are people who are young who post to 4chan & grow out of it before they’re old enough to buy cigarettes. And then there are kids just going with the flow of peer pressure, one-upping each other who lose track of their own identity. There are adults who never grow out of this and hide behind the veneer of the kids who do.
These are distinct categories, and to pretend they are not distinct is disingenuous. I am not ignorant enough to believe that everyone who posts here is a nazi. i'm also not stupid or naive enough to want to be associated with, or hang out with,
any of you fucks beyond the degree that I already engage with macrumors, reddit, usenet, or ircwith regards to
“joining in” on discussions of myself. 99% of you I wouldn’t let pet my cat.
Section Cii.
You are correct in one regard: people who post here(at least in this thread), seem more interested in understanding the meat & potatoes of who I am & the issues I discuss than people on websites deemed socially acceptable. The norm there is for people to demean me, my work, &my character with no regard for evidence & no understanding or desire to understand what I want to achieve. The low hanging fruit would be to say
“well, look who likes you; what does that say for you, LOUIS????” – the guilt by association thing. I don’t like accepting the premise of assholes; I’d turn the tables & say – if you believe these people are bottom of the barrel scum
(which a lot of you are); what does it say about you that you treat me worse?
nobody here has wrongfully tried to implicate me in attempted murder based on complete bullshit. In some circles, it has become normal to accuse me of being complicit in the harassment & attempted murder of people based on a
single comment on a video where I made G-rated-comments expressing my opinion regarding their poor behavior towards other people.
Ridiculous, false accusations about me were made LONG BEFORE I knew this site even existed; people actively seeking to destroy my character & business reputation were doing so years before this website existed. And the people who go out of their way to slander me & claim I harass people, direct harassment at them, or are complicit in attempted murder of them were saying this type of stuff before I knew this site existed. I am not stupid or foolish enough to accept the premise that these individuals would be sending me flowers & candy if not for my decision to register & respond to posts about me.
I may work on Apple products & think I have a snowball’s chance in hell of them becoming more repairable, but even I’m not that stupid. I don’t care about the opinions of people who hated me before i knew this website existed. people who post lies about what i have said or think are not worth caring about.
People have said the comments section in some youtube videos was immature. yet the comments section of ABC(or cbs/nbc, i forget, but i think ABC) every news video on youtube for 3 months straight in NYC had comments on it that were even worse than the worst shit you people probably say on this website. why is the outrage with this regard directed towards me, & not towards those who actually have the BUDGET and TIME to police their comments section? to accept the premise of assholes, is something i refuse to do.
Section D: attempt at positive influence.
There used to be these kids that came to my store after school back when I allowed anyone to come in and use the equipment. I liked having a store that functioned more like the old school NYC businesses run by someone passionate about their craft before it turned into trek-buying-every-bike-store & wholefoods, chase, starbucks, & retail space for lease. There would be kids that showed up from time to time that enjoyed asking questions, messing with their devices. They were incredibly well behaved.
It would surprise me when their parents came in. they treated them like… kids. The parents would apologize in advance for these kids’ poor behavior, and would tell me all the stories of how difficult they were at school, with others, etc. I noticed none of this.
This has been a pattern for me. It is also a pattern my dad made me aware of.
Telling kids what to do is a fail. Authority has to be earned. When these kids showed up, I did not treat them like mrs. friedland treated kids at p.s.23, with contempt and anger. I treated them like people.
The point? When you treat kids like people rather than like brain damaged cattle, they actually rise to the mantle and act better. This was true for
me as a non-neurotypical kid. It’s true for others as well.
The best behavior I ever saw from the random kids that showed up to replace their own iphone backs or try a soldering iron, was from kids whose parents said they were hell & who said their teachers told them they were shit. Mrs friedland was my 4th grade teacher; she made my mother cry during a parent teacher conference. She claimed I would grow up to be a failure, point blank, and listed all of my perceived “Faults.” I actually wrote a book about this entire thing back in august I hope to publish some day if I ever find the balls to.
What is the point of all this? Yeah, let’s say some of you are total pieces of shit. You probably are. You are. What is more likely to result in change; honestly engaging, or using slight of hand to pretend that those distinct categories of individuals on this website I described in section C do not exist, & lumping you all into the same ball? By doing so, I lose all credibility; and therefore, lose any chance of being a positive influence on you. If people want the world to change & for people to be better, that starts with doing what works. When I make posts like this
https://kiwifarms.st/threads/escape-from-new-york-louis-rossman-edition.124966/page-21#post-16591544 or this
https://kiwifarms.st/threads/escape-from-new-york-louis-rossman-edition.124966/page-22#post-16600807 it isn’t bullshit; I mean it that I can respect someone’s work regardless of whether they respect me. If this rubs off on any of you and changes your thought process to one that ins one butterfly effect way leads to the world sucking less – I’m happy with that. That would make me happy, far more than people who hate me who willfully misinterpret who I am & lie about me on internet forums makes me sad.
That type of thing happens when you engage with people where they are. I also speculate that is why this thread isn’t a pile of shitbag negativity, in spite of the fact that I do not express/hold the views that I am accused of holding/expressing by my many detractors.
I am infinitely naive & stubborn about one thing, and likely will be until I’m dead; that my actions & attempts to clean up my corner of the world make it a better place. I am often wrong. I will be wrong many times more, but it doesn’t stop me from trying. If someone here watches my content, tries to clean up their own corner of the world & make it a better place, or sandpapers off the edge of teenage angst/edginess, I did some good.
I do the same thing when I go onto fucking tesla forums and write a book in the comments.
https://www.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/.../?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 99% of the time this is a total fucking waste of time. 1% of the time I find someone reasonable & actually convert them to someone who cares about a good cause. The 1% of the time I succeed convinces me the 99% of the time I spend failing is not a waste of time.
Section E: With regards to the trans opinion question:
I have no issues with trans people & treat them the way I want to be treated. For me it isn’t a question of my opinions on their identity. It’s just human fucking decency. One example; this fuckface I had as a mailman walks into my store, while I am helping an obviously trans customer. I treat this customer the way I treat any other customer; I run to the front to help, I treat this customer with an
of service mindset, & I do everything I can to ensure a happy outcome. My mailman is staring, making these disgusted looks, then laughing under his breath. I took him aside and told him to never fucking do that again.
I asked him, regardless of what you think; do you honestly believe this person went through high school in new york city without having someone laugh or snicker at them? Do you really think you’re adding something to the conversation by laughing at them, treating them like they’re different/weird or like a piece of shit? Above all, who the fuck do you think you are to look down your nose at MY customers when you’re in MY FUCKING BUSINESS? Get the fuck out of here you piece of shit. That obviously came at a price unless you believe that nobody picking up my mail & the superviser having to show up to pick up what that mailman didn’t after,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4CCuMg6jXI but it was a point worth making.
To be clear, I don’t think men are women or vice versa. But that doesn’t mean I walk up to people and go out of my way to call someone who is obviously trying to pass as a “she” a “he” just to be a dick, and I think it’s stupid as fuck that people see taking part in behavior that causes non-deserving people to feel shittier for no good reason as a marker of being a
“real man.”. as someone who has literal brain damage from my own childhood, I am INFINITELY sympathetic to the plight of the people who do not fit in; the people who feel weird & uncomfortable in their own skin. For WHATEVER reason. I am not here to make their lives shittier for no reason. Yes I roll my eyes out of my head at people who claim it is
“transphobic” for me to want to exclusively date what i believe to be biological women.
My personal trainer got banned from an online dating site. after having so many trans people reach out to him, he finally put “only interested in biological men” on his profile. he was banned for this, on a website where profiles routinely state
"only interested in 5'9" and up" - it is ok for someone to have a preference for height, but not ok for him to have a preference that he date someone who was born a woman. i think that's fucking ridiculous.
That is a separate issue than whether or not I decide to be pieces of shit to everyone in that group regardless of how they have treated me. THESE ARE UNRELATED.
This seems to be something that is lost in modern society where everyone wears their political opinions & speaks about them as if it’s WWF wrestling. There’s this idea that if you have more conservative beliefs about gender, you have to go out of your way to laugh behind the backs of trans people or go out of your way to call them something you just know is going to piss them off.
How much effort does it take for me to say “absolutely my friend”? And isn’t that the same amount of courtesy I would hope someone would show me? Further, what do I have to gain from saying “absolutely, sir!” to a trans person trying to pass as female? I am going to make them feel like shit & then I’ll feel like shit that I made someone’s day worse, after they were nothing but nice to me. What am I adding to the world with that interaction?
Is that how I want to be remembered? NO.
Will that get more people interested in my cause? NO.
Will that result in me living a better life? NO.
so why do it?
Every trans person I have met in real life has been incredibly kind, nice, & accepting of me - & I have in turn provided the same treatment to them.
You can treat people with decency without being a piece of shit; you can actually treat people very kindly. Above all, I'm not here to assume that every person I meet from a group thinks the same
(or is as negative towards me) as the worst experiences I have had with a small subsection of those people on the internet.
that’s about it for that.
