37-Year-Old Man Seeks Counseling After Ghostbusters Destroys Childhood
Immediately after watching the 2016 Ghostbusters film, insurance salesman Ronald Troutmeyer fell victim to a series of psychological afflictions associated with a troubled upbringing.
Troutmeyer’s recollection of his childhood was happy and quite ordinary until over 30 years later when Sony Pictures released a female-led reboot of his favorite supernatural comedy. “All those wonderful memories are just gone,” said Troutmeyer, who was 5 years old when the original film was released. While looking at the 1984 Ghostbusters IMDB page, he confessed: “Now, I can’t even remember what Harold Ramis looked like. But that’s not the worst part,” according to Troutmeyer, “In my dreams, Bill Murray has breasts and he just isn’t funny.”
After the credits rolled on Paul Fieg’s modern rendition of Ghostbusters, Troutmeyer’s once happy childhood suddenly became a PTSD-fueled nightmare, leading him to seek help from a local psychiatrist specializing in adolescent trauma. “Most patients in this field have suffered through actual trauma when they were young,” explained Dr. Eleanor Whitman, an expert in child psychology at Northwestern. “The subject of transferred trauma through new cinematic experiences rewriting previous ones is controversial territory. I think that it can be particularly damaging to male subjects who are used to being the center of the entertainment universe.”
“I’m not sexist,” Troutmeyer clarified, “I just don’t like them messing with my childhood. Why do they have to take things away from us? It’s like rewriting history. I think the filmmakers are the sexist ones, using their agenda to obliterate my childhood heroes.” Troutmeyer went on to discuss the importance of having role models that resemble himself. He expressed fear that his boys will not have anyone to look up to: “I don’t want to see my kids go through the type of childhood I’m now suffering.”
Ronald Troutmeyer has enrolled in an intensive 8-week psychotherapy program to tackle his recently-acquired emotional trauma. He will be joined by Marvel fans reeling from the recent announcement that Tony Stark’s Iron Man will be replaced by a black woman. As white males are becoming frequently displaced in entertainment, the popularity of this psychological field is anticipated to grow exponentially. Meanwhile, Troutmeyer hopes that he can find ways to cope with future infringements on his childhood.
