So I'm not sure how many people here are familiar with TED Talks, but they're referenced to quite a bit here in the business world, and I only recently have begun to watch them fairly regularly. They are essentially conferences where speakers will have various topics ranging from successful business stories, to inspirational life stories - all of which can be used as life lessons for your own personal growth.

That brings me to this particular topic that I saw today. I'd rather not go into too much detail, because I think it's worth everyone seeing this and reacting to it with your own impression. But in short, the woman speaking is named Stella Young, and she is a disabled person who is confined to a wheelchair similarly to our own JediKirby. (Note: I am not trying to draw this comparison to be offensive by any means - I actually specifically posted this topic with Kirby in mind because I would like to see his reaction to the video as well).

Stella speaks about how often disabled people are seen as heroes or inspirational to those without disabilities, and she looks to change people's perceptions by no longer looking at disabled people as "exceptional" for simply doing normal things that any non-disabled person could do (without anyone giving a damn).

I posted the video below - it's only 9 minutes long, and definitely worth watching. I think she makes some great points and it's a topic that most people have been affected by at least once in their life.

Sorry, don't know how to play this video :(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K9Gg164Bsw

Thoughts?

Thanks for posting, man. It's so inspirational how she had the courage to speak out about this despite her disability.

:'-)

This is touching. I remembered how I never looked up to JediKirby.

Only down

Sorry, my brain immediately switched off when I saw TED Talk.

You're not the only one. TED is a cancer.

people suffering from TED talks aren't inspirational

You should be inspired by my story that has absolutely no relevance to what you are going through.

Plot twist: Life is really hard, and some people have had it harder than you. Apparently that means you should have some kind of forced perspective moment of clarity and stop acknowledging that life really blows sometimes. AT LEAST YOU CAN WALK, YOU *******! LOOK HOW EASY YOU HAVE IT WHEN I MAKE IT SEEM LIKE MY EXTREMELY UNIQUE CIRCUMSTANCE IS A BASELINE FOR JUDGMENT OF HOW HARD LIFE IS! I ROSE FROM NOTHING TO BECOME A PERSON WHO GETS PAID MONEY TO MAKE PEOPLE FEEL GUILTY ABOUT THEIR COMPLETELY JUSTIFIABLE UNHAPPINESS! NOW GO GET 'EM, TIGER!

"I'm not your inspiration", said to a crowd of people who paid $6000 per person to hear her speak.

TED: Because spending money to hear about how the world could be made a better place is, like, just as good as making the world a better place, man.

I'll occasionally watch an interesting presentation by an expert in their respective field (example with a Finnish speaker, of course), on youtube without paying anything for it. TED's a pretty decent deal for me.

Hey, you guys: Let's INSPIRE SOME PEOPLE! So strange that these things are so popular in a country that has the second highest rate of depression in the world.

I forgot how cynical Massassi can be.


That's a pretty good attitude.


Statements like this without any explanation deserve nothing more than


Did you even watch the video? She addresses this exact point in her speech. She realizes that on the surface it seems contradictory, but she's not trying to inspire everyone because she's a disabled person that's speaking - she's trying to be informative and disprove a misconception. If people find that inspiring, good for them, and it's probably for the better.


I'm not defending the fact that these talks are insanely overpriced for anyone that actually wants to go and see them. They are. Also, not all of them are good, some of them fall flat and are quite dull. However, with the power of the internets we have the ability to watch the vast majority of these talks for free, so what's it to you?


Isn't that the idea?

Sure, if you just ignore the fact that depression is a medical condition.

Rarely is the question asked:

Having watched enough TED talks to know exactly of what she speaks, this talk was certainly a worthwhile call-out on that sort of bull****.

I'm reminded of my favorite TED talk of all time.
Sorry, don't know how to play this video :(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo5cKRmJaf0

Nobody is saying that depression isn't a medical condition. I'm simply arguing against your original statement about the irony of a country interested in inspirational things while having a high number of people with reported depression. Is it not possible that people with depression seek out things that are inspiring to help get them out of a depressive state?

I admit that I'm speaking with ignorance here as I do not have depression and would never claim to know how someone with depression feels, but nevertheless the concept of looking for something uplifting when one is feeling down seems to be a fairly obvious correlation. Now, whether someone views this kind of speech as "uplifting" or "inspirational" is purely a matter of opinion.

They post one a day, filtered by the curator's personal politics (N.B. bay area media and technology entrepreneur). It's not the talks you get to see, it's the talks you don't get to; for example, talks which deeply criticize capitalism, or the way modern science is conducted.

"What's it to me" is that TED is the ultimate bay area tech elite conceit, the ultimate among an army of idiot startups all trying to convince people that they're changing the world, when it's really just another social network.

tho tbf to the silicon valley purportedly-tech-but-actually-finance billionaire, considering how much the purportedly-finance-but-actually-rentier billionaires spend on news stories convincing the increasingly-educated public that 'capitalism' means the same thing as 'free market', it is probably in his best interest not to publicly share the videos criticizing them.

It wasn't my intention to spark a debate on whether or not TED talks themselves are justifiable, intellectual, or inspiring as a whole. I really wanted to focus specifically on this woman's 9 minute speech, which I found to be interesting and ironically inspirational. I can't control how a forum chooses to react to a particular topic because that is in itself, the true nature of a forum in the first place. However, I am curious to know how anyone felt about Stella's points in relation to your own personal experiences.

For what it's worth, I do think you have reasonable points, Jon. I would say, however, that at this point we've diverted from the original idea of this thread.

Thankfully, I didn't find this video all that inspirational. Unfortunately, given the venue, I had high expectations, and thus felt let down.

I was reminded about another TED talk I watched. Some random psychology grad student goes up on stage to talk about how she went to grad school because her life lacked direction. The sum of her talk was that it still lacked direction after several years of grad school. Yawn.

(Stella Young is still right, though.)

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Regarding the actual talk: Yup.

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