There’s drama on Reddit again, with a veritable army of Redditors rising up in righteous indignation to fight off those evil man-haters who’ve challenged their ineffable right to free speech to post creepy and intrusive and possibly illegal pictures of women and girls.
I don’t have the energy to catalogue the whole murky mess so let me just point out a few of the key events here, all of which have inspired multiple mega-threads full of sound and fury and lots of misinformation.
1) Reddit user Violentacrez, the founder of r/jailbait and r/picsofdeadkids and countless other skeezy subreddits, deleted his account after learning that Adrian Chen of Gawker was working on a story about him that might include his real name.
On Reddit, where bullshit travels at the speed of light, Redditors convinced themselves that Violentacrez, who took pride in being Reddit’s “creepy uncle,” was being “blackmailed” by either Chen or ShitRedditSays, conceptualized by most Redditors as some sort of collective supervillain not unlike Star Trek’s Borg. (On the Men’s Rights subreddit, moderator Ignatiusloyola, a major purveyor of misinformation on the current controversies, even suggested that I might somehow be mixed up in all of this, which is of course not the case. ) Violentacrez has come forth to say that Chen was not in fact blackmailing him in any way.
Naturally, Redditors have risen up to defend the honor of Mr. Acrez, who despite because of his incredible skeeziness was a beloved figure amongst the Reddit masses. Indeed, the moderators of a number of popular subreddits – including r/politics and, of course, r/mensrights – have banded together to ban Gawker and Jezebel and all related sites from their alleged free-speech zones.
A few links if you want to explore this further:
Redditors Stand Up to Gawker to Protect Child Pornography (AtlanticWire)
[Mod Post] A tribute to Violentacrez, who was doxxed and was being threatened in real life, and an important message to ALL subscribers (please upvote this self post) (NSFW subreddit thread; unreliable information within)
2) The CreepShots subreddit, devoted to surreptitiously taken pictures of attractive young women (and possibly a few men), has vanished, apparently either banned by Reddit’s admins or taken down by the subreddit’s moderator after someone threatened to expose his name.
But this was not the only attempt to creep-shame the creepshotters: A tumblr blog called Predditors posted the personal information of 20 or so Redditors who were active posters in r/creephots; all the info was gleaned from other Reddit postings of theirs. (Most of this information has since been scrubbed from the site.)
Naturally all this has inspired much indignation amongst Redditors, who are seemingly unaware of the irony inherent in their indignation about the invasion of privacy of those who ran and/or enthusiastically participated in a subreddit explicitly devoted to photographic invasions of privacy. (I don’t support revealing the personal info of these people, but at the same time I’m having a little trouble working up any sympathy for them.)
Rumors have spread on Reddit that one Redditor was physically attacked after being exposed as a CreepShot regular, but the only source of information on this is a user with the Reddit handle of POTATO_IN_MY_ANUS, so let’s just say that this is unconfirmed for now.
Links:
How to Shut Down Reddit’s CreepShots Once and for All: Name Names (Jezebel)
Internet Wars Over Women’s Bodies (Forbes)
The Internet War Over Creeps on Reddit (AtlanticWire)
/r/creepshots mod blackmailed into shutting down the sub a.k.a. The Admins Sure Doxxed The Ball On This One (ShitRedditSays thread)
r/creepshots has been removed due to doxxing of the main mod (SubredditDrama thread)
So it begins. Creepshots member beaten up following the Jezebel article which doxxed 20 Redditors (SubredditDrama thread)
There are naturally many more threads on the various aspects of all this on SubredditDrama right now.
Naturally, the good people of Men’s Rights have some thoughts on all this, many of them based on things that aren’t true.
/r/Creepshots and /r/violentacrez taken over by SRS by blackmailing with doxxing info. Apparently r/MensRights is next. (NOTE from DF: Nothing in this headline is true.)
Update on ViolentAcrez/Gawker/Adrian Chen/CreepShots (Substantially more accurate than the previous thread.)
Why does SRS feel the need to fuck with everyone? (Assorted SRS vilification based mostly on misinformation.)
Can the recent doxxing events be seen as an act of terrorism against this (or any) subreddit?
I’ll update this post with more info as necessary.
EDITED TO ADD: Here’s a giant list of links to media coverage of all this.
EDITED AGAIN: Chen’s article has been published on Gawker.
Meanwhile, the now-infamous Redditor POTATO_IN_MY_ANUS, the source of much of the dubious information discussed above, has been banned from Reddit; more importantly, he has been caught doctoring a screenshot of a conversation between him and a Reddit admin explaining why he’s being banned. So pretty much all of his claims, including the one about a creepshotter getting beaten up, are now suspect.
Also, here’s a screenshot that purports to be from Violentacrez explaining why he left Reddit.
Steele, I hope you support doxxing the owners of My Daguerreotype Boyfriend. Those vile people, photographing baby kangaroos without getting a signed consent form.
I will clarify that I do in no way, shape or form condone Creepshot behavior; however, it is not indicative of any especial animus toward women; as can be seen, such behavior is distributed amongst both genders and reveals nothing but a poor character in the individual.
Holy crap, Cloudiah even explicitly said that it’s not okay, as did leftwing fox, as did I….
STOP OBJECTIFYING BABY KANGAROOS, YOU VILE FEMINISTS!!!!!!!11111111
Am I to trust the word of feminists that the Creepshot Reddit was as creepy as portrayed in this post? Given the extent to which Boobzland is given to exaggerate, I think not. But unfortunately, I can’t view it, as it has been deleted.
Steele, you are a humanist! And by humanist, I mean you are denying the HUMANITY of baby kangaroos, and condoning CREEPJOEY behavior. Vile!!!!!1!!!
Steele: “however, it is not indicative of any especial animus toward women; as can be seen”
As can be seen from what, Steele? The fact that a large proportion of creepshots of women are close-ups of crotches or boobs, upskirts or headless, whereas that kind of thing is rarely done to men? As can be seen from the very examples you provided?
(To everyone else, obviously this shouldn’t even need to be said, but here are the rules: If you can find even one woman who says or does anything anywhere ever, it counts as proof that all feminists believe or support that. Please update your rulebook.)
It’s not justifying double standards to say that taking upskirts, including of minors, and taking pictures of clothed adults are different things. Several people here have said, and I agree, that what TubeCrush does isn’t OK (except for the pictures where the guy was asked to pose). I’d extend that to People of WalMart and similar sites as well. But to act like they’re equivalents is pretty disingenuous.
So let me get this straight.
These very same guys who complain that being called “creepy” is a shaming exercise on the part of other people who call them as such for engaging in creepy behavior……REFER TO THEMSELVES AS CREEPS and hang out on website/threads that have CREEP in the name?
…….The irony…it burns.
Wait. Does that imply that you are trying to make the case that two things are qualitatively equivalent yet HAVE NOT EVEN LOOKED AT one of the two things you’re trying to compare?
NerdyPants: While I appreciate that you condemn TapThatGuy, that wasn’t the point of my post. I in fact do not have a massive objection to TapThatGuy; I dislike it, it’s invasive, but not criminally so. I feel the same about CreepShots.
And if it’s not indicative of “misogyny”, that is, if such behavior is present in men and women, the hysterical rhetoric in the OP is misleading.
Come on y’all.
You’re trying to hold Steele to the same standards of intellectual honesty to which you hold yourselves.
That’s just not fair.
Clearly this is the moral equivalent of taking crotch & boob shots of underage girls and women.
Look, I think it’s wrong. It’s an invasion of privacy, except in the cases where clearly the men know they’re being photographed or have given permission to the posters. But have a little perspective, Steele/Butthorn.
Cloudiah, I have no Earthly idea what you’re referring to. I suppose nonsense is a good way to scramble the debate and make off quietly. Par for the course at the hate cult.
I’ve never understood when people argue “oh, well men get treated shittily sometimes too, so it’s TOTALLY OK TO BE SHITTY TO WOMEN.”
Uh no. Being shitty to people and violating their bodily integrity is BAD, regardless of gender/sex/orientation. This is not a tit-for-tat game here.
Signs that you may be a huge nerd: your first reaction to this site is, “But almost NONE of those are daguerrotypes! It’s almost all ambrotypes, dry plates, and even a fair amount of film! *grumble grumble all old photos are not daguerrotypes grumble*”
(Still a really fun site, though, even if I am a ginormous dweeb.)
Duder, Steele, did you click on my link?
@Polliwog You aren’t the only one to have that reaction. But then I see this and stop caring.
Yes, if such behaviour is present in men and women.
Which it is not.
As can be seen from the fact that a large proportion of creepshots of women are close-ups of crotches or boobs, upskirts or headless, whereas that kind of thing is rarely done to men.
A fact about which you are now pleading ignorance, which implies that you reached afore-mentioned conclusion without even looking at the evidence. Good work on the man-logic there.
I’ve got another one for the fucking bingo card.
– “Well I would expect this kind of rhetoric from you AWFUL FEMINISTS.”
Really can’t figure out what Hollaback has to do with this. Um, girls and women aren’t taking photos of boys and men because they want to fuck them (and want creepy strangers to explain how they want to fuck them, too, in detail). They are doing it because these guys have harassed and/or assaulted them on the street. If you can’t tell the difference… Well, then you’re probably into the MRA.
Again and for emphasis, NerdyPants, I can’t take Boobzland’s word that CreepShots was some kind of wasteland of criminal activity. Perhaps there was some inappropriate behavior; Reddit appears inclined to such, given the horde-like mentality. However, I have to believe it was far less than Boobzland claims, given your slanderous past.
And again for emphasis Steele, the fact that you are arguing that CreepShots was qualitatively equivalent to TubeCrush etc. while claiming to not know what CreepShots looked like makes you an intellectually dishonest moron.
It’s always a mistake to engage Steele with sincerity, since he is so jawdroppingly stupid that he really must be a poe. Still…
(a) What nerdypants said just above.
and
(2) Man Boobz did not shut down CreepShots. This post really isn’t about that. Try, TRY to focus.
You can make that argument; I’d disagree, and maintain that the spirit of the letter was the same. The point is the sentiment behind the sites.