So Michael Brutsch – recently outed as notorious Reddit creep Violentacrez – appeared on CNN last night to discuss the fallout from his outing. It was not a wise choice on his part. He hasn’t been making a lot of wise choices lately.
Brutsch spent much of the cringe-worthy interview in self-pity mode, talking about the horrible consequences he and his family had suffered as a result of his behavior, the most notable being the loss of his job. He seemed only barely aware that others might have suffered from his actions over the years running subreddits devoted to the exploitation of underage girls. Like, for example, the girls themselves.
He offered this not-quite apology for his actions:
I am to some degree apologizing for what I did. I was playing to an audience of college kids. Two years ago when all of this was at its height, the audience was appreciative and supportive of the sort of gallows humor that I put out there.
He also blames Reddit and the Reddit community for, essentially, not putting an end to his career as “Reddit pimp” sooner.
Oh, and he brought along the GOLD PLATED REDDIT ALIEN BOBBLEHEAD the Reddit admins once sent him for the fine work he did curating r/jailbait.
I don’t think that CNN did a great job presenting the issues around Violentacrez’ less-than-brilliant career, or really getting across what a thoroughly repulsive person he was, but the interview is worth watching in any case, if only to see Brutsch’s futile attempts to sort-of-apologize for, but also to minimize and deny what he did as Violentacrez and shift the blame on to others.
Here’s the interview itself:
Here’s a giant Reddit thread on the interview. Brutsch makes occasional appearances, posting as mbrutsch. Generally speaking, the more he posts, the less sympathy he gets from the crowd.
Here’s a thread in the For Hire subreddit, in which Brutsch puts himself forward as a Senior Perl Programmer with “5 years experience building and maintaining adult communities,” looking for work in the online porn biz. (So, yes, he is on the one hand sort-of apologizing for r/jailbait and the rest, while also touting his experience with r/jailbait as something an Adult Content business might for some reason want in a programmer.) One commenter informs him that “adult content companies don’t want anything to do with people associated with underage materials. I know because I work in the business end of the industry and have for 6 years.”
Here’s a thread on the interview in ShitRedditSays
Here’s Gawker’s Adrien Chen on the interview.
Here’s a smart piece in the New Yorker that ties together the stories of Amanda Todd and Brutsch.
This is all I could see when I first opened up this article.
Gah, image fail.
It’s interesting, because I’ve been following this on Gawker and there aren’t nearly as many apologists in the comments as I figured there would be. Even if we were to frame this as a freedom of speech issue, freedom of speech does not equal freedom from consequences of that speech. Mr. Brutsch has not been silenced — in fact, he continues to regularly post on Reddit, and he has now appeared on national television.
And making the connection between what Brutsch has spent years doing and the Amanda Todd case is very important. All of those girls in the photos he has shared are real people. Redditors who defend Mr. Brutsch want it both ways — they think 12-16 year old girls should have to face the consequences of having their photos taken, but that Mr. Brutsch should not have to face the consequences of passing those photos around.
Where the link to the New Yorker should be, there’s actually just another link to the Gawker article.
Who could have foreseen that posting sexualized images of underage girls would have negative consequences? That poor, poor man.
/sarcasm
Also, I think it’s especially hilarious that those in the legitimate adult content industry want nothing to do with him. Sounds like they want to stay as far away from that shit as possible.
I’m still amazed that people can actually go on the internet and state that this guy hasn’t done anything wrong, not just morally but legally, without imploding from the wrongness.
I like how he blames Reddit for letting him get away with it. Because yeah, when you break the rules, it’s totally other people’s fault for not shutting you down fast enough, rather than your own fault for CHOOSING TO DO THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE. Not that Reddit isn’t a skeevy place, it’s just such a warped line of reasoning.
@MKlein,
Yeah, isn’t that always the case with predators? It’s everyone’s fault but theirs.
Happens every day in court MKlein. “It is not my fault I violated the order of protection, I told her to get one because I refused to leave her alone after she asked me unless she had one. Then when she did, I called her to say ‘really?'”
Actual quote by the way.
Ugh, if I wanted to really upset lots of people I think I could do it fairly easily. It is not a talent. Saying horrible things to upset people is not a talent, it is something to be ashamed of.
New Yorker link http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/10/amanda-todd-michael-brutsch-and-free-speech-online.html
That last link (New Yorker) goes to the same Gawker piece.
There was an interesting conversation, where a guy defending r/jailbait was convinced it wasn’t harmless.
Sometimes my faith in humanity is rewarded.
mklein: Brutsch’s defense is that he didn’t break any rules, (legally, or on reddit) and so they encouraged him to this, in some way.
What I see is them exploiting his predilictions (be it for trolling, or pictures of young women, or whatever it was that moved him… and I suspect it was many things) and he enjoyed the notoriety.
That he violated norms of society, and encouraged others to do harm to people, well that’s what he’s being ostracised for, and I can’t say it doesn’t seem warranted.
What sticks out to me is Brutsch’s nearly complete erasure of the people in the images he posted. He describes what he did as ‘putting images into folders’ (images that were somehow streaming at him anyway, which is a little… disturbing, I guess.) for the purpose of riling people up.
It’s like the content of those pictures is mostly incidental; secondary to his acquisition of internet points.
He needs to go learn some empathy.
http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/government-tyranny/filler-jailed-denied-attorney-by-judge-robert-e-murray/
Hi Suzy D!
Always good to see youBringing nothing to the table as usual!Brutsch is stunningly incoherent. I know there’s no good way to go on CNN and defend the things he did, but you’d think he would at least plan beforehand and try to say things that make him sound less like a creepy fuck. It can’t even be blamed on the editing.
Oh, we’re just posting bullshit links that have nothing to do with this post now? Cool. Here’s Romney’s surrogate saying that contraception is a “peripheral issue:”
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/10/17/1035181/romney-surrogate-calls-contraception-a-peripheral-issue/
Here’s Joe Walsh saying that there are “zero” incidents of women dying due to pregnancy:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/10/19/rep-joe-walsh-no-abortion-exceptions-because-pregnant-women-dont-die/
Here’s a dood who poisoned his girlfriend because he didn’t want her to have his baby:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/10/restaurateur-accused-of-poisoning-girlfriend-posts-bail.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&dlvrit=649324
pwn
Go blitzgal, go!
Here’s a state representative who said, “Some girls rape easy,” when discussing a case in which a 17 year old high school senior raped a 14 year old girl in his school’s band room:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/state-legislator-criticized-for-comments-on-rape-hj76f4k-173587961.html