[scrambled]

Economist never uses bylines, supposed to be that 'objective' it is one voice

[el mechanico]

Quote:

Keyboard Don Juan

I guess we now know what comes after "Innovative Casanova"

[Sumanguru]

I read the Economist article. As DoBA said, the headline is terrible. But the article is one of the best, most even-handed articles about the Manosphere I've ever seen. (I wish they would have reached out to Roosh, though). Paul Elam sounded insightful and level-headed. They did a good job showing the complexity of the various factions of the Manosphere and their respective growth over the last few years.

[Thought Criminal]

The comments to The Economist article were very supportive. There were virtually no Feminist comments. I find that very surprising. The Economist says interest in the Manosphere is not yet mainstream, but is larger than a fringe movement. Very encouraging!

[Rigsby]

I've noticed a few 'Do you even lift?' comments at the Register tech paper. It gets like 4 million unique hits a month, if you don't know it. It's a bit left leaning, but is a very good tech paper none the less. More UK than US centric, but read all over the world.

It's not the sort of place you expect that little gem to crop up. Kudos to the infiltrator!

Chuck in a few 'ham planets' and 'shitlords', and pretty soon you're talking real political currency. (seen a few of them too)

I don't engage in 'debate' there, as it is too full of white knights and unhinged rad-fem types, but a little subversion goes a long way.

It's actually a really great little forum, but the whole red pill/blue pill question has not been raised there yet.

Slowly, slowly...

[Suits]

(06-17-2016 10:59 AM)damok Wrote:  

http://www.economist.com/news/united-sta...-balls-all

'One keyboard Don Juan, Roosh V, has won fame (and ire) for publishing books like “Day Bang: How to Casually Pick up Girls During the Day” and “Bang Poland: How To Make Love With Polish Girls in Poland”.'

Hopefully get home a spike in sales!

For those who don't want to have their email address sold to the highest bidder:

Quote:

Balls to all that

The rebalancing of the sexes has spawned 21st-century misogyny


W. BRADFORD WILCOX, an academic at the University of Virginia who holds robust views on the benefits of marriage for adults and children, is used to sparking debates. But, after publishing a video about the economics of marriage, he was surprised to field criticism online from a character called “Turd Flinging Monkey”. In his own 15-minute broadcast, the chimp equated marriage to slavery. TFM, as he’s sometimes called for short, is a YouTube character created by a disciple of the Men Going Their Own Way movement. An online fraternity, MGTOW believe that marriage fails basic cost-benefit analysis. Why sacrifice sexual freedom for a wife who may later divorce you and take your children and assets? Better to eschew “gynocentric” conventions in favour of self-sovereignty, the logic goes.

“Save a male and stop a wedding™” is an unregistered trademark of MGTOW.com, one of many websites and blogs that form the manosphere, a diffuse and nebulous corner of the internet. The groups sometimes overlap and sometimes feud; their aims range from fighting for fathers’ rights in family courts, where they believe men get raw deals, to trading in tips about how to seduce women. One keyboard Don Juan, Roosh V, has won fame (and ire) for publishing books like “Day Bang: How to Casually Pick up Girls During the Day” and “Bang Poland: How To Make Love With Polish Girls in Poland”.

Dedicated members of the manosphere groups tend to see the world as divided between consumers of blue pills and red pills, a concept borrowed from the “Matrix” films. If Neo, the film’s hero, takes the blue pill, he will remain blissfully ignorant of the powerlessness of humans. Gulping down the red pill will mean reckoning with the truth and seeing “how deep the rabbit hole [went]”. In the manosphere, blue-pill thinkers are those who uncritically accept the idea that society discriminates against women. “Red Pillers”, by contrast, recognise that it is men who are worse-off. As proof, they point to false rape accusations, disparities in the length of prison sentences—63% longer for men, on average—and gaps in college enrolment, where women outnumber men by 12%.

Such grievances led Paul Elam, a 50-something Texan truck driver, to found AVoiceForMen.com in 2009. The site is among the most popular in the manosphere, though Mr Elam objects to this categorisation. “We consistently clash with other groups—like pick-up artists—considered part of the manosphere,” he explains.

Mr Elam had his red-pill epiphany after reading “The Myth of Male Power” by Warren Farrell. At the time he was working as a substance-abuse counsellor in Houston, Texas. He noticed his colleagues asked every woman who came into the centre whether she had suffered harm at the hands of a significant other, and every man whether he had perpetrated such harm. The questions were never posed the other way round. When Mr Elam inquired why, he says his male and female colleagues snapped at him. “The idea of men taking care of themselves frightens people. People have always relied on men to create safe societies,” Mr Elam says. “When they say ‘What about me?’ that creates fear. The impulse is to think ‘Well then, who’s going to take care of us?’”

Interest in such ideas is not robust enough to make them mainstream, but it is too widespread for the manosphere to be considered just a fringe. The popular Red-Pill group on Reddit, a platform for online discussion groups, has grown from 19 followers in 2012 to more than 155,000 today. The “Men’s Rights” Reddit group has also seen its subscriber base double to over 100,000 in the same period.

Observers of the manosphere disagree over exactly what fuels it. Barbara Risman, the head of the sociology department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, attributes its rise to a fear that as women become more liberated, men are struggling with feeling dispensable. “Previous men’s movements dealt with an expansion of the idea of what men could be. This is different. This is about men feeling as though they’ve lost dominance.”

For his part, Mr Wilcox, the simian provoker and professor, thinks the movement is related to the decline of the traditional family unit. The percentage of Americans over 18 who are married has dropped precipitously in the past half century from 72% in 1960 to 50% in 2014. “Family breakdown can be a breeding ground for misogyny,” he says. Mr Elam retorts that Mr Wilcox’s views are sexist towards men. “You would never tell a woman to ‘woman up’ and get married if she didn’t want to. But that’s what he’s telling men to do.”

[usnar]

it seems there is a new mention here, in an article by
Jake Kivanç

titled: "Nero, Nazis, and the New Far Right: The Phenomena of the Professional Troll"

http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/nero-nazi...onal-troll

quotes:

"Roosh V is also a character who, despite being accused of advocating for some pretty heinous stuff (particularly that rape should be legalized), defends himself with the pretense that he's joking. The question that many are left wondering, however, is whether these accounts are the real thing, or if they're just professional trolls turning a profit off of idiots."

[eradicator]

(04-15-2016 07:37 PM)RedPillUK Wrote:  

It looks like his wikipedia page has already been updated..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Marche

"Marche has a son, and lives happily with his wife, Helen, and her partner, Tyrone, in Toronto.[5]"

Toronto, home of the cucks. I guess Toronto is the cuck capital?

[The Beast1]

Someone edited out the Tyrone comment on Wikipedia. Seems to not be true.

[Horus]

Brief mention of the meetup drama at 1:06:00 regrading Free Speech Isn't Free in a conversation with Vox Day and Stefan Molyneux.

[Mercenary]

...

Roosh mentioned a SECOND time in "The Economist".

However, this time I think it's only on the official Economist website, not the actual printed magazine.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist...explains-1

Quote:

The Economist explains:

What is the manosphere?

Jul 5th 2016,

In February, Barack Obama, a self-proclaimed seduction guru better known as Roosh V, made international headlines when he planned men-only gatherings across dozens of cities. He had won fame (and venom) for penning pick-up guides like “Bang Ukraine: How to Make Love to Ukrainian women in Ukraine” and “Don’t Bang Denmark: How to Make Love to Danish women in Denmark (if you must)”. Most controversially, he argued that legalising rape on private property would help control it—a view he later insisted was satirical. Ultimately, he cancelled the in-person powwows, citing security concerns. (A band of female boxers had promised to visit the Toronto meeting.) Roosh V’s webpage, Return of Kings, is among the most popular of something called the manosphere. What exactly is meant by this term?

The manosphere is a loose agglomeration of blogs, websites, and forums dedicated to men’s issues. Not a concrete umbrella organisation so much as a concept, the manosphere contains groups whose ideologies sometimes coincide and clash. Father’s-rights activists argue that men are discriminated against in family court. The Men Going Their Own Way movement believes that marriage is a bad deal for men: why give up your sexual freedom when your wife will probably divorce you, taking your children and assets with her? AVoiceForMen.com seeks to reveal to people that the world is gynocentric—it is men, not women, who have it toughest.

Many of these groups see the world as divided between Red-Pill thinking and Blue-Pill thinking. In “The Matrix”, a sci-fi film, if Neo takes the blue pill, he will wake up in his bed, blissfully ignorant of the powerlessness of humanity. If he takes the red pill, he will stay in “Wonderland” and discover “how deep the rabbit hole goes.” In the manosphere, “Blue Pillers” are those who uncritically accept that women are discriminated against. “Red Pillers” know it’s actually the other way around.

To support the Red-Pill philosophy, its adherents often cite gender gaps in prison sentencing—America’s male criminals do 63% more time than female felons on average—and enrolment in college, where women out-number men. Some manosphere groups also rail against domestic-violence services, which often focus on women, and rape laws, which they believe are unfair to defendants. Many of these groups have tens of thousands of members. Some observers view the rise of the manosphere as a backlash against modern equality. As the liberation of women increases, the number of people inhabiting this corner of the internet may yet swell further.

[Roosh]

I mildly confronted Laurie Penny at Milo's party on Tuesday. She responded politely so it never escalated into heated words. She wrote an article about her experience:

Quote:

Milo swoops away to hold court. I hear a throat clear right in front of me.

And there is Barack Obama, also known as Roosh V, self-styled leader in the “neo-masculinity” movement, author of a suspicious stack of sex travel guides and headline-hunting nano-celebrity in the world of ritualised internet misogyny. Roosh hates feminists for a living. He asks me what I’m doing here. I ask him the same question.

The interaction that follows is the most surreal episode in a deeply surreal evening. Roosh is tall and well-built and actually rather good-looking for, you know, a monster. I have opportunity to observe this because he puts himself right up in my personal space, blocking my view of the room with his T-shirt, and proceeds, messily and at length, to tell me what my problem is.

Number one: my haircut, and he’s telling me this as a man, makes my face look round. This is absolutely true. Number two: I seek to destroy the nuclear family, and disturb traditional relationships between men and women. This is also true, although I remind him that the nuclear family as it is currently conceived is actually a fairly recent social format. He insists that it’s thousands of years old, and asks me if I truly believe that it’s right for gay men to be able to adopt children. I tell him that I do. He appears as flummoxed by this as I do by his presence at what is supposed to be a party to celebrate Gay republicans. He’s here for the same reason I am: Milo invited him.

What surprises me about Roosh is that he seems to be a true believer. Unlike Milo, he appears to be—at least to some extent—convinced of the truth of what he’s saying. He is bitter and vindictive, convinced of his own victimhood as a self-made blogger who was never given his due by the mainstream media. He tells me that the reason I have a column is that I’m a useful idiot and all my readers have low IQs. I ask him if he’s negging me.

https://medium.com/welcome-to-the-scream...1b6e0b2932

At the same party was a mangina from Vox who was intimidated by my appearance:

Quote:

When I was standing in a circle with a group of other journalists, I noticed an angry-looking man with a giant beard walking by. That’s Barack Obama, known better as Roosh — one of the internet’s most infamous “men’s rights” writers and activists.

Roosh got famous writing a series of “travel books” that teach men how to sleep their way through various countries — e.g., Bang Sweden, Bang Brazil, Bang Ukraine, Don’t Bang Denmark (he had a bad time with the Danes). The “advice” in Roosh’s books can sound disturbingly like bragging about getting away with date rape.

http://www.vox.com/2016/7/21/12238048/rn...ce=twitter

[spokepoker]

What was that like for you?

[Phoenix]

Quote:

Roosh is tall and well-built and actually rather good-looking for, you know, a monster.

Clearly wants the D.

[Roosh]

(07-22-2016 12:36 PM)spokepoker Wrote:  

What was that like for you?

I was expecting her to have a nastier attitude but she was way too nice to me, so I kept it civil and shared my honest thoughts about her work and appearance.

[eradicator]

You should have escalated and tried to get the bang. She flat out wrote that you were good looking, clearly wanted the D.

[Gmac]

(07-22-2016 12:18 PM)Roosh Wrote:  

https://medium.com/welcome-to-the-scream...1b6e0b2932

At the same party was a mangina from Vox who was intimidated by my appearance

Can confirm.

[debeguiled]

Let's not forget, Laurie Penny is the girl who complained about having her life saved by flipping Ryan Gosling:

Quote:

Now Penny has seemingly quit Twitter declaring: ‘I’m leaving Twitter until all this bloody fuss dies down. Honestly, it would have been less trouble to get run over.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...klash.html

She even went so far as to write a whiny article about it at Gawker:

Ryan Gosling Saved Me From a Speeding Car But There's War In the Middle East So Everyone Calm Down

Quote:

Look, I am kind of an idiot. I am constantly walking into things, losing my phone and keys, and wandering into traffic because I'm thinking about something else or have spotted something interesting in the sky, and that's when I'm not in a country where all the cars come in the wrong direction. Friends and complete strangers prevent me from taking the fast-lane death walk in New York City on a regular basis, and the reason that this happens is that people are actually surprisingly decent when you get down to it. If Ryan Gosling hadn't happened to be the nearest person at the time, I'm sure the girl standing next to me, who confirmed Gosling's identity, would have prevented me from meandering into an early grave.

The only reason she was in danger was because the cars were coming in the wrong direction. Making sure she is safe is the responsibility of others, so if it hadn't been Gosling, it would have been the woman standing next to him, so it isn't a big deal.

Quote:

In the interests of composed reporting, I really think the sentiment "Ryan Gosling is a total hero and saved this woman's life!" needs to be reassessed, even though it's technically accurate.

No need to comment.

Quote:

But as a feminist, a writer, and a gentlewoman of fortune, I refuse to be cast in any sort of boring supporting female role, even though I have occasional trouble crossing the road, and even though I did swoon the teeniest tiniest bit when I realized it was him. I think that's lazy storytelling, and I'm sure Ryan Gosling would agree with me.

The truth doesn't fit my story so I am rewriting it and expect you to agree with me, all of you.


So if you have a passing interest in the boring details of technical accuracy, you can safely assume the truth is the opposite of anything she writes.

Now I understand why she is so insane and unpleasant. It gets her all sorts of attention she never would have gotten otherwise.

Society is giving her doggy treats for tracking in mud.

[Atlanta Man]

Roosh always has some feminist doing an art project about him,writing articles about him or protesting him. I swear they want to fuck him but he always says he has never met them. He finally meets one of them and she is taken back by how he looks- notice she says he has a huge beard and is tall and muscular-all masculine traits, yet she claims to be repulsed by masculinity. These professional feminists are all bluster, they really don't want feminism- they want a tall, bearded, muscular man to dominate them.

[ElFlaco]

(07-22-2016 02:50 PM)debeguiled Wrote:  

Let's not forget, Laurie Penny is the girl who complained about having her life saved by flipping Ryan Gosling:

Shortly after that, Laurie Penny famously received a first-class smackdown at a debate with David Starkey (starting around 1:50). I've watched his response more than once just out of sadistic pleasure: "And I will not be lectured to by a jumped-up public schoolgirl like you."

[AnonymousBosch]

(07-22-2016 12:18 PM)Roosh Wrote:  

Number two: I seek to destroy the nuclear family, and disturb traditional relationships between men and women. This is also true.

My Hometown is now very racially-diverse, and filled with families from a multitude of cultures, I've noticed that, from Sikh to Asian to Hindu to Sudanese to Middle Eastern to Syrian, they're all traditionally-structured.

These families all interact with each other in a positive way that reminds me of how things were pre-Second Wave Feminism, positively-enough that grandparents are still frequently-included in the 'family circle'. On evening runs in Summer, the parks are full of these groups, all interacting, all happy. I rarely see this in White Family Groups. Hell, I rarely see a Father.

As such, Laurie Penny stating that she's wilfully-trying to destroy these Minority Family Structures is clear evidence that she's speaking from a Racist, White Colonialist perspective, thinking she knows better than people she's patronising would call 'marginalised' that she possesses far more 'privilege' than.

Makes me think that the rhetoric of all the major feminist media figures should be easily-compiled and identified for the destructive forces they are, and disseminated toward immigrant minority groups so they understand who the real enemy is that causes cultural degeneracy. Show them Penny's unhappy prose, show them the filth she lives in, show them what she believes and tell them how she plans to destroy their own happiness and bonds.

[Liberty Sea]

Quote:

And there is Barack Obama, also known as Roosh V, self-styled leader in the “neo-masculinity” movement

Self-styled? Roosh literally created it. If he is not the leader then who? Those writers love to use words like self-styled, self-appointed, so-called, etc. to sneakily dismiss people's genuine status.

[Liberty Sea]

There is some truth to one of Penny's observation: the distinction between Milo and Roosh. Milo is a little more than a fabulous shitlord, and Roosh is a humorous, occasional prankster but essentially a serious, earnest believer. Milo himself hinted this in his alt-right article, where he characterized the Meme Brigade (to which most he closely identified with) as not taking much of they say seriously, and mostly just having rebellious fun. This is consistent with TLOZ's observation.

(03-29-2016 08:04 AM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  

Milo is a fag who just doesn't give a shit because all real fags want is to be entertained and enjoy the show while it lasts.

There is an eerie dissonance when you realize you take things seriously while your fellows don't.
But that's as far as she goes, and regarding the people she has not met, she's wrong. Outside of direct personal interaction, her judgment is baseless. Ann Coulter is both a shitlord and a believer, as is Trump (regarding his most basic platform). TLOZ may disagree with me on Ann Coulter (as in, she is more of a fan of Trump the man than nationalism the ideology), but that's the impression I get from reading her books and following her on the campaign trail.

[Mercenary]

The forum itself has been referenced in India, on the website "India today":

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/rishi...41283.html

Quote:

If 14 seconds isn't allowed, can men stare at women for 13 seconds? Here's all you need to know

Vivek Surendran
New Delhi, August 16, 2016

Kerala Excise Commissioner Rishiraj Singh made a statement that men who stare annoyingly at women for more than 14 seconds can be booked. Social media users got a topic to troll and the statement got us thinking about the practicality of such a rule.

Kerala Excise Commissioner Rishiraj Singh is synonymous to controversy. From making controversial statements to going against the official code of conduct, Singh has managed to stay in news. He has also earned many loyal supporters who refer to him as the 'Lion of Kerala'.
Yes, Singham! And now 'Singham returns' by making a new statement that has not gone down well with many.
Singh, while speaking at an event held in Kochi on Sunday, said, "A case can be filed against men who 'annoyingly' stare at women for more than 14 seconds". He also urged women to come forward and speak up against all physical/sexual harassment they face and asked them to carry small knives or pepper sprays to defend themselves in case of molestation bids.
Kerala Sports Minister EP Jayarajan said Singh's statement is 'annoying' and that he will bring this to the notice of the Excise Minister K Babu.

Mr Singh, you are being trolled
Rishiraj Singh's statement is being trolled big time on social media. Memes are being made using popular scenes from Malayalam movies. Here are five of them, and for those who can't read Malayalam, we have translated it

Girls tells her friend that a guy is staring at her. Friend responds by saying he stared at me for 13 seconds and then shifted to you to avoid trouble.

What does the Indian law say?
Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code states, "Whoever assaults or uses criminal force to any woman, intending to outrage or knowing it to be likely that he will thereby outrage her modesty, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both."
Under Section 354D of the Indian Penal Code, stalking is described as follows -
1) Follows a woman and contacts, or attempts to contact such woman to foster personal interaction repeatedly despite a clear indication of disinterest by such woman;
or
2) Monitors the use by a woman of the internet, email or any other form of electronic communication, commits the offence of stalking.

Although stalking, using expletives, offering work benefits in exchange of sexual favours, sharing content on social media with an intent to harass, are all punishable offences under various sections of IPC, but staring has not been included as of yet.


Is staring an offence anywhere else in the world?

A thread on Roosh V Forum has a user Feldeinsamkeit stating that staring is "now to be categorized as a form of sexual harassment that is in and of itself worthy of being reported to the police."


A Quora thread asking "When does staring at a woman become sexual harassment?" got an answer that states "frequently staring at someone, particularly in a manner that this person has expressed a disliking for, could be one element of harassment. But by itself it really would have a hard time fitting the US Federal definition of Sexual Harassment."
Singapore Legal Advice website states, "The use of the term "outrage of modesty" originates from section 354 of the Penal Code which criminalises the offence of the "assault or use of criminal force to a person with intent to outrage modesty". The use of criminal force is a key element. Hence, simply staring at someone inappropriately would not fall afoul of this section, which has mainly been applied to molestation cases."

Staring at someone in a disturbing way could be considered wrong and not acceptable as a social etiquette, but it has not been listed as illegal anywhere. It could be, however, be a part of sexual harassment laws or under "outrage of modesty".

Uttar Pradesh came up with a similar rule in 2013
A video report by Aaj Ki Khabar states that through an amendment in the Section 354D of IPC, harassment of women via social media and mobile phones were made punishable offences. It also says that staring has also been listed as a punishable offence under this section.
We weren't able to confirm this.
In the video, people question the apparent '30 second stare rule' where men could be booked if they stare at a woman for over 30 seconds. Men are worried they could become soft targets and says such a law could be misused by women.

How much is too much? What is the logic behind 14-second-stare-rule?
Being stared at by random people could be quite disturbing, intimidating and awkward. But how much is too much?
We couldn't come up with a possible explanation of rationale for the 14-second-rule. Social media users have been raising questions like -
1) Who'd keep a check that a person's stare is not crossing 14 seconds?
2) What happens if you stop staring at the 13th second?
3) Is staring for 13 seconds or lesser legal and acceptable?
4) What if men wear sunglasses and women can't make out they're being stared at?
5) Will blinking have an effect?

[budoslavic]

Motherboard mentioned Roosh V in their article today, "Leslie Jones and the Ethics of Amplifying Online Harassment". Also, Milo's name is being mentioned as well. It's written by Jason Koebler.

Quote:

Soon after news broke that Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones’s website had been hacked and replaced with stolen nude photos and racist memes, I got an urgent email from Whitney Phillips, one of the world’s foremost experts on online trolling and harassment (Phillips quite literally has a doctorate in 4chan). Phillips wanted to know if Motherboard was going to cover the hack, and how we were going to do it.

“I have some thoughts on the ethics of amplification—how, we can't not comment on stories like this, but commenting perpetuates the disgusting narrative and associated imagery. The question being, what's the ethical way not just for journalists and academics to respond, but for individuals, as well?” she said.

“Is more harm than good done when the association of Jones with Harambe is given longer life? I'm honestly not sure,” she added. “BUT I WANT TO HAVE THAT CONVERSATION.”

In her book This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, Phillips explores how early trolls from 4chan’s /b/ board manipulated the media into spreading their message. Though “trolling” is now an outdated, imprecise term, the Twitter harassment and illegal hacking of Jones’s website are amplified the more journalists write about it, the more people retweet it, the more we allow it to stay in our collective consciousness. (Take a look at how the alt-right celebrated after Hillary Clinton vindicated the movement's existence).

Phillips emailed me as I was also considering whether there’s an ethical way to cover abhorrent behavior on the internet—decisions about how and whether to write about racially, sexually, or xenophobically motivated hacks and harassment is a question the Motherboard staff considers all the time, but it’s rarely a conversation that ever makes it to the public.

And so I decided to have that conversation with Phillips and the roles we all play in amplifying questionable or grotesque online behavior. This is an edited transcript of that discussion; the entire audio of the conversation is this week’s episode of the Radio Motherboard podcast. (You can subscribe here, or on any podcasting app).

MOTHERBOARD: When something like this happens you don’t want to give the people harassing her or hacking her publicity, but at the same time you want people to know this is happening. To me it seems like like an analog is how we report on mass shootings—how are we supposed to cover a mass shooting without getting copycats? Or how are we supposed to cover online harassment without perpetuating what happened?

Whitney Phillips: The ideal outcome is to not incentivize further behaviors. The way this works is, there’s an immediate reaction and then a flurry of think pieces and news coverage. The ideal outcome is we don’t create a space, a circumstance in which these behaviors are so effective for the people engaging in them. As you said, by not reporting on what’s happening, by not condemning what’s happening, then you risk almost seeming complicit, like it’s not worth mentioning. It’s a fine line between explaining what happened to condemn something, to contextualize it, to talk about it, and incentivizing future behaviors.

Those two things happen almost simultaneously, so it really is a bind cultural critics and journalists are in but also one individuals face. This is a space where individuals can lend their voices to important conversations, but in so doing it amplifies the story. Every retweet, even if it’s a retweet in order to condemn, it still is furthering a particular message.

I don’t know who is responsible for these actions, I don’t know what kind of people they are like in bodied spaces, but if i had to guess, part of the “game” for them is to trick regular Americans and journalists alike into continuing the harassment. Every time we repeat what they’ve done, we are amplifying that message. We are keeping it in cultural circulation. And those images—it’s not just about the impact it has on Leslie Jones, but any person of color, any woman, any person who is thoughtful—that’s harmful.


Do you think journalists are beginning to think about the things you brought up? I remember when the Fappening, which was the celebrity iCloud leaks, happened, everyone was like "Oh my God, let’s report this," but not too many people thought "Hey, maybe we shouldn’t publicize this" because the publication of the fact that this happened is going to lead people to seek out those photos. I feel like there was eventually a backlash to that sort of coverage.

Motherboard kind of sat that one kind of completely out because we thought "We don’t want to amplify this message."

But eventually that story became so huge that it was like, "Why aren’t we condemning this, Why aren’t we saying something about this?" And since then we’ve taken the tack of we should report on this stuff because people deserve to know what’s going on—we’re an online culture publication, but we’re sensitive about how we’re going to report on these things.

It seems like the Fappening was a turning point and people are being more mindful of these things now and don’t just have a bonanza of coverage every time something bad happens online. But I don’t have insight into other newsrooms and you talk to journalists all the time—has the tone of your interviews changed?


Definitely—they’ve started to think of their complicity in amplifying this content. People were still repeating and sensationalizing the Fappening as they had done with online harassment up to that point. But things started to change for last year’s pro-rape rally organized by the pick-up artist and all around… piece of work Roosh V.

The journalists I talked to in the US and overseas were worried if they filed stories on this case—it’s just some guy, his reach is limited, but it becomes much different when you give him a national or global platform. You risk drawing additional participants, not just genuine participants, but you attract people who enjoy controversy or just want to stir the pot for the sake of stirring the pot, and so journalists were in this moment—they recognized that risk. They also recognized the risk of not reporting on the story. In order to combat violent misogyny, you have to name it and show examples of it.

No one had answers, but I could hear in their voices that they were genuinely concerned and wanted to do right by the people who are negatively affected. But our media ecosystem doesn’t do well with nuance, and sort of—it values clickbait and sensationalism, it values likes and views.

It puts journalists in the position that, regardless of what their conscience is saying, that’s not the business model, and so you have a conflict between sort of editorial demands and human ethical moral demands. Those two things don’t always go together in this moment of media history. It has been heartening to see the conversations are happening. The consensus is that people don’t really know, and they’re worried about the impact their stories are having.


I can’t help but thinking it’s important to have these conversations about motivations, but obviously there’s a very concrete and public victim here: Leslie Jones. We don’t have her to talk to right now, but how should the victim’s wishes factor into how we cover it?

That’s a tough question. The problem is there are so many victims of these behaviors that we probably have a reasonable sample size to pull from, and that’s not a joke. This happens so frequently, you know—it would be, I would wonder what each individually thinks. We don’t often (or ever) have access to their inner thoughts, and it’s completely understandable if any of us put ourselves in her shoes, the last thing we would want to be doing is engaging with a bunch of journalists and answering their questions about stuff. I would want to disappear for a long time off the internet and out of the public eye.

Regardless of whether we know what they want, we should defer to what is going to do the least harm. It’s such an egregious case, it’s an issue of justice and fairness—in the end we should try to rally around our own, meaning a human who has feelings and a family and people who worry. What would we do if this was our mom or our sister? We would want to protect them and be kind to them and anything we could do to not make it worse, that’s what we would do. Thinking about this case, treating the victim as imagining what we would do if we loved or knew them, I think that’s why these conversations are so critical, because there are lives at stake.

The Hollywood Reporter interviewed Milo Yiannopoulos from Breitbart and asked what he thought about Leslie Jones getting hacked. Milo was the one who initially incited a lot of the early Twitter harassment, and I couldn’t help but think that this is the old school, "let’s cover this from every possible angle" sort of journalism that isn’t helpful and amplifies a message.

But then I looked and their tweet about it was highly successful, that story got a lot of attention. People on the internet click bad things. Everyone wanted to know what Milo thought because he started this. So like, there’s always going to be someone who says "Here’s where you can find the photos," "Here’s what one of the harassers thinks"—are we fighting a losing battle?

The danger there in framing it as an "us vs them" is those things we’re accusing "them" of doing are pretty endemic to the "us" as well. Milo is an extreme example of someone behaving in grotesque ways, and other instigators like him are similarly grotesque. And it’s really tempting to point the finger and say "They’re the problem, they’re the bad guys, they’re the ones that are doing this," that he started it.

But all the people who retweeted that tweet and who commented on that story and who then perpetuate it inadvertently—even the people who are doing it from a well-meaning perspective or commenting on the story in order to condemn the story—we’re all responsible for how the internet is. The internet is not bad because of a few bad eggs. If the internet is bad or if it yields more negative outcomes than positive outcomes, that’s a function of all of us. That’s why it’s so critical for all of us, regardless of where we draw the moral or ethical line and push people over that line, you’ve got to think about what can we individually do? What are we doing and how can we do better? How can we be more mindful, more compassionate?

That is a more helpful approach to those questions because we all carry some responsibility. We’re all curious about the story. We don’t necessarily all want to see the images, but we all want details, we want to know what she thinks, we want this information. That desire for information, even if it comes from a neutral place or a positive place, it still perpetuates our system.

What this example shows and the other examples show, all of these outcomes that many people condemn as being hateful or grotesque, it’s all reflective of the fact that our system doesn’t work, that our system is not set up for humane engagement, it’s set up for hot takes and clickbait and sensationalism. This is the result of that. This is the bed all of us have made.

We haven’t all embraced it, but this is the result of a media economy that privileges metrics. This is what happens. And so, in order to really think about how do we fix it, we have to think about the “we.” We deal with the we, and then we think about them later. What I hope comes out of it is some self reflection, because it’s deeply, profoundly needed.