hey! here's my monthly bonus video

i watched this one first when i became a patron and my partner really likes your rantsona creature (i do too) and wanted me to tell you :)

Hello Joel i would love more of this content, I have always enjoyed AITA and your thoughts so its a delightful combination. Not sure where to stand about baby guy vs dog guy though still dwelling. Not that a conflict of asshole verdict would impact my enjoyment. Thanks very much Joel - your recent patreon Ruby

banger

This is interesting. Of course with #2 he's not the asshole for not wanting to help a guy catch a dog because he has to watch his kid, but saying "I already shoo'd the dog away" is kind of an asshole move. I don't think many people would disagree with this. On #3 I'm not sure, the kid obviously isn't dealing with it well and the parents aren't doing a great job at helping. But how is "we don't love each other anymore" fundamentally different from "we've both really changed a lot and don't want the same things". If the first isn't a satisfactory reason, how would de second be? The kid is being kind of an asshole about it, not in an unjustifiable or unforgivable way but yeah.

I enjoyed this and would look forward to more

i liked this format a lot!! and hard agree on the last one, i was already in college and living separately when my parents divorced and it still would have been infinitely harder to process if I didn't know what the actual cause was. And I think it's an interesting contrast to the first two, where the asshole behaviour was coming from fully grown adults. Sure, maybe the kid could have been a little more gentle, but "it's the child's responsibility to act maturely when their parents get divorced" is sort of a wild take, when they're clearly young enough to have a school counselor and be fully dependent on their parents. Not acting with enough "decorum" is something literally every teenager is guilty of, let alone one whose parents are getting divorced for reasons they refuse to explain lol

I follow AITA too and the fatphobia is by far the worst part of the sub imo. It seems like all logic and compassion just flies out the window when a fat person is involved. There was a recent post where OP denied an overweight 9yo girl a second slice of pizza at a sleepover and the girl went to bed hungry. And though there was some debate, the sub basically agreed that letting a 9yo go hungry is fine as long as she's fat. "She's not your responsibility but might do her some good", they said. Fucking wild.

I'm still sad that the bonus videos can't be going over that one toy story review.

Love it. Looking forward for the next one.

Regarding the second one, redditors seem to have this thing where they're weirdly affronted at the idea of helping out a stranger.

I like it

I disagree on number 2. I got bit by a dog as a kid and have been a bit nervous around them since then. I think a lot of people might have similar issues, so you shouldn’t call someone an asshole if they won’t help catch a stranger’s dog.

This was really fun!! I hope you make more

That was cool

I’d like to see more of these :)

I am into this!

I liked this as a change of pace. Feels more low key; kinda a little Joel feeling. How do you feel about fake posts in AITA? On one hand it undermines the the point because obviously made up people aren't real and therefore don't have moral obligations towards each other. On the other hand fake posts can act as a sort of morality play where we can examine specific ethical questions through a more direct lens.

Hi Joel! I was, in fact, not disappointed and I'd love more videos like this one. As someone who's mostly been unable or, sometimes, unwilling to go to therapy, I've been an avid participant in many online advice forums (mostly not on Reddit) for my whole adult life. It can be a crapshoot obviously... Hearing your well-balanced perspective on things can be helpful, even if there was one I sort of disagree on. The boy whose parents divorced- Did he mention his age? If he's like a teenager, his tone really reads like he's kind of an asshole. His need to make someone "the bad guy" in his mind sounds kind of pathological, and maybe his parents know it. Maybe his parents are afraid to give him too many details about their relationship because they know he'll weaponize it against them. But I guess I'm just hypothesizing. It's not fair to tell a minor they are being an asshole in a circumstance that is beyond their control. I think for him though it should be emphasized that the world is not as black and white as he wants it to be. Anyway, when it comes to Reddit, I feel like I need a hazmat suit for that site. If everyone on Reddit collectively asked "AITA?" my answer would be YES. Save for some subreddits, it's just too toxic for me. I can't seem to post a question without getting downvoted to hell or told to kill myself. 🙃 What I'm trying to say is, thank you for finding interesting Reddit advice content so that I don't have to look.

i really liked this one, thanks :)

What if its not being a regular thing disappoints us? What if your expectation of disappointment makes a bleeding disappointment of irregularity in my heart? What if this was already true and is even truer after reading your bleak assessment of your own work? What indeed does it mean to live if this is what life consists of? How can I keep going in a world of illusory promise and deflationary content creationers? It is a brutality of the soul that manifests itself here and everywhere that such sorrow is rained down upon the creator's own heart by his own fist or hers or theirs. The merciless raining down is the same and not gender specific, but please don't give in to the self-down rainage. It serves no self-improving purpose even though that's its self-justification. It is just a happiness destroyer. It does no good for anybody, and is particularly harmful as you can imagine to the bearer of this sad state.