There is nothing in nerd culture worth getting violent over.
There’s been a lot of really bad comic books, films, and video games put out over the recent years. Often times what makes them subpar is the constant politicking. I did a comedic review series on YouTube of exactly how bad the comic America was. Any time I think of the actions of the characters of Rose Tico or Admiral Holdo in The Last Jedi I wonder why on earth anyone thinks that Rian Johnson can write women well. Then you have Mass Effect: Andromeda which got so out of hand with its pandering towards LGBT groups that it dead-named a transgender character. For those who don’t know, dead-naming is a giant social taboo among many transgender people, so this move exposed the writer as tackling the subject without doing proper research. My personal guess would be that they probably don’t know any trans people personally. Regardless, the game flopped.
There is not a single time that I ever read any of those listed above, or watched, or played that I thought to myself “I’m gonna punch fans of this in the face.”
Never once.
The reason being is that people are allowed to disagree. People are allowed to have tastes. People are allowed to support what they want. People are allowed to criticize what they want. If someone criticizes something that you like, it doesn’t mean that there’s any sort of a controversy. I had friends who were offended that Christopher Priest wrote the character of Jessica Cruz (co-created by noted republican Ethan Van Sciver) making fun of Sean Hannity of FOX News in Justice League. Personally, I thought it was a funny joke. Not for one second did I think of hitting anyone over it. I’ve seen people call the premise of the anime The Rising of the Shield Hero sexist. They’re completely wrong, but they have a right to their wrong opinion. It’s no reason to punch them.
For some reason, there is a segment of the geek realm that has become more and more okay with physical violence. They’ve also become more and more okay with ruining peoples’ lives. The gut reaction of many people of a certain political leaning (hint: it isn’t to the right) is to strike out at anyone who disagrees with them. A prevalent example would be Jeremy Hambly being assaulted at Gen Con. Should you go Twitter, you’ll find that there are individuals on there who are zealously devoted to trying to deplatform Ethan Van Sciver. Then there’s the attempt at ruining the career of Vic Mignogna. That same attempt is now becoming an attempt to ruin the lives of his supporters as well, such as Yellow Flash, with former Channel Awesome personality Marzgurl calling for him to be doxxed. To give you a gaze into her character, she called the friend who leaked this desire of hers to the public a “backstabber.” How it’s backstabbing to possibly prevent someone’s life being exposed to the world is beyond me.
What I also find peculiar is how they justify these sorts of things. A gateway into the mind of this type of individual can be found in the deposition testimony of Mark Waid during his lawsuit with Richard C. Meyer. For the sake of disclosure, Richard and I are friendly and he has given me quite a bit of advice on the future launches of my comic books. What I found interesting about Mark Waid and his testimony was that he had stated that white supremacy existed on “a spectrum”. Funny as it is to imagine the choads that make up the Alt-Right as a bunch of racist autists, Mark is wrong. Mark likely knows he’s wrong. This “supremacy spectrum” is an excuse to try and label people with conservative politics as “evil” with no basis in reality. It’s a pathetic attempt to justify evils done toward his fellow man.
Given how many non-white people they throw this at, it rings hollow. Personally I have three comic book projects that I’m working on right now. Zero percent of my artists are white men.
This is where we find ourselves though. We find ourselves in a position where people will ignore reality and ignore evidence to feed a narrative. It’s a purely tribalistic notion. It’s all about trying to bolster people on one side of the political isle while trying to silence the other with force. It’s a cross between something like bad parenting and an even worse philosophy. Equality to a sane man is a place where all people are treated the same despite their background. Equality to these insane people is where you have to agree with a specific set of ideals or you’re a subhuman. If you’re a subhuman, then all manner of misfortune can beset you and they won’t feel guilty at all for supporting or cheering it on. Likely they’ll do it again. It’s the same sort of mentality that leads toward someone getting a bike lock upside the head or maced in the eyes.
Obviously some people I’ve mentioned are people that I’m friendly with. There are even friends that I have that I won’t mention who have been in similar situations, and it breaks my heart even thinking about what’s happened to them also. People in my own circles expect similar to happen to me once my own comics launch or if my YouTube channel continues to grow. There was even a bit of hesitance when I was asked to attend this year’s International Conference on Men’s Issues. It lasted all of about a half second, because my desire to promote discussion and to meet with other people to discuss important issues supersedes my fear of possible bad things. I think that’s true of many people that I’ve had the pleasure of knowing.
Ultimately, there needs to be a solution. I believe that the solution is just to continue to move forward. To not surrender to the pressures of those who would do these terrible things. And the reason being is that they do these things to try and get people to be silent. To fall in line. To believe something not by being convinced of the idea, but by force. The only way that the Social Justice Inquisition wins is when you submit to them.
Do not submit.
