Train - Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me...if you will always stick up for your best friend even when you know they're wrong)

Ok version of "Sticking up for someone when I know they're wrong" - stepping in to stop them from getting an ass-beating, then pulling them aside to chew them out

Not ok version - kicking the other guy's ass and shouting WORLD STAR while flashing a thumbs up at my friend

the question of loyalty and where loyalty ends (especially when you know someone is wrong) is really important, not something where i feel there is necessarily a correct answer or way to act, but useful to know how someone typically stands on it, because it can explain behavior that is otherwise completely baffling or hurtful hurtful

for example, what do you do when a loved one writes a song like 'drops of jupiter'

It's a valid question.

I feel like there's a middle path.

Sticking up for a friend who you know is wrong doesn't necessarily mean that you defend the wrong position. It could just mean defending the person behind it.

Being understanding about someone who has simply made an error in judgment, but whose intentions were good. Someone with a basically good heart, and who is a good person otherwise.

"Hey, please allow me to apologize for my friend here. He's had a really bad day and he's had a lot to drink; I'm sure he didn't intend to insult your mother. Tomorrow, when he's feeling better, I suspect he'll apologize."

THAT is an example of the *good* kind of sticking up for a friend who is in the wrong.

I would never advocate that a friend should double down on the bad behavior simply out of friendship. I would welcome my friends pointing out (gently) the ways in which I am wrong, which are many in number.

Or, what Neanderthal said way more concisely.

I tell him to go back to the Milky Way and miss me with that song

Xxxpost

also, as someone who uses perhaps the worst and least consistent use of grammar on ilx, can i just say that

'your best friend always stickin' up for you even when I know you're wrong'

is very confusing and is likely to lead to confusion on this thread because, in this scenario/lyric, i am the one who is arguing with some unknown entity, i think, and your (my) best friend is always stickin' up for you (me), even when i (...also me?) know you're (the person i'm arguing with? or my best friend? or me again?) wrong

My best friend and I will tell each other when they're being rude to someone else. It's a good way to check each other

I feel like there's a middle path.

i don't know if "middle" is necessarily a good name for it (makes me think of centrists), but instead i think of avoiding the absolutes. the absolutes are 100% loyalty even when someone is completely wrong and is hurting others with their wrongness vs. applying an extremely skeptical case by case practice to even the bestest of friends/family). i'm very distrustful, especially since the trump era, of people who act in either way

i think the former (100% loyalty even when you know they're wrong) is much more common than the latter (treating relationships like a disinterested computer)

I think certainly sticking up for people has a lot of value and will always do it if the person is right, but doing so when they’re wrong is actively bad for them and is at best enabling them. I don’t care if I’m friends with someone if they’re acting out or out of pocket. It’s so easy to say nothing rather than handing them an extra shovel to keep digging. This also goes for people I’m friends with too, I appreciate when people can say, nah you’re full of shit on this one.

Clearly all you grouches need to check out Mozart while you do Tae-Bo.

Then get a soy latte.

"Hey, please allow me to apologize for my friend here. He's had a really bad day and he's had a lot to drink; I'm sure he didn't intend to insult your mother. Tomorrow, when he's feeling better, I suspect he'll apologize."

THAT is an example of the *good* kind of sticking up for a friend who is in the wrong.

Okay, gyac. Sorry for what you went through.

I still think that people who are basically decent sometimes have bad days and make mistakes. I certainly do. Don't you?

We can simultaneously call them out on bad behavior while forgiving them their trespasses.

Sure. Doesn’t mean the feelings of the person they hurt cease to matter.

...which is why I advocate starting with a (hopefully sincere) apology on their behalf.

I would honestly be embarrassed if someone apologised on my behalf and I certainly wouldn’t expect it to be accepted.

Here's my overthinking of the question.

I tend to interpret "sticking up for" someone as meaning defending them in a situation where someone else is objecting to something they've said or done. I've never been comfortable with defending anything I know is wrong or hurtful. My basic instinct in a situation where my friend and another person are in conflict would be to de-escalate rather than defend.

In Neanderthal's example, where my friend is being physically attacked, the weight of 'wrong' is greatest on the side of whoever initiated physical violence, so that using physical force to defend my friend from attack is justified. Unless my friend was being such an asshole as to not only be in the wrong, but also the first to escalate to physical force. In which case, any intervention on my part is going to be a bit tardy, mostly wanting to protect my asshole friend from truly serious injury.

I tend to use Montaigne as a lodestar here: a best friend would never ask you to do something that would violate your ethics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ASIPYg0hso

applying an extremely skeptical case by case practice to even the bestest of friends/family

even when not carried to absurdity this v rationally-presenting empirical approach is a great way to get jerked around by your feelings to the point of lunacy

(it's what i do tho sigh?)

the problem with assuming that our friends or family are good-hearted or well-meaning etc is that the world is full of situations where somebody who's committed really heinous crimes will have friends say "they've always been a good person, i've never seen any hint of this side of them"

course i'm not saying we shouldn't be supportive of anybody we care about but there has to be a line for behaviour that we can't condone, and also for behaviour that leads to "i can't consider this person a friend any more"

so in short i think unconditional love is a bad idea, always

Yeah, I like there are degrees of wrong here which the song doesn't really define like...

There's abuse, and there's...also garden variety rudeness or insensitivity. All of us are guilty of the latter two, but not everyone is (regularly) guilty of the former.

*feel like

Can you imagine no love, pride, deep-fried chicken
Your best friend always sticking up for you
Even when I know you're wrong?
Can you imagine no first dance, freeze-dried romance
Five hour phone conversation
The best soy latte that you ever had, and me?

this song and band has always been an enigma to me, I do not know what the above lyrics are getting at, I've read it's inspired by the passing of his mother? I can imagine sticking up for a mouthy friend in a "hey they are drunk probably didn't mean anything by it" kinda way but then again this is also why I stopped hanging out with drunks because who wants to stick up for that

though in the context of the song I don't know that we are the best friend...kind of reads like word salad, maybe I am not sophisticated enough to understand Train

when my pops worked for Wendy's he attended several "let's get all the upper management together for a weird private party/concert" functions and Train headlined one of them, I think that probably says it all, about Train

but yeah Pat Monahan and his mom and his mom's best friend can go back to Jupiter, collect all the drops over there, supporting wrong people is wrong

Wrong people wrong people.

I think what I do expect from a friend - and hope to provide when a friend is in the wrong - is that they let me down easy, that they use empathy and their knowledge of me/how I work to understand how I got to the mistake I made. Obviously there are infractions severe enough that this would no longer be appropriate.

but yeah if I'm being shitty in some internet argument - the main way of being in the wrong in 2023 - a friend chiming in with a DM is always appreciated

weird I nearly revived an old thread on this song a few days ago just to reveal that it may have worn me down just a little over the years

Ugh, THIS song 🤣

I voted for “not”

(Even though I totally stuck up for friends when they were wrong when I was younger)

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8 year old heard this song at lunch today and asked "Is this OneRepublic?" I continued sticking up for him but envied growing up never having met Virginia.

Then there's that friend you've known a long time, or at least a long time ago, known him in some ways, not others, and you speak right up for him, when urgently asked by others (I've always dreaded being in this position):
https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/mila-kunis-ashton-kutcher-say-aware-danny-masterson-letters-caused-pai-rcna104236

Yeah i don’t know, I think I’d find it very easy to decline the request to write a plea for leniency for someone being brought to trial for the things he did

No way would I do it, but can imagine getting grief for it in my little town. There can be a pressure in small close-knit communities, like I guess all these ex-fellow cast members, from a lonng time ago, but not like Kunis and Kutchner are that dependent on prestige of an olde sitcom---then again Kutchner may play on the common perception that he's not very bright---may say he signed a letter, trustingly, that he was assisted with/just asked to sign, like do we really think he'd otherwise use a word like "tertiary"?

my best friends are the ones who I trust to challenge me when I'm wrong because I love and trust them, that's a huge part of what makes them my best friends, so this seems backwards to me

terrible, terrible song either way

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