fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5695 ]

[ SECRET POST #5695 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5695 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 26 secrets from Secret Submission Post #815.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
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I'm glad it gives you an incentive to clear out every now and again.
I have trouble with the show because a week of 'therapy' and de-junkers coming in isn't going to cure these people, and a huge majority of them are left with a damaged, still-filthy house (half a day with wipes and scrubby pads did not make those houses clean), and a person who lived in literal heaps of their own feces, or rat and mouse droppings, or the corpses of dead pets and just...didn't care. It's so stop-gap and temporary and kind of pitiful.

Edited 2022-08-09 23:08 (UTC)

It's not that the hoarders didn't care, it's that their mental health issues were too great to be able to clean up those problems. So I completely agree with you about the show.

Oh, i know they didn't 'care', per se. I meant - they didn't seem to notice the reek of dead pets and urine, and looked baffled when others did. I don't think the show long-term helped the really sick individuals at all; I hope I'm wrong.

They do set the people up with long-term services, including ongoing therapy, after the filming ends. (Up to the individuals to decide which ones they take advantage of. Some refuse, some go for it.)

I don't know enough to say how well that works, but it's more substantial than "show up long enough to film a few days of drama, disappear completely afterward."

They do, but a lot don't seem to use the after-care services, and a few 'what ever happened' episodes showed people had gone right back to hording as bad as before. It just seems pretty optimistic and a little overly-ambitious to think that the really bad, long-term people are going to change much at all.

but what would satisfy you then? like the way you talk it sounds like you think if the majority just continues why bother trying and that seems like a pretty cruel outlook to me

Way to pole-vault to a really ridiculous conclusion, Anon.
What would 'satisfy me' is that mental health care in the US be fucking updated and expanded and made available to everyone, everywhere, so that shows like that aren't someone's last-ditch effort to save their home, or their ailing parent, or their dignity.

Jeez Louise.

I meant in the context of the show, obviously. Your first complaint about the show as that a week of fixes isn't going to help anyone and then when someone pointed out they also offer long-term care you pivoted to saying that well, but not many use the long-term service and now you deflect by throwing your hands up and going actually the only thing that would help is if we get good healthcare in the US.

So what is your actual problem with the show, what could they do differently?

Oh for fuck's sake.
My actual problem is it's not a long-term solution for a lot of people. It's a stop-gap, and the 'whatever happened' episodes show that many people either don't follow through with aftercare, or they do and then they fall back, anyway, because the aftercare is finite. I'm not 'pivoting' - I'm pointing out actual, factual issues.

The show, in my opinion, holds out false hope at the expense of people who are, some of them, *very* mentally disturbed, and doesn't really do much other than offer a band-aid.

A tv show is not a fix for this kind of thing, and it seems like yet another reason for people to ignore real mental healthcare issues. I'm glad if some people can watch and get a boost, make progress in their own spaces and feel like if that person can do it, so can they. That's great! But the show itself is not a solution, and however well-meaning all the people involved, sometimes I think it might make things worse.

The show can't do anything differently - it's a cash machine churning out 'entertainment' for the masses, and is as much part of the problem as it may be any sort of help.

Sorry if this is your go-to whatever show, if it's helped you immensely, or if it's just something you've casually watched: I find it problematical and a bit exploitative.

I find this comment pretty good and I'd like to engage with it, but I for the life of me can't figure out why you're so deeply defensive and over-the-top with all that "for fuck's sake" "jeez louise" kind of acting.
So I guess, sorry that my comments are giving you the vapors when you evidently have some perfectly good points to make. Since that's the tone we're using here.

'The vapors'? I guess I'm 'deeply defensive' because for some reason you (i guess?) want to keep poking and poking and poking at me about why I have issues with this show, as if I am shouting and screaming in comments about it being the worst thing possible and anyone enjoying it is a horrible, terrible person.

I guess you got a reasonable reply and now can't poke me again, but whatever makes you feel good. The 'tone' is entirely in response to the tone I'm getting.

da
Fair enough.

(no subject)

tabaqui - 2022-08-11 00:19 (UTC) - Expand

DA. They are not 'deflecting' for goodness' sake, they are making a perfectly valid, and quite comprehensible point and you seem oddly invested in this show. Maybe you like gawping at mentally ill people a little too much?

Damn that would be such a zinger if I wasn't a mentally ill person :(

Yeah, I feel the same way. I find it too disturbing and too sad to watch, because whatever sense of healing or betterment the show contrives to sell the viewer is almost certainly 98% bullshit. This person's reality hasn't changed; they're still out there living with the same horrifying disorder, and probably living in conditions that quickly returned to what they previously were.

Also, from what little I recall, the show can be quite cruel to the people it pretends to be helping. Like, I'm not saying I would be any good at dealing with someone in that mental state. I'm deeply revolted by severe hording and I probably couldn't keep my feelings from coming out towards the person; I would not be a good hoarder therapist. But if you're going to build an entire show around the premise of "helping people who suffer from compulsive hoarding," then for fuck's sake, don't come at them with this idiotically patronizing, insensitive, "just be rational" approach.

I don't remember any of the people being actively cruel (I haven't seen every ep), but I do remember thinking that one day of the Got Junk guy trying to change a life-long hoarder's behavior is kind of....overly ambitious and pretty much doomed to failure.

I think the worst eps are the ones where animals are hoarded (and mistreated) - I can't watch those at all, especially when they fail to remove every single animal. It's too fucking evil.

The one or two episodes I caught bits of, quite a few years ago, seemed to involve scolding and talking down to the hoarder and, in some cases, yelling at them and letting them know their stuff was getting tossed one way or another. Which I can totally understand if it were just a family member speaking to their hoarder loved one in private. It's not a very sensitive approach but people are at their wits' end sometimes. But if you're going to film it and treat it like it's therapeutic somehow, I really hate that.

Maybe they've gotten a lot less shitty and insensitive in the last few years. It wouldn't surprise me at all.

Oh! Actually I (somewhat tepidly) apologize to Hoarders, because now that I really think back, I think the show I'm remembering was actually a precursor to Hoarders that took on people with various types of unfortunate and disordered behaviors. So yeah, nvm, Hoarders is probably not the horrible show I'm thinking of.

Ha, yeah, you must be. The Hoarders people can be stern, but they never yell, or threaten, or stuff like that. Sometimes I think they give in too easily to stuff, but they never just take stuff and toss it, and if something is thrown away by mistake, they shut everything down, go find it, apologize, etc.

Some of the family members, though, understandably, can get pretty frustrated and short-tempered.

I remember a TikToker that cleans houses for free (not only Aurikatariina) and many people ask her if she has found the people returning to make the houses dirty and if is frustrating to see all the work done just ruined like that. Both that Tiktoker and Auri had said that they do understand if the house owner do fall again in that habit because is not something they can "fix" in one-two weeks but many months or years with therapy, but they have mentioned other people felt that seeing their house clean have helped them to seek therapy and keep the house clean to keep the motivation.

Although I remember a woman that hoarded bunnies and each time someone told her to give them away because some of them were sick, she got so offensive and narcissist with "well, do it yourself, I don't care!" and leaved the place. I swear that's the one ep I couldn't watch again.

Yeah, that's the worst; when their illness has robbed them of their ability to see that their animals that they 'love' are suffering.

I've watched Auri a couple times - I love how non-judgemental she is. I also love the way those apartments are made, with the bathrooms and sometimes kitchens all tile and stainless steel and you can just wash and rinse everything down a drain in the floor. Awesome!

I love Aurikatariina! (even her use of "house" is a bit misleading, those are clearly cheap tiny rental flats in apartment blocks)

Though I wonder how she says her dream is to clean all around the world and... Not everywhere has bathroom floor drains and electric stoves that are ubiquitous in Finland, how will she manage? AND the rats and cockroaches people from warmer regions always comment about... But she's a pro so we'll see.

Yeah, definitely a different experience if she goes cleaning a house in South Africa or Florida or even the UK. Or a random semi-rural house in my state, with infestations of roaches and a nest of raccoons in the ceiling.....

But good luck to her!

I just imagined her in a semi-rural house with roaches and trash and all and be soooooooo happy lol

Heeeee! I do think our lack of central drainage in a bathroom or kitchen floor would be a bit of a problem to get used to at first. And woe! to her when she encounters her first bathroom with carpet on the floor *gag*.

Probably she would find a way to clean it, after all even if the houses are different from Finland, she still gives tips from certain kind of dirt that have helped. I remember when someone gave a tip to remove the odor from your wash machine with a bottle of clear vinegar and it worked so amazing!

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