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
@littleknown Thanks for the link. Setting aside the arguments of whether it was doxxing, I agree it does seem the guidelines only apply to patreon funded videos not all videos made. I have checked again and it doesn’t look like they were a part of it – but I don’t use or know the site well so people should check themselves if they want to know for certain.
I am on the side of it not being a dox. If he wanted to dox he always had the details from the letter anyway, and as I previously said he kept them private while he believed that information to be private exactly like he should have done. He only considered the name and email public once he knew it was public. So from my perspective, he did not dox a name or email which were the only doxxable (is that a word, Im pretty sure it isn’t!) information.
Once that is out I will never support considering releasing public business information related to publicly available people in any form, for any reason, as a dox or wrong. I believe this information to be a different class from personal or confidential information.
I know most won’t believe me but I would be standing on the side of his detractors, even if only for that one point, if he had released the name or email (or connected a business to her for the same purpose as outing someone anonymous which might be something else to consider differently) while she was still anonymous.
I hope even if people reading here say “nope, completely wrong” you at least have an idea I am not just a rabid fanatic – I have actually considered this and nearly initially considered it differently.
@Bryce
Like I said, for me the deciding factor is how much harm could result from having someone with that prejudice in that job.
A Libertarian computer programmer, math teacher, etc, is unlikely to do anything that different from a programmer with different political beliefs. OTOH, sexists can be a problem in any job that involves interacting with women in any way, and it’s particularly problematic in jobs where they have some authority over women or girls.
I would probably also factor in how obsessed the person seems with the subject. People who fixate on the subject are probably more likely to act on it at their job.
I do agree that our society needs to think about this, and decide how to react to things people say on the internet. But I think it would be wrong to just dismiss or ignore everything that is said. Some opinions make a person unfit to hold certain jobs.
@happyelf: I can understand better now where you’re coming from on “dox or no dox?”, but I think a strong case can be made that whether dropping someone’s personal information is a dox or not has less to do with whether the information is already out there, and more with the intent, the nature of your followers, and your knowledge of what your followers are likely to do when given the information.
It is abundantly clear that Thunderf00t dropped the information maliciously. Regardless of whether LW provided the information to him, whether she doxxed herself, and whether Baphomet published her information before TF, the fact remains that he published her Yelp with the malicious intention of coordinating fraud — whether his massive following were leading the charge or simply joining it, he is not only abundantly aware of what they are wont to do with such information; he actively rejoiced in the results.
If TF had made a video saying “LW’s personal information was released by a Gamergate doxing and raiding board. Her Yelp is being inundated with false reviews in a coordinated attack determined to take away her and her husband’s livelihoods, and the livelihoods of 14 other employees of their company. While I am still furious that she tried to get me fired, these actions are disgraceful. Please do not support them or join in.” — that one be one thing. But in point of fact, he is applauding the raid, and has been from the start.
@KafkaNoMore:
Thanks for the corrective information, and no apologies necessary for the grammar. It’s good to know that he doesn’t have any students working for him.
Paradoxical Intention,
So of course potential customers of Laughing Witch’s service business should “have every right to know” that she is the kind of person who would write a letter filled with vicious lies to a person’s employer, right? After all, if she treats people on the internet this way, how is she likely to treat a customer?
I don’t agree with the above. Just pointing out how easy it is to pick one side and offer up bullshit distinctions like a desperate defense attorney. Yes, you can manage to find a tortured way that Phil Mason’s employer should receive a letter calling him a Nazi and a criminal, if tortured reasoning is good enough for you. But how many people out there who share ideological agreement with you have you just made vulnerable to this kind of attack? When they are attacked, will you remain consistent? If an ideological blogger posts an article from their place of work, are that person’s ideological enemies justified in trying to get that person fired? Do you need to know which side of the ideological dispute this person is on before answering?
Not that it matters to you, since you are so fond of just making stuff up, but Mason is always careful to distance his political views from his work. When he does videos about ideology, he never says he is speaking for his employer or anyone but himself.
You are doing the same thing that Laughing Witch did — getting so caught up in the thrill of doing harm to someone else that you lose all sense of proportion and settle for bullshit rationalizations that will allow you to do the harm you want to do. Instead of standing with the principle that nobody should have their livelihood targeted just for expressing opinions on the internet, you try to carve out exceptions to that principle that will allow this particular target to be attacked.
But the exceptions are bullshit. You don’t actually believe in them. You hate Thunderf00t and enjoy watching harm come to him. The tiny distinctions you pick and choose are just rationalizations for your hate and your desire to see your ideological enemy harmed.
EJ,
You are apparently unfamiliar with the facts. The campaign that LW participated in was solidly in the “second category.” There were form letters — many of the participants in the campaign sent identical letters. There were lists of people to contact — not just Mason’s employer, but also the local police and the media. According to LW, about twelve people in her group sent letters. It was an organized campaign to make as much trouble for Mason as possible — including the specific goal of making him unemployed — by smearing his reputation with harmful lies. All for expressing his opinions on YouTube.
So if Phil Mason was already on thin ice for some reason, and he had been fired because this letter-writing campaign was the last straw, that’s on him? What if he wasn’t on thin ice, but because of this campaign he now is, and then there is another campaign that succeeds? His fault?
Kootiepatra,
She tried to take away the job he loves and depends on as his primary income. How is that a “flyswatter”? The stakes are the same for both parties: their livelihoods. And she’s the one who decided to suddenly crank up the stakes to that level. Prior to her aggression, Thunderf00t did not try to go after her income or anything else of the kind. He simply disagreed with her on the internet.
SFHC,
So up until Mason encouraged brigading of LW’s Yelp page, you see Thunderf00t as the victim and LW as the perpetrator?
littleknown,
I agree that Thunderf00t reasonably should have known, and probably did know, that the Yelp page for LW’s business would come under attack as a result of his publicizing that page in his video. And most likely, that is exactly why he did it.
But would you also use the term “hate mob” to describe the group of people who organized to tell lies to Thunderf00t’s employer in attempt to make him unemployed? If that’s not enough to be a “hate mob,” how does posting false information to Yelp qualify?
I wouldn’t say that Phil Mason lacks un understanding of “harassment culture.” He is a victim of it. A group of people who disagreed with him on the internet wrote letters to his employer falsely accusing him of crimes in an attempt to get him fired. They also contacted the police to call him a “Nazi,” in a country where Holocaust denial is a crime (and where any report to the police may very well trigger an automatic investigation of the target).
Mason’s retaliatory tactic also shows an understanding of harassment culture. He did it better than Laughing Witch did it. (Which is apparently a greater sin than being attacked for no good reason in the first place.)
@littleknown
Actually (some inner daemon wouldn’t let me rest) and I went searching a little bit further (If only I haven’t). Some worrying things came up.
First, on Dr. Phil Mason’s Wikipedia page it is written that he is part of the Academy of the Sciences Czech Republic (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Mason) – which is quite a big institution (quite a big deal if you ask me). Now, I know that his little research lab/institute is only a part of the Academy like many others, it is still shocking that he can have the Academy’s name on his wikipedia.
What I find disturbing about this is that such a vile/ranting/harassing online persona can be a part of such an institute and nobody cares!
And the other worrying thing is that i discovered that his research institute employs students, both Phd students and younger, and many of them are women. There is a picture of them with Thunderf00t in the background. They all look like young minds that can be easily manipulated and corrupted by him. (I don’t want to link any pictures, I don’t think it’s appropriate), he has all rights to work there, I just find it sad that he has such an influence!
But the most shocking thing is that I believe that (the reason that he is so smug about not getting fired) is that his students/colleagues/employers are all aware of who he is and what kind of worldview he has, what kind of videos he makes (it’s on his wikipedia) – and I don’t believe that somebody cares. That’s what’s scary about this story.
And by the way, I don’t think that what Laughing Witch has done is right. Contacting his workplace was the lowest of the low. But what he has done (with unleashing the hate mob) is equally horrible and just shows how dangerous he is.
But would you also use the term “hate mob” to describe the group of people who organized to tell lies to Thunderf00t’s employer in attempt to make him unemployed?
Wait, there was a group now? I thought it was literally just one letter from LaughingWitch herself.
http://replygif.net/i/1075.gif
littleknown
Fucking THIS.
There’s a handy name for this within the legal system: Deliberate Intent.
I’m reminded of when Gawker posted a news item regarding Quentin Tarantino’s script for Hateful Eight being leaked online. In the article, they actually SHARED THE LINK to the leaked script! Rightfully so, people called it out for the bad form and deliberate intent that it was.
If you tell people “HEY! THERE’S AN OVER TURNED ARMORED VEHICLE THAT’S SPILLING OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY INTO THE STREET! IT’S RIGHT OVER THERE!”, you can’t then hide behind plausible deniability and play innocent like, “I never TOLD THEM to take that money, so it’s not my fault that they took it.” It also doesn’t help your argument when you’re doing proverbial cartwheels of glee BECAUSE PEOPLE TOOK THE MONEY THAT YOU POINTED THEM TOWARDS. You knew exactly what the hell you were doing and you should be held accountable for your actions and take responsibility for your part in this. The law generally agrees, hence deliberate intent was born.
Frostbite883: Sadly, I am unable to watch the videos–it’s not a matter of time, as such, but circumstance. I’m most interested in the argument justifying the letter-campaign, with emphasis on the following:
1: Did the letters actually accuse him of Nazism or Holocaust denial? If so, what were the justifications for that? (His fumbled, bumbling comments in the Ray Comfort debate don’t really measure up, for the record–he was an idiot and inept and pretty much full of fail, but not saying Hitler was some sort of good guy.)
2: Were the letters sent to the police, or just his employer?
If you can bullet-point those two elements, I’d appreciate it greatly.
@freemage
1. Yes, repeatedly.
.
Orion,
You should read the OP. David Futrelle of course greatly downplays the original aggression that started this whole thing, but it’s there in the middle:
David could also have noted that some of the participants in this campaign delivered their lies to the local police and the media. They were hoping to get Mason fired, get him investigated by the police, and have him portrayed as a woman-hating Nazi in local media.
All because he expressed opinions on the internet.
In David’s view, apparently, people who take this kind of action to threaten a person’s employment, get them in trouble with the police, and destroy their reputation by associating them with Nazis, are merely engaging in a “letter-writing campaign.”
But people who write false Yelp reviews are a “hate mob.”
As far as I know, David has been silent on Mob Mammoth’s attempts to organize an attack on Mason’s Patreon funds. (Other than leading off his article by making sure that Mob Mammoth knew the funds were there to attack, of course.)
Normally I wouldn’t fix a blockquote monster strike, but I actually posted before finishing my comment, too, so….
Iris, you keep insisting on trying to link David to the Patreon-report campaign. Patreon was not mentioned anywhere in the article; you have to follow one of the links to even know how he’s getting paid at all. (I can’t speak for the other readers, but I rarely actually follow David’s links–either they go to a column I’ve already read, or they go someplace vile, horrible and utterly unspeakable.)
The push to report itself came from one of the other commenters, something you only acknowledged after being challenged. This suggests that perhaps you are not the most honest participant in this discussion.
In addition, while you may feel that directing people to find her company’s Yelp page and suggesting they post about her actions there (and then, later, gleefully post when people go beyond that and submit false reviews) doesn’t qualify as ‘malicious doxxing’, it is quite reasonable for others to say that it is. I do have to wonder by what Internet Authority you were deemed sole arbiter of what counts as doxxing. It’s a fucking slang term, and its definition is ever-shifting; Patreon themselves do not seem to list a precise definition, preferring, most likely, to retain the right to ‘know it when they see it’.
The reports are being made by people who sincerely believe that yes, this is doxxing, and it is then up to Patreon to decide if Dunderbu++’s actions in this affair qualify as sufficiently beyond the pale for them to act upon, as well as what action they might desire to make. The fact that this has sent you into such a fainting couch tizzy suggests that you are concerned that the good folks at Patreon might concur with those commenters who have made the reports–which would undermine your contention that there’s no way that his actions could be considered doxxing in the first place.
I wonder if Iris here goes on Kotaku in Action and other gamergate sites to talk about how wrong and bad it is to harass someone just because they expressed an opinion on the internet.
Haha! Just kidding! I think we all know the answer to that.
http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view6/3873632/stick-it-o.gif
Neither side is “right” to take this Internet war into real life. But we all know that Thunderf00t is keen on orchestrating mobs to harass and intimidate. We all remember how Tf00t was banned from FTB and than used his back-channel email to subscribe to get to the mailing list and the emails. How his mob called the FBI on DawahFilms and his family, the same mob that now harasses Anita and other women that dare to have an oppinion different than Tf00ts, and now this story of course, he fully knew what he was doing when he lead his mob onto the buisness page of LW’s company.
Many people don’t have a problem on calling LW out on her actions! Most people seem to condem it (including David in his article).
But Tf00t’s minions would never question or condem the actions of their vile/zero-empathy master.
And we all know how people that have zero-empathy are called in real life!
freeemage,
False.
My first comment in this thread linked to the comment calling for an attack on Mason’s Patreon income.
Yes, David has plausible deniability. Just like Thunderf00t does. After all, TF just showed a Yelp page and said, “Anyone can say anything they want on the internet.”
But TF knew what he was doing. And David knew what he was doing when he led off an article about people maliciously going after each others’ income by mentioning that TF has “a surprisingly lucrative part-time job,” and linking those words to an article about TF’s Patreon income.
Also note that when the attempts by Mob Mammoth to brigade TF’s Patreon showed up here in the comments, David did not step in to dissuade them. He did appear in this thread following several comments encouraging mob action, but he said nothing about them.
Like TF, he keeps his distance and lets the mob do the work.
Also, given that Thunderf00t waited a long time to dox Laughing Witch, he can’t claim that he was acting out of anger. No, the guy’s a sadist.
Laughing Witch, I’m so sorry that this hate mob came after you. Stay strong.
Iris, you appear to be missing a significant point in all this, in that LW’s husband’s business in fact has nothing to do with her actions towards thunderfoot, and that the Yelp reviews are false and I fact violating Yelp’s terms of service.
While Thunderfoot’s doxxing and inciting harassment against LW is EXPLICITLY against patreon’s terms of service, and thus reporting him to them is entirely justified.
Don’t bring your mealy-mouthed “WHTM/David Futrelle is JUST as bad as Thunderfoot is!” bullshit in here. It reeks, and it’s a false comparison.
I wonder how many comments Iris has made to TF to tell him how absolutely wrong it is of him to instigate reprisals through silent inference. Probably not many.
@Iris Scanner
You are really sticking with this “plausible deniability” thing? It’s beneath you, and absurd.
Patreon has a policy against its Creators doxing people and coordinating fraud. That is something TF is currently doing, unapologetically.
It is important to note a difference between reporting a user for violating Patreon’s guidelines (something that is currently happening), and encouraging a mob of of your supporters to trash a business’ Yelp page, and rejoice in the damage of fraudulent reviews.
TF is willfully and joyfully violating Patreon’s ToS. The employees of the tub restoration company did not do anything, but TF apparently sees them as getting what they deserved, or at best, as collateral damage.
TF has a fully sufficient income from his job as a research chemist. David (along with most everyone here) has come out against all of the actions taken to try to get him fired from that position.
The reason why many see TF’s Patreon or YouTube income as fair game at the moment is because he is using his position in those platforms to direct a hate mob towards the goal of destroying a business, along with a number of people’s livelihoods, and rejoicing in it. It is reasonable for Patreon and Google not to want to directly fund such actions, or to allow their platforms to be used in such a way.
And yes, to answer your earlier question: I do see a letter-writing campaign designed to get someone fired from their primary source of income as a hate mob. Albeit in this case, a very small and ineffectual “mob”. Even if all the letters consisted of were informing the employer about some troublingly misogynistic videos, and not suggesting he be fired, but that they should consider confronting him about the hostile culture it creates for any potential female or Muslim co-workers, I would still come out against it. Employers can be fickle, and with so many states in the U.S. lacking basic protections for LGBT employees…I just think targeting a person’s primary source of income leads nowhere good.
Catalpa,
I agree that the false Yelp reviews (which I have called “false Yelp reviews” more than once) violate the TOS. Of course they do. I’m not so sure about your collateral-damage argument. The malicious, unprovoked actions by Laughing Witch and her mob were designed to inflict as much damage as possible to Mason. Since the goal was to get Mason fired and possibly get him in trouble with the law, it seems pretty clear that Laughing Witch and the rest of the mob working with her had no concern for collateral damage to anyone in Mason’s personal life. Just look at their videos. They are positively gleeful as they contemplate the harm they might do to Mason for expressing his opinions on the internet.
When your enemy treats you this way, are you supposed to keep your hands tied behind your back while you respond?
I can’t say that what Mason did was right, but I also can’t say that it was wrong. If someone tried to get me fired, and to get me in trouble with the law, and to have me labeled a Nazi in my local newspaper, I’m not sure what I would do in response. It certainly isn’t fair to look at what Mason did in isolation — you have to look at what was done to him to provoke his response. These people were willing to take every single thing they could away from him, including his livelihood and his reputation. They didn’t care about any collateral damage from their attacks, which were unprovoked. And Mason, suffering an unprovoked attack, is supposed to just take it? He is supposed to be more concerned about Laughing Witch’s family than she was about his?
On the other hand, Laughing Witch’s actions are not nearly so ambiguous. She and the mob she coordinated with tried to destroy Phil Mason’s life with lies for no reason other than that he stated his opinions on the internet. What she did is not in the least understandable or justifiable. She freely chose to cross a serious ethical line and desired to do considerable harm to another person. Everything she is experiencing now is what she attempted to inflict on Phil Mason, unprovoked.
After Bart Simpson whipped up a false media sensation about a child trapped at the bottom of a well, duping an entire nation, Bart himself accidentally ended up at the bottom of the well. And he said, “What did I do to deserve this?”
My post was taking exception to you equating Thunderfoot and DAVID’s actions, not Thunderfoot and LW’s.
Nice attempt at being disingenuous though.
@Iris
You can go now. I’m pretty sure we’re all bored.
I’m sorry, did you not read my earlier post addressing this same mentality you expressed earlier, and the several other posts that agreed with me after that was posted?
There are other ways of handling this situation besides going for the petty revenge, eye-for-an-eye bullshit that TF is currently engaging in.
You’re trying to make this shit sound like he had no other choice but to go around and ruin LW’s husband’s business, when he could have informed his employers, the police, and ran damage control instead. TF abso-fucking-loutely had other options besides siccing his hate mob on LW’s business.
He chose to drop the business’ Yelp information to his fanbase instead, a fanbase who has a history of harassment against women who say anything against TF, or say things he doesn’t like or agree with.
And most of us agreed that what LW did was wrong, and it wasn’t okay for her to do that.
You’re being a disingenuous, repetitive little shit, Felipe, and quite frankly, I’m sick of it.
What still isn’t clear is whether there’s any evidence to validate LW’s claims about Phil Mason orchestrating a harassment campaign against Anita Sarkeesian.