prideandfall
Veteran Member
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2007
- Messages
- 2,118
- Location
- a drawer of inappropriate starches
- Basic Beliefs
- highly anti-religious agnostic
simply for the purposes of your edification: chris hardwick is fairly well known within "nerd circles" - for years, he has hosted "the talking dead" which is basically a talk show only about the walking dead, which airs immediately after the walking dead.A lot hinges on whether it is an equal relationship. Based on age alone, there's a pretty significant age difference between the two. To tell the truth, I had never heard of either of them before this thread... Maybe he was easily recognizable to those who knew either. Maybe they just jumped on board because he was going down so they decided to pile on. No idea.
he's also been the host of a late night meta gameshow called @midnight on comedy central, he was one of the founders of "the nerdist" which is a popular website and chain of podcasts, etc etc.
point is, chris hardwick isn't mainstream cultural zeitgeist famous, but he's definitely in about the "C"-list tier of celebrity in terms of exposure and air time.
chloe dykstra was basically just attractive for a living until she prominently (well, relatively speaking) got into a relationship with chris hardwick, then she wound up in a couple things.
anyways none of this matters to the facts of her story, i'm merely giving an extremely cliff notes version for the purposes of perspective.
the worst you could say about them as a couple is that it was an utterly cliche example of older celebrity with hot younger model and her career may or may not have gotten a boost from her proximity to him and may or may not have taken a hit from their breakup... her body of work is miniscule before she met him, and is miniscule after, so make of that what you will.
no argument here but, and this was the point of contention at length during my talks over the weekend, is that kind of exploitation really classifiable as *abuse*?Yes, in an ideal world, anyone who is being treated badly in a relationship would simply leave. But real life is much more complicated. And it's worse if one person undermines the confidence of the other one so significantly that the non-dominant person doubts themselves and anything they think or want.
i'll grant taking advantage of someone, i'll grant creepy and ethically unacceptable, i'll grant skeezy behavior which women should collectively shun men for and stop encouraging their behavior by capitulating to it... but abuse? that seems quite a stretch.
it sounds to me like they had the kind of shitty relationship that is endemic to the vast majority of couplings within the context of the human condition, and while i have total sympathy for her having allowed herself to get shat on, and i have contempt for him for being the kind of person who would do that to another human being, i have to confess that i don't see the details as being notable whatsoever.