Yeah, it's Cracked.com, but humor me and give these two a read. I think on these quite a bit, even after many years.

Explains much as to how we humans act towards one another:

https://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html

How the hell Trump supporters even exist:

https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Blue's Clues. The humour is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the jokes will go over a typical viewer's head. There's also Blue's nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his characterisation- his personal philosophy draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these jokes, to realise that they're not just funny- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Blue's Clues truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in Blue's existential catchphrase "a clue a clue," which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev's Russian epic Fathers and Sons. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Traci Paige Johnson's genius wit unfolds itself on their television screens. What fools.. how I pity them. 😂

And yes, by the way, i DO have a Blue's Clues tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- and even then they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand. Nothin personnel kid 😎

Unironically Deus Ex, it's full of cookie-cutter crazy conspiracy theories and references, but it introduced me to the literary genre of Cyberpunk and it's surrounding culture back in the day. If it wasn't for it, I probably wouldn't be so critical of modern consumerism and corporate culture. It helps that a lot of the game's social commentary remains very topical twenty years later, they simply don't make games like this anymore.

The Truman Show fucked me up as a child

"The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins

Daft Punk's 1997 "Homework" album

"The Atomic Cafe" 1982 documentary film

Edit: Vonnegut, the far side and Calvin and Hobbes for making me feel like I'm not crazy and most people are peddling a tremendous amount of bullshit.

I read Asimov's Foundation series of books when I was 14 or so, and it made me a lifelong science fiction fan.

The Hubble Deep Field image struck the first major blow against my childhood indoctrination in young earth creationism.

Midnight Gospel

The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury, it's a collection of short stories with a light meta story connecting them. The man feared technology, thought it would ruin society. It was written in 1951 and some of his thoughts on how technology could ruin people are eerily spot on.

They Thought They Were Free. Book caused me to reevaluate exactly how politics at individual and social levels happened and how fascism works without any individual being inherently "evil." Class politics and interests followed closely behind to explain how evil can arise among populations that all consider themselves "good people"

Heinlein's "The Door Into Summer". Both beacuse it reminds me that I might never find what I'm looking for; and because it taught me to never give up on looking, anyway.

There have been several. I'll pick Eric Berne's book Games People Play.

I immediately recognised a few that I had played and, having been 'called out' on them by the book, it did lead me to stop and behave more constructively.

Thank You for Arguing, Fourth Edition (Revised and Updated): What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion

Drowning in a world of marketing and political slogans, this books helps me them how they attempt to persuade me. It also opened up a whole new interest in rhetoric.

Morrowind because I'm one of those people. But for real, that game in part defined large parts of my life. I got frustrated with the limits of the game so I started making mods, then got frustrated with the limits of the engine so I learned how to make my own. Now I work adjacent to the game industry with plans to get back into the industry proper in a couple years. Making games is all I've ever wanted to do and I owe a big part of that to Morrowind and the construction kit.

It's a bit early to say if it's life changing, but Hi Ren made me reassess my thought patterns and negative self talk in ways therapy never could, which is pretty damn powerful for a musical performance.

Thus spoke Zarathustra. I've been thinking about this book pretty much everyday for the past 20 years. It made me want to enjoy life and create great things.

https://youtu.be/xUiuVjX2ubQ?feature=shared

Transplant tourism in China 🇨🇳

There's only one reason to make a device to give people an invisible lobotomy with that contraption. Transplant tourism is a real thing, if you need a kidney, they'll find some poor Chinese citizen who's broken some menial law or just pull some poor Uyghur, labotomize them, poof there's your kidney match in short order.

Here's a video of what these people are doing https://youtu.be/xUiuVjX2ubQ?feature=shared

It changed my life because after seeing this, for all practical purposes, I try my very best to avoid things from China because I don't want one penny of my money going to support this barbaric inhumanity.

If I see "made in China" I will try my best to find an alternative. For example, I returned to razor mice because they were made in China and got one of the same model instead that was made in Taiwan. It was sort of a luck of the draw, I had to buy two of the same model before I got one from the country that I wanted it from and I returned the one that was made in China. It was about an extra hours worth of annoyance, but it's important to me to keep doing things like that, because of this video. Fuck the Chinese Communist Party and their treating other human beings like animals.

The Selfish Gene, 1976, by Richard Dawkins.

The ones that affected my life the most are probably Chuck Palahniuk's books. I read them as a teenager.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

GEB by Douglas Hofstadter

Guitar Hero exposed me to the idea that there was great music that wasn't on the radio and inspired me to pick up an instrument

Don't laugh but Ariana Grande :)

Hackers as a kid, got me into IT security. Daemon and Darknet by Daniel Suarez, gave me a new perspective on society.

The Dune trilogy when I was in something like 6th or 7th degree. It was just such a great piece of fiction to introduce quite a few philosophical thoughts at the time. I still enjoy the books. (and the old film with Sting in it)

Nineteen eighty four

Movie: Interstellar and Inception. Great mind-changing works, and they really influenced (especially Interstellar) how I perceive the world. Very deep, but also very "on-point". Book: The Cloud ("Die Wolke") is a book about the consequences of a radioactive catastrophe. It is written in German and is a young adults novel, and when I read it it really stuck with me. Game: Morrowind - great game, very open to interpretation. It has a lot of very deep sub-tones, but also doesn't go overboard and stays a game. Big recommendation :) Also Locks Quest as a video game - it is kind of a tower defense game, but also with a character ark. I really like it. Music: The OST from Locks Quest. I always listen to it when I'm stressed, and it is really nostalgic to me.

Books.

The American-Australian science fiction TV series "Farscape." The themes and characters were all so beautiful, the cast was talented, the writing was great, the season/series long plots were all tight with great pay offs. The story is kind of "Lost in Space" if it was set in a galaxy built out of the cantina scene from "Star Wars: A New Hope." The Jim Henson Workshop built all the creatures for it and the CG effects actually hold up pretty well.

One character, a priestess named Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan (played by Virginia Hey), was the emotional heart of many an episode. One episode in particular, she's literally debating a god who has come to collect the soul of another character. She chides the deity saying something to the effect of "as a priestess I have long ago come to terms with different peoples, different beliefs. But all must recognize that life values life." As a teenager, that really stuck with me. Really shaped how I see the world.

(not an ad, but the whole series is on YouTube, "free with ads" if anyone wants to check it out.)

Max Payne 2 had a huge influence on my interest in narratives in general and also ingrained noir into my skull permanently.

Terminator 2 made me want to get into movies and cameras. Along with The Thing

Dead Labor: Toward a Political Economy of Premature death does an excellent job at breaking down how capitalism literally profits off of your death.

Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter

Its quite the yarn: hard to believe it was hidden inside my string

Books: Plato's Republic (mostly interesting for a deep dive in the Socratic method, but also interesting to see where some modern ethics and philosophy is derived from in western traditions)

Go ask Alice (first real experience with experiencing what it's like to be truly a victim of abuse and addiction)

Flatland (great book about challenging fundamental assumptions!)

Think like a Freak (Really got me wanting to better analyse and thing about the world around me)

Harry Potter and the methods of rationality (great fanfic overall, but what really stuck with me was challenging my own conclusions after new evidence comes in, I really had to take a break and just think about that for a bit while reading this one)

Movies: The Trotsky (sleep on film that really explored being weird and asking the why not give people more control over their lives)

Game: Morrowind (First game that let me just ruin the plot and keep going, as a kid it probably one the most formative moments of really feeling like I had autonomy)

Edit: Spelled the movie wrong!

Bridgerton introduced me to the world of romance novels. What a crazy rabbit hole!