WTF happened to Russell Brand?

[username108]

I'm just watching his videos on Youtube and he seems (sorry) WOKE as fuck all of a sudden. WTF happened to him?!

He’s a total moron, whose ego is inversely proportional to his number of brain cells.

He is woke now as it keeps him in the limelight. He is as addicted to adulation as he once was to booze, women and drugs.

If he’s a recovering addict does he still rabbit on a load of nonsense like a coke head? I was never sure if he was just super annoying or had just snorted a load of coke?

He's been like that for years now. He was an addict but found spirituality ànd managed to turn his life around. He seems very happy.

it’s an absolute nonsense to say certain people or certain communities have ownership of them or their meanings.

Except for the word woman I guess?

I agree with some of what he says and disagree on other things. Don’t forget he is a privileged white, heterosexual male who spent his twenties and thirties fucking as many women as he could and taking as many drugs as his veins could handle. He has swapped hedonism for spirituality, which is great, but he’s still the same arrogant twat that he was and I’m sure he’d agree.

Your sweary aggression is not helping your case. hmm

Personally, I'm cheering @todayisnottuesday on. Loving the fact that people trying to shut her down with some very self-righteous comments haven't succeeded.

I can't see beyond the Andrew Sachs things with him and Jonathan Ross, or his previous poor treatment of women that has been widely discussed. I'm not interested in anything he has to say

He was never my favourite person to be honest, but I’ve listened to a lot of his stuff recently and found him eloquent and thoughtful. Some of it is a bit OTT for me but he actually talks a lot of sense much of the time.

He’s re-invented himself, got clean and is in a good place in his personal life. Good for him I say. (And he’s still on my list of men I really shouldn’t fancy, but actually do .... ... )

@lazylinguist

So basically he used to be an irritating, self-centred, attention-seeking arse and now he's an irritating, woke, 'spiritual', attention-seeking arse. He's very unfunny and has a spectacularly annoying manner.

This says it perfectly!

I'd say "awake" rather than "woke" based on his content.

It seems to me that being too ' woke' is just another way of saying someone is too 'PC' - as in politically correctly, which was used in the in the 80s/ 90s about people who wanted to use terms like chair and firefighter instead of chairman and fireman and who were careful of the language they used with regards to the disabled and to ethinic minorities

@FATEdestiny

What does WOKE mean?

Gets offended at everything.

He's an arrogant idiot who adores the sound of his own voice, always has been .

@BudgieHammockBananaSmuggler

It’s a shame it has become an insult as actually the sentiments of the people described as woke represent the better side of humanity. Considerate of other people and the planet, respectful, compassionate, unselfish. The unwoke are actually the biggest shits of society. And the use of woke is an insidious way of undermining more progressive aspects of society.

(But despite this I still like the definition of woke I read here ages ago - people who are so open minded their brains have fallen out)

Woke is supposed to mean that. For a long time I strived to be woke and thought it a good thing. But in the last few years, it's come to describe an extremely, extremely intolerant and belligerent extreme side of an increasingly polarised political discourse. A political discourse that's increasingly nasty and is becoming increasingly detached from reality. One that refuses to see any other point of view and more and more often eats it's own if someone doesn't fully buy into the group think.

It's also become worryingly supportive of some very, very dodgy things like sexual abuse and sexualisation of children. It's bafflingly also becoming more and more homophobic and the always existing streak of misogyny that runs through just about everything, is incredibly deep and dangerous. It's very disturbing.

Ooh a Zombie thread about RB.

I find him very interesting to listen to. Sorry about that.

“Woke” is a term used negatively. You know someone’s woke when they sound like they’ve just read a bunch of spirituality books and they start spouting it around to everyone as if it’s their own opinion they’ve had forever, but you can tell they haven’t done any work on themselves and it’s very eye-roll inducing.

Or anyone that claims to be “enlightened”.

RB is legit. I’ve loosely followed him for his whole career. He’s been in the gutter and he’s been a success, and realised it’s all a farce. He’s truly done the work with the 12 step program He’s genuinely studying religions. He’s got an incredible perspective from all of that. On top of that he is incredibly quick and has a really unique way of communicating.

I can see how it looks at first glance though, if the last time you saw him he was “pulling down his trousers and pants..” and now he’s all guru-looking in his loose t-shirts and beads! I can’t deny he looks like a bit of a twat.

He is really self-aware and funny about his own ridiculousness, to be fair!

I know this is a zombie thread but he's definitely shifted away from "woke" and moved onto being another libertarian/borderline conspiracy theorist/alt right mouthpiece gaining popularity due to the pandemic. Not sure if he actually believes that stuff or he's just doing whatever it takes to get views and make money.

I've watched a few of his videos at the behest of some impressionable friends and it's quite clear he thinks he's much more intelligent than he actually is.

[quote angell84]@todayisnottuesday I meant that I left that part out (being sexually abused) about MYSELF , not him.

But yes I have been through all that stuff too.

I have no time for him at all. I especially hate peoplr who abuse people, like he does, and then goes on to be a "spiritual guru". It is another form of manipulation.[/quote]
@angell84 💐💐 you are what the world needs.

l thought his talk with Mooji was incredible , a joy to watch.

A sort of svengali for stupid people.

Happy to be a misogynist twat till he realises he's nearly tanked his career doing it then did a swift about turn.

This^

I just don't buy it.

@CliveAntichrist

Message deleted by MNHQ. Quotes deleted post

This is just cruel and salacious. It's fine to discuss the public persona of someone in the public eye, but there's really not need to describe the shape of their genitals.

I agree @Mef82.
In actual fact there are at least a couple of MNetters who have also slept with him. But IIRC none of them have posted about it in detail. That would be unnecessary.