History repeats itself. In September 1939, Hitler launched World War II by blocking Poland on Twitter. In December 1941, the United States entered into the war after Japan subtweeted the American naval base at Pearl Harbor.
This past Friday, according to Breitbart, Twitter “declar[ed] war on conservative media” by taking away the little blue checkmark that used to run next to Breitbart “journalist” Milo Yiannopoulos’ name on Twitter, verifying that he is indeed the real Milo Yiannopoulos.
No, really. Here’s the headline of the piece that ran in Breitbart’s tech section on the terrible injustice done to young Mr. Yiannopoulos, who coincidentally just happens to run Breitbart’s tech section.
Now, Milo hasn’t actually been banned from Twitter. Twitter simply informed him that “due to [his] recent violations of the Twitter Rules” — he’s a bit of a bully — they were taking away his little blue checkmark. So now he has to navigate Twitter without a little blue checkmark, like the overwhelming majority of Twitter users.
Naturally, Milo’s army of fans has responded to this terrible tragedy with wisdom and restraint.
JUST KIDDING! They’re crying bloody murder on Twitter and harassing anyone they can blame for Milo’s de-checkmarking.
Referencing a slogan formerly used to honor journalists and others literally murdered by terrorists, Milo’s Twitter fans launched the hashtag #JeSuisMilo. It was ugly
Here are some scenes from the ongoing debacle that is that hashtag.
https://twitter.com/TheAmazingPleb/status/685651751685341184
https://twitter.com/rstafford9/status/685635514481786880
https://twitter.com/AlHolmes66/status/685863515916115969
https://twitter.com/GBedecker/status/686036916744097796
#JeSuisMilo
SJWs suck TwatLord anus at Twitter.— Rapier Half-Witt (@br549q) January 9, 2016
Naturally, there were rape jokes.
#jesuismilo Haters are going to hate, Salt is going to flow, Spread your butt cheeks darling and prepare for Milo
— Tengu Manz (@Tengumanz) January 9, 2016
https://twitter.com/MikeRotondo86/status/685666046443823104
In a variation on the old “I’m Spartacus” ploy, many of Milo’s fans pretended to be him. (The real Milo posts as @Nero)
https://twitter.com/MiloYiannopoul2/status/685699475290091520
#JeSuisMilo suck it, bitches.
— Ryuuko Matoi 🇷🇺 (@dustinherrick1) January 9, 2016
https://twitter.com/Nuclearcherries/status/685698288864079873
https://twitter.com/dunnolol4/status/685735953072193536
It didn’t take long for the Milovians to find women to blame for Milo’s plight. Many — including some of the fake Milos — went after Huffington Post writer Jessie Thompson, who wrote a piece defending Twitter’s actions. Many of her, er, critics seem to be big fans of the c-word.
https://twitter.com/QuintusMetellus/status/685867151060766722
https://twitter.com/PillboxHill/status/685927247581085696
https://twitter.com/JRocca26/status/685916008561963008
https://twitter.com/Jew_Banker/status/685901724180037636
https://twitter.com/goodboygreg/status/685845870336708608
https://twitter.com/herpefeminist/status/685849987230597121
But she wasn’t the only woman to draw the fire of the Milovians. Some used the hashtag as an excuse to attack familiar #GamerGate targets.
#JeSuisMilo Randi Harper is a fat wanna be whore who can get a man. She is repulsive and ugly.
— Evandros Vanderbilt Kensington (@evandrus33) January 9, 2016
@m55244084 Whores get paid though… Zoe does it for free .. sex I mean, She plays victim for Money though #JeSuisMilo
— The King of Worms Mannimarco (@AKingOfWorms) January 9, 2016
Others — again, including some fake Milos — used the hashtag to promote their own agendas — some silly, some horrific, some a mixture of the two.
#rape #meninism #feminismiscancer #jesuismilo #financialrape #misandry pic.twitter.com/h3gKvnRTgn
— a boy has no soul (@saumyajit_) January 10, 2016
https://twitter.com/fiendeJ/status/685643144076083201
https://twitter.com/Qildaen/status/685938406929481728
https://twitter.com/gazetchic/status/686237395893776386
#JeSuisMilo Asia for the Asians, Africa for the Africans, White nations for EVERYONE! It's #WhiteGenocide.
— ProWhitesUnite (@prowhitesunite) January 9, 2016
#MisceGenocide is genocidal, so promoting it is racist & offensive. #WhiteGenocide #Trump2016 #JeSuisMilo #tcot https://t.co/Ct2vusC8oK
— Ben L. ن⚡️🐸👌🏻 🙏🏻 RIP Ashli Babbitt 🙏🏻 (@BNLieb) January 9, 2016
@AntiMarxistMilo #JeSuisMilo #CulturalMarxism pic.twitter.com/A8l8Iisyv8
— Milo Yiannopoulos (@AntiMarxistMilo) January 9, 2016
https://twitter.com/_simpa_/status/685993767007088640
One fellow thought he knew the real reason feminists hate Milo.
#JeSuisMilo @Nero You know what? Every feminist should admit one thing: They are crazy about you. And you are unattainable. That hurts them.
— Jeff Goldblum FAN (@Super_Slav_KEK) January 9, 2016
A few even managed to work their “cuck” obsession into their Tweets.
First the Gamers rose up with #Gamergate
Now everyone that isn't an Beta cuck or Brainwashed Feminist is rising up with #JeSuisMilo— EVEILCHARM (@EveilCharm) January 9, 2016
In the news: Twitter went full cuck, Adolf Merkel gets more laws for something her immigrants did, and Milo reings supreme. #JeSuisMilo
— Jeff Goldblum FAN (@Super_Slav_KEK) January 9, 2016
https://twitter.com/Ideo_Vames/status/685659660104368129
You can tell something about writers by the fans they attract. Milo’ fans prove with every terrible tweet of their what a wretched bunch of bullies and bigots they are — and why Twitter needs to do more to crack down on the abuse that its platform enables.
Congratulations, Milo defenders, for own-goaling yourself so magnificently.
I know I’ve said this many times before, but I’m loving the random post feature. Not only did I find the genesis of SCENTED FUCKING CANDLES, Peter Andrew Nolan does a drive by in the comments!
Oh my gosh, that thread is gorgeous. It has Peter Andrew Nolan, Scented Fucking Candles, FUCK YOU BITCH MY DAUGHTERS ARE COMING FOR YOU, and NWOSlave saying he has a harder life than Sojourner Truth because sometimes he has to stand on the bus. It’s like a greatest hits album of Mammoth comments.
@Kat
Don’t worry! They use an uppercase letter after the colon, so they didn’t actually use it right.
As for all the people using the hashtag: so, they’re openly and literally (and yes, I’m using that word correctly) claiming to be a self-hating gay asshole with a bad dye job. Good to know.
I don’t see the lack of verification significantly preventing people from discerning who the real Milo is. Besides, as David said, millions of people use Twitter without verification. And plenty of them have wide audiences or are even in a position where the preservation of their reputation is important; Milo may be more at risk because of his popularity, but not enough to say that taking away his verification is something worth getting so upset about.
Besides, the risk of harm is still purely hypothetical, and what happened to Ben Garrison is more complex than easily-negated fake twitter handles.
I would only agree with this if I thought he could be really hurt. And even if he was hit as hard as Ben Garrison I don’t think he would be (and I’ll stop short of saying he does deserve it, but…).
All that aside, I will never understand these people who think that not being allowed a strong platform or a broad audience equals a violation of free speech. Milo is free to say anything he wants; in turn, everyone else is free to withdraw any endorsement of him whenever they want. Hardly “declaring war.”
@Panda: very well, but can I still be mad that David Bowie is dead and these sapient yeast infections are still alive?
@Nequam
I see no problem with that, but I’d add Lemmy Kilmister for posterity.
Nequam,
Actually, …*sigh*
*shakes head*
@Rabid Rabbit
Although it isn’t the Chicago Manual of Style‘s latest style, it’s not wrong to capitalize a grammatically complete sentence after a colon.
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Capitalization/faq0008.html
I remain awstruck.
Actually, I’m convinced that the tweeter is Milos’s publicist. In addition to using a colon correctly, this tweeter manages to be almost witty, prop up Milos’s ego, and not say “c*nt,” “ugly,” or “fat.” This sort of tweet is beyond the capabilities of any manospherian I’ve ever read.
Holy hell. I’m french and… wow, I don’t even know where to start.
JeSuisMilo ? JeSuisFreakingMilo ? Seriously ?
Yeah, dude, you lost that stupid blue dot aside your name for being a manchild. That’s totally comparable to our artists who got murdered with assault rifles, you tart ! Oh yeah, and nice touch complaining about being censored on the very media that is supposedly censoring you. AND demanding that people delete their articles about you, which would actually qualify as censorship, you smeghead.
#JeNeSuisPasMiloParceQueJaiUnCerveauFonctionnel
It’s ok, Milo. Nobody cares.
@ Paradoxy
Cheers for that.
I can see now that the blue thing may import some level of status in that I suggests twitter feels you may be ‘important’ enough that people would wish to impersonate you.
Come to think of it, I think Jon Ronson wrote something about his own experiences with this subject.
Still, can’t help but think the only place it’s important that people believe you’re you is somewhere with armed guards.
They’re very rare, mostly because you have to have a -17 Charisma to qualify.
Remember when Anita was verified and they raged about it for, well, however long it’s been since then? For all their CONCERRRN about feminists “Not caring” about “Real problems,” they literally do care more about that nigh-meaningless checkmark than about anything that actually affects men’s lives.
Because MRAs chemosynthesise projection.
Wah wah, get over it Ben. Actions have consequences. Besides, I have a hard time imagining how a troll account could generate viler tweets than Milo himself.
I keep waiting for the bubble to burst regarding Milo’s inexplicable fandom. The guy is so obviously, blatantly full of shit on every level, yet his enraptured fans genuinely seem to view him as some truth-telling warrior against the “PC police.” It truly baffles me, particularly how they keep making excuses for his utter absence of tech savvy – a curious quality in a “tech editor,” one would think – and documented contempt for gamers.
Given his shifty business practices, I wouldn’t be surprised if he winds up doing a long stretch in the clink for fraud. I’m sure his fans will still blame the mythical SJWs for that, too.
I just love the image in the opening picture (depicting a scene from Disney’s Fantasia, superimposed with cutouts of Yawnopoulos’s face). It’s rather telling that these guys are identifying with brainless, magically animated household objects that follow a misguided task to the point where their utterly unthinking antics ultimately cause enormous distress to their incompetent animator. It’s like #GamerGate, but once again, I suspect that the incompetent animator gets away scot-free while innocent victims are bombarded with hateful shit. It’s all too predictable with reactionaries.
It still baffles me that anyone outside a fetish porn site would use the term ‘cuck’, though.
Story about a rather weird advert for a translation app, which apparently has a ‘sex pest’ setting.
Who’s Julian Blanc btw, he sounds like that Roosh bloke?
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/11/automatic-translator-ad-viral-ili-logbar-accused-sexual-harrassment
Additionally, I fail to see how anyone could be “confused” by Milo losing his precious blue tick. He’s widely known as @Nero on there, and anyone who is that eager to follow him can find that out pretty much anywhere. And don’t get me started on the typically disingenuous Breitbart tactic of claiming Twitter has “declared war on conservatives.” Every other verified Breitbot is still unchanged. Hell, even similarly vicious RWNJs like Adam Baldwin and Nick Searcy are still verified.
@Alan – Julian Blanc is a PUA coach who was famously booted out of Australia a year or two back when his visa was revoked. He made videos of himself attempting to force women to give him blow jobs. A real charmer.
Oops, just remembered that RWNJ could be regarded as ableist. My apologies.
@M:
As a man, I would have to say that I have had very few long-term health problems which are clearly the result of Sarkeesian’s twitter verification. Yiannopoulos’s lack of verification is too recent to have caused any long-term issues, but I can report the following short-term issues:
– All the rain has stopped. I’m unsure of how crops will be irrigated from now on.
– Every day, dawn has been a little earlier. Owners of nocturnal pets may want to invest in blackout curtains.
– Great musicians are dying.
– Europeans have developed a sudden interest in colonising the moon.
– Half-Life 2 Episode 3 still hasn’t come out.
@Ghost Robot:
I feel the same way. I think it’s best to think of Yiannopoulos as being an indicator of what economists call “revealed preference” – that is, that people may say they want A, but if they keep acting like they prefer B to A, then what they actually want is B.
In this case, Yiannopoulos’s fanbase may say that they want gamer culture, objective news, straight white men taking centre stage, et cetera – but their revealed preference indicates that what they actually want is pandering, and particularly the silencing of media aimed at anyone except themselves. No amount of loudly claiming otherwise will alter this.
EJ (The Other One)
Also, now that you mention in, sunset has been getting a little later each day. If this continues… What can it mean if sunrise and sunset happen at the same time?? Somebody get that man his checkmark!
Ben Cohen:
The verification is also an endorsement, and twitter has a higher standard for those people. He broke the terms for benefitting from that endorsement by being Milo, so they took it away. If he didn’t abuse and harass people, he’d still have it.
And I don’t see how his reputation can be ruined. Well unless somebody made a fake account that was actually respectful and not a raging douche… Then all his fans might hate him. Keep in mind that those folks using his name are his supporters. His supporters are the ones more likely to make fake accounts to mimick those they don’t like. This was seen with gamergaters trying to pretend to be Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn. Miko is safe.
(Unrelatedly, being on my phone without AdBlock, I’m just going to complain for a second about how nauseatingly misogynistic the Taboola ads are. “10 of the sexiest female politicians from around the world!” “Girl dumps boyfriend and then begs for him back after he wins thousands from online game!” I know, clickbaiters gonna clickbait, but… Arghadjqhshdg. Okay, now that’s off my chest, back to your regularly scheduled thread.)
@Ben Cohen
Yea, if this keeps up then people might think that the misogynistic, abusive and transphobic posts come from someone other than Milo.
We wouldn’t want an innocent faceless troll to take the blame for Milos pandering to actual nazis.
Ben Cohen
Believing a Breitbart story and linking to it? That’s like driving coast to coast leaving your emergency break and turn signal on.