LJ_Reloaded
バクスター の
- Joined
- Apr 3, 2010
- Posts
- 21,217
NEWS FLASH KOTAKU... all those people hurling threats at Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian, etc. are fake false flagging trolls. You just ran aground at the tip of the iceberg.
http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2015/02/25/scariest-trolls-fake
Comedy is a tough one. Satire is its tougher cousin. But we live in a world where anyone can upload as many videos as they can make, call themselves a satirist and claim to be 'pushing boundaries'.
In the case of Jan Rankowski - the 20-year-old recently outed by Buzzfeed as being behind the Jace Connors character, a mentally unstable-seeming YouTuber with a penchant for waving knives around and unhinged rants - the boundaries he was apparently pushing involved the go-to technique for any aspiring comedian: making violent threats to a woman who had been on the receiving end of dozens (hundreds?) of other threats.
Wait, did I say go-to technique? I meant 'a thing nobody trying to be a comedian - or person of any kind - should ever try to do'.
I'll admit I believed it. Rankowski and his chums at Million Dollar Extreme caught me in their self-titled satire. The rancour from certain types online had got to the point where I could believe a man with serious problems had crashed his car on the way to outspoken developer Brianna Wu's house with a load of weapons in the back of the vehicle. It's a relief, in a way, to know that serious violence wasn't in fact on the cards - that it was all a stupid joke.
Fooling me - fooling anyone - with that sort of thing doesn't bother me. Well done, that's my favourite kind of satire: the one where you end up questioning what you do or don't believe.
But Rankowski and his 'provocative' comedy partners removed any semblance of comedy from their Connors act thanks to one element I genuinely cannot get my head around: making actual threats to Brianna Wu. I don't give a shit how ludicrous those threats were. GamerGate's less stable followers had already whipped themselves up into a frenzy of such comical ludicrousness that anything was believable - and not just to me. Wu herself wrote about the threats from Connors. They had negatively affected her life.
But hey, it was a joke, right? Maybe. But it was a terrible joke. The sort of joke an idiot who doesn't understand what satire truly is or what empathy might be about makes. A cheap, easy jab without any thought for the potential ramifications it could have.
Instead of thinking, instead of coming up with something clever or unique to say on the matter of GamerGaters and their attitudes, Rankowski decided he would instead add his voice to the cacophony, 'parodying' them by, well, joining in. His screams would be shriller and louder, meaning they would be heard above the rest, but they were too similar to the other - genuine - ones, and ended up blending in, becoming part of what they were supposed to be satirising.
At that precise moment, any comic value the Jace Connors character might have had was lost. The best thing to do would have been to come clean, apologise profusely for the confusion - and fear - he caused, and to pack the character in. But it seems Rankowski only realised he was doing something that was rather stupid when he was found out, and the harassment crosshairs of 8Chan settled firmly on him.
Reading his interview with Buzzfeed is eye-opening. This is a young man who at no point acknowledges what he did with his "satirical" threats. He doesn't see it. He doesn't realise that the problem isn't with 8Chan's army of trolls or the harassment he's now facing - it's that he brought emotional pain and distress to someone who has been suffering a lot over the last few months. That stunning lack of empathy has riled me up. Angered me, even.
http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2015/02/25/scariest-trolls-fake
Comedy is a tough one. Satire is its tougher cousin. But we live in a world where anyone can upload as many videos as they can make, call themselves a satirist and claim to be 'pushing boundaries'.
In the case of Jan Rankowski - the 20-year-old recently outed by Buzzfeed as being behind the Jace Connors character, a mentally unstable-seeming YouTuber with a penchant for waving knives around and unhinged rants - the boundaries he was apparently pushing involved the go-to technique for any aspiring comedian: making violent threats to a woman who had been on the receiving end of dozens (hundreds?) of other threats.
Wait, did I say go-to technique? I meant 'a thing nobody trying to be a comedian - or person of any kind - should ever try to do'.
I'll admit I believed it. Rankowski and his chums at Million Dollar Extreme caught me in their self-titled satire. The rancour from certain types online had got to the point where I could believe a man with serious problems had crashed his car on the way to outspoken developer Brianna Wu's house with a load of weapons in the back of the vehicle. It's a relief, in a way, to know that serious violence wasn't in fact on the cards - that it was all a stupid joke.
Fooling me - fooling anyone - with that sort of thing doesn't bother me. Well done, that's my favourite kind of satire: the one where you end up questioning what you do or don't believe.
But Rankowski and his 'provocative' comedy partners removed any semblance of comedy from their Connors act thanks to one element I genuinely cannot get my head around: making actual threats to Brianna Wu. I don't give a shit how ludicrous those threats were. GamerGate's less stable followers had already whipped themselves up into a frenzy of such comical ludicrousness that anything was believable - and not just to me. Wu herself wrote about the threats from Connors. They had negatively affected her life.
But hey, it was a joke, right? Maybe. But it was a terrible joke. The sort of joke an idiot who doesn't understand what satire truly is or what empathy might be about makes. A cheap, easy jab without any thought for the potential ramifications it could have.
Instead of thinking, instead of coming up with something clever or unique to say on the matter of GamerGaters and their attitudes, Rankowski decided he would instead add his voice to the cacophony, 'parodying' them by, well, joining in. His screams would be shriller and louder, meaning they would be heard above the rest, but they were too similar to the other - genuine - ones, and ended up blending in, becoming part of what they were supposed to be satirising.
At that precise moment, any comic value the Jace Connors character might have had was lost. The best thing to do would have been to come clean, apologise profusely for the confusion - and fear - he caused, and to pack the character in. But it seems Rankowski only realised he was doing something that was rather stupid when he was found out, and the harassment crosshairs of 8Chan settled firmly on him.
Reading his interview with Buzzfeed is eye-opening. This is a young man who at no point acknowledges what he did with his "satirical" threats. He doesn't see it. He doesn't realise that the problem isn't with 8Chan's army of trolls or the harassment he's now facing - it's that he brought emotional pain and distress to someone who has been suffering a lot over the last few months. That stunning lack of empathy has riled me up. Angered me, even.
