Phil Mason, better known online as Thunderf00t, is a scientific researcher and YouTube bloviater who’s turned his hate-crush on video game critic Anita Sarkeesian into a surprisingly lucrative part-time job; his seemingly unending stream of YouTube videos attacking Sarkeesian, many of which have drawn hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube, have without a doubt contributed mightily to the harassment directed against her by the online mob known as #Gamergate.
Now Mason is trying to defend himself against charges that he has become the de facto leader of a vast hate mob that harasses Sarkeesian and other women … by encouraging his followers to harass a woman who charged him with exactly this.
And a good number of Mason’s 400,000 YouTube followers have taken him up on this challenge, flooding the Yelp page of the business the woman runs with her husband with fraudulent one-star reviews and besieging her and her family business with angry and harassing phone calls (at least one of which the perpetrator has put online).
The story of this particular debacle began this past January when the YouTuber who calls herself Laughing Witch sent a letter to Mason’s employer, accusing the YouTuber of harassing Sarkeesian and other women and repeatedly suggesting that he and his followers were a bunch of Nazis. Her email was part of a letter-writing campaign by a number of feminist Youtubers who hoped their letters would get Mason fired from his research job.
Mason, who apparently faced no repercussions from the letter-writing campaign, decided last week to retaliate against Laughing Witch — real name Jennifer Keller. He posted a video about Keller’s letter, following up with a second video posting her name as well as screenshots from the web page of Porcelain Tub Restoration, the company she runs with her husband.
While Tunderf00t didn’t explicitly command his army to harass Keller and her husband, he suggested to his supporters that they post their thoughts about her on the business’s Yelp page — and they did, cratering the company’s rating with literally hundreds of fake one-star reviews.
Yelp has been removing the most obviously fake ones, as well as those referencing her letter about Thunderf00t, but many remain up as “not recommended” (in other words, questionable) reviews, including a number of clearly trollish ones accusing Keller of being a Nazi.
These negative reviews, as ludicrous as many of them are, have apparently hit the business hard. Keller and her husband have set up a FundAnything page in an attempt, they say, to make payroll in the wake of the attacks on their and their company’s reputation online. On the FundAnything page Keller’s husband, Paul Burns, writes:
We are getting slanderous lies about our services and people posting deplorable images on review sites, as well desecrating our star ratings and customers calling. No one clicks to a service company with 1 star rating.
According to Burns, the 26-year-old “family based service business with 14 employees” may be forced to close “because of a brutal mob attack on our social review sites.”
Mason’s response to this campaign being waged in his name? Another video, in which he declares that “Karma [is] ONLY A BITCH, if you are one!”
Except that this isn’t “karma,” a supernatural force that Mason, a self-avowed “skeptic,’ presumably doesn’t believe in anyway.
This is an organized harassment campaign, instigated and encouraged by Mason himself.
While I’ve enjoyed Laughing Witch’s videos in the past, I think the letter writing campaign was wrong. Writing employers is a low blow. And despite Mason’s many flaws as a thinker and a human being, he’s no Nazi.
But the wave of harassment he’s brought down on Keller — and which he has not made even the slightest attempt to rein in — is indefensible.
And it’s getting worse by the day: 8chan’s Baphomet forum, a haven for malicious doxers and harassers, has now jumped aboard this harassment train, targeting not only Keller but her supporters as well. They’ve doxed one other YouTuber already, and are working on doxing others.
In a Baphomet thread, one anon happily reports that the attacks on Keller are causing her great distress:
While Mason at first suggested that he would call off the attack if Keller apologized to him, he has since refused to accept her apology, and seems positively gleeful about the pain he’s caused her and her allies.
The internet has officially hit another new low.
I’ll post more on this as it develops.
NOTE: Thanks to Daily Kos blogger idlediletante (Margaret Pless), who provided me with a number of tips on this story. She’s written three posts on the subject so far:
Family Business Brigaded on Yelp by MRA YouTube Stars
Phil Mason is Working With Baphomet to Ruin DC Business
How it Feels to Be Targeted By An Internet Hate Mob: One Man’s Story
@Iris
so you think the only proper way Thunderfoot had to respond to what Laughing Witch did to him was to do the exact same thing to her even though we agree that it was wrong for her to do it in the first place?
Putting aside the fact that TF didn’t even get fired, so there wasn’t any damage done to his income or his job…again, some of us agreed that what LW did was wrong. Do you not read, or are you too busy knee-jerking all over the place in a very sorry attempt to justify doxxing and harassment?
Yes, it would be awful for someone to try and get me fired over shit I never said and shit I never did. Yes, it would be awful for someone to lie to hurt my reputation and my income.
No, I wouldn’t try to ruin their fucking lives over it, nor would I try to destroy their business and the livelihoods of everyone working for them. I would NOT go and dig up personal information about them and use my followers to harass them and attempt to not only ruin their lives, but the lives of their employees and significant other. I would NOT mock them while they were suffering a mental breakdown. I would NOT entice my followers to drive this person to a mental breakdown. I would NOT attempt to make an example out of them like TF is doing now.
I would report it to my employer and to the police and run as much damage control as I could, and not pull this petty, destructive, “an eye for an eye” bullshit, which, may I remind you, is illegal. He incited his fanbase to harass LW and her business. That’s harassment. That’s illegal.
What LW did was wrong, and she apologized for it and shut down her channel. What TF did is inexcusable, and he’s continuing to do it, solely because he can.
What TF is doing isn’t “karma”, it’s petty fucking revenge, plain and simple. He’s getting a kick out of ruining the lives of LW and of everyone around LW, and that’s bullshit. He’s running a goddamned hate mob that is going to possibly drive LW and her husband out of business, and might even drive her to suicide if her mental breakdown gets worse.
On top of that, he’s also funding this little vendetta against LW via Patreon, and, again, that’s breaking Patreon’s rules.
But, it’s all okay, because she attempted to do it first, right? It’s all okay if she loses her livelihood, and her employees lose their livelihoods, and hell, it’d be a-okay if she killed herself, right? Because she did it first, and that makes it okay.
Fuck off, Felipe. You’re a piece of garbage too.
Lithp
It’s the one where the title is ANITA SARKEESIAN FAN TRIES TO GET ME FIRED and
has a pic of Anita in the thumbnail.
And yes, to all… there is nothing wrong with reporting these violations of the TOS, they are not light violations either. It’s why they wrote the TOS. They don’t want people making money of doxing or encouraging fraud or harassment. And it’s malicious doxing as well, which is the langauge of the TOS.
I included that video, and the Karma is a Bitch video, and news articles
in the evidence box.
He made seven thousand dollars making those videos.
——————————————————-
Also we can just disagree that writing letters to get someone in trouble with various authorities is not ok, but it’s free speech, and she believed what she wrote. What is happening now is not free speech but what is worse, it’s perpetual harassment with no end.
So people acting like this is all equal or a zero sum game are assholes.
Phil gloated that no harm came to him.
He also called the FBI on a Muslim man back a couple of years ago. They had a video exchange on you tube. It is laughable to attempt to say there was a “death threat from a Muslim extremist”. Nobody buys that. Phil shit his pants and he also tried to ruin that man’s life. So all this fainting and being vexed is phony crapola. If these people believed what they said, then
then they believe that Phil deserves what he got. But they don’t. And the chan boards that were incited, do they really just want “reciprocity”? No. People are having orgasms over harassing someone and making up reasons why they deserve more abuse, and that’s about what’s going on.
And who cares if LW tweeted David? So what? How dare she want an article on this? How would that invalidate her apology? It doesn’t. She’s VERY sorry she did this, trust.
Frank Spencer: Was Laughing Witch within her rights to contact Thunderf00t’s university? Of course. All universities have policies on the use of social media by their staff (although I can’t find the one at Thundy’s place, probably because it’s in Czech), and they usually stipulate that staff must ensure that there is clear separation between personal opinion and professional association. Phil has not only shot videos from his lab he’s also made explicit reference to his scientific authority (granted ultimately by his institution) and even given acknowledgment to his Youtube viewers and Patreon supporters in a published paper, ultimately funded by his institution.
Exactly. LW, Bewildered Ape and jenny were right into being a part of the letter writing campaign. Oh, and mockingbird, delphi_ote, milkshake fan, freemage, Iris Scanner, The Golux and everybody else, please take time to watch these BA videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0F9LLSohaI – Open Letter to Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, CZ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYQNkN66YuA – Thunderf00t Is A Liar: I Lie To Deflect Criticism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNnmBBd3bQM – Explaining The Open Letter: What Is Respect?
*well within their right
[quote]Exactly! Thunderfoot did this whole ‘nudge,nudge,wink,wink’ thing while David did nothing of the sort . yet Iris keeps insisting that David did encourage use to harass him by reporting his patreon page by link to a article on another web site.[/quote]
It’s such a weird claim…he linked to an article which in turn mentioned it to show that Thunderf00t was well paid to say these things.
And it’s not even hard to find someone’s Patreon account, the whole point is that they’re public. Otherwise, people wouldn’t be able to become your patrons, & you wouldn’t get paid.
[quote]It’s the one where the title is ANITA SARKEESIAN FAN TRIES TO GET ME FIRED and
has a pic of Anita in the thumbnail.[/quote]
Oh, I see, it’s in the description. Well, that’s all that I need, then. Also:
[quote]So it turns out theres nothing actually wrong with someone writing to someone elses employer.[/quote]
Is this an attempt at sarcasm, or is he admitting that the letter wasn’t illegal, but still refusing to admit he’s being petty & hypocritical anyway?
What a shitshow. Paradoxical basically sums up all my thoughts, but I’ll add this:
Why is it so damned predictable that, if you write something that’s within spitting distance of critical of Tf00t, aggrieved man-children trip all over themselves to be the first to scribble “NO U” in feces everywhere?
Sure, you get the occasional monocled gentleman who can string enough words together to make a sentence, but most of ’em … “rabid” comes to mind.
So, someone by the name of “Sad Monkey” just did a drive-by on my YouTube channel, and I invited them to come here and say their piece instead of spamming the comments section of my last video.
If you can say your shit there, you can say your shit here.
What was in the letter exactly? Like did she actually call him a nazi? Or state he shares viewpoints with nazis or something like that?
I personally see nothing wrong with a letter writing campaign and find boiling down everything to “going after his job” or affecting “him in the real world” or stuff like that. Things said on the internet is just as real as off the internet. Those guys are the ones who like to pretend that the things they say online aren’t real. As if it’s some make believe place and they’re not hurting people they harass. Anonymity doesn’t make you less responsible for your words.
Back to the point, methodology is important. Let’s compare:
1) A letter or letters to the university regarding their opinion about his behavior, one that the university officials can read and decide for themselves.
2) Harassment of the family and reviews of a service they never used on Yelp, Even Yelp recognizes they are lies.
Her videos have nothing to do with that business, but Universities often have policies about this kind of thing.
This comment is way late but ah damn that link of Iris’ in their first comment really did link to the 9th comment on this entry, which I would have realized if my phone hadn’t been so slow and awful, so now I’m embarrassed. Anyway.
@ColeYote was there something else you wanted to discuss other than Iris’ comments? Because it’s totally cool to talk about your thing and just skim right by the trolly comments. I don’t know about everyone else, but I do that all the time when I’m not in the mood for bullshit. That way leaves space also for the people who ARE in the mood for hashing out the bullshit to do their thing but also for you to do your thing as well.
Oh, and I did see your bit about how “That video wasn’t Patreon funded!” bit Sad Monkey, and I’d like to raise a point:
Whether that video was funded directly by Patreon is moot. The point is, he’s using Patreon to make YouTube videos, and that was a YouTube video. He’s still making money per video. Rationalize that however you want, but the fact of the matter is he’s still getting paid for it.
“find boiling down everything to “going after his job” or affecting “him in the real world” or stuff like that”
That should be: ” find boiling down everything to “going after his job” or affecting “him in the real world” or stuff like that to be to vague and only serve to destroy details that are important.”
Sorry.
“TF isn’t absolved of all guilt because she did it first.”
Exactly. I shouldn’t have to repeat that this is a logical fallacy called “tu quoque”, but I just did. We named this kind of wrong thinking a long time ago, because it’s obviously wrong. Arguing that something is ethical/unethical based on what someone else did is something a 5 year old does, not a grown adult. “But mommy, he did it first!” If this argument worked, stealing and murder would be ethical by the same flawed reasoning. It’s lazy, dangerous thinking. KNOCK IT OFF!
If we’re considering it a sin now to call attention to and criticize someone’s crowdfunding pages, someone should have a word with Phil Mason about that. I believe he has shared some thoughts in the past about a certain Kickstarter run by Sarkeesian.
Seriously, it doesn’t matter who “started it,” but if reporting perceived abuse of crowdfunding sites counts as “starting it,” than Futrelle didn’t start anything; Thunderf00t and his buddies did.
Good news is that Yelp took down many of the stupid reviews however they are getting around Yelp’s work by posting photos of the twitter arguments. I reported the photos so hopefully that will get Yelp on the ball.
“I personally see nothing wrong with a letter writing campaign and find boiling down everything to “going after his job” or affecting “him in the real world” or stuff like that.”
The man should be allowed to have a personal life and be able to express his personal opinions without feeling like every moment of his life is going to be used against him by his employer. People constantly say and think things that they’re boss won’t agree with. That’s their right when they’re not working.
I’m not interested in living in a world where everyone’s employer owns every minute of their life and polices their every thought. Threatening a person with that fear over a disagreement is wrong. For all your talk of people treating the Internet as different than the real world, you seem to forget that nobody would run to tell someone’s employer about something they said at a bar or an open mike night or at an AA meeting. Why is this okay when it’s on the Internet?
Well, generally people at open mic nights and AA meetings aren’t commanding lucrative hate mobs.
@Delphi_ote: There’s a big difference between a personal life and a public persona in which he uses the job credentials to give himself credibility.
@Delphi_ote: I have to agree with Tessa on this one. This isn’t like him going to a bar and saying racial slurs, this is him going on the internet, representing the university by claiming they’re the ones giving him credentials, and then spouting bigotry.
Then he’s representing them, and that can reflect poorly on them. If he didn’t say that he’s from that specific university then there shouldn’t be an issue. But he waves that stuff around, and it’s part of his public persona.
As was discussed earlier, he’s posted his videos from his place of employment. He’s brought his work life into his whole You Tube celebrity persona. He’s actually lucky he hasn’t gotten in trouble because his employer as every right to fire him for that.
I think, at least in this specific case, it’s fair to let the employer know. That doesn’t mean I think all such letter campaigns would be valid or the employer should always act on the claim. Though at least stating that they don’t endorse Thunderf00t’s nonsense couldn’t hurt. Because he kind of does claim that he’s arguing from a position of expertise & academic discourse, which is clearly not true.
Though, as someone I talk to on Skype brought up…does Thunderf00t have female colleagues? If so, how do they feel about his propensity to set his fans on people, mostly women, who criticize him or just talk about their opinions in general?
So, the Sad Monkey thing is over. They were civil at first, and then when I told them that I wasn’t going to watch a TF video to prove their point because obviously TF is biased as fuck and I simply am not going to give him views (though I thanked them for taking the time to provide links to attempt to prove their point), they went into a “This is why I didn’t want to debate you, you don’t know anything and you won’t listen to anyone else, and you said you didn’t have time to watch his videos (no I didn’t, I said I didn’t fucking want to and stated why), but you typed out a really long response to me (it wasn’t that long and I’m a fast typist)! *implication that I think his university endorses his views because they didn’t fire him*, yadda, yadda, yadda”.
Oh, and they didn’t want to post here because David wasn’t approving their comments fast enough apparently. Go figure.
Anyways, I’ve deleted their comments off of my channel, so it’s not cluttering up my videos with unrelated spam.
Agreed. If he’s bringing his place of employment into this, they have every right to know what kinds of things he’s saying while he’s using their name and their resources to make his videos.
If he said it in a bar, or in the privacy of his own home without any ties to the university, I can see saying “yeah, that’s not cool, that’s doxxing”.
Say for the sake of argument Mason wasn’t involved in doxing or using credentials inappropriately, would it still be right to contact his employer based solely on his opinions? Because if it’s really about his views on feminism and Islam then a campaign to have him fired is an attempt to punish him for those views. It’s then disingenuous to try and justify it some other way or claim to care about an institution’s reputation. (If he has incited harassment then this is beside the point, but hypothetically.)
It opens up a can of worms as to what is legitimate criticism of social movements, ideologies, religion, what is just hate, and who should be pronouncing on that.
MRAs: Attempting to silence their opponents since before MRAs gave themselves that silly acronym.
It’s what they do.
It’s who they are.
@delphi_ote
I know you’re a regular, but I’m side-eyeing the hell out of your both-sides-are-bad freeze peaching in this thread. Your obsession with what LF did and barely-nominal recognition of what TF did reminds me of nothing more than your stock-standard “SARKEESIAN IS A TIME-TRAVELLING COMMIE-NAZI WEREWOLF! SHE SECRETLY CONTROLS THE WORLD FROM HER VOLCANO MOON BASE! SHE KILLED JFK AND VOTED FOR BUSH! Oh, and the harassment is bad, maybe, I guess. Anyway, HER FATHER IS HITLER…” #GamerGate false neutrality.
Also, reporting somebody for a drunken rant about “Those damn [n-words]” to their employer isn’t as unheard of as you think. Because they might have coworkers who’d be unsafe around them. That drunken racist at the bar might physically attack his black coworker; Thunderbigot might physically attack his female coworker.