So it’s official: the Emma You Are Next web site, which was threatening to release nude pictures of Harry Potter actress Emma Watson, is a hoax. The site now redirects traffic to the home page of something called Rantic, a mysterious supposed “social media marketing enterprise” with a reputation for hoaxes.
Rantic is now claiming that the real agenda behind its website was a noble one: to expose the evils of leaked celebrity nudes – and, by painting 4channers as the evil hackers behind it all, to get 4chan itself taken down.
And somehow, to do this, they had to threaten to release nude pics of Emma Watson? It’s like fighting death threats against women – by sending death threats to women. The idea that this is a feminist “false flag” — an idea already being floated in Men’s Rightsy circles — is plainly ridiculous. Rantic’s actions are about as unfeminist as its possible to get.
Indeed, it seems pretty clear that Rantic’s new site is as much of a hoax as its last one.
Rantic’s own, er, “explanation” for the Emma Watson site is a masterpiece of concentrated bullshit:
We have been hired by celebrity publicists to bring this disgusting issue to attention. The recent 4chan celebrity nude leaks in past 2 months have been an invasion of privacy and is also clear indication that the internet NEEDS to be censored. Every Facebook like, share & Twitter mention will count as a social signature — and will be step closer to shutting down www.4chan.org.
Nothing about this makes any sense whatsoever. How do you protect celebrities from threats by threatening a celebrity? How do you use the Emma You Are Next hoax to get 4chan taken down … when everyone now knows that you, not anyone on 4chan, was behind the hoax?
Add to this a call for censorship that seems calculated to enrage the internet masses, and it’s hard not to conclude that Rantic is still playing the internet like a fiddle. For what aim I don’t know. Maybe, like some Men’s Rightsers we could mention, they figure that bad publicity – scratch that, catastrophic publicity – is better than none.
That’s more or less what Business Insider has concluded. In a piece published this morning, BI’s James Cook writes
Rantic Marketing doesn’t exist. This wasn’t a marketing stunt at all, but a social experiment run by the most notorious gang of pranksters on the internet. …
Rantic Marketing is a fake company run by a gang of prolific internet spammers used to quickly capitalize on internet trends for page views. The group go by a variety of different names. Collectively, they’re known as SocialVEVO … The only known video footage of the group is a rap song about pickles that they used dubious spam techniques to make incredibly popular. The song used to have over 8 million views on YouTube.
As for that supposed plan to shut down 4chan? It’s only served to rally 4chan’s defenders.
In any case, the best way to fight celebrity leaks isn’t to shutter 4chan. It’s to find and prosecute those who’ve hacked celebrity nudes (including photos of several young women who were underage when the photos were taken) – and those who’ve knowingly spread them around the internet.
It may be hard to find the original hackers, but it’s certainly not hard to find those who distributed the nudes. Hint: Look at Reddit. Hundreds of thousands of Redditors were involved in what became known as TheFappening, and Reddit itself apparently profited handsomely from the attention and traffic.
Though the original TheFappening subreddit was belatedly shut down, leaked celebrity nudes are still being distributed openly on Reddit. This is criminal activity. Enforce the laws.
And Rantic, whatever your game is — just. fucking. stop.
I am foreseeing a time when I will be kicking my kids out into the back yard so that *I* can get some time on the Nintendo.
I am also foreseeing a time when I’ll have to say that I won’t run D&D with them if the chores aren’t done.
This whole “HA, it was to raise awareness” shtick feels eerily similar to the fiasco surrounding Sam Pepper at the moment, a content creator for YouTube. [CW: sexual harassment/threats]
I had never heard of this YouTuber before this, but apparently he has a pretty big following and is known for being “edgy” and pulling pranks on people in his videos. A few days ago, he released a video where the “prank” was him hiding his arm under his sweatshirt so he could grab women’s butts on the street without their knowledge.
Rightfully, the YouTube community flipped out on him, including some YouTubers of major influence banning him from all of their future events and videos. People downvoted and reported the video for sexual harassment, and YouTube took it down. Pepper did not respond at all on social media about the controversy.
The next day, he released ANOTHER video, this time of a woman grabbing the butts of strange men on the street. It too was widely condemned, reported, and removed.
A short while later, he released a third video with the big reveal: It was all staged! It’s good that you were outraged, because sexual harassment is bad! This was allllllll to raise awareness for the one dude he knows who was abused in his marriage, and for Pepper himself who (apparently) has had his butt grabbed at events before! Social experiment! It’s all okay! Gotcha, audience. Of course he would NEVER grab women’s butts without their permission. How silly that you should think such a thing.
I haven’t seen any of Pepper’s critics who are willing to believe him. They may extend him a tenuous benefit of the doubt, but he is being widely accused of simply covering his tracks after his first video came caving in on him.
And now he has emailed threats to Laci Green, one of his foremost critics. So, yeah, it seems pretty darn hard to believe that this guy was at all interested in raising awareness of sexual harassment.
Food allergies: Short answer, nobody knows why they seem to be increasing among children in western “developed” countries. There are a couple hypotheses floating around. One is the “hygiene hypothesis” that fromafar2013 was talking about, and one is the whole “different gut bacteria” thing kirbywarp was talking about. They also find that, contrary to what pediatricians in western countries recommend, that children who are exposed to common allergens earlier rather than later tend to develop less food allergies.
Sorry. Find immunology kind of fascinating. Regarding the “hygiene hypothesis”: germs aren’t all bad. From what I see in the US, we’re so germophobic. And your immune system actually needs to be exposed to germs in order to work up a healthy defense. It wouldn’t surprise me if this is the reason why.
The only acceptable outcome here is if Rantic turns out to be Frog Hammer.
First of all, in reply to Policy of Madness’s thank you, you’re welcome.
Second I replied to claytonkb, the author of “What are men’s rights?”. I said that one trait that is universal is that men dominate women. I said that my theory about how it happened is that when men realized that their upper-body strength can be used to hurt women, and therefore get what they want, men took this as a right to dominate women. I also said that just because a trait is universal doesn’t make it right.
Maybe I shouldn’t have said universal trait. However, I can safely say that it is a common trait.
Thus Spake Kootiepatra:
No, no, no… See, Sam Pepper’s implicit threats of violence against Laci Green were just to raise awareness about threats of violence! And him calling her a “c*nt” was just to raise awareness about vaginas!
To put my last post another way might doesn’t make one right. A simple saying but it looks like the manosphere either doesn’t understand it or rejects it.
ralmcg: …Did you say “I read an interesting essay” about a blog post you wrote?
I grew up in the 90s and I was allowed out without an adult when I was as young as 7yrs old. And since I was the eldest, my brother was allowed out at 6, as long as he was with me, and when I was 10, my 5 yr old sister was allowed out under my supervision. It’s not like we didn’t get into any trouble, but shit. We listened to “stranger danger” (never mind the danger at home), we stuck to areas we knew if we were alone and only went exploring new areas if one of our peers was with us (one of these adventures took my brother and I to the other side of the city just by following the train tracks; we were 10 and 11).
Our mom never knew all the places we went. We were just told to be home for supper and after that as soon as the streetlights came on. We were okay. We knew the area around us pretty intimately for several miles and if we had in been any danger, we’d have known where to run and where to hide. I don’t think adults give kids enough credit these days. My mom fucked up in a lot of ways, but letting us play outside unsupervised wasn’t one of them.
Katz, it wasn’t my essay. It was written by claytonknob on “The Liberdade” wordpress site. I thought it would be an interesting read about how at least one man views rights, especially the rights of men in family cases.
Also, for some (unintentional) hilarity in the “all types of VAGINAS” vein here’s Roosh’s NSFW joke take on different types of vulva. He supposed to be making fun of how different vulva look but he doesn’t even get the names of the parts right. 😉
I spent a lot of time playing outside in the dirt and I still developed a plethora of allergies. I do kinda wonder if they’d be even worse if I had stayed indoors.
4chan: These people think we’re horrible! Let’s set up this strawman to say we need to be censored and watch those same people defend us against the thought police! We’re controlling their opinions through our mastery of social media and stuff!Mwahahahaha!
…And that’s how it really happened.
Allergies: These theories are both very plausible but I’m sure there’s a genetic component to all this. My grandfather had a ton of different allergies against pollen, animal hair and dust mites(back in the day they called that “the boy gets colds a lot”) even though I’m pretty sure he spend plenty of time outside as a kid. And, look, three out of five of his children and five out of eight grandchildren have the exact same or partially the same allergies.
So I believe there’s a genetic component as well as the fact that a lot more children are tested for allergies today than, say, twenty years ago. But gut bacteria and/or germs probably play a role, too. Or maybe it’s epigenetics.
Who knows, I’m not a scientist.
My state has become the first to ban antibiotic soap. It takes effect next year I think. It’ll be interesting to see if it results in less allergy frequency and severity and fewer cases of resistant bacterial infections.
So much for that narrative. This whole thing is a bottomless maelstrom of lulz, apparently.
Everything is false flag. Nobody actually means anything they say or do, with the only victims being the ones caught in the crossfire. Nothing to do but don our tinfoil hats and wait for the lizard people to make their move.
(Actually, there should be a rewrite of 1984, where the new totalitarian regime maintains control by claiming everything is satire or sarcasm. RANDOM STORY TIME!)
That evening, the Not Police busted in to Winston’s apartment with a battering ram painted to look like a clown’s face. This was part of a new campaign to alert citizens of the dangers of a flimsy door or rusty locks. They called out their usual phrase, “THIS IS A RAID! Just kidding!” before storming in to Winston’s living room in full riot gear, guns drawn and sight lasers painting a small bead on Winston’s forehead.
The room was silent for a moment before the captain burst out laughing. One by one, the Not Police lowered their weapons and lifted their face shields, high-fiving each other on a well done prank. Winston laughed along just as he had been taught, though he couldn’t help feeling a bit annoyed that they hadn’t performed the prank raid earlier in the day when he was wearing pants.
Wiping tears from his eyes, the captain approached Winston with a pen and note pad. “Winston Smith, you are under arrest for treason against the community, conspiracy, fraud, and wearing mismatched socks.”
Winston looked down. He wasn’t wearing socks. The captain slapped his knee and laughed uproariously.
“Ha HA! Just kidding. No, this is simply an example of what could happen if you ever decided to break any laws. Now come along with me.”
“What? Why?”
The captain’s smile disappeared immediately and was replaced by a rather stern frown.
“This is a mock arrest. You’d hardly understand how an arrest works if we just told you about it, now would you? Come along with me, you’ll be held in a prison cell overnight. In a real arrest, you’d be held for much longer, you see.”
“Of course, I see,” replied Winston, not seeing at all.
In the corner, one of the Not officers loosed a giggle that he completely failed to suppress. The captain whipped around to face him. “Jenkins!” He hollered. “What is so funny?!”
“Sir,” Jenkins replied, “Sorry sir, it’s just that you called it a ‘prison cell,’ sir.”
“Hrmph, spoil the surprise, would you, Jenkins?” The captain turned back around and addressed Winston again.
“Sorry about that, we aren’t actually taking you to a prison cell. It’s just a little room in the basement of the Not Police Station where we put a couple bars and a cot. It’s actually rather pleasant. Now please, come with me.”
Winston spent that night in the basement of the Not Police station, on an uncomfortable little cot surrounded by hastily constructed iron bars. Unfortunately, he wasn’t given a chance to put on pants. The Not Officers insisted this would add to the illusion of the mock arrest and incite the proper shameful feelings one should experience in a real arrest. At least they had been kind enough to give him some hot chocolate.
Is “raising awareness!” the new “just kidding!/being ironic!/it was satire!”, as a get-out-of-jail-free card when people are called out for doing horrible things?
And for the record Sam Pepper’s got a track record of those kinds of videos – he and his supporters trying to pretend it’s about that one video are intentionally disregarding a pattern of treating women’s boundaries like they’re an inconvenience to his particular form of “entertainment”.
Then again I’m a huge Laci Green fan so I’m probably just white knighting. *rolls eyes*
Kirbywarp, that story is awesome.
@ kirbywarp – double plus good. Or something.
::fires glitter cannon indiscriminately::
Time for a sports break. Here is the finals of the 2014 Women’s Rugby World Cup. Enjoy.
Thus Spake Zarastrivingally:
I don’t like Laci Green, and I STILL think threats of violence and gendered insults are nasty (and unfunny) behavior. (So is groping or pinching women without their consent, even if you’re doing it “raise awareness.”)
So I guess I’m… black knighting? Reverse knighting? Mid knighting? I’m not up-to-date on my dismissive anti-equality snarl words.
@WWTH
Routine administration of antibiotics to livestock has about a zillion times higher impact on antibiotic-resistant bugs than soap. Nevertheless, I haven’t used antibiotic soap in forever, because the most common antibiotic agent in them (triclosan) has been implicated as an endocrine disruptor. The FDA is reviewing it, but I decided I didn’t need to wait for the inevitable “All clear!” that I won’t believe anyway.
Turns out I’m just as healthy with regular Ivory soap. YMMV of course.
Just goes to show that it’s not hard to dupe the manboobzers into making fools of themselves.
Until I hear otherwise, I’m going to assume that Rantic is just another synonym for 4chan.
Same assholes, different cess pool.
Kind of OT guys, but I’m arguing with an MRA on xojane about the notion of “women date alpha assholes when young then marry betas for their money”. He tried using a burden of proof fallacy on me, then linked to a blog post HE wrote where the references were to his other blog posts plus one to Heartiste’s and one to Rational Male. Shoddy evidence indeed. Now apparently it’s my turn and I need to disprove his claim…but that’s like trying to prove the sky is blue.
How do you give evidence for obvious reality? I tried arguing that women are people who think and feel the same way as men and linked to some testimonies of women describing why they married their partners (love and personality) but he dismissed it as “tinted glasses” and “anecdotal evidence” vs Heartiste’s “science” (i cant even).
If knowing that women are people is “wearing tinted glasses” then I weep for the manosphere. I flounced from that debate as I know ill get nowhere. And I always stick with my flounces. Always.
But seriously, how do you “prove” women marry for love? It’s so fucking obvious.