EDIT: Bloomfield says she found the screenshot on Facebook. Details below.
Janet Bloomfield – A Voice for Men’s compulsively lying “social media director” – is at it again.
A couple of months back, Bloomfield – who goes by JudgyBitch1 on Twitter – decided for some reason that she could best serve AVFM’s social media directing needs by straight-up libeling feminist writer Jessica Valenti – by making up inflammatory quotes and attributing them to Valenti in a series of Tweets. She later boasted in on her blog that the quotes – which she admitted she’d conjured out of thin air – had inflamed hatred of Valenti and caused her to catch “a bit of hell.”
Now Bloomfield is pulling the exact same stunt again. This time, her target is feminist cultural critic and #GamerGate bete noire Anita Sarkeesian.
On Saturday, Bloomfield tweeted an obviously doctored “screenshot” of a tweet that Sarkeesian never made.
https://twitter.com/JudgyBitch1/status/518538483405975552
Screenshot here in case she takes it down or gets tossed off Twitter again; here’s another screenshot including replies from JB’s fans.
How do we know this is fake? Well, whoever made this fake screenshot made one glaringly obvious mistake: this Tweet is way too long to be a real tweet. Twitter, as you probably know, has a strict limit on the number of characters you can use in a Tweet. 140. This fake tweet has 218.
Here’s what happened when I typed the same text into Twitter myself: as you can see, I went over the limit by 78 characters. That’s, uh, a lot.
As you can see, the “Tweet” button is disabled; it’s simply impossible to post Tweets that are too long.
Looking back through Sarkeesian’s Twitter timeline, I found the real Tweet that she posted at 2:32 PM on the 29th of September.
"Siskel and Ebert made their own 'tropes vs. women' video in 1980" via @Polygon http://t.co/5CxJxfH2YI
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) September 29, 2014
As you can see, not only does the time match, but the numbers of favorites and retweets is roughly the same as well; there have only been a handful more added since the fake screenshot was made. Whoever made the fake tweet obviously just screenshotted this real tweet and then pasted in new text using the same font used by Twitter.
The sheer incompetence is astounding.
Did Bloomfield make this Tweet herself, or did she simply pass along a fake screenshot she found somewhere else? Well, Google Images couldn’t find any other instances of this fake screenshot on the internet; Bloomfield appears to be the first person to post it. Which suggests that either she or someone she knows made it – or someone else made it and sent it to her, and she posted it on the internet without checking to see if it was real.
Given her proclivity for making up quotes and attributing them to her enemies, I’m going to take a wild guess and say that I think she had something to do with creating the fake screenshot.
EDIT: Bloomfield says she found the screenshot on Facebook, on a page called Feminist Crazy Quotes, where it seems to have first appeared. Here’s her Facebook repost of it. It’s not clear where Feminist Crazy Quotes got it, as I can’t find any other instances of the tweet on the internet using Google Image search. It’s still not clear why the supposed “social media director” of AVFM, a woman who seems to spend half her life on Twitter, would not immediately realize that the Tweet was way too long to be a real Tweet.
If you scroll down through the responses to Bloomfield’s tweet, you’ll notice that Bloomfield’s fans ate this blatant deception right up; inclined to believe the worst about Sarkeesian, they easily convinced themselves that this preposterous, overlong, literally impossible tweet was real. And Bloomfield was in the thick of it, egging on their hate.
@JudgyBitch1 @femfreq Does this twat ever NOT complain about anything? Her vagina must be dryer than California's crops this year
— BigAngryPhil (@TheBigAngryPhil) October 4, 2014
https://twitter.com/JudgyBitch1/status/518539850656784384
https://twitter.com/JudgyBitch1/status/518540314953650176
When one #GamerGater noted that the quote seemed a bit much, even for the hated Sarkeesian, another commenter pulled out the “radfem” card.
https://twitter.com/JohnCobalt/status/518540889715920897
It goes without saying that Sarkeesian is not, in fact, a radical feminist.
When a few other tweeters pointed out the obvious – that Sarkeesian’s alleged tweet was in fact way too long to be a real tweet – Bloonfield fell back on the same “logic” she used when she was called out for making up quotes about Valenti: well, she may not have said this, but doesn’t it sound like something Sarkeesian would say?
https://twitter.com/JudgyBitch1/status/518541193169616896
No she wouldn’t. She didn’t. If she had, you wouldn’t need to use a fake screenshot to demonize her.
Amazingly, even after the tweet had been revealed to be fake, even after JB was reduced to claiming it was a “Poe” – just as she did with the fake Valenti quotes – the hatefest continued on, with dozens more tweets from JB’s peanut gallery denouncing Sarkeesian for her imaginary racism.
Here are just a few of them:
@JudgyBitch1 @femfreq Your racism is more disgusting than the anime that comes out of Japan. That's why you only cater to white women.
— Pepper #GoldenDeers 🔞 🪷 (@GintaxAlviss) October 4, 2014
@JudgyBitch1 @femfreq Obviously Anita who has constantly made racist statements about Japan. But a white woman like her oppresses minorities
— Pepper #GoldenDeers 🔞 🪷 (@GintaxAlviss) October 4, 2014
@JudgyBitch1 @JustLaurenB I don't like anime personally but i have to just say it. She's a cunt…….
— online larper (@Trektadactyle) October 5, 2014
@JustLaurenB @Ryang115 @JudgyBitch1 That is like Hitler saying to the Polish you don't have a culture.
Its basically it.— man-size lizard (@bio_nils) October 5, 2014
@DarkCityUK @JustLaurenB @JudgyBitch1 I believe even if she didint tweet that she probably thinks that way.
— online larper (@Trektadactyle) October 5, 2014
@JudgyBitch1 Gee, its almost like she wants to be criticized for her ignorance, just so she can call it "harassment": http://t.co/7ltBxaM6Ev
— Diogenes (@DioWallachia) October 5, 2014
One more prudent Tweeter suggested that Bloomfield might want to take down the blatantly fake screenshot, if only to protect herself.
https://twitter.com/PhoenixCE/status/518811930576691200
Ironically, while going back through Sarkeesian’s timeline to see if I could find the Tweet that was used in the screenshot, I ran across this:
For those asking my @xoxo talk should be online soon. In it I discuss how defamation, libel and slander are often deployed to harass women.
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) October 1, 2014
And while most the overwhelming majority of this defamation comes from angry men, some of it comes from angry women – like Janet Bloomfield — who are every bit as dishonest and abusive as their male counterparts.
I’m impressed she has a friend to make a wedding cake for, given how unpleasant she is.
She doesn’t piss me off. She just disappoints me with her unrepentant lying and refusal to accept responsibility as adults do, using excuses like Poe’s Law” instead. Her followers are dumb enough to think Anita Sarkeesian would say any such thing. Anita’s not know her racist tirades though. They just really want to believe she’s the monster they’ve made her into and that JB is competent and honest.
Some wedding cakes do taste terrible, but it has nothing to do with the covering. I used to work with a lady who made cakes for events as a side job, and even her cupcakes made from a Duncan Hines box were dry and stick-in-the-mouth. She did this on purpose to make them less crumbly and easier to decorate.
Other wedding cakes taste terrible because they are made one or two days ahead of time, frozen solid for decorating, then thawed the morning of the ceremony. Even the most moist and delicious cake is going to degrade in a freeze-thaw cycle. Putting buttercream on top of a cake that’s been through the freezer won’t magically return moisture to the cake.
Even when JB is talking about cake, she just makes shit up and builds her opinion on a foundation of shit, then demands that everyone agree that it smells like roses.
Ha. Fancy Judgy Bozo, who is a REAL racist, trying to call Anita Sarkeesian out on her imaginary racism. And using cultural relativism too, no less.
That isn’t a Poe. It’s a massively failed ideological Turing test.
That is exceedingly adorable.
Yeah, JB’s sarcastic response seems wayyy more racist than the fake tweet? Like she’s reading into it a lot, which, like, why? Why not just have the response tweet be the fake AS tweet? I just… I don’t get it.
Wow, she’s awful. Is she getting paid at AvFM? Is Janet Bloomfield her real name? It’d seem like this kind of gig would seriously diminish a person’s chance at legit employment in the future, but I guess even a spot of enlightened self-interest is too much for some folks. Huh
agree with kirbywarp that the tweet is dumb but not necessarily sexist (?) or racist, so that makes it extra weird. What a bunch of bozos.
I think I just found out how she made that fake tweet.
And it’s not the only fake-tweet generator, either.
That’s what I thought too. The only one who said anything really racist was JB, but within 24 hours it’s going to be a “fact” on the internet that Sarkeesian is a raging racist and says stuff like that all the time.
Maybe it’s just my screen, but there’s a ghostly grayish fringe around the characters in JB’s fake tweet. The kind you get when you really suck at pasting text in Photoshop.
I always fall back to the same observation in these instances — if their position is the correct one, why do they feel the need to lie so much?
Kirbywarp:
I was thinking the same. Is it racist because promoting stereotypes about anime affects significantly the Western perception of the entire Japanese culture? Or is it racist because it seems to assume that Japan is a country where “disgusting, sexist and misogynistic forms of media” generally come out?
@Kirbywarp and Arctic Ape:
I definitely noticed that JB was very quick to repeatedly throw around racial slurs (“yellow bastards”) that did not even appear in her faked tweet. The projection is strong with this one.
@Bina lol yepp you’re right
http://lemmetweetthatforyou.com/t/bz7g4w
I guess JB meant to imply that AS is gleefully calling “Sexism!” while exhibiting a side of racism herself. Much sentence, very clarity.
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants
Nope, I noticed that too. It’s especially dark in the upper left corner of the text. This caricature of a human being usually especially cracks me up, because loud stupid people are funny.
I’m torn between that and disgust here, though, because inciting harassment is a terrible thing done by terrible people. So I’m amusgusted.
Gods, they are just so bad at everything. It’s like if toddlers could operate keyboards.
Of course JB did it herself, that’s why it’s so poorly done. Women can’t do technology. Or count.
Radical Feminism has been equated to Sex, Sex Work, Porn and Trans Exclusive Radical Feminism.
Although I can’t imagine being a Porn-positive RadFem is easy to defend. TBH, not because of any fault with RadFem ideology but porn as an industry is basically industrialized misogyny.
Stunts like this really reveal the nature of the person who created them. Such projection!
I can’t imagine Sarkeesian saying that *anything* “caters to perverts and losers”. This is the person who repeatedly says that it is possible or even necessary to enjoy some aspects of media while being critical of others.
I think JB et al consider those who disagree with them as losers.
or spell the word “racism”
@ScarlettAthena
Yeah, if there’s one think Sarkeesian isn’t, it’s hostile. I can understand seeing her positions as extreme, but in a way that never denegrates those she disagrees with. Not even once.
She is remarkably consistent in the fact that she frames things as social or cultural and never personal. Ever.
Arctic Ape, I think that “perverts” and “losers” are meant to be gendered slurs.
We should find actual horrible things JB has said, and flood twitter with “fake” tweets of her actual words.
I’m not sure we could come up with anything more terrible than what JB would actually say.
@ummbassetthoudstory (sorry annoying to find on my phone)
It reminds a story a lady I worked with told me. A kid in the neighborhood put on his spiderman costume and rode around. Then he would go home and put on regular clothes. Then he would ride around and ask if anyone had seen spiderman.