I have, at this point, seen orders of magnitude more people talking about how they are so upset at all of the people demanding her friends cut her off than I have seen people actually doing that. It stinks of deflection based on a strawman.
Contrapoints - Opulence
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PT answer with a plug in to his video was abismall, and Lindsay answer was mostly fine, but her saying Contra apologize was great and liking a tweet comparing it to gamersgate 2.0 was incredible dumb, I don´t want them to cut off their friendship with Contra, but the way they are dealing with it was bad.
person: "ah no natalie sucks for doing that"
youtuber: "YOU DON'T KNOW US"
You are the product. i'm not saying this gives tweeters a free pass for abuse but the kinda defensiveness on display makes me think the youtubers mentioned here don't fully grasp their current situation... To be fair, i think people like PT are relatively new to the scene, but gg buddy, you're not just a content producer.... You're an influencer.
youtuber: "YOU DON'T KNOW US"
You are the product. i'm not saying this gives tweeters a free pass for abuse but the kinda defensiveness on display makes me think the youtubers mentioned here don't fully grasp their current situation... To be fair, i think people like PT are relatively new to the scene, but gg buddy, you're not just a content producer.... You're an influencer.
This.
Ultimately these Youtubers are selling their opinions on various subjects and using different sources to inform those opinions. They hold a lot of weight with millions of people and have a direct impact on how others view certain subjects. If their opinions are flawed or causing harm to people (whether inadvertently or not) they need to address that promptly and thoroughly.
There are two facts that are true:
1) They don't deserve to be doxxed or abused
2) They also need to be held responsible for the views and content they are putting out and influencing people with.
You cant sell yourself and then complain that people criticise your opinions by using the excuse that they don't know you. We might not know every detail of your personal life but we do know what you put out there and if you keep harming certain people and keep doing a bad job of defending yourself and then start to lash out at everyone while tarring us all with the same brush as the extreme minority taking it too far, it just comes across as either disingenuous or just reinforces any concerns people may have about them as a person.
To people using the defense that "people are looking for an excuse to get mad"
Do you not know how stupid that is? Have you ever interacted with another human being? People don't get mad for the hell of it. It makes you come off as either dismissive or projecting.
Do you not know how stupid that is? Have you ever interacted with another human being? People don't get mad for the hell of it. It makes you come off as either dismissive or projecting.
Quick recap for you:
- in the Opulence video, Contra has several personalities read lines, including one Buck Angel, a trans man with some degree of notoriety who also holds transmedicalist views and questionable opinions about non-binary people
- Buck thanked her for the opportunity, to which she replied with hearts
- People, especially enbies, are upset at her for giving Buck a platform
- Natalie hasn't really made any public statement yet, outside of a short message behind a Patreon paywall, where she says she's going to address the issue in her next video, and that she had her reasons for featuring Buck
- Meanwhile, people have been asking other prominent leftist youtubers, including, but not limited to, her friends (i.e. PhilosophyTube, Hbomberguy and Lindsay Ellis) to give their take
- so far, Hbomb has made a couple tweets, essentially saying that it sucks being associated with a "shithead" (i.e. Buck); it's worth noting at this point that some of Buck's unsavory takes have been liked and positively responded to by Graham Linehan, aka @Glinner , aka the dude who tried to prevent the trans charity Mermaids from getting funds earlier this year, which prompted Hbomb to do the infamous DK64 stream out of spite, during which he raised $350k for said charity. So yeah, Hbomb is not happy about that.
- PT and Lindsay, on the other hand have made official statements. People will have different opinions on those statements obviously, but a number of people - including myself - have found them pretty lackluster for a variety of reasons. PT's statement, for instance, reads like an ad for his next video lol. Some of their additional comments following the statements have been lackluster too.
- in fairness to Lindsay specifically, a recent video of her talk at XOXO 2019 detailed all the harassment - hint: a lot - she's dealt with over the years, how she's been coping, and what her strategies are for handling online criticism. Plus, some people have apparently asked her to apologize when she was never involved with the video to begin with (she doesn't have any lines, unlike Buck Angel or Philosophy Tube). There's no doubt in my mind that part of her overly defensive stance is out of mental exhaustion and having trouble to wade through the mess.
The whole Leftube community is being dragged into this, where people are asking people like Peter Coffin, Kat Blaque and others to chime in. Some of them do, some of them refuse to. There's also a sense, from my point of view at least, that the whole reaction to the situation is being unfairly portrayed as a lynch mob of people simply calling for everyone to chastise and cut ties with Natalie, while the legitimate criticisms are not addressed properly enough. You might have seen this already, but someone is calling the situation "GamerGate 2.0", as if it's anything close to that.*
* I will say this though: if you told me there might be some alt-right plants trying to sow discord and have Leftube tear itself apart behind false pretenses of asking for accountability, I wouldn't be surprised. It's just disappointing that that seems to overshadow the legitimate calls for accountability.
If anyone thinks I forgot something important, feel free to respond.
The two sides of my unwanted take on the matter (queer cis male):
- People absolutely have the right to criticise Natalie’s work and what she says on Twitter, especially when it – even unknowingly – reinforces harmful views towards NB people.
- BUT I think it takes some real conspiratorial thinking to believe she genuinely secretly hates NB people. Based on her output as a whole, I just can’t see it.
I think that while it’s easy for a disinterested person to identify a distinction between reasonable, good faith criticism and abuse, it’s a lot less easy to sort through a torrent of social media directed at you which contains some of both. Most human beings, who aren’t gifted with a superhuman amount of emotional resiliency and ability to stay detached, will find that it’s the abuse that sticks in their mind and becomes the dominant tone, drowning out the good faith criticism. Even if abuse is in the numerical minority among responses, it has a way of adhering to you and eating at you to the point where you can’t help but be consumed by it and having it color your perceptions of everything else. So I think we have to understand that it might take someone some time to deal with the anxiety/trauma/other mental health issues that the abusive part of an online reaction provokes, before they feel like they’re able to respond to the good faith criticism of the non-abusive part. I also don’t find it unreasonable for Natalie’s friends to be concerned about her mental health first and foremost, as dealing with a mob of people lobbing criticism at you online is exactly the kind of thing which can and has triggered mental health crises.
While I'm sympathetic to that: they can do that without throwing trans people frustrated by Contrapoints' actions to the wolves while doing so.
That's a genuinely awful way to think about and treat people. Lindsay Ellis talks about it in her XOXO talk where she isn't considered a person a lot of the time, she is considered her Brand, and that it is dehumanizing and it's absolutely awful for her mental health. None of them asked for the responsibility we're putting on them, and none of them owe us more than the videos they put out.
Like, criticize the content by all means, and stop supporting a content creator if you think they're a shitty person. But let's not attack the person and say that it's fine because they're an "influencer".
I wouldn't do their job. Think they are stronger people than I am. But it comes with the gig (not abuse or attacks, again)
Can't get rich off of this weird illusion of friendship that they cultivate with their followers over years of back and forth twitter threads, livestreams, inside jokes that span multiple channels and then cut and run.
For the third time, don't abuse internet celebrities. They are just people. But the foundations of their brands have been built on the back of being personable and engaging outside of the content....Your followers are invested in you just as much as the content.
EDIT: CP has probably long since come to that conclusion considering she's putting her apology/explanation behind a paywall. She didn't feel like she was getting paid enough (or is too big for?) for all the extra engagement with internet strangers thing. It's the right thing to do in the long term (for her pockets and mental health) but it's not great timing.
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Her views on NB people are bigoted and she invited a known truscum piece of shit onto her video. This isn't really hard to grasp.
agreed coconut milk
idk how many times internet celebs got to learn...if you want to be friends with your fans, then your fans are going to check you like they're you're friends
these people feature their face, funny memes, colorful personalities, etc for a reason. Lindsey should stick to written essays if she can't handle the pressure that comes with using "herself" to advertise her opinions on movies most people wouldn't give the time of day otherwise. The minute you use the abuse you've gotten to color all who disagree with you in the "incorrect" way as bad....well, you've lost it at that point.
funny enough we wouldn't be having this convo if it were some white edgy dork on Youtube that messed up, but whatever lol
I'm getting why people are annoyed that she's featured buck and are disappointed with that.Buck has had some pretty snivelling views recently despite previously being an esteemed trans role model. That doesn't mean the cancelling (I've deffo seen this, one positive thread under a hbomberguy tweet doesn't mean it hasn't happened)and the guilt by association thing that people are trying to do to her peers and friends that I've seen on twitter is great either really. Like demanding someone to atone and speak on something because they were also in a video/and or is contras friend is wtf
What are the examples of her non binary prejudice? I've looked and not really seeing anything concrete on that
What are the examples of her non binary prejudice? I've looked and not really seeing anything concrete on that
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Holy shit does this medium writer fucking sucks.
Yeah, pretty disappointing behavior from people who's content I not only normally enjoy but respect.
People have already turned on him because he dared send hearts to lindsay ellis's response.
Fucking THISThis is so on point. Absolute
fuck truscum, fuck handwaving bigotry
No idea if this is directed at me, but I did say he was "being useless" by sending hearts to Lindsay et al, so I might as well reply.
With the benefit of a good night's sleep (I slept pretty poorly, but shut up it's just a turn of phrase :( ), and especially after reading MsHappyDieHappy's response, I realize I was a bit too vindictive yesterday. My bad. For now at least, Hbomb's response is as good as it gets among Natalie's circle of YouTuber friends - certainly seems to be, judging by some enbies' comments, and that's good enough for me. There is no doubt in my mind that Buck's association with Glinner has given Hbomb a different perspective on all this than, say, Olly. He's probably more critical and objective about the situation because it hits closer to home in his case. I mean, he has to, otherwise it undermines his efforts earlier this year. Hopefully he's talking some sense into his friends in private.
That Twitter thread though. Pure fire. Maybe I'm just weak to arguments coated in righteous anger, but I find it hard to disagree with anything MsHappyDieHappy said. Powerful stuff.
(I know this should teach us that none of these people are our 'friends', but I can't help but be glad that Hbomb, Shaun, Three Arrows, ThoughtSlime, Jim Sterling and a few others seem to be on the right side of this issue)
it wasn't directed at you at all, I was just mentioning what I saw on twitter, I only follow a handful of people on there and hbomb is one of them, so it just sort of popped up for me.
I'm the last person that should be allowed to have any opinion on any of this whatsoever, so feel free to disregard me entirely.
Calling this debacle "Gamergate 2.0" is honestly such an insult to the victims of Gamergate, this baffles me how anyone would ever try to make this comparison.
I can imagine that yes, the attention and abundance of tweets can feel overwhelming to deal with, and I'm sure some of those tweets might not be as civil and polite as they should be, but I'm fairly sure neither members of BreadTube are going through a tenth of what Quinn had to endure during GG, and it's infuriating anyone would imply as such and draw such a comparison.
I can imagine that yes, the attention and abundance of tweets can feel overwhelming to deal with, and I'm sure some of those tweets might not be as civil and polite as they should be, but I'm fairly sure neither members of BreadTube are going through a tenth of what Quinn had to endure during GG, and it's infuriating anyone would imply as such and draw such a comparison.
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Yep. There's also the issue of it signalling to a (mostly) cis audience that people upset with ContraPoints, many of whom are binary and non binary trans people, are equivalent to misogynists, racists, neo nazis, and so on.
As someone who has been following “left-tube” for about 5 years now I’ve have become increasingly distant from it because I’ve felt a growing “cult of personality” around some of the bigger members which probably makes stuff like this all the worse (and kind of counter productive to socialist ideals to me)
Who's idolising anyone here? Philosophytube offered snide jabs, side stepped peoples grievances and offered an ad-pology whereas Jack Saint takes have been good. If this whole thing has taught me anything is that you can't hold these people to account without being disingenuously lobbed in with the mob and can't really expect them to hold each other accountable. So all I can really do as a consumer of their content is vote with my feet.
I also think Lindsay's video is really important and good but probably came at a bad time in relation to this particularly controversy. NB's are just asking for some solidarity and accountability from these creators who essentially set the tone for the discussion around them. So Lindsay throwing this very legitimate concern in with mobbing/doxxing and suggesting it is akin to gamergate 2.0 is quite shocking and I expected better from her.
I'm pretty ignorant on a lot of what is going on here. Like I've recently started participating in LGBT type communities, being a lesbian. I naturally see a bit of transgender talk and stuff like that in those communities but terms like Transmedicalism and Truscum were brand new to me, I've been having to do some googling.
The gamergate 2.0 comment wasn't from Lindsay. I think its fair to not like her response, but I think its important to separate the various responses you didn't like from different people as being that, different. Not one big mass thing.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe she might have liked that tweet which would suggest she agrees with it.
Oh okay, my mistake there then.
You need a Twitter account to see who liked the tweets no? Can someone take a screenshot for us?
Yeah Lindsey did like the tweet promoting that insulting "Gamergate 2.0" article. It's still there in her "liked tweets" tab, you have to scroll down quite a bit though, since she liked many other tweets since.
This is honestly the worst take ever on this backlash, and I'm incredibly disappointed of Lindsay to see she endorses such an inane comparison. I've watched her XOXO festival conference a few days ago, and I think it might be because of what she's been through and is going through and has troubles taking distances from it all since it is just very traumatic to her, but I hope she'll see that this take really wasn't it, at some point.
This is honestly the worst take ever on this backlash, and I'm incredibly disappointed of Lindsay to see she endorses such an inane comparison. I've watched her XOXO festival conference a few days ago, and I think it might be because of what she's been through and is going through and has troubles taking distances from it all since it is just very traumatic to her, but I hope she'll see that this take really wasn't it, at some point.
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I can sort of see where she's coming from, and it's a comparison that's made pretty often whenever harassment starts to happen in these situations. People bring it up in those Epic Game Store threads as well, but it really misses the larger point of the origin of Gamergate. This is the Internet, and some people are always going to take things far too far, and start sending death threats or attempt to doxx the people involve. I've been on the receiving end of that some myself and it's terrifying, exhausting, and understandably doesn't put those people in a great mood to see the nuance in the larger conversation. But, the big difference is that Gamergate was formed as a harassment campaign first and foremost. It's one and only goal was to harass Zoe Quinn and other women out of the industry because they were hurting the sanctity of game journalism largely because they were women.Yeah Lindsey did like the tweet promoting that insulting "Gamergate 2.0" article. It's still there in her "liked tweets" tab, you have to scroll down quite a bit though, since she liked many other tweets since.
This is honestly the worst take ever on this backlash, and I'm incredibly disappointed of Lindsay to see she endorses such an inane comparison. I've watched her XOXO festival conference a few days ago, and I think it might be because of what she's been through and is going through and has troubles taking distances from it all since it is just very traumatic to her, but I hope she'll see that this take really wasn't it, at some point.
This situation doesn't really compare to Gamergate, as the main goal that people are focusing on here is the nonbinary people who feel hurt and betrayed by the amount of times that Contrapoints has thrown them under the bus or put her foot in her mouth. While the people who send death threats or try to doxx should always be condemned for the terrible people that they are, it's really not a fair comparison that anyone should be making unless they believe that all these nonbinary and trans people speaking up are doing so in badfaith or out of some form of bigotry.
The origins and motivations behind why people are upset with her matter and I hope that she can recognize that through the shitstorm happening.
Well Theryn apologized, so out of Natalie saying something we dont have much else to discuss. We can only guess at reasons of why she didn't say anything yet.
Not sure why you think you get to determine that after the entire thread has been swarmed with concern for youtube personalities. That you focus on Natalie in response to that post of all posts is like, come the fuck on. I edited it in case it really wasn’t clear on first read:
It's more about Lindsay applying that defense to Natalie. Like, who gives a fuck if we know you? You made a decision as a highly-visible and influential voice in the trans scene to feature a transmedicalist and only after criticism did you bother to put out a "no wait trust me it's fine" message about it and lean on the "you know I'm not like them" defense. FOH with that, literally pick anyone else to participate in your video.
Well my focus on Natalie is because she is the cause of the controversy, so we should focus on why she did what she did. In no way that takes the focus of how non-binary people have felt, in fact only redirects it to the actual issue.
Besides by involving people like Lindsay and the rest of breadtube in the controversy, you inherently dilude the discussion considering they had no call in the primary controversy anyway. I think we both agree tot he same points but them fighting words I guess haha
People are all “woo trans rights” right up until you criticise someone prominent on YouTube that’s done something shitty to non-binary people and then it’s all “woah woah, have you thought about how they feel?”.
Just people piling in to show concern and support to the person that’s repeatedly snubbed a section of the trans community. Treating her actions as a mistake instead of you know, actually inviting a disgusting transphobe onto your show, editing and producing it before publishing it and making them proud.
Just people piling in to show concern and support to the person that’s repeatedly snubbed a section of the trans community. Treating her actions as a mistake instead of you know, actually inviting a disgusting transphobe onto your show, editing and producing it before publishing it and making them proud.
Except it does, it has and people have repeatedly said as much.
Ehhh it's clearly a mistake, otherwise your mind is already made about the whole point and why not go outright and say Nat is a truscum?
I think you're a bit out of your depth on this one when you start to sit here and tell nonbinary people that they have to accept it as a mistake before Contrapoints has even said anything. Contrapoints has said that she's going to make a video about this and that she had a very good reason for it, so pushing this idea that she had no idea who Buck Angel is when you personally had never heard of truscum 2 days ago is strange for you to do. Like, she posted that on Patreon, didn't apologize for hosting him, and didn't just say "oh, it was a mistake" so don't start pushing this onto the people affected by the things that she's said and done
This isn't really what's happening? If you want to represent a group of people, act as a voice for them, or even just claim you support them you can't just wave away your friend repeatedly acting against their interest. This isn't some online celeb thing, people confusing parasocial boundaries, or related to friendships. it's kind of expected of anybody talking/writing about these issues.
The issue her isn't that 'breadtube' aren't peoples perfect friends, it's that they claim to advocate for a group but are falling over each other to defend one of their own (probably the most important one to speak about the topic given their sportlight and it being a primary topic of theirs) who's hurting that group. The parasocial relationship discourse is just them trying to deflect people's concerns, it's a super reactionary method to do so given there's a hint of truth in that a small minority see things that way whilst totally ignoring the issue the majority have.