Atlas Has Shrugged
August 12, 2018 1:22 AM   Subscribe

I am John Galt (SLTwitterThread)
posted by fearfulsymmetry (38 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
I thought Atlas Shrugged was something you grew out of when you turned 19 or 20... but these men and women appear to be, like... adults.

I am quite confused.
posted by rokusan at 1:51 AM on August 12, 2018 [11 favorites]


The rabbit should know better too.
posted by howfar at 2:42 AM on August 12, 2018 [14 favorites]


I like how the cat in the video with the guy in the enormous top hat looks utterly unenthused.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:12 AM on August 12, 2018


rokusan, the classic John Rogers quote explains the phenomenon:

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
posted by Zonker at 4:54 AM on August 12, 2018 [104 favorites]


It's sad that this kind of weirdness is a lot harder to find online these days.

I know it's said ironically, but I'm not sure I agree with any part of this statement, at any level...
posted by randomkeystrike at 5:03 AM on August 12, 2018 [4 favorites]


I thought Atlas Shrugged was something you grew out of when you turned 19 or 20... but these men and women appear to be, like... adults.

Alan Greenspan would beg to disagree.
posted by Beardman at 7:11 AM on August 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


And the vast majority of these people are...*scans checklist*...white -- check. Male -- check.
posted by zardoz at 7:24 AM on August 12, 2018 [3 favorites]


Speaking as a bookish former 14 year old, I must disagree with John Rogers. The list of books that changed my life at that age is a bit more expansive. I'd already read and enjoyed Lord of the Rings, and I couldn't believe anyone found Atlas Shrugged readable. But the books that changed me were ones like The Jim Morrison Biography No one Here Gets Out Alive, which introduced me to Arthur Rimbaud and William Blake.
posted by Morpeth at 7:31 AM on August 12, 2018 [4 favorites]


So there's a town here in Southern Ontario called Guelph. This town was founded in 1827 by a Scottish fellow named John Galt, in fact they celebrate a "John Galt Day". So every time I've heard over the years the question "Who is John Galt", particularly in university, uttered with such intense conviction that I've enjoyed trolling these gentlemen (almost always gentlemen and always white) with the statement "He's the founder of Guelph".

I was never popular with the Objectivist crowd.
posted by Ashwagandha at 8:03 AM on August 12, 2018 [77 favorites]


What I love, Zonker, is that each and every time someone hauls out that quote here, it (deservedly IMO) attracts favorites in the dozens-to-hundreds range.
posted by adamgreenfield at 8:12 AM on August 12, 2018 [4 favorites]


Weirdly Google tells me that quote has only been posted 10 times here. I would have expected much more than that.
posted by octothorpe at 8:16 AM on August 12, 2018 [4 favorites]


Yeah, I don't know if most of these people are real Atlas Shrugged fans and believers, or if they just thought making the video would be fun.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:21 AM on August 12, 2018


Ashwagandha
So there's a town here in Southern Ontario called Guelph.

I live in Guelph. I saw 'John Galt' in the link and (having reached adulthood with blessedly minimal exposure to Atlas Shrugged) genuinely thought "Guelph is on Mefi? What?"
posted by torisaur at 8:29 AM on August 12, 2018 [35 favorites]


Yeah, I don't know if most of these people are real Atlas Shrugged fans and believers, or if they just thought making the video would be fun.

I believe the overlap on that Venn diagram is 100%.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 8:29 AM on August 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


Also, those videos are absolute proof of how utterly banal and unaccomplished the “John Galts” of the world really are. You aren’t special. You’re completely replaceable, just like the workers and laborers you despise.

Oh, and you look like a goddamned idiot with that fedora.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 8:34 AM on August 12, 2018 [16 favorites]


It's like someone performed a spell to personify the phrase "banned from town hall meetings for life"

I don't think I have it in me today to hatewatch these videos, but the still shots say everything they need to.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:35 AM on August 12, 2018 [15 favorites]


I remember reading about various big budget projects to film Atlas Shrugged over the last couple of decades and I love that what we finally got were three shitty TV-movie-of-the-week quality films with mostly no-name casts and budgets that were cut in half for each subsequent installment. They couldn't even keep the same D-list cast and crew for each film.

The final film couldn't get funding and had to resort to relying on the altruism of its fans by running a Kickstarter campaign. It turned out to be so poor that it didn't even make its $5m budget back grossing only $851,690 at the box office and earning a 0% Rotten Tomatoes rating.
posted by octothorpe at 8:36 AM on August 12, 2018 [19 favorites]


"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life:

sideways to that and previously ...

Both novels are ridiculously long. Both were largely ignored by the literary and educational establishments, due to their unmistakable whiff of madness (This fear of insanity is, of course, why the literary and educational establishments always miss out on all the good stuff.) They have both, however, found a devoted readership, been hailed as life changing, and have remained in print since publication. Between them, they explain much of our current twenty-first century world, from the underground anarchism of Anonymous and the shift from hierarchies to networks, to the Tea Party and neo-conservative hijack of American politics and the massive shift in wealth distribution towards the super rich.
posted by philip-random at 9:08 AM on August 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


Speaking as a bookish former 14 year old, I must disagree with John Rogers. The list of books that changed my life at that age is a bit more expansive.

I'm fairly sure that Rogers didn't mean those two books, and only those two. (I read neither, although I took a decent stab at LotR.)
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:54 AM on August 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


It's like someone performed a spell to personify the phrase "banned from town hall meetings for life"

Lol forever but also weeping softly because have been witness to so many of those town meetings
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:12 AM on August 12, 2018 [7 favorites]


Wow, that's a lot of temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
posted by AlSweigart at 11:32 AM on August 12, 2018 [11 favorites]


> The final film couldn't get funding and had to resort to relying on the altruism of its fans by running a Kickstarter campaign.

Previously
posted by ardgedee at 12:45 PM on August 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


They should have made that quote more accurate (and actually from the book):

"I am John Galt. GET THE HELL OUT OF MY WAY!"
posted by tspae at 1:05 PM on August 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


"fuck you, galt mine."
posted by ardgedee at 1:06 PM on August 12, 2018 [9 favorites]


I know John Galt - he's a surgeon my mother once had for a procedure.

(I...might have had a very hard, good laugh when I found out his name.)
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:20 PM on August 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


I cannot even begin to watch these vids after the day I’ve had. Might muster up the energy to make a video though. “John Galt is on Fire. Shall I Piss on Him to Put it Out? Mebbe After I Go Vote for Universal Healthcare and It Passes.”
posted by Nancy_LockIsLit_Palmer at 3:05 PM on August 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


Both were largely ignored by the literary and educational establishments, due to their unmistakable whiff of madness

That surprises me, at least regarding Tolkein. I mean, Wikipedia...
On its initial review the Sunday Telegraph felt it was "among the greatest works of imaginative fiction of the twentieth century." The Sunday Times seemed to echo these sentiments when in its review it was stated that "the English-speaking world is divided into those who have read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and those who are going to read them." The New York Herald Tribune also seemed to have an idea of how popular the books would become, writing in its review that they were "destined to outlast our time",[1] and Michael Straight described it in The New Republic as "...one of the few works of genius in modern literature."[2] W. H. Auden, an admirer of Tolkien's writings, regarded 'The Lord of the Rings' as a 'masterpiece', furthermore stating that in some cases it outdid the achievement of Milton's Paradise Lost.
And while reviews have always been mixed, mainly on the "literature or not" battle, I had never heard anything like "whiff of madness" regarding LOTR or the Hobbit.

(Atlas Shrugged, on the other hand, yes, obviously.)
posted by rokusan at 4:49 PM on August 12, 2018 [9 favorites]


Just coming here to make sure everyone saw this clip, specifically.
posted by duffell at 5:11 PM on August 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


The final film couldn't get funding and had to resort to relying on the altruism of its fans

snort
posted by randomkeystrike at 7:58 PM on August 12, 2018 [7 favorites]


Never mind Guelph, until 1973 there was the city of Galt, Ontario -- named after the aforementioned John Galt -- which later became incorporated as part of Cambridge. It was the home to a prominent manufacturer of plumbing parts, so for many years men using urinals would see the word "Galt" while peeing, which seems like a fitting association.
posted by sevenyearlurk at 9:09 PM on August 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


Both were largely ignored by the literary and educational establishments, due to their unmistakable whiff of madness

That surprises me, at least regarding Tolkein. I mean, Wikipedia...


the other book being compared to Atlas Shrugged there was Illuminatus (Robert Anton Wilson + Robert Shea). Sorry for not making that clear.
posted by philip-random at 9:30 PM on August 12, 2018 [3 favorites]


What I love, Zonker, is that each and every time someone hauls out that quote here, it (deservedly IMO) attracts favorites in the dozens-to-hundreds range.

What was that quote recently, that ~Ayn Rand looked at all the horrors of the first half of the twentieth century, and decided that the real evil to preach about wasn't the Holocaust but was rather millionaires having to pay taxes for government services~?
posted by sebastienbailard at 12:01 AM on August 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


I am John Bigboote.
posted by flabdablet at 5:09 AM on August 13, 2018 [14 favorites]


That's John Big-boo-TAY.
posted by Billiken at 6:13 AM on August 13, 2018 [12 favorites]


(shoots Billiken)
posted by flabdablet at 7:30 AM on August 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


Hahaha, the twitter thread is my husband, and he has an unerring knack for finding the weirdest, grimmest things in any part of the culture. I am so glad the thread (deliberately) didn’t include the kids who were filmed saying the line.
posted by carbide at 9:06 AM on August 13, 2018 [7 favorites]


All I can think of is "I'm Cherokee Jack!" from MST3K: Red Zone Cuba.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:10 AM on August 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


hahahahahahaha
posted by nikoniko at 2:25 PM on August 13, 2018


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