- Mar 13, 2020
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I think this is where things are shifting a bit though.OK, but what are people actually doing in response to Leavitt's involvement? They're just... complaining. Sometimes loudly.
So what? I mean, he made videos specifically to make his points known; the right to reply exists. There's no power being leveraged other than that. And if the studio sees that as a PR nightmare, isn't that just a consequence of making highly opinionated videos?
We can't say he can say whatever he wants and then people can't respond in kind. And actions have consequences.
It's one thing to voice your complaints about this guy, the content in his videos, etc...but it's going a step further than that.
The articles being written? Fine. The research going into the articles? Not fine.
You can see this for yourself by visiting a bunch of the different articles and they ALL share the same talking points, the same exact video links, etc.
They put a bunch of labels on him such as being an anti-feminist, which isn't true. In one of the videos they literally linked to him being anti-feminist, he specifically says that he is in support of feminism, just not certain brands of it. I don't know how that's controversial when people also have different takes on brands of masculinity...
They called him alt-right and in none of the videos I watched did I see any indication of that to be true. In fact, none of the articles even EXPLAIN why he's alt-right, they just say that he is.
They say he "attacked" "social justice warriors" (I can't even keep up with all the labels on people anymore), but in all the videos I watched again, he didn't incite anybody. He very calmly lays out his points, explains them with polls and other forms of research, and that's it. He didn't do a Quartering and just highlight what people said and then let the dogs out and they're acting like he did. All you have to do is look at the comments on his videos and you can see that it's largely discussion about the topics and not just blindly hating people.
They even went as far as to say he was promoting a toxic work environment, with no claims from anyone to support this. It may be true or not, but we don't know because they didn't talk to literally a single person from the studios.
Not to mention, Warner Bros KNEW about the content of his videos. He disclosed it to them and they hired him anyways. Now he's "resigned" and just due to the fact he's going to make a video explaining what happened, because he's pretty much been forced to by the stories written about him, now members of the press are already writing about how he's going to be an awful alt-right grifter before he's even had a chance to tell his side of what's going on.
Maybe he will be or maybe he won't, but the press has their mind made up and it's just wild to me the level of irresponsibility this has shown. The other ironic thing is that with all these labels on him, I can tell you from experience with talking with other people that he's going to have a hard time finding work in games again because anywhere he goes, the media is going to make it a story and highlight the studio that hired him with negative press. So what's left to do? Well, I guess court the audience that's supporting him now thanks to how the press covered this story.
So yea, it's absolutely fine to criticize and disagree with this guy, but the media went a step further than that and put a lot of damaging labels / assumptions on him that they provided literally ZERO evidence for. I shared a thread about this on Twitter, but I deleted it because I know what will come my way for calling this out...
I can completely disagree with the guy, think he has cringe video titles / thumbnails and is courting a certain audience that I vehemently disagree with, but this was ugly. It wasn't good journalism and watching this all go down and how quickly the public just fell in line with it without doing one ounce of research on the guy has made me feel extremely uncomfortable this past week.
I totally agree there should be consequences for actions, and if this guy was anything like The Quartering and specifically played up a grift to incite mobs after the media he disagrees with and then turn around and play the victim? Fuck yea, I think he should be removed from having a platform because of his irresponsible use of influence.
This Troy guy though? He's about as far as you can get from someone like The Quartering, whose only intention is to rile people up for his own financial gains.
Even funnier is that I have publicly questioned the reporting on this, and this Liam guy that started is definitely going around and namesearching himself / subject to find anyone that doesn't support the narrative and is blocking them, including me.
That's the current state of social media. If you don't automatically believe in the story that's being laid out in front of you, you're against them and you support the "opposition" or whatever you want to call out. I can't tell you how many times I've been attacked by people just for wanting more information on the story because that's supporting "both sides". I've given up trying to reason with people like that. As a journalist, it's my damn job to know as MUCH INFORMATION AS POSSIBLE, before making a report. I don't know how we've gotten so far away from that...you know how far up your own ass you have to be to write a story making these kinds of allegations against people without knowing for 100% certain that it's the truth?
It's crazy.
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