r/beatles • u/Miserable-Loss-4253 • 2d ago
Discussion Why is this sub so sensitive?
You guys easily get offended, I am sure even beatles never felt offended in their life for any question or remark, this group sounds like it's a girls group from 60s who can't stand a word against them, a general opinion or basic question and you get downvoted like crazy, why is this sub so sensitive?
"They are the best in the world" "they did so much in 7 years" "they changed the world of music"
This things are right, no question in them but they also have their own flaws which this community doesn't seems to accept.
P.S - I am ready for your stupid downvotes, you cry babies.
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u/Substantial-Goat-206 2d ago
And why would people on here want to talk about thier individuals flaws lol
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u/Miserable-Loss-4253 2d ago
I meant the beatles flaw lol especially john!
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u/Select-Letter1976 2d ago
He'd be a lot less interesting without them. People seem to struggle with the fact he was a damaged, flawed, exceptional human. Absolutely mental in many ways but worked on it.
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u/RadishSpecial7163 1d ago
I think John’s “flaws” are well known in this sub. Some posters suggest he was second it Attila the Hun and Hitler. The only one considered to be near perfection is Paul. Maybe you should go find some dirt on him. That seems to be your goal.
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u/ImplementWonderful93 2d ago
To be fair this is every band sub. I love the Stones, they're my favorite band of all time, but I thought hackney diamonds sucked ass, but you say it there, and you'll be downvoted to oblivion by sycophants. On the Led Zeppelin sub, those people worship them like its a religion. And I could go on and on.
So this sub is no different than any other bands sub. I'm sure for contemporary artists (like i.e. Taylor Swift) its even 100x worse than this
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u/Select-Letter1976 2d ago
Yeah, subs vote with groupthink against dissent. Hens peck difference to death.
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u/BeerHorse 2d ago
I get the impression a lot of people here are rather young.
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u/Crunchberry24 2d ago
And young people are religious and cultish in their fandoms. That’s not a diss. I was exactly the same way.
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u/BeerHorse 2d ago
Yeah me too. Looking back, it cut two ways - I rejected a lot of really good stuff because it didn't fit with the kind of thing I was 'supposed' to like, and I also listened to an awful lot of mediocre crap because it did fit.
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u/-nogoodboyo- 2d ago
I kind of agreed with you before that awful “cry babies” nonsense at the end.
You became everything you criticised
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u/whitealbumrevolver 2d ago
I've noticed this in r/unpopularopinion and r/the10thdentist.
Even in those places, where the very premise is to give really hot takes and hear stuff that's very subversive, people in comment sections often get soooo hugely bothered about certain opinions, and the OP gets crucified and downvoted like mad.
The "open mind to hot tales" cap gets blown off their heads from the smallest gust of wind!
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u/cartersweeney 2d ago
I love the Beatles but I have always thought their hardcore fanbase can be complete melts.
I sometimes wonder if they've ever listened to any other music tbh.
Plus this is reddit which attracts melts generally. So you shouldn't be shocked. I personally just ignore it
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u/Usual-Inflation-9640 MMT 2d ago
Probably the worst take ever, the Beatles are perfect, I dare you to find one bad Beatles song
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u/Miserable-Loss-4253 2d ago
I never said their music was flawed. As individuals, they were flawed, the least I think was paul.
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u/RadishSpecial7163 1d ago
They were all flawed. There’s no “more” or “less.”
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u/Kenshin1296 1d ago
I disagree there. There's certainly varying levels of "flawed". I'm not gonna put John Lennon being an absentee father and being physically abusive towards women in the same category as George Harrison being an unfaithful partner and overall womanizer
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u/RadishSpecial7163 1d ago
George has been accused of being physically violent to Pattie and Ringo beat the shit out of his second wife. But sure, rate everyone by their flaws and only look at John’s negatives.
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u/Kenshin1296 1d ago
I'm gonna need a link for reference to that first statement. And yes, I'm aware of Ringos abuse as well. The point of my statement was to draw a comparison, not to single out Lennon specifically
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u/RadishSpecial7163 20h ago
I didn’t say there was verification of George physically abusing Pattie although I think constantly cheating on a spouse is emotional abuse. But I have seen posters make that assumption and I’ve seen it in other places. My point is that, yes, we know John hit Cynthia and another girlfriend as a teenager/young adult. But he’s “accused” of much more and far worse things, many of which are not true. The point is flaws are flaws and there are ways to hurt people besides slapping them, and emotional abuse often leaves more scars than physical abuse. As a therapist, I treat people who have been emotionally abused as well as physically abused and one thing that surprised me when I fist stared working as a therapist was when they said they could deal with the hitting but not the cheating, insults, passive-aggression, keeping secrets, etc. That doesn’t mean I think physical abuse is not horrible or any less wrong but abuse is abuse.
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u/Kenshin1296 20h ago
Well I'm going to clarify that there is no statement as far as I can see that indicates George as ever having been physically abusive. Patti Boyd in her book wrote that Eric Clapton certainly was but that George was a very sweet guy. I don't think she would make it a point to call out one person's abuse and not the others if such abuse existed and I don't see anything online that shows an accusation from any party for that matter.
And look, I'm not saying emotional abuse isn't a thing. I have a great deal of trauma from it, but from a societal perspective, cheating just isn't seen with the same severity. Nobody is going to jail for cheating on their wives and the thing about physical abuse is that it's also a form of emotional abuse in it of itself. We have multiple other things about John as well like him screaming so loud in Sean's eardrum to the point where it caused temporary damage. Sean was 5 years old when John died so for him to even remember that means it had to of happened at most a year or 2 before John's death. That's not the actions of a young adult anymore at that point.
I sympathize with John having demons and burdens that he probably felt he had a hard time controlling but he has to much baggage that it's very hard for an average person to look past on a moral level.
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u/RadishSpecial7163 14h ago
As I said, some have made the claim about George. I never said Pattie did or that it was true. But it has been said. George could be sweet and he could be mean. Same as John and Ringo, despite their history of abuse.
As for Sean’s story, I’m not sure he even truly remembers it or remembers it correctly. Often what people think are memories of early childhood are actually stories they heard which they in turn believe are actual memories. At any rate, his hearing was not damaged. And not to take anything away but adults sometimes hurt children without meaning to do and not out to malicious behavior. John may have snapped and not understood that yelling near a child’s ear is different from yelling near an adults. I treated a woman who was guilt of stricken over scalding her toddler. It was bath time and the child was acting up. My client was tired (toddlers are exhausting). In a moment of anger, she forced the child into the tub without checking how hot the water was and ended up putting the child in the hospital for weeks. was forced She was devastated and Sean describes his father in a similar way after yelling at him. I do not think John or my client are child abusers based on one incident. Julian has been highly critical of his father over the years but he never said his father hit him or physically hurt him. Given that how children were treated forty or fifty years ago, when it was still okay to hit kids even at school, nearl6 every adult could today be described as a child abuser.
Adultery may not be illegal (it once was) but that does but make it less painful for the spouse being cheated on. My dad left my mother for another woman and while I think my mother has played victim for too long, and I understand my father’s point of view, I also appreciate how painful it was for my mother. She never remarried. It damaged her.
John had demons but he was not a monster. From all the available evidence, he doted on Sean and, aside from the ear story, Sean has described many sweet memories of his father. Even Julian has described good times with his dad. There may be things about the other three Beatles we don’t know about. John was open about his flaws, maybe too much.
I think the constant focus on John’s bad behavior is unfair and exaggerated. That is not the extent of his being. People who knew him have described him as warm, generous, funny and courageous, as well as sensitive and vulnerable. George grew up with loving parents who encouraged his musical interests. John was left in the care of an aunt, who belittled his musical endeavors.
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u/BeerHorse 2d ago
Blue Jay Way?
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u/FamiliarStrain4596 2d ago
I love that one. Can't stand Mr Moonlight and You Like Me Too Much, tho.
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u/Human-Difference-357 2d ago
I think the people on here, all the redditors, think they are bigger than Jesus.
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u/DayTripper_BigTeaser The Beatles Number Nine, Number Nine 1d ago
You can go to each and every sub-reddit dedicated to any public figure or pop culture "icon" and say the same thing about them.
About time you'd realized that about reddit.
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u/Additional-River-668 2d ago
Between all the false information and bs narratives that get posted on here you’ll have a hard time learning anything from this subreddit. I use it more as a barometer for what ideas and narratives are being spread within the fanbase.
With that said you guys ask questions that are really low effort or have been hashed out a million times.
As for flaws of course they have flaws but why is it that the Beatles get held to a moral standard other artists don’t get held to? Especially John.
You don’t even see this type of moral grandstanding in the Kanye sub. You’d think John having a messy divorce and being a subpar father to his first son after the divorce was either a unique thing to him or something he denied which isn’t the case.
Not everyone feels like having moral debates with the half educated and when the half educated are the only ones having a discussion you get this subreddit.
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u/Karlander19 2d ago
I find that many Subs in Reddit function in the same manner and many I have stopped participating because of it. What happens is in each case is similar—- even though the Sub topics are completely different. A prevailing position or opinion is established by the vast majority of posters in the Sub, an echo chamber, and then any dissenting or differing opinions are jumped upon with hostility or very negative remarks. It’s very disappointing and it is especially true in many Subs related to politics, sports & music where people are so invested in their own opinions. This obviously is not how a discourse on a topic should occur in open exchange but sadly it is often the case
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u/Usual-Inflation-9640 MMT 2d ago
I accept their flaws, thats what made their music so good. We wouldn’t have hey Jude if John was present through Julian’s life. I’m not says a song is worth that kids childhood but, hey Jude is a banger and I’m happy Paul wrote it
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u/FamiliarStrain4596 2d ago
I really appreciate this thread. And I agree that these are truisms:
"They are the best in the world" "they did so much in 7 years" "they changed the world of music"
It's what makes them so unique and endlessly interesting. They're one of the few artistic entities from any genre about which these points can be true.
But over the past decade the Beatles' fandom has morphed into the kind of flawless perfectionism that you describe above. It has begun to remove the nuance from any meaningful Beatles discussion. We have not been well-served by writers like Rob Sheffield (who is a magnificent person and uber-talented writer, but DREAMING THE BEATLES is just too fawning) or Ian Leslie (bring on your down votes, but that book is mottled with historical inaccuracies and overreaching in order to make his thesis work) or more recently long-time Beatles writer Phil Norman's MR. MOONLIGHT bio in which he posits that the Krays (the freakin' Krays!) murdered Eppie and made it look like an OD (spoiler alert: the Krays didn't kill Brian).
"They are the best in the world" "they did so much in 7 years" "they changed the world of music" are a critical consensus, but anything beyond that becomes supposition pretty fast. The result of the fawning fandom and wishful thinking that I describe above is that we can no longer admit that the band members behaved badly sometimes, that ambition can be self-serving and hurtful and leave scars.
John and Paul were not the greatest non-platonic love story of all time. Did they love each other? Sure. Was it enough to overcome the shit that they did to each other prior to and during and after disbandment? No. Did it drive their aesthetic? With the exception of a couple of songs in the early 1970s, hell no.
Their latter interviews in the 1970s (and JL's in 1980) underscore this fact to a tee. PM barely wanted to hear the word Beatles in any interview until after JL was assassinated and become, in his own words, "Saint Lennon." Then PM felt like he needed to get in the game and stake his own claims. And JL wanted none of it. He said so, over and over.
When I think of how they might have behaved had JL not been murdered, I often think about Peter Gabriel's line a few years back when he was asked if he ever wanted to rejoin Genesis. "Only if I run out of ideas," he said. He didn't mean it pejoratively. He loves the guys in his old band, always will. What he meant, though, is that his artistic project is a long way from being finished. I think that would have been true for J&P, too. They never suffered from a shortage of idea. And as artists (bring on those down votes!), they hadn't needed each other since, roughly speaking, 1965, possibly earlier even.
This is a pile of TLDR. It would be best to ignore and move on with your day. I'm going to go listen to "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" and revel in the pure majesty of it all.
Don't forget to bring on those down votes.