Not being creepy means never having to convince someone to have sex with you. You don’t need tactics. You don’t need lines. You don’t need to change her mind about you. She’s only gonna have sex with you if she wants to have sex with you.
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Marriage Equality Avatar Efficacy
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Mail Bag Wednesday – “Cheerleader”
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What Every Man Should Know
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Mail Bag Sick Day + Bonus Puppy Footage
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The “Gray Area” of Rape Culture
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The R-Word
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Misogyny’s Impact On Health
Posts Tagged “reddit”
Our own Whitney Phillips, PhD has just published a really thoughtful piece on the Violentacrez fiasco over on The Atlantic. Here’s an excerpt:
This may not be a pretty picture, in fact in Violentacrez’ case it is quite ugly (placing in entirely new context the term “front page of the internet”). But like all trolls, Violentacerz shows us, purposefully or not, the underlying values of the host culture. Maybe not the individual values of individual users (i.e. just because Violentacrez derives pleasure from the sexual exploitation of women and minors does not mean that all Redditors derive pleasure from the sexual exploitation of women and minors), but at the very least his actions shine an uncomfortable light on what passes as “positive” community contribution, as well as the kinds of behaviors Reddit’s paid staff and volunteer moderators are willing to protect — apparently in the name of “making the world suck less.”
What an Academic Who Wrote Her Dissertation on Trolls Thinks of Violentacrez – The Atlanic
Redditors giving Reddit mods hell over trying to defend Creepshots. This is priceless. Click the image below for proper reading-size.
On Forbes, Tim Worstall uses syphilis and penicillin to argue that technology changes which social mores are considered “acceptable” to explain why so many Redditors seemed to find Violentacrez’ actions defensible in his article We Need a New Set of Manners for the Internet.
Excremental Virtue explains this “if I can do it, it’s permissible” lapse of logic by saying “Posing for photos constitutes an act for which any and all retaliation and “use” is fair, no matter how private their original contexts—including ex-partners circulating erotic photos, including photos taken of women unawares, including men commenting on and masturbating to them.”
Aaron Brady makes an excellent point in his article Creepshots and the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of ‘Free Speech’ – “when people invoke “free speech” to defend a person’s right to take pictures of unwilling women and circulate those pictures on the internet, they are saying that it is okay to do so.”
Cranberryzero on I Heart Chaos demonstrates that he has no clue what he’s talking about when he says “when you’re a big enough troll to become both a hero and villain on a site like Reddit, you must be doing something right. The Redditor that goes by the name of Violentacrez has been a Reddit fixture for some time now, operating anonymously… that is until Gawker went and tracked him down.Thoughts? Was it right to out him? At first I thought so, but now, not so much.”
Over on The Verge lots of commenters are rushing to Reddit’s defense, flubbing details and feebly alleging that Violentacrez was planted by Gawker to make Reddit look bad.
Yesterday was one hell of an interesting day in regards to Reddit’s public image. In the morning, BuzzFeed ran a glowing profile piece on founder Alexis Ohanian, “Why is this man running for President of the Internet“ lauding him for his efforts in helping squash SOPA. Ohanian stood infront of a podium adorned with the motto “Making the World Suck Less.”
It’s not clear how Ohanian was making the world suck less when encouraging, benefiting from, and ultimately protecting the actions of a man who posted photos of underage girls for perverts to leer at. And that’s a fact that Gawker’s Adrian Chen raised loudly and clearly when he published what is, in my opinion, the best depiction of Reddit’s success to date: Unmasking Violentacrez, the Biggest Troll on the Web. If you read nothing else on Gawker, let it be this.
Now, in case you haven’t been following along prior to today, many Reddit subforums had already begun banning Gawker links days in advance, in preparation for Chen’s article. In fact, their was an outpouring of support for Violentacrez, real name Michael Brutsch, despite his habit of posting 14 year-old girls their bikinis. Apparently creating and moderating boards like /r/creepshots, /r/jailbait, and /r/picsofdeadjailbait were just fine but when a journalist chose to reveal VA’s identity, this was somehow a gross violation of his privacy.
With how much work Reddit staff goes to portraying themselves in a humanitarian light, calling themselves “the front page of the internet” and “a force for good in a bad world,” it’s important that we all remember that they knew of Violentacrez’s habits of posting exploitative photos and simply looked the other way. As long as they could benefit from the traffic he brought to the site, they did nothing to stop him.
I recently got into a discussion with my friend and former dissertation advisor about my strong and ever-growing antipathy towards Reddit. She described my feelings as “perplexing,” doubtlessly because I’ve been accused on more than one occasion and by more than one person (including her, in the nicest and most constructive ways possible) of being something of an apologist for trolls. Consequently I can see why it might seem odd that I’d maintain an uneasy ambivalence towards trolling but be rabidly judgmental about a site like Reddit, which is constantly being lauded (and lauding itself) for democratizing the internet, saving the world from SOPA, and delivering pizzas to the needy, all done for the loves (which I’ve just decided is the whiteknight equivalent of the lulz).
The thing is, though, Reddit irritates me. But not for the obvious reasons, namely the shameful number of subreddits that are either devoted to or permissive of rape jokes, racism, mysogyny, jailbait porn, etc. These things are objectively and demonstrably gross, and in the case of human shitbags Violentacrez and CreeperComforts, which our Chris Menning discussed earlier, outright illegal. The thing is, the site is large, and therefore contains multitudes. Just because some users are shitty doesn’t and shouldn’t mean the whole site is shitty. Read More »
Reddit is home to a lot of unsavory content. Whether it’s nude photos of underage teens, upskirt photos of teenage girls, rape fantasies, rape confessions, incest fantasies, or other voyeuristic photos of women taken without their knowledge, Reddit is the go-to destination for would-be predators to get their virtual fix.
No wait. Reddit is the home of the saviors of the Internet who single-handedly killed SOPA by building an Internet Bat-Signal, who buy pizza for those in need when they can’t buy their own dinner, and brings strangers together with the largest Secret Santa gift exchange in the world. Clearly Reddit is the home of the good guys. The good guys who will take upskirt photos of your little sister and post them for everyone to see. Read More »
“High emotions, inside jokes, and cultish reverence for one interest above all: When you’re inside a fandom, it’s as if you’ve found your long lost people. But to outsiders, fan enthusiasm and rage can be truly insufferable.”
Earlier today, the Daily Dot posted an article about the 10 worst fandoms as picked by Reddit. The short answer is “all of them,” with dishonorable mentions going to Juggalos, youth cannabis culture, Anime fans, and a handful of other interests that
won’t get you upvotesstrike Reddit as annoying, including memes and anti-fans. Because Reddit, Reddit is above all that nonsense. “If I ever hear anyone say ‘le’ or ‘me gusta’ in real life, I am going to run them down with my car, then post it to Reddit for karma,” Lauren Rae Orsini quoted Redditor Chakote as saying. Also, people who spend time bitching about the people they hate, that’s just obnoxious! As dinoswithjetpacks notes, his attention likely split between this comment and a meme he’s making for r/athiesm, “What annoys me the most is the anti-fanbases. People glorifying the fact that they DON’T like something that’s popular.” That is very funny irony, you two!
I owe a great deal of gratitude to Reddit. I’ve received a fair amount of traffic from them in the past, as my “What Men’s Magazines Are Really About” post maintains a position among the top posts of all time to the OneY subreddit. I created original content that I knew the subreddit would enjoy, I submitted a link to it, and I’ve been able to enjoy the referral traffic for my work.
Additionally, my satire about the social media intern who died of butt bacon was a joke at the expense of Reddit, and I still receive occasional traffic to it from Something Awful, Fark, and other various message boards. So again, I have to thank Reddit for that.
I’ve submitted a great number of Modern Primate links to Reddit, along with some to Slacktory, to 11 Points, and other blogs that I like. And I’ve spent countless hours taking part in conversations on /r/minecraft and other subreddits I’m interested in. My account is nearly three years old.
But still, because of my habit of linking to my own site where I post my own original content, I’ve been labeled a spammer and have been banned. I’ve messaged the admins twice in the last two weeks, but haven’t gotten any response. It seems that the only way I could avoid this is if I were to relinquish any rights to my original content and post it exclusively to Imgur.
In effect, Reddit punishes the creation of original content, and rewards content theft.
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