Anita Sarkeesian was at a convention of youtubers this week, which sounds like a kind of hell. It’s not that I don’t think there is worthy content on youtube — this event was founded by Hank and John Green, who do good work — but that you just know it was also going to draw in the worst people on the internet. It’s an audience I would not want to hang with, and they wouldn’t want anything to do with me.
True to form, the worst people on the internet showed up to Sarkeesian’s panel, which was on the harassment women receive. They smugly took over the first couple of rows of seats, and even proudly posted videos of themselves filling the front row. Oh, boy, an opportunity for real-life harassment!
Sarkeesian fired back, and good for her.
If you google my name on YouTube you get shitheads like this dude who are making these dumbass videos that just say the same shit over and over again. And like I hate to give you attention because you’re a garbage human. Whatever dude.
But the fact that these dudes are making endless videos going after every feminist over and over and over again I think is a part of the issue. Why do we have these conversations? We don’t just get to be online. We don’t just get to participate like everyone else.
The dude she specifically pointed at in this criticism was Carl Benjamin, who goes by the pretentious pseudonym Sargon of Akkad, who actually is a garbage human, one of the army of the worst people on the internet who rants constantly against feminism, against the “regressive left”, and who thinks any of those women who complain about non-stop harassment are “professional victims”.
Which makes it particularly interesting now that if you follow Sarkeesian’s suggestion and google her name on YouTube you will find hundreds of videos proclaiming the martyrdom of Carl Benjamin. Why, he was just sitting there innocently to respectfully listen to Anita Sarkeesian, and she bullied and humiliated and harassed him, for no reason at all! He can’t be a garbage human, because he just popped into existence for that panel, and has no history of any kind, and no reason that Sarkeesian might have singled him out.
Now, suddenly, Benjamin has decided that he is a “victim of abuse”.
Absolutely no empathy shown towards a victim of abuse. This is exactly the kind of follower @femfreq attracts, @vidcon. https://t.co/BiYHDI0XV6
— 1337 Human (@Sargon_of_Akkad) June 23, 2017
And that he was publicly humiliated and harassed by Anita Sarkeesian, and that he is “triggered”.
Triggering is not a joking matter, @vidcon. The public humiliation Anita subjected me to is horrific harassment. https://t.co/UO0wAtJvcp
— 1337 Human (@Sargon_of_Akkad) June 23, 2017
Yeah, right, and now all of his followers are realizing that harassment is a real problem, so they’ll stop doing it themselves. The level of hypocritical bullshit from the worst people on the internet has suddenly jinked skyward. Benjamin has actually had the oblivious gall to ask the conference organizers to block her from sitting on another panel today because she called him a name. Who would have thought the man who wrote a petition to get universities to stop teaching courses on social justice could be so censorious?
You can almost see him giggling like a troll through those tweets.
I have reported his tweets (and the tweets of many of his minions) as targeted harassment to Twitter. I think it might be worth for other people to do so as well.
Very reminiscent of these bastards during a speech given by Maryam Namazie. It turns out pro-Islamist trolls and youtube atheist trolls have something in common: cowardly tactics and misogyny.
I guess Sarkeesian called him out within five minutes of the panel starting since that’s about the length of Carl’s attention span.
But he has 600K subscribers, as he proudly tells us!
https://twitter.com/rebeccawatson/status/878277908741054464
So we’ve finally officially found the worst person on the internet.
Congratulations, Mr. Benjamin!
@6 Rietpluim:
Maybe not the number one worst person on the internet, but he is definitely in the top five. One of the top five spots would go to Paul Elam, and another spot would go to people who troll any discussions on police brutality, to spout racist nonsense.
So yeah, definitely among the worst.
Carl sounds like a charmer. I am amazed at the consequence free mentality of these jokers. I wonder whether Carl-Sargon’s employer and family know that his weekend hobbies revolve around harassing women?
Or even that they have emerged from their basement.
reitpluim @ 6- Carl’s pretty bad, but his biggest issue is a terrible mix of lazy ignorance and an inflated self-estimation of his competence. In short, he’s a walking Dunning-Kruger effect. That said, he’s not nearly as awful as Paul Elam (already mentioned above), Bearing, Kraut and Tea, or Atheism is Unstoppable. Even Blair White is worse than him- she at least seems nastier and pettier in personality- and there seems to be a new guy calling himself The Naked Ape who seems downright deplorable.
I so want to be there when he finds out about the new French gender equality minster, Marlène Schiappa (Secrétaire d’État auprès du Premier ministre, chargée de l’Égalité entre les femmes et les hommes), ‘€5,000 would be a deterrent’: the French minister who wants sexual harassment fines. To watch his help explode could magnificent.
Public humiliation is exactly the kind of treatment pieces of shit like him deserve. If only it would happen on a daily basis.
Gack, me@10: To watch his help explode could magnificent → To watch his head explode could be magnificent.
This special edition Typos offering is brought to you by severed fingers which… um, several figures… ah, oh, nuts, forgots ti…1
Except that I don’t think he’s actually humiliated — I don’t think he’s capable of shame. He’s just using it as an excuse to whine.
This is one reason I follow this blog (and Skepchick) because PZ highlights things that happen out there that I would probably never heard of in my info bubble. I had heard of this Sargon person before during another not so nice controversy… oh yeah the horrid caricature of Chanty Binx in the infamous “Feminists Love Islamists” video.
Not sure if I would have heard of gamergate if not for this blog and Skepchick. Well I did eventually see an episode of “The Internet Ruined My Life” on SyFy that highlighted the torment Brianna Wu went through.
“Adam Ruins Everything” had an interesting analysis of why video games became make marketed despite so many women being potential enthusiasts.
https://youtu.be/i08CVkBxvBM
Admittedly I am not a gamer. My main emphasis back in the day was Madden Football. When I was a kid we played sandlot football and got exercise. Video games make one more sedentary, but less prone to injury.
@ PZ #5
So he either lied or hemorrhaged 400k subscribers since he said that? He’s sitting at about 213k from what I see.
And I kid you not but it seems thunderfoot has broken away from their so called “skeptic” community, and specially Sargon, because Sargon and a bunch of other assholes were cracking jokes at some innocent woman getting shot by her bf during some freek incident.
So this guy was even intolerable for thunderfoot.
hemidactylus
“Video games make one more sedentary, but less prone to injury.”
One word: Nintendinitis. (Also known as “Gamer’s Thumb”)
This Benjamin dude seems to be acting like a professional victim. *goes to put shades on, misses and puts shades on nearby cactus instead*
There are still rays of hope in the Youtube community, one of which goes by the ‘nym of ‘hbomberguy.’ He primarily reviews games, but he’s also thoroughly fisked quite a few anti-feminist videos as well.
Wait, wait, wait. How does Carl know that HE’S the one Anita’s referring to? There’s so many garbage people who make videos about Feminist Frequency, Tropes vs. Women, and Anita! He’s got no proof that it’s him specifically that she was talking about, as she declined to mention his name (or his pretentious as fuck pseudonym).
I guess it’s true what they say about hit dogs!
Carl of Swindon used to be one of the worst humans on YouTube, and has set the bar so low that he’s currently being called out for hypocrisy by effin’ Thunderf00t, but I regret to inform you there are even worse people on there (as popular antifeminists/bigots) such as Bearing, Kraut&Tea or Roaming Millenial, and their many clones. And that’s not even mentioning the outright Nazis, TERFs and people like Blaire White. So yeah, there’s that. And it also seems we’ve *lost* Laci Green who just had a tearful hugging session with ‘ol Carl who was so sorry some people claiming to be his fans harassed and threatened her, something that never occurred to him as a possibility, but they had a moment of redemptive forgiveness.
VidCon seems to have been an emotional rollercoaster for Carl this year, it is so pathetic.
=8>-DX
Wait, what happened to Laci Green?
lotharloo
Decided to turn garbage as well.
@Lotharloo
She “took the red pill”. Basically shes trying to bridge the divide and act as peace maker. Befriending alot of these red pillers in order to try to find some understanding and common ground. Honestly it all sounds lime naive golden middle bullshit to me.
A little more than a month ago Laci stated her goal was to bridge the gap and find understanding between SJWs and anti-SJWs, but her actions since have been questionable- at best- if that was her goal. She was pretty quick to ignore people who have been doing for years what she says she wants to do now, no matter how mild their criticisms might be, and often with contradictory reasons in light of other actions and statements*. So far all Laci seems to have done is adopt the bog standard anti-fem talking points and peppered them in her more recent videos**. Basically, people have seen who she’s cozied up to- mainly those with large subscriber numbers- and who she’s dismissed and ignored- those without large subscriber bases- and are concluding she’s looking to make bank off this endeavor.
At the very least Laci’s doing absolutely nothing about the fact that she’s being used as a cudgel against people who have been harassed and abused by the people she’s aligning herself with. Ultimately, terrible people are using Laci to guilt trip people to make nice with those who have denied their existence, set raving hordes upon them, and made insinuations- at the very least- that they wish harm to them, and she doesn’t seem to give an ounce of shit.
And while it shouldn’t matter, she’s also currently dating Chris Ray Gun, a Gamergater and anti-feminist who at the very least has a tendency to spout crap that’s helpful to people like Richard Spencer.
As =8)-DX notes in 21, she did have a hug session with Carl, accepting his (most definitely insincere) apology, though I’m not sure if he’s taken the video where he blames Laci for supporting a system that created Elliot Roger.
* One example is her refusal to even talk to Kevin Logan. Granted, Logan may not be everyone’s cup of tea, and there’s plenty one can criticize him on. That said, he has spent a lot of time on his “Descent of Manosphere” video series, which showcases the very worst among them. In many of those videos is a section called “The Almost Inevitable Bit about Laci Green” because she was the target for a fair amount of ire among the regressive assholes. When she made her announcement, he complied all of those bits and made a video asking Laci to watch and see just what the people she was looking to get close to had to say about her. She never did because another YouTuber by the name of ShoeOnHead told Laci about some exceptionally nasty things Logan said about Shoe and Shoe’s boyfriend, Armored Skeptic. What Logan said about Shoe was quite misogynistic, and he was rightfully called on out it by all side. What Shoe, perhaps tactically, left out was that Logan had a made an apology video (it’s still on his site, so you can see if you find it sincere) which both Show and AS accepted. That said, even if he hadn’t, what he said barely holds a candle to things Andy Warski or Blair White have said yet she’s still eager to cozy up to them.
** For example, starting her “Taking the Red Pill” video off by asserting the feminists are “cannibalizing” themselves “as usual”.
@22, lotharloo
Nothing. She’s always been one to reach out to people she herself disagrees with, so I personally didn’t think any of this was very new. And she’s always been less than perfect. And various people for various reasons have always categorized her as the enemy, and had contempt and rage for her.
Here’s the video that started this most recent uproar. Plus of course she’s active on social media so there’s plenty of other stuff she’s said related to this.
Here’s some brief video of her [tweet video 1, tweet video 2] crying, talking about meeting with Carl, they talked about how he hurt her, etc. she’s trying to forgive because that’s important to her, and she appreciates some of his efforts, and such. She’s such a brave, vulnerable person, and that’s kind of awesome.
Yes, I’m concerned about the possibility that she could be mistaken, misguided, or whatever. She’s not garbage though.
Sorry I said golden middle when I should have said bothsideism.
@PZ Myers #13:
No, not to whine, but to use it for strategic advantage. People who are susceptible to the just or unjust world fallacy cannot and will not accept, that there’s no limit to human villainy, so they naturally side with the one who appears more civilized. This is no different from what the far left and far right had done in the 1930’s by having a group of representatives, preferably intellectuals who constantly talk about the nobility of their goals, and are many steps removed both mentally and physically from those who do heinous things.
I’ve read plenty of comments which defended his actions and condemned those of Sarkeesian based on what they already thought. According to their talking points, she was wrong for “harassing him”, should have been banned, the “victims” were only there as paying customers, and they never harassed anyone. Note, that nobody came forward with explaining what credentials these paying customers had to debate the panel, nor offered an alternative explanation as to why they haven’t asked Laci Green, Hoff Summers or Jaclyn Glenn to actually debate them. To no surprise of mine, I got no replies back for similar question, nor have I gotten a response to my question as to why this scandal is more important, than tens of millions falling out of healthcare, or that the state of New York refused to protect the sexual abuse victims because several churches and the boy scouts lobbied against it, fearing a potential bankruptcy. If their alleged stance is men’s rights because women don’t care, then it’s highly suspect that they have no opinion on rising premiums and on a throng of male victims who had been abused by the church.
What Sarkesian did was nothing compared to the kind of shit that she’s received from shitheads like Benjamin. All she did was call him out and insult him, and he wants to call that harassment and grounds for being banned. This outrage is from a group of guys who simultaneously instigate massive troll mobs to perpetually harass feminists they don’t like, and dismiss the deluge of grotesque rape threats, death threats, and slander their targets receive as no big deal.
Misogynists on YouTube can dish out horrific abuse on people they don’t like, but run crying when they get even the slightest insult in return. They also bang on about free speech and how their worthless shitposting needs to be defended, but try to silence anyone they don’t like whenever they get the chance. Misogynist shitwads don’t have actual consistent moral standards. They don’t care about free speech in principle, or about harassment in principle, or anything else they claim to value. They want protection for their own speech, and protection for themselves against harassment, and they want to deny those same protections to the people they harass and silence.
Sarkeesian was right to call this guy a garbage person. It’s an apt description of all of these worthless misogynistic piles of shit on YouTube.