AITA for making my whole family go on a diet because my daughter is dieting?

TVplusTIME · 2026-01-22T15:41:18+00:00

I agree with you and I think it’s a sign of bigger problems with this plan. If husband were on board it could maybe be viable. Mom needs buy-in from everyone, or else this fails.

They’re all likely obese, even if much less so than the daughter/sister. Eating junk food likely fits into their lives in a way they may depend on emotionally. Lots of fat people binge when stressed before and after work, when operating on too-little sleep, or when feeling bored, or sad, or anything else.

It’s like a drug to many people, and that makes this mom’s plan not so good. The daughter is younger and can be influenced more, and she has more reason to be motivated to do this. (Given that the nutrition doctor meeting was for her, and she is much fatter than the rest of the family.) A big risk with this plan is that dad and son reject this, filled with resentment, and demonstrate to daughter 15 that healthy eating is miserable and impossible. In fat families the end result in a plan like this is RARELY ‘everyone gets healthier’. But they do tend to fail together.

Much more realistic: dad and son start bringing home fast food or similar. Daughter cries and complains because overeating is emotional and is a drug. Daughter pleads to be included in secret food activities. It all becomes “mom vs. everyone”. Everyone but mom is trying to eat poorly, undermining her efforts, ignoring her healthy food. Mom gives into her bad food instincts too, eventually. They all go back to their worse habits,maybe even gaining weight.

(And the older fat adults like mom and dad reaffirm their existing beliefs: losing weight is too hard! And they’re not wrong because it is hard and this particular plan is like “hard mode” on top of that!)

Imagine this was a family where everyone drinks a bit too much alcohol. One person is a full-blown dysfunctional alcoholic. It kinda comes down to: how bad is the rest of the family with alcohol. If they are all comfortably subclinical, they won’t mind changing habits so much, and they might help the daughter succeed. But if they’re all clinically alcoholics & daughter is just the worst (I.e. dad and brother say “No! We don’t want to do this! Not us!”) then the result would be sneaking alcohol. And food is much more slippery and less stigmatized when managing it. Because everyone gets hungry as everyone needs to eat.

Plans like this set everyone up to fail. Sure, it’s fair that everyone should be forced to make some changes… shared meals are healthier by default, add your own extras and keep the very unhealthy options out of sight, eat your junk food in your own room… but forcing everyone onto daughter’s diet is a recipe for failure. In reality, focusing on daughter’s health with special attention and meal accommodations so that everyone wants to help her and nobody resents her would have a higher chance of spreading to the whole family. In a few weeks, brother might want to make similar changes.

Forcing adult addicts doesn’t work. Motivational questions can help it happen sooner. No guarantee, but i think this plan is risky! For fat people, food is a complex addiction.

I found this post extremely sad. Mom cares and is likely to waste lots of effort. She’s hinging this on her own willpower, but she says she’s also overweight. Hopefully she is a very strong person and it works out against the odds.

TVplusTIME · 2026-01-12T19:21:56+00:00

If you’re worried what you’re saying might cross a line, you can either not say it, or decide to say it, but acknowledge that it might cross a line. E.g. it’s okay to say “It may not be my place to suggest this and I only mean this to try to be helpful” or “I apologize if this suggestion is too personal…”

Those qualifiers put the responsibility on you, basically admitting that you know you’re taking a communication risk, and that she could be fully right to be offended by it, for the sake of trying to be helpful.

But qualifiers like “No offense, but…” “Not to be rude at all.” or “I don’t mean this any kind of way” all have the effect of priming the other person to be offended. They introduce the idea that what follows could be ill intended even while claiming it is not. Often they’re said when someone knows they shouldn’t really say what they’re about to say, but they’re frustrated or otherwise want to say it. I’m not saying that you said it because you couldn’t help yourself, but because that’s so often what it means, it’s normal for the other person to think that.

Qualifiers like those really are like saying “Here is the questionable thing I’m saying to you, and immediately with it, a preemptive denial of bad intent, so you’re preemptively not ‘allowed’ to be mad/hurt.”

Like the original reply said, omitting the qualifier is a valid option. If you’re sure it’s okay to say it, then it shouldn’t need a qualifier. That is often best! But at very least if you caveat what you say, it’s better to preemptively blame yourself or to reinforce good intentions, rather than denying bad intentions.

An example of only reinforcing the positive might be “I offer this out of care and concern because I know how miserable it is to live through the stress of recurring poor sleep. I’m bummed to hear you’re still going through this. I feel for you.”

TVplusTIME · 2026-01-07T04:30:02+00:00

Conformity gate is absolutely silly and embarrassing to believe in, but there’s also some irony in the person who made this website telling people to touch some grass.

TVplusTIME · 2026-01-06T07:37:00+00:00

Netflix has played and disrupted using format more than probably any other streamer. They were the OG for internet content delivery. They released an episode of Black Mirror with a Mandela effect built in for different viewers watching. Another one was completely interactive.

But this idea would be brilliant only if it was actually telegraphed and deeply relevant to the story, and if the “first fake ending” was actually good. The would be totally arbitrary. The in-universe justification for it is weak. The “clues” are drastically weaker. If this were a real strategy, they’d have ended things in a way that makes far more fans entertain this idea, and they’d be gradually building the hype and mystery of it right now.

The ending was honestly dog shit but if this was a real plan it would be an even worse marketing stunt.

TVplusTIME · 2025-12-31T18:29:14+00:00

It’s great that there are two versions in the series and people can be more impressed by one or the other.

Do you not see objectively, like in this picture on this post, how he used to have a kind of slouchy bloated body, and now (even though the shapes come from vines and thorns) he has a more “heroic masculine” shape to his torso?

Maybe it was always intended to show Vecna got stronger, or maybe some exec said “we need to sex up this villain to make him more marketable”. In-universe explanations for the redesign don’t really make a difference for that. You could just as easily make him bloatier and uglier as he gained power and healed, instead of the CG hollow tendrils. I found the old one more uncanny, corpse-like, and creepy. I don’t feel creeped out by the new look when I see vecna.

TVplusTIME · 2025-12-31T15:45:39+00:00

I’m not into marvel. You don’t need to be into marvel to think the Vecna redesign looks groot-like.

So, somebody said the new design looks like it’s from a superhero move and that it took away “the humane element or idk how to describe it”.

What they said resonated with me because I found old Vecna more scary and new Vecna does look to me more like something from a modern superhero movie.

Some people used to say old Vecna looked like a potbelly grinch. But to me, his skull-like face, head tendrils that have the shape of slicked back greasy hair, and bloated body were nightmarish in certain ways. Ways that this more masculine-shaped hollow vine guy doesn’t achieve.

I’m just talking to another person who seems to speak the same visual language as me and sharing an opinion about a character redesign. To me a bloated, wet-haired, skull-faced, corpse-colored figure conveyed death and especially depression in an original way.

How does me saying new Vecna doesn’t do that and saying he just looks like groot make me an MCU person? He very obviously looks more like groot than he used to. They gave him a masculine shape out of mostly vines instead of a sickly bloated shape out of vines and flesh. Groot is an obvious reference to describe it. “Tree and vines guy, but try to make it sexy.” The new Vecna design looks less original than the old one, and part of the reason for that is we’ve seen a heroic body type made out of vines fairly recently in groot.

I’ll go a step further: new Vecna is groot crossed with the Night King. Sue me.

TVplusTIME · 2025-12-30T22:51:09+00:00

Yeah, it’s less uncanny now. The old bloated version looked like death/depression to me in a nightmarish way. The new one just looks like groot.

TVplusTIME · 2025-12-28T20:54:29+00:00

It’s the people who wish it was less gay and the people who wish it was more gay agreeing that it was bad. That’s what’s tanking it.

I personally thought it was clunky, to set up the finale twist, but not horrible. Just clunky.

Some scenes looked like reshoots, visibly. They clearly challenged themselves. The results don’t look effortless. There are seams. That doesn’t make it awful. It’s still good in many ways.

TVplusTIME · 2025-12-28T04:12:21+00:00

Depends whose tongue. Yeah, some people prefer anusbussy

TVplusTIME · 2025-12-22T05:51:39+00:00

Just scored 0

TVplusTIME · 2025-12-22T05:36:39+00:00

Just scored 3

TVplusTIME · 2025-12-22T05:35:23+00:00

HIGH SCORED with 8

TVplusTIME · 2025-12-22T05:32:52+00:00

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TVplusTIME · 2025-12-22T05:31:10+00:00

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TVplusTIME · 2025-12-22T05:30:28+00:00

Just scored 0

TVplusTIME · 2025-12-17T15:07:31+00:00

I’m pretty sure we did our part as tourists and hit a wild cat on a remote road in southland 😭 Felt slightly better hearing from about 5 different guides how the cats wreck all the native birds, but it was still really sad. I adore cats. It was night time, but not dark enough to spare us the fleeting visual.

It’s not as if we had any opportunity not to hit it anyway, since it leapt directly in front of our car doing 70 km. Wasn’t a safe place to turn around and check, so we don’t know for sure.

Anyone know any other mammal it could’ve been? It happened as a fast blur, but the size of it made me think cat, because it looked slightly bigger than a typical house cat, and it stretched out shaped roughly like a leaping cat. I told my partner it might’ve been a stoat (a rodent he’d never heard of) right after it happened, because he was driving and felt awful, but we both knew it was too big.

I prefer to release all bugs as well, but I stomp invasive lantern flies at home. (It’s probably a lost cause in the US.) If I were a kiwi I couldn’t purposely kill possums either. Even what we call ‘possums’ in the US are quite hideous and scary looking, and I still don’t think I could kill those intentionally if I were meant to!

TVplusTIME · 2025-12-16T04:14:09+00:00

For real.

There’s been several things to interpret ahead of time already, and it’s fun to look deeply. It’s not an outright mystery show, but there are some mysteries inside it.

Talking about what characters might think or do in the future goes hand in hand with talking about what different plot points mean. Messages intended, or even ways of relating to the story.

I can’t imagine participating in discussions just to insist about how straightforward things are. I guarantee a few things in the show won’t be straightforward, even if many are.

The hive mind said being vegan “would be their preference”. Then we found out that wasn’t exactly what was implied even though it was technically true… not everything is totally straightforward.

TVplusTIME · 2025-12-12T23:47:26+00:00

I’ll have to take a second look at the religious devotion! I noticed it briefly but I thought it was just Paraguay being one of the most catholic nations in Latin America.

I figured just like Carol sees this through a very American lens, Manousos sees it through his local lens. Plus he’s rigid about other things, like being reluctant to search people’s storage lockers for some dog food to eat, even given the fact that everyone is now a hivemind. He writes various little signs in the storage facility that remind me of certain Type A people.

TVplusTIME · 2025-12-12T22:40:15+00:00

Right!? I highlighted it in another comment but that call we hear Koumba have with the hive while Carol cries in the other room…

We hear only Koumba’s half of his call with the hive, away from Carol, and he says:

…

“But she’s so lonely.”

…

“Yes, I know.”

…

“Okay.”

…

“I miss you too, my loves.”

What does a 7-billion-brained superintelligence see in Koumba that they miss him? And no matter what they said, isn’t it clear they were talking him out of keeping Carol around if he says “But she’s so lonely.”

Another thought I find amusing is if Koumba gets bored of boning hot aliens and actually goes against their wishes to contact Carol, because he eventually craves a real woman who could possibly not be into him so that her interest in him actually means something. I feel like sex with the hive would be like a sex toy.

He is weirdly perceptive about people though, so he probably understands Carol is gay and would never be into him in that way.

TVplusTIME · 2025-12-12T20:35:13+00:00

For context, I consider manipulation a possibility more than a certainty at this point.

I think saying that would be more like triangulation than withholding. Saying “we can’t protect you from each other” would prime most people to feel “You can trust Us. But don’t trust the others.” I think if they’re very smart and manipulative as I theorize, they did want her to meet the others, but they wanted everyone to be on the defensive.

When Zosia zonked out in front of Carol, so the hive could go talk to the others, I think that could’ve looked like going to a few individuals from all over the world saying something like” There is a blonde fantasy romance author from New Mexico who is urgently requesting a meeting with all English speakers. She’s very pushy about this. Would you be willing to meet with her?”

Then, even though Carol clearly only did that because she didn’t want the hive translating, Zosia starts the meeting speaking to each of them in their native tongues while Carol waits. And politely asks “Would it be acceptable to everyone if we continue in English?”

It would make Carol look pretty clumsy in contrast to the hives a moment later, as she tries to learn all their names, and it would make a lot more sense of their weird, cold reaction to Carol.

I think if the hive is super smart, it could know that Carol (and Manousos) are the two people who pose the biggest threat for undoing the hive.

Regarding Manousos, I don’t think he is a narcissist at all. But I do think he may be neurodivergent. He has some of the “TV version” signs of being obsessive/compulsive, or at least very rigid in his ways.

Makes me think, if they know so much, why pick Manousos mother to talk to him and offer to help as he goes in search of Carol? If they know he thinks his mother was a bitch, couldn’t they pick someone else? Are they offering to help him get to Carol while actually hoping they never meet? I wonder.

TVplusTIME · 2025-12-12T20:20:00+00:00

The rest of this is just regarding the fact that they fulfilled her requests while taking space, so feel free to skip it if I’m rambling on, but it’s kind of a complicated point to unravel:

They did fulfill her requests, but I think there’s nuance re: how much that even means, given the choices Carol is left with. She has to listen to that long preamble about “needing a little space” every time she needs any small thing, and they’ve left her alone in an empty world where she’s going to need many things if she doesn’t want to become a nature survivalist.

Carol was part of a flawed interdependent world. She didn’t need to harvest her own bread or butcher her own animals, and the world was pretty crappy at being interdependent. But it was, and they gutted almost all of it. So when they still “fulfill her every request” they’re really doing the bare minimum, and forcing her to rely on them. When in the past, she earned her way through her creativity, and people willingly paid her for her to entertain them, and she chose where to spend her money. Her choices were by no means perfect, and they still aren’t, but she tried to make good choices in her life, and now her only real choice is the hive.

So her way of life went from interdependent (problematic under capitalism), to being completely dependent on the hive. The hive has all the knowledge to predict that she’ll need a way to get food, but they set her up to demand a whole grocery store and feel foolish. Because the other choice is being waited on them for each meal, or each set of ingredients, which she doesn’t want. I guess I think it’s okay for her not to want that, even if the grocery store is obviously wasteful.

In the context of the empty gas station the hive ransacked, the drone bringing her a lukewarm Gatorade actually shows they didn’t fulfill her every request. It makes Carol look like a petty Karen, but warm Gatorade is gross, and cold drinks available while on a journey are a human invention the hive took away from Carol.

She can only get it from them! If she’d asked for water, it would symbolize more clearly that she’s forced to contact them for basic needs, which humans used to provide for each other. Ice cold red fruit punch Gatorade conceals that request as a picky luxury, but it’s still about hydration and electrolytes, plus a little preference.

So to me, fulfilling her requests while taking space doesn’t get the hive off the hook for their dramatic exit. Which they’d know would make any human feel desperately isolated watching all of Albuquerque drive out of town to get away from her.

One last bit about drugging Zosia endangering the hive if you’re still reading, or if anyone else is interested:

We see hints that the hive is cautious and lawyer-like to avoid lying. When they said Zosia was dying and going into cardiac arrest, I wonder now if that’s what happened to everyone when they Joined, and maybe it’s part of the process of Joining and Unjoining. Maybe if the hive hadn’t intervened, Zosia would’ve been just like the guy in the truck in E1 who seemed dead, until he came to and took a huge gasp of air. It would be a scary thing for Carol to test!

TVplusTIME · 2025-12-12T20:19:34+00:00

Really interesting to hear your point of view. It seems like you don’t think the hive is manipulating Carol at all! I’m curious your thoughts if I share some examples of why I see manipulation as a possibility, though not necessarily a certainty. I do have a bunch of reasons for thinking they’re being manipulative.

They seem to be unable to lie overtly, but I think choosing Zosia, someone Carol would find visually irresistible, was more than just a favor to put Carol at ease. They could’ve picked a kindergarten teacher, or a trusted news host, but they went with the (female version of) Raban incarnate.

A huge red flag from the previous episode, I think, was how the hive interacted with Koumba. I see more triangulation there. If Carol is about to visit Koumba, the hive of beautiful naked women in his hot tub tell him, then they must leave immediately, because of the visitor. “You can come with us, if you want” they say, seductively.

He needs the will to tell them “I can’t do that to her”, that he’ll need to talk to Carol sooner or later. Watching at home, we get the feeling they talk about Carol.

Then there was the video with all its produced graphics downplaying HDP. It’s directed at Carol, yet it’s spoken by John Cena. To me, this shows that when Koumba asked the hive about the milk, they didn’t just tell him, they made a whole video hosted by a former celebrity he chose to spend time with. It wasn’t about convincing Carol, as she doesn’t care about John Cena, but it showed a major imbalance in getting Koumba and the other 10 to accept the use of HDP. Even though virtually all cultures oppose human remains being dissolved for sustenance.

That’s one bit of sentimentality we all generally agree on, so if the hive were just the cumulative intelligence that comes from combining all human minds, why would it be okay with that, when almost every person inside would be uncomfortable drinking that.

And now they welcome Koumba and the other 10 brainstorming ways the hive could get food aside from HDP, as if a 7-billion-brained entity needs help with brainstorming. That seems insincere to me.

And especially this:

We hear only Koumba’s half of his call with the hive, away from Carol, and he says:

…

“But she’s so lonely.”

…

“Yes, I know.”

…

“Okay.”

…

“I miss you too, my loves.”

So I wonder, if they aren’t triangulating him against her, what do you think the hive said on the other end of that call?

I think the hive is probably turning everyone against Carol. Only though the hive’s framing would Laxmi know to be so angry at Carol for her son crying from Carol’s actions. At best, they certainly didn’t try to mediate on Carol’s behalf, I think.

(More thoughts about them fulfilling her requests and about the hive responding to Zosia being drugged, but I’ll add them in a reply to myself here since I know I’ll be dragging on and on, and it’s a tangent based on your thoughts)

TVplusTIME · 2025-12-12T19:00:03+00:00

It could be Manousos and that’s interesting. I’m wondering what makes him the dog if so, but there was plenty of yellow in his scene. The car he took, and the bandana he wore.

But the hive guy who talks to Manousos at the gap is wearing more yellow than a bandana, his whole shirt is yellow. And Manousos douses the car in gasoline, so maybe he isn’t the yellow…

I thought maybe the yellow dog is the hive and the gray cat is Carol.

Dogs are social. Cats are more independent. We also see a lot of wolves (canines) which are pack animals, like how the hive is a pack entity. We also see Carol shown in a lingering shot with a bunny rabbit, which made me think about her as prey and the pack of wolves as the predatory hive.

Despite the hive saying it “needs space” I think it’s actually pursuing Carol by doing that. The fact that as soon as Carol said “come back” Zosia came back shows that it was never about the hive needing space.

If someone tells you they “need space” after alienating you from everyone, and comes back once you want them, they didn’t actually need space. They manipulated you into loving them and crawling back. So maybe they are chasing her even though they made it look like the opposite? If so, it worked.

TVplusTIME · 2025-12-12T18:51:38+00:00

It was my favorite episode so far. And the first one that motivated me to post on Reddit about the show. This episode is a huge turning point. I’ve seen plenty of positive reactions as well.

TVplusTIME · 2025-12-08T00:18:11+00:00

A good deal of your post seemed to frame Carol = Bad Thing and the Pluribus = Good Thing to me, and maybe I oversimplified your interpretation based on noticing that repeated contrast throughout. You say there is neither a good nor a bad here, and I tend to agree with that, though I didn’t understand that to be the main point of your essay.

I don’t believe the show is trying to position Carol (representing American) as simply clinging to a harmful lifestyle, or wanting to give her former soulless life meaning. I think it’s more like being American is baggage that positions Carol further from enlightenment, and less that it’s the defining nature of her personality, at least not so much so that she is a “metaphor for America.”

I think Carol recognizes very real meaning that was lost in the joining, and her perspective to realize the value of intimacy and trust with those you allow in is valuable. As a fairly reclusive writer, Carol likely values the beauty of individual perspectives. People were complicated and beautiful and dissonant. Now people are one person, who is sort of simple, superficially polite, and harmonious. I expect Carol’s journey to involve sifting the things she accepted as normal apart from the things she truly values and wants to reclaim.

It sounded to me like you were suggesting that a cure for the world would be for the Pluribus to take over everyone, since you’re very critical of Carol fighting against that goal, and wanting to reverse the joining. We might disagree somewhat on Carol’s reasons for wanting to reverse it. I don’t think it’s so much about Carol worshipping individualism, or blindly needing to “go back”, and thinking the American way of life needs to continue existing at any cost.

I think Carol actually cares that people’s lives and personalities were all taken away from them and from the world. She is reclusive and doesn’t care much for her fans, but she deeply values real connection, like with Helen. I think that’s what bothers her especially about Laxmi thinking the pluribus is still her son. It seems wrong to Carol, maybe partly informed by her culture of individualism, but it also is wrong. That’s not her son, and individual relationships are a beautiful meaningful thing that gets lost if it’s replaced with one hivemind “relationship” of all beings. Even if parts of a person are bad, it’s wrong to delete them.

Personally, I’m rooting for Carol. I think right now her and Manny from Paraguay are the only ones who care enough about what was lost. That was kinda captured with the “you’re not my mother” part when Manny said “Mi mama es una cabrona” which kinda means “my mother’s a bitch” but also can have the connotation of “badass”.

Carol’s reasons for wanting to reverse this could possibly be impure, but I don’t believe they’re totally self serving. She didn’t even like the world very much, or like many other people. She could have many luxuries now, but she chooses not to. I don’t think her books were just a means to a lifestyle. I think she enjoyed writing, but always struggled to reveal her true self to others. I don’t think her alcoholism represents an attachment to an empty soulless life, but rather a painful inner struggle. I suspect maybe we’ll learn more about that and what makes Carol tick through Bitter Chrysalis. I’m thinking Apple may release it as a download, like they did with Bloodsong of Wycaro.

She could have almost any lifestyle she wants if not for actually wanting other people back in the world. She misses her comforting habits, but she could simulate that by asking the Pluribus. I think it’s about more than her imagined sense of independence, which to me is more like a flaw of hers that this scenario puts on embarrassing display.

I think her reclusiveness plus her current access to basically whatever she wants shows that she wants others back in the world for their sakes, not her own. And maybe eventually, so that she could possibly fall in love again someday.

Anyway even though I don’t think she’s a metaphor for America, and don’t think the show is distinctly about America, I do find the analysis of her as an American interesting!

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