Oh, Reddit, not again. So about a week ago, a woman posted what seemed to be a heartfelt and sorrowful confession to r/confession with the self-explanatory title “I cheated on my sweetheart of a husband for 3 years with my violent, abusive ex. This is the one secret I am taking to my grave.”
Now, r/confession purports to be a subreddit devoted to helping out those who confess their wrongdoings, and the sidebar warns potential commenters not to be abusive: “No personal attacks, we are not here to make people feel bad.”
But Reddit being Reddit – that is, a hotbed of resentful “nice guys” always looking for an excuse to vilify women in general or a woman in particular – many of the commenters attacked the OP as an evil “scumbag,” or worse. While the worst comments were deleted by the mods, many attacks on the OP remain, some with literally hundreds of upvotes. Those who expressed any degree of empathy for the OP found their comments roundly downvoted.
After a few days, the discussion died down.
But then, after several days of silence, a new wave of abusive comments started to appear. Like this one:
And this:
Oh, but there’s more:
I’ve saved the worst for last. (I’ve also included the response from the confessor herself.) TRIGGER WARNING for violence.
.
.
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So how did a dead thread like this come to life again, and so unpleasantly? Well, you guessed it: it got linked to in r/mensrights and later in r/redpill, a smaller and even more extreme “men’s rights” subreddit. And indeed, if you look at the comment histories of the people I’ve just quoted, you’ll see that most of them also posted in either r/mensrights or r/redpill around the time they made these comments.
It’s a fair guess that many of the upvotes that these terrible comments got also came from visiting r/menrights-ers.
Back in r/mensrights, one commenter, disgusted by all this, chronicled some of the bad behavior of his MRA comrades:
A lot more people besides IBM2431 are going to have to stand up and speak out if they want to clean up r/mensrights’ well-deserved reputation as a net exporter of hate.
Not that r/confession is absolved of blame here. While commenters there piled on this woman, who seemed sincerely sorry for what she said she had done, the r/confession regulars found nothing wrong with the behavior of another commenter — a dude, of course — who confessed he’d “fapped” a number of times to cam footage he found of a friend of his sister’s masturbating — which was evidently recorded and put online without her knowledge or consent.
NOTE: By the time this post goes up, it’s possible and even likely that the mods of r/confession will have deleted the worst of the comments from the r/mensrights and r/redpill invaders. But they should still be visible in the comment histories of those who posted them.
RE: jonatma
If my husband cheated on me, I’d be pissed as hell, but he’d still be human. And even if he cheated on me in the most humiliating way I can imagine (which is tough), I STILL wouldn’t wish mass internet trollage on him.
Seriously, I didn’t think this was an unusual position to take.
Seconding Cassandra here, and voting that pecunium’s amusing me far more than jonatma420 here is.
Re: “damaged goods”: yeah, just don’t. For those of us who’ve been raped and/or abused the societal “you are now unlovable” is strong enough without it being directly reinforced like that.
I honestly can’t think of anything that Mr C could do that would make me wish assault with a baseball bat and then suicide on him. This is because…I know this is the part where angry misogynists get lost…I actually care about him! Like most people care about their partners!
You guys have a problem with anger that you really ought to get some help for.
thebewilderness : I never said for her to die.
pecunium :My “head up your ass” comment really got your attention didn’t it? I can see you at your keyboard: “I say it right back to this motherfucker, ya, thatl’ show em Grrrrrr.”
Jonny Weedeater: Tulgey, That depends on HOW bad a thing you do.
No. It doesn’t. One is human. Doing a bad thing doesn’t change that. Even if it did, fucking somone on the side doesn’t do that (question, is Arnie no longer human? What about Eisenhower?).
But, if someone cheating makes them not human, what does rape do to someone?
Are you going to go out and condemn rapists with the same level of persistent vitriol as you have shown with this quixotic attempt to come here to try and make a case for your peaean to abusive behaviour?
Where is the ire for other crimes?
Or is it that this is a woman? Is it perhaps that her partner doesn’t know, and so she might not be being punished enough in her offline life which makes you want to abuse her to one and all, everytime you see the subject come up?
Don’t you have a life?
Btw, I said damaged goods on the sense that the next one she is in a relationship with has to handle her with great care in order to help her heal.
Not in the sense that she is a disposable commodity.
Sheesh. There are times. When I hate what our culture had become.
Ha ha, dude, you’re not upsetting us, least of all pecunium. We’re enjoying batting you around, just wish you were smarter so there was some challenge to it.
jonny weedeater: Do you think I am “riled? Now that’s funny. Ignoring the rest of the wider web (because this isn’t the only place I hang my hat), you aren’t that creative.
Want to actually get to me? Refuse to take others needs into account when you are looking to get $60 a person for dinner. That would do it.
Abuse someone in my presence. That would do it.
Commit torture. That would do it.
I was riffing on the head up your ass comment because it was easy, and because today I happen to be thinking in “army”, since it’s my date of eligibility for retirement, and the reunion of my deploying unit is coming up.
That my attentions seem to have gotten under your skin, that’s just candy from the piñata.
As you said, try harder.
Or, as we say, “dance troll, dance.
Seriously! And I’ve been cheated on, and once I was done having a standard fare recently broken up pity party, I opted for “just don’t speak to me” — this is the gas lighting ex, so it’s actually quite good he did something he couldn’t gloss over as my fault…
Because hey, guess what? No one is blaming the cheated upon for the cheater cheating! We are, however, blaming these douchenozzles for the incredible lack of humanity, bullying, and threatening behavior displayed in their reactions to (and this is important now) someone else being cheated on.
That shit isn’t acceptable from the cheated upon, but could possibly be forgiven as a “heat of the moment” thing. From third parties who have nothing, at all, to do with the situation? Nothing besides internet bullying.
Also, having been told, more than once, to just kill myself already, that shit is mind bogglingly toxic. That isn’t even just “I hate you” or “he’s better of without you” (both being quite possibly true) but “if you die I’ll be glad”. And being excited by the prospect of someone committing suicide? That’s a special, special, level of fucked up.
(FTR, the most recent “you should just off yourself already” was my best friend’s MSW/JD mother saying it was bound to happen and I should get it over with before our friendship hurt her son more…my mere existance pissed her off. Time before that it was because I laughed at a damned foolish move resulting in the entirely predictable results, along with half of stage crew — the damned fool picked me, and me alone, as unreasonable for laughing.)
That seriously! was regarding Cassandra, I typed too long and y’all moved on.
Is that “if she’s cheated, she’ll cheat again” thing even true? I’ve been away from uni for long enough for all my statistics-brain to melt away, but surely there’d be a way to quantify what percentage of people cheat, and what percentage of those people cheat again, or somesuch.
RE: DLColvin
Btw, I said damaged goods on the sense that the next one she is in a relationship with has to handle her with great care in order to help her heal.
You are not helping your case, dude.
“pecunium :My “head up your ass” comment really got your attention didn’t it? I can see you at your keyboard: “I say it right back to this motherfucker, ya, thatl’ show em Grrrrrr.””
*dies laughing* see, I’m picturing him laughing at you while multitasking (spinning or cooking, bit late for cooking so spinning?)
“Commit torture. That would do it.”
Can we have that rant? It’s so much more interesting than our pot loving n00b.
Lol, I know, the Geneva convention does apply to “terrorists” because why? In small words so I can make this make sense to our favorite asshat, my father.
“Who has blamed “the one with the penis” for anything (assuming by this you mean the partner she was unfaithful to. I blame the one’s with the penes[how THEY spelled that] for what they said to her).”
That was a response to: “Sounds like that poor woman was well and truly fucked over by the ex. ”
She is just as much at fault as the ex is.
I think “men’s rights activists” are confusing getting dumped and cheated on and whatever else to being an “oppressed group”. Just chucking it out there, in case no one else has said it already.
Argenti: Everyone else has gone to bed. Supper is in my tummy. I am finishing a bottle of lagniappe beer, and paying the price of too much time on the drop spindle (the rieter’s is flaring in my right thumb; from twisting the yarn onto the copp). I’m reading some news about Palo Alto, and planning for a panel discussion about police/military interrogation I’ve been asked to give in SF in March.
I’m also taking care of the etrogim, and thinking about making a snack and thinking about how many onions I need for the sauce I want to make tomorrow.
I’ll take tomorrow off from spinning, until the evening, when I’ll use the wheel. I think the spindle will be set aside until Friday, at the earliest (which is grmmnbble because I really want to see how it’s going to look plied up).
Sigh. I bow out then. I’ll check up on how things went in a day or two.
Just be careful not to be angry just to be angry, ok? I deal with that enough irl. It honestly looks to me that’s where this thread is going.
jonny weedeater: That was a response to: “Sounds like that poor woman was well and truly fucked over by the ex. ”
She is just as much at fault as the ex is.
1: It doesn’t mean what you think it means. I don’t see that excusing her. it might be mitigating, but it’s not exculpatory, and nothing in that comment makes it so.
2: Where is the anger at the dude? I don’t see you fulminating about how he needs to be harassed, nor about how he’s not human.
You don’t care about him, because he has a dick. You hate on her because she doesn’t.
Which is why you fail at being a decent human being.
Oh my…
Jonatma, I’ve been reading people tell you time and time again that they aren’t talking about who’s to blame for cheating but about how awful those commenters were to her
I’m going to go out on a limb here and wonder if youve been cheated on recently? That would explain your over-uppity response about this woman you don’t even know.
Seriously, it’s none of your business.
That panel going to be online? I watched a couple of your discussions back when this first came up and they’re interesting, to say the least.
Too bad about the spinning disagreeing with your thumb, but yeah, you should probably take a break before the “arg, that hurts” spreads (I am way too young for my joints to hate me so, I’ve knocked just about all of them out of place at least once >.< )
jonatma — penis is Latin, making penēs the proper plural, but hang around, you’ll sure come across Pecunium and I discussing Latin sooner or later, both our nom’s are Latin after all!
Oh, Pecunium, my father was ranting about fluent Latin speakers the other day, it was pretty hilarious. Is even the Pope really fluent?
argenti: Terrorists don’t have protection under the Geneva Conventions. They aren’t combatants. They are common criminals.
That means they have all the protections afforded under the laws of the countries which arrest them.
In such places as there are active hostilities… terrorism can take place. In the event that an act is terrorism it’s common crime. Engaging in resistance to the occupying power isn’t terrorism (per the Sections of Art. 3 which relate to the rights/responsibilities of partisan/resistance forces).
However, all persons in the area of occupation are afforded protections under Geneva. There is no such category as, “unlawful combatant”. Even spies (who have the least protection of any person who is not a member of the occupying forces; but that’s a completely different, and not relevant, digression) have protections.
Looks like we’re back in MRA-red-pill-antilogic land. Troll appears to be interpreting:
“point out how the MRA comments against this person are morally wrong”
to mean
“we think the woman is a super dooper person who has never done anything wrong, and probably deserves a Nobel Prize and bon bons for life, what a great person she is for cheating”
MRAs: learn to read for comprehension.
New troll seems to have a rather flexible definition of what’s “inhuman”. Generally people reserve that word for, say, Mengele, shit like that, not giving someone head after they’ve said something obnoxious.