I’m really confused what the marketing department was thinking for the TV show Peaky Blinders. Every time I’m on, Netflix is just advertising Peaky Blinders, and I’m like, “What the fuck is a peaky blinder?” Did they pitch the show like, “Hey, you know what’s going to be a real attention grabbing hit show that everyone’s going to want to watch? We’re going to call it Peaky Blinders, and it’s going to be starring that one fucking guy from Inception that no one cares about. It will be great.” I don’t know anyone who watches Peaky Blinders, so if you watch it, why? Just tell me why.
I don’t know if I’m the only one that does this – #relatable –but do you ever leave the bodies of spiders you’ve murdered, the slain bodies of spiders all around your house, just to let other spiders know not to try any funny business? I feel kind of like a serial killer, like I just want other spiders to know that this is what happens if you fall on my face at three in the morning. Because that’s what happened when a spider fell on my face at three in the morning.
You can probably tell that I’m not in my regular filming location. I’m still at my parents’ house, and I’ll probably be going home tomorrow. I’ll be able to film videos, and it will be a crazy time. This is definitely a half-assed attempt since I don’t have a microphone or my lighting. I don’t even have my regular lens that I normally use with me. I’m borrowing one of my dad’s lenses, which is not meant for close-up vlogging, which is why my face is so close now even though the camera is so far. We’re just not going to talk about it. We’re just going to deal with it. Everything is so good.
What I want to talk about today is Internet harassment. What’s come out of that is this idea from a lot of anti-feminist, anti-social justice people—I don’t know what you refer to yourself as—that if a person is being harassed by someone on the Internet and they block or ban or mute them ,that they’re censoring that person’s ideas, and they’re being closed-minded and closing off other people’s opposing views.
I know that this is a criticism that a lot of anti-feminists have because it’s a criticism that I receive a lot. As a person who talks about racism and sexism and controversial topics on the Internet, I receive a lot of awful comments, not surprisingly. This isn’t just one one or two.
These are comments – insulting, awful, sexist comments – that I’m receiving every single day. I’m just getting multitudes of comments calling me a bitch and a cunt and telling me to kill myself. For my own personal mental health and well-being, I’ll delete those comments, because I don’t know a single person that that’s going to be great for their own mental health. No one wants to see that shit. I don’t think it’s positive, and I don’t think it’s logical. I don’t think it really contributes anything to the discussion.
I do have one video where the comment section was particularly bad, so out of the hundreds of videos that I’ve made, there is one video where I turned the comment section off. I still get comments about it either on my channel or completely unrelated videos from people being like, “Oh, typical feminist – can’t handle dissenting opinions. Way to censor other people’s ideas,” which is a little ridiculous because A) my bad for not wanting to enable a space for people who were solely causing me a bitch and a cunt and telling me to die.
B) it’s not really censorship when you can go literally anywhere else on the Internet and share your opinions, which by the way, you do, because there’s misogyny everywhere and women are getting harassed every single fucking day simple for existing on the Internet.
I think the funniest thing about this—I mean, as funny as harassment can be—is when people come at me on Twitter ready to start a fight. Because I am the least aggressive person ever. I avoid getting into big confrontational arguments in my own personal life to the point that it’s probably a serious character flaw.
I just really don’t think that anger and hostility are productive in a debate, because from a sheer communications perspective, literally no one is coming out of that argument with a more open mind or a new life perspective. That’s just not how you have a productive conversation and not how anyone’s mind gets changed.
There’s also this idea that if you’re a woman on the Internet who shares her opinions and speaks her mind that you’re obligated to listen to and engage with every single person who wants to start a fucking Internet debate with you.
First off, that’s a little arrogant to think that just because someone puts their self online, it’s their obligation to listen to you and argue with you until the fucking ends of the earth, because a lot of these people will argue until the ends of the earth.
No one’s mind is getting changed, and I don’t really see the point of it. I don’t really get it. I don’t exist in my everyday life just constantly ready to get into a fucking Twitter fight because I’m a person and that’s just not how I function.
I just want to let you in on a little secret. Women online don’t owe you shit. Whether or not I choose to engage with those kinds of comments says nothing about my critical thinking skills or how open-minded of a person I am. It says more about the person commenting. Framing women who don’t want to put up with harassment and abusive comments as being unskeptical fascists, it’s super twisted.
When you harass women online and you leave shitty comments, you’re not promoting logic or debate or open-mindedness. You’re really just being a dick.
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