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Okay, rant time: I'm going through this professional development course thing for work, and boooy howdy is it just - so very white and upper middle class. I've lost count of the number of times I've said "UGH fuck ooooff" at these videos.
The first section was on health and fitness, and it was (unsurprisingly) very fatphobic, quite ableist, and weirdly sexual at times? There were occasional nuggets of helpful advice, like establishing *why* you personally want to improve your health, buuut o_o
I've only just started this next section on "intellectual life", and the first example of why thinking is important is just absolutely bonkers. It starts with a bunch of people going on one of the only guide-free animal safaris in Africa, which is a GREAT start.
This lady wants pictures of these lion cubs, but oh no! She can't get the angle she wants, so she GETS OUT OF THE CAR. And then she physically PICKS UP THE LION CUBS to line them up for a good photo. NOTHING CAN POSSIBLY GO WRONG HERE.
The lady gets the picture, she gets in the car, and goes home happy OH WAIT NOPE JUST KIDDING SHE GETS MAULED BY THE MAMA LION and DIES. And apparently this is the example this PD company decided to use as an example for why thinking is good, actually!
The "real life" examples this PD company uses are just absolutely bananas, they're so extreme that I almost doubt they're real. Want another crazy example? In the previous section, the speaker was talking about the decision to lead a healthy life. *deep sigh*
He very casually talks about his brother, who apparently smoked, was an alcoholic, never exercised, always ate junk food, was a drug addict, and died young. Just! He didn't even give his brother's NAME or show any emotion at all in talking about his brother's DEATH. WHAT.
I'm not convinced this guy had a brother. I'm not convinced that the lion cub story is real (though rich white people have been known to do incredibly stupid things like this, and I'm assuming the woman in the story was rich and white).
This whole experience has been bonkers so far, and I've only finished one out of twelve sessions. I'm in for a wild ride, and I'm not really looking forward to it, but at the same time it's kind of nice to be mad and confused about something that has zero real-world stakes.
Oh my god, in the "intellectual life" section this speaker literally just said, with his own mouth, "If your life is a wreck, how smart are you really?" Ffffffuuuuuck oooofffff! That is the most privileged bullshit!
Y'all might want to mute this thread, I'm very likely going to continue flipping tables over here every time he says something unimaginably stupid, which is probably going to be fairly often. AUGH.
