Good Stress or Bad Stress

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My satirical puppet videos are starting to become more and more popular on YouTube. My Channel has about 1000 views, I have about 90 something friends and subscribers and there's these 6 people who are Muslim and Islam who Love The show so much that they are making DVDs of my videos and selling them and translating them in Arabic. They email me all the time, a couple of times a day acting like they are my agents. I don't know if it's a good stress or bad stress. I'm trying to be very cautious. At the same time, I get negative criticize. Once there was a misunderstanding over a fictional character which a very common last name and this person thought that I was making fun of him which I wasn't. My show left public access TV because there was people with personality disorders overreacting to the puppet show. I recently got cyberbullied by this Libelous Christian who called me a Anti-American Terrorist Sicko just because of my puppet show videos. At the same time, I live with my very strict and serious parents in which I don't talk to that much because we can't relate to each other and they have no sense of humor. I barely have any friends to talk to about this craziness.

Part of me is still trying to cope with negative criticism and the nasty things that I've been said to by people with personality disorders and not sure if these Muslim people are serious about this whole business things.

I have a strange feeling that my show is going to be big someday. It's exciting but it's scary because I'm still living with my parents and they told me that I will never be popular entertainment wise.


It's scary because I'm alone in this world. Everything is happening too fast. If I wanted something to happen fast it would be an improvement in my social life and have a life partner.

There's still people from the public access station who email me once in awhile saying nice things about my show still and at the same time I don't want those crazy people with personality disorders who dislike my show to come after me and attack me.

I've got too much on my mind, it's hard to stay calm.

Hope it gets better for you. Try not to worry about what your parents say, parents can sometimes not see what their kids can do until the kids achieve things, also if they don't understand things achieved they may also discount the achievement.

About the negitive comments, bin them or delete them. You could put up a note beside your you tube vids that says that 'negitive comments will be ignored and constructive comments are welcome'. Doing that may reduce the negitive comments, whilst inviting people to help you make your vids better.

About the difficulty keeping calm, would keeping some form of diary help? to be able to express your feelings to a neutral place and read it back later to look at the feelings/happenings/issues in a calmer state?

Greetings to you, Eric.

I have gone over and watched parts of a few of your shows, and I have watched two of them all the way through. I am not qualified for judging the overall value of anyone’s talent/s, yet I do offer at least this mention of your apparent ability to accumulate, sort, select, assemble and present various thoughts, facts and principles in attention-grabbing and entertaining ways. Also, I can see why some folks might cheer you on while others only criticize your work ... and please notice my differing focal points there:
--some folks cheer you on;
--some folks criticize your work.

There is yet a third category of which you are acutely aware, of course, and I hope you do not ever misunderstand or misjudge me as being someone who is criticizing you.

As I perceive it, here is your inescapable dilemma as a puppeteer in your present practice:

A claim of “Fiction!” does not make anyone’s artistry automatically inoffensive, innocuous, harmless and/or unobjectionable. If it did, such work would also have to be inherently bland, dull and possibly boring. Then, neither does “freedom of speech” guarantee silence of response. Rather, it only suggests all people share-in-common a right to be heard in whatever order.

There is nothing wrong with thinking or even believing someone deserves something. Fortunately for all, however, very few human beings are ever authorized or required to actually dispense anything other than that which clearly falls within our individual levels of willingness and ability to treat others as we would like to be treated ... and it is there we can find lowered levels of stress.

Basicly I just want people to not get angry with my work and that one's reaction is their responsibility and not mine. I think it also has to do with sense of humor. Some people think like me very cartoonish, explotions are fully, hanging cartoon jokes, Bugs Bunny jokes like "Everything is getting dark Doc, I can't see. and.......I KILLED THE WABBIT! I'm a MOIDERA! (Murderer)" I'm so used to watching Looney Tunes and I guess not a lot of people get that kind of humor. It's scary because people would think that I'm a sadistic terrorist or say something just nasty like if I did something indecent in public. Some people listen and some don't. I made that video explaining that kind of humor and explaining that it's only fiction and your right, without irreverent humor it would be just bland, boring, etc. It's like having a puppet singing about the nice weather outside and slipping on a bananna peel and saying something like "oops, I better watch where I am going ha ha ha ha". Very corny and inoffensive. Then let's just say that I change somethings like the puppet feeling down and depressed because his girlfriend cheating on him and he says, how can my life get any worse.........then comes the irony where trips on a beer bottle and falls down head first and a car runs over his head, apply the dark humor to the set of the mood. And then here comes people complaining and junk. Crap happens in life, and we Aspies know that having this disability Sucks Hard.

But anyways, I think I see the point that you are making about how not all people are going to accept it because it's fiction even though they themselves will be blind by that fact.

I feel the world is made up of two people.

Logical thinkers and Sensitive People.

Some think by facts and others think by emotions, and conflicts to arise.

I don't want to call myself insensitive but my love is for this artform and the carefree spirituality of it all which not a lot of people will understand.


Even though that I understood some of the points you were making, I didn't understand it all so could you reword some of what you were saying again. Thanks

Therein lies this entire deal. If this world ran solely on simple logic, maybe one could say fictionalized reality should not upset anyone, or at least that emotionally-stable people should not be upset by it. But in reality, logic and emotion are not mutually exclusive.

With matters of self-interest set aside, let us say artists do what they do either to cause response or to cause reaction. Someone might feel moved by your work and smile (and/or take a specific course of action), or someone might not like being stirred by your work and end up frowning (and/or taking a much different course of action). Either way, you have been a "successful" artist.



Why not? That might be just what is needed for someone to take a specific course of action of great benefit to himself, herself, yourself, myself, someone else or any one or more of many others.

But yes, I do realize my question there is largely rhetorical.



Correct. Someone else getting angry does not prove any wrong-doing on my part ... and I will spare you the obvious question there!

No matter how great or small, virtually everything I have ever done in life (and even have yet to still do) has had (either logically or illogically) some kind of effect upon someone else, and I have certainly had my due measure of criticisms and praises in return. The praises are preferred, of course, but I cannot imagine anyone living a life completely free of criticism.

I once heard a pigskin-football player say he knew his body would only ever stand however many blows before he would have to quit playing altogether, so both logic and emotion were driving him to be sure every blow counted as worthwhile (at least to him) along the way.

What benefit do you hope to receive from the practice of your art?

Well for me being a Satirist by goal is to make people laugh and to make people think and to share my love for irreverent carefree humor, puppetry and animation.

Lots of satirists have told me that people are going to get pissed off at you if you are trying to make a point and at the same time making it satirically funny but that's how the process is. It's to make fun and to share a point of view that not many people usually see.

I personally do social satire and of course there's lots of crime and psycho crazies in the world,
I feel that puppets and animation can do things that humans can't because it would be considered bad-tasted or horrifying. It's like, you can't just show someone jumping off a cliff trying to end their life and tumbling down the cliff instead with a bunch of rocks in the way. Cartoons and puppets can do things that would seem disturbing to most. That's why I try to promote the idea of Fiction. But maybe it's not just the fiction that bothers people, but maybe it's the subject manner like the dark horrors of society that they try to not think about because it makes them emotionally unstable or reminds them of a horrible event in their personal life.

There is a personal cost attached to that.



Please know I am not trying to twist or to change your words here, but to say there really is no such thing as fiction, and that neither is there any kind of reality, however fictionalized, that does not in some way affect someone. We might wish life to be mere fiction, but it is not. And so, the question becomes something along the line of how we might help each other bear it just as it is: very real.

I'm a little confused on what your trying to say or point out. Are you trying to point out that Irreverent in Irreverent Humor can be dangerous therefore or what causes critism for those who can't handle reality as it is? or.......

Wih some overall principles in mind, I am trying to share some of my own hard-won experience without implying wrong thinking or outright error on your part.

I have learned it can be helpful to others to be irreverent against something such as religious sanctimony, for example, but not merely for the sake of my happening to enjoy irreverence. In other words, we must each have some sense of meaning or purpose in life, and I have learned there was nothing but fruitless frustration yet ahead for me when all of my efforts were primarily focussed upon what *I* happened to want out of it. Or to try to say all of that in another way:

Practice your art in whatever way you believe to be of maximum benefit (at least potentially) to yourself, to certain others and/or to anyone at all, then see what happens. And of course, you are already doing that. When the outcome is something other than you would like, make adjustments in focus (such as thinking more of others or of different others), or begin asking people what different "toons" *they* might want to take in. But if all of that ultimately fails for you like it did for me, then begin trying to simply offer to people what they actually *need* ... and just let the chips fall wherever they may. Some will still reject you and a few might not, but at least you will have known you did not spend your life being demanding of the lives of others.

Well for me, I'm not trying to say that everyone should love irreverent humor but almost like telling people "If you don't appreciate this then move on and leave me alone" sort of deal. But of course people are going to be ignorant. When I make fun of something, it's always for a point and my opinion. Everyone has an opinion but I shouldn't let nasty comments stand in the way of what I love. My stuff is similar to South Park, it's black or white. Either you are going to enjoy it or hate it. And I think people would hate the content because not all people are as open minded or as carefree as I, some people would rather not speak or think such thoughts of negativity. And when they see something negative, they often frown upon it and don't care if it's mockery upon negativity, it's the subject manner alone. It's almost like swear words, there's still people who don't like hearing Damn, Ass, b***h, Bastard, etc. and might strongly be agenst it to the point that they will take an action like you said. It's neither right or wrong, it's only labeled by the person. What I see is ignorant might not be for the opposite person and that person might think what I do is Evil and Sadistic which I don't.