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.
Wow… I hadn’t seen the context on, “rape easy”.
That’s fucked up.
Holy fuck, he was referring to an actual case? Christ, I had no idea. That’s awful.
(unrelated: every time I scroll past this post I see Brutsch’s sad walrus face and giggle because sad walrus.)
Heh. Dig up stupid!
I was reading through some of the comments on the CNN piece and one comment reckoned that Brutsch’s son now won’t be able to get into the marines because of this. Seriously? So if you’re an intelligent person, with a well-rounded personality, and physically fit, the US military won’t enlist you because you have one older, awful – possibly criminal – relative?
Yup. My biggest frustration with how this story has been reported is that they are not putting the details of the specific case out there, leaving people free to presume this was an instance of a “Romeo and Juliet” relationship between a 17 year old and his 16 year old girlfriend. Nope. No relationship, not a 16 year old girl, not even a statutory rape. The girl said NO from the outset.
Well blitzgal, y’know, it’s her word against his and he’s such a nice boy and she probably likes it rough and I saw her wearing a skirt and and and.
*wanders off to find a bucket*
Pity poor Michael Brutsch. The true crime here, is that of an internet message board where no one would be outraged by normal schoolboy shenanigans, forcing him to do terrible things in order to get the response he so craved! I must cry misandry on this, because we all know that if the facts concerning his conception had been a just little bit different, all Brutsch would have had to do to get his daily dose of incoherent outrage would have been to post to Reddit while openly female.
Oh yeah, that’s pretty much the caliber of the comments that you see on local reporting of this story. There was also a gang rape of a college student on her way home from the bars last weekend, so you can guess what everyone had to say about that. Roundly condemning the three men who forced themselves on a total stranger on the street, right? Nope. She’s an idiot for being alone at night. I asked them what time of day is it legal to rape me, so I can keep track for future reference — is it a specific time, or any time it’s dark? Because that will seriously limit my ability to work during the winter months. I got no answers, surprising.
Blitzgal, oh, I know. I don’t watch the news ’round these parts for a reason.
Even the feminist group where I am decided that the best way to spend our time was to advise women not to walk alone at night aka 4:30 pm. I did not spontaneously combust at that meeting, but I am glad that there’s an outlet of sanity on the intertubes otherwise my live in employer would get an earful.
I’m glad CNN did this story. Creeps like this guy need to be shamed in public.
Racist ignoramuses who think the poors should die in the streets and women are hypergamus could use some shaming too, Ruby.
You’re getting obvious, Ruby.
HOLY SHIT ALL THE BLOCKQUOTES WORKED
At what time is it legal to rape a woman? Any time past dinner hour, clearly we shouldn’t be out when we ought to be standing at our husbands elbows to serve him his dinner and cut his meat into bite size pieces.
“Some girls rape easy”. Yeah, fancy us girls showing up to school!
I’ve been thinking about that for a while, but every time I try to say something I feel like I’m just being paranoid.
@Nepenthe
WTF? I finish my work day at exactly 4:30 pm, which then requires a 10-30 minute walk home (depending if I catch the bus or not). And truth be told, it’s much darker in the morning, and that takes a 15-30 minute walk (usually 30 minutes because I almost always miss the bus while stopping at Timmies). Unless I were to take a taxi every morning and evening, not walking alone in the dark is kind of impossible.
I would have flipped had I been a member in that group, not only because they said such a ridiculous thing, but because they did so as feminists.
lowquacks and whataboutthemoonz,
Now I have to look at Ruby’s other posts…
I am personally made uncomfortable with the way Ruby’s reputation precedes her. I know that she has problematic behavior, but I guess I’d prefer to call it out as she exhibits it.
Holy shit. I saw this interview live, but it was while I was at work and I was cleaning tables in the break room, so I wasn’t really paying that much attention. Didn’t notice just how much he dug his own hole.
To me, they just read as “Hey ladies! We’re talking about X, Y, Z, whatever, but we FEMINIST LADIES all really know *wink wink nudge nudge* that these are all code words for the baby flavored donuts we’re eating at our Super Secret Misandry World Domination(tm) meetings, right? Right? Laaadiiiiieeeeees???”
Spork the blockquotes, seriously.
This particular instance wasn’t so much “we’re holding her in bad faith” so much as “MRA lets an MRA shibboleth loose pretty obviously”, though.
As far as I can tell, Ruby’s MO is saying something vaguely relevant each thread and then complaining about how much those feminists eat their own or w/e.
“Us feminists secretly like to creep shame, eh, eh? *nudge wink wink nudge*”
Although for the record, I do totally think creeps like this guy need to be shamed in public. And lose their jobs. And make asses of themselves on CNN. And step on legos for the rest of their life.