It’s awful. I still follow him on social media with some (likely foolish) hope that he’ll come out of this. I don’t know how that happens. I don’t want an “I was wrong,” I just want the old Joe back for his sake and that of his baby.
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About him being with a younger woman what I can tell (personal experience) is that we can’t choose who we love, we can only try to resist.
Of course, I don’t think I will ever fall in love with a much younger woman just because it’s difficult to have similar interests.
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No, I’m sorry, but when you’re a nearly 50 year old man with a lot of fans who adore you and the power differential that comes with that, sleeping with a literal teenager is just plain gross. There’s a point when age differences don’t matter, but that’s not when someone is high school age.
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I get your point and must admit you are totally right.
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This makes me so sad. I used to love his work and was really looking forward to the second album with PB (and was hoping they would tour the UK with it). I have seen him a couple of times in London and he was an amazing live performer. I have seen his posts on IG and unfollowed him a while back - he now seems totally obsessed with it. I just hope he’s OK 
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I’m not on Twitter or whatever it is that Joseph Arthur is on (Parlor? MySpace?)…is Arthur anti-vax like REM-collaborator Jim Carrey (remember years ago when he accused the Governor of California of poisoning children with vaccine mandates?), or is he questioning the efficacy/safety of the new Big Pharma products?
He believes that vaccines are a conspiracy to poison America, that people who support vaccines are nazis, that the pandemic isn’t real, and that scientists and researchers are lying and should be imprisoned. He’s very far gone.
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Don’t forget the horse dewormer
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Yeah, he actually has songs with Ivermectin in the lyrics. Ugh.
I saw an LA Times article about him from last summer and it’s just sad. The guy needs help, but deradicalizing people isn’t a thing that seems to have much success.
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I’ve been a big fan of JA’s music/art for 22 years and have witnessed his endless loop of crashing and burning and rebirth. Not sure how he will rebound from this latest episode, but thankfully when his songs play I am still able to listen without any kind of ick feeling. Although his shenanigans are a real turn-off right now, I can separate the artist from the art as he’s not my buddy or coworker. I suppose it’s hardest on those who know him.
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Did not know about any of this, that’s very sad. His show with Mike in Brussels, 2014 was really great. Hope he gets the help he needs.
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Lots of musicians I like believe some pretty kooky stuff. I don’t agree with every single thing that Michael Stipe believes, nor do I think he’s 100% right about every issue he publicly expounds upon. I still enjoy his music. I’m a far more casual fan of Joseph Arthur - as I said above, I only really care about Arthur’s music to the extent that he collaborates with Peter Buck, whose music I care about a great deal - but, as this pandemic winds on and on and on, I’m growing increasingly tired of the public shaming of the vaccine deniers and skeptics. Do I think they’re wrong to take ivermectin and call Dr. Fauci a Nazi? Yes, I do, 100%, but, as George Carlin once put it, think about how dumb the average person is, and then realize that half of them are dumber than that. I’m vaccinated and boosted, and, at this point, Joseph Arthur or anyone else can put their head in a microwave oven if they think it cures covid better than the vaccines, I really couldn’t care less, nor do I feel it’s my duty to show them the right path or ostracize them from society because of their, in my opinion, kooky beliefs.
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I’d agree if Covid wasn’t contagious…
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The guy has become a disinformation platform, boosting lying doctors, railing on about cancel culture and wild conspiracies. I never said to stop listening to his music. Mostly I feel sad that a guy I really respected has lost it and wondered what happened.
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Exactly. By spending almost all his time putting this stuff into the universe he’s actively hurting people. If he privately didn’t get vaccinated it wouldn’t affect him at all. But by doing podcasts and huge numbers of tweets a day about cos piracy theories, that takes it to a different place.
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Hardly surprising that the same guy who sings about keeping his third eye open and “all the spiders inside your head” on the Arthur Buck album would be easy prey for conspiracy theories and magical thinking when it comes to covid. Like many creative people, he pretty clearly has a screw loose, it is what it is. The same personality traits that make him an artist make him susceptible to anti-vax nonsense.
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This isn’t a wing box. It’s just a friend/musician/friend of band who went off the deep end, publicly.
He has before, and it lead to not great things. In this case it killed his career, and he did so willingly.
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Such a waste, such a sad story
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I’d never heard of him before Arthur Buck collaboration. I checked him out after and enjoyed several songs and followed him. It is truly sad to see him derailing and one can only hope he pulls himself out of this. I unfollowed him on both twitter and instagram several months ago.
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Yes, he is a person. And, as I said above, people are complicated. What I find just as baffling as the notion that ivermectin is a good idea is this notion of “Oh, wow, I thought this guy was on my team, but it turns out he doesn’t actually agree with me 100%, how can that be?”. If we agree with someone who takes a stand that kills their career, as in the case of the Dixie Chicks, they’re heroes. I suspect that, in his mind, at least, Arthur sees himself as a hero taking a similar principled stand.
I have a friend in real life who believes the public schools are a plot turn his daughter into a lesbian. I find that idea shockingly stupid, but, because he is a good man in so many other ways, I still meet him for lunch and try to ignore the hot button topics on which we disagree. Just because Eric Clapton has gone covid cuckoo doesn’t mean I’m going to throw away my Cream records, either. Or my Arthur Buck record.
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