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innuendostudios · 3 years

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I was invited to give a talk on GamerGate over Zoom in early 2021. I've long been frustrated that there isn't a good timeline of GG and its origins on YouTube. When people ask "what the hell was GG anyway?" they often get referred to my or Dan Olson's videos on the subject, but both of them were made while GG was ongoing, and presumed a degree of familiarity on the part of the audience. There was just too much to say about what was already happening to spend time getting the audience up to speed, and it was safe to assume our audiences had enough context to follow along. But time moves fast on the internet, and many people who now care about such things weren't there while it was happening, and are lacking the necessary context to follow the better videos. For a long time, I've only been able to direct them to RationalWiki's timeline, which is excellent but so exhaustively comprehensive that it's likely to scare off first-timers.

I realize an hourlong lecture isn't necessarily helping matters, but the first 20-or-so minutes of this video are my attempt at streamlining the timeline such that people can be up to speed on the most important stuff fairly quickly. The rest is talking about what it all meant, how it prefigured the Alt-Right, and using it to better understand digital radicalization.

This video was made with the help of Magdalen Rose, who edited the slides to the audio while I was laid up with a back injury. Go sub to her channel! And please back me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

FUCKING VIDEO GAMES? FUCKING VIDEO GAMES. THEY MADE DOZENS OF PEOPLE MISERABLE FOR YEARS OVER VIDEO GAMES! NOT EVEN FUCKING VIDEO GAMES, FUCKING ARTICLES ABOUT FUCKING VIDEO GAMES. THIS IS WHAT PASSES FOR LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE. ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS SHIT??

Hi! My name is Ian Danskin. I’m a video essayist and media artist. I run the YouTube channel Innuendo Studios, please like share and subscribe.

I’m here to talk to you about GamerGate, and I needed to get all that out of the way. I’m going to talk about what GamerGate was and how it prefigured The Alt-Right, and there are gonna be moments where you’re nodding along with me, going, “yeah, yeah I get it,” and then the sun’s gonna break through a crack in the wall and you’ll suddenly remember that all this is happening because some folks - mostly ladies - said some stuff - provably true stuff, I might add - about video games and a bunch of guys didn’t like it, and you’re gonna want to rip your hair out. By the end of this, you will have a better understanding of what happened, but it will never not be bullshit.

Also, oh my god, content warning. Racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, rape threats, threats of violence, domestic abuse - I’m not going to depict or describe at length any of the worst stuff, but it’s all in the mix. So if at any point you need to switch me off or mute me, you have my blessing.

Brace yourselves.

Some quick prehistory:

In 2012, feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian ran a Kickstarter campaign for a YouTube series on sexist tropes in video games. And, partway through the campaign, 4chan found it and said “let’s ruin her life.” And a lot of the male general gaming public joined in. And by “ruin her life” I’m not talking 150 angry tweets including dozens of rape and death threats per week, though that was a thing. I’m talking bomb threats. I’m talking canceled speaking engagements because someone threatened to shoot up a school. I’m talking FBI investigation. The harassers faced no meaningful repercussions.

And in 2013, Zoe Quinn released Depression Quest, a free text game about living with depression. They received harassment off and on for the next year, most pointedly from an incel forum called Wizardchan that doxxed their phone number and made harassing phone calls telling them to kill themself. The harassers faced no meaningful repercussions.

(Also, quick note: Zoe Quinn is nonbinary and has come out since the events in question. When I call Zoe’s harassment misogynist, understand I am not calling Zoe a woman, but they were attacked by people who hate women because that’s how they were perceived. Had they been out at the time things probably would’ve gone down similarly, but on top of misogyny I’d be talking about nonbinary erasure and transphobia.)

Okay. Our story begins in August 2014. The August that never ended.

Depression Quest, after a prolonged period on Greenlight, finally releases on Steam as a free download with the option to pay what you want. In the days that follow, Zoe’s ex-boyfriend, Eron Gjoni, writes a nearly 10,000-word blog called The Zoe Post, in which he claims Quinn had been a shitty and unfaithful partner. (For reference, 10,000 words is long enough that the Hugos would consider it a novelette.) This is posted to forums on Penny Arcade and Something Awful, both of which immediately take it down, finding it, at best, a lot of toxic hearsay and, at worse, an invitation to harassment. So Gjoni workshops the post, adds a bunch of edgelord humor (and I am using the word “humor” very generously), and reposts it to three different subforums on 4chan.

We’re not going to litigate whether Zoe Quinn was a good partner. I don’t know or care. I don’t think anyone on this call is trying to date them so I’m not sure that’s our business. What is known is that the relationship lasted five months, and, after it ended, Gjoni began stalking Quinn. Gjoni has, in fact, laid out how he stalked Quinn in meticulous detail to interviewers and why he feels it was justified. It’s also been corroborated by a friend that Quinn briefly considered taking him back at a games conference in San Francisco, but he became violent during sex and Quinn left the apartment in the middle of the night with visible bruises.

Off of the abusive ex-boyfriend’s post, 4chan decides it’s going to make Zoe Quinn one of their next targets, and starts a private IRC channel to plan the campaign. The channel is called #BurgersAndFries, a reference to Gjoni claiming Quinn had cheated on him with five guys. A couple sentences in The Zoe Post - which Gjoni would later claim were a typo - imply that one of the five guys was games journalist Nathan Grayson and that Quinn had slept with him in exchange for a good review of Depression Quest. Given the anger that they’d seen drummed up against women in games with the previous Anita Sarkeesian hate mob, #BurgersAndFries decides to focus on this breach of “ethics in games journalism” as a cover story, many of them howling with laughter at the thought that male gamers would probably buy it. This way, destroying Quinn’s life and career and turning their community against them would appear an unfortunate byproduct of a legitimate consumer revolt; criticism of the harassment could even be framed as a distraction from the bigger issue. Gjoni himself is in the IRC channel telling them that this was the best hand to play.

The stated aim of many on #BurgersAndFries was to convince Quinn to commit suicide.

Two regulars in the IRC, YouTubers MundaneMatt and Internet Aristocrat, make videos about The Zoe Post. Incidentally, both these men had already made a lot of money off videos about Anita Sarkeesian. Matt’s is swiftly taken down with a DMCA claim, and he says that Quinn filed the claim themself. (For the record, in those days, YouTube didn’t tell you who filed DMCA claims against you.) Members of the IRC also reach out to YouTuber TotalBiscuit, who had been critical of Sarkeesian and dismissive of her harassment, and he tweets the story to his 350,000 followers, saying a game developer trading sex for a good review might not prove true, but was certainly plausible.

This is where GamerGate begins to get public traction.

Zoe Quinn is very swiftly doxxed, with their phone number, home address, nudes, and names and numbers of their family collected. Gjoni himself leaks their birth name. The Zoe Post, and the movement against Quinn - now dubbed “The Quinnspiracy” - make it to The Escapist and Reddit, which mods will have little luck removing. The Quinnspiracy declares war on any site that does take their threads down, most vehemently NeoGAF. People who defend Zoe against the harassment start getting doxxed themselves - Fez developer Phil Fish is doxxed so thoroughly, hackers get access to the root folder of his website.

In what I’m going to call This Should Have Been The End, Part 1, Stephen Totilo, Editor-in-Chief at Kotaku where Nathan Grayson worked, in response to pressure not just from The Quinnspiracy but an increasing number of angry gamers buying The Quinnspiracy’s narrative, publishes a story. In it he verifies that Quinn and Grayson did date for several months, and that not only is there no review of Depression Quest anywhere on Kotaku, not by Grayson nor anyone else, but that Grayson did not write a single word about Quinn the entire time they were dating.

In response, The Quinnspiracy declares war on Kotaku. r/KotakuinAction is formed, which will become the primary site of organization outside of chanboards. The fact that their entire “movement” is based on a review that does not exist changes next to nothing.

Some people start to see The Quinnspiracy as potentially profitable. The Fine Young Capitalists get involved, a group ostensibly working to get women into video games but who have a Byzantine plan to do so wherein they crowdfund the budget and the woman who wins a competition gets to storyboard a game, but another company will make and she will get 8% of the profits, the rest going to a charity chosen by the top donor. 4chan becomes the top donor. They like TFYC because the head of the company has a vendetta against Zoe Quinn, who had previously called them out for their transphobic submission policy, and he falsely accused Quinn of having once doxxed him. 4chan feels backing an ostensibly feminist effort will be good PR, but can’t resist selecting a colon cancer charity because, they say, feminism is cancer and they want to be the cure to butthurt. They also get to design a character for the game, and so they create Vivian James, who will become the GamerGate mascot.

Manosphere YouTubers Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini launch a Patreon campaign for their antifeminist documentary The Sarkeesian Effect and come to The Quinnspiracy looking for $15,000 a month for an indefinite period to make it, which they get.

In what will prove genuinely awful timing, Anita Sarkeesian releases the second episode of Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, and, despite not being a games journalist and having nothing to do with Quinn or Grayson, she is immediately roped into the narrative about how feminists are ruining games culture and becomes the second major target of harassment. Both she and Quinn soon have to leave their houses after having receiving dozens and dozens of death threats that include their home addresses.

After being courted by members of the IRC channel, Firefly star Adam Baldwin tweets a link to one of the Quinnspiracy videos and coins the hashtag #GamerGate. This is swiftly adopted by all involved.

In response to all this, Leigh Alexander writes a piece for Gamasutra arguing that the identity that these men are flocking to the “ethics in games journalism” narrative to defend no longer matters as a marketing demographic. Gaming and games culture is so large and so varied, and the “core gamer” audience of 18-34 white bros growing smaller and septic, that there was no reason, neither morally nor financially, to treat them as the primary audience anymore. Love of gaming is eternal, but, she declared, “gamers,” as an identity, “are over.” Eight more articles contextualizing GamerGate alongside misogyny and the gatekeeping of games culture come out across several websites in the following days. GamerGate frames these as a clear sign of [deep sigh] collusion to oppress gamers, proving that ethics in games journalism is, indeed, broken, and Leigh Alexander becomes the third major target of harassment. These become known as the “gamers are dead” articles - a phrase not one of them uses - and they make “get Leigh Alexander fired from Gamasutra” one of their primary goals.

Something I need you to understand is that it has, at this point, been two weeks.

Highlights from the next little bit: Alex Macris, a higher up at The Escapist’s parent company, expresses support for GamerGate; he will go on to write the first positive coverage at a major publication and cement The Escapist as GamerGate-friendly. Mike Cernovich, aka “Based Lawyer,” gets GamerGate’s attention by mocking Anita Sarkeesian; he will go on to hire a private investigator to stalk Zoe Quinn. GamerGate launches Operation Disrespectful Nod, an email campaign pressuring companies to pull advertising from websites that have criticized them. They leverage their POC members, getting them, any time someone points out the rampant racism and antisemitism among GamerGaters, to say “I am a person of color and I am #NotYourShield”; most of these “POC members” are fake accounts left over from a previous, racist disinformation campaign. Milo Yiannapoulos gets involved, writing positive coverage of GG despite having mocked gamers for precisely this behavior in the past, and gets so much traffic it pulls Breitbart News out of obscurity and makes it a significant player in modern conservative news media.

[Hey! Ian from the future here. This talk mostly addresses how GamerGate prefigured the Alt-Right strategically and philosophically, but if you want a more explicit, material connection: Breitbart News took its newfound notoriety to become, as its Executive Chair phrased it in 2016, "a platform for the Alt-Right." That Executive Chair was Steve Bannon, who threw the website's weight behind The Future President Who Shall Not Be Named, and, upon getting his attention, would then go on to become his campaign strategist and work in his Administration. So, if you're wondering how one of the central figures of the Alt-Right ended up in the White House, the answer is literally "GamerGate." Back to you, Ian from the past!]

In what I’m calling This Should Have Been The End, Part 2, Zoe Quinn announces that they have been lurking the #BurgersAndFries IRC channel since the beginning and releases dozens of screenshots showing harassment being planned and the selection of “ethics in games journalism” as a cover. #BurgersAndFries has a meltdown, everyone turns on each other, and the channel is abandoned. And they then start another IRC and things proceed.

It goes on like this. I’m not gonna cover everything. This is just the first month. It should be clear by now that this thing is kind of unkillable. And I worry I haven’t made it obvious that this is not just a chanboard and an IRC. Thousands of regular, every day gamers were buying the story and joining in. They were angry, and no amount of evidence that their anger was unfounded was going to change that. You could not mention or even allude to GamerGate and not get flooded with dozens, even hundreds of furious replies. These replies always included the hashtag so everyone monitoring it could join in, so all attempts at real conversation devolved into a hundred forking threads where some people expected you to talk to them while others hurled insults and slurs. And always the possibility that, if any one of them didn’t like what you said, you’d be the next target.

To combat this, some progressives offered up the hashtag #GameEthics to the people getting swept up in GamerGate, saying, “look, we get that you’re angry, and if you want to talk about ethics in games journalism, we can totally do that, but using your hashtag is literally putting us in danger; they calling the police on people saying there’s a hostage situation at their home addresses so they get sent armed SWAT teams, and if you’ll just use this other hashtag we can have the conversation you say you want to have in safety.” And I will ever stop being salty about what happened.

They refused. They wouldn’t cede any ground to what they saw as their opposition. It was so important to have the conversation on their terms that not only did they refuse to use #GameEthics, they spammed it with furry porn so no one could use it.

A few major events on the timeline before we move on: Christina Hoff Sommers, the Republican Party’s resident “feminist,” comes out criticizing Anita Sarkeesian and becomes a major GG figurehead, earning the title Based Mom. Zoe Quinn gets a restraining order against Eron Gjoni, which he repeatedly violates, to no consequence; GG will later crowdfund his legal fees. There’s this listserv called GameJournoPros where game journalists would talk about their jobs, and many are discussing their concerns over GamerGate, so Milo Yiannopoulos leaks it and this is framed as further “proof of collusion.” 4chan finally starts enforcing its “no dox” rules and shuts GamerGate threads down, so they migrate to 8chan, a site famous for hosting like a lot of child porn. Indie game developer Brianna Wu makes a passing joke about GamerGate on Twitter and they decide, seemingly on a whim, to make her one of the biggest targets in the entire movement; she soon has to leave her home as well. GamerGate gets endorsements from WikiLeaks, Infowars, white nationalist sites Stormfront and The Daily Stormer, and professional rapist RooshV. And hundreds of people get doxxed; an 8chan subforum called Baphomet is created primarily to host dox of GamerGate’s critics.

But by November, GamerGate popularity was cresting, as more and more mainstream media covered it negatively. Their last, big spike in popularity came when Anita Sarkeesian went on The Colbert Report and Stephen made fun of the movement. Their numbers never recovered after that.

Which is not to say GamerGate ended. It slowed down. The period of confusion where the mainstream world couldn’t tell whether it was a legitimate movement or not passed. But, again, most harassers faced no meaningful repercussions. Gamers who bought the lie about “ethics in games journalism” stayed mad that no one had ever taken them seriously, and harassers continued to grief their targets for years. The full timeline of GamerGate is an constant cycle of lies, harassment, operations, grift, and doxxing. Dead-enders are to this day still using the hashtag. And remember how Anita had nothing to do with ethics in games journalism or Zoe Quinn, and they just roped her in because they’d enjoyed harassing her before so why not? Every one of GamerGate’s targets knows that they may get dragged into some future harassment campaign just because. It’s already happened to several of them. They’re marked.

(sigh) Let’s take a breath.

Now that we know what GamerGate was, let’s talk about why it worked.

In the thick of GamerGate, I started compiling a list of tactics I saw them using. I wanted to make a video essay that was one part discussion of antifeminist backlash, and one part list of techniques these people use so we can better recognize and anticipate their behavior. That first part became six parts and the second part went on a back burner. It would eventually become my series, The Alt-Right Playbook. GamerGate is illustrative because most of what would become The Alt-Right Playbook was in use.

Two foundational principles of The Alt-Right Playbook are Control the Conversation and Never Play Defense. Make sure people are talking about what you want them to talk about, and take an aggressive posture so you look dominant even when you’re not making sense. For instance: once Zoe leaked the IRC chatlogs, a reasonable person could tell the average gater, “the originators of GamerGate were planning harassment from the very beginning.” But the gater would say, “you’re cherry-picking; not everyone was a harasser.”

Now, this is a bad argument - that’s not how you use “cherry-picking” - and it’s being framed as an accusation - you’re not just wrong, you’re dishonest - which makes you wanna defend yourself. But, if you do - if you tell them why that argument is crap - you’ve let the conversation move from “did the IRC plan harassment?” - a question of fact - to “are the harassers representative of the movement?” - a question of ethics. Like, yes, they are, but only within a certain moral framework. An ethics question has no provable answer, especially if people are willing to make a lot of terrible arguments. It is their goal to move any question with a definitive answer to a question of philosophy, to turn an argument they can’t win into an argument nobody can win.

The trick is to treat the question you asked like it’s already been answered and bait you into addressing the next question. By arguing about whether you’re cherry-picking, you’re accepting the premise that whether you’re cherry-picking is even relevant. Any time this happens, it’s good to pause and ask, “what did we just skip over?” Because that will tell you a lot.

What you skipped over is their admission that, yes, the IRC did plan harassment, but that’s only on them if most of the movement was in on it. Which is a load of crap - the rest of the IRC saw it happening, let it happen, it’s not like anybody warned Zoe, and shit, I’m having the cherry-picking argument! They got me! You see how tempting it is? But presumably the reason you brought the harassment up is because you want them to do something about it. At the very least, leave the movement, but ideally try and stop it. They don’t, strictly speaking, need to feel personally responsible to do that. And you might be thinking, well, maybe if I can get them take responsibility then they’ll do something, but you’d be falling for a different technique I call I Hate Mondays.

This is where people will acknowledge a terrible thing is happening, maybe even agree it’s bad, but they don’t believe anything can be done about it. They also don’t believe you believe anything can be done about it. Mondays suck, but they come around every week. This is never stated outright, but it’s why you’re arguing past each other. To them, the only reason to talk about the bad thing is to assign blame. Whose turn is it to get shit on for the unsolvable problem? Their argument about cherry-picking amounts to “1-2-3 not it.” And they are furious with you for trying to make them responsible for harassment they didn’t participate in.

The unspoken argument is that harassment is part of being on the internet. Every public figure deals with it. This ignores any concept of scale - why does one person get harassed more than another? - but you can’t argue with someone who views it as a binary: harassment either happens or it doesn’t, and, if it does, it’s a fact of life, and, if it happens to everyone, it’s not gendered. And this is not a strongly-held belief they’ve come to after years of soul-searching - this is what they’ve just decided they believe. They want to participate in GamerGate despite knowing its purpose, and this is what would need to be true for that to be ok.

Or maybe they’re just fucking with you! Maybe you can’t tell. Maybe they can’t tell, either. I call this one The Card Says Moops, where people say whatever they feel will score points in an argument and are so irony-poisoned they have no idea whether they actually believe it. A very useful trick if the thing you appear to believe is unconscionable. You can’t take what people like that say at face value; you can only intuit their beliefs from their actions. They say they believe this one minute and that another, but their behavior is always in accordance with that, not this.

In the negative space, their belief is, “The harassment of these women is okay. My anger about video games is more important. I may not be harassing them myself, but they do kind of deserve it.” They will never say this out loud in a serious conversation, though many will say it in an anonymous or irreverent space where they can later deny they meant it. But, whatever they say they believe, this is the worldview they are operating under.

Obscuring this means flipping through a lot of contradictory arguments. The harassment is being faked, or it’s not being faked but it’s being exaggerated, or it’s not being exaggerated but the target is provoking it to get attention, which means GamerGate harassers simultaneously don’t exist, exist in small numbers, and exist in such large numbers someone can build a career out of relying on them! It can be kind of fun to take all these arguments made in isolation and try to string together an actual position. Like, GamerGate would argue that Nathan Grayson having previously mentioned Zoe Quinn in an article about a canceled reality show counts as positive coverage, and since Grayson reached out to Quinn for comment it’s reasonable to assume they started dating before the article was published (which is earlier than they claim), and positive coverage did lead to greater popularity for Depression Quest. But if you untangle that, it’s like… okay, you’re saying Zoe Quinn slept with a journalist in exchange for four nonconsecutive sentences that said no more than “Zoe Quinn exists and made a game,” and the price of those four sentences was to date the journalist for months, all to get rich off a game that didn’t cost any money. That’s your movement?

And some, if cornered, would say, “yes, we believe women are just that shitty, that one would fuck a guy for months if it made them the tiniest bit more famous.” But they won’t lead with that. Because they know it won’t convince the normies, even the ones who want to be convinced. So they use a process I call The Ship of Theseus to, piece by piece, turn that sentence into “slept with a journalist in exchange for a good review” and argue that each part of the sentence is technically accurate. It’s trying to lie without lying. And, provided all the pieces of this sentence are discussed separately, and only in the context of how they justify this sentence, you can trick yourself into believing this sentence is mostly true.

So, like, why? This is clearly motivated reasoning; what’s the motivation? What was this going to accomplish?

The answer is nothing. Nothing, by design. GamerGate’s “official” channels - the subreddit and the handful of forums that didn’t shut them down - were rigidly opposed to any action more organized than an email campaign. They had a tiny handful of tangible demands - they wanted gaming websites to post public ethics policies and had a list of people they wanted fired - but their larger aim was the sea change in how games journalism operated, which nothing they were asking for could possibly give them. The kind of anger that convinces you this is a true statement is not going to be addressed by a few paragraphs about ethics and Leigh Alexander getting a new job. They wanted gaming sites to stop catering to women and “SJWs” - who were a sizable and growing source of traffic - and to get out of the pockets of companies that advertised on their websites - which was their primary source of income. So all Kotaku had to do to make them happy was solve capitalism!

Meanwhile, the unofficial channels, like 8chan and Baphomet, were planning op after op to get private information, spread lies with fake accounts, get disinformation trending, make people quit jobs, cancel gigs, and flee their homes. Concrete goals with clear results. All you had to do to feel productive was go rogue. In my video,

How to Radicalize a Normie, I describe how the Alt-Right encourages lone wolf behavior by whipping people up into a rage and then refusing to give them anything to do, while surrounding them with examples of people taking matters into their own hands. The same mechanism is in play here: the public-facing channels don’t condone harassment but also refuse to fight it, the private channels commit it under cover of anonymity, and there is a free flow of traffic between them for when the official channels’ impotence becomes unbearable.

What I hope I’m illustrating is how these techniques play off of each other, how they create a closed ecosystem that rational thought cannot enter. There’s a phrase we use on the internet that got thrown around a lot at the time:

you can’t logic someone out of a position they didn’t logic themselves into.

Now, there are a few other big topics I think are relevant here, so I want to go through them one by one.

MEMEIFICATION

So a lot of interactions with GamerGate would involve a very insular knowledge base.

Like, you’d say something benign but progressive on Twitter.

A gater would show up in your mentions and say something aggressive and false.

You’d correct them. But then they’d come back and hit you with -

ah shit, sorry, this is a Loss meme.

If I were in front of a classroom I’d ask, show of hands, how many of you got that? I had to ask Twitter recently, does Gen Z know about Loss?!

If you don’t know what Loss is I’m not sure I can explain it to you. It’s this old, bad webcomic that was parodied so, so, so many times

that it was reduced to its barest essentials, to the point where any four panels with shapes in this arrangement is a Loss meme. For those of you in the know, you will recognize this anywhere, but have you ever tried to explain to someone who wasn’t in the know why this is really fuckin’ funny?

So, now… by the same process that this is a comics joke,

this is a rape joke.

I’m not gonna show the original image, but, once upon a time, someone made an animated GIF of the character Piccolo from Dragon Ball Z graphically raping Vegeta. 4chan loved it so much that it got posted daily, became known as the “daily dose,” until mods started deleting every incident of it. So they uploaded slightly edited version of it. Then they started uploading other images that had been edited with Piccolo’s color scheme. It got so abstracted that eventually any collection of purple and green pixels would be recognized as Piccolo Dick.

Apropos of nothing, GamerGate is a movement that insists it is not sexist in nature and it does not condone threats of rape against the women they don’t like. And this is their logo. This is their mascot.

If you’re familiar with the Daily Dose, the idea that GamerGate would never support Eron Gjoni if they believed he was a sexual abuser is so blatantly insincere it’s insulting… but imagine trying to explain to someone who’s not on 4chan how this sweater is a rape joke. Imagine having to explain it to a journalist. Imagine having to explain it to the judge enforcing your abuser’s restraining order.

Reactionaries use meme culture not just because they’re terminally online but also because it makes their behavior seem either benign or just confusing to outsiders. They find it hilarious that they can be really explicit and still fly under the radar. The Alt-Right did this with Pepe the Frog, the OK sign, even the milk glass emoji for a hot minute. The more inexplicable the meme, the better. You get the point where Stephen Miller is flashing Nazi signs from the White House and the Presidential re-eletion campaign is releasing 88 ads of exactly 14 words and there’s still a debate about whether the administration is racist. Because journalists aren’t going to get their heads around that. You tell them “1488 is a Nazi number,” it’s gonna seem a lot more plausible that you’re making shit up.

MOVE FAST AND BREAK THINGS

Online movements like GamerGate move at a speed and mutation rate too high for the mainstream world to keep up. And not just that they don’t understand the memes - they don’t understand the infrastructure.

In an attempt to cover GamerGate evenhandedly, George Wiedman of Super Bunnyhop interviewed a lawyer who specializes in journalistic ethics. He meant well; I really wish he hadn’t. You can see him trying to fit something like GamerGate into terms this silver-haired man who works in copyright law can understand. At one point he asks if it’s okay to fund the creative project of a potential journalistic source, to which the guy understandably says “no.”

What he’s alluding to here is the harassment of Jenn Frank. A few weeks into GamerGate, Jenn Frank writes a piece in The Guardian about sexism in tech that mentions Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn. In another case of “here’s a strongly-held belief I just decided I have,” GamerGate says this is a breach of journalistic ethics because Frank backs Quinn on Patreon. They harass her so intensely she not only has to quit her job at The Guardian, for several months she quits journalism entirely.

Off the bat, calling a public figure central to a major event in the field a “journalistic source” is flatly wrong-headed. Quinn was not interviewed or even contacted for the article, they were in no way a “source”; they were a subject. But I want to talk about this phrase, “fund a creative project.” Patreon is functionally a subscription; it’s a way of buying things. It’s technically accurate that Frank is funding Quinn’s creative project, but only in the sense that you are funding Bob Dylan’s creative project if you listen to his music. And saying Frank therefore can’t write about Quinn is like saying a music journalist can’t cover a Bob Dylan concert if they’ve ever bought his albums.

And we could talk about the ways that Patreon, as compared with other funding models, can create a greater sense of intimacy, and we also could comment that, well, that’s how an increasing number of people consume media now, so that perspective should be present in journalism. But maybe it means we should cover that perspective differently? I don’t know. It’s an interesting subject. But none of that’s going on in this conversation because this guy doesn’t know what Patreon is. It was only a year old at this point. Patreon’s been a primary source of my income for 5 years and my parents still don’t know what it is. (I think they think I’m a freelancer?) This guy hears “funding a creative project” and he’s thinking an investor, someone who makes a profit off the source’s success.

The language of straight society hasn’t caught up with what’s happening, and that works in GamerGate’s favor.

In the years since GamerGate we have dozens of stories of people trying to explain Twitter harassment to a legal system that’s never heard of Twitter. People trying to explain death threats to cops whose only relationship to the internet is checking email, confusedly asking, “Why don’t you just not go online?” Like, yeah, release your text game about depression at GameStop for the PS3 and get it reviewed in the Boston Globe, problem solved.

You see this in the slowness of mainstream journalists to condemn the harassment - hell, even games journalists at first. Because what if it is a legitimate movement? What if the harassers are just a fringe element? What if there was misconduct? The people in a position to stop GamerGate don’t have to be convinced of their legitimacy, they just have to hesitate. They just have to be unsure. Remember how much happened in just the first two weeks, how it took only a month to become unkillable.

It’s the same hesitance that makes mainstream media, online platforms, and law enforcement underestimate The Alt-Right. They’re terrified of condemning a group as white nationalist terrorists because they’re confused, and what if they’re wrong? Or, in most cases, not even afraid they’re wrong, but afraid of the PR disaster if too much of the world thinks they’re wrong.

ACCOUNTABILITY AND CONTROL

A thing I’ve talked about in The Alt-Right Playbook is how these decentralized, ostensibly leaderless movements insulate themselves from responsibility. Harassment is never the movement’s fault because they never told anyone to harass and you can’t prove the harassers are legitimate members of the movement. The Alt-Right does this too - one of their catchphrases is “I disavow.” Since there are no formalized rules for membership, they can redraw boundaries on the fly; they can take credit for any successes and deny responsibility for any wrongdoing. Public membership is granted or revoked based on a person’s moment-to-moment utility.

It’s almost like… they’re cherry-picking.

The flipside of this is a lack of control. Since they never officially tell anyone to do anything but write emails, they have no means of stopping anyone from behaving counterproductively. The harassment of Jenn Frank was the first time GamerGate’s originators thought, “maybe we should ease off just to avoid bad publicity,” and they found they couldn’t. GamerGate had gotten too big, and too many people were clearly there for precisely this reason.

They also couldn’t control the infighting. When your goal is to harass women and you have all these contradictory justifications for why, you end up with a lot of competing beliefs. And, you know what? Angry white men who like harassing people don’t form healthy relationships! Several prominent members of GamerGate - including Internet Aristocrat - got driven out by factionalism; they were doxxed by their own people! Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini parted ways hating each other, with Aurini releasing chatlogs of him gaslighting Owen about accepting an endorsement from Roosh, and they released two competing edits of The Sarkeesian Effect.

I say this because it’s useful to know that these are alliances of convenience. If you know where the sore spots are, you can apply pressure to them.

LEADERS WITHOUT LEADERSHIP

One way movements like GamerGate deflect responsibility is by declaring, “We are a leaderless movement! We have no means to stop harassment.”

Which… any anarchist will tell you collective action is entirely possible without leaders. But they’ll also tell you, absent a system of distributing power equitably, you’re gonna have leaders, just not ones you elected.

A few months into GamerGate, Randi Lee Harper created the ggautoblocker. Here’s what it did: it took five prominent GamerGate figures - Adam Baldwin, Mike Cernovich, Christina Hoff Sommers, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Nick Monroe, formerly known as [sigh] PressFartToContinue - and generated a block list of everyone who followed at least two of them on Twitter. Now, this became something of an arms race; once GamerGate found out about it they made secondary accounts that followed different people, and more and more prominent figures appeared and had to get added to the list. But, when it first launched, the list generated from just these five people comprised an estimated 90-95% of GamerGate.

Hate to break it to you, guys, but if 90+ percent of your movement is following at least two of the same five people, those are your leaders. The attention economy has produced them. Power pools when left on its own.

This is another case where you have to ignore what people claim and look at what they do. The Alt-Right loves to say “we disavow Richard Spencer” and “Andrew Anglin doesn’t speak for us.”

But no matter what they say, pay attention to whom they’re taking cues from.

AD CAMPAIGN

George Lakoff has observed that one way the Left fails in opposition to the Right is that most liberal politicians and campaigners have degrees in things like law and political science, where conservative campaigners more often have degrees in advertising and communications. Liberals and leftists may have a better product to sell, but conservatives know how to sell products.

GamerGate less resembles a boots-on-the-ground political movement than an ad campaign. First they decide what their messaging strategy is going to be. Then the media arm starts publicizing it. They seek out celebrity endorsements. They get their own hashtag and mascot. They donate to charity and literally call it “public relations.” You can even see the move from The Quinnspiracy to GamerGate as a rebranding effort - when one name got too closely associated with harassment, they started insisting GamerGate was an entirely separate movement from The Quinnspiracy. I learned that trick from Stringer Bell’s economics class.

Now, we could stand to learn a thing or two from this. But I also wouldn’t want us to adopt this strategy whole hog; you should view moves like these as red flags. If you’re hesitating to condemn a movement because what if it’s legitimate, take a look at whether they’re selling ideology like it’s Pepsi.

PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING

One reason to insist you’re a consumer revolt rather than a harassment campaign is most people who want to harass need someone to give them permission, and need someone to tell them it’s normal.

Bob Altemeyer has this survey he uses to study authoritarianism. He divides respondents into people with low, average, and high authoritarian sentiments, and then tells them what the survey has measured and asks, “what score do you think is best to have: low, average, or high?”

People with low authoritarian sentiments say it’s best to be low. People with average authoritarian sentiments also say it’s best to be low. But people with high authoritarian sentiments? They say it’s best to be average. Altemeyer finds, across all his research, that reactionaries want to aggress, but only if it is socially acceptable. They want to know they are the in-group and be told who the out-group is. They don’t particularly care who the out-group is, Altemeyer finds they’ll aggress against any group an authority figure points to, even, if they don’t notice it, a group that contains them. They just have to believe the in-group is the norm.

This is why they have to believe games journalism is corrupt because of a handful of feminist media critics with outsized influence. Legitimate failures of journalism cannot be systemic problems rooted in how digital media is funded and consumed; there cannot be a legitimate market for social justice-y media. It has to be manipulation by the few. Because, if these things are common, then, even if you don’t like them, they’re normal. They’re part of the in-group. Reactionary politics is rebellion against things they dislike getting normalized, because they know, if they are normalized, they will have to accept them. Because the thing they care about most is being normal.

This is why the echo chamber, this is why Fox News, this is why the Far Right insists they are the “silent majority.” This is why they artificially inflate their numbers. This is why they insist facts are “biased.” They have to maintain the image that what are, in material terms, fringe beliefs are, in fact, held by the majority. This is why getting mocked by Stephen Colbert was such a blow to GamerGate. It makes it harder to believe the world at large agrees with them.

This is why, if you’re trying to change the world for the better, it’s pointless to ask their permission. Because, if you change the world around them, they will adapt even faster than you will.

THE ARGUMENT ISN’T SUPPOSED TO END

Casey Explosion has this really great Twitter thread comparing the Alt-Right to Scary Terry from Rick and Morty. His catchphrase is “you can run but you can’t hide, bitch.” And Rick and Morty finally escape him by hiding. And Morty’s all, “but he said we can’t hide,” and Rick is like, “why are we taking his word on this? if we could hide, he certainly wouldn’t tell us.”

The reason to argue with a GamerGater is on the implied agreement that, if you can convince them they’re part of a hate mob, they will leave. But look at the incentives here: they want to be in GamerGate, and you want them not to be. But they’re already in GamerGate. They’re not waiting on the outcome of this argument to participate. They’ve already got what they want; they don’t need to convince you GamerGate isn’t a hate mob.

This is why all their logic and rationalizations are shit, because they don’t need to be good. They’re not trying to win an argument. They’re trying to keep the argument going.

This has been a precept of conservative political strategy for decades. “You haven’t convinced us climate change is real and man-made, you need to do more studies.” They’re not pausing the use of fossil fuels until the results come in. “You haven’t convinced us there are no WMDs in Iraq, you need to collect more evidence.” They’re not suspending the war until you get back to them. “You haven’t convinced us that Reaganomic tax policy causes recessions, let’s just do it for another forty years and see what happens.” And when the proof comes in, they send us out for more, and we keep going.

The biggest indicator you can’t win a debate with a reactionary is they keep telling you you can. The biggest indicator protest and deplatforming works is they keep telling you in plays into their hands. The biggest indicator that you shouldn’t compromise with Republicans is they keep saying doing otherwise is stooping to their level. They’re not going to walk into the room and say, “Hi, my one weakness is reasoned argument, let’s pick a time and place to hash this out.”

And we fall for it because we’re trying to be decent people. Because we want to believe the truth always wins. We want to bargain in good faith, and they are weaponizing our good faith against us. Always dangling the carrot that the reason they’re like this is no one’s given them the right argument not to be. It’s all just a misunderstanding, and, really, it’s on us for not trying hard enough.

But they have no motivation to agree with us. Most of the people asking for debates have staked their careers on disagreeing with us. Conceding any point to the Left could cost them their livelihood.

WHY GAMES?

Let’s close with the big question: why games? And, honestly, the short answer is:

why not games?

Games culture has always presented itself as a hobby for young, white, middle class boys. It’s always been bigger and more diverse than that, but that’s how it was marketed, and that’s who most felt they belonged. As gaming grows bigger, there is suddenly room for those marginal voices that have always been there to make themselves heard. And, as gaming becomes more mainstream, it’s having its first brushes with serious critical analysis.

This makes the people who have long felt gaming was theirs and theirs alone anxious and a little angry. They’ve invested a lot of their identity in it and they don’t want it to change.

And what the Far Right sees in a sizable collection of aggrieved young men is an untapped market. This is why sites like Stormfront and Breitbart flocked to them. These are not liberals they have to convert, these people are, up til now, not politically engaged. The Right can be their first entry to politics.

The world was changing. Nerd properties were exploding into popular culture in tandem with media representation diversifying. And we were living with the first Black President. Any time an out-group looks like it might join the in-group, there is a self-protective backlash from the existing in-group. This had been brewing for a while, and, honestly, if it hadn’t boiled over in games, it would have boiled over somewhere else.

And, in the years since GamerGate, it has. The Far Right has tapped the comics, Star Wars, and sci-fi fandoms; they tried to get in with the furry community but failed spectacularly. They’re all over YouTube and, frankly, the atheist community was already in their pocket. Basically, if you’re in community with a bunch of young white guys who think they own the place, you might wanna have some talks with them sooner than later.

Anyway, if you want to know more about any of this stuff, RationalWiki’s timeline on GamerGate is pretty thorough. You can also watch my or Dan Olson’s videos on the subject. I’ll be putting the audio of this talk on YouTube and will put as many resources as I can in the show notes. The channel, again, is Innuendo Studios.

Sorry this was such a bummer.

Thank you for your time.

#video essay #alt-right playbook #Youtube

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worminstuff · 3 years

Text

awesamdude x reader

per this request, “ i forgot to say in my last request: i just recently found sam, so if you could write him i would absolutely adore you (which i already do) if not no hard feelings- anon xo🤍 “ i present to youuu

awesamdude x reader fluff!!!!!

Sam and tubbo are filling in the oshun, having a bit of a q&a when someone asks Sam if he has a girlfriend and someone slips up a lil.....

^^^^^^^

“Oh Tubbo my moms in the chat! Hi mom!” Sam made a quick glance at his stream labs to see his mom had popped in.

“Your mom watches the streams? Pog!” Tubbo let out a airy laugh.

“Yeah my mom is so cool, everyone tell my mom she's cool in chat please. Okay next question, Tubbo do you have one?” Sam finished a row of sand finding his inventory also empty so he made his way over to the chests.

“I think I do Sam, ellewastaken, what do you guys do all day when you're not streaming? Personally I eat and go to school and edit, that's about it” Tubbo smiled and shook his head a bit at his boring schedule.

“Same for me too I guess, we streamers aren't super exciting.” He nodded, agreeing with tubbo, “Chat what are you spamming?” Sam paused what he was doing to try to read the chat that was going incredibly fast. One of his mods, catching his confusion one of his mods dmed him a screenshot of what his mom said in chat that caused the little uproar,

your schedule is not boring anymore with y/n around that's a bit of a lie.

“Mom!” He laughed a tad as he spoke “Mom you've doxed your own son! They don't know about that yet.” He shook his head to himself, she didn't do it on purpose because she had no idea he had yet to mention it to his viewers. Sam wasn't particularly hiding you, there wasn't really a reason to, you didn't post pictures of him or yours faces publicly so that wasn't a problem, he just hadn't gotten around to it yet.

You were sitting across the room quietly like you'd been doing for his streams lately, scrolling through twitter or tiktok or doing some schoolwork just keeping him company. You perked your head up at that though, curious to what she could've said.

“Your mom doxed you? What?!” Tubbo laughed loudly.

“Okay chat relax, relax, y/n is actually my girlfriend,” You sat up completely now, fully listening.

“You've got a girlfriend Sam? That's so cool! Congratulations!” Tubbo smiled wildly, Even his chat was excited for Sam.

“I do! Thank you Tubbo!” he chuckled. “She's awesome, She's here too, she sits with me while I stream so im not lonely, when Tubbos not here of course.” He looked back to you seeing your shocked face, he gave you a small nod and a smile, calming you a bit.

You hadn't given a thought about what it would be like when his audience was aware of your existence.

“merinaxbc asked how long have you and your girlfriend been together, I have a feeling a bunch of these questions are gonna be getting asked around now” He chuckled, “We’ve been together for..5 months? I think? I think im right.” He turned back to look at you, seeing you nodding happily.

“kerilinmemegod asked, does y/n also play Minecraft? Oh its so strange seeing you guys know her name, she does like Minecraft but she mostly likes games like animal crossing. We’ve been playing that a lot lately.” Him and Tubbo were making their way towards Sam’s base for some more sand and food.

Tubbo and Sam talked about some smp things and things for mcc while they worked, answering a few questions here and there.

“I'm getting a whole lot of questions about y/n now I feel like I should let her answer them. Tubbo do you wanna talk to y/n maybe?” He looked back to you silently asking if you'd be okay with his idea, you gave him a small nod.

“Sure! You should just be glad Tommy's not here.” He giggled.

“I am, I am, okay here she is!” You slid a chair over as he pulled off his headset holding out for you. You situated your chair next to his on the side with his mic, taking his headset from his hand.

“Hello!” You grinned with excitement, You'd known of Tubbo, and you adored him! You thought he was so sweet and you loved listening to him and Sam.

“Hi! Hi Sam’s girlfriend! Its so nice to meet you Sam’s girlfriend!!” You could hear his grin though his voice.

“Hi tubbo! Its nice to meet you too!” You grinned up at your boyfriend as he was smiling towards you shaking his head at how you were practically vibrating in excitement.

“You gotta answer questions, look at these,” He pointed towards his stream labs on one of his monitors. You read through the latest few and decided on one from a minute ago since it was the first one you saw.

“How tall is Sam? tall tall.” Sam defiantly towered over you quite a bit, he loved it to, being able to lift you and hold you so comfortably.

“Is he really?” Tubbo asked

“He’s like..6′5?” you looked towards him, “Close, 6′7.″ he nodded looking at his screen placing sand.

“Surely not! That's huge!” Tubbo looked at his face cam in astonishment.

You laughed, looking towards the stream labs for more questions, “We don't live together, maybe soon though. I am in school! Regular college nothing as smarty pants as him.”

You sat answering questions as they came in, occasionally talking with tubbo in-between.

The entire time Sam was grinning. he adored listening to you talk to his community and one of his best friends, you were so adorable too. You got excited with certain questions, happy to tell stories of you two. He thought you were absolutely perfect, and it seemed like chat did too!

***

there we go! a small bit o sam, hopefully it was alright! it was a lot of fun to write sam, 10/10 will do again:D

#awesamdude #awesamdudefanfiction #awesamdude x reader #dreamsmp fanfic #dreamsmp #dream team fanfic

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the-bjd-community-confess · 3 years

Text

Many Divaz/Z3st confos

Mod: Not all the ones in the inbox, but a batch of them to peruse at your leisure.

1. Z3st got told by a mod on the BJD Discord to stop with his drama-mongering. He argued with the mod. In b4 he whines here about the BJD Discord.

~Anonymous

2. @A certain someone: DOA mods warning you to stop making drama or else ban is not an attack on you. BJD Discord mod warning you to stop making drama or ban is not an attack on you. They're just doing their jobs. To stop finding yourself in situations where you feel attacked, don't make drama. Seriously it's getting super tiresome seeing your crap all over the place esp since you're acting like someone shot your dog or smth. You're doing this to yourself and blaming others for your own actions.

~Anonymous

3. My friend got messaged on FB by Z3st because they posted in support of Divaz. Z3st called them names and tried to prove his "innocence". Apparently my friend wasn't the only person Z3st did this to, I wouldn't be surprised if he did it to everyone who commented in support of Divaz. Z3st is crying about being the victim but all I see is him being the aggressor. Who the fuck messages people they don't know to harass them like that?

~Anonymous

4.@al3xcessive... you can't blame someone for "doxxing" you when you put your information out there first. Also, that's not what "doxxing" is, they've literally only showed your name AFTER YOU SHOWED IT YOURSELF PUBLICLY. All of your other information was hidden. I searched for your name on FB and wouldn't have ever found you if you hadn't gone and shown yourself by spamming comments on the post.

~Anonymous

5.lol al3xcess claiming he'd been "harassed" when he DMs random people to call them bootlickers and they tell him to fuck off xD

~Anonymous

6.If the customer is batshit terrible to work with, you refund them and ban them. Don’t feed trolls and all. Seems simple? But Div4s just gonna dox somebody like that? Even their most hardcore fans ought to be sayin “hol up” instead of cheering.

~Anonymous

7.Lol @ Z3st calling Divaz "insidiously hostile" when he himself is this way and he even admitted it: "i had been nothing but nice, and ABSURDLY patient, and understanding and looking back now the gushing tone in which i took makes me sick" - Looking at HIS OWN receipts, his "absurdly nice" is just normal decency. It really says a lot about him that he considers it absurd and that it makes him sick. Divas aren't the ones being insidious, Z3st, you admitted you were deceptive from the getgo.

~Anonymous

8.I'm done with r_s who defend BJDivaz on DoA. I had to wait MONTHS for any sign of life from them, they NEVER answer their emails, and they've mishandled ALL of my orders. They won't be an adult about this! If you're ordering from them, you're pretty much supporting them. Stop.

~Anonymous

9.Neutral to Divaz but seeing them did a call out to a troublesome customer is a bit uncomfortable. I believe they should have kept the person's name as anon, never mention their irl or username. I understand that they are upset that their business reputation is damaged by the customer's words but still a business shouldn't blast their customer's personal info on public platform. A business should be a business. Personal feelings should be handled off the business page.

Again I fully understand Divaz is human too and they can feel upset by exaggerated rumours but a business shouldn't be so sensitive to any provocation. I'm sure other dealers also get a lot of negative comments but we seldom hear them talk about it publicly. Really not my place to say, I think Divaz should try to keep personal emotions off their business page. Occasional bad press will naturally go away on its own if they can maintain good and satisfied customers on a long run. I feel like them fighting back against angry (ex) customers and seeking comfort from others is not the best move as a business. It is fine that they express their frustration to their family and friends but definitely not on a public business page. It just feels unprofessional. It's my 2 cents.

Sorry Divaz, I know you don't want to hear this but please do try to keep personal feelings aside when running a business. It will really help you on a long run. Haters will only use this against you because they know you will react to their provocation. This will never end and only damge your reputation further. Hope for the best.

~Anonymous

10. Cheeesus, that long Divaz post on that DoA user is too much. With all the precise time-stamps details and quotations, it's like a lawyer presenting a courtcase like "the evidence here shows that at 'hour;minute' you said this XXX. Is it true?" And we, the witnesses/audience, are all called to participate in the judgment. lol

~Anonymous

11. ne1 else get msged by Z3st on fb cuz he wants to bitch u out for posting on divaz?

~Anonymous

12. Divaz doxxes and stalks people, talks shit about customers on their FB, forgets to place orders, hands out tons of excuses for why they can't reply... among other things. Why the fuck are you all still dealing with them? Cl0ver singing, Alice's and a bunch of other companies are ten times better. Stop👏 validating👏 shitty 👏companies 👏

~Anonymous

13.There are certain people who always jump to the defense of BjDivaz and get mad when other people have legitimate issues with them. Get a life. Some of us have real problems and bad experiences ordering from them.

~Anonymous

14. I know everyone has a different situation and state their opinion with what they have already experienced, but I'm not gonna lie that I felt bad when I read someone saying that bjdivaz long layaways aren't even neccesary and they should just remove it. While I do agree bjdivaz could improve in how they manage some stuff, at the same time they are the only ones that let me "join" the hobby and don't feel bad because I can't pay in full or put down big payments as other hobbyists. I know it's not neccesary and I can save, but from someone who comes from a place of poverty I already feel guilty enough spending in a hobby and having big amounts of money always end up in paying emergencies and starting from 0 again. So these "really long and unnecessary layaways" give me the opportunity to not feel as guilty and enjoy something like the rest without spending too much every month to the point that it could affect my daily life.

~Anonymous

15. Z3st/Alex is legitimately evil for what he's doing, trying to put a company out of business that, per the emails that he himself posted, has never been anything but helpful to him (and many others). I'd bet he's the main source of all the BJDivaz hate going on here, and the miserable people around here were more than happy to grab their pitchforks and join his mob. Stop it.

~Anonymous

#BJD #ABJD #BJD Confessions #TrueBJDConfessions #BJD Dealers #BJD Groups

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a-student-out-of-time · 3 years

Note

((Mod, since you value respecting different opinions and everything, something's recently happened: the Youtuber Kubz Scouts said he didn't like a character and was happy they died, so fans of that character are now screaming insults at him and demanding that he be "canceled". Because if there's one thing that drives Danganronpa fans into a screaming at the top of their lungs frenzy, it's other people daring to have a different, and perhaps unpopular, opinion about fictional characters.))

//Did you want my opinion on this? Because I can’t really give you one, since I haven’t watched his DR playthroughs and I’m not at all interested in internet drama.

//As for that kind behavior, if you do want my opinion on that, I’ll do my best to provide. I’ll put it under here for anyone who’s not interested.

Let’s not pretend this is exclusive to Danganronpa fans or that this is a new development. I remember the days when everyone was playing Undertale and anyone who didn’t go for the Pacifist Run and didn’t do everything perfectly was subject to a lot of discontent. Hell, I remember when Superwholock was a thing and people genuinely and unironically used threats like “You messed with the wrong fandom.”

Someone disliking a game or a character in a game is not a personal attack on you because you like them. We cannot assume that just because someone likes or dislikes something, they are by extension directing their feelings toward people who do not share their feelings on the matter. I examine media on its own merits and never try to list the fandom as a reason why I dislike something. Media and fandom are exclusive things and we can talk about the problems and merits of one, the other, or both.

This is the biggest one: Cancelling is not a real thing, at least not the way many of us think it is. There are people who’ve been “cancelled” and yet still have fans, still talk about things the same way, and still have a voice in public despite doing shitty things or just things deemed “unacceptable” by some group of people. Cancelling is more often than not just momentary outrage followed by mass attempts at character assassination, and it’s often filled with baseless accusations and quotes pulled out of context rather than real evidence for bad behavior. And in most cases, it will fade away. While I absolutely do think that people should be held accountable after saying and doing horrible things, there are people who’ve been “cancelled” for honest mistakes or behaviors they themselves did not realize were bad, or even for very minor things like people not liking the way they draw or for not liking a popular character. And this kind of thing really just takes the form of sending hate mail and demanding that they disappear or die. The kind of behavior people are supposed to discourage in any circumstance. The thing I dislike the most about this behavior is not just that it’s just reskinned cyberbullying, but that it actually makes the problems worse. When you harass and insult people for not holding your opinion, that is not going to endear them or anyone to your side. In fact, it’s probably going to make them stick to their opinions even harder. And when that happens, it makes it so easy for shitty people to co-opt that as a sign of how irrational and cruel your side is. It also hurts that it feels like most people who engage in this stuff think they’re doing the world a favor, when all they’re doing is harassing someone whose reputation they don’t have the power to destroy. I think most people do this either because they’re genuinely ignorant of their inability to really damage someone’s credibility, that they think it makes them a good person for stopping “unacceptable” behavior, or maybe they’re just in it for the drama, because it’s “fun”. But what really hurts the most is this expectation many of us now have, that we’re one opinion or one stupid post away from getting showered with hate mail, doxxed and maybe even pushed to the brink of suicide, and for things that we may not have even meant. To be crystal clear, I will not excuse genuinely repulsive behavior and you shouldn’t either, but this is not the way to handle it. If you want people to change their opinions or understand where they went wrong, communicate with them and help them understand. You need to engage with them openly and kindly. Compassion is the key. I say this not for the people who’ve been “cancelled”, but for the people who think it’s a good idea: it can be so easy, but you will not get anyone to agree with you just by answering hate with hate, and you will never be able to completely silence anyone in today’s world. You simply won’t. Most importantly, this kind of behavior does not put you on a moral high ground, it makes you no better than the people you claim to be standing against. Sending death threats and hate mail to people is wrong regardless of who’s doing it, and if one person does it, you’d be the bigger person by not responding to them. Most of all though, remember Hanlon’s Razor: never attribute to malice what can equally be attributed to ignorance. Some people make mistakes and post things without realizing what exactly they mean- I’ve done this myself and I had people point out how bad they were, so I simply deleted the posts. People are often much better and more understanding than they’re given credit for and I want people to understand that. And if you try and get them to listen, but they still refuse to see things your way, ignore them. Move on from them and try to find people who will. You can’t simply force opposition out of existence, but you can try to at least get more people to see things your way through kind words, sharing of thoughts and understanding alternative viewpoints. I would never ask anyone following me to try and “cancel” people who don’t like my writing. I want to encourage kind communication and open discussion, because that’s how we learn and how we improve. What I do ask is that you be good to others and to yourselves, ignore the drama, and talk openly and kindly with other people. Compassion and understanding is how things truly improve.

#mod talks #mod rambles #a student out of time #Anonymous

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lairmadness · 5 months

Text

hiatus notice!

It's been a long time!! We are both well, but life has been collectively kicking both our asses a little bit, and the prospect of picking up and running the blog as consistently as we used to is feeling kind of daunting as a result. So we're going to step back for a little while and work on some other stuff while we clear our heads, and come back later ready to continue.

(how much later? unsure! But hopefully not long, we still both care a lot about the blog and its story. This isn't the last you'll see of it by a long shot :))

Additionally, both mods have both moved main blogs over the past few months- you can now find us instead at @alien-shmalien and @creaturelytracker.

Take care!!

#i (tracker) should also apologise for. um. disappearing for like the whole of august and september and most of october #i am no longer insanely depressed like i was but other stuff is still grating on me hence the continued break #and My problems are relatively tame in comparison to what dox has going on!!! so!!! this was just better for both of us #than being guilty and hemming and hawing over when we're gonna start the blog up again yknow #but we will be back.. eventually.....#(mod dox here) HI shits been insanely hectic and tracker is back so i think. we just need. a little bit of a break.#i am personally working on a webcomic ish thing so if you enjoy our stuff you can check us out there (you can find a link to it on main)#(as for what tracker is mentioning in the tags. i um. got disowned <3 lmAO im totally fine but its stressful yaknow?)#ooc

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little-red-toyota · 3 years

Text

Final good bye to the fandom

TW//Trauma, triggers, nsfw, sexual themes, rape, domestic abuse e.g.

This is gonna be a long ass post…

It has taken me a while to get emotionally strong enough to do this, as I will have to think back at some traumatic events from my past to address some of these things. That's why I waited until I got home from vacation with my family, as it will seriously affect my mood and mental health, and I want to be near my doctor and therapist, just in case.

And also, I know that the majority of those reading this will invalidate me and tell me I am making things up to clear my name. So, I literally have to torment myself to write a blog post people will just brush off as bogus anyway. But I will do it now that I am in safe surroundings. Then it will be off my chest, and I can finally move on. If people will continue stirring up the past, it will be their problem, not mine.

I think I should write one last blog post where I address everything. I have left the TTTE-fandom, but I will write that one as my final goodbye to the fandom. I just have to find out everything I've been accused of so I can properly address them all in order. I might leave out details of my life that is too hard for me to open up about. I know most of you will just invalidate me anyway.

1. The Stepney fic and glorifying rape.

2. My mafia-AU.

3. The Darin incident.

4. Being a pedophile. (Where do they get this from anyway??)

5. Running the NSFW-blog.

6. Drawing penises/boobs on trains. Drawing age-regression art.

Is there more?

Ah... yes! Faking my own suicide, of course!

7. "Faking" being suicidal.

8. Having the audacity to survive and go on living.

9. "Making up" my past trauma to justify writing fics to cope with it.

10. Being a nazi for being interested in WW2 history and for being Norwegian and having so-called nazi-letters in my last name (actual letters of the Norwegian alphabet).

11. Putting a white-supremacist flag (the actual flag of Norway) on my porch on family birthdays and our national day.

12. Being a danger to my daughter.

Anything else that needs to be addressed? What else am I being accused of? Send me a dm and I will add it to the post.

Okay, I will bump the Stepney fic down a bit as it is the most traumatic thing for me to address, I will save that one for last.

2 and 3. The dark au/mafia au where I gave some TTTE characters some rather dark and unpleasant character traits, and the whole incident with Darin and the pedo-Salty was addressed in this blog post written by my husband last year, so I am not opening that can of worms again: https://little-red-toyota.tumblr.com/post/623743183795470336/in-light-of-recent-events

Even the thing about Toby cheating on Henrietta is addressed there.

As for the au, I never fully explored it as I started losing interest in TTTE around the same time. I found other things to enjoy and TTTE faded into the background and the au was dropped before I even wrote any stories, apart from the one about Toby and Henrietta.

Some people claim, like this lovely individual, that most of the characters were rapists and pedos. No, not most. Only one of each. And I did not write more than one story about rape and suicide. Where does this person even get that from? Someone who told someone who had heard from someone who might have heard….?

Don't spread rumors unless you are sure that they are true.

Anyway, it's all addressed in that blog post in that link. I don't see how this mafia au is any worse than other dark post-apocalyptic or violent aus. It mostly was about the diesel mafia and their illegal businesses, not about sex, even if it did occur now and then. I find the substance abuse in it to be more problematic tbh…

4. Being a pedophile.

I don't even know how to defend myself against this one, as I don't even know why people think I am pedophile. They only throw the accusation out with no backing evidence, so I have no idea where it comes from or what it is that makes people think I am one.

Apart from one claim that I had faved "porn" alongside "strangers'" baby photos on DA. I addressed that earlier though. As DeviantArt doesn't sort what you click "like" on, it all ends up in the same folder unless you actively go through it and sort it into categories, which I don't bother most of the time. It also doesn't say WHEN it was added to your faves. So, I can have faved an artistic nude on Saturday, and then faved my friend's family photo on Thursday. It's not like I actively search for porn, get all steamed up and then look at pictures of children. WTF.

The few children I have faved are not from complete strangers, but long-term friends of mine. Yes, it is possible to have friends on the same website. I have actually met a lot of my RL friends through DeviantArt. I posted photos of my daughter when she was a baby, they would fave it and congratulate me. So, I did the same when they had a baby. As simple as that. Nothing weird or perverted about it. Due to people doxxing me last year however, I deleted the photos of me, my husband and my daughter from DeviantArt, so it's no longer there.

Porn isn't allowed on DeviantArt anyway. The nudes there are so-called artistic nudes, and for the most part I use them as pose-references when I draw as it is easier to draw a pose using a nude base and then dress them up once you got the pose right.

"The very naked" centaurs I have faved. Well, I like the mythological creature Centaur. And as far as I know… they do not wear clothes, so how are they NOT nude? Look it up, it's a horse body with a human torso instead of horse head. I don't see them as sexual, but what do I know? Maybe YOU do?

I have no sexual interest in children whatsoever.

5. Running the NSFW-blog on Tumblr and Twitter.

Yes. I was one of six people modding that blog. ONE of six, so I refuse to take the full blame here.

MerciResolution has openly admitted to being the founder, and she recruited me and some others to modify as the confession load became too heavy for one person to handle alone.

The original blog on Tumblr worked as follows: People would anonymously send a confession to our askbox, we would add a picture (sometimes photoshopped) to the text and post it on the blog. Always tagged as NSFW and with proper trigger warnings if necessary! The blog itself was also marked as explicit, so it didn't appear in searches and such.

For us, this blog was nothing but a joke. We did it for shits and giggles. If anyone took it seriously and thought we got off to the stuff that was posted, we apologize for that, but to us it was just for laughs. And we DID laugh a lot, you guys should have seen the weird shit people sent us sometimes!

We had fun and we never thought anyone would take it seriously, so we never thought of writing "joke" in the description or anything. It never occurred to us that it could be anything but a joke.

We also made a Twitter account for it, also locked for minors. But it was quickly hacked, and someone changed the password so we could no longer access it. We made another account and forgot about the old one…

After a while, the original mods started losing interest and the blog (both on Tumblr and Twitter) became less active. That's when a person I had known for years, and wrongfully trusted, came forward and wanted to take over ownership. So, the ownership was handed over to Russalita/Charlie.

That turned out to be huge mistake!

Me and the other mods had more or less forgotten that the blogs existed, when suddenly someone started bashing me and getting up in my arms over it. I got seriously confused as I hadn't been active on it in almost a year. But as it turned out, Russalita had removed the mature filters and made the accounts open for all the see. Even minors.

And as people knew I was one of the mods, they fired their guns at me. I can see why though, so I'm not pointing any fingers here.

I tried contacting her by phone, asking her to lock the accounts again, but she gave me a less than polite response, hung up and then blocked my number…

So, I decided to try to shut the blogs down on my own, trying the old passwords. It worked on the Tumblr-account, and I managed to password protect it, for some reason it couldn't be fully deleted. But the Twitter account had gotten its password changed by Russalita. I was however able to get a new password by logging into the e-mail we had used to create it. I deleted the Twitter blog fully. It can't be re-activated even if we wanted to. It's gone.

But it turns out the old, hacked one is still up and now open for everyone. And this one poses a huge problem as we have no way of getting into it to delete it. Only thing we have been able to do so far is reporting it and hope it will be removed by Twitter. So I only have one thing to say about it: report it.

I am no longer running any NSFW TTTE blog anywhere, nor do I have interest in doing so. So, if you come across one, claiming to be me or any of the other mods, it is false.

6. Drawing penises/boobs on trains. Drawing age-regression art.

People seem to believe I have drawn genitals on trains. I have never done such. Any art on the NSFW-blog with genitalia on the trains were sent in by confessors and was not drawn by me. Most of them seems to have been drawn by someone who goes by the name "The Lance".

I HAVE drawn things for the NSFW blog, but there were no genitalia in those drawings. I drew Frank of Arlesdale looking grossed out by (I don't know what the part is named in English, but it is connected to the brakes of the engine) that stick-like thing on his bufferbeam being wet from whatever the confessor did to him. I drew an over-exaggerated comical pic of a horrified Peter Sam getting his face licked by his driver, who had an enormous tongue. I also did a couple of manips. Mostly maniping engine faces on humans, like the one where Gordon's face is on a less than fit guy flailing his shirt around, and the Arlesdale smallies' faces on a movie poster from Magic Mike. One with Mr.Conductor in a giant bun while Pinchy is applying ketchup on him, for a confession about eating him, I think? I've done some more, but I forgot what it was, I only know I loved making them comical rather than erotic, as I saw the blog as a joke overall.

I HAVE also drawn aheago faces on engines because it looks hilarious. Though I have only drawn them on my OCs and the NRS engines, not TTTE characters.

Point is I have never drawn genitalia on trains. Ever. And I likely never will. It's not THAT much fun drawing NSFW stuff.

I see from this screenshot that a certain MK-Instrumentalist claim that all my personal art is age-regression art and infantilism…

Whose art have you been looking at? Because it's definitely not mine. I have drawn a couple of baby/chibi diesels… But claiming that all of my 700 or so artworks are depicting infantilism and age-regression stuff? I suggest people go have a look for themselves. I haven't drawn that. That MK-guy has been desperately trying to cancel me for ages for reasons only himself know. I don't even know the guy, and he doesn't know me, yet he wants to see me beheaded. Go figure.

I was for a long time bothered by some age-regressor on Tumblr who just wouldn't leave me alone with their weird asks, who tried to force themselves on me and some other artists here. They claim age-regression isn't a fetish, but the shit they sent to my askbox certainly looked like a fetish to me.

I don't want anything to do with that stuff. It weirds me out.

And no. I have never drawn pedophilia or rape art either. This guy can't even make up his mind on which one to accuse me of.

7 and 8. Faking suicide and having the audacity to survive and go on living.

As many know, after the intense shitstorm against me last summer, thanks to Darin, I attempted suicide. I didn't succeed as my husband came home early. I was gone for a few days but returned when a young boy reached out to me for help as he was being groomed and didn't know who else to turn to.

Recently I saw a screenshot where someone claimed me to have faked suicide, and that I just came back after a few days when everything had died down.

Wow.

I am truly sorry I survived.

I don't remember much from those days to be honest, but as the load became too heavy and the bullying too intense, piling up on 30 years of old trauma… I decided to end it. I must warn you guys who might get triggered now; there are detailed descriptions of a suicide attempt. Proceed with caution. People told me I was a bad mother among other things, having had those same thoughts myself (according to my husband, I am a good mom) and people just confirming them, I thought that my daughter would be better off growing up without me. I could have chosen a more effective suicide method, but I was afraid my daughter would be the first to find me, so I wanted it to be clean and look like I was just sleeping. That way it could be explained as natural causes.

So, I decided to overdose on pills. I downed all pills I could find in the house that had a warning triangle on it (strong pain meds etc.) and then went to my computer to delete my online existence, especially the personal data.

As a former paramedic, I should have known better. Because after half an hour, my body started reacting. But not the way I had hoped and wanted. I started retching and almost vomiting. That's when my husband came home from work and found me. He immediately saw the empty packages and knowing my past suicidal tendencies, he reacted instinctively. He put his fingers down my throat and had me puke everything up, then he called an ambulance and had me admitted to the hospital.

I don't remember anything from the days I spent there. But I have been told they emptied my stomach and gave me lots of fluids. I was then assigned a psychiatrist which I am still seeing today.

I was gone for those days because I was in hospital, not because I was pulling some kind of trick and pretending to have ended myself.

So… I am sorry I "faked" my suicide.

I'm sorry my husband saved me. I am sorry the medics and doctors succeeded in saving my life.

I am sorry I survived and proceeded to live on. If I ever make another attempt, I promise to do better.

Why are you guys so persistent in trying to push people to suicide anyway? Do you get a kick out of it? Why do people have to be pushed to that point before you care?

What did we tell our daughter? Simply that I got sick and had to go to the hospital. She took that well.

I've seen a lot of people wonder why I am still around. Why shouldn't I? Does my daughter deserve to lose her mother over some online crap she doesn't even know about? I owe her to live and watch her grow up, to help her with her homework and whatever else a parent needs to do. I also owe my husband to stay by his side, like I promised him the day we got married. Even if I do not wish to live.

I'm sorry I survived, guys. Really, I am.

9. "Making up" my past trauma to justify writing fics to cope with it. And 1. The Stepney fic and glorifying rape.

First… why would anyone make up trauma? It's not like it's a competition to have the worst life, is it?

Sadly, I don't have to make up anything. My life HAS been rocky up until the birth of my daughter. I have been through so much trauma I couldn't even fathom it myself before my therapist listed it all up to me. Until then, I had just been casually talking to her about it, like I would talk about the weather. I didn't cry or get in touch with my emotions even once while telling everything, because I was taught from an early age to never complain, to suck it up and go on. So, no matter what people did to me, I would just smile and go on, even if it killed me inside. I did not want to show any sign of weakness, because then they would attack me. A habit I developed through years of being bullied in school. Never show feelings, just pretend nothing could hurt you, then they would eventually grow tired of it and stop.

Except they never did. They kept going through all my years at school. To such an extent, my boyfriend didn't dare to show himself hanging out with me out of fear of being bullied himself… And as we grew older, he would start cheating on me too. And I kept smiling…

My next boyfriend was a bit older than me, and while that didn't bother me, as we were both well over legal age, it bothered him. We only lasted one year before he bailed out and ditched me out of the blue via an sms.

The next guy… was the one who scarred me for life. Both physically and mentally. A charmer at first of course, until I was trapped. He was unemployed, so he moved in with me, and I paid for everything from food to phone bills. All while he was dating several women behind my back, calling various pay-phone services and in general acted like a manwhore. As I worked as an electrician (also being subject to massive bullying and sexual harassment at work), he would be jealous of all my co-workers and if I ever came home late or worked overtime, he accused me of cheating and was extremely violent about it. He would also isolate me from my friends and family, making me think I couldn't get any other than him. If any of my male friends (almost all my friends are male…) came over, he would give me such hell afterwards, it was easier just to tell them it was a bad time to visit. And after a while, they stopped asking. This guy also demanded sex. Every single day. If I refused, he would punish me, mostly by flogging me with lampcords, belts or whatever else he had at hand. My back is a criss cross map of old, faded scars even now nearly 20 years later. I would have shown you a photo, but I am so self-concious about my body after all the bullying, I hardly even show my face in photos. Maybe one day… but I certainly need more therapy before being able to show naked skin to strangers, even if it's just my back. So I had non-consensual sex with him more often than consensual. It has taken me hours in therapy to even take the word in my mouth and call it by its proper name: rape. I was raped, almost every single day for little over a year, before I found the strength to break out of the relationship and finally throw him out of my house. It all ended when I found some revealing texts on his cellphone, which he was extremely protective of… Texts that revealed that he had engaged in a relationship with a 12 year old girl, and it had been going on for a while. Not only was he cheating on me, but he was a pedophile too. Needless to say, I didn't even let him pack his stuff before I fetched my shotgun and chased him out of the house. I don't know where I got the courage and strength from… but I was furious.

I thought I had gotten rid of him, but no. He started stalking me in public. Hiding behind shelves when I was shopping, his car following mine everywhere I went. I received weird letters in the mail with cut-out letters from newspapers, glued together. On top of all, his creepy, old uncle called me with some rather disgusting suggestions and tried to come on to me really hard. I had to change my phone number, and after coming home to my house and finding out someone had entered my home using a key, only to empty the drawer of my night table, I also had to change the locks of my doors as he had clearly copied the key.

He didn't stop until I got the police involved.

So, when I finally met the guy who would become my husband (or rather, we found out we were made for each other, we had known each other since we were 11 years old), I had major trust issues towards men especially and it took him endless patience and love to break me out of that shell.

But the trauma doesn't stop… or start there.

In the year 2000, on January 4th, I would experience something that made me unable to even look at a train for over 10 years. The Åsta accident (google it). I was a volunteer in the Norwegian Red Cross then, and a paramedic in training. Back then, you were allowed to start training the year you would turn 16. So, I was still 15 when I witnessed the most traumatic event of my life. The day started out calm, we were stocking up the ambulance after delivering a patient to the hospital when we got a call with the code "500", which means "catastrophe". Normally when we get that code it is a rehearsal… so we drove towards the coordinates with the thoughts that this was just an exercise, nothing real… we didn't prepare ourselves mentally… And we ended up in the closest thing to hell I have ever been… The sight of the burning trains, the smells, the sounds, the screaming… I still wake up by nightmares to this day. Though the moment that haunts me the most is when the screaming stopped… because we all knew why… I don't want to go into details, but 19 people died that day. But we also saved 67 people. I try to hold on to that thought. The age limit for starting paramedic training was raised after this, as I wasn't the only one who was too young for an accident of that scale. Today it is 18. A memorial stone has been placed on the site, but I still haven't been able to bring myself to visit it, even if we drive past the site every year on our way to visit family further north in the country. I needed hours of therapy to even be able to ride a train after this. To have gotten to the point where I now volunteer at a heritage railway and is in training to become a driver, is a HUGE step for me. My next goal is to visit the site of the accident.

On to next trauma… A previous employer, a rather large electric company in Norway, whom I worked for 8 years. The first five years were great, we were a close-knit bunch of electricians, and we had a great relationship with the bosses and higher-ups. Our labor union was strong.

It all started changing in 2009 when we got new leaders… and those decided to get rid of everyone who were a member of the union. One by one, they started harassing workers in various ways, trying to get them to quit. In Norway, they need a legal reason to fire you, it's not enough to not like someone. There has to be a good reason to fire someone e.g. theft, neglecting work… Since they didn't have any reasons to fire us, they started making our work lives gradually harder and harder until we would break and find another job. Sadly, one of my co-workers couldn't stand the pressure… He bid us all farewell as normal one Friday and hung himself the following day.. But as I was a girl in a male-dominated profession, I had been taught at an early stage to ignore anything that would hurt me emotionally, just arch my neck and plow through. I kept doing that, despite starting to feel more and more mental and physical pains… even my co-workers pointed out how I was being mistreated before I acknowledged it myself. I tried to tell my boss, but he reacted by treating me worse. So, I went to his boss… and that's when things went to hell. Instead of doing his job and listen, he started harassing me too. He deemed my over-weight a problem, and he started demanding I gave him detailed lists of what I ate and how much I worked out… Completely illegal of course, but by this point I was broken down to the point I thought I was useless and couldn't get another job… so I accepted. He started accusing me of lying about my exercise, so I started training at the gym in the basement at work instead. One day, while I was there, he locked the doors and turned the lights off. There were no windows, no cellphone reception and hardly anyone walking by in that part of the building… I sat there in the pitch dark for 3 hours before I was let back out. I still get badly triggered by narrow, dark rooms and rooms with no windows. To such an extent, I jumped out of a small window on the second floor of a gym when I was in boot camp. I was allowed to train downstairs in the bigger gym with windows on all walls after that incident…

The harassment at work went on for years until I finally snapped, ended up at the hospital and got into therapy for the first time. I don't want to go into depth about what more happened, I just can't… I can't bring myself to write it all. Luckily, I had gotten more education while working, so when I graduated, another company called and gave me an offer I just couldn't refuse. So, I quit my job and never looked back, even if the traumas I suffered there still haunts me to this day.

Sadly, even after switching jobs, now getting a safe job with sane leaders… I started to relax, and that's when all my past trauma came washing over me. And one day, on while driving to work, I had my first serious panic attack. It started as this feeling I used to have at the old company; getting sick to my stomach and having the sense of someone being out to get me… then it developed to breathing problems… and I had to pull the car over. I broke into tears, struggling to breathe, stumbling out of the car to read the logo on its side just to reassure my body and brain that I worked for a different company now and there was no reason for panic. I called my boss and let him know, because he also was a "refugee" from that other company, so he knew what me and several others had gone through. He managed to talk me down enough for me to come to the office to talk to him. That helped.

I got back into therapy. A better therapist this time. But sadly, it got apparent that I could no longer work as an electrician as there was too many triggers. I was diagnosed with PTSD, severe depression, and social anxiety. I'm still working on these and get better slowly.

I have been in therapy for a long time now, and it was my therapist that suggested I wrote fics to cope and "write it out". I tried to make up my own characters for this, but never felt any connection. I was by this time in the TTTE fandom and had met people with similar trauma and pasts like myself, and I started roleplaying with some of them. Me and a girl from UK then agreed to try to rp/co-write a fic to cope with our trauma. We both found it easier to write about pre-established characters we had a connection to, even if it was an au that made it barely recognizable from the original source material. Only the names and some minor things were similar.

That fic was Stepney's Virginity Gets Lost.

Do we regret writing it? No. It helped us write out our traumas and helped us overcome some mental obstacles in out therapy process. Our therapists cheering us on, because we finally managed to break through the hard shell surrounding us. We both cried for the first time in years while writing it, some of it through roleplay, because some parts were extremely graphic and brutal and very mentally exhausting. We had to take long breaks between each writing session, so the fic wasn't written in just a weekend. But we got a lot of darkness out of our minds by writing all this. And we were definitely NOT aroused by it, like this pervert here claims.

It's when you dare to touch and feel the difficult and dark emotions, you can finally move along in the grieving process.

Should it have been posted online?

In retrospect, no. But at the time, we thought it might help other trauma victims, as we also found reading about other people's experiences and fictions touching painful subjects helpful to ourselves. So, we posted it, never expecting it to cause such a controversy 3 years later. In fact, we had more or less forgotten about it until it came back to bit us in the ass. Or rather, bite ME in the ass, as I am getting the full blame alone.

Also, despite what people claim, it was not posted openly for children to read. It was tagged properly and hidden behind mature content walls. If a minor chooses to break that wall, that's not the author's fault. It's the same as watching a movie with an age restriction way above your age, not the filmmaker's fault.

I think MerciResolution puts it nicely here:

"If your problem lies with you KNOWINGLY entering adult spaces when you’re a minor, ignoring all mature warnings that are literally SCREAMING at you “hey, this is what you’re getting into. Are you sure you want to proceed?”

That’s ENTIRELY on you. YOU are the fucking problem.

We’re marking mature things as best as we properly can. If you decide to ignore them, that’s your own damn fault. We’re not your fucking babysitters."

Also, I never posted the story on Wattpad, so if anyone has done that, it's not me. I posted the story on Fanfiction.net, DeviantArt and AO3, that's all. If it's posted anywhere else, it's not done by me.

I had honestly moved on from it when people pulled me back into it.

Other people who have done questionable shit in that fandom are easily forgiven because "they have moved on" or "changed". Yet, nobody believes I can move on or change…?

I had moved on; my interests had changed. But people won't let me, so here I am… Having to defend some crap I did years ago. A fic I no longer have any interest in.

I'm not even interested in TTTE anymore. I have moved on with my own book project now and I would like to focus on that.

So, deleting my TTTE content, whether it was the SFW or NSFW stuff, didn't cost me a penny. It actually felt like a relief. The only downside with it is that people now can't read it and make up their own opinion about it, but will solely believe in what others say, and those things are often seriously bent out of shape and blown out of proportions to such an extent it's barely recognizable.

If people claim that Arry and Bert rape Stepney in the fic, they have never seen it or read it. That's not what happens. That's just an assumption made by looking at the title and knowing there is a rape/torture scene in it. But I'm not gonna tell who the victim is or who performed it, because this is the only way I am able to tell who has actually read the fic or not, who is just trying to spread bullshit and who is actually telling the truth. The person in that screenshot, has no idea what he's talking about.

Does SVGL romanticize rape and abuse?

No, not in the least. It's described as the horrible, heinous acts it is and is in no way meant to be cute or romantic and definitely NOT something anyone should get off to. If anyone finds it sexy, that's their problem, not the authors'. If anything, SVGL might romanticize suicide, because one of the characters isn't able to cope with his trauma and chooses to end their life. Which is something I considered doing myself when I was in the darkest pit of depression. So, I apologize for maybe romanticizing suicide. The following chapters describe how friends and family handle the loss and grief.

It also describes a toxic relationship, where one of the parts struggles to get out of it. They eventually manage to break free, but it is not easy. This can easily be translated to my previously mentioned relationship, as it was my way of writing out my experience about how hard it is to break out of a relation when your partner has broken you down to the point where you no longer believe in yourself and your self-worth.

The last chapters start to gradually become brighter, as both our lives started getting better too. But we never really wrote the end because we both lost interest in writing TTTE content by that time and just left it hanging.

I'm not the only one who has written NSFW TTTE fanfics out there. But it seems like violence and murder is more acceptable than sexual things? I do wonder how brutally mutilating children's show characters are more tolerable than sexually abusing them. Neither should be okay.

Some content creators hide behind "it was a joke". I have been told that such topics that SVGL touches upon shouldn't be joked about… so I didn't do that, and yet it was wrong? So how should such topics be treated? Be hidden like it's a shame, like in the old days when rape victims were told to suck things up and keep it to themselves? When those subject to abuse didn't dare to speak up because people would judge them?

I think it is important to talk about these subjects and why they are so problematic. Victims shouldn't have to hide their trauma; they should be allowed to talk openly about it without fearing judgement.

Some of you claim that writing isn't a good way to cope… You're trying to dictate how trauma victims deal with their trauma, and that's a dangerous path to walk down. Nobody handles trauma the same way. You might have your thoughts on how you would react, but you'll never know until trauma hits you… and you might not react the way you had expected or planned. Trauma messes with your head and you won't be able to think clearly. It makes you do thinks you normally wouldn't have done and can make you act out of character. So, do not judge people without having been in the same situation yourself. Ever.

Someone wrote that I have "more problems that just a rape".

Read that again.

Just a rape.

This person does not know how damaging a rape can be. And if you made it this far in this post, you know I didn't only go through one, but several. Not just by my ex, but also being ambushed while I was walking home from a party, and later; a co-worker forcing himself onto me at a building site. I can't go into depth about them all, I just can't.

Just a rape…

"Just" the feeling of not being in control of your own body and your own decisions. "Just" being robbed off your dignity and self-worth. "Just" having someone intrude into your private zone, tear your clothes off and claim your body against your will. "Just" feeling how your life force leave you as you realize that fighting against it won't help you, and you silently give up and just lay down waiting for it all to be over. "Just" spending hours in the shower, scrubbing your skin until you bleed because you can't wash the filth away and you keep feeling dirty no matter how much you clean yourself. "Just" waking up at night, after having relived the scene again in a nightmare. "Just" looking over your shoulder wherever you walk because you heard something or thought you saw something or simply because someone is walking behind you. "Just" the fact that you'll never feel comfortable walking alone at night again or have someone walk behind you. "Just" never being able to relax because your body constantly think you're in grave danger. "Just" a rape…

That's such a neck-beard thing to say. Someone who clearly think of other people's bodies as property or things. Not taking into consideration that we are living, breathing individuals with feelings. And that having another person violate us isn't something we like or that we'll easily get over. We want to choose who we give ourselves to, nobody should be forced. We didn't ask to be raped. We didn't want it. We didn't like it.

Rape is trauma.

Yes, we should have chosen other characters for the story, but we did what we did, and it cannot be undone now. So, if the only thing I will be remembered for in the fandom is that ONE fic, instead of all my other content, that's what it will be. That's what people chose to. I'm moving on.

10. Being a nazi for being interested in WW2 history and for being Norwegian and having so-called nazi-letters in my last name (actual letters of the Norwegian alphabet).

*sigh*

This is something that could only happen in America, isn't it?

Some people don't bother educating themselves. The "nazi-letters" you guys are talking about is actually part of the Norwegian alphabet and has nothing to do with Nazism or white-supremacy to do at all. The Norwegian alphabet has 29 letters, the three extra is æ,ø,å or in capital letters: Æ,Ø,Å.

We can't help it if some morons over in the US abuse these letters as symbol of their twisted mindset.

Yes, my name contains one of those letters. It is my name… and I didn't choose it. It is a common Norwegian name.

As for me being a Nazi?

Those who knows me knows that I am as far from a Nazi as one can get. I despise Nazism with all my heart.

But the reason some people choose to believe so… was that some guy who has no hobbies or life went through every single fave I've made on DeviantArt since I joined the site in 2006, which is well over 20000 faves. And he found a few Nazi-characters from a web series I was following about ten years ago. I am very interested in history and especially WW2-history, so I found that particular web-series interesting and faved some artwork related to it. What this guy failed to notice is that I also faved the Allied characters… That's ALL there is to that story.

I has also faved a pic someone made of Joseph Goebbels (I think it was?) as a Pixar Car. That's not because I have any nazi-sympathies, but I simply found the concept of turning historical persons, both good and bad, into Cars as an interesting project. I would have faved any other historical Carsified person as well.

As for me being a Norwegian and have a natural pale complexion, that's not something I can help. That's nothing I choose. And it doesn't make me racist or Nazi. Period.

11. Putting a white-supremacist flag (the actual flag of Norway) on my porch on family birthdays and our national day.

Again. Get educated.

This flag… is the actual flag of my country. The Kingdom of Norway.

There is nothing Nazi about it. It is not a symbol of white-supremacy. IT IS THE FLAG OF NORWAY.

During WW2 it was even illegal, so people would paint it everywhere in a protest against the Nazi-occpation and the SS. We even decorated our Christmas trees with it, and that is a tradition that has followed us into the modern day.

Again, if some idiots in the US choose to use it as a symbol for their disgusting logic, it is not Norway or the Norwegians' fault.

12. Being a danger to my daughter.

I need people to elaborate here.

What exactly do you think I do to my daughter? What is the cause of your concern here?

The fact that I have made NSFW content? How is that harmful to her as long as I keep it away from her? You DO realize that even authors, pornstars and moviemakers have children and that they can be good parents, right?

Do you think I read pornographic content for her as bedtime stories? Or show her porn instead of kids TV? How sick are you guys, really…?

Some people even wanted CPS to take my child away from me… Have a look at these screenshots…

You want a happy, healthy, innocent child to be taken away from a stable, safe home with loving parents just because you don't like the content the mother made? You want her to be placed in foster care, where there is no guarantee that she will have a happy upbringing rather than have her stay with her parents who love her and care for her, for reasons she'll never understand and wasn't even aware of?

"Think of the children!" a lot of you say when it comes to my content. May I ask why this doesn't apply to my daughter?

Why do some of you go as far as to wishing her dead or wanting her to be removed from the home she feels safe and loved in? How is that thinking of the children?

As for the douchebag in that screenshot. You claim that if your mother did something like that you would want nothing to do with her… I have a question: Do you know EVERYTHING your mother do? Does she include you in each aspect of her life? Even her sexual life? No?

How do you know she doesn't do thing you don't approve of when you're not around? She could be a rabid pornmag reader for all you know. But stuff like that is something adults hide from their kids. So, you wouldn't know, unless you go snooping around in her business.

Everyone is entitled to privacy. What I and my husband do when our kid is not around is our business, not hers, and certainly not yours.

Porn and parenting are to be kept separate from each other. Period.

And we do.

There is absolutely no reason to be worried about my daughter. She is a happy, healthy child in a safe, stable home with family that loves her and cares for her. Not just me and my husband, but also grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

If you want to remove her from that over a stupid fanfic behind a mature content wall, you're the deranged person, not me.

This is all I have to say about all this and my time in the TTTE fandom. I have left by my own, free will. Yes, I am aware that many people don't want me there. That's fine. I don't want to be there.

I am a bit disappointed in those people who just blindly unfollowed me and unfriended me without any questions asked, just followed the leader. Big users tend to dictate who and what is worth following in that fandom. They will even protect real predators, but I'm not going to open that can of worms now. I'm done with the fandom.

Some of those people, I have been talking to regularly, even supported when they faced hardships in the fandom themselves. But when I got in trouble, they ditched me without a word…

If anything, this whole ordeal showed me who to trust and not, and who were true to their word when it came to how deep our friendship was. True friends at least give you the chance to explain before they drop you. I hold no ill feelings to those who did, at least they asked me before judging.

And those who still stayed with me, are the ones who truly know me and who I really am.

Some of the worst libels posted about me might be reported to the police, but I haven't made up my mind yet. I am not mentally strong at the moment, so I don't know if I have the strength to legally follow it all up. I will ask the cops at work for advice on the matter.

All I ask for now is some peace.

You don't have to like me. You don't have to follow me. You don't have to like my content. Feel free to invalidate me, I know a lot of you will.

But please, stop bullying me and my family.

Please stop sending me horrid messages and death threats.

Please stop doxxing me and calling me.

Please leave my family alone. If you don't care about me, at least care about them.

Please just ignore me. I have already left the fandom, there is no reason to keep hunting me.

I just want to move on and go on with my life and the content I am currently working on. After years in therapy, my life has gotten better, and I want to move on.

Please let me.

#good bye to ttte #tw//suicide #tw//rape #tw// bullying #tw//depression #tw//ptsd #tw//ttte #tw//sex #tw//abuse #tw//domestic abuse #I'm done

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incarnateirony · 1 year

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Truly though, the longer I do this whole metanarrative style DJ leak thing with occasional primer videos, the more I understand why Riddler Khu does things the way they do.

While never have I EVER encountered a fandom so basically rich-socialite-corrupted that people are trained to successfully mass attack/doxx leakers in the name of angry con kids that want to be ITK (2po, scripthunt, every mod in that lot.), much less a fandom that FALLS for this shit as routinely,

Khu still gets obnoxious shit from the occasional PROVE IT TO ME jackass, but it's incredibly rare despite the magnitude of the fandom. Similar to my case, most people with brains recognize how reliable he's been and why he can't say where his shit is from and leave it be but there is always that one self centered motherfucker trying to make it All About Them like folks here do.

But for those who don't know, Riddler Khu is one of the top leakers in the pokemon fandom. But he never just says shit outright. He does things like post pictures that, while themselves are not new content images, tell enough of a story that people use their brains and riddle it out together, and it always comes true.

Ever since I started the musical method, there's been an interesting phenomenon. Most loudly of it, it's that the obnoxious white noise of lies that spew out of my cult of antis just has nothing to latch onto. They lack the honest effort or mental capacity, one or the other, to actually listen, much less do so routinely to the various parts and get the full context. But there's plenty of people that have been listening and have since developed some pretty crystal clear ideas of what I'm saying, maybe even clearer than if I tried to write longass technical posts about it.

And that's it at the end of the day. Haters simply don't have the capacity to Do What I Do, and that makes them angry, but then what I Do What I Do via abstract means, they don't even know what they're supposed to be hating on or lying to counterpoint. They have neither the sense nor the context. So then it just becomes shrill general antiscreaming like it is in its bones. THE ARTIST THAT MAKES THEIR OWN CONTENT UNLIKE US RESELLING OTHER PEOPLES SHIT HAS A PATREON! EVILLLLL! STUPID POOPIE HEAD POSTING VIDEOS I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

And then you see it for what it is. A bunch of angry children throwing feces at the wall. Definitional smear campaigns that they hope to see work, they hope to hide the truth, hope to chase out the person that's been running circles around them for years, but they can't.

And since then, well. All the lies, all the filth he put out there against me. I realized it's been completely undone, looking at the follower count I largely ignore. Why? Because hate doesn't have what it takes to take down the truth, as long as the truth itself doesn't yield to their attacks, which is why spnscripthunt members have been escalating their doxxing, threats, etc the last few months. That's it. That's all they have left. Anger, hatred, revenge. And it's really just, it's all their own faults and they know it. On every level, this is a self inflicted wound. But it's what they have left, for almost exactly 2 months, so goddamn they're gonna keep up the shrill teakettle sounds until the spout clogs and they just explode from pressure.

So yeah. I totally understand both why Riddler Khu and Bobo engage the way they do now. Even when it comes to genuine people, they seem to feel, idk, better? About figuring out parts of it themselves too. Like people love playing Clue anyway and it actually seems to be a better way to spread leaks or any kind of information, period, than writing bigassed posts trying to explain it all that people zone out on.

Just. Thoughts. But no, spnscripthunt. To each and every mod there, I am not ever, EVER going to let this fandom forget you doxxing randoms trying to retaliate against me, and you doing NOTHING to penalize or disassociate from that mod, because you were all involved. Not going to let them forget 2po's con sources threatening hellers at cons with physical violence. Not going to let them forget that you KNEW you were lying when you said my pilot script was fake--lying for EIGHT MONTHS--but you were that dedicated to your hate campaign and salty my copy was newer than your coffee runners, and saltier I knew it despite you throwing half the uninformed fandom at me and couldn't be shaken because we had older drafts and, well, knew it was fucking real resultingly.

They're not gonna forget. And now with this nice collected block list of their mods and users hate trolling my anon box, it's a nice little record to Never Forget, especially once 1x13 airs, and they're truly shown as the hating, anti, bitter, lying frauds they are. Because it's not about The Truth to them. It's not even about the show. It's barely about leaks anymore. It's about their egos, and the violence with which they lost the whole farm.

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logicalstansadvice · 3 years

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did you see the photo on the galaxy blog, Ale is there on set with sebastian while he is doing that outdoor drumming scene you can see her in some of the photos

// Galaxy, Kevin, Princess and all the other blogs that claim to be "Seb" blogs to me are in the same pile now: a big pile of shit. They are all righteous sjw until Sebastian is seen with a girl. Then their true colours emerge and suddenly there is no more justice, just stalking, doxxing, bodyshaming, accusing him of every evil in the world and using every cause on earth (racism, ca, sexism, covid etc) to try and sabotage his career.

So I'm not surprised that instead of focusing on HIM and what HE was doing on set, they are more focused on the fact that his gf is there.

Like mods said, it's not uncommon for gf/bf of the actors to be there. They are obv part of the social inner circle so why would that be a surprise to anyone. Or why would it matter.

Vamp - it's been a strange year in this fandom. I think for a lot of us, it's the first time we've been around to experience the beginning of one of his relationships that, judging by his previous standards, is so public.

It's been fascinating to watch the progression of opinions, emotions and behaviour in this fandom over the past year and how we've all seemed to settle into these very distinct groups of fans - the casual fan, the haters, the nannies, team "don't give a fuck" or the outliers. Reminds me of what happened to the Cumby fandom.

Damn shame, this fandom was so much fun when I joined....now it's just a shell of its former self. I count myself lucky though, I found a group of like-minded fans that share the same focus and love for Seb's professional life and Marvel as a whole. It's what's kept me here and thriving.

I think that's the key to fandom happiness. Regardless of what's happened or will happen, in the end, the choice of how we decide to live out our time and experience in this fandom, the content we create, curate and consume is ours alone to make.

Lady Danger - Thank the Lort for the ladies of this blog - I would’ve peaced out of this fandom ages ago otherwise.

Ruby Woo -

I love my peeps 😊!

#logical stans advice #logicalstansadvice #opinion blog #sebastian stan #6 mods and counting #what a year it’s been

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silver-wield · 3 years

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I looked up the zine account and fell down a rabbit hole and... Jesus Christ and the Latterday Saints... I saw the receipts about the racism, Islamophobia, etc. and they were certainly not what I expected. And there were some tweets responding to the receipts with "mm no, that's a lie" and then not providing proof themselves. What hurt the most was seeing a fellow bipoc defend the same people who continue to associate with the biggest racist of them all. Idk, no amount of love for a ship would make me forget about all the negative qualities in someone.

What gets me is the blocking situation. Barely any followers, and yet 4000+ people blocked for reasons as simple as "because they weren't clerith" and them cleaning it up by saying "we were only talking about trolls" but listed the former as its own reason. People even said they were blocked without even talking to the mods. And when others were saying "this is unprofessional. aren't you trying to sell your zine?" their responses were a collective "were you even trying to buy the zine?"

I didn't even know that str*y *rrows was doxxing that person on this very platform.

I'm probably younger than a lot of them, and I'm sure as hell younger than the entire ship war, so my only question is, "What on earth has them so pressed that they're willing to be bigots, liars, AND doxxers?"

Yeah, the cult is ugly, which is why we call them the cult cause they're not shippers like the other ones. They don't even like Aerith and just wanna bang Cloud using Aerith as a proxy.

I haven't been in the fandom for a whole year yet, but I've seen some nasty shit from queen dumdum and that's why I tell people to watch out for her. Don't give out your personal info and don't believe any of her shit.

That zine will never exist. She'll take money and info and use it against people cause that's her entire thing. She's a liar and manipulative af.

She never even played FF7 in any capacity and just wants to be right and get attention and money from sheeple following her insanity. I really can't see why she's here cause she hates the story and every character, including Cloud because the way they paint his character is sickening and no actual fan of him would ever say that about him. I didn't appreciate him in AC, but I sure af wouldn't suggest he's the way they say. Their Cloud is a pos who deserves to die alone. Canon Cloud is actually a sweetheart with a ton of issues just trying his best. She weaponises all the characters of it suits her needs, then plays victim when people say she's ruining the story.

Seriously, it's best to just call her embarrassing and leave her and her dumbasses to it.

#Ship war #Twitter nonsense #Dumdum cult

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bi-dazai · 5 years

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a summary of the whole contrapoints thing from someone who has been spending most of her time on twitter and seen it first-hand throughout

(im using screenshots, some ive downloaded from trusted twitter mutuals and some ive made myself. since i have the shinigami eyes extension and many of my twitter mutuals dont, some scs will be inconsistent. i have checked each downloaded sced tweet to make sure theyre real.)

please dont try to start an argument on this post, im just summarising whats happened. ive already argued myself out over on my twitter and whatever point youre trying to make has literally already been said 20 times before.

Basically in late august/september natalie said some inflammatory shit about pronouns and nbs and “binary transes” which she’d said stuff along the lines of in the past. both nb and binary trans folks have criticised her lightly for this kind of attitude in the past as well. she has a pattern of behaviour (including being very...lenient towards terfs) but the stuff she was saying and the bad takes were tolerable, if incorrect and a little ignorant. what she said this time was basically “asking for pronouns in trans spaces is good i guess but it hurts passing/semi-passing transes like me” which is a take that makes no goddamn sense and is extremely ignorant towards both nb folks and trans folks who do not have the luxury of even trying to pass. she exaggerates the actual effect it has on her as well. basically the entire tweet reads really badly (the discussion was about asking for pronouns in trans spaces):

peter coffin made some batshit crazy takes (as usual) including inventing the term “enby cultural capital” which he refused to actually evaluate on past asking people to read a book (if you cant clarify your point on your own then you have an issue). he started tweeting like a madman and making it painfully clear how hard he will go to bats for natalie despite him being nb himself (many people joked/suspected that its because he wants to fuck her, same with philosophytube, and honestly looking at how they see her that isnt hard to believe).

natalie went off twitter for a while, eventually leaving an apology that was actually alright and made me and several others believe she would return a little more understanding of trans intra-community issues, especially in terms of class because she has always had an issue with ignorance from that angle. she said she had a friend called gwen taking over (nobody knows who this is nor had they ever heard of this friend, leaving some people suspicious that she may have made her up. im not going to confirm or deny this because i have no clue.)

idk what peter coffin was up to because at this point i and most ppl had officially stopped listening to him but i believe he was angrily tweeting about cancel culture. a lot of people were as well, even though the bulk of the criticisms of natalie had been written and expressed in a mature, appropriate way. some of my twitter mutuals who had been involved in discussing natalie’s past trends with these issues as well as her lack of class consciousness and (probably) accidental antisemitism began to get messages from what was very clearly alt-right trolls trying to doxx natalie. it was real information, which is extremely concerning, but no person published it and her criticisers that got those dms were vocal about not bullying or doxxing natalie. natalie wasn’t pushed away because of “cancel culture”, and “cancel culture” really isnt a real thing and many contra fans believed this too until she came under criticism, which highlights a pretty weird mentality but whatever.

anyway, she came back this week with a new video titled “opulence” which i dont care for watching so i just read about it from my twitter mutuals who did. since i didnt watch it ill only summarise its criticisms very basically.

to put it simply the main criticisms of the video were that she conflated trans aesthetic with literal opulence and class again, which people weren’t a fan of. she talked about her experience over the last few weeks, spinning it her way because how else would she spin it, thats to be expected. it was mostly just the usual contra, flawed takes and a bit of class ignorance...except for one blaring massive issue which is absolutely undeniable proof for where she’s heading with her politics and her content.

on that video, natalie invited infamous transmed, the guy who outed lana wachowski for money, buck angel, to collab with her. this guy is infamous in the trans community for being a cis bootlicking bigot. he makes kalvin garrah look like a lovely guy. he’s been around for a very long time and he’s very famous for being a massive asshole. heres just a taste of the kind of attitude he carries:

contra has previously spoken up about why you shouldn’t platform bigots. so her platforming a bigot has some very very obvious implications.

needless to say, people were and are pretty mad and very disappointed. a large majority of her fans have been against this.

when oliver (philosophytube) promoted the video on his twitter many replies to his quote tweet were his fans begging him to be even mildly critical of contra.

on contra’s subreddit (for clarification, natalie isnt a mod there and im not sure about how involved she is on the sub) there was even a thread created in which MANY of her fans on there expressed criticism of contra’s views. the mods then locked the post, deleted comments, and banned the use of the word “truscum” because it was offensive i guess? it was a move very close to “terf is a slur” territory

furthermore, some pretty infamous transphobes have been in support of her and buck angel in the past, including ian miles cheong which is...wow. some of these are scs from a twitter mutual, but the ones with red names are from me - i have the shinigami eyes extension, so basically any person with a red name is a known transphobe (im surprised buck isnt marked yet lol).

finally, ill put some threads here that give a pretty good analysis and view of the situation imo

#long post #contrapoints

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vanguardofparadox · 4 years

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S[Es]sion [No]t[Es]:

I’ve been o[U]t here a while exploring beyond [Th]e F[U]r[Th][Es]t Ring, [Th]e endl[Es]s [No][Th]ingn[Es]s of [Pa][Ra]dox S[Pa]ce between different S[Es]sion’s Medi[U]ms, [Th][At] I sometim[Es] don’t [Th]ink abo[U]t my own S[Es]sion for Wip[Es] [At] a time. It’s been [At] least 413 days since I last visited it, so I fig[U]red [No]w is as good a time as any for me to recap where I c[Am]e [Fr]om.

My n[Am]e is Hrisch Seprex, and I [Am] [Th]e Chief Explorer of Alternia’s Inter-Dimensional [Th]re[At] Ass[Es]sment te[Am]. When [Th]e Alternian Empire learned of [Th]e existence of [Pa][Ra]dox S[Pa]ce, Her Imperial Cond[Es]cension herself decided [Th][At] it m[U]st be inv[Es]tig[At]ed and f[U]lly [U]nderstood to find o[U]t if it was a new [Fr]ontier for Alternia to conq[U]er, or a new b[At]tle[Fr]ont [Th][At] m[U]st be defended against [At] all costs.

[Th][At] was over 612 Sweeps ago. Fo[U]r trolls [U]sed a piece of software masq[U]e[Ra]ding as a g[Am]e to gain acc[Es]s to [Pa][Ra]dox S[Pa]ce, ca[U]sing a massive meteor storm in [Th]e proc[Es]s. Fort[U]n[At]ely, [Th]e Planetary Defense Grid saved [Th]e planet [Fr]om [Th]is fiery s[Pa]ce-born c[At]aclysm, and [Th]e Cond[Es]ce’s military managed to stop [Th]e “G[Am]e” before all fo[U]r trolls co[U]ld enter.

[Th]is g[Am]e expr[Es]sed itself in [Th]e form of an inter-dimensional s[Pa]ce called [Th]e Medi[U]m. It was a planetary system wi[Th] seve[Ra]l planets all inhabited by fantastical alien [Ra]c[Es]. As [Th][Es]e fo[U]r rebel trolls fo[U]nd [Th]eir plans for dimensional crossing being [Th]warted by HIC’s troops, [Th]eir te[Am] coh[Es]ion snapped, and [Th]e goldblooded mastermind behind [Th]e g[Am]e code released a ~ATH vir[U]s [Th][At] killed every[Th]ing in [Th]eir Medi[U]m and [Pa]rtially c[Ra]shed [Th]eir S[Es]sion.

J[U]mping ahead to [Th]e pr[Es]ent, I was recr[U]ited for [Th]e Inter-Dimensional [Th]re[At] Ass[Es]sment te[Am] after discovering a robot [Th][At] had origin[At]ed [Fr]om [Pa][Ra]dox S[Pa]ce. I was told [Th][At] I wo[U]ld be modifying [Th]e g[Am]e code to r[Es]tart [Th]e failed S[Es]sion. On [Th]e orders of [Th]e Cond[Es]ce herself, I wo[U]ld [Th]en have to enter as a player along wi[Th] [Th]e Jadeblooded Hemophage [Fr]om [Th]e original fo[U]r (her Rebellio[U]s Dre[Am]s somewh[At] c[U]rbed after spending h[U]ndreds of Sweeps as a [Po]litical prisoner).

Over all [Th]ose sweeps, o[Th]er trolls had managed to [Pu]rge [Th]e ~ATH vir[U]s [Fr]om [Th]e S[Es]sion and even mapped o[U]t [Th]e Medi[U]m by expeditions [Th][At] made [U]se of a device called a t[Ra]ns[Po]rtalizer [Th][At] had been fo[U]nd in [Th]e r[U]ins of a temple near [Th]e hive of one of [Th]e rebels. [Th]ey were also able to g[At]her all [Th]e b[U]ilding m[At]erials released by [Th]is mass extinction event.

We also fo[U]nd o[U]t [Th][At] [Th]is g[Am]e had been played in m[U]ltiple timelin[Es], and we were somehow considered to be an offshoot b[Ra]nch of wh[At] was considered to be [Th]e “Alpha Timeline”. Except [Th][At] all divergent b[Ra]nch[Es] were s[U]p[Po]sed to wi[Th]er off and die o[U]t, and somehow o[U]rs hadn’t.

We didn’t have e[No][U]gh players to properly r[Es]tart [Th]e s[Es]sion however. [Th]e g[Am]e, which had to be modified to even consider me to be a candid[At]e for being a player, had classepected me as a Rog[U]e of Doom. [Th]e Hemophage prisoner who was to accom[Pa]ny me had originally been classpected as a Maid of Blood, b[U]t after my modific[At]ions, [Th]e g[Am]e was tre[At]ing her as a Knight of S[Pa]ce.

(Nei[Th]er of [Th][Es]e m[At]ched [Th]e classpect of her co[U]nter[Pa]rt in [Th]e “Alpha Timelime”. In fact, [No]ne of [Th]e fo[U]r players did. [Th]is co[U]ld be beca[U]se o[U]r Alternia was so vastly divergent [Fr]om [Th]e o[Th]er [Th]ey were effectively different trolls entirely. [Fr]om wh[At] I [U]nderstand, in [Th]e o[Th]er timeline [Th][At] we have d[At]a on, [Th]ey had a dozen players, instead of o[U]r q[U]artet of rebels.)

[Th]e Cond[Es]ce had forbidden anyone else b[U]t me and [Th]e Rebel Dre[Am]er of a Jadeblood [Fr]om being players in [Th]e r[Es]tart S[Es]sion, so I had to get cre[At]ive. [Th]ro[U]gh some shenanigans involving Time T[Ra]vel and Ectobiology, I was able to make a [Pa][Ra]dox Clone of myself whom [Th]e g[Am]e assigned [Th]e classpect of Prince of Time, giving o[U]r r[Es]tarted S[Es]sion a Time player to go along wi[Th] o[U]r S[Pa]ce player.

One [Th]ing I didn’t co[U]nt on wo[U]ld be my Prince of Time [Pa][Ra]dox Clone [Th]en [U]sing time t[Ra]vel to go back in time and set [U]p all [Th]e divergenc[Es] of o[U]r timeline [Fr]om [Th]e s[U]p[Po]sed “Alpha”, before ret[U]rning to join [Th]e S[Es]sion wi[Th] [U]s. A second [Th]ing I hadn’t seen coming was [Th]e fact [Th][At] [Th]e Ectobiology eq[U]ipment wo[U]ld a[U]tom[At]ically make a second [Pa][Ra]dox Clone, who ended [U]p being classpected as a Seer of Void.

[Th][At] backstory o[U]t of [Th]e way, let me get to [Th]e act[U]al d[Es]cription of my Medi[U]m. As I said, [Th]e Alternian Military had intervened before [Th]e original g[Am]e S[Es]sion was completely started, and all life in [Th]e Medi[U]m was wiped o[U]t.

[Th]e first player to enter was [Th]e goldblooded “Mastermind” behind [Th]e g[Am]e. His split personality manif[Es]ted into two different dre[Am]selv[Es] wi[Th] differing classpects, Heir of Mind and [Pa]ge of [Ra]ge. His planet was [Th]e Land of Flare and Calcite, comprised of clear crystals [Th][At] do[U]ble-re[Fr]act any light. He prototyped his Kernalsprite wi[Th] a dead serverhive. [Th]is had [Th]e effect of making [Th]e [U]nderlings and King and Q[U]een [No]n-mobile, b[U]t if yo[U] got too close to [Th]em yo[U] co[U]ld still be st[U]ng by be[Es].

He was followed by [Th]e rebels’ “M[Es]siah” fig[U]re, a m[U]tant-blooded Mage of Heart. His planet was [Th]e Land of Cherri[Es] and Longing, which s[Po]rted for[Es]ts of cherry-blossom tre[Es]. He prototyped his Kernalsprite wi[Th] [Th]e Blood of his similarly rebellio[U]s Anc[Es]tor, a s[Am]ple of which had been reverse-alchemitized by [Th]e “Mastermind” o[U]t of [Th]e inexplicably tall [Pa]ir of [Pa]nts [Th]e heretical seer of an Anc[Es]tor been wearing [At] his exec[U]tion. Re[Po]rtedly [Th]e plan was to try to [U]se [Th][At] blood to be able to acc[Es]s [Th]ose seer [Po]wers in some way.

[Th]e [Th]ird and final entry of [Th]e original S[Es]sion was [Th]e rebels’ leader, an Oliveblood whom styled herself as “[Th]e Lion[Es]s”. Her classpect was Witch of Bre[At]h, and in an [U]n[U]s[U]al de[Pa]rt[U]re [Fr]om [Th]e p[At]tern for Bre[At]h players, her planet was [Th]e Land of Rivers and Savannah. ([Th]e prevailing [Th]eory [Fr]om [Th]e analysis te[Am] is [Th][At] [Th]e Rivers are standing in for [Th]e [U]s[U]al meteorological phe[No]me[No]n, beca[U]se [Th]ey’re still a close metaphor for Bre[At]h’s [U]nrelenting drive and direction of [Pu]r[Po]se.) She prototyped her Kernalsprite wi[Th] a “Magic C[U]e Ball”, an artifact associ[At]ed wi[Th] [Th]e Green Moonman’s failed rebellion, [Th]e one r[Es][Po]nsible for HIC banning ad[U]lts [Fr]om [Th]e Alternain Homeworld.

Many aspects of [Th]e SGR[U]B Rebellion tried to borrow historical weight [Fr]om [Th]e t[Ra]itors [Th][At] had come before. In addition to [Th]e m[U]tant-blood anc[Es]tor mentioned above, and [Th]eir ti[Es] to [Th]e Green Moonman fig[U]re, [Th]e fact [Th][At] [Th]ere were fo[U]r core conspir[At]ors was an echo of [Th]e Tet[Ra]rchs’ Rebellion [Th][At] had immedi[At]ely preceded [Th]em.

As I had mentioned, [Th]e fo[U]r[Th] player was stopped before she co[U]ld enter. Had my Rebel Dre[Am]er com[Pa]nion, who [At] [Th]e time called herself “[Th]e Primagen” entered, [Th]ere were plans to [U]se a dead M[At]riorb for her Kernalsprite’s prototyping.

When I r[Es]tarted [Th]e S[Es]sion after modifying [Th]e g[Am]e’s code, my initial entry as [Th]e Rog[U]e of Doom gave me [Th]e Land of F[U]sion and Enigmas, a planet littered wi[Th] c[Ra]zy [Am]alg[Am]s of items [Th][At] have been haphazardly combined via [Pu]nchcard alchemy. [Th]is land is also [No]table for [Th]e n[U]mero[U]s faeri[Es] darting [Th]ro[U]gh [Th]e air.

My Jadeblood Rebel Dre[Am]er of a [Pa]rtner was given [Th]e Land of Cobbl[Es]ton[Es] and Pen[U]mb[Ra], an a[Es][Th]etic [Th][At] I feel might better have s[U]ited [Th]e Maid of Blood classpect [Th][At] she’d been originally assigned. As a S[Pa]ce Player, she sho[U]ld have had a land wi[Th] [Fr]ogs instead; [Th]is was [Th]e first evidence [Th][At] my g[Am]e modding had beg[U]n to ca[U]se glitch[Es] in [Th]e g[Am]e’s systems.

For my [Pa][Ra]dox Clone, [Th]e Prince of Time, his planet was [Th]e Land of M[U]shrooms and Perc[U]ssion, a landscape of tree-sized m[U]shrooms, inters[Pa]ced wi[Th] b[U]ilding-sized dr[U]ms, cymbals, and be[At]box[Es] of all kinds, incl[U]ding a snare dr[U]m [Th]e size of a small city. [Th]is is a [Pa]rtic[U]larly hostile planet, as hidden in [Th]e crown of each of [Th]ose giant m[U]shrooms is an explosive [At]omic device, and sho[U]ld a tree topple [Fr]om [Th]e vibr[At]ions of nearby dr[U]mming, [Th]e device deton[At][Es]. Even so, [Th]is Land gave my mission vital inform[At]ion for o[U]r initial navig[At]ion beyond [Th]e F[U]r[Th][Es]t Ring.

As for [Th]e second [Pa][Ra]dox Clone, [Th]e Seer of Void, [Th]e g[Am]e glitched o[U]t entirely when trying to gener[At]e [Th]e planet for his entry, likely [Th]e r[Es][U]lt of all my t[Am]pering wi[Th] [Th]e codebase. Instead of a proper land, he was given a planet-sized Perfectly Generic C[U]be, which [Th]e g[Am]e labelled as [Th]e Land of Perfection and Genericisim.

Yo[U]’ll [No]tice [Th][At] I haven’t mentioned wh[At] prototyp[Es] we gave any of o[U]r Kernelsprit[Es]. [Th][At]’s beca[U]se we waited [U]ntil [Po]st-entry for [Th]e prototyping proc[Es]s. Everyone was in agreement [Th][At] [Th]ree Seprex[Es] were two too many, and we [U]sed a chain of self-prototyping shenanigans to fix [Th][At] problem:

1. All of Seprex’s Dre[Am]selv[Es] were killed. 2. Two of [Th]e Dre[Am]selv[Es] were [U]sed to prototype [Th]e Jadeblood’s Sprite, and [Th]e remaining Dre[Am]self was [U]sed as [Th]e first tier prototype on one of [Th]e Seprex[Es]’ Kernelsprit[Es]. 3. [Th]e Jadeblood’s f[U]lly prototyped Sprite^2 was [Th]en [U]sed as [Th]e second tier prototyping on Seprex’s Sprite, merging all [Th]ree dre[Am]selv[Es] into a com[Po]site Sprite^3. 4. [Th]e Rog[U]e of Doom, Prince of Time, and Seer of Void all were allowed to achieve God Tier, merging wi[Th] [Th]eir dre[Am]selv[Es] into one re[U]nified persona (Yo[U]rs tr[U]ly.)

[Th]is still left two [U][Np]rototyped Kernelsprit[Es]. [Th]e dead singly-prototyped Sprit[Es] [Fr]om [Th]e first s[Es]sion were collected. [Th]e Serverhive Sprite and Magic C[U]e Ball Sprite were prototyped on one of Seprex’s remaining Kernelsprit[Es], reviving [Th]em, incl[U]ding [Th]e fact [Th][At] [Th]ey each had tier two prototyping slots open. [Th]ose two open slots were [Th]en [U]sed to prototype a f[U]lly [U]pg[Ra]ded “[U]ltim[At]e” Alchimeter (wi[Th] integr[At]ed t[Ra]ns[Po]rtalizer & ectobiology f[U]nctions) in [Th]e first slot, and in [Th]e second, [Th]e hardware for AI-DARA (Artificially Intelligent D[At]a Analysis Rec[U]rsive Algori[Th]m) v.2.35, [Th]e Artificial Intelligence reverse engineered [Fr]om two identical robots, one fo[U]nd by [Th]e original SGR[U]B rebels and [Th]en capt[U]red by [Th]e Cond[Es]ce’s troops, and [Th]e o[Th]er one [Th][At] I had fo[U]nd prior to being recr[U]ited.

As for [Th]e final Kernalsprite, it remains [U]n-prototyped back on LOPAG. RD has been promised [Th][At] for her co-oper[At]ion on [Th]e mission, when it is complete, [Th][At] final sprite will be prototyped wi[Th] [Th]e dead sprite belonging to “[Th]e M[Es]siah” of her original player gro[U]p, as well as [Th]e dead m[At]riorb [Th][At] she’d originally wanted to [U]se. It hasn’t yet been decided wh[At] she will be allowed to [Pu]t into [Th]e final prototyping slot [Th][At] will be open. AI-DARA has s[U]gg[Es]ted [Th][At] her newly [U]pg[Ra]ded Sprite form wo[U]ld be [Th]e optimal choice, b[U]t as wi[Th] many [Th]ings abo[U]t my exploring com[Pa]nion, [Th][At]’s [No]t a decision I’m a[U][Th]orized to make.

By ab[U]sing [Th]e prototyping mechanic as we have, we’ve managed to achieve seve[Ra]l [U]sef[U]l benefits. As I [Am] technically RD’s Sprite, she can s[U]mmon me wi[Th] her Sprite Pendant. Similarly, as AI-DARA is technically my sprite, she can be be stored in My Sprite Pendant, giving me [U]lt[Ra]-[Po]rtable acc[Es]s to bo[Th] her k[No]wledge base and predictive f[U]nctions, as well as a whole Phernalia Registry’s wor[Th] of eq[U]ipment.

One o[Th]er c[U]rio[U]s property abo[U]t my home Medi[U]m: While [Th]ere are 7 Planets total in [Th]e system, [No]t co[U]nting Derse and Prospit, [Th]ey are s[Pa]ced in [Th]eir orbits between Skaia and Veil as if [Th]ere were 8. RD has taken [Th]is as a sign [Th][At] o[U]r s[Es]sion was meant to have a Land of {something} and [Fr]ogs, b[U]t we have to find one and bring it back. I do [No]t disco[U][Ra]ge her independent search for [Th]is, as s[U]ch activity still aligns wi[Th] o[U]r mission.

7 notes · View notes