Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea

wilwheaton.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 367 posts

Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea

#291

Post by pclmulqdq »

sircastor wrote: post #19

Having read a number of his essays and books, I had no idea he felt this way. We get such limited windows into people’s lives and build whatever narrative around it. I’m impressed by the courage to share something like this. It’s a lot to express and undoubtedly he’s going to get a lot of flak for it. I hope he’s healing though.

I have also read a lot of his work and followed him over the past few years. From a more cynical point of view, I doubt he actually felt anywhere near this depth of regret and resentment until his career imploded. That seems to happen with many child stars.

Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea

#292

Post by JasonFruit »

foobarbecue wrote: post #266

I loved watching TNG as a kid, but Wesley's scenes always made me cringe. Maybe this is why.

I think for me, it was because he was about my age, and acting in the smarmy teacher's-pet way that I knew I tended to put on myself. Add on top that the writing was like the Mary-Sue fantasy of a "gifted student" in a small pond, and I had plenty of reasons to cringe at myself reflected in Wesley Crusher.

Wil Wheaton, on the other hand, sounds like a pretty decent guy.

Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea

#293

Post by Der_Einzige »

CamelCaseName wrote: post #269
Kaze404 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably doesn't help either that her biggest role was a Dan Schneider show of all people.

I'm not familiar, so I searched him up. Is this what you're referring to? > Then, in March 2018, Schneider's time at Nickelodeon suddenly ended amid allegations of verbal abuse and questionable treatment of the young stars who appeared on his shows Source: https://www.looper.com/618303/the-dan-schneider-controversy-...

Didn't one of the guys from drake and josh also end up getting in trouble for CP or related?

Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea

#294

Post by soylentcola »

irjustin wrote: post #8

Wow Will was such a part of my childhood watching Star Trek. Obviously, he didn't appear often but he was memorable simply because there were so few people as young as him on the show. Sad to hear this all around. This also brought back memories of me being required to play piano growing up. I hated piano, performing (recitals), playing in general. I was terrrribbleee (still am) and was put up in lessons for 12 years…

> Wow Will was such a part of my childhood watching Star Trek. Obviously, he didn't appear often but he was memorable simply because there were so few people as young as him on the show.

Yeah, he's 5 years older than me, but I remember watching that show and daydreaming about how cool it would be to live on the Enterprise and how I would be best friends with Wesley Crusher.

I know adults loved to rag on the character and (re-watching it as an adult) I can see where some of the criticism of how he was written comes from. But there were so many parts of that show that have not aged well, and the "token genius kid" is still one of the least annoying to me.

Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea

#295

Post by Der_Einzige »

bil7 wrote: post #171
Gordonjcp wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, maybe watch something original and not totally derived from something else, like the Marvel movies, or Sonic the Hedgehog 2, or Fantastic Beasts...

pretty hard when about 80% of new films these days are a sequel, remake, or tie into an existing universe[1]. Yes, just watch old films you say, but they're not on the front page of netflix and disney+, where the average person goes for entertainment recommendations. [1] https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/pop-culture-has-b...

Aren't there only like 7 actual stories?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots

Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea

#296

Post by pbhjpbhj »

pjc50 wrote: post #175
mavhc wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Stranger Things isn't good, it's just a mashup of 80s films that are at least twice as old as the actors, no original ideas at all. The problem is more celebrity rather than the filming process. Make it illegal to report any "news", ie gossip, about anyone under 18 for a start.

The media coverage of child stars is a large part of the harm, and social media makes this worse.

Which media?

Is there a sex divide, country divide, some other large scale segmentation ... I can't recall ever seeing anything about child stars when they are/were children but I consume mass-media every day.

Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea

#297

Post by noasaservice »

fristechill wrote: post #284
gwd wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As I have young children of my own today, I'm faced with these questions. What is a healthy amount of pushing vs too much? I don't need my kid to be the best at anything - I just don't want them to be lost/dead-in-the-water or unable to fend for themselves. If you read other things written by Wil Wheaton, you'll find (according to his description) that his parents had a very perverse relationship with each other, a…

Parents, love your children, as much as you can. Children, honour your parents, as much as you can. The alternative is resentment, a condition toxic enough to keep anyone in hell.

No post body was provided.

Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea

#298

Post by prirun »

anonymous_sorry wrote: post #147
nlnn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a tough one. If you discover a passion for something as an adult, you'll often wish your parents had pushed you into it as a kid. I feel this way about music, zero education as a kid, started late as an adult, but feel I'll never catch up. Though there's no way of knowing whether I'd have felt the same as a kid, or pushed back against it at the time.

I had piano and clarinet lessons as a kid, and kept them up into my teens. I rarely practiced except when I was forced to, and I wasn't very good at practising when I did. I don't consider this abuse by the way, I was "forced" to go to school lessons too (not that I'm questioning Wil Wheaton's experience, which sounds quite different). Ultimately I found the repetition required in practising extremely boring, and I d…

> When I hear an good musician now, I inevitably wish I'd tried harder and could do what they do.

I listen to good piano performances on YT and wish I was as good. But then I think about how much time I have spent being good with computers and realize that I could not have spent that much time on piano too. They probably spent as much time over their life pecking on a piano as I have pecking on a computer.

There's only so much time in a day!

Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea

#299

Post by lapcat »

Lendal wrote: post #268
jazzythom wrote: post #17

My parents pushed me hard, but sent me to a liberal arts school, and I’m hardwired for engineering. Hilarity ensued. The grinding of gears was a memory I would pay to erase. Deeply resent spending hours every day learning languages for countries I had no interest in visiting and how glaciers formed. What a waste of my finite precious time. If only I could go back I’d run out the gate and get on a train never to be se…

Airing it in public isn't going to work for him. I had similar kinds of problems. Nothing I said or did worked so I just stopped talking about it. My mom would call me and I would politely talk to her about the weather and things like that, but nothing else. Now she's gone. We never could work out our issues. Most normal people accept that there are limits to what we can accomplish in our lives. Rich powerful people…

> Rich powerful people don't accept that truth, and keep trying to get what they want. But you can't always get what you want. So that's gonna be a hard lesson for Wil I think.

In the very first paragraph of the article, Wil explained how he predicted, correctly, what the reaction would be from his parents. He's not in denial, not even close.

Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea

#300

Post by jmull »

heyflyguy wrote: post #257

Tough read. Part of getting older seems like letting go of these bothersome memories and loving someone in spite of it. I hurt for this family that may never reconcile. The mom wants to believe she did right and won't apologize. Wil wants her to admit what really happened, which she may never do. She'll die someday and this may still be unresolved, which is the real tragedy. Being the bigger person isn't always easy,…

I disagree that "letting go and learning to love" is necessarily to be strived for. There are different ways to heal (as best you can).

(I let it all go and have no bitterness. My brother didn't and won't as far as I can tell. I don't see any reason my way is better. It's just what worked for me. Some broken things don't have a good fix, and you just move forward in whatever way you can.)

Post reply on HN