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The Spoof That Became a Reality: How Evan Rachel Wood and Darren Criss Became Friends in 2014

Evan Rachel Wood and Darren Criss hit the stage together in the Off-Broadway revival of Little Shop of Horrors on January 30th, and this Sunday, March 31st, their performances are coming to an end. On February 20th, the pair appeared together on TODAY with Hoda & Jenna to promote their show and talk about how their friendship began a decade ago in 2014 and has continued strong till today. But what was it that brought Evan and Darren together in 2014? It was a spoof on the show Funny or Die of the Tom Hank's movie Big , but in this version of the film the male lead role is played by a female, Evan Rachel Wood. Darren Criss is the adult who plays her love interest and eventually finds out he’s had sexual relations with a 13-year-old girl aged by magic. What is interesting on top of this, in the 2003 movie Thirteen , Evan played a 13-year-old who wanted to be older and in one scene she had sex with an older man.   When Big came out in 1988, it was a huge success and few were

A Brief Look at Evan Rachel Wood's Television Appearances Promoting 'Phoenix Rising'


Besides perhaps early February of 2021, Marilyn Manson has probably been in the news more this month than at any other point in his career, and for that we mainly have to thank his ex-fiance Evan Rachel Wood. She has single-handedly been able to drag his name through the furnace of the Me Too era for people to reevaluate his career for the current and future generations through her accusations against him, but it is up to us to determine whether her accusations are trustworthy or not, and whether or not Marilyn Manson will emerge from the furnace scathed and charred or refined like gold.

On March 14th there began a tidal wave of bad press against Marilyn Manson, a sample of which I will present below. This is the day what I call "Evan Promotion Week" began. I anticipated this bad press in January as soon as it was announced that Phoenix Rising would debut on HBO in March. I told people to expect at least one major television appearance by Evan Rachel Wood to promote her documentary. Yet not even I anticipated she would make four major media appearances to promote her two-part documentary, as well as one major media appearance by the director Amy Berg. This further allowed the rest of the media to grab as many headlines as possible and exploit the accusations against Manson with renewed interest, especially after Manson and his lawyers issued his lawsuit and put the fear of God not only in the accusers but also in the media that covers him and his cases.

I will begin below by offering some thoughts on each of the five television appearances of Evan and Amy, then I will address some of the major articles that have come out concerning Manson over the past few weeks in a separate post.


1. Good Morning America (March 14, 2022)



When asked why she didn't name Marilyn Manson as her abuser from the beginning, Evan replies that it was because she was too scared. We have heard various responses to this question before, but usually she says that she had no intention in naming her abuser and she was ready to take his name to her grave. In 2016 she said she was waiting for others to come forward in order to not be dismissed by the media. Till this day, Evan has never provided any good reason or proof to justify her fear so many years after the relationship has been over.

When the interviewer asked for Evan's thoughts on Manson's original official statement on Instagram after she and others named him in February 2021, specifically the part about having "like-minded partners", Evan responds that she believes Manson interprets their sex to have been kinky, which is not what Manson says at all, but Evan turns it into a statement about kinky sex, and thus refuses to answer the question. The statement is really about mutual consent, not just sexual but the relationship as a whole.

When asked if she thinks it's fair to say that he came as advertised, Evan replies in the negative, because the world would not have put him on such a pedestal if they thought his act was real. Yet throughout the relationship she would constantly defend Manson and tell the media that Manson is not who he portrays himself to be, and she didn't want to talk about Manson because in reality he is sweet and normal and it would ruin his public image. Everything Evan has been saying for the past few years is Evan confirming that the tabloids from 2007-10 were all correct and now she has regrets for trying to correct them at the time. However, if the tabloids had everything correct about Manson from that time, then should we not assume that all the tabloids and bad press she received is also correct, or were they still completely wrong about her? If you are going to be fair and avoid a double standard, then be fair and say that the tabloids were also right about yourself.

The interviewer makes Evan affirm that all the things she accuses Manson of, including drinking his blood, was done against her consent. Instead of giving a strong affirmation, it was a weak nod and barely audible affirmation. It is one thing to say the allegations and write about them, but when you hear them back to you it sounds ridiculous, and it seems to me that Evan by her dramatic response knows this and can't give a strong affirmation.

The next question is not asked, but it has to do with Manson calling her 158 times and threatening suicide, to which she responds, as she looks down the whole time, that she had to go to him to diffuse the situation but received torture instead. The problem is, this never happened, instead she is exploiting an interview Manson did to promote his album in 2009.

She is also asked about the lawsuit Manson is bringing against her, and this is the only time in all her television interviews that the name Illma Gore is mentioned, though Evan never says her name nor acknowledges her in any way both in this interview or any other.

When asked if she can at least say the accusations against her are false, she does not answer yes or no, but says she is not legally allowed to comment and that she is confident she has the truth on her side. This response sounded very prepared, and constructed in a way to avoid it and shoot it down. A good interviewer would have pressed her and made her shoot it down at least three times.

We are next given by the interviewer a piece of information nowhere else given: that Evan met with the FBI in November of 2021. Though we supposedly see this in the documentary, this is the only place we learn when it allegedly took place. We are also told the FBI would not comment.

In summary, the interviewer did a decent job in challenging Evan Rachel Wood, by asking challenging questions instead of just sucking up to her. It was a short segment and heavily edited, but both sides were adequately portrayed. As for Evan herself, it is clear she is performing, she is acting when she talks, which means she is rehearsed, but the editing doesn't capture it enough outside of the way she responds. She wants to be seen as a sympathetic figure, but confident in her analysis.


2. The View (March 14, 2022)



Evan begins this interview by saying that she was not drawn to Manson, but Manson was drawn to her by approaching her for a work project on Phantasmagoria. She calls this a false promise because though many scenes were shot along with a trailer, Manson never released the film due to various complications and scheduling conflicts, and he himself said in 2015 that working on the project was mentally exhausting and he had to put it aside.

If she meant this also relationship wise, this is a direct contradiction to everything Evan said about how they came to mutually fall in love with each other, and it was Evan who first made the moves on Manson. In Elle U.K. (August, 2007) Evan said the following about how their relationship began after Manson's divorce: "We became movie buddies until one night when we suddenly looked into one another's eyes and knew." Manson was grieving his divorce, and Evan is really the one who put the moves on Manson in his low point and revived him.

But now she views her entire early relationship as him Grooming her, as is clear when she says "he started grooming me as soon as he said hello." According to Evan, every intention of Manson towards her was evil, while her every intention was innocent, good and pure. Evan's paranoid, conspiracy laden mentality tries to paint Manson as a serial killer out to hunt his next victim, and from his first "hello" Manson was plotting all the wicked things he was intending for her. It seems like Evan's lack of a horror movie in her acting resume is being fulfilled by making her own life into a horror movie from which she would emerge as the survivor who sleighs the monster in the end.

She calls herself a "minor" when she filmed "Heart-Shaped Glasses". She was nearly twenty years old.

In 2007, a representative of Manson issued a statement regarding whether or not there was real sex or penetration while shooting the video, saying simply: "It was simulated sex." It is a clear statement.

"He made me forget who I was, and it's taken me years to remember." This is a nonsensical statement and directly contradicts her statements from the time, how she wanted to pursue a different path in her life and career with Manson, thus revealing her choice in becoming what she became and blaming Manson for any regrets.

According to Evan in the documentary, her suicide attempt occurred weeks after her relationship with Manson ended, and yet here she is explaining that she was driven towards suicide as a way of escaping the relationship. Not only is this a contradiction, but in the documentary she says that she went back to Manson for a few months after her suicide attempt and short stay in a mental hospital, even though this is not true.

Her explanation why she never reported Manson's alleged crimes against her within the statute of limitations is contradicted by her earlier statement that it took her years to remember. She says she tried to move on from what happened to her, but you can only move on if you know something happened to you. She even says she tried to forget it ever happened and was running from it. If she is trying to forget and running, that means she was aware of something at the time. Therefore, it wasn't Manson who made her forget, but even if everything Evan says is true and real, it was she who tried to forget things on her own and struggled to do so. (I made a video about this, which can be seen here.)

She accuses Manson of scaring her long enough till the statute of limitations runs out. Yet in the documentary Phoenix Rising she confesses that once she left Manson she never heard from him again. This looks like Evan is once again trying to blame Manson for her not going to the police when she was supposed to, which was within three years of the abuse, and seemed to have been more than enough time for her.

Her reference of Manson citing the statute of limitations in 2012 indicates Evan took a deep dive into his interviews to mine information for the accusations she brought against him. Of course, she gives no actual citation nor context to his usage of the term, which makes her bringing it up very questionable. In fact, this is a term Manson has used as a provocative joke punchline since the 1990's, and even has a painting he made in 1999 that was featured in some of his exhibition shows (which Evan attended in 2010), which is called "Statue of Limitations" as a pun on the legal term. Below are a few other examples of Manson using the term "statute of limitations" in a joking and provocative way, along with a link to the interview if you want to read it in context:

"I have always found that the best and most exciting stories on the road are better left a secret because of the statute of limitations." (Purr; 1995)

"Some of them are more extreme and the statute of limitations would prohibit me from commenting on them." (Esoterra; 1996)

"Now, uh, I got a copy of Black Inches. This is a year or so - probably the statute of limitation's up." (Dinner for Five; January 2002)

"I had my closest friends with me — but all the things I did that were exciting I can’t mention til the statute of limitations passes." (McClatchy Newspapers; February 2008)

After a strange yet obvious question from Whoopie, Evan says that her family knew something was happening to her, yet she says over and over again in various places throughout the years that her family knew nothing of her abuse for years after it happened, and we even have an interview with Evan's father from 2014 in which he fondly recalls spending time with Manson, let alone all the times her brother Ira was around her and Manson together and took advantage of Manson. In the years Evan was with Manson, she probably spent the most time with her father in many years, and Evan in her younger years often talked about wanting to get away from her mother's control.

"I had friends that used to circle the neighborhood that were just waiting for me to call, and that means so much, and when I was ready, I called." This is another contradiction and lie from Evan that she recently fabricated. She has repeatedly said that no one knew about her abuse until many years after her relationship with Manson, but ever since the new narrative of her documentary came out, suddenly everyone around her knew but herself until it was too late (though even in the documentary she slips and says that no one knew for years).

When Sunny reads off the allegations Manson brings against Evan and Illma Gore in his lawsuit, Evan's reaction is very strange. You can tell she wants to interrupt, because she is a very controlling person and doesn't like the fact that she no longer has the upper hand; you can tell she is very uncomfortable; and the strangest thing of all is that at one moment she begins to sort of laugh, but then immediately changes her facial expression to sort of crying, then she goes back to laughing - this is Evan clearly giving off a performance but not really doing a good job with it; she needed more rehearsal to prevent her anxiety from interfering.

It should be pointed out, that by ignoring the contents of the allegations Manson brings against Evan and trying to make it Manson's fault for her doing the things like impersonating an FBI agent, she only makes herself look like a spinster politician, spinning everything in a very prepared way to manipulate and control the entire situation as if she alone has the right to express her opinion and not the one she is accusing. For someone who wrote new legislation, she sure doesn't have much respect for the legislation that affords due process to anyone accused of anything.

"I'm doing this to protect people, I'm doing this to sound the alarm there's a dangerous person out there and I don't want anybody getting near him." Funny how she doesn't care so much about exposing the rapist bar owner that she also claims raped her and is probably more of a threat to harm others in the future, which again makes her spitefulness against Manson sound more personal rather than her claim of doing it for the protection of the general public.

In summary, the ladies of The View are clearly on Evan's side and don't even want to entertain the possibility that she is claiming things falsely. This was a platform given to Evan to shine, though she is clearly giving off a well-prepared performance which she fumbles at times, especially through her weird gestures and contradictions, both being the result of Evan having to form a new narrative for her documentary that contradicts previous statements she has made on this issue. Some reviewers have focused on her body language as a sign that she is lying, but I think it is a distraction to focus on something so subjective and up for interpretation and unnecessary when her words clearly betray her over and over again.


3. The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (March 14, 2022)



Right from the beginning, Trevor Noah asks a question that makes him sound unaware of the fact that Evan came out against her alleged abusers and rapists in 2016, and Evan does not correct him on this, but continues to mislead the public by implying that it took her 16 years to come forward, when in reality it was six years after the relationship that she came forward, seeing that the relationship ended in 2010 and Evan began talking about her rapes by two different men in 2016.

Evan also repeats her new narrative line from what she said earlier on in The View, that she in fact did remember her abuse after the relationship ended and she tried to forget what happened to her, move on, and run as far from it as possible, thus destroying her whole Phoenix Act narrative that she didn't realize she was abused until after therapy years later.  (I made a video about this, which can be seen here.)

At one point she says: "You'll hear that a lot from abuse survivors", in reference to her saying that she thought she was the only one abused by Manson. This comes off as a confession, however, and Evan trying hard to make her story unite with the stories of other abuse survivors. Everything Evan says about her abuse is very scripted from real abuse stories and she tries to make the stories her own, often contradicting herself, as well as adding and subtracting things at various times as she deems convenient for herself.

Evan has explained since 2016 that the reason she did not come forward in naming her abuser was because she was waiting for others to come forward and create more of an impact by doing it together, because a group of women are more easily believed than just one. Later she changed this story and started saying that she had no intention of ever coming out against Manson by name out of a baseless fear of retaliation from him. She always wanted to name Manson, but she wanted to do it in a way that would get the most attention from the media.

"Professor" Evan then gets into a Freudian analysis of Manson, ascribing his alleged abusive behavior to the abuse he suffered at the hands of his parents, and instead of getting help to break the cycle of abuse, he has refused it every single time. Now even if this analysis was completely true, how does she know he has refused help for this? Manson has been to rehab and has received some psychological help, both of which he has talked about, so even if all that "Professor" Evan says is true, how does she know that he hasn't addressed it? Evan's attempt to psychoanalyze Manson is a pathetic attempt of Evan making herself out to be some sort of psychoanalysis expert in front of millions of people by psychoanalyzing not a professional patient, but her ex-fiance. Wrap your head around how absurd all of this is! Imagine one of your exes, who doesn't even have a college degree, giving a psychoanalysis of you to an international audience of perhaps millions!

Then Evan brings up internet allegations that supposedly involve minors being abused by Manson. As she says it, Evan is clearly acting, being dramatic and concerned, but certainly not hesitant to say that she is accusing Manson of being a child molester, thus indicating she will sink to any level to say anything horrible about Manson without giving any proof.

We then hear Evan give a spin that would make any politician drool. Whereas on The View she said: "I'm doing this to protect people, I'm doing this to sound the alarm there's a dangerous person out there and I don't want anybody getting near him," now she is making her accusations into an act of love towards Manson to prevent him from hurting himself and hurting others. Not only is this narcissistic, but deranged.

This is followed by Evan talking about her delay in coming forward due to her trauma, and we hear nothing authentic coming from her own experience; instead, we hear Evan quoting textbook jargon anyone can say if they read a book about abuse and trauma. She tries to make herself sound like an expert, but an astute listener will not hear one authentic word come out of her mouth, even though it is supposed to be about herself. She doesn't do a bad job of explaining what trauma does to a brain, but it is basic psychology she is explaining and not what actually happened to her. She tries to make it like it happened to her, but it is very unconvincing and I would even say pathetic and desperate. She will do anything to avoid telling what actually happened to her, because nothing did in fact happen to her as she describes.

Her excuse to justify the Phoenix Act, where 1 to 3 years doesn't give a victim enough time to process what happened to them, is just laughable. Reporting abuse should not require a victim to process everything that happened to them first. This could take a lifetime, or it may never happen at all, and the longer you process the more your brain figures out patterns to put together forgotten memories and create false narratives. People should be taught to report abuse upon immediate suspicion, and allow an investigation by professionals to determine what actually happened. Such explanations by Evan only helps herself and not real victims. Everything Evan says about psychology is done in a self-serving manner and should not be treated seriously.

In summary, Evan is given a platform by Noah to project herself as if she is a professional, a professor or even a doctor, and doesn't question her at all, in fact his questions reveal a complete ignorance of the case. Evan pretty much repeated her same talking points as she did on The View, but came off as very disconnected from what she was talking about, giving us a textbook version of her supposed experiences instead of anything relatable or real. Anyone who has read a few books on the subject could have explained things the way she did, perhaps better because by textbooking her experiences she is reaching too far to make connections with the stories of real abuse victims, and therefore comes off as fake and disingenuous.


4. The Drew Barrymore Show (March 17, 2022)

 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 

This should have been a better interview, because Drew Barrymore and Evan Rachel Wood share a common experience and rare accomplishment, in that both of them were successful child actresses who achieved greater success as adult actresses. I didn't expect Drew to give a hard hitting interview, but I did expect something different from Evan's other interviews, where she comes off as more authentic and less of a textbook version of herself. For the most part, what we get instead is Drew and Evan in a love-fest, where Drew sometimes comes off selling Evan's story better than Evan does. I wanted to hear more about Evan's childhood and the difficulties that exist in Hollywood for a child actress trying to become an adult actress, which we did get a little about, but it was too mixed up with Evan trying to sell her abuse story, looking at her childhood as an extension of the victimhood she would later grow into. She describes her childhood as leading her to become "such easy prey" for an abuser, who she claims is Marilyn Manson.

"I was 18 when I met Brian, and though I was legally an adult I had lived no life as an adult." This is such a ridiculous statement. No 18 year old has ever lived their life as an adult, you just are and grow into more and more into it as you age. Not only is this a terrible excuse for her to present herself as a victim, but the reality is that from everything I have seen in all the interviews and public appearances from before she was 18, I can assure you that most normal 18 year olds are less mature and less adult than she is. The fact of the matter is, and maybe you can even say part of her problem is, that Evan grew up and became an adult too early, not too late as she claims.

Most parents when they explain an argument they have with each other to their children says, “Every couple fights, it’s normal.” It's just a simple and convenient way of avoiding to have to go into explaining the details to kids. Sometimes it is indeed normal if a couple gets in a disagreement, but loves each other. If a couple fights and hates each other, then it is not normal.

In many interviews from the time Evan was with Manson, she talks about how positive the relationship was for her, and how she was given the freedom to explore who she really is as an artist, and it was something Manson allowed her to do without judgment. Now Evan spins how she really felt at the time into a textbook version of abuse, saying that what she felt at the time was not her being a rebellious young woman who no longer slept in the same bed with her mother, but it is as if she wishes she did continue to sleep in the same bed as her mother in her early twenties and did whatever her mother wanted her to do, like it was before she was 18. It is a very weird situation she is describing that a good interviewer would have picked up on and explored deeper, but unfortunately Drew is a horrible interviewer and more of an enabler. I would love to have Evan explain what she really wanted from Manson by dating him and being engaged to him. No doubt she would just say that if she had a normal childhood she would not have entertained the thought of giving Manson any attention from the beginning, but since she considers her childhood to be abnormal, she feels she was groomed right from the beginning. In other words, her regrets make her blame all her youthful decisions on others, and she refuses to take any responsibility for her own life.

Every word and every thought and every movement and every intention of Manson she turns into an act of abuse. Things that every truly loving couple does she views in a twisted and demented way. By doing this she is trying to put Manson on an equal level with a serial killer hunting his prey. Nothing Evan says is convincing or credible. Anyone who knows anything about Manson will easily dismiss this as ridiculous, but because most only want to know Manson from his outward appearance and persona, Evan can actually sell this little girl's fairy tale to the naive and willfully ignorant.

When Evan went on tour with Marilyn Manson, she wasn't a "young teenage girl", but she was almost 20 years old. And for anyone going on tour for the first time, I'm sure it would be overwhelming, and it involves work and a lot of tedious hours, but to blame that on someone else is desperate overreaching. Evan is clearly expressing regret for the decisions of her youth which brought her grief with the media and her family and her friends, that now she finds the need to blame someone for all these decisions and takes absolutely no responsibility for herself.

I believe this is the first time Evan mentions "triangulation". Triangulation is a manipulative technique of basically spinning a story, sort of like gaslighting. Evan is a master of triangulation. Here she ironically blames Manson for using this method of manipulation that she has clearly studied and perfected. Narcissists are associated with this personality disorder. But Evan likes to present her story as if she lifted it right out of a textbook and uses these terms in psychology to her advantage to manipulate her listeners. One way Evan uses this here is by saying that Manson paints his ex-girlfriends as crazy in order to discredit them. However, Manson has not done this with all his exes, only those that were indeed crazy, and when they have come forward against Manson, their craziness shines and they discredit themselves. Manson just says what any rational person is thinking. For Evan, who has confessed that she has many mental illnesses, and refuses to add the additional mental illnesses she displays and does not acknowledge, to say she is not the crazy one is again a desperate attempt to silence any possible criticism against her.

Evan here tries to make her involvement in the 'Heart-Shaped Glasses' video as detached from her relationship with Manson. At the time she said she was as proud of her involvement in the video as she was for her involvement in the movie Thirteen, and had made an agreement with Manson to do it for each other no matter what anyone thinks of it. Now she wishes it involved more professionalism. Basically, this is future Evan once again wishing younger Evan didn't do what she did, but takes absolutely no responsibility for her actions, and blames her regrets on someone else. As for "the footage will be destroyed afterwards", I have no idea what she means; why would it be destroyed? Her demands sound ridiculous and unreasonable, especially when considered in context, that it was a video they both wrote and performed in together as act of romance to express their mutual love based on some of the films they were watching at the time. Now she comes off as if she wishes the entire video was the opposite of its intention.

It's amusing how Drew talks about the documentary as putting something in her head and implanting something in her brain. Saying these things just shows how she doesn't question anything and takes in the information as is, but it also adds to the fact that Drew is a better promoter for the documentary than Evan is, because she is at least being real in her approach and not giving a dry and boring textbook analysis of everything, though she does veer towards this the more she talks, because everyone has to show themselves to be an expert in human psychology.

When Drew asks why she didn't just get out of the relationship, Evan once again refuses to give a real answer based on her experience and begins to tell Drew what her textbooks say about that and aligns herself with it. Worse still, she blames those who ask such a question for perpetuating the problem of abuse, placing the blame on someone else once more. The facts are, Evan had dozens of opportunities to leave if she wanted to, they even had two extended break ups where they were apart for a year, but she came back, and instead of blaming herself, which would be the right thing to do, whether its an abusive relationship or not, she blames Manson. It should also be noted, Evan leaves out a lot of information to perpetuate these myths in her story, such as the fact that she was engaged to Manson for seven or eight months. Nowhere in the documentary or in any interview does she says this or even get asked about it, because it puts further responsibility on her making her own decisions instead of being given the opportunity to blame Manson.

Drew's monologue about Evan being one of the best mothers she has ever seen in her life, based on what she saw in the documentary that was filmed deliberately to portray her as one of the best mothers, just shows how gullible Drew is, and how little research she has done into the custody battle between Evan and Jaime Bell, where Evan is once again shown to be insane and lying through her teeth. Unfortunately, just by Drew sucking up to Evan and buying into her story and calling her a "new hero" is enough to bring other naive, gullible people to Evan's side, and because of this it makes this interview out of all four the most impactful and successful for Evan. Usually normal people are humbled by such extreme praise, but Evan takes in every word with pride as if it is what everyone owes her.


5. Amy Berg Interviewed by CBS News (March 16, 2022)



One of the biggest issues I have with Phoenix Rising as a film is that it was allegedly intended to be focused on Evan's journey to change legislation with the statutes of limitations in the Phoenix Act, but the end result of this two part documentary only spends about ten minutes discussing this and primarily is a hit-piece against Marilyn Manson with a lot of drama and emotion and no substantial arguments. It would have been a much more powerful documentary if the focus got off of Evan, even for just a few minutes, and presented a sample of these many alleged cases where abuse victims have been wronged by the statute of limitations. The fact that they did not do something so obvious and so impactful but focused on bringing down Manson makes it lose any credibility it could have had, and turns into a journey through the mind of a legitimately insane individual in the person of Evan Rachel Wood. The fact that Amy Berg, who is otherwise a celebrated documentarian, could not see something so obvious, and understand that she is basically exploiting a mentally ill Evan, makes her lose all credibility and respectability.

It is a lie that this began with Dan Cleary and that other survivors began to come forward in 2020. I have documented on Marilyn Manson Uncanceled that the accusers were colluding with each other since 2019, as is documented on their social media accounts. Some have been close friends since 2011.

In this interview, once again, we are presented with the false and misleading information that one needs to come to terms with their trauma before they come forward and report their abuse to the police. Women need to be taught to report their abuse before they even begin to deal with their trauma. Dealing with your trauma for ten years before you even consider to report the abuse gives a victim, whether legitimate or not, an opportunity to willingly or unwillingly create a false narrative that will prevent true justice from coming to fruition. This is the great evil of the Phoenix Act: it promotes and misleads victims from adequately dealing with their problems and encourages ignorance.
 
 

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