You couldn’t make it up. Update: you could make it up, and someone did. I bit! /end of update.
You know how Alanah Pearce has been getting harassment, and how she’s been reporting some of the harassers to their mothers?
Now some of the reported ones are suing her for doing that. For some reason the judge has apparently failed to throw the case out.
Australia-based video game reviewer Alanah Pearce is set to appear in court after revealing to mothers that their sons threatened her on her Facebook page, according toThe Huffington Post
According to the 21-year-old, the threats were prompted by her game reviews posted on YouTube. Some viewers responded negatively on her reviews by posting sexually abusive messages on her Facebook account.
Which is not something that people should do. People should not do that.
In response, she decided to conduct her own investigation on her male abusers and discovered that many of them are aged 10 to 15 years old.
That would explain a lot. I can think of several harassers who sound about 10.
To solve the issue, she decided to contact her abusers’ mothers to tell them about what their sons have been posting online.
One mother responded by forcing her son to write a handwritten apology letter to Pearce.
However, some of the abusers, with the help from their mothers, have filed a lawsuit against the game reviewer on grounds of defamation.
Defamation? How can it be defamation?
One of the boys said the threats were only meant as a joke and should be ignored. He then stated that he is more mature than Pearce because of how he would have handled such a situation and even accused her of being a tattle tale.
“Our so-called ‘threats’ were just small pranks, and not much different than things you see on the Internet every day,” he said. “If I was receiving these death or rape threats online I would have just brushed them off because I’m clearly more mature than her.”
“But she crossed the line, though, by telling my mom about it,” he added. “Something you learn at a very young age is to never be a tattle tale. She obviously missed that important lesson.”
And that’s grounds to sue her for defamation?
No, of course it’s not. Is there something about the legal system in Australia that would explain this?
And by the way, fuck that idea. It’s a bullies’ charter. It’s a rapists’ charter. Yes you damn well do be a tattle tale when someone is bullying or harassing you or a third party. Of course you do. If that kid’s mother is on his side in this, there is something badly wrong with her thinking.
I’m not ignoring the seriousness of this, if true, but didn’t she herself come out and debunk this a week ago? The story was run on a satirical site. HuffPo probably got taken in (there’s a big surprise!). But according to Ms. Pearce’s own Twitter feed, she denied that this was happening.
So, really awful, if true, but she herself said it was a hoax, several days ago. Did something new crop up?
Except that the lawsuit isn’t real. It was “satire” (weak though it may be), and Alanah has confirmed it: https://twitter.com/Charalanahzard/status/540544498598563842
I’ve seen this before. It appears to be satire. Apparently not only could you make it up; it was made up.
I forget where I saw it before, but among the places it is stated to be satire is
http://www.themarysue.com/game-journalist-not-being-sued/
anbheal is correct.
“When other outlets picked up the story as fact, Pearce took to twitter to refute the whole thing.”
This report also mentions a fantastic response from one of the mother’s Alanah contacted.
This is satirical.
Someone did make it up. This is a hoax.
Yeah, hoax. Unfortunately, I think this fails as satire. The idea of exposing the rampant hypocrisy of the gamergaters is fine, but it’s bad writing to to present it as a straight news story, especially when the history of gamergate shows that almost no amount of exaggeration can encompass the true awfulness of the movement. What people forget about The Onion is that its articles are almost always obviously satirical because they generally* don’t read quite like normal stories–which is why it’s even funnier when people take them as real.
*Every now and then The Onion fails at this too.
Oops!
Epitome of Poe’s Law.
The abuse of the libel system in this way is hardly satire, it is routine.
The late Lord McAlipine wrote in his book ‘The New Machiavelli’ that a very handy way of dismissing an allegation is to have someone make a false accusation that can be shown to be false. After that, the original accusation will also be presumed to be false.
It appears he put this plan into effect. Police were called in to investigate an accusation which was subsequently dismissed as a case of mistaken identity. McAlpine had a cast iron alibi for the new allegation. He then went about suing people who mentioned his involvement on Twitter.
Now that he is dead it turns out that the actual abuser was a relative of McAlpine’s and police had ‘mistakenly’ given the accuser the wrong name. But that is hardly McAlpine’s only connection to pedophilia. McAlpine bankrolled the defense of several members of the Westminster pedophile ring currently being investigated. He also financed the libel cases they used to suppress reports that they had been arrested for pedophilia after visiting children’s homes in North Wales late at night.
Australia has the same libel laws as the UK and they are spectacularly corrupt. There is no proof that McAlpine was a pedophile but there is plenty of proof that he covered up pedophile activity and there is a mountain of circumstantial evidence suggesting worse.
If Ms. Pearce had published the abuse on a blog or website and word had gotten back to the cretins’ parents third hand, would they have any legal basis for suing her? Not likely.
How incompetent and corrupt does a judge have to be to hear a case simply because it was told second hand instead of third hand?
I really should read the comments before responding….