“The Handmaid’s Tale” author Margaret Atwood famously said “men are afraid women will laugh at them; women are afraid men will kill them.” She could have added: “every time they go on a date with a man.”
On TikTok, a motley assortment of young men are doing their best to convince women they should be afraid of this possible dire outcome, making short videos in which they fantasize about killing their dates in very graphic, and very specific, ways.
The videos first call on women to imagine going on a date, but then quickly turn from romance to fantasies of murder. ““Imagine we go on a cute picnic date and I pull out a knife to cut some fruit,” one of the videos posits. “But instead I cut ur throat and you just f*cking die lol.”
“Imagine if we went on a gym date,” another begins, “but instead of spotting you on bench I pushed the weight as hard as i can on your neck and you just [skull and crossbones emoji] kinda sounds like fun ngl [not gonna lie].”
A woman calling herself bekahdayyy responded on TikTok with a video calling out this unfortunate trend, showing clips from a variety of these “imagine” videos alongside newspaper clippings about women being killed by men they knew in the exact ways the “imaginers” imagined.
Sadly, I doubt she had to look very hard to find these examples; domestic violence against women is startlingly common. According to the Centers for Disease Control “about 1 in 4 women … have experienced contact sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetime and reported some form of IPV-related impact.” The figure for men is one in ten.
While more men are murdered than women, women are far more likely to be killed by a current or former partner. Indeed, as a post on VAWnet notes, “fifteen times as many females were murdered by a male they knew than were killed by male strangers” in 2013. So it’s not hard to see why women fear their dates could turn violent.
The men posting the “imagine” videos contend that they are just jokes, with one telling the Daily Dot that “I never meant any disrespect by it” and that he didn’t “promote abuse against woman.” Could have fooled me.
More than a few observers wondered just what was supposed to be funny in these jokes. It’s a good question; they’re only “funny” if one finds the notion of violence against women — or women’s fear of such violence — inherently risible. I’d really like to hear one of the guys posting these videos to explain exactly how this sort of “humor” is supposed to work.
A TikTok spokesperson told the Daily Dot that these videos violate their rules against “content that promotes hateful behavior and violence against women,” and that they will be removed. But critics note that the platform was slow in its response, enabling many of these videos to go viral before being taken down. Which is, sadly, all too typical in cases of violent misogyny online.
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Any bets on when these guys start posting TikTok videos about ’my girlfriend dumped me when she saw my Imagine You Dying vids about her and got a restraining order against me! Can’t girls take a joke anymore?!?’
Some brain bleach:
This is Lucky. He is a rescue piggy.
@Allandrel:
And here’s the whole herd at the Nagasaki Bio Park, commuting to the strains of Parry Gripp:
Oh, me, me, I know! It’s the same way as “wouldn’t it be funny if five guys raped her?” was funny when Tosh 2.0 said it!
… I forgot why that was funny in any way but he was a Real Comedian so it must have been!
Thank you @Allandrel & @Full Metal Ox for the double dose of brain bleach.
The fact that these guys think this kind of comment is in any way amusing is frankly terrifying. OTOH, as they all seem to be reaching painfully hard for the Edgebro award, failure in the world of relationships is almost guaranteed to be theirs.
“WHYYYYYY!!!!! CAN’T I GET A GIRLFRIEND!!! MUST BE MY WRIST CIRCUMFERENCE/CANTHAL TILT/THE COCK CARROUSEL/CHAD!!!!!”
See one of the big things about telling jokes that such people never actually seem to keep in mind: When someone tells a joke, we’re both supposed to be laughing. When someone tells a joke I’m not supposed to end up traumatized either during or after the joke.
I find this “joke” (just like rape jokes from men) deeply, and I mean deeply, disturbing! The only purpose this serves is to widely normalize the idea that committing an act of violence against a woman is funny. Especially when the person telling the joke is representative of the kind of people most likely to commit an act of violence against a woman.
It doesn’t matter if the “joke-teller” claims they would never harm a woman. Telling the joke and thinking it’s funny says a lot about the character of the person doing it and none of those things are good.
@ Lakitha K Tolbert
Technically he said “Ful ofte in game a sooth I have herd saye!”; but I suspect the concept is as old as language.
Considering people will eat Tide pods and set themselves on fire after watching Tik Tok videos, “it’s just a joke” is a really inadequate disclaimer.
You know, I’m normally opposed to the idea of suppressing an entire media platform.
But I’m kinda having second thoughts about TikTok these days. It’s like an exceptionally awful video Twitter. That’s been influenced mainly by 4-Chan.
@Full Metal Ox
OMG those furry round butts.
I just love how invested that guinea pig is in eating that lettuce.
I also like existential crisis guinea pig. He’s like me after reading a cosmology article.
The guinea pigs are delightful.
A friend of mine, who has a house on a couple acres, became known as “the place you dump your unwanted guinea pigs”. She had a llama (or was it an alpaca? don’t remember) at one point too, and some foster kittens who stayed.
Anyway, she ended up with a LOT of unsocialized piggies, but at least they all got fixed.
In warm weather, they lived outside with the chickens, and she used to joke about “the herd of guinea pigs thundering across the plains”. Because they really were, I saw a video. Imagine that Nagasaki batch spread out instead of on a bridge. Like a teeny tiny cattle stampede. It was adorable.
The chickens, on warm summer nights, preferred to fly up and roost in the big oak trees rather than into the coop. They did lay eggs in the coop.
Anyway, it was all very Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom. So that’s what I think of when I see guinea pigs. A thundering herd.
Meanwhile, that guy feeding Lucky is a keeper. He’s got a beard and tats, so obviously he’s A Manly Man, but he also smooches piggies. Bet he doesn’t make “jokes” like this.
Re: the OP
I wish I could say I was even surprised, but I’ve met edgelord men like that so many times in my life. Some of them turned out to be violent creeps, the rest I didn’t hang around to find out. When someone makes a joke about hurting you, believe them, believe that they are dangerous – and get the hell away if you can.
@Lakitha
No kidding. What really gets to me too is that even men who don’t joke about harming women, IME often laugh about women being injured or dying – IDK if it’s a way to mask or diffuse their horror or what, but it really disturbs me.
It starts young too. When I was a teenager, a girl at my school died in a car accident. I will never forget how the girls consoled and supported each other afterwards… or how the boys were telling jokes and laughing about it within an hour. The difference was just so stark.
@Allandrel
OMG Lucky is so, so cute! And it’s even more adorable how the dude is so caring and gentle and overwhelmed by the cute. After the OP I kind of needed that reminder that not all men are awful, so… thank you.
@Full Metal Ox
That is so adorable I just cannot.
Since this has blessedly become the guinea pig thread, I give you Pui Pui Molcar!
I had a guinea pig as a child. Since he was an albino with terrible vision, I was very proud to teach him to rear up for a carrot when I would whistle, but in retrospect, teaching a fuzzy sack of intestines to go after food is not exactly the biggest accomplishment of my life. 😀
Still, it often made my day to whistle and see him hop up on his hind legs, nose in the air… I feel like some kind of vegan restaurant next door to a petting zoo where you could eat your meal, then take all the peelings and such of said meal over to feed guinea pigs and the odd rabbit would be a hoot. “Here’s your order sir, and this is your side dish for the zoo.”
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants
The first time I saw these things was in a grocery store: they appeared to be pretty candies in a candy dish. I said to my boyfriend, “Are they trying to kill children!” He shared my outrage. We are not safety experts or consumer advocates. We are not even parents. But we knew there was something deeply effed up about Tide pods.
I felt the same way in third grade, when the school had monkey bars installed on our playground, which was covered with cement: Are they trying to kill us!
I suppose there are some who genuinely think it is funny. There is an irony between the image of a pleasant date and a gruesome murder. However such men have zero understanding of the fact that women are genuinely scared. There can be no comedic irony or sense of absurdity when the hypothetical is actually quite possible.
On the other hand, men are not really allowed to feel sadness or fear and sometimes deal with genuine fear and trauma by turning it into a joke, though that doesn’t seem to apply here.
Of course a sadly more common effect of men’s restricted emotional range is that when something goes wrong in their lives they start looking for a scapegoat to direct their anger at. They never got to date the women they got to date, they still fantasize about dating them, but since they’re so angry they also fantasize about violent revenge, and rather than admit that there’s something wrong about doing both at the same time they call it a joke.
@ kat
The first time I got dragged into a Lush (the posh soap shop) I thought they sold cakes.
Even at my edgelordiest, I never cosidered ‘joking’ about the person I was talking too. That always just seemed like straight-up bullying.
Screw these guys.
@GSS ex-noob:
Meanwhile, that guy feeding Lucky is a keeper. He’s got a beard and tats, so obviously he’s A Manly Man, but he also smooches piggies. Bet he doesn’t make “jokes” like this.
Note furthermore that he voluntarily eats vegetables (he partook of the carrot, which is more than Lucky did) and is willing to nurture lives that won’t stay in his care.
@Prith:
I’m guessing that the Pui Pui Molcars stem from the same evolutionary line that produced the Catbus from My Neighbor Totoro?
@Alan Robertshaw:
The first time I got dragged into a Lush (the posh soap shop) I thought they sold cakes.
Cases in point—nor does it help that they dwell sensuously upon ingredients like coconut and citrus and vanilla:
http://www.lushusa.com/dw/image/v2/BDMQ_PRD/on/demandware.static/-/Sites-lushcosmetics-export/default/dw2d0d7853/images/product/00116_1.jpg?sw=450&sh=450
http://www.lushusa.com/dw/image/v2/BDMQ_PRD/on/demandware.static/-/Sites-lushcosmetics-export/default/dwcd4c4551/images/product/02257-pdp.jpg?sw=450&sh=450
http://www.lushusa.com/dw/image/v2/BDMQ_PRD/on/demandware.static/-/Sites-lushcosmetics-export/default/dw043b79b7/images/product/02258-pdp.jpg?sw=450&sh=450
@Lakitha K Tolbert; @Battering Lamb; @Cyborgette:
That kind of joke is a threat with a laugh track; it’s an inflatable clown hammer with a real sledgehammer inside.
@Full Metal Ox
Truth. I’m extremely not into beardy masc dudes, but any man who shows that level of caring, gentleness, and empathy is instantly 10x hotter.
And… yes. Those are quite good analogies. Especially the clown hammer one. 🙁
More like just a plain old sledgehammer that these shitsticks are “pretending” to believe (I doubt even they think anyone’s fooled) is an inflatable clown hammer. There needs to be some actual humor involved to claim it’s a joke.
“I walk up to you on the street, pull out a gun, and shoot you in the head” is not a joke, because there’s nothing humorous about it.
@ full metal ox
Let’s play ‘cake or soap’
Come to think of it, isn’t cake a synonym for bar when it comes to soap? So looks like this issue has been around for a while.
@Alan Robertshaw:
Compare with the sort of Special K bars my mom used to make for Scout meetings (a widespread term is “Scotcheroos”, although I never heard her call them that; it may be a regionalism):
http://www.cookingwithkelsey.com/uploads/9/6/8/3/9683617/published/special-k-bars.jpg?1590868626
(An unintended consequence is that rides down I-75 through Kentucky trigger my cravings for this dessert; a lot of the roads are cut through hills, laying bare cross-sections of rock strata that evoke the chocolate, butterscotch, and peanut butter layers:
http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/road-cut-us119-11779615.jpg)
@Gaebolga:
More like just a plain old sledgehammer that these shitsticks are “pretending” to believe (I doubt even they think anyone’s fooled) is an inflatable clown hammer. There needs to be some actual humor involved to claim it’s a joke.
“I walk up to you on the street, pull out a gun, and shoot you in the head” is not a joke, because there’s nothing humorous about it.
Writers portraying a certain DC Comics character take note. (Can anyone remember the last time the Joker was actually funny?)