The End of All Things (Archive)

This page is under expansion or restructuring and may contain inaccuracies or errors. You can improve the quality of this article or other articles.

This page is an archive of an external webpage. The information on this page may no longer be accurate due to current events or changes in Destiny's beliefs.

This document served in hopes of correcting the record and establish, with good foundation,
beliefs regarding some of the more controversial topics and positions that have sprung up over the past years.

Preface

This document was made possible by the tireless contributions and assistance from many in chat, including, in no particular order,
cantclosevim · Doxx · Rhodesy · punished_furry · TCBrady · cybervegan · Wannabe_Sadboi

Beginning

“It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

— Bilbo Baggins, "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring"

I was a streamer on Twitch.tv for 3,943 days, from June 6th, 2011 until March 23rd, 2022. In that time I’ve been a Starcraft 2 ladder hero, a Starcraft 2 semi-pro turned entertainment streamer, the most popular Twitch streamer for about a year, an aspiring League of Legends player, a variety game entertainer, and finally an online political pundit. Before Twitch, I streamed on Twitch’s predecessor, Justin.tv. Before that, I streamed on livestream.com and ustream.tv, before streaming was even an established medium.

I am many things, and many things have been said about me. I am obnoxiously abrasive, oftentimes far too hyperbolic, and can be annoyingly offensive. I can also be incredibly passionate, fiercely driven and sometimes even considerate to a fault. I do not consider myself to be nice, but I am kind. I don’t consider myself to be very friendly, but I am, without question, a good friend.

This document is vast and encompasses many different topics. By the end of this journey I will have established the following things:

• A brief overview of the start and end of my political project on Twitch
• A detailed understanding of my trans positions and how they came to be
• A comprehensive overview of who I am, and who people say I am
• The lies spread about me and my community, and how they’re created
• Vaush’s central role in the propagation of malevolence towards me and my community

The Birth of Twitch Politics

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”

— Albert Einstein

In the Beginning…

I’ve always had an interest in philosophy, science and politics. Even throughout the early days of my streaming I’d often venture off into topics completely and totally unrelated to gaming. The discussion of these subjects was always peripheral to gameplay, however, and it wasn’t until 2016 with the rise of Trump that I decided to take political discussions a bit more seriously. I thought online political discourse at the time was characterized by a fundamental misunderstanding of what was factually true on both sides of the political discourse. I figured, at the time, perhaps naively, that I could contribute to and shape this dialogue in a more meaningful way to improve the state of online discourse.

The 2016 days of online politics were best characterized by the likes of Armoured Skeptic, Thunderf00t, Sargon of Akkad and The Amazing Atheist. The arguments were rife with what I would later call “gamerbro politics,” a center-left social ideology with a special disdain for third wave feminism and LGBT issues.

The political content these figures specialized in was essentially the lampooning of the “blue-haired, overweight” feminist seen screeching in “Ben Shapiro owns college student” compilation videos. In those early days of 2016, no one on Twitch, or the gaming community in general, really, was representing left-leaning or progressive social positions, so I decided to toss my hat into the ring. Coming from an aggressively toxic internet background gave me the unique ability to communicate with younger people (“gamers”) in a language they understood while still representing a distinctly progressive agenda, something that at that point was only really talked about by those who were perceived as outsiders, such as Anita Sarkeesian and Brianna Wu.

Early days politically on Twitch were rife with racism ( 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 ), sexism and transphobia. Most stream chats were incredibly combative against me as “gamergate politics” had taken hold strong in the larger Twitch communities, and it wasn’t uncommon that I would receive massive waves of harassment after every panel or debate I participated in.

This harassment included:

• 3 separate visits from the FBI. ( 1 | 2 | 3 )
• People coordinating messages to send to law enforcement to falsely incriminate me, including cutting up past discussions I’ve had over a video of me showcasing my Glock in an attempt to make it sound like I’m encouraging people to kill conservatives.
• Being doxxed multiple times across multiple addresses.
• People searching for my child's and his mother’s address.
• Multiple DDoS’ on both my personal connection and across my websites.
• Tens of thousands of hateful messages across Twitter, including death threats and graphic death/rape depictions of my son.
• Thousands of hacking attempts across my bank accounts, emails, Reddit accounts, cell phones and other private media accounts.
• “Investigations” into Jewish and Arabic donors in my community.
• People posting images of my house on /pol/, telling me they were going to show up to where I live.
• Spam chargebacks across hundreds of credit card donations.
• Dozens of catfishing attempts to solicit nudes/passwords/personal information from me.
• Spam reporting of my YouTube and Twitter accounts coordinated by multiple online communities almost forcing me to quit online politics.
• Multiple attempts to contact my son via social media.
• People sending inappropriate and hateful messages to my mother on Facebook and Twitter.
• Racist and hateful spam across my donation platforms using stolen credit cards,
• Racist and hateful brigades across my chat rooms, discord and subreddit.
• Had a leaked dick picture incorporated into the CSS of a subreddit (hosted on official Reddit servers) that wasn’t removed until I made a post that reached the #1 spot of /r/all complaining about it.
• Had several communities dedicated to spamming my sponsors and the clients of my sponsors with complaints to get me removed from teams or sponsorships.

Despite the harassment from others, and to the chagrin of the broader Twitch chatting and gaming community, I managed to carve out a decent space for myself doing political content on Twitch. I was the sole occupant of this space for about 2 years before the “first wave” of Twitch political descendents, Hasan and Irishladdie, would mutate and slither out of my community.

The Chubber and the Chadwick

On December 26th, 2012, I had my second discussion with a ShitRedditSays community member Ian Kochinski, known online as Irishladdie, about feminism, rape culture and other political and social topics. ShitRedditSays was a subreddit of highly active, radical progressive posters who were well-known for brigading and harassing other communities across Reddit with, what they perceived as, anti-LGBT/progressive views. Though they also arguably led the charge to getting the notorious r/jailbait and other jailbait-like subreddits banned from Reddit, SRS was eventually “‘neutered’ effectively by one of the admins.” According to ex-CEO Yishan, a large number of their posters were banned due to excessive brigading and harassment, even after multiple warnings to moderators...

Irishladdie would go on to have several conversations with me and other members of my community before being ousted for a long-term sexual harassment event that took place in my Discord community. To distance himself from these accusations, he changed his name to Vaush and began a YouTube channel in January of 2019.

Hasan Piker established himself early on as a “fratboy content” contributor on his uncle’s show, The Young Turks, and eventually would go on to do light pop political commentary videos on TYT’s Facebook page. He would then try his hand at streaming on Twitch in early 2018, though he’d have difficulty breaking past double digit viewership until reaching out to me in October of 2018 to review a debate of his against Charlie Kirk.

Over the next several months, Hasan and I would frequently collaborate across both of our streams and popular Twitch shows, including the Rajj Royale and the Trainwrecks podcast.

The Great Schism

While I had built a reputation fighting with conservatives and alt-righters across the internet (gaining enough notoriety to be featured across multiple profile pieces on MotherJones and Slate, as well as mentioned in a New York Times podcast and article about deradicalizing alt-righters), I was unaware that I was doing a poor job at establishing a better foundation of thought for the people I was bringing over from far right extremism. Instead of replacing the extremist mindset of many far right people with a more rational one, I was simply trading out one extremist far right mindset for an extremist far left one. I underestimated the amount of actual communists and socialists in my fanbase, foolishly assuming many people were only joking when they’d make comments about it, as I’d always been a social democrat who believed in capitalism with strong government interventions.

An uncomfortable turmoil would grow amidst my fans anytime I had a strong disagreement with any figure to my left. These conflicts would culminate in a massive schism in my fanbase (jump started in July of 2019 over a disagreement about Kamala Harris, among other things) with me eventually bleeding off thousands of viewers over the next few months to both Ian and Hasan.

The Trans Question

According to discoverphds.com, the average Masters’ dissertation length is approximately 20,000 words whilst a [PhD] thesis is approximately 80,000 – 100,000 [words].

This document contains over 32,270 words and 490 external links.

I will never write anything this long again in my life.

“Indefinite Suspension”

“It's not about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.” Rocky Rocky Balboa (2006)

The Official Reason

Twitch sent me an email on March 23rd, notifying me that my account had been permanently suspended for “hateful conduct.” The email does not specify what words were used or what exactly was said on stream, though it does provide some links to the Hateful Conduct section of Twitch’s Community Guidelines. As I was not a partnered streamer on Twitch at the time of my suspension, I unfortunately have no other way of gathering any specific information related to my suspension. I’ve attempted to appeal twice, requesting information relating to my suspension, but I’ve only been answered with automated rejections.

My Speculation

       With no direct and clear communication relating to my ban, there’s not much for me to speculate on. It’s possible that my position that trans-women ought to be excluded from NCAA and professional athletic competitions against cis-women fell in direct violation of Twitch’s Hateful Conduct & Harassment guidelines, which states: “Calls for subjugation, segregation or exclusion, including political, economic, and social exclusion/segregation, based on a protected characteristic, including age. We do, however, allow discussions on certain topics such as immigration policy, voting rights for non-citizens, and professional sports participation as long as the content is not directly denigrating based on a protected characteristic.

       It’s also possible that any number of comments I’ve made concerning certain individuals or online activist communities constituted “hateful conduct.” As it’s impossible to determine what constitutes “hateful” at any given point in time, and since it seems to be a moving target at Twitch depending on the year and the streamer, it’s impossible for me to say.

Rumors…

Many across Twitter and Twitch have speculated numerous reasons for why I’ve been suspended, although these reasons are unlikely, unless Twitch made a mistake in their email to me. It had nothing to do with platforming Fuentes during a debate for 10 minutes, as the suspension would not have been for hateful content, but for aiding in ban evasion. The suspension also had nothing to do with anything posted on Twitter, as the email specified that the conduct occurred “on stream.”

Others have speculated that my suspension occurred for hate raids, harassment, or other forms of brigading, but again, none of these were specified in the email sent by Twitch and none of them fall under “hateful conduct.”

Political Considerations

Many from both the right and left have speculated on how this ban will affect my political stances concerning not only trans people, but more broadly across the entire spectrum of social and political issues. Many find it apt to define their political positions based on the social groups they belong to, or to their reactions to opposing social groups. I have maintained an incredibly stable internal moral philosophy (the greatest amount of “good” should be created for the greatest number of people) that I’ve used to generate my political positions. To this day that moral philosophy remains unchanged.

Some claim that the political positions I occupy are ones I arrived at spitefully, but the reality is that conversations take different shapes depending on who’s participating. If I were arguing about BLM against a progressive figure far to the left of me, I imagine a lot of our conversations would revolve around the effectiveness of rioting and how much of the protests can be characterized as such. It’s entirely possible that we’d spend an entire conversation with me arguing that rioters should be punished, property owners should defend their businesses, and the government should be taking a more active role intervening against the violence. But perhaps the next conversation were to be against a conservative who believes BLM has no legitimate grievances. In this conversation I may point to the idea of riots being “the language of the unheard,” and that there are at the very least the perceptions of systemic issues that require addressing in some manner, otherwise it’s foolish to simply complain that the problems start and stop with only the rioting.

I haven’t really changed positions in either of these conversations, I’m merely representing a different shade of my position based on the direction the other person is heading in the conversation. Also, it’s entirely possible, if not expected, that my social or political positions may evolve over time. It’s not because of “spite,” though, rather it’s because I’ve discovered a new political position that more closely adheres to my guiding moral principles.

Finally, let me say this: you may have seen many inflammatory 30 second video clips of me on Twitter or YouTube. I will no longer attempt to defend these statements, because most of them are indefensible. I do not make 30 second videos, and I cannot defend a 30 second statement. If you see someone who has posted a 30 second video of me, that video is not my content, that video is their content.

There are many “viral video” moments of me that look bad, largely because they lack the context of the conversation surrounding the clip. Even within the full context of the conversation the sound byte may sound “spicy,” but it’s nowhere near as hateful as people attempt to portray. One of the things I’ll be addressing in this document is the importance of engaging with my source material when making political arguments. I don’t want to argue against a 20 second representation of someone’s argument, I want to extract the essence of their arguments in their strongest forms and fight against that. I expect others to extend that same courtesy to me.

Dysphoric Discourse

“But you can only lie about who you are for so long without going crazy.”

Ellen Wittlinger

Parrotfish

Why?

Many ask why debate trans related topics at all? It affects a niche percentage of the population with some estimates saying <1% of people are trans. It is incredibly divisive. It invites, maybe even begs misinterpretation. It opens you up to liability from disagreements. Most people on either end of the argument are too dug in to ever even consider changing their minds.

I argue about trans positions for the following reasons.

Trans positions help you explore another person’s view of their morality and how they view the world. Trans discourse is especially prone to being incredibly poor, so it’s a conservation I want to improve. There is poor representation among people who support trans issues on the internet. I have a sizable trans community in my own audience.

       Many have incredibly strong views about gender and sex and their place in our society yet have little understanding of how these concepts are constructed. While they are quick to push you for definitions about “what is a man/woman,” if you ask them the same question they will quickly default to definitions surrounding chromosomes and genitilia, rejecting the sex/gender distinction while neglecting the fact that we determine someone’s gender 99% of the time without having access to either of those pieces of information. The reality is that sex and gender are complicated topics that are worth having complicated discussions over. Even if we all broadly agree on 98% of gender/sex definitions, there’s no harm in pushing the boundary a bit if it can encompass a few more people in society to drastically improve the quality of their lives without causing harm to anyone else.

       The state of trans discourse on the internet is abysmal. It seems that on one extreme of the argument you have genuinely transphobic figures who don’t believe trans people even exist. These people say trans people should be denied healthcare, community support, opportunities to integrate into society, and feel that their entire existence shouldn’t be acknowledged as anything other than mental delusion. On the other end of things you’ve got people who want to eliminate women’s sports, unquestioningly affirm every single person’s belief that they are trans, even if they’re a 4 or 5 year old child, claim that transwomen experience periods, attack lesbians for their dating preferences, and claim that not wanting to have sex with trans person is transphobic. It’s important to acknowledge the

biological distinctions between trans and cis people so that we can have realistic conversations about how best to integrate trans people into society in as many ways possible.

       Trans supporters, along with many other supporters of issues that are considered “left” on the internet, like sex workers, seem to be ubiquitously tied to extremist leftists economic and political ideologies. Almost any trans supporting public figure you find on the internet seems to identify as a socialist, communist, or some type of anarchist. I think it’s a positive to show that a moderately positioned person can be staunchly in favor of trans rights, and it demonstrates that you don’t necessarily need to embrace an entire change of economy or government in order to respect and accommodate trans people in daily life.

From Those in the Back

       The nature of political and social discourse lends itself to conversations that  involve a wide breadth of experiences foreign to myself. One of the most valuable tools available to me is soliciting others for feedback to ensure that my opinions are tracking with the lived realities of many of those I speak for. Trans experiences are no different. Before I get into any detailed accounting of my social and legal positions on trans issues, I’d like to cite 31 excerpts from the hundreds of emails I’ve gotten from my trans viewers over the past few months. I understand there may be a selection bias, due to the types of people who are more likely to watch me, but all I can do is ask for experiences from my audience and listen. I believe this will better lay the groundwork for the development of my perspective and why I have the positions I do on these topics.

       Some names and details have been changed in order to protect the anonymity of those who’ve emailed me.

“It's exhausting as a person who is sort of into politics who is also trans. In podcasts people will bring up trans people out of nowhere and everyone has to have a strong opinion on trans issues. One second I'm chilling listening to a podcast and the next second somebody's giving a take that feels very personal and relevant to me. It's stressful. It's not just the trans stuff ofc, there is so much politics and shit happening all the time and nasty, disingenuous people out there everywhere. After a while I just want to tune out and live my life. Go to work, come home, play some games, work on some hobbies, go to sleep. I don't have the stamina to be out there on Twitter or Reddit arguing against anti-trans people and the pro-trans deer gender people. Contra said something like this while back with the Buck Angel controversy. It hurts a lot to be casted out and rejected by the trans community after feeling like the trans community is one of the few places that was supposed to be a 'safe space', of people who understand me. I don't wanna be in chat and all a sudden somebody's asking me if I'm trans and it's a big deal and like a regular Discord server some of the people will be cool with it and some of them not, and all a sudden I just "started" a bunch of drama by speaking words in VC. So there is strong pressure to conform or at least not challenge w/e stuff trans people are saying online as a trans person myself. Really hurts when the community turns on me. It also sucks that the noisy trans people online have some more extreme views on things. Nobody will hear my POV because I am too busy living life and too tired to be arguing with people on Twitter all day. It's the same with my trans friend(s). And it sucks that some people get aggrevated by whatever dumb shit crazy trans people on the internet say. Even when you are super duper careful with which trans people you're talking about, emotionally I still feel like I'm being lumped into the group. I fear people will lump us all into the same group. It's just how a human processes emotions I guess. I hope crazy online people don't warp your sense of perception of how the real world is.” “I always just wanted to live a somewhat normal life as a woman ("living stealth" in trans terms) - not a trans woman, not a trans activist, not a person in queer culture - just a woman. The reason to distance myself from "being a trans woman" grow with every bad take these online communities give.” “Both my partner and I are progressive peeps (my partner was actually a huge Hasan fan when we met, but not any more) but we both harbor beliefs about trans issues that we’d never share publicly or with most of our friends, because we know we’d get ostracized for them. Or in my case, even potentially banned from a huge gaming community I'm a part of. This bothers me a lot more than it does her. Here’s some examples. You need dysphoria to be trans: (she feels strongly about this, I’m still thinking about where I stand) Trans women cannot fairly compete in cis women's sports. Neo pronouns: made up internet bullshit. Non-binary people aren’t trans: (she feels strongly, something I’m still thinking about). Both of us cringe at the ultra left online trans community, but in my case I sort of went through a year long phase of being one of those people. Which obviously I now look back on and cringe. But yeah, I used to be friends with a lot of the people you now fight with on Twitter. But yeah, not a huge fan of being lumped in with those people, but it’s almost unavoidable if I value my relationships and ability to participate in certain communities more than I do the ability to speak my mind about everything. We both pass. But she really wants to be completely invisible, where I on the other hand just don’t care as much if people know. However it does feel really shitty that there’s this culture in the new age trans community of like “omg I can tell you’re trans, I’m trans too, let’s talk about that!” and I hate that shit. I had a friend of a friend clock me like this in a w0ke way, and was sort of off put by it. and my friend couldn’t understand why I cared at all. Worse than just being clocked to me is when people who do know I’m trans try to virtue signal this allyship to me, like go out of their way to say stuff like “heyy girlllll” when they don’t normally speak to people like that and I can tell. That shit makes me physically cringe, and more othered than when someone actually does just misgender me. But some people do like that shit, I dunno it’s all my perspective.” “I'm a trans woman and local political advocate in my area, I know you said you don't want trans women to come on to agree with you as a trans shield as you said. But I don't think these people truly understand how dangerous their influence is. I have worked for 2 campaigns door knocking for people in my district. If a progressive democrat wanted me to read off lines similar to what like DemonMama, Josie or vaush (sometimes) says I wouldn't partake in door knocking/canvassing. Because I would be afraid of how people would react, like it's basic reality they are denying and somehow it has webbed so many normally rational people who like in my college have started believing this!” “I'm kinda insulted that mrbeard thought he knew anything about trans folk. It honestly sounded like the only thing he knew was radical statements he found on the internet. I understand the sentiment of “don’t gate keep being trans” which is where the whole truscum/transmedicalist hate comes from. And I don't think someones invalid for not doing invasive surgeries. but at some point we have to be able to accuse people of fuckery. I never wanted to be trans. I had seemingly permanent depression for the last decade. I also suffered from suicidal ideation and panic attacks while I was confronting myself to make a decision on my identity. The only thing that's helped me was counseling, and moving towards that goal of physical transition. Dysphoria is literally the only reason I call myself trans. My brain said ‘woah, somethings wrong here, I’m not like the others’. It's the only reason I changed my identity, to reflect and describe my experience. If someone is not actually describing an experience they are a part of, should they really be allowed to claim it? If someone called themselves a veteran but they’ve never served in the military, we would agree that it means they're not a veteran. Hence the reason we put the word “veteran” on their ID to separate the liars from the real ones. I don’t think we need “trans IDs” but I do think the term trans(gender) should be reserved for the people actually transitioning or desires to in some manner. Most likely because of dysphoria. Changing your pronouns is like changing your full name to a shortened version or nickname. My given name is Draven. But I dislike it. Drave on the other hand feels easy, simple, and neutral. Drave is my preferred name. He/him are my preferred pronouns. But nothing about my preference actually means anything. I would say that Identifying my dysphoria and my desire to correct it as the indicator I am ‘trans’. I would say that feeling happier and healthier on the opposite sex’s hormones would describe my experience as ‘trans’. Changing my pronouns does not actually describe the suffering, struggle, or experience I deal with. It merely allows me to feel respect for my journey to manhood.” “Within the 2 months between starting hrt from October 29th to December 27th 2021, it felt extremely similar to when I took the SSRI lexapro in the past. My brain felt calm and satisfied by the correction being made through the medicine. I still question myself thinking I must still be high off the weed from last night sometimes. Once the estradiol (estrogen) and spironolactone (anti androgens((testosterone blockers)))kicked in, my seemingly permanent depression vanished. I've never felt more happy and mentally free than right now. I've even spent $2,000 on laser hair removal for my face, which improved my self confidence 10 fold. Not because society doesn't want women to have facial hair, but because I don't want facial hair. It's basically itchy pubes on the face and it's entirely unneeded. Waking up in the morning and noticing that all the shaving I did yesterday meant nothing because it's already growing back is an insanely frustrating thing. Especially when you have sensitive skin. Nothing about taking hrt the last 5 months or socially transitioning the last year and a half has ever proved to me it isn't a fucked situation between my brain and my body. I’m absolutely getting the short end of the stick no matter which direction I take. TBH I would rather be alone forever as trans than to regret never transitioning (Which feels like - never being happy). But only because I feel like people actually see me for me now. If it were the case that I could be socialized into being cis, I think all the transphobia and internalized hatred of myself would have cured me. No amount of poking and proding of a cis person will ever make them want to transition. So why is it that people refuse to accept that from our best guess, that the identities of trans people reflect that of cis people and are immutable. It's practically the same argument as sexuality. I was never straight or cis to begin with. You could even say that they attempted to socialize me into being straight and cis but it never worked. I just chose to accept the fact that I was bi and or a trans woman. In middle school my real life aspiration was to have a woman's body when I became an adult. But I assumed it was just a fantasy and couldn't actually happen because I knew nothing about being trans until half a decade later.” “I refuse to hang out in trans/lgbt+ activist type communities. There are great trans meme groups and great trans friendly spaces for other topics. But when everything becomes about how negative everything is and how rhetoric demands outrageous claims otherwise all is lost then I'm outtie. I enjoy my queer and trans friends and I enjoy my straight cis friends. But joining lgbt+ discords and that zoomer app amino was horrible. It literally rides on elitism and the proclaimed suffering. There is nothing fun about obsessing or coping with a group. It's often focused on IdPol anyways. I also joined a queer app called Taimi and there seems to be a load of clueless pre transition trans folk. If they're all on this social/dating app trying to match with further along trans folk to ask questions like "Where do I get HRT my counselor referred me to a place that closed" or "What Insurance do I need?", there clearly aren't proper spaces for them. Those communities that claim to support trans folk are dumbfucks who obess about fuck bois online identifying as super straight, and how you should be able to change ALL the documents that literally declare your existence from assigned gender at birth to prefered gender at the click of a button with no mediation. Not to mention the inability for allies to ever visit these communities without having to be 'programmed' and set in the corner to repeat catch phrases is ridiculous. I'm most likely the only trans person most of the people in my life have ever or will ever hold a connection with. If I were to ever take any of these dumb fuck takes from online and shout them at my friends and family, then I'd never get to build anything with them. Compassion and empathy for people in a changing world is the most impactful thing I can offer. And at the end of the day, the people around me understand that trans people aren't all that different.” “I started watching more and more debates, and eventually I started to really appreciate your arguments. You’ve helped me learn how to foster an internal value system and derive ideas and stances from that. You helped me understand the importance of being introspective and consistent. I know people think your fans are just cringe debate-bros, but from your conversations I’ve learned to listen and ask questions. My discussions with friends and family have become more productive and far less heated because I have the tools to navigate them with a level head. Your work has improved my life tremendously, and improved the lives of those around me by some amount as well. I also want to thank you for talking about trans issues the way that you do. I find you discuss trans issues with an enormous amount of empathy. I really feel you’ve done your best to consider a trans experience, in the way a shallow retard like Hasan never could. You articulate the trans experience better than any cis person I’ve seen online, and better than 95% of trans people online. I’ve also felt so frustrated and invalidated by the sports debates. It drives me crazy to hear people say that hormones erase all biological difference. HRT has been wonderful for me, but it’s not magical. It’s very limited, actually. While I can get plastic surgery on my face to better approach a cis appearance, because of the effects of a male puberty, I have broader shoulders than 95% of cis women. It’s one of my biggest insecurities, and I have to be careful with the clothes I choose not to emphasize that feature and evoke the image of “man in a dress.” Incidentally, those same broad shoulders would absolutely give me an advantage if I was a competitive swimmer—just look at a picture of Michael Phelps. “Autogynephelia” is something that trans spaces won’t engage with at all. They will flatly tell you it doesn’t exist and that it’s just a transphobic lie. I find that very invalidating to my own experience. At the same time, I still feel very ashamed of my sexual proclivities. I often question whether or not I’m “really” trans, and I feel like I can never discuss this publicly, because my words will just be weaponized by TERFs and transphobes to hurt other trans people. I've thought about writing a book exploring some of these ideas, but I question whether or not it would be responsible to do so. Logically, I think I really am trans. I can recall a desire to be female that predates any sexual attraction, and even as hormones have slashed my libido, my desire to be a woman has not waned. When I reach new levels in my appearance, I get aroused and I masturbate to my reflection, then after a few times it just becomes mundane and normal to me. I keep these feelings under lock and key because of how much trans people and transphobes alike would hate me for this. Emotionally, I feel like a fake. Still, there’s also an internal transformation that occurs during transition. My vocabulary and inflections have started adapting in ways I hadn’t anticipated. My emotional self is changing, partially due to hormones. I never used to cry, but now I’ll find myself tearing up at random bullshit, like pictures of cute puppies or a really delicious slice of cake (estrogen is a hell of a drug). I’m picking up some new hobbies and friends and dropping old ones. I'm undergoing a social metamorphosis, not just a physical one. I really really enjoy when I can just pass as cis. When I move through my life like a normal woman, it feels really nice and really peaceful (Covid has helped by normalizing masks—masks are a godsend for transwomen). When people realize I’m trans, they’ll ask me my pronouns, or start trying to talk about trans politics with me—it’s just really annoying and othering. I have enough anxiety as is. I hate attention, I hate pronouns, I hate people patronizing me and telling me how brave I am and how happy they are for me. I literally just want to be a normal person.” “Hearing MrBeard talk like this made me want to 41% myself, and I wanted you desperately to clarify that some people aren't trans. Some are white suburban privilleged fucks seeking attention off the back of actual trans people who face actual harm in society. These are the "trans" people this dumbfuck talks too. You made these clarifications clear during the cringe Neo-pronoun shit but god I just wanted you to hammer it in each and every time he made these claims. It does not matter how mild, or severe your dysphoria is but you NEED some gender dysphoria to be trans. well at least I'm 99.9% sure that is true for what we know. Though I am certain you just stopped caring half way through this debate when it was clear how terminally online this guy is. Still I wish it was hammered more because of my next point. I am convinced that lefties, and toxic trans people like Keffals believe people in the middle do not exist. To these people, only the far right, and far left exist. You are either a trans ally or a transphobe. The current online trans community is the MOST harmful thing for trans people as a whole. I know I hear you keep saying that "These people do not represent the trans community" which I feel is mostly true. I am worried for the future, I am seeing the effects of people like Keffals bleed into the real world. I know these people only exist on twitter and have no real world interactions, however I do. I live in the deep south, a small town, and I suck off Bezos in a huge factory so I can have the opportunity to get HRT. I get the opportunity to see many different faces and talk to them. A good majority are right leaning and are of the crowd of tolerating trans people and others are just on the fence. Truth is it seems most everyday people just don't care and don't know facts about the issue. Understandable. The thing is from what I can tell, it is cunts like Keffals and the far left that push these people to the right on these issues the most. The reason I feel like I can't come out to some of these people, a few of which I have become friends with. It's not because of JK, it's not because of TERFs, it's not because kiwifarms or 4chan. Normal everyday people don't give a fuck about those things. It's because of these crazy fucking lefties on twitter or IRL and the bad interactions with radicals that stick with them. When I probe some people about trans issues I don't hear about how cool JK is and how based her tweets are. I hear about how they got called a transphobe by some deerself because they wouldn't burn their Harry Potter wand they got at Universal. The small number of people I do come out to joke about how I will get them canceled or fired if they misgender me, it's light hearted, but it's because of what they see from memes or tik tok.. for older people it was facebook mom shit. It is upsetting to me, and I know this is likely not what the rest of the US is like. It's probably not how most of my state is. But fuck it irritates me to see any normal voting person pushed to the right by these crazies. I feel like these people are going to actually set us back 50 years at this point. That won't happen but I hope you can feel my frustration. DGG might be the only bastion left that can represent a normal online trans community. I have been called a transphobe so much the past few days. Communities on twitter or reddit are like too far gone now. Granted they always were, but at least I could exist in these spaces and have normal takes. Now I just feel alienated.. I feel lonely. It's all a crazy echochamber of shitty takes. If I say anything against the community or narrative. I should kill myself, or I am not a real trans person or I am just transphobic. I am so thankful that you and your community exist. I am glad I can exist here with normal ideas, more importantly. You might say something along the lines of not going to these crazy spaces in the first place or disengaging with dumbfucks on twitter. It's a little hard here, we don't exactly have a strong trans community, in fact, the biggest left community we have here is can you guess? yeah they are tankies. So usually if you want a IRL trans interaction, you are a little forced in with these people. I dated someone from this group and I'll come back to that, if you thought there was any hope in this. well there's not, they watch hasan and meme on twitter. So I just want to say as far as online spaces go I am greatful that I have some representation that know what the fuck they are talking about when it comes to trans issues. So thank you.” “I scoffed when I heard the guy you were debating say that trans people can find realizing their trans as freeing, because to me it's felt like a curse that ruined my entire fucking life. By the time I made it to 20 I was genuinely going to kill myself. I tried to. I threw myself into traffic in the hopes that I would get murdered in a car crash but (un)fortunately I was only injured and I kept living. Tried swallowing a bunch of pills but I ended up vomiting them up. I was too anxious to go and buy a gun to kill myself with so I didn't end up doing that, and the idea of stabbing myself to death was just a little too painful for me. It was around this level of suffering that I realized I was being foolish. Not the suicide part, I was still pretty sure that was happening, but I realized that I may as well try to transition. My logic at the time was this: If I don't transition, the odds of me commiting suicide are 100%. Life is pure pain and I just wouldn't be able to take it for much longer. But if I transition, if I fundamentally change every single aspect of myself as a human being from the ground up, if I learn how to talk like a girl, walk like a girl, get lucky with the hormone treatments somehow fixing the problems with my body, learn an entire new set of social skills, lose 150 pounds, every single person in my friends and family accepts me, if I'm blessed with the right facial genetics to pass as feminine, if I'm able to find a doctor in my area who is even willing to administer the medication to me, if I can do all of this, I might be happy one day. That astronomically low chance is still higher than 0% so I just decided fuck it, I'll try. This thought process alone I think encapsulates the suffering of gender dysphoria the best. Imagine living your entire life and putting in as much effort as possible every single day, overcoming severe mental distress and essentially recreating yourself whilst still overcoming the challenges of everyday life, just to get yourself A CHANCE to feel happy. Even if everything goes right, if you do everything perfectly, it's still entirely possible and frankly even likely that you won't even be happy. I would know, because that's what happened to me. I worked hard and I won the lottery. I objectively pass. I can go out into the world and with no prompting of any kind I am treated as a woman in society. But it didn't fix my anxiety. It doesn't make me hate myself less. It doesn't even help the dysphoria that badly. Probably at least once a week I need my boyfriend to talk me off the ledge of a building (metaphorically) because I go on a psychotic rant about not being a real woman and how I'll never really pass. It doesn't even matter that I have years of lived experiences telling me that I pass because the demons in my head won't let me believe it. This is the reality I deal with every day, and I know many other trans people anecdotally speaking who go through something similar to this. I know a lot of passing trans women and it doesn't even matter that they pass. The dysphoria struggle is still real. So with all of this being said, when I hear about NB deer kins on twitter with blue hair talking about how oppressed they are and how transphobic people are for not using their ze/zim pronouns, and how valid they are despite the extent of their transition being their twitter bio and never feeling a shred of dysphoria all of their lives, It makes me want to shoot myself more than the dysphoria ever did. I actually hate these people. I have had friends kill themselves because they couldn't handle it anymore, and I'm supposed to pretend these people are the same as us? Fuck that. Not only do they try to pretend that we are somehow the same, but they actively fuck things up for the rest of us. For every stupid tweet one of these dipshits make, it's yet another conversation I have to have with my religious conservative family. I have had to unravel their lunacy more times than I can count. It has evolved past frustration into genuine hatred.” “Anyway, after this long ramble I just want to say one thing on the broad subject. The term "transgender" is overly broad to the point where it's losing value as a descriptor. If people who don't have dysphoria or don't want to medically transition want to call themselves transgender then whatever, I don't care about what anyone does or doesn't want to do with their bodies or their social presentation. But we are not the same, and to lump us all under the same umbrella term does people like me a disservice, because it dilutes the importance of having the proper medical care. It's like if we didn't have words for "gay" or "lesbian" or "bisexual" and just called everyone who wasn't straight "queer". I really don't like it when people who don't have these intense life ruining issues I've had come in and start muddying the waters surrounding those issues. If people want to push for placing less importance on gender roles in society then sure, fine, that's probably a worthy cause. But don't do it by hijacking the discussion around a very specific issue related to a very specific group of people like me. If people want transgender to be an inclusive umbrella term for anyone who doesn't rigidly conform to the most strict definition of traditional gender then so be it, but we need new narrower terms to describe specific things.” “With time I came to realize that trans online communities are extremely toxic. They overfixiate on acceptance and validation to the point of insanity. Subreddits that were dedicated to educating and poking fun at trans people in denial have become toxic sewers in which if you dare to speak up against their current beliefs you are immediately shunned, silenced and called a transphobe or a truscum. All reason and civil discourse has been silenced. The obsession with being "valid" runs rampant. They do not care whether they are right or wrong. The only thing they came to look online is validation and blind acceptance. It deeply saddens me because it is going to lead to a massive outburst in transphobia.” “For a bit of context, I transitioned at 15 in early high school, am 21 now. When I transitioned this was barely even a thing anyone knew about, and I was the only trans person I knew. NB stuff was only juuuust beginning to exist and not like it is today. But by the time I got to college that had changed, and it’s honestly been very surreal. I swear to god I’ve met like, 30+ irl people at my school that go by some other pronouns or claim to be trans while just looking like… normal cis people. Now I'm stealth, so like I am not even really in specifically lgbt spaces either. At first I didn’t really mind but the more common it got the weirder it got for me. These people rarely even know much of anything about trans issues either, it’s very strange. It’s like I'm walking on thin ice trying to not offend a group that I'm literally part of. The most surreal experience I've had out of all of them was when I made the mistake of telling a specific friend I was trans, and they didn’t really realize I was stealth and told their roommate. When I hung out at their place once they were like “omg I’m the only cis person here”, and it was just her and her extremely gender conforming female roomate. and that roomate, after specifically having me telling them that I’m stealth, would somehow bring it up to every other person that ended up coming over. It was insane. They would like joke about cis people like it was some uncool thing to be it was weird as fuck. That reminds me of another thing you said, which was that online spaces are like 99% male. I’ve actually had the exact opposite experience. while online it tends to be male-r, and I’ve definitely met some male nb types irl, it is huuuuuugely dominated by like, woke white womenl. Like the trans support group thing at my uni is roughly 90% afab, with most of them being like, cis women with dyed hair and “she/they” pronouns (or weird neopronoun shit). I have yet to meet a single other trans woman that wasn’t super early in transition despite that support groups group chat having like, 50 people in it. It’s very isolating and weird, like why is a group supposedly about me not at all relevant to myself? That also connects to my biggest pet peev, where people will do dumb woke things in the name of supposedly helping me that actively make my life worst. Like pronoun tags for everyone and introducing themselves with pronouns on everyone doesn’t help me at all, my entire point of my transition is I wanted to actually be seen as a woman by others, and now I basically can’t tell if I’m actually being seen that way or if it’s woke shit. The worst offender was that a bunch of clubs at my school swapped out “woman” for “woman identified”. like the a cappella group changed its name from “the all womens a cappella group” to the “all women identified a capella group”. I wish I was making this shit up. This has turned into a bit of a rant, and like at the end of the day I can blend in as cis for the most part so it’s not the end of the world, it is just very weird and the extent of it in recent years has been insane. It's like despite being only 21, having transitioned earlier meant I transitioned in a completely different time and culture to most trans people my age. And now that I'm stealth, I don't have the “I’m trans” defense without outing myself, and can’t even really say anything when I hear people say this insane stuff.” “I personally have battled with a trans identity for as long as I can remember and before I even knew what that was. Growing up it was obviously scary to explain to someone but as time went on, it wasn't being scared of people judging me for coming out that kept me from doing it for so long, it was the opinions and insane talking points from people in the lgbt communities because I was afraid to be casted out by the only people I thought could understand me for not agreeing with their viewpoints.” “*As I understand it...* Years ago, mostly on Tumblr, there was a huge surge in the uwu xenogender otherkin stuff in the trans community. There was a rift between people who accepted that and those who believed being transgender was a serious thing, not something to express how different and special you were to your friends. The uwu community started calling these people 'trutrans' because they felt they were deciding who was really trans, or who was a *true trans* person. The 'trutrans' started calling the other side 'tucutes' because it was a meme on Tumblr and reddit for someone questioning their gender to post a selfie with people in the comments etc saying the OP was "too cute to not be trans! UwU". Of course, because the online trans community is toxic as fuck, the 'tucutes' started calling the 'trutrans' the new insult 'truscum'. They decided to embrace the insult, calling themselves that. The truscum community was composed of mainly hardcore transmedicalists in the beginning, i.e. not only needing dysphoria be trans, but also needing to be in the process of transitioning physically, usually working towards eventual surgery, to be legitimate. Some transmeds were not considering nonbinary people to even be real at all. *This is where I step into the community. I'm going to talk about Reddit in particular from here on because once Tumblr became SFW I noped out of that hellsite.* As time went on, more moderate people, such as myself, started to feel alienated by the general trans community because of our stances on dysphoria, tucutes, xenogenders, etc. I found r/truscum at some point because I would see other posters and commenters on r/asktransgender, r/mtf, r/trans get threads locked, posts deleted, and users banned for saying you need dysphoria to be trans or questioning anyone's legitimacy, no matter how ridiculous they were. Things like he/him lesbians, neopronouns, self described 'transmen femboys' with no dysphoria showing off big-booba NSFW selfies, etc. R/truscum became a pretty chill place, basically just like the other trans subs but safe for people like me to express their opinions without a fear of a ban(which by the way, I had to use a separate account entirely so as not to get banned on other trans subs). The community is painted as hateful bigots, transphobes, racists, right wing, etc etc, but for the most part it's just a normal center left trans community that occasionally makes fun of the cringe teenagers on Tumblr, on TikTok mostly nowadays. All of this is to say, if a trans person is labeled 'truscum' on the internet, don't assume they're a bad person or hold bigoted views. *Now for the more important part, do you need dysphoria to be trans?* I believe that in order to be considered transgender(or at least not be in a separate category) you ought to have current or alleviated gender dysphoria. If you don't have dysphoria, that means you have no negative feelings about remaining in your assigned birth gender presentation or identification. At that point it seems to me like a person just wants to be transgender because they....just choose to? "Transgender - a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond with their birth sex." That 'sense of personal identity' is an immutable characteristic, you can't help this, this isn't a choice. You've argued this several times before on stream. It's 'who I am inside'. I have difficulty believing there are people in good faith saying that who they are on the inside is opposite their birth gender, but legitimately have no negative feelings about staying the way they were assigned at birth. If these people exist, they may as well not identify as trans, because they're not really any different than people who aren't trans but want to be the opposite gender because they think it's cool. It actually reminds me of the Champagne Socialist argument you had with Vaush. Even if these people technically fit the definition, they're not really worth talking about when discussing the difficulties of the group as a whole. I and many others in the 'truscum' community have a pretty low bar for what is considered dysphoria. I don't think you need to be in the process of transitioning. If you can't because of your financial situation or because you live in an unsupportive family/community, that's fine, you can still be trans. You don't have to have dysphoria bad enough to be suicidal. You don't need to get Sexual Reassignment Surgery. The point is, you want to be the opposite gender if everything were perfect, and importantly, NOT want to stay your current gender assignment.” “What changed my life was facial feminization surgery. At 13 months, I had FFS with arguably the best surgeon for $50k (which my insurance fully paid for, thanks to my cushy engineering job), and suddenly I started presenting as me 100% of the time. Initially I was very much an activist. I used my Instagram to “advocate" for pro-trans causes, to raise awareness of anti-trans legislation, etc. Part of this was me wanting to give back to others like me, to help create a future where trans people wouldn’t have to wait until 27 to feel like they could transition without throwing away their chance at a happy life. I grew up steeped in media that made me hate who I was. Maury and Jerry Springer shows featuring trans people were some of the only media I could find that featured real life trans people, and those depictions were SO negative. These were people who were subjecting themselves to this ridicule to survive. I didn’t see any hyper successful engineers or business people that were trans that I could look up to. And now that I was this person I had wished society would show me, I wanted to be visible. Fast forward to now, this isn’t quite the case anymore. I still feel similarly in that I hope trans people don’t face what I faced growing up, and don’t have to be afraid of being disowned and ruining their lives by coming out to their parents, for example. But I no longer engage very much in the online advocacy outlets I started out really engaged in early on. I just… can’t relate to the online trans community in so many ways. I have a few really close trans girlfriends in real life that I adore. Most of them identify as heterosexual and are in relationships with men, and for all of us, being trans is just one part of who we are. And not really a major facet at that. I don’t hide that I’m trans (I’m still open that I am on social media and with friends), but in real life situations, I don’t want every person I interact with to know I’m trans. And my whole identity and set of interests aren’t derived from that aspect of my identity. Also, I do feel like some of the online twitter trans advocates are advocating for causes that will end up hurting our progress as a community, and will cause more real transphobia to manifest. And to be totally honest, I would be really afraid that if I spoke up about these feelings, I would have crazy people trying to get me fired and ruin my life.” “Basically trans communities online are super-mega extreme. People use positions of authority to convince kids to get on hormones with no accountability or regulation which is really dangerous and reflects on the trans community and feeds into the grooming kids narrative. As well as banning anyone who dissents and isn't super uwu hug boxing. Secondly, it hurts so much to be demonized by other trans people online. I can't go to many trans communities online because they all inevitably become super uwu validating, uwu hug boxing. If you go against any of this you are put in the transmedicalist label, [which] has tons of really bad associations. Like any level of dissent or like disagreement when it comes to these spaces you are cast out, it's really fucking alienating. These spaces also are super hug boxing saying everyone passes which can be dangerous to younger people who may be attacked. You can already understand this, but it's also really scary that there are people in these communities online that are like figures of authority like admins mods, or big community members who convince these kids to get on DIY hrt with no accountability. And when this shit goes wrong it reflects back on the entire trans community. Basically, it is a huge fester that grows in online spaces that pushes out literally all non-extreme people out of the spaces to spare everyone's feelings and engages in very insanely dangerous actions. TLDR for next section.: ALL ONLINE CONTENT CREATORS but you and some others engage or encourage the behaviors I talked about above and it is very scary. Because I feel like we are barreling toward undoing a lot of progress and making things materially worse for a lot of trans people with how ideologically bought into positions they are. Because it is just a fact of reality these online people gain more and more real-life influence every day as more and more people tune into twitch and into their streams and they grow especially within the trans community. Thirdly I feel like all online political communicators for trans issues engage in all these terrible behaviors I have explained above. It’s really scary, I go door to door for local elections and if I had to like repeat talking points for a democrat that like Vaush, DemonMama, or Josie or Maddie or any of these people say I'd genuinely fear for my life. I'm scared, I love politics. I don't like being doomer pilled but Steven I am genuinely scared deep down that things are going to get significantly worse before they get better, I fear we are heading towards this edge but we have already hit the velocity to where it's too late to stop, I'm scared for my future. I know that society won't fall, I know trans people probably won't be gunned down in America. I'm not delusional but I'm afraid of hate crimes going up, I'm afraid of losing my friends, I'm afraid I'll have to quit politics that makes me happy. I'm too emotional at the moment to keep writing and I'm super sorry this is so long, I just care so deeply for all of this. and I feel like as things online become more prominent (literally in my college clubs and a progressive meeting I went to a while ago.)“ “I am so glad that suffering is not necessary for many young trans people these days. On the other hand, how people speak about trans issues now is troubling, putting so much emphasis on EVERYONE and EVERY gender being valid. To the point where you could probably categorize any normal person as nonbinary because it is so all ecompassing. This makes zero sense, and leads us to the xenogender discourse which I would like to go away forever. The biggest reason I am grateful for your voice is because I began to lose hope that people still thought like I do, when I joined discourse on twitter and spoke against xenogenders, I got death threats and people encouraging my suicide, including from prominent people in the Demon Mama community. Further I believe this deemphasis I see on medical transition in these communities is troubling, who will fight for that for us if we have half of trans people saying medical transition is unnecessary to be valid?” “Gender dysphoria is about as close to IRL body horror as you can get. Being trapped in a body you know isn’t right for you is hell. I constantly worried about my appearance, I fretted over things no one else would notice, and I always felt like I was taking up space for real (read: cis) women. Online, everyone might go: “Yes queen you’re so valid, of course, you’re a woman! You look so good!” But those are just words and most of the time, they feel like lies. Sometimes, they are. The reality of being trans is — if someone can tell you are trans, if they can clock you — they almost never consider you a member of the gender you identify as. You are a fucked up man or woman or, depending on how bigoted they are, a thing to them.” “When I’ve been discriminated against at past jobs, my most significant non-one-off experiences with bigotry, it was never because my coworkers got bad opinions about trans people from dipshits on the internet. It was because they were conservative types that hated me because I was early on in my transition. I looked like a weird guy in my Waffle House uniform because I was on HRT and wore makeup, and sounded like a girl because of voice training. I don’t think most people care about the online shit. It’s just an excuse they use. They’d use some other excuse for why they don’t like you if they didn’t have that. The other worst sorts of experiences I’ve had were in college when I thought people legitimately wanted to be my friend, but it turned out that they had actually just clocked me and wanted to sit me down to ask me some personal questions about being trans, before they moved on and didn’t talk to me again. I cannot tell you how many times someone has asked me if I’ve gotten “The Surgery,” after talking to me for less than five minutes.” “I feel I have pretty mild gender dysphoria from stories I have read. I used to absolutely despise looking at myself in the mirror, avoided people taking photos like they would kill me, spent hours upon hours a week plucking hair 1 by 1 out of my body and starved myself to the point of looking like I was in a concentration camp. I have thankfully been able to mostly solve these issues by taking care of my skin, living a more healthy lifestyle via eating well and working out and dressing and acting more feminine. I 100% feel like I am an oddity when going outside with my nails painted, carrying a handbag with feminine mannerisms but I can actually function like that compared to previously where I used to struggle to place an order at a fast food restaurant. I have an appointment with an endocrinologist booked although still months out to see if hrt is a good solution for me and am testing the waters if I want to slowly transition. I will say there has been a weirdly scary amount of people who I have come across along my journy to figure out what the actual fuck is wrong with me who claim to be trans seem to not understand gender dysphoria which ends up making me feel fucking insane. It is legit frustrating joining a community of people who seem to just think it's fun or fashionable to be trans and don't seem to have any reason to have transitioned in the first place. It is even more frustrating having people try and convince me I am currently trans due to the way I present and act even though I really haven't really done anything yet. It seems fucking bizzare that it seems like the bare minimum to be trans is just act or dress nonconforming to your asigned gender. All the recent stuff in the news thanks to the imo retardation in America over trans issues which then has spiraled into arguments on social media has legit made me feel unwell for weeks at a time due to me wishing I had nothing in common with these people. While there are some very good vocal pro trans voices out there It feels like the vast majority make it seem like an insane cult. While thankfully this has made me rethink my approach to potentially transitioning and has made me more cautious I feel like it would be easier for people like me if we just faded back into the background and went somewhat un-noticed.” “Hello, I'm watching your latest video and the subject of toxic online trans communities came up, and at 53m you mentioned that you get emails from trans people saying they also hate the toxic online trans community and that they believe it makes their online experience worse. If you have a list of trans people who feel this way, feel free to add me onto it. The people who make me feel ashamed of being trans are those toxic online trans people. They make me feel like I can deeply understand why so many conservatives despise the left. Even on reddit, the only way I can seem to get through to radical trans people is by pulling out my trans badge, and even then they seem to tend to just ghost me after.” “I see so much straight hate from online queer communities. It almost feels like queer people have been otherized and demonized for so long they have begun to start otherizing themselves. It breaks my heart. All I want is to feel like I belong and am accepted. It upsets me so deeply to see so many voices and opinions echoed that are full of so much hate and disdain. It only serves to further divide the very people that we should be working to build relations with”. “I'm not active in trans circles IRL anymore and neither is my friend even though at first we'd go to the local trans association every week. And if you were to go to an association anywhere you'll notice that beside a few exceptions it's almost only questioning/early trans people that are in there. I don't think the reason in most cases is that people can't vibe with UwU xenogenders, it's because when you start transitioning, it's an explosion in your life, positive and negative. Being trans is central to your experience, always on your thoughts etc... you need validation, to be reassured, to feel that you are not alone and also advice for admin/ medical stuff. But as time goes on and it's been a few years, well you are more confident, you are now less of a Trans and just a woman (or a man or enby). Life goes on and you don't think about it as much. These places just aren't for you anymore. Also most trans people cringe at who they were at the beginning of their transition, kinda how you cringe at your teenage self. I think it's very easy for older (when I say older I mean time since realizing you’re trans, not how old you are since birth) trans people to forget how they were, and just judge the behavior and insecurities of younger trans people. A Lot of early trans people are very angry at society and the system, because their life is shit and people are mean to them constantly IRL. Again it's easy for passing trans women/men to look at that anger and be annoyed because well now we are pretty well integrated, almost nobody knows we are trans. “they give us a bad rep”, “they are too mean” etc... I'm not saying there is no truth in it, but it's also because we now just want quiet and peace because we are “the good ones”. We look and act like the gender we are so even if someone learns we are trans they will probably react neutrally or positively. However that's not the experience of these younger trans people, they get insulted and mocked, they are often going through tough shit with their family, they are losing friends.We don't have the same problems they do or even the same political interests necessarily, they want shit to change fast and drastically, we want to be more integrated and left alone.” “I DON’T think someone has to transition medically to be transgender, but I DO think there has to be some underlying discomfort with the way you’re perceived and/or the way your body looks. You can’t just be an afab who puts she/they in your bio and who has no desire of going any further than that and then claim to be transgender. This dilutes the meaning of the word to an absurd degree and delegitimizes us more so than we already are. I also don’t feel at home in most queer communites. It feels like I'm having to walk on eggshells to make sure I don’t say anything that could be misconstrued as invalidating and it’s extremely mindfucky. I saw a post the other day on r/MTF where someone said “I wish I were a girl :(“ and while some of the comments understood what she meant and responded accordingly, there were a lot of people berating her and telling her she shouldn’t be posting stuff like that as she OBVIOUSLY was already a girl, and that posting anything outside of that sentiment made other people in the sub feel bad. This is reflective of a larger problem where queer people are being called out or ousted from queer communities if their language and/or opinions don’t 100% match with the current progressive rule book. Hesitant towards the use of neo-pronouns? Don’t say anything or risk being demonized and rejected from the community and then have absolutely no where else to go bc 95% of all queer communities follow pretty much the same guidelines. Same with trans sports, discussions on words like tranny/transexual/agp/etc, medical transition for kids, having politics outside of anarcho-communism, etc, etc. Why should trans people have to tone-police themselves to such an absurd degree and make sure to only use language that’s fully inclusive and go out of their way to cater toward everyone’s ego? These issues are messy and deserve to be discussed in a way that acknowledges that. Wokescolds across the internet (most prevalent on tiktok and twitter imo) make being trans even harder than it has to be because now I have to watch how I act and what I say not only around conservatives, but also queer people. I want to be able to give an opinion like “trans women probably shouldn’t be competing in sports with cis women” w/o some white cis ally or a dozen 14 y/o trans people telling me I’m transphobic.” “Most people would agree that people like Shapiro and Crowder aren't helpful for trans people due to similar reasons - which I agree with. On the other hand, I personally think people like DemonMama or maybe even Vas nowadays are doing a similar disservice to people like me. Nowadays you don't even need a Ben Shapiro to make trans people sound ridiculous - the online trans community is now doing it for them, which is so much more frustrating to me, since the harm to trans people like myself isn't as obvious anymore when lefies are advocating for "Neo Pronouns" than when some conservative calls trans people mentally challenged. I personally felt the need to clarify to every person I came out to as trans that I am not an "online trans person" even though I am mostly online and a trans person - It's exhausting. To be clear - I don't hate people like DemonMama. I think they just aren't aware of what they are doing to some trans people and how it affects us. I don't even necessarily have a problem with people identifying with autism or as a deer in some abstract way - It IS a part of their identity and if it makes them happy, go for it - I just think it should not be under the same umbrella as gender identity and therefore treated a bit differently. I also don't like to use the word "transphobic" anymore. The term is used so inflationary nowadays to the point where anybody that disagrees with a trans person whatsoever can be called a transphobe. I have some progressive friends and it feels kind of humiliating when they clearly don't want to talk to me about certain topics because they feel like their opinion might come off as transphobic even though their thoughts might be reasonable. Sometimes it feels like I am left out of good conversations due to me being trans.” “I am a college student (sorry) and have been watching your content for about a year. My best friend is a trans man, and I have plenty of other trans friends. Being active in LGBTQ+ groups at my school, I’ve come to learn that, for the most part, no one in real life respects the online “trans activists.” I’m sure you’ve gotten email after email about this recently, but I’d like to add my two cents. Trans men are seriously fucked over. You’ve mentioned this on your stream a few times, and it’s true. Every issue is centered around trans women. On the right, it’s because they fear that it’s a perverted man etc etc, and on the left, it’s because of the way-too-vocal online communities. The problem is, these communities claim to represent trans people, but all trans people I know want nothing to do with them. Lately I’ve been talking to my trans friends about this a lot, and they feel that they’re being used as a political pawn for a culture war they didn’t sign up for. It makes me depressed to see these bad faith political actors are using a group of people that already have it rough to advance an agenda.” “I'm a 22 year old trans female nursing student at a private religious university in the south (I'm not rich or religious, I'm only here for scholarship money). Being a private religous institution they will not allow any official organization for lgbt people or anybody left of democrat, this led to the creation of an unofficial lgbt club organized over discord. After the original leadership of the server graduated last year it has been taken over by the most terminally lefty-brained dumbfucks who use the word "gender" in practically every other sentence who are only here becuse of their parents' money. Usually I would stay away from these types of people but it's hard finding friends who will openly associate with a trans person at a religious university (for reference, a majority of the student body doesn't agree with gay marriage and the "conservative club" is functionally a groyper club). It's extremely alienating because this is a relatively large group and I don't feel like a single person here has the same experience with their gender as I do, they use it as an accessory that you change every few weeks instead of an identity. The other "trans" people don't experience dysphoria or do anything to further their transition, the only other person on hrt was a trans guy who was socially pushed out of the group for being slightly conservative. The most alienating thing though is when they talk in the discord about how they want to "make cis people feel uncomfortable" and "be more visibly trans" which both sound like nightmare scenarios to me. It's really scary to me when the people advocating for trans stuff at my school are making me, a trans person, feel almost transphobic.” “With time I came to realize that trans online communities are extremely toxic. They overfixiate on acceptance and validation to the point of insanity. Subreddits that were dedicated to educating and poking fun at trans people in denial have become toxic sewers in which if you dare to speak up against their current beliefs you are immediately shunned, silenced and called a transphobe or a truscum. All reason and civil discourse has been silenced. The obsession with being "valid" runs rampant. They do not care whether they are right or wrong. The only thing they came to look online is validation and blind acceptance. It deeply saddens me because it is going to lead to a massive outburst in transphobia.” “I see people like Vaush, who are neither trans nor a woman (effectively meaning he is nothing more than a cis man), making misogynistic comments "in the name of trans activism" or people saying "maybe we shouldn't have women in sports", etc. I see it for what it is: a fucking goldmine for TERFs to capitalize on. The misogyny from Vaush is the best recruiting material in the world. It cannot be understated how good it is for them, it is the "trans discourse" equivalent of proof of WMDs in comparison to comments like "maybe we should do away with women in sports" which is more akin to an ISIS beheading video. It does far more harm for trans women. Because TERFs usually have to point to crazy or misogynistic things that trans activists say that come from people like DemonMama, who happen to be trans, and no one can really argue that DemonMama isn't part of an oppressed group, so there's still that discomfort because her word can be handwaved as an oppressed person punching up, or just an oppressed person being frustrated at a perceived oppressor. Meanwhile, Vaush as a cis man is perceived to be speaking from the position of a group of people who are the facilitators of gendered oppression (or have been throughout history), so his words carry a lot more weight than some frustrated trans woman, because TERFs can use it and point to it as "see, men are just using trans ideology to oppress us". It is a lot easier to develop a boogeyman or an enemy when you develop a narrative that your enemy is supported by a group of people who have historically held all the power in the first place.” “I've been watching through the recent nonsensical trans sports debate debacle and all of the associated drama, and holy fucking shit is it perpetually exhausting to be someone who literally just wants to vibe and be treated as a normal girl but to have your entire existence dragged out into the open and paraded around like some sort of freak of a lost cause for a bunch of purposeless perpetually online dipshits to group around and pat themselves on the back so hard they leave bruise. All the while the only feeling I ever have is like they painted a target on my forehead and kicked me out in front of the crowd, cheering and telling me it's for my own good, while they sit back and face none of the repurcussions for the stupid shit they say or advocate for "on my behalf". Honestly speaking? It feels exactly like the same shit I've always dealt with, except instead of being told I'm wrong for existing or telling me I'm a freak and that I should be cut out of rights or cut out of consideration "for my own good", I'm told that I need to shut up and let them speak for me now, because they're here to save me from myself once again. You mentioned a bunch of things recently that really stood out to me, and legit made me feel like "Yes! Someone fucking gets it!", like when you mentioned how you had the impression that trans women didn't want extra visibility, or to be treated special for being trans, that the whole concept or idea was just... being or becoming an average woman, and yes, absolutely, that's all I've ever really wanted. That was what most people I knew, and people I know irl felt, or worked towards. I've quipped before "Fuck trans acceptance, I want trans indifference" because that best reflects how I really feel about it. I want my status as trans to be one of the least important, least interesting things about me- because in my own mind, it already is. A lot of these absolute specimens you have the displeasure of talking to online though, I notice this really huge difference in perspective that I can only really sum up as like... I wonder how many of them actually identify as "women", and how many of them identify as "trans women"? It's like that old difference between a girl gamer and a gamer girl, yeah? I feel like I'm just a woman, I identify as a woman, and that makes me trans- but for some of these people being trans seems to deadass BE the goal, and that is so fucking wild and so fucking uncomfortable for me, honestly. I'm not entirely sure how to really sum that up or apply some sort of sorting algorithm to filter these people out or differentiate them from the poor normie fucks like me who just want to vibe, but it's been something on my mind for sure. Additionally- it feels so wildly, absurdly fucking uncomfortable seeing this plethora of cis-male presenting dipshits out here claiming ownership or expertise on trans discussions and dictating rules or claiming total ownership over trans positions when I just feel like "Shut the fuck up, you don't speak for me! None of this *affects* you! You get to go home after your shitty debates and stare slack jawed at your computer screen while I'm the one who gets thrown under the bus for all of your bullshit.". It's incredibly frustrating, and it just seems to have gotten worse with time. So I'm 30 now. I originally came from old 4chan nonsense, before there even was a political board! I was an edgy kid who was, like a lot of folks back then, just some social reject who liked edgy jokes and japanese culture nonsense. I wound up finding a community there and had a bunch of fun, back when all the stupid racism and nazi shit was legitimately a joke- before the word got out that 4chan was full of racist nazis and all the edgy kids making offensive jokes got Poe's Law'd out of existence by mainstream dipshits flooding in and missing the point that all of the edgy shit was only funny because it was untrue. Kinda like that time you mentioned when someone took you saying faggot seriously and went "Yeah! Screw them gays" and you had to do a double-take on, what do you mean?? That's not what I meant in the slightest. Back then, the thing that really got me out of my shell was hilariously, all the fucking trap threads. I had considered all the trans stuff but all the "trans spaces" were a bunch of ugly, bitter, 40 year old women with hardcore sexist views on "what being a woman is like". You wanna play games? You wanna watch anime? You wanna tell jokes? "Oh no hunny, that's not feminine enough"- and all the needlessly exhausting drama that hasn't changed to this very day. I was deeply offput by that, but I looked up to the traps as these fucking amazing people, they were chill, they were funny, they were cute as heck and they just did what they liked, played games, had interests, had actual personalities. For a long time I proudly proclaimed that I wasn't trans!!! I was totally a trap!!!... But of course, times change, and so did the context of that word. Suddenly that playful term that represented my whole identity and the things I looked up to changed, and overnight everyone recognized it as a term of "hate speech". No amount of argument was good enough, no debate could ever be really won. People argued with all these personal anecdotes about their personal fears on trans panic being used to murder them because some edgy dipshits online used the term trap- and all of my own personal fears or personal experiences didn't matter in the slightest because they didn't align with the popular narrative, you know? That was when I realized that all the personal anecdotes and the thin veneer of protecting people's feelings, or representing people's experiences, or standing up for people's unique lived history was all a bunch of horseshit that nobody actually believed, it just looks nice on a resume when you're trying to fluff yourself up to look better. I gave up on that fight, and fine, whatever, guess I'm begrudgingly under the trans label now, but that was still one of those early things that made me really put off by "trans spaces". Beyond that, there's this really weird break in experiences that I feel where my perspective is informed entirely by a deep level of introspection and deconstruction. I was presented with binary options, and to arrive at the thought or feeling of being trans, I had to dig in really deep and try to take it apart so I could understand why I felt like I did. It was tough, it was scary, I made a lot of mistakes but I got here on my own, and with that journey or process came a lot of introspection and self awareness. Because I questioned everything, because I questioned myself, I have *answers* to all sorts of weird internal questions, and a basis by which to reason most gender related things. This is one of those things I find is so severely and sorely lacking from any self avowed "trans spaces" these days, personally. The term that used to get tossed around a lot was hugbox, and I think that's kind of what they all inevitably become. No questioning, no introspection, no ability to just be wrong- it's just a continuous outpouring of external validation for anyone!... except the dumb autistic motherfuckers like me who actually ask questions. The idiots who walk in and go "So I don't understand this- and aren't content with "that's just how it is" as a handwavey answer. I feel like this whole toxic positivity culture is doing nothing other than ruining anyone's chances of forming a reasonable, grounded sense of self, they never have a reason to! It reminds me a lot of your commentary on therapy, with the idea that if you're going to therapy for 10 years and there's no breakthrough, your therapy isn't fucking working because the point of it should be to get you to a reasonable place where you can take care of yourself, and the same here. The point of a support community is to give you tools, perspectives and support so that you can eventually not need that support group anymore, or maybe so that you can be strong enough to support more people- but that's not what these things become. They're more like a perpetual state of endless validation that protects anyone and everyone from the horrors of even the tiniest fraction of introspection. Folks will tolerate anyone and anything... except for someone who dares ever upset the established status quo, or deviate even slightly from the script. Like god damn, do you know how many gapes and guffaws you earn just by going "I'm not a literal communist actually, I'm like a socdem at most?" anywhere that claims to be trans inclusive? All of your thoughts, experiences, and ideas are of the utmost importance to us!... only so long as they're things that reinforce what we already think is true.”

Gatekeeping is good, actually

Gatekeeping the “trans” label is essential for three important reasons.

To make it possible for those who are not trans to have an ability to grasp and understand trans issues. For trans people to find communities they can join to share a space with people with similar experiences. To develop a consistent set of medical and social guidelines for how to treat trans people to optimize their outcomes.

Where I stand

Much has been said about my position on trans issues, with people claiming I’m transphobic or that I hold many transphobic positions, despite the numerous debates ( 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 ) and conversations ( 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 ) posted publicly on my YouTube exploring and defending trans issues. These examples don’t include the countless smaller conversations I’ve had on stream with smaller creators or chatters as well. Many of these conversations occurred years ago, before it was fashionable to be “woke” on trans issues on Twitch or YouTube. Some try to point out that these conversations in the past aren’t a valid way of figuring out where I stand on trans issues today, but these same people seem to have no problem linking things I’ve said or done years ago to try to attack my position on trans issues today.

For clarity, allow me to clearly state my position on some major trans issues:

I believe trans people are “real,” insofar as there appears to be a set of people that exist with incongruent gender identities existing inside their mind opposite the sexual presention of their bodies. Historically, psychologically and socially there doesn’t seem to be any other way to account for or explain the experiences of trans people other than to accept their accounting of their internal experiences. I believe that currently gender affirming care (including social transitioning and surgeries) to be the best way to treat gender dysphoria. There seems to be a growing body of evidence showing that some forms of medical and social treatments are effective at alleviating dysphoria in trans individuals. This medical care should be available and provided for by insurance just like any other treatment at all appropriate stages of a trans person’s life. I believe trans athletes should be able to play with the gender they express as up through grade school and high school (in high school, drug therapy would probably be required for contact sports). Sports in elementary through high school are less about hardcore competitiveness and more about socialization and encouraging active lifestyles. NCAA spots for college sports are far more competitive and limited, but most people should have the opportunity to play in grade school and high school if they wish. I believe the decision to place minors on puberty blockers or HRT should be a decision made between parents, their children and their doctors. I don’t believe the government has a legitimate interest in preventing these types of medical interventions so long as there is some evidence that they can improve the outcomes of trans children.

       In accordance with my ethical values, my desire is to push for whatever policies enable as many trans people as possible to live the healthiest lives of their choosing without conflicting with the people around them. If further information comes out showing that some treatments I advocate for now are ineffective, I would no longer support those treatments, and if other information were to be released that would show other methods alleviating the suffering of trans people, I would support those methods.

Healthy Discourse

       What should the ultimate goal even be with trans discourse? It would seem today that trans people’s very existence has become the battleground upon which far left and right culture warriors are fighting. The far left are pushing for radical acceptance of ideas totally unrelated to trans people under the guise of trans rights (e.g., neopronouns, xenogenders, “trans women are biological women”, etc…) and far right people are still reluctant to even believe that trans people exist as an actual concept beyond delusion or mental illness. Detransitioners who share their stories about how they were pressured into transitioning early are swept under the rug by LGBT activists because their lives are seen as fodder for TERFs and conservatives, and trans individuals with successful transitions who’re undoubtedly saved by medical and social intervention are seen as mentally ill freaks who’ve resorted to bodily mutation to appease a delusion.

We can do better.

We need to do better.

We should be creating safe spaces where trans people are comfortable exploring their identities and how they relate to society. They should be able to seek guidance and assistance from both communities and medical professionals without the fear of being pushed in either direction as a political football in our ongoing culture wars. Even among trans people there is a rich diversity of thought about what it means to be trans and how best to approach the complicated web of issues surrounding trans issues, so it makes no sense for anyone from the outside to pretend to have a singular, perfect answer to dealing with their issues.

We should also be able to have spaces where we can critically evaluate trans ideas. We should be able to have challenging, public conversations about what it means to be trans without someone constantly throwing suicide statistics in our faces while claiming we’re engaging in hate crimes simply for questioning the current trans orthodoxy. Society has moved incredibly quickly on trans issues; it was barely 10 years ago when the only representations of trans people were lunatics on Jerry Springer and Maury, compared to today where there are mainstream actors starring in mainstream TV shows, so it’s expected that society would need a constant level of discourse to keep up with rapid shifts in how we view trans people.

Based on the conversations I’ve had and the observations I’ve made, it appears to me that there are broadly two different schools of thought on being trans. The first school consists of the “traditional” trans types, people who simply want to pass and be treated as the gender they identify (and express) as. These people don’t want to be constantly embroiled in conflict relating to their views or constantly questioned about their trans experience by people hoping to engage them in some political discourse. They tend to use standard pronouns, acknowledge fair and reasonable arguments relating to trans issues, and oftentimes focus on dysphoria being one of the defining aspects of their trans experience with the alleviation of their dysphoria being of the utmost importance.

The second school of thought consists of trans people who seem to relish in the idea of “transness”. They are incredibly politically engaged, oftentimes via social media, and want to be perceived publicly as a “trans person,” not just as the gender they identify with. For this group of people, being trans is seen as having less to do with gender and more to do with personal expression. Dysphoria is seen as not being an important (or even necessary) part of being trans, and sometimes no steps are made whatsoever to socially or medically transition. This group of people often argue in favor of more esoteric concepts such as “gender as expression,” neopronouns and other more radical, less scientifically founded concepts, such as trans women having periods, and transwomen being biological women.

Online Activism

The online activism coming from those like DemonMama, Vivian, Chloe (@bobposting), Doe, and Keffals is harmful to trans people, both online and offline, for a few important reasons.

It alienates many dysphoric trans people from their own communities.

       Anecdotally, it seems to be increasingly difficult for moderate trans people to find communities they can identify with. Online activists seem to be increasingly extremist in their pushes for “exotic” trans identities and all seem to require some buy-in to socialist ideas. They also seem to be more overwhelming filled with non-binary “activist” types whose goals are markedly different from other trans people. Rather than being able to slip invisibly into society and assume the role of their gender identity, the activist types seem to want a spotlight of visibility on their trans identities.

It makes it more difficult for the public to understand trans issues.

       It’s becoming increasingly difficult to have conversations with those with little understanding of trans issues when exotic gender concepts are becoming more and more popular. Defending the concept of “autismgender” is impossible while I’m trying to explain gender dysphoria to a hostile conservative; having to disavow 95% of the popular online activist discourse undermines any future point I might make regarding trans people during a conversation.

It threatens to hold hostage all of the progress trans people have made.

       Oftentimes conservatives will point to a slippery slope of sorts, claiming that the acceptance of some entirely reasonable LGBT ideas will somehow move us towards more radical ones. It’s easiest to fight against the idea of a slippery slope by showing that the same train of thought that leads to idea A doesn’t lead to idea B because the two ideas don’t share any similar foundations. For example, the concept of gender dysphoria and trans people's experience of it is something that is extensively documented in scientific literature and there are social and medical interventions that have documentation showing that gender dysphoria can be alleviated. The concept of exotic genders and the demand for neopronouns, however, have no such scientific or psychological basis. Activists online will link all of the concepts together, denigrating the logic behind the acceptance of trans issues in order to further their own ideological agendas, essentially using trans people as shields for their online enjoyment.

       It’s perfectly fine if there are people who want to advocate for more exotic gender-related ideas, but they shouldn’t identify so broadly with the trans movement. There is too much at stake right now in the real world for trans people to have to worry about an “uwu cat gender” person representing their interests on social media in a way that makes their entire identity seem like a joke. Gender is an incredibly important and integral part of our identity, and trans people shouldn’t have to worry that poor arguments made by activists about trans women in sports are going to snowball out of control into anti-trans bills being pushed for across the country. All too often progressives make it seem as though it’s required for us to throw intellectual honesty to the wind for the sake of being compassionate, yet it is essential to realize that throwing rationality out the window is not compassion, it is cruelty. It leaves us unequipped to wrestle with both of our own thoughts and the thoughts of those that would oppose us, ultimately moving us further away from a world more inclusive for the very same trans people we’re supposed to be advocating for.

Character

My top five most popular political debates, in descending order:

March, 2017, JonTron on his alt-right indoctrination January, 2018, Brittany Venti & friends on if I was pedophile March, 2020, Eric Striker on liberalism vs Nazism March, 2019, Vincent James on gun control January, 2017, Lauren Southern on immigration

Friendship

“It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to your enemies,

but a great deal more to stand up to your friends.”

Albus Dumbledore

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)

What are friends?

Friends are people you choose to include in your life because they enrich it in some way. It might be the shared joy of fun activities, it could be counsel they give during times of great personal struggle, or perhaps it’s just someone with shared history that you catch up with from time to time. Friends, or at least good friends, should also be able to challenge you if you’re making foolish decisions. Friends should be able to push you, without condemnation but with loving conviction, into becoming the best version of yourself that you can be.

…and how do I choose them?

In most aspects, I’d say I am similar to most when it comes to choosing friends. I have friends that I enjoy sharing hobbies with, and I’ve made friends from a number of different platforms and in a number of different settings. I have a large overlap between my personal and public life, so any friend I make in one setting is likely to carry over from one to the other.

One large difference, however, is that I tend to seek conflict from people who are intriguing to me. People who can challenge me in some way, either philosophically, politically, or even personally, and can do so in a unique way or from a unique perspective, are very interesting to me. Some have pointed out that I have a bias in favor of women or conservatives on stream, yet the reality is that I’ve pursued many unique friendships over the years due to the interesting qualities and challenging demeanors different people have had, including Richard Lewis, Infrared/Haz, JonZherka, Vaush, Hasan, Prime Cayes, Dylan Burns, Mike from PA, and MrGirl, to name just a few.

A few years ago, I was of the mindset that certain political differences precluded friendships with certain types of people. This may still be true, to some extent, but I think it’s going to depend mostly on how those views filter down to a person’s behavior towards me. I could conceive of being friendly or friends with someone who possesses significantly different political views from myself, but if those views resulted in them treating me (or the people around me) poorly, a friendship would likely be untenable. This of course does not mean that I condone or sanction all of the behaviors or choices they make (nor do I expect them to do this for me), but merely that I do not see political differences as some inherent, insurmountable obstacle preventing positive personal interactions.

Many people have been upset recently because of my friendly conversations and personal connections with some right leaning figures, namely Nick Fuentes and Lauren Southern, but people seem to think that I am some inhuman machine who will process friendships solely for political alignment or advance, sometimes seemingly forgetting how many people who are politically close to me have treated me in the past. I have been viciously backstabbed and attacked by many on the left, including Vaush, Hasan, Josie, Maddycakes, Lumies, BadBunny, Denims, Mike from PA, Alebrelle, MxVivian, Merrick, Xanderhal, and many, many more smaller and larger creators throughout the years. On a personal level, I don’t think maintaining friends solely due to overlapping political views has been a successful strategy for me so far.

Dog Whistling and Political Correctness

“When a word ceases to be a term of description and becomes merely a term of praise, it no longer tells you facts about the object: it only tells you about the speaker's attitude to that object.”

C.S. Lewis

Mere Christianity

Dog Whistling vs PC Speech

Up through 2018–2019, irony and sarcasm were valuable tools of radical groups online. It made their ideologies aesthetically appealing, due to clever use of humor, gave cover for more extremist beliefs, permitting popular figures to come across as more moderate than they actually were, and allowed for otherwise ToS-restrictive communities to flourish in areas they otherwise wouldn’t be able to, such as with /r/frenworld, on Reddit. While there is value in being able to recognize when a community has masked itself in irony in order to hide more insidious beliefs, this idea, like the beginnings of most good faith progressive engagement, has been pushed to the brink and is no longer a useful way to identify bad actors on the internet.

Most don’t realize it, but dog whistling and politically correct speech are the two poles of a shared spectrum. Consider a spectrum of possible statements we can make that range from [0, 100], where [0, 30) are a range of clearly racist statements, 50 is a neutral, factually correct statement and (70, 100] are a range of clearly unnecessarily “PC” statements. If your desire is to “signal” to a racist base without violating the ToS or someone’s sensibilities, yet while still adhering closely to your true beliefs, your goal would be to make a statement in the range of (30, 50). We would call these statements dog whistles; but when we’re aware of dog whistles that can occur up to a range of 49 and 50, what happens to our well-meaning, neutral statements? Eventually it’s possible to get swept up in feeling like people who are making statements in range (50, 65) are actually part of the dog whistling crew, so our politically correct speech must narrow from (70, 100]) to maybe (75, 100] or even (80, 100], or maybe even (95, 100], lest we be confused with a dog whistler encroaching on our space from the other end of the spectrum.

Consider the following “13/52” statements:

Black Americans commit, per capita, the most violent crime in the United States. The number one cause of death for young, black men during the coronavirus pandemic were other young, black men.

       Where would you rank these statements? “13/50” or “13/52” statements are obvious dog whistles. These two similar statements seem like they could be dog whistles, so perhaps somewhere in the range of (30, 50)? But neither of them are, on their face, incorrect. What does politically correct pushback in range (70, 100] look like when engaging with these statements?

The Anti-Defamation League, a common progressive source on the internet for social matters, claims “the number 13 used in conjunction with either the number 52 or the number 90 is a shorthand reference to racist propaganda claims by white supremacists against African-Americans to depict them as savage and criminal in nature.” There is no further discussion of where these stats really come from on the ADLs page.

       Our politically correct pushback against the dog whistle has now ventured off into the realm of fantasy. In an attempt to push back in a socially conscientious manner against a perceived dog whistle, we have thrown away the factual grounds in exchange for “feeling good.” All too often I find those in the politically correct crowd are so eager to disagree with those they confront that they lose sight of what it is they’re actually fighting over. Perhaps even more troubling, this same crowd has also begun to make “guilt by association” attacks toward people like me who would rather fight on factual grounds than abandon them for moral condemnation.

       Losing the factual ground in an argument causes two, massive problems. Firstly, it costs you the ability to persuade. If anyone not squarely in your camp were to take a gander at the arguments you’re making, they’d feel as though you refuse to acknowledge the reality of a given situation, thus they’re likely not to listen to anything else you have to say on the matter because you come off as a partisan hack rather than someone interested in commenting on the reality of the situation. The second issue you run into is you wind up undermining your own positions. If it were the case that black people in America weren’t behind in several key areas, why target those communities with financial assistance or community reinvestment? If it’s simply all rigged numbers and misrepresented statistics, then we can say that crime in black communities is a non-issue and simply focus on other problems in society.

“Can’t you hear it?!”

       If we can’t combat dog whistles with overly conscientious statements, then, what is the solution? I say it’s best to simply own the dog whistle as truth and demand the interlocutor to clarify their position, forcing them to either moderate it (bringing them to your side) or forcing them to ground it out into something that’s not a dog whistle and more revealing of their true arguments.

       Instead of the ADL’s response, then, consider this exchange:

       “Despite being only 13% of the population…”

       “True. Why do you think black Americans commit more crime?”

       They have opened with the (30, 50) dog whistle, but now we’ve fearlessly owned the position at [50]. We have acknowledged the factual reality of what they’re saying, instead of cowering from it, and we’ve pushed the ball into their court. They can’t repeat the same dog whistle, and now they’re forced to respond in one of two ways:

“Well, a lot of black people are poor or disadvantaged in other ways, which means they commit a ton more crime…” or “Black people are just neurologically wired differently than white people due to genetic differences.”

       Either answer moves the conversation forward. If they say the first (it might take some finagling to get there, they won’t readily admit to socioeconomic conditions and will likely have to be talked there from bringing up “broken families supplanted by the government” or “toxic culture which inhibits their drive to participate in society” or some other argument that will eventually ground out into “environmental factors”) then we’ve essentially arrived at an area of agreement; black people do commit more crime, but the causes are not intractable and the reasons can thus be ameliorated. If they give the second answer, then we’ve forced them off of the dog whistle into their truer position. We are now comfortably occupying the factual ground and are forcing them to fight a tougher battle, proving race realism, rather than us trying to wiggle and squirm around uncomfortable statistics.

       Over the past couple of years I’ve learned to love dog whistles. If I feel as though someone is not being forthcoming with their true positions, I’ll simply seek clarification until we’ve either arrived at an area of mutual agreement where I am comfortable continuing the conversation, or I’ve forced them to reveal a truer, more difficult to defend position that causes them to lose ground with people who are less comfortable agreeing with the underlying extremist positions. Nothing is more frustrating than watching a handful of well-meaning progressives attempt to argue why “it’s okay to be white” is a white supremacist statement but “it’s okay to be black” would be a perfectly acceptable slogan for an oppressed community.

       Don’t fear dog whistles. Learn to embrace that which is factually true and push forward from there.

Ontology

“I don't think that you have any insight whatsoever into your capacity for good until you have some well-developed insight into your capacity for evil.”

Jordan B. Peterson

“Meta-what???”

“Metaphysics” is a branch of philosophy that tries to study all of the things that are, like space and time, universal substance, causation, etc…etc… Well, people debate what metaphysics even means, or if metaphysics is even something to be solved. We’re not addressing any of those issues here, though. It’s simple enough to say that “metaphysics” is the study of “things” and “ontology” more specifically refers to how things are as they exist. If this doesn’t make much sense, that’s fine, because metaphysics and ontology are both dumb and if you ask 10 philosophers to define what these encompass, you’ll probably get 15 different answers. For the purpose of this document, “ontological” just means a sort of classification of something. So when one says “ontologically evil,” you’re saying that the very nature of a thing makes it evil, implying that there are no other actions or qualities that would allow it to escape such a classification. For example, a “combustion-engine car” might be a category of ontology in which a thing has 4 wheels and an engine. The combustion-engine car might be blue or red, it might have nice seats or no seats, it might be a convertible or a hard top, it might move fast or slow, and it might be loud or quiet, but it is always going to be a vehicle with 4 wheels and a combustion engine.

On the Construction of Evil

Perhaps the largest problem plaguing both online and real life politics today is our inability to separate people from their ideas. It seems to be sufficient to identify only one or two bad ideas or statements from a person to classify the entire person as being “ontologically evil.” The natural moral follow-up to such a classification is the treatment of said person in whatever manner one deems appropriate. We can see that this treatment of an individual is troublesome for several reasons, but it becomes increasingly problematic when we use these types of classifications across an entire society. Before we dive into specific examples of that, let’s build out two more concepts to illustrate how damaging these categories can be to political and social discourse.

Many people over the past several years have taken to replacing the definition of the word racism with that of the term systemic racism. Systemic racism is the notion that in order to exercise racism, a person must belong to one class on the top of some hierarchy with the ability to exercise some structural oppressive power over another person belonging to a lower class in said hierarchy. There is nothing wrong with the concept of systemic racism, but we already have a term for it: systemic racism. There was never any reason to replace the original word racism, and all it’s done is lead to a million conversations about “whether or not black people can be racist towards white people” with people screaming back and forth at each other using different definitions of the word. Regardless, many people believe in this notion of systemic racism, or other types of systemic oppression, meaning it is impossible for these people to conceive of “oppressed people” being racist towards “oppressor class” people, regardless of what’s being said, or what position both individuals are in.

One final term I’ll introduce is the concept of punching up. This refers to, especially in comedy, the idea of insulting or attacking a category of person that’s already traditionally doing well in society. Punching up is seen as preferable to punching down because you’re not capitalizing on the misery or misfortune of a person for humor, but rather mocking a person in a position of power.

Now that we’ve laid all the pieces on the table, I’m sure we could see how we could combine them in highly problematic ways to construct an incredibly toxic environment that allows bullies and bad actors to thrive. If I can identify as an oppressed class, I can claim that you are not allowed to ever attack me for any reason as it would be an example of you exercising your systemic oppression by punching down on me. However, since I’m part of an oppressed class, I can punch up at you and attack you infinitely. Furthermore, if I can identify just one evil belief in you, or in a group you belong to, or even in a group your friend belongs to, I can categorize you as an ontologically evil person, giving me carte blanche to attack you in any way possible, with you never being able to hit back. This can include attacks on your sexuality, death threats, penis/height/bodyshaming jokes, family attacks, etc…etc..

On the Commission of Evil

Now we can see how truly problematic these definitions and constructions are; we’ve essentially created classes of people that are capable of acting with impunity in the most vile manner possible towards other classes of people. This isn’t social justice, it’s simply bullying with more steps.

Now that we’ve built out the framework, let’s look at some examples of how this plays out in the real world.

Doe, a popular trans Twitter user, explicitly calls Riley, someone she had a disagreement with in a conversation, ontologically evil and demonstrates explicitly the toxic system we’ve established. She’s also called for mass reports against Gami for making a “deer hunting” joke (Doe identifies(???) as a deer, kind of), despite making genocide jokes of her own about cis people. Josie, a trans streamer on Twitch, says that “going after [a] person’s looks” is transphobic, so attacking trans people on photographs is out of the question. However, she can attack people for photographs on Twitter with no fear of being hateful. If you made a similar comment about a trans person photoshopping their Twitter picture for any reason, would it be transphobic to her? Would she be critical of other trans people attacking me for my appearance? What about when Keffals makes fun of bald people, even with other trans creators trying to push back against her for doing it? Keffals, a popular trans Twitter user, tweets to Sondsol and claims that calling her subhuman is essentially a statement that he hates trans people, yet Keffals has no problem saying people “are not human” when referring to others attacking her and a friend on Twitter. Gwen, a popular trans Twitter user, casually making thinly veiled death threats to conservatives is okay because they are conservatives. She’s also made comments that even people who are friends of mine are ontologically evil. Keffals complains that people hate her and make things up about her with no proof, then a couple hours later in the same stream speaks about how I want the trans genocide to succeed, with no proof. Gayestfesh, active community member of DemonMama and Vaush, calls for mass brigading and reporting of Sondsol solely because of who he’s friends with. After Keffals accuses Chudlogic of being a pedophile with no evidence, her mod @hunter_lyon doxxed Chud on Twitter by posting a picture of his face while also calling him a groomer. That same Keffals mod has called me slurs in the past, multiple times, even after being blocked. Any other combination of people and slurs, especially done after a block, would absolutely be considered targeted harassment and hate speech. Ahrelevant talks about the 100+ people he’s had to ban from Keffals’ audience raiding his stream and spamming hate messages, but neither Keffals nor any other trans Twitter user seems to believe they have any accountability for the harassment their audiences engage in. It is righteous and good when Keffals and friends take away the income of a perceived adversary, but if their platforms get reported it’s a tragedy.

       Using our understanding of how we can use oppressive categories to aggressively attack others, it’s possible we could take an intersectional understanding of these classes and use more oppressed classes to attack other traditionally oppressed classes, even if we don’t belong to either oppressed class. Remember, we only need to show that the person is doing harm to or attacking some class beneath them to prove the evilness of the actor, giving us the ability to attack them carte blanche. So if we can prove that a gay or a black person is attacking someone of a lower financial class, for instance, we may be able to directly attack their gayness or blackness on those grounds.

When Lauren Southern had a discussion with some trans people on stream, a moderator, Posadist John, of both Vaush and DemonMama took it upon himself to begin doxxing those trans people. (He can be seen typing in the video here.) Keffals and Vaush justify death threats being sent to MsBlaireWhite, with Keffals explaining why the death threats she gets are wrong but the death threats MsBlaireWhite gets are righteous. When Vaush was attacking JK Rowling, he made sexist remarks (article) about both her and other women criticizing him for said remarks, defending the sexism and claiming he’d do it again, going as far as to say it was morally necessary because she was attacking trans people. In April, Hasan liked a tweet calling a gay man running for Congress in Colorado against Lauren Boebert a “smarmy annoying 🚬”, shorthand for “fag.” Multiple progressive figures tripped over themselves to defend why it was actually okay to be homophobic by applying our understanding of “intersectional bullying” to the situation. Vaush came out to justify homophobic attacks on gay men, as long as they’re white and wealthy(?), due to their misogyny and co-opting of AAVE. In this case, gay is less oppressed than black or black gay. Popular progressive twitter account, @vanillaopinions, came out defending Hasan’s tweet as a rare win, claiming the tweet was funny. They went on to condemn me in the same Twitter thread where I was accused of calling trans people trannies (this has never, ever happened) and claiming I’d repeatedly engaged in transphobia. After being called out for the blatant hypocrisy, they became triggered, told all mutual fans to stop following, and claimed my fanbase was one of the worst on Twitter, all because they received some mild pushback on defending homophobia. Pete Buttigieg was subjected to multiple homophobic attacks from progressives as well, including Virgil from Chapo Trap House and Mike from PA (central_committee on Twitch), questioning Pete’s gayness because he took too long to come out of the closet while in the military and living in Indiana. He was supported by internet communist Kira Chats (who rebranded from BadBunny to escape the deluge of homophobic, transphobic, ableist and racist comments she’d made on her Discord server, as well as racist/homophobic comments made on stream and to a moderator). Mike also defended other homophobic attacks against Pete, including a comment about the “natural devious disposition inherent in gay men,” (here’s Hasan defending the same tweet) and questioned (along with another progressive streamer, Lucidfoxx) why any gay man in Indiana would “struggle” with being gay. Mike makes a questionable comparison of Ahrelevant to Steve Urkel after multiple conflicts the two had had on stream. In this case, his blackness could be attacked because Mike perceived him to be aggressive towards those of a different financial class.

       Since I’ve been identified as being an “ontologically evil” adversary, here are attacks I’ve had thrown at me:

Higheyna, community member and ex-girlfriend of Vaush, after denying calling me a rapist, shows up in DemonMama’s chat calling me “rapestiny.” DemonMama originally called me a liar, but then immediately walked it back and claimed she “didn’t care.” Higheyna’s made multiple rape comments about me in Vaush’s chat as well. Maddycakes, an online progressive streamer, made weird rape claims about me on a panel, receiving pushback from almost everyone else there besides Josie. After I had push back against the fake rape claims Maddy made against me, she would go on to fabricate DMs against her, claiming they were coming from my community. (Does it count as antisemitism and mysoginy if she is writing fake comments to herself..?) After being called out on it, she just implored me to “leave [her] the fuck alone,” saying the proof of photoshop was just an “accidental mark-up” she hit on a tablet (in a pixel perfect position). Further analysis further proved she’d fabricated those messages. Josie would go on to defend Maddy in a later stream after her false claims about me, claiming people were only “having fun on the platform,” then saying those who support me are “no better than those who supported Donald Trump after he started the insurrectionist riots.” DemonMama defends Maddy calling me a rapist with no evidence, and falsely claims that her fake DM accusations were faked, when those harassment DMs were proven 100% to be fabricated. Kaceytron fabricated a story about me ignoring a safe word and implied I raped Kira Chats/BadBunny. Keffals claimed I stealth people, then softly walked it back later; she would go on to say that she would never apologize for it after horrendously misquoting and butchering positions I have relating to informing your potential sexual partner about your genitals. Keffals comments are ironically transphobic, however, as she is essentializing a trans person as having the genitals of their assigned sex at birth, which is not always the case, and I specify in my tweets and on stream that I am talking about genitals, not someone simply being trans. Despite Keffal’s lack of sympathy for me and her willingess to make false rape claims about me without caring to apologize, she is bothered when I am not sympathetic towards her getting doxxed, and gets upset when I use a similar “evil” argument back at her. The difference is, I am not calling her evil because of her beliefs, I lack regard for her because of her aggressive and hateful demeanor towards me, including taking credit for getting me banned from Twitch. Ninetails, another progressive trans streamer that runs in these same circles, echoed similar claims with no evidence on her Twitter. Chloe (@bobposting), a large trans Twitter user, falsely accused me of raping Melina on stream in response to this video. Melina and I poke/tickle/prod each other pretty frequently, but Chloe decided in this instance I was raping her and decided to take this claim to Twitter. She would later claim this tweet was just a joke, but people in other communities, such as Vaush’s subreddit (or people on Twitter), echo it uncritically. Other active members of these communities continue to echo this claim. Xanderhal even does this while reacting to a 10 year old conversation I had with Vaush back in 2012. Rape and slur comments are fairly common Twitter as well. Death threats. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of death threats. Many show up in my DMs as well, though the people will unfortunately delete their accounts or get banned afterwards, so if I don’t screenshot them I can’t archive them. At suspiciously the same time Vaush’s community was chided by the Reddit Admins for brigading, we’d received notice that our subreddit was being brigaded. Many like to attack my relationship with my son. So many tweets attacked Melina after she quote tweeted Lauren defending me. Almost every quote tweet to this is some kind of attack on Melina. Many have attacked me in the past for identifying as non-binary (I no longer identify this way), even though I’ve considered different sexual/gender identities and discussed it at length at various points on my stream. ( 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 ) Many large communities have defended using racial slurs against me, including Hasan, multiple times, as well as smaller streamers such as Kira Chats (BadBunny), and large accounts on Twitter, including the squirrel. Moderators and members of said communities freely use and defend slurs against me as well. I won’t dig up every time someone says it, but if you search Twitter there are countless examples. ( 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 ) People have attacked me over my canvassing efforts, with Josie claiming I “made a progressive candidate lose.” and fans of Hasan sexually harassing/attacking me for canvassing in Omahat over Discord. These canvassing efforts culminated in a hit piece being published on me by Hannah Michelle Bussa of the UNO Gateway, spurred on by a short clip created in and propagated by Vaush’s community, to which I responded with a detailed write-up on my subreddit. Kaceytron and Ana have falsely claimed Melina and I spread STDs. Multiple people have made fun of me for someone misrepresenting a drug and selling an unknown amphetamine to me instead of MDMA. ( 1 | 2 | 3 ) There are many other random attacks, such as people calling me fascist, claims that I’ve never been raped or violently assaulted by an intimate partner, people saying I’m a groyper, claims women only fuck me because of my money, telling people to give me no charity, etc…etc…it’s honestly not worth listing all of the attacks, there are hundreds more across thousands more accounts, hopefully I’ve gotten the point across.

       Not all of these claims come from large accounts, and these claims run the gamut from “not so serious” to “extremely dire.” I hope I’ve been able to accurately convey the diverse amount of harassment I receive across a multitude of platforms from a variety of communities on a nearly daily basis. None of the prior claims have anything to do with a difference of opinion or disagreements in political philosophy, rather they are all personal, baseless attacks that are either hateful in nature or rooted in some fact that does not exist. Please understand that there are thousands more comments that could be gathered out there, either in relation to me or other people being attacked in a similar manner, but I only have so much time to gather and write. Also, these are only attacks that have come from communities that are supposed to be closely politically aligned with me. If I wanted to show even more hateful comments, I could easily visit Kiwifarms, conservative subreddits, YouTube comment sections from conservatives I’ve debated, or 4chan threads made about me. It is an unbelievable amount of lies and hatred one in my position is expected to not only tolerate, but deal with in an even-handed manner where I am expected never to lose my temper and cross the line.

Living your Values

I don’t care much for what people say about themselves, truly. I don’t care if someone says they’re tolerant of different people, if they profess some political position, or if they’re good towards their friends; ultimately, I only care about people’s actions, and how well they understand the issues they claim they care about.

I am far from perfect, but I believe I am a better person than the vast majority of those that inhabit online political communities. I have and will continue to make many mistakes in my personal and public life, but I believe I aspire to some ideal at the end of the day that I am proud of. I don’t like to come off as a braggart, but I do believe my track record is better than most in this arena, and if there was ever a time to recount some achievements, this would be it.

Professional Causes I have always believed in revenue sharing as a business model for people who work directly on creating/editing content for me, whenever the model works. If I’m paying flat rates, my rates are generally better than industry rates. I paid my original YouTube editors at a loss ($1,000/month) until the channel was earning enough money to split the profit 50/50 with the editor earning more than $1000/month. I pay my current editor a 40% rev split on a channel currently earning over $550,000 in ad revenue yearly. When I saw the positive reception to my D&D Patreon, I contacted Koibu and offered to bump up his rate from one he’d originally discounted me. I’ve tried to pay every person who’s designs I’ve used for merchandise, stream events, youtube/twitter banners/profile pics, or any other art I’ve used, including $5,000 for my D&D music and $1000 for the original “leruse” picture drawn in paint. I pay people to maintain my website, including a monthly fee to Cake and extra compensation for work by JaydrVernanda (tons of random site updates) and LinusRed (major work on bot and other integration things for my website). In 2012 when I first started my website I made the choice to make it open source so that any work that went into creating a website for me could benefit the greater streaming community for years to come. I was unaware that my website’s source would be taken and used so prolifically by people who would try to get me shut down, including Vaush, Shoe0nhead, Keffals, TheSerfsTV, Xanderhal, Exiliaex, Merrick Deville, conureCC, Shark33ozero, DemonMama, and Queen Marci. Neither me nor my developers have ever received a single word of thanks from any of these content creators, and no one has contributed to the original repo from the forked project. I have never charged an appearance fee for any of the live shows I’ve gone to unless a larger company or sponsor was paying out of pocket. I have not been requested payment for any of the university speeches or debates I’ve attended, even when others there have (Elijiah Shafer, Dennis Prager). I have hosted/supported a massive number of smaller streamers, including those who either no longer support me or attack me constantly. I am one of the only large streamers that consistently gave voices to smaller streamers by way of conversation, hosting, or numerous appearances (sometimes on and off stream) across panel shows. Personal Causes I’ve donated money anonymously to some projects in the past online, including personal LGBT causes like Lumi’s surgery. One year later they would be giggling along with Mike about my departnership from Twitch while he’s claiming I do nothing for trans rights. I offered to fly out to stay with or remotely book rooms for Nicole (BadBunny/Kira Chats) after she had a traumatic sexual experience with one of her moderators (an experience even my community showed support for). Less than a year later she would be trashing me on her stream, claiming I never cared about her, called me a bad friend, claimed I valued viewership over friends and that I cultivate a toxic community. She’s gone on multiple tirades since then, despite me defending her at multiple points against my community. I was one of the first big streamers to openly and aggressively support OBS back in 2013 when XSplit was the leading streaming service, and again in 2018 when Jim needed help fundraising for his platform and I pushed for other large streamers to contribute with me. Jim was amazing for a long time in providing me with personal support for pushing the limits to what I could do with streaming. I went back to Starcraft 9 years ago to do a big fundraiser for the guy who had created the Gameheart overlay, eventually netting him a full time job at Blizzard after the success of the integration of his overlay, despite having been out of the community for several months when he was trying to raise money. I’ve intervened in issues where I perceived a wrong being done, even if it was potentially an unpopular stance opposed to more popular figures that I have closer relationships with. One such time was during the Prime Cayes drama where I helped to clear Prime’s name of a bogus improper conduct allegation in the middle of the night in Amsterdam (off stream), an intervention he later publicly thanked me for. I’ve also taken the side of less popular streamers against more popular ones, such as siding with Novaruu during the DM leak drama, and even prevented high schoolers from canceling each other. I’ve gone out of my way to get even streamers I’m not on good relations with unbanned for what I perceived to be unfair causes, such as TheSerfsTV. I also tried to submit an idea so Vaush could appear on Twitch streams again back when he was banned, though I was willing to mute my Twitch stream and send viewers his way when he wanted to have a discussion, such as for the Rittenhouse conversation. I am the only large streamer I am aware of that will judiciously pursue cross-platform bans if my viewers harass someone. I have stated multiple times that I will ban someone from my subreddit, d.gg chat room, Twitch/YT chats as well as block them on social media if I see them attempting to harass someone from any of these platforms. Despite having this offer open, it is often not taken seriously by the very same people who complain about harassment. I made it a point to cover sexual assault allegations on stream to provide some more insight into how events like these happen and how they can be avoided. These were met with overwhelmingly positive responses from the victims involved. Political Causes I offered up my platform to any progressive candidate that wanted to have a conversation and advertise for their campaign, despite these videos not performing very well on my YouTube or my Twitch streams. ( 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 ) One of these interviews was Josie (pre-transition) and it would be her first major appearance on any internet platform. She was initially a fan of “a lot of my stuff” and thought my audience was valuable back then, though she would go on later to accuse me of being transphobic and defend people calling me a rapist. I spent over $100,000 (here’s the budget sheet for Omaha), of which ~$5,000 was fundraised by my community, for canvassing efforts in Georgia and Omaha for progressive political leaders. I paid my two lead organizers $5,000 and $4,000 a month to have a full time residence in Omaha for two months to manage volunteers who’s accommodations and food I was also paying for full time. We also coordinated travel and covered hotel expenses for the final weekend in Georgia and for every weekend in Omaha. In Georgia we knocked on over 20,000 doors and led the single largest canvassing mobilization in the state during the final weekend of campaigning for Warnock and Ossoff. I helped to support and promote some local political causes in Georgia. One of the interviews I gave to two of the people working on causes in Georgia wound up being Maddycakes’ first major appearance on any internet platform, a woman who would later go on to falsely accuse me of vague rape allegations.

Lies

“Besides, as the vilest Writer has his Readers, so the greatest Liar has his Believers; and it often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect.”

Jonathan Swift

The Examiner

Evidence is Inconvenience

In this chapter I am going to explain different types of harassment that exist online and the relevant accusations levied at either me or my community. Some of these sections are going to feel a bit empty, but that’s because other members of online communities have found it sufficient to simply accuse me or my community of committing any of these acts (oftentimes without understanding what the acts are) without providing a shred of evidence for any of these accusations. This is not only unfortunate, it is a reflection of sub-standard character to propagate these sorts of lies when other online figures should know better.

Hate Raids & Brigades

A “hate raid” involves some organized or coordinated attempt by one community or group of people to show up (“brigade”), en masse, and spam either hateful or derogatory messages at another individual or community. Hate raids are not when a handful of people decide to respond rudely to a tweet. Hate raids are also not when individuals decide, independently, to send negative DMs to someone via social media. Hate raids are also not when multiple members of an instigated community show up in the instigators “arena” and leave hateful comments. It could be said that some amount of “organic” brigading could happen, especially if a content creator views the work of another, but it wouldn’t be considered a “hate raid” unless explicit or at least implicit calls to action were made.

Let’s look through a few examples:

John attacks a much larger content creator, Nicole, in a YouTube video. Nicole views the YouTube video, giving it a scouring review, and many of her fans in turn go to John’s channel and leave negative comments/reviews across many of his videos. One could argue that this is “brigading” behavior, as Nicole reviewing John’s video on stream will inevitably lead to some members of her community visiting John’s channel. But a “hate raid” it is not, unless there are community posts or directions from someone within the community to leave some specific types of hateful comments. Laura and Jess get into a big fight with one another online, culminating in both exchanging heated words. Once their exchanges are done, Laura retreats back into her server and begins to link social media posts and videos by Jess, telling her community that Jess has an “ugly goblin nose” and that people should say as much. Even though some comments may be exchanged by both communities that aren’t really brigading or hate raiding, the explicit call at the end by Laura to go through Jess’s videos and leave comments would definitely rise to the level of “hate raid” behavior. Despite being blocked, Keffals will continue to tag people and direct their community to harass them on Twitter in an attempt to speak with them. Keffals has engaged in this behavior multiple times. If someone has blocked you on a social media platform and you continue to direct your community to them, or create new accounts or use old accounts to circumvent the block, you are almost certainly engaging in some form of brigading and harassment.

       With a slightly more sophisticated understanding of what a hate raid is, let’s review the allegations against me and my community.

Keffals claims around the time of my ban that she was hate raided by my community. Sondsol reviewed the “hate raid” and showed that Keffals was brigaded by another community before I even knew who she was. A poster on my subreddit, johnleoks, later summarized this in a post. Keffals never seems to bring up the fact that she was not only fighting with large content creators earlier on Twitter, she was even harassing them from behind a block. It’s more likely any hate raiders came from this than from my community. Kaceytron bolstered this claim, saying I’ve targeted trans people to hate raid, again with no evidence. DemonMama claimed I sent a hate raid to Keffals. DemonMama later said she didn’t even care to review proof or evidence of any hate raid, which is common for her. Josie also claims she would be hate raided while streaming on Dylan’s panel. She later claims she banned two dozen chatters who were “hate raiding” her, disregarding the fact that any hate raid from me would involve hundreds or thousands of chatters. Logs from her chat would later show she only had 10 chatters banned, with only 1 of them actually being transphobic. Vaush has, without evidence, also made multiple claims about hate raids, despite his own community getting clocked by the Reddit admins for excessive brigading.

       To date, despite multiple claims of hate raiding, not a single content creator has produced a shred of evidence of any members of my community calling for or coordinating any sort of hate raids or brigades on other streamers. Even the “hate raiders” people point to tend to be 0 follower, newly created Twitter accounts, or Twitter accounts who only engage with me in a negative manner.

Doxxing

“Doxxing” is a semi-informal concept on the internet that typically denotes someone publishing information about someone else online that the victim typically wishes to keep hidden, especially for purposes of harassment. The information may already be publicly available somewhere, but if one attempts to re-publish or amplify publicly available information or collect it on another platform, it would typically still be considered doxxing.

A couple quick examples:

Amy goes through John’s old school website, looking for information about his address. She finds it and posts it on Twitter, hoping it will scare him into deleting his account. This is a form of doxxing, even if the information was publicly available prior. Steve sees that Jennifer says a racial slur in a TikTok video where none of her information is listed in her account. Steve is able to find out her identity and place of employment and @’s her employer on Twitter to get her fired. This is a form of doxxing. Steve has found Jennifer’s personal information and is amplifying it on social media to cause her harm. After witnessing a quarrel between Keffals and ChudLogic, Keffals’ mod, hunter_lyon, posts a picture of his face that he explicitly wishes to keep private on Twitter. She also pairs this with an unsubstantiated groomer allegation. This is a form of doxxing, as hunter_lyon’s goal is to harm Chud by posting information he’d wish to keep private.

       And the allegations against me or my community?

Keffals makes an ambiguous claim about who is doxxing (but will clarify in other things that the harassment comes mostly from my community, or falsely claim my community has a large overlap with Kiwifarms (a banned term in my chat so people can’t link to threads), or falsely claim I am getting stuff from Kiwifarms), even though it is obviously Kiwifarms behind the doxxing. Predictably, other people jump in and allege that my community is behind it. She also makes false claims about “revenge porn” in the earlier clip, which doesn’t make sense, because porn you’ve released yourself on the internet is not “revenge porn.” These allegations echo to random parts of the internet and are generally well received. Even random chatters from other communities make the same claims, again, with no evidence. Keffals never seems to mention that she has accrued an impressively huge Kiwifarms thread (over 400 pages) in a relatively short amount of time. Kiwifarms is a community known for doxxing, brigading, and other forms of targeted harassment.

       No content creator has ever provided a single shred of evidence of any doxxing happening in any part of my community, be it my chat rooms, my subreddit or my Discord.

Hateful Remarks

“Hateful” generally implies you are making derogatory remarks towards someone specifically in relation to some protected class. These remarks tend to be sexist, racist, or anti-LGBT in some manner. Many people make claims about me making hateful remarks, but virtually all of these are either half-true or just entirely fabricated.

Keffals has claimed (among other things) I’ve made 41% jokes about her, or other trans people. She’s said the same about my community, implying I endorse it. Others seem to believe I want to “embrace 41% jokes.” The reality of what happened was that I misread a comment in chat assuming the chatter was making a trans suicide joke, when the chatter was actually just making a NEET suicide joke. I went on to say that, although it was “tempting to embrace the 41% jokes, I’m trying to stay above board.” I don’t think I need to explain myself, but just in case - this was literally the day of my indefinite suspension from Twitch, a suspension that Keffals and others cheered on and even tried to take credit for. At this time, it was tempting to attack the people who were attempting to destroy me by any means possible. Despite this, I’ve held myself to a higher standard and resisted the temptation. Many claim I make fun of trans people for attempting to commit suicide. This claim originates from me being skeptical about a suicide “attempt” and the afterwards behavior from Doe. She claimed in a published word doc that she had “upwards of 700-800mg” of Diphenhydramine in her system, which is ~15 pills of Benadryl, well under the LD50 (the dosage at which 50% of subjects will die), which is 20-40 mg/kg of bodyweight ( 1 | 2 ). After her “attempt,” she immediately published some poetry along with some vague-posting about childhood trauma and tweeted it to warm reception to all of her Twitter followers. The next day she was immediately back to valiantly fighting with degenerates on Twitter over political and social causes. She continually made personal attacks against me in regards to my mental health and the bad drugs I was sold, sometimes even from behind a block. Regardless if you think my criticisms of Doe were well founded or inappropriate, this is the only suicide attempt I’ve attacked the credibility of. It clearly had nothing to do with her being trans and everything to do with the ridiculous set of circumstances and the treatment surrounding this particular “attempt.” Also, I never initially directed any of these comments to Doe, these were comments I made in my chat. If they were so harmful to Doe, why were people finding logs in my chat, screenshotting them, then posting them all over Twitter when I already had Doe blocked? Wouldn’t they be the ones causing her harm? People always claim my community makes transphobic remarks, but they can never link or show long standing members of my community or places that I have control over being transphobic, it’s always random Twitter riff-raff, or people who follow me that I have no control over on other social media platforms. I have and will continue to mute anyone in my Twitter mentions making transphobic remarks, but it’s impossible to control who hate follows me.

Random Harassment

Harassment comes in all shapes and sizes, and is quite vague. Many erroneous claims about harassment, nonetheless, have been made about me or my community as well.

Charmhole, a random politics orbiter on Twitch, claims he has a clip of me assaulting him. It was really just me saying I wouldn’t have a conversation with him. Vaush has claimed while speaking to DemonMama, with zero evidence, that my community was absolutely DDoSing both of them. Vaush and others have claimed my community tried to “pedojacket” (falsely state someone is a pedophile) Doe, again with no evidence. The sad thing about this conversation is that the truth is actually entirely the opposite, with both me and my community completely siding with Doe in the argument, despite my personal dislike of her. Extra funny claims from Merrick that Vaush’s community is not sexist, even though she’s said the exact opposite before, especially after his JK Rowling fallout, with more claims about mine, though she will never contact my mods or provide proof to ban any of the sexist comments. It’s also funny that Merrick claims to care about sexism, when she had no qualms with sexism from Vaush, when he said that a woman who was wearing stockings and a skirt wanted to be sexually harassed, or when he called her a “stupid fucking bitch”, all while Merrick was in the chat. Claims by Josie that I am a constant source of transphobia and harassment, and would go on to say that I laugh at rape victims, claiming there are “inconsequential forms of rape.” This is a horrendous misquotation of a conversation I had with Duncan Can’t Die. She would also falsely claim here that DemonMama doesn’t use a site based on my website’s original code, a false claim also stated by MxVivianWulf and Keffals (twice).

Random Statements

       I’m not even sure how to classify these statements. Just random, baseless, bizarre things that people believe about me.

I’ve seen it alleged that I go to “paid events” for fascist propaganda. I generally don’t get paid for the events I go to, and certainly not the one referenced. Hasan’s community claimed during the r/place event that my community was botting, though no one was banned from my community and plenty from others were banned.

Ian

Everything about my stream would be significantly worse if it weren’t for the tireless dedication of the people who work for and with me.

In no particular order:

RTBA, “The Bear”, security, moderation and a million other things

Cake, master website maintainer and a chief “puts out fires” guy

JaydrVernanda, mysterious “the actual developer” guy

LinusRed, the other “actual developer” chat bot maintainer

4THOT, chief subreddit janitor

Ninou, email manager, master unbanner and merch deliverer

August, actual YouTube editor “God on Earth”

Lemmiwinks and Kendolly, the “Old Guard” Twitch Mods

Anti, George, Mikecom, Phree, Andrea, Polecat, Notdiced, bog boy, Amelie, and Zoulos, my thankless Discord moderators

&

CeneZa and Sztanpet, the two who originally, for no compensation, originally built out destiny.gg and chat back in 2013

The VQ

“The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it”

Albert Einstein

referencing an interview of Pablo Casals

Et tu, Brute?

We’ve already gone over the insertion of Ian Kochinski, currently known as Vaush, formerly known as Irishladdie, into the YouTube and Twitch sphere. In this section, I want to focus on how Ian chooses to operate in this space, and how the intentional mischaracterizations he makes of me are ultimately harmful to both me and the work that I do. While I repeatedly get characterized as being “obsessed” by both him and his community, Ian is easily the most prevalent puppet master of this narrative. There is nothing obsessive about covering some of the most popular figures in this space making commentary about hot topic political issues. The only goal of framing criticisms in this light is to escape any and all responsibility for the things one says, and give oneself a pass to endlessly attack the people covering you. It would be impossible for any mainstream figures like Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson to start claiming that rival pundits are obsessive stalkers, and this situation is no different.

Ian has always been someone who has been an extremist in his political ideals, even back in 2012 claiming that we ought to sacrifice intellectual honesty for the purpose of the progressive movement. He’s also caused some conservative members of my community, namely Exskillsme, to leave after making multiple overtures advocating violence against conservatives. Vaush has flirted with the idea of being more and less radical over time, but for the most part he’s always been considered significantly to the left of me.

Ian was a highly active member of my community and has stated multiple times that he’d watched every video and debate I’d done. In March of 2019, it had been brought to my attention by a few individuals that Ian was engaging in some form of long-term sexual pressuring of an 18 year old woman in my community. As my fan-base was currently undergoing a fairly radical schism at the time, I had to figure out a way to handle the situation that didn’t make it look as though I was only punishing Ian for being a leftist. I’d decided to do a public reading of the logs first to my community to see what the general reaction would be to the behavior before revealing the culprit. His behavior was almost universally condemned, and it was only once I revealed who the accused was that some members of my community changed their mind and said I was being too harsh. Regardless, the die had been cast. I brought Ian onto Discord to have a conversation about what had transpired, but ultimately I was forced to kick him from my Discord server for some time to protect members of my community. The entirety of their Discord DMs can be found here.

Ian was incredibly upset at Poppy post accusation (even though he had continued to harass her after his apology) and made references to either silencing her by attacking her in Discord, smearing and attacking her with his discord community, or about how she was a “disgusting human being who never needed an apology who needed to be reduced to a sobbing mess.” Poppy has posted as recently as a year ago a summary of most of what happened and the fallout she experienced afterwards.

Once banished from my community, Ian began to grow in his own right as a YouTuber. He also rebranded from Irishladdie to Vaush in order to escape the stigma of his prior misconduct allegations and continued to produce video and debate content across YouTube and Twitch. We would go on to have a friendly rivalry for the next few years through conversation and debate (with me privating the allegation video so as to not destroy his fledgling career), though it wouldn’t be without a couple notable road bumps. One of the worst of these was during the Rittenhouse debate saga, where he stood idly by as his girlfriend, roommate and community tried to get me banned with a 16 second misrepresentation of what I’d stated during a debate about rioting and defense of property. His community had multiple threads calling me a white nationalist or stochastic terrorist, with Ian liking multiple tweets stating the same.

Post Rittenhouse, I decided it was no longer sufficient to be “correct,” but rather I had to engage in some optical and rhetorical consideration so actors like Ian weren’t able to come out of arguments “looking good” while being so incorrect in their analysis. Ian decided to stop interacting with me after I became aware of this, leading to two disastrous conversations where he advocated that socialists didn’t have to live their principles and a heated screaming match where he claimed Bush and Scalia were fascists. Once he started to elicit critical responses from his community, he decided it was no longer worth engaging with me and would continue to invent new excuses to avoid doing so indefinitely onwards.

The Vaush Identity

Ian initially started out as a “more left” version of me: edgy, debatelord, “logic and fact” pilled, but ardently socialist and anti-capitalist. In 2019 he did very well absorbing the fall-out from the beginning of my anti-leftist arc, but eventually realized, with the decay of breadtube, it wasn’t enough to simply rely on absorbing Destiny anti-fans. Due to Ian’s extremist, violent and anti-establishment rhetoric, he could really only draw fans from other extremist circles on the internet. However, Ian also had an interesting predicament in that, like me, he found himself at odds with many in the far left as well, and became increasingly unwilling to debate or engage with the far right. In January of 2022 Vaush began to feud aggressively with Luna Oi, NonCompete, FD Signifier, Professor Flowers and Thought Slime.

For a while, Ian sought to forge a friendship with Hasan. Due to Hasan’s fallout with me, however, he was looking to disengage with the “debate” side of the internet and network hard with more normal streamers he could grow his fan base off of. Hasan also prescribes to a similar view Ian does of not platforming smaller creators, so Ian had no chance of linking up. For years Ian was incredibly critical of Hasan, even wanting to take his place, but when setting his sights on further stream growth he eventually tried to gear himself up to be more palatable to larger streamers, even admitting as much when doing a large charity stream in May of 2021. By January 2022 he switched to maximum simp mode trying to get on Hasan’s good side. Eventually he would realize this was futile, as Hasan simply had no desire to engage, and would return to being critical of him and his fanbase.

In March of 2022 Ian had another massive falling out with the leftist and video essayist communities, this time after a fight with Kat Blaque, Contrapoints and Noah Samsen. This, combined with viral tweets with JK Rowling losing him thousands of subscribers on his YouTube, Ian decided to totally isolate himself in his community, eschewing debate or challenging engagement and instead focusing on ratcheting up the extremist rhetoric and covering YouTube videos and social issues on stream. He would go on to call this, in April of 2022, “The Fortress Arc.”

In March I was indefinitely suspended from Twitch. After some time not appealing his ban on Twitch for the “cracker” arc, Ian, sensing an opportunity, that very same day applied for an unban from Twitch and then made excuses to go back onto panels again, unchallenged, perhaps with the goal of trying to peel viewers off of my old colleagues.

My Treatment of Ian

       Before I get too far into how Ian treats me, I’d like to establish something for how I deal with people I lack respect for. I might personally attack or show disdain towards someone who has wronged me, but I will always give them credit for making good arguments, and I will try to be fair when they get involved in situations with others. This has resulted in me siding with and supporting arguments for several individuals over the years that I’d had long-standing public feuds with. Later on, we’ll look at how Ian claims I am spite-driven and dishonest when dealing with him, but before we look at his claims, let’s take a look at how I actually treat him.

I almost always show the full video of whatever Ian is saying so that he has a chance to explain the entire context of whatever topic he’s discussing. I almost never rely on second-hand characterizations of things he’s said, as those tend to be warped, whether intentionally or not. I was willing to mute my stream to have conversations with him while he was banned from Twitch. I deleted the Poppy sexual allegation video from my channel so his fledgling YouTube career wasn’t besmirched with such a damaging allegation early on. I would defend him relating to Poppy multiple times later on. ( 1 | 2 | 3 ) I’ve defended and advertised Ian’s good faith multiple times to my community, even after the Poppy drama. I ironically even worried about him turning into “YouTube Vaush” in one of these clips. Despite being friends with Bastiat and feuding quite viciously with Ian, I cast the third and deciding vote in his favor in the Hippy Dippy debate because I genuinely thought he did a better job. Despite being friends with RGR, I took his and Doe’s side in the RGR/Doe debate. I gave Ian a lot of credit in his debate with DemonMama, even after Rittenhouse and after him calling me spiteful and obsessively hateful. I sided with Ian against ChaosIsMel, even though he was a bit hot-headed. Even my community sided with Ian against Professor Flowers. I sided with Ian hardcore multiple times against Noah Samsen. I sided with Ian multiple times against Luna Oi! and NonCompete. I said Ian did a good job in his conversation with Charlie Kirk. Even when he was bleeding thousands of subscribers during his JK Rowling fumble, I tried to give the best possible explanation of his point of view. I have defended him multiple times against people misquoting old things he’s said where they paint him to be a pedophile, even on a popular podcast with Isaac Butterfield. I clarified that Vaush wasn’t as bad as Hasan when he was banned from Twitch over the “cracker” discourse. I’ve said that I hold Ian to a higher standard than Hasan for political discourse. I expressed that I thought Ian’s ban was unfair from Twitch over the cracker discourse. I even defend Ian against unfair characterizations from my chat. I give Ian credit for at least being reasonably intelligent compared to other pop political people online like Hasan and H3H3.

Simulacstiny

I want to describe one of the big processes in which people come to believe things about me that aren’t true. For lack of a clever name, I’ll call this the DLC, or Destiny-Lie Cycle, that Ian continually takes part in.

A false claim about me is made, or a statement about something I’ve said with no proof or reference. Oftentimes this might be a chatter saying “Hey Vaush, did you hear when Destiny said xyz?!” or a Tweet claiming I’ve said or done something. A character explanation will be given for why I’ve done the thing I did not do. “Of course Destiny said this, it’s because he’s transphobic/arrogant/racist/sociopathic, etc….” This claim will echo and reverberate throughout the community. Ian’s community will listen to, agree with, and repeat back his characterization of me as they discuss why I am the kind of person who would do the kind of thing that I did not actually do. This new, demonic caricature will become the reference for future attacks. “Remember when Destiny said xyz, guys?” where the “thing” being “remembered” is not actually the thing I’ve said or done, but the initial false claim. A copy without a reference, or simulacrum, if you will.

       Let’s look at some examples for how claims are made and exaggerated. Notice that, in contrast to my treatment of Ian, he will almost never have the original video or tweet on screen to engage with what’s actually being discussed. Instead, it is almost always a caricature or his memory (of another caricature) of what was said. Also, sometimes the exaggerations are not huge, but they’re just slight enough to slowly change the representations of things I’ve said over time to slowly morph me into a monster.

Ian misrepresents an entire Twitter chain for the purposes of making me look ridiculous. Almost nothing said here is true. She hadn’t initially said she’d been “raped several times,” she said “a dude slipped his condom off during sex after I asked him to wear one this week and it’s been bothering me, but I was too awkward to say anything.” I never said you “needed to be strong enough to stand up to guys raping you,” I said “if you are noticing someone is taking a condom off and you can't say anything, you probably don't have the emotional maturity to engage in sex.” This wasn’t said to her, this was said to CapriTheUnruly on Twitter. I never called her a retarded child, I quote tweeted one of my own tweets and said “if you are noticing someone is taking a condom off and you can't say anything, you probably don't have the emotional maturity to engage in sex.” Ian goes on to spend minutes recounting an entire set of tweets and convos, yet never shows an original video or tweet once, why? Now that Ian has created a false copy, he refers back to it, saying I’ve engaged in “rape apologia” and that I’ve said “a woman who was raped is like a retarded child,” right after saying I’ve done “so many awful things” to justify my Twitch ban. I have never engaged in “rape apologia” and none of my Tweets were ever calling the original victim a retarded child. Ian has also incorrectly stated I am laughing at women who are choosing to be raped. Ian talks about something “we saw” in regards to me laughing at a woman who was raped and calling her a retarded child. This never happened, the thing his audience “saw” was past fiction, and now he is referring to it to reinforce an event that never happened. He also claims I’ve “argued against metoo” in this clip and say women should “shut up” if they get raped…despite me doing a ton of #metoo coverage on stream and being thanked by victims of abusers online about it. He also repeats “we saw all of this”...except Ian has never shown anyone anything. He even goes on to say that “no context is missing” from any of my statements… The anti-#metoo statements are most likely in reference to this tweet, where I was critical of people who randomly open up about trauma/assault on Twitter. I don’t believe it’s an appropriate forum to trauma dump, but I’ve also said I don’t believe #metoo is about “trauma dumping,” it’s about holding larger figures accountable when all other avenues of justice have been exhausted. It’s fair to take issue with my tweet, but there is no fair characterization of me that is “anti-#metoo.” Ian here calls me transphobic while admitting I hold pro trans positions. He goes on to destroy my character before stating anything about my trans positions, saying I don’t care about minority groups, calling me a sociopath, and badly misquoting my philosophical position of egoism. After running through some garbage philosophy to explain his own way of argumentation, he eventually arrives at the position that I argue to feel smarter than other people. This is in obvious contrast to the number of academics I’ve had on my stream - why would I challenge myself if I just wanted to feel smarter than others???. It seems strange to construct so much argumentation to attack someone for wanting to pursue the truth. Ian here falsely claims that I’m quote tweeting multiple transpeople and calling them pedophiles, groomers and sex pests and making fun of their suicide attempts. None of these statements have literally anything to do with transphobia. The only trans person I have ever called a pedophile was Chloe, the one who originated the joke about me raping my wife on stream, and that was in response to her tweeting that she’d gotten over 500 minors onto HRT. I do not “make fun of trans people’s suicide attempts,” I have only gone after one person, Doe, and it had nothing to do with her being trans. Ian will go on to do more character assassination, trying to claim I believe all trans people to be “stupid ingrates” who are “subhuman internet detractors.” I have never given any indication like this in my life. This is a touch ironic as Ian has said, in much harsher words than I, the online trans community is “hyper fragile,” wrought with “a ton of mental illness”, and they are “unreasonable” people who can’t be converted. He also said “these people are less than human” and “subhuman.” He’s also claimed that the online trans community is a bigger threat than Nazis. Ian’s transphobic rants were so legendary they got him notoriety in other left-leaning communities on Reddit. Ian claims that my “moral compass is fucked” and that the warning signs have been there for years. He will make another reference back to “all of the horrible things” I’ve done…but he is never referencing a real action or thing I’ve done, only his other references. Ian claims that my community is “psychotic” by “referring to objective truth.” Ian horrendously misrepresents my opinion during the “just move” discourse, claiming my positions are ridiculous and that I walk them back. He also claims I’ve changed my entire argument from claiming poor people should move to saying that wealthy tech bros should move in a conversation I had with Noah. My initial argument was not to say that “all poor people should move,” it was that people who can’t afford a particular area they live in should move to a cheaper apartment/area, as rent is going to be your largest expense. Many people in both mine and Ian’s community countered this by essentially saying that moving as a poor person is impossible, a position I still disagree with. I did not “walk back” any housing position with Noah, we spoke about people being forced to move due to high property taxes relating to Prop 13 in California, in which both of us agreed the people living in the houses should simply sell them and move. The next day he references his own prior misrepresentations of my “just move” conversation to reinforce the idea that I’m classist. At 2:40 he even explicitly says he doesn’t want to address any criticisms I’ve given of him, so he will never watch a video with my claims. This doesn’t prevent him from misrepresenting my views on his stream over and over again, however. One criticism I said was that people should not be moving to the most expensive cities in the US, and that there were other cities you could move to for job hunting instead. I’ve stated in the past that I’m frustrated when people act like you can’t move to a cheaper place to budget money better. I’ve literally explicitly spoken to Ian about this exact conversation topic before and explained my exact position. He backs off from his issue with my position and just moves to a “your rhetoric is mean” argument. Regardless of if you agree with my stated positions or not, it is insane to think I have ever given the prescription that “every single poor person should move out of every single huge city.” Ian claims I debated someone and called them a pedophile just for recommending “do it yourself” HRT, and says I have the same mental stability online as Haz or Hinkle, two tankies. This is not why I called her a pedophile, I called her a pedophile because she has a discord where she bragged about privately talking to over 500 minors and getting them on HRT. It’s still a mistake by me, but far different than calling every person who advocates for HRT for children a pedophile. I had a conversation with Taftaj where I explicitly state I’m fine with DIY hormones the day before Ian gives this take. Ian refers back to the misrepresentation that I called Chloe a pedophile “because she advocates for kids being able to get on HRT.” I’ve stated multiple times before this Ian rant that I am in favor of people pursuing DIY HRT if other options aren’t available. Ian is upset here because he claims that my community and I gaslight people into believing I said/did different things than I actually said. But this is because what I claim I’ve said never lines up with what Ian claims I’ve said, because he’s often engaging in bad faith when quoting my views. Ian claims my subreddit “literally acts like Kiwi farmers” and makes fun of their lack of “adherence to reality.” This is extra ironic, given that Ian’s subreddit is the one that was dinged by the admins for harassment. You have no idea what Kiwifarms (a banned term in my chat) is if you think my community “act like Kiwifarmers.” Ian claims I was banned from Twitch because my community took a hard right shift, again with no evidence of shifting beliefs or anything. He will constantly say I’m “spite driven” but never really gives any clear evidence or examples of me changing positions out of spite. My views on certain things have naturally evolved over time, but not “to the right.” On some things I’ve moved a bit left on (like trans issues), and on a lot of “procedural” things I’ve been moved a bit (like the electoral college, gerrymandering, Citizens United, etc…), but none of these are generally shifts “to the right.” Vaush in the past has agreed as much, saying my shift is generally in rhetoric, not policy position. Even Ian’s own community completely saw through his rhetoric about the Palestine claim. His subreddit also provided a better, more precise criticism of my “spite driven” arguments, though I respond to those criticisms here. Ian claims I bully trans people on Twitter. He then talks about how he followed Synth on Twitter, then unfollowed her because she was a “DGG stan,” but then refollowed her once she became critical of me again. I do bully trans people on Twitter, but because they’re stupid, not because they’re trans. I bully everyone on Twitter. It’s a bit ironic given that Ian has demonstrated the same frustration with minority groups getting “more space” for arguments and held to “lower standards.” He’s even said the exact same thing about online trans communities as recently as September of 2021. Synth has essentially admitted to just clout farming me for followers, and constantly farms my DGG community for OF subscriptions. ( 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 ) Others seem to attempt to clout farm off of fights with me, too. Natigska comes into my chat to make a comment, immediately clips a video, then runs to Ian to have a conversation about them. This person has their own incredibly contentious past, changing their name from Scrimzox/Nathorix after allegations came out of them encouraging fans as young as 12 to send them nude pictures. None of this mattered, though. Feuding with me was enough to get a follow from both Ian and Keffals. Ian uncritically reads a comment from his chat, doesn’t bother to fact check, and leads to misrepresenting my views to his audience. He tries to claim he “doesn’t like playing telephone” but will move on to character assassination as though the prior claims were true. My original take regarding the housing crisis was that the incentives were bad for every single actor in the housing market and that everyone acted with impropriety, not that it was solely the fault of homeowners. Ian has claimed that MrGirl is a pedophile and that my community and I defend him, and says I am becoming like Sargon of Akkad who defended Amos Yee. He has claimed several times my community is full of pedophile defenders. This is a particularly silly example, given I had a massive debate/disagreement with Amos Yee, an actual pedophile, and never defended his point of view. It’s also annoying when Ian himself has made some fairly edgy jokes surrounding pedophilia. Ian claims I am a creepy, obsessed stalker in the same way Ana was a stalker to me, seemingly ignoring the fact that we’re both large content creators occupying a very similar space talking about the same political issues. Ian would reference this claim again in a few weeks, saying that me covering his content is me being creepy and abusive. Ian claims that my defense of Citizens United is that “it’s complicated.” Citizens United is a complicated case, but that’s not the only thing I’ve said about it. I’ve discussed the issues surrounding the case multiple times on stream, even with educated people about it. Ian literally agreed with me that it’s a complicated case that’s hard to decide. Ian admits that he didn’t watch my debate with TheSerfsTV and completely misrepresents my arguments about Google requiring trans people to wear deadnames on their badges, claiming I just didn’t think it was a big deal to deadname people. After literally saying he didn’t even watch my debate. My argument here has to do with the idea that you probably can’t just put whatever name you want on a name badge for security purposes. The extra irony about this is that it ended up not being Google at all who required this, it was a security company Google was subcontracting for security work. Ian claims I only bring up negative experiences to get “dunks” on other people because I brought up Byron’s suicide in an argument about why social workers can be scary to people who have been committed to mental institutions before. I was not “bringing this up” for a dunk, I was bringing it up to reinforce why social workers can be so scary to people. Ian later claims I’m making stuff up, regardless. Ian misrepresents my contention with Philosophy Tube, claiming I was only upset because she “implied” she needed to go on a renter’s strike. He even brings up the exact same Bernie Sanders comparison that I shot down in our conversation. I had literally already had a conversation with Ian about this where he agreed with me that Philosophy Tube’s tweet was “unsavory.” Ian claims I’ve only attacked DemonMama, vermin, and conure “because they’re in his community.” My first conversation with DemonMama had to do with language being used on Twitter, it had nothing to do with Ian. My second conversation with DemonMama had to do with her trying to paint DaSkrubKing as an incel, and nothing to do with Ian. My issues with his ex-girlfriend and roommate had to do with them constantly calling me names, calling me a rapist, and trying to get me banned from Twitch. Ian claims I’ve kicked him out of my community because he was a lefty. This is explicitly why I went about the sexual harassment allegations in the way I did, to avoid exactly this type of bias claim. Ian claims we were never friends. This seems like it’s probably not true. He’s claimed over and over and over again that I am classist and have no solutions or anything, despite the fact that I religiously go over policy/research on stream constantly. This is also extra ironic as Ian has admitted many of his solutions only exist so long as a socialist revolution happens. He also tries to gaslight me in this convo claiming he didn’t bring up my net worth to attack my positions. Ian claimed I was only victim blaming when talking about the Prime Cayes allegations and that all of my arguments were conspiratorial. He also alleges that I said “if you’re a workplace victim of sexual harassment, you have power over your boss.” That is a gross mischaracterization of what I said, which was in fact that Kat, the woman involved, knew Prime was into and admitted to “playing along” to further her career, which does indeed make the situation more complicated. I even say here that it’s almost always bad for a boss to proposition a worker. He would then later claim he was correct about the entire situation. There is a belief that I would bully rape victims, very popularly endorsed by Ian’s subreddit, probably because he himself said I engage in rape apologia.

Countersue

       One incredibly irritating aspect of Ian is that he engages in behavior that I’d be crucified for, especially by his community, if I were to engage in anything remotely similar. Many of the things he’s actually done are even worse than the things he’s falsely claiming I do.

While Ian was fighting against Kat Blaque over their personal issues, it wasn’t enough to prove that what she was saying was incorrect, he also had to label her as a stalker, an abuser, an abuser, and again an abuser, similar to him labeling me an abuser and stalker just for reviewing his political content. He’s claimed I am transphobic merely for quote tweeting and fighting with trans accounts on Twitter, yet here he is blowing up a smaller trans creator while simultaneously using stereotypically transphobic insults against them like “mentally ill.” Ian has talked multiple times about using his community to brigade. He’s mentioned trying an “underhanded way to effect an outcome” regarding other Reddit communities. He’s encouraged people to “publicly shame” Contrapoints. He’s told his audience to “go nuclear on Riley,” and online trans content creator, and to “call her whatever you want.” He even gave cover for people going after her law degree, with DemonMama also chiming in to say she shouldn’t be a lawyer as well after communities began to spam phone calls to get Riley disbarred. (More context here) Ian also mentioned on stream that perhaps Riley shouldn’t be a lawyer. He wished his audience would have harassed Professor Flowers some more. He’s encouraged his community to harass a police officer having a breakdown on social media. Ian will be critical of views of mine, and then copy the same view and pass it off as his own, sometimes just a few days later. I was critical of BLM after they defended Jussie Smollett, which I was mocked by Ian and many others for. Three days later, he went on stream and spoke about how “disgusting” BLM was for defending Jussie Smollett. Ian amplified others making fun of me for saying people would kill themselves if they lived for 7 days in my shoes. A few days later he said an average person on Twitter would kill themselves in 8 seconds if they had to deal with the harassment he does online. Ian attacked me for trying to test his conviction with a $25,000 bet on whether or not a trans genocide would start in the US in a few years after he said we’re on the precipice of a genocide, with the proceeds going to charity. A few days later, he came up with the idea that people should bet to test their convictions on stream. Ian is constantly amplifying/liking tweets that are attacking me or my wife, after complaining about me going after people “just for being in his community.” Ian complains that people view him as a boogeyman by spawning false narratives about his community, while constantly doing the exact same thing to me by claiming that my community is full of evil people who defend pedophiles. Ian defended the idea that individual actors in systems could act as capitalist as they want, because we’re all slaves to the system, and said he would never criticize individual capitalist actors, only systems. Obviously this is not true. Despite how critical Ian is now of me fighting with leftists and being “spite based,” he had a decent understanding of my issues with leftists through 2019 and 2020. Ian makes fun of my community for pointing out tactics he uses to sound more serious, such as deepening his voice and changing his vocab, despite him admitting as much on stream before. Ian has been selectively critical of #metoo stuff when it doesn’t serve his political interest as well. Sydney Watson called him out on Twitter and his community responded in kind. He self-admittedly engages in quite a bit of motivated reasoning. If I ever left a convo with a lefty and said “I know they’re wrong, I just don’t know why lol, let’s go find out why they’re wrong” I would be crucified for it.

Summary

       My goal here is not explicitly to illustrate how horrible a political pundit I believe Ian to be. I think other people have done a good job at that. Instead, my desire is simply for people to understand how figures like Ian can contribute to such a horrendous misunderstanding of who I am, the positions I advocate for or the things I’ve done. I don’t even necessarily blame Ian’s fans for hating me, given the monster Ian builds me up to be every single time he opens his mouth about me on stream. I just wish people would hold content creators to higher standards when it comes to illustrating the positions of our political rivals and demand to at least see the original video or Tweet being referenced.

       I am also not saying I am correct or even acting virtuous in every interaction I have. There are times when I’ve said or done things I shouldn’t have, and I’ll admit as much. For instance, I should not have called Chloe a pedophile, despite my discomfort with her talking to hundreds (thousands?) of minors on Discord about HRT, and despite her making rape jokes about my wife and I. I will not apologize, however, for calling all people who advocate for DIY HRT pedophiles because I have never done such a thing. Same as with Doe, perhaps it’s not my place to speculate on the validity of her suicide attempt. But I will not apologize for mocking all of trans suicidality, because I simply have not done such a thing.

End

I hope this was as agonizing to listen to as it was for me to write.

(:

dggL

The End

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide.

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

…

I am incredibly lucky to do what I do. I have been blessed with the opportunity to learn new things, play more video games than any human should be allowed to, provide financially for myself and my child, employ talented and wonderful people, pursue dreams I didn’t even know I could have, travel to more parts of the world than I ever thought I’d see, and engage with wonderful people from around the world, meet new friends, lovers, coworkers, enemies, fans and haters alike. Despite the cost, I would never choose to step back into the life I lived before this. And yet the cost is great; I feel sometimes there is no recognition of this. Rather, people think me to be a monster wandering the internet looking for communities to terrorize.

This is not the case. I believe the vast majority of the things posted about me on the internet are lies, and I believe people undercount the good I do in both my personal and public life. I don’t wish for everyone to like me, or even respect me, I simply wish that those people that hate me at least hate me for things I’ve actually said or done, and weren’t only spurred on by the rantings and ravings of bad political actors online looking to animate an audience from the rubble of my reputation.

I hope this document has served to correct the record and establish, with good foundation, my beliefs regarding some of the more controversial topics and positions that have sprung up over the past couple years. I’m sure it will be a continual battle to fight against mischaracterizations against me, especially as my opinions continue to mature through time. I appreciate everyone who has stood by me, I hope I can continue to at least aspire towards the ideals I’ve set for myself, and I’m excited for the projects and adventures awaiting me.

Steven