So if many of these accusations aren't new to the public, why are people only now deciding to listen? Why did this suddenly become the month we exposed an industry so fraught with scandal that Variety now reads like a newspaper crime section?

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I'll go ahead and warn you now: It has to do with Trump.

Ugh. Yeah, I know, sorry.

But before we get to America's inflaming boil of a president, I'd like to start at the heart of the story ... which is obviously the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. A student there conducted a test in which he had subjects describe a situation in their lives when they felt either powerful or powerless. They would then carry out a specific task involving gambling or problem-solving. What they found was that when powerless-feeling people described their situation as "unjust," they were far more likely to take big risks than those who had no perceived injustice. In other words, people who felt that life was unfair had a much grander "burn it to the fucking ground" attitude toward unrelated situations.

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This is a long way of saying that everyone has a little John Wick in them (and not only because Keanu Reeves totally fucked all our mothers). If you feel cheated by a situation, you're a little more inclined to show caution the door. There's actually an extreme version of this called "post-traumatic embitterment disorder." It's when a person feels an injustice on their lives so hard that they seek retribution wherever they can get it. Slightly less extreme, people suffering PTSD from terrorist attacks or disasters will have a similar need to better the world around them to avoid future tragedy. Like how if you were really affected by The Day After Tomorrow, you might start a foundation to prevent Roland Emmerich from making more films.