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June 30, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
01:05:08
What Happened At #VidConUS 2017？
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In this video, I will demonstrate that everything Anita Sarkeesian says about me personally is not true.
I attended VidCon 2017 in Los Angeles, and I went to meet a group of fellow YouTubers who deal with similar subjects.
At VidCon, there were several panels that featured Anita Sarkeesian, so we thought we would tend to actually hear what she had to say, and if there was a question and answer session, perhaps we could actually pose some of the criticism to her that we have that she has for years refused to address.
We arrived 10 minutes before the first panel was due to start to find the room virtually deserted, so we decided to sit front and center.
Now, we understood that this was going to be rather provocative, as Anita probably wasn't fans of us.
So Dave Cullen of Computing Forever suggested that perhaps if she treats us with respect and professionalism and shows some dignity, what we could do is give her a standing ovation afterwards, to show that we could respect her in turn.
This of course did not happen.
Instead, Anita spotted us, in particular, me, singled me out, and then subjected me to a torrent of abuse.
on youtube you get shitheads like this dude who are making these dumbass videos are making endless videos that just go after every feminist we had been silent in our seats listening to what they had to say and when she says whatever dude she's replying to me shouting back at her i just want to talk
But don't just take my word for it, because her audience was made up of a large number of YouTubers, and they all have their own opinions on what happened.
I went there to just see Anita talk and not harass her.
I wouldn't have been lumped in with those people.
If I knew that there were people there to harass her, I wouldn't have been associated with them.
And in that vein of thought, I can actually go ahead and let you guys know that I really feel like everybody that was present there wasn't there to harass her.
Now listen, I'm not going to go ahead and speak for Sargon of Akkad.
I'm not going to say that, you know, he hasn't said some questionable things about her in the past.
It doesn't matter how right or wrong he was, you know, none of that shit is of any consequence.
The point is that he wasn't there to yell at her.
He wasn't there to insult her.
He wasn't there to harass her.
He was just there to listen to her.
And I remember sending them a video afterwards.
I said, listen, we were there to kind of give you the opportunity that you guys wouldn't give us, and that is to listen to them.
That's what I wanted to do, is to listen to people like Anita.
That was a YouTuber called Bunty King, and he's not familiar with my past with Anita, because he's only become acquainted with me recently.
However, he has heard the defamatory lies of Anita Sarkeesian and her followers, which I will address later in this video.
Anita Sarkeesian's public diatribe against me went viral.
And needless to say, I wasn't happy because it broke VidCon's terms and conditions, specifically the condition of don't harass or abuse people.
So I made a video about it, directed to Hank and John Green, asking her to be removed from a panel that she was going to appear on two days later, which was ironically an anti-harassment panel.
Despite the numerous complaints that they received that Anita Sarkeesian, one of their featured creators, used her platform on one of their panels to abuse an audience member, I didn't get a response.
It was only after Anita Sarkeesian appeared on the anti-harassment panel that Hank Green issued a response on Medium.com.
In it, Hank makes some rather questionable and frankly inaccurate statements, such as saying that it is openly known that women on the internet are subject to far greater amounts and intensity of harassment and abuse than men.
A statement which is frankly factually inaccurate, but I'll address it later on in the video.
Hank directly addresses the skeptic community.
He says, there is a fairly prominent genre of social political commentary on the internet that focuses on specific individuals as a path to attack ideas and build outrage.
These creators do not violate harassment policies, but the result is often that the vitriol of their followers ends up focused on not ideas, but on people, usually women.
Many people in these communities end up believing the righteous thing to do is threaten, harass, and dox the thinkers they are arguing with.
Whether or not this is an intentional strategy to cultivate harassment or an awful side effect, the result is some of the worst discourse and most intense harassment on the internet.
Unlike his previous statement, this one is actually half right.
This community does not violate harassment policies.
But unfortunately, this is the internet.
You will find in every community people who threaten, harass, and dox.
There is unfortunately very little more that can be done besides condemning and reporting these accounts.
He continues with, This year we had a contingent of attendees, some who paid, some who snuck in with fake passes, I paid, I can't speak to anyone else, who have either been perpetrators of this harassment or had, for years, watched as the outrage they cultivated resulted in followers doxing, harassing, intimidating, and even threatening the lives of the creators on these panels.
This is, to my knowledge, not true.
There was no one present at Anita's panel who had been the perpetrator of any harassment, or in any way deliberately cultivated followers who would do such a thing.
In fact, I know through first-hand conversations with the content creators that were there, they all condemn doxing, harassing, intimidating, or threatening, because these things are not only morally reprehensible, but counterproductive to dialogue.
But unfortunately, Hank's defamation of the skeptic community just keeps going.
He says, it is difficult to imagine that this group of people who are aware that their channels have been base camps for years of harassment of some of our panelists did not realize that their arriving early to fill up the front three rows of the panel was going to be intimidating.
I'm sorry, I'm really going to need a citation on that one, Hank, because I don't believe you know anything at all about the base camps of the people harassing your panelists.
Especially as you had previously expressed complete ignorance of our channels entirely.
And I have to say, I personally would think that seasoned public figures such as the ones on your panel would be able to be professional towards the audience regardless of the makeup of that audience.
He then goes on to address what is by VidCon's own code of conduct, Anita's abuse of me.
During the panel, a panellist called out one of the audience members for being someone who has made her life very difficult and wished she didn't have to give him attention because he was a quote garbage human.
Look, we don't want our panelists to insult our audience members, even when we completely understand that the comment exists in a much broader and pretty messed up context.
And if I might interject, Hank, one that you claim to have no knowledge of, and if you have only spoken to my abuser, you only have their word.
But don't worry, I will put you straight in this video, even when people have said hateful things that everyone in our office disagrees with.
We have a policy, and it exists not just to protect people at the show, but to protect our ability to have these conversations.
I'm glad you can recognise that, Hank.
Do you not think that you should enforce your own code of conduct when one of your paid featured creators abuses from the platform you provided a paying audience member?
Our founder, Hank Green, talked with our panelists and said two things.
He told her that her comment had violated our policy, but he understood that there was a broader context, which to be clear, we were blissfully ignorant of until this weekend and remain inexpert in.
Then he apologized to her for not being more aware of and active in the understanding of the situation before the event, which resulted in her being subjected to a hostile environment that she had not signed up for.
We agreed that she would go forward and continue on as a panelist on a later panel.
And if I can now give a bit of commentary on this, Hank, this is insane.
You admit you don't know what's going on here.
You admit you have no idea.
And you admit that Anita Sarkeesian abused me from your platform and you allowed her to appear on a panel about preventing abuse.
Because even though she was abusing me, you think she is the victim here.
She is not.
She is the perpetrator.
This is insane.
Why are you doing this?
As one might imagine, this absolutely baffling decision on the part of VidCon and the Vlog brothers was met with incredulity.
If you were looking for fair analysis and commentary from anyone on YouTube, you would probably not be able to find anyone more credible than Philip DeFranco.
And this is what Philip DeFranco had to say about your decision.
Debate or being critical of someone's opinions, that's not always an attack.
In fact, more and more these days, I feel like people see criticisms as just hate and attacks on them.
But to say that this man just showing up to see this panel was threatening and harassment, I find that ridiculous.
And I completely concur.
This is ridiculous.
This is absolutely unbelievable, especially for a man who claims to be coming from a position of ignorance on the subject.
You did not even contact me regarding what had happened from my point of view.
You had listened to the abuser's perspective, decided you agreed with it, and then condoned it using VidCon as a platform.
Keemstar, the host of the channel Drama Alert, posted a video to you on Twitter that was incredibly salient and explained to you exactly what the dangers of doing this were.
Hey Hank, I just want to say, man, it must stink being in your position with all the drama that's going on in VidCon right now.
But as I've been watching the coverage of VidCon for many years now throughout our community, I know that VidCon has a pretty good record of eliminating like bullying and harassment at the actual event.
I'm sure you're already aware of this, of what happened with Anita Sarkeesi and Sargon.
But I mean, it's pretty cut and dry that Anita Sarkeesi did break VidCon's rules on stage on one of the panels at VidCon calling Sargon a garbage human.
I'm just really hoping from my perspective that VidCon takes action so I can report, you know, on DrumAlert that, you know, VidCon did the right thing here.
Because if there is no action, then it kind of puts VidCon in this like, you know, political stance, right?
A political statement.
Meaning that if VidCon is not fair and open to everyone, then VidCon is not for everyone.
It's not for creators.
It's only for certain creators with certain political agendas.
And I really hope that doesn't happen because VidCon has been such a, you know, thing that people enjoy throughout our community and would hate to have that label.
So Hank Green, please take some action so I could say everything was done fair here.
Thanks, Hank.
And thank you for all you do for the YouTube community.
I truly mean that.
As we already know, Hank agreed that Anita Sarkeesian was justified in breaking VidCon's code of conduct and allowed her to carry on with her second panel.
Her second panel featured her and a few other content creators, most notably Boogie2988, who's rather famous in these spheres.
This was his opinion leading up to appearing on this panel.
If this doesn't come across like one of my normal videos, it's because I'm very, very anxious.
I'm very anxious after what happened.
I've been anxious about what happened three months before it happened.
I've been anxious ever since.
So this is going to be a very hard video to make, but I do think it's important.
I've gone to VidCon for four years in a row, and I've done panels and signings, and I've met a bunch of different people, and it's one of the best experiences of my life.
This year's VidCon was a little bit different because I went into it very, very nervous.
A little bit of social anxiety, and that social anxiety got worse because some altercations were happening between the crowds and security.
So that made me very nervous.
But what made me more nervous is one of my panels ending cyberbullying and then one of my fellow panelists.
Boogie is, of course, referring directly to what Anita Sarkeesian had done to me.
And unfortunately, on the first day of VidCon, something happened that made my anxiety go almost completely out of control.
During Anita's first panel called Women on Gaming, that panel went very, very wrong with some people attacking them during the QA section.
And even during that panel, some people who were sitting right near the front are people she considers to be detractors of hers.
And she became so nervous and felt so attacked that she actually called one of those detractors names right to their face.
I'm sure you've heard about this controversy.
And because of that, I began to be very afraid that if she disagreed with me, she might do the same during our panel, making me feel very uncomfortable and making the audience feel very uncomfortable.
And that's definitely not something I could handle.
And my anxiety got so bad that really up to about an hour before the panel, I had every intention of canceling on them.
But I really don't like upsetting the VidCon team.
And I didn't want to have to try to explain all of that to them, the reason I was canceling, but why I would be doing everything else I did that day.
And I also thought that could be perceived as an attack.
And I just wanted to do the panel and I just wanted to hope for the best and hope that everything worked out.
My anxiety got the best of me and just about every YouTuber I know and even some of my fans and even a fellow panelist that I got to spend some time with and even the moderator for the panel, I ran by all of my talking points and asked, do you think this is something that would be offensive?
Do you think this is something that would upset Anita or anybody else in the audience?
I wanted to make sure to get this right and I practiced and I practiced and I practiced and I practiced and I practiced.
I think we should just pause here for a second, Hank.
Do you think it is reasonable for Boogie to be this afraid of appearing on a panel with another one of your guests?
Because I certainly don't.
And the only reason he is this afraid is because Anita Sarkeesian can abuse anyone she wants with impunity with your consent.
Your backing, Hank.
You personally endorse this.
This is what Boogie said on his panel.
And I'm sure you'll find it to be highly controversial.
I practiced this one for weeks okay.
I think sometimes because we do talk about certain subsets of people, specifically people without privilege, some people can get the misconception that only those throats are harder.
And I say this as the only male on this panel and I say this as a white cis male with a person who's in a place of privilege, that I understand that some communities have it worse, but I have trouble really understanding that because the depths of what we've gone through.
And I mentioned it earlier, a few years back, we had somebody put out a hit on my life on the tour network for $3,500, and then they sent me the link and they delivered a pizza to my house to let them know that we were there.
The absurd thing was they had the address wrong.
They had my friend's address because a friend had left a box in my house, and that box had a label and that label appeared in the video.
So I had to call my friend and say, Jason, get out of your house.
They're going to kill you.
It's like, what are you talking about?
I sent him a screen cap of the hit, and then the doorbell rings, and it's dominoes.
And he's like, oh, we don't want any pizza, please.
We've had boxes of feces delivered to our homes.
We've had threats in my life, my family.
We have been made to feel very, very uncomfortable.
And I don't say this to dismiss anyone else's pain or to say that I have it worse because I genuinely don't believe that I do.
I just want to say that if it can happen to me, and I'm coming from a place of privilege, I think this can happen to anyone.
It can happen to any of you who choose to create tomorrow.
And I think when we get that misconception, I think that we have naysayers.
Well, it's not worse for women.
It's not worse for people of color.
I think when we focus it on a human rights issue, not a woman's issue, not a man's issue, not a gay or straight issue, or a fat person's or skinny person's issue, but it's a human rights issue that affects us all at least in some way.
I feel we can unite these subsets and these groups and these different people.
And I think we can fight it together.
And when we do that, I think that's how we actually could potentially end cyberbullying.
But we have to end, I think, this freak of squabble between each group before we can do that.
us.
Boogie's point was not only a good one and very well received by the audience, but it seems to directly answer a question asked of Anita Sarkeesian on the previous panel by another YouTuber called Joey Salads.
I have a serious question for everybody up there.
Why do you guys act like only women face harassment online?
I'd like to see you freak out about it.
That's exactly what you guys are doing.
You're feeling like a human being.
I mean, even your language, like freak out about like now.
You're just mocking me.
That's not the same other community station.
See, you're harassing me right now when I'm in the audience.
Now look, next question, question and answer.
The question is, is online harassment gendered?
And if it is not, why is it being treated as if it is?
And the answer is no.
Online harassment is not gendered.
At least if the Pew Research Center is to be believed, they think most online harassment is directed at men.
And it seems to be a very strange turn of events that when Joey Salads asks the question, he is deplatformed.
And when Boogie speaks to this question and answers it by saying, no, it is a human rights issue, not a women's rights issue, Anita Sarkeesian abuses him too.
A couple of more panelists had their closing arguments and then we left the stage and I'm shaking, very, very nervous, but I felt like it went well.
And when I get off of the stage at the bottom of the panels, there's Anita and she seemed to be very, very upset.
And I don't remember exactly what she said.
I'm paraphrasing here, but she said in the very upset that I think it was very fucking uncool that you said what you said there at the end, knowing that no one else would have enough time to respond.
And I bet you can imagine how that affected my anxiety because the exact focal point of my anxiety for the entire weekend, in fact, for the last six weeks, the nightmare scenario that I was terrified of actually had come true.
I had upset somebody who I very, very much had tried to not upset and did not want to upset.
And this story is corroborated by another panelist who was there at the time and saw the thing happen.
I was standing right there.
Anita came up to him and said, you know, I'm sorry for the harassment that you've gone through, but I think that was kind of fucked up what you said at the end of the panel.
I don't think that we had enough time in the last five minutes to unpack that and to talk about it.
And I think it was kind of fucked up.
And again, I'm going to turn to Philip DeFranco for what I would consider to be the most fair and reasonable assessment of all of the events that we have covered so far.
You're essentially criticizing someone for filming someone, as you even said, breaking VidCon policy.
It's a showcasing of actions of an individual.
That seems a bit ridiculous to me.
If I go to a Markiplier panel and I want to film him because I want to expose what I think are flaws in his open argument, and that he at one point says, Philip DeFranco's a little bitch, baby.
How does my filming make me the bad guy?
And here's what I'll say.
I'm a fan of VidCon.
I'm a fan of John and Hank, who of course started.
I personally believe this move is weak and I don't agree with it.
Of course, I don't run VidCon.
You say someone Anita violated VidCon policy, but that you also kind of understand where it came from.
Also adding that one of the founders apologized to her.
She would then go on to be on another panel where reports came out later and then he even made a video on it, a YouTuber by the name of Boogie, who said he was scared of offending her the entire panel.
And then after the panel, she yelled at him.
And luckily, they were able to talk it out, but still, that is an aggressive person.
He's right, Hank.
She is an aggressive person.
She appears to be an abusive bully.
And the thing is, this is not a new pattern of behavior for Anita Sarkeesian.
She has power and she will use it.
Returning to your debrief, you say, what both of these issues have driven home to the VidCon team is that people are often bad at understanding their own power.
We all imagine ourselves to be simply people, just another human being among billions with one tiny voice.
But trolling, whatever that is, really does drive people from our platforms and ends their dreams of being creators.
A simple stroll through the hotel lobby can really endanger people's safety.
Not only is that also ridiculous, but that's aimed at me, Hank.
One of the victims of Anita Sarkeesian's abuse.
And it's highly ironic when you say, maybe that is especially true when creators have built a fanbase with the kind of inflammatory rhetoric and audience development strategies that can potentially turn their followers into more than just trolls.
We are all watching as those techniques wear at the fabric of not just internet culture, but our whole world.
We hope that one of the many lessons learned at VidCon 2017 will be that it is very difficult to correctly imagine the power you can have over other people, and maybe we will all work harder to understand that in future.
Again, this is highly ironic given that you are defending Anita Sarkeesian.
And again, don't take my word for it, as a straight cis white male, I wouldn't know what I'm talking about.
I'm privileged.
Why don't we ask another feminist of what Anita Sarkeesian's power is like?
Personalities have an awareness in popular culture above and beyond their direct audience, meaning people have an opinion about them, but they've never sat down and watched a single one of their videos all the way through.
Now, I have a unique perspective on this whole thing because I have been harassed by some of the followers of both Anita Sarkeesian and Sargon of Akkad.
What do I mean by harassment?
I mean a pattern of things that go beyond insults, campaigns to discredit me, to smear me, threats.
That is a video game feminist called Liana Kirzner.
I have had two conversations with her, which were very polite and very enjoyable.
And I am sorry to hear that anyone who listens to my channel has harassed her.
And I denounce it without question.
This is her opinion on Anita's influence on the gaming industry itself.
I think it was a gaffe.
She is not good off script.
And I'm going to be brutal here, but at the end, I'm going to say I'm saying this because I'm concerned on multiple levels.
This is coming from a good place.
So you feminist frequency people out there who have engaged in your own harassment against me, who have gotten me blacklisted in this industry, who have basically made people afraid to support me because it crosses your ire and they don't want that.
They don't want the trouble of treating me like a human being because you have sent up the flares in this damn industry that anybody opposes you is subhuman and bad for women.
So if you think his behavior is bad, you better look in the damn mirror and check yourself because you are guilty of everything that you accuse them of.
The problem is you are more effective at what you do.
You actually cause people to be shunned in this industry.
People deny me interviews and don't want me covering their product because I am anti-feminist frequency.
Not because people think you're right, but because they're afraid.
Okay, everybody is afraid of getting spanked by the feminist frequency paddle because that is a rallying cry to the Twitter mobs.
Think about that.
Think about how you feel right now.
The next time you try to attack a game because you don't like it.
Make very, very, very sure that what you are criticizing is actually something that you can back up instead of just something that makes you feel personally uncomfortable or that you don't like.
Hank, why do you think she refused to answer this very straightforward question?
If I could, I'd like to ask this question specifically to Anita.
Is that okay?
Yes?
I don't know if I'll answer it.
You don't have to.
I'm just curious.
The various things that you've said online over the past few years, do you truly believe that?
Okay.
Dude, can we please remove him from the question line?
That is not harassment.
It's a stupid question.
Can we please remove this catch mask in the present?
Why wouldn't she just say yes?
I can't imagine being on a panel and being asked, do you believe the things that you say and refusing to answer?
That's worse than saying no.
It makes it look like she has an ulterior motive.
And again, the criticisms of her are numerous and valid.
And again, I'll refer to Keemstar and Liana Kaye just for consistency's sake when they point out why people don't like Anita Sarkeesian.
Imagine having radical thoughts and radical opinions and then saying them out to the whole world.
And then when you're criticized for it, you claim that the people criticizing you are attacking you.
It doesn't matter how hard you try.
Logical people will always win because there's always going to be more normal people where their brains work correctly than crazy fucking people.
So when the crazy people are saying all this weird stuff, the normal people are like, oh yeah, I don't agree with that.
And then when the crazy people are like, oh, you don't agree with me?
Oh, you're attacking me.
Then even more normal people are like, yeah, I really, I really don't agree with that.
If you want to throw those punches like you have done to video game developers again and again and again and again and again.
And if you want to throw the punches at gamers, like you and your compatriots have done again and again and again and again and again in order to earn the respect of this industry instead of everybody just being irrationally terrified of how you're going to terrorize their product, then you have to show you can take a few hits.
That's how this works.
That is what fighting means.
That is what being a warrior means.
It means you're gonna get knocked down, but you get back up.
And you know what?
You can't whine about it.
Because if you really look at it, you threw the first damn punch.
You went after Princess Peach.
You went after Lara Croft.
You went after Ellie from The Last of Us.
For God's sake.
Like there is no female character in games that you have not gone after.
And that is your right.
But you need to understand the deeply personal, tender, vulnerable relationships that gamers have with those characters.
And what you call harassment, in a lot of cases, not always, there has been some legitimate stuff, but in a lot of cases, these things that are harassment are howls of anguish from gamers because you are traumatizing them.
You are saying the thing that got them through a painful adolescence is evil and harmful.
So you better be prepared to take a few blows.
Next, I'm going to address the baseless accusations that I am somehow solely or mostly responsible for the harassment that Anita Sarkeesian apparently receives.
And that comes from both her, her cronies, and you, Hank.
The man who claims to know nothing about this.
And the way you've acted, maybe you don't.
So I will educate you and I will accept your apology.
Anita Sarkeesian began her Kickstarter tropes vs. Women in Video Games in May 2012.
And by June 2012, she was already promoting the fact that she was being heavily harassed.
After complaining at length about this harassment and after it being widely publicized by the gaming press, she received a massive boost to the amount of money she made with this Kickstarter.
From the originally modest request for $6,000 to $160,000.
Again, I stress, this was done in 2012.
And let's just assume for the sake of argument, all of this was legitimate harassment and she made up absolutely none of it.
I could not be responsible for the harassment Anita Sarkeesian received because I didn't make my first YouTube video for another year.
This is something Anita managed on her own.
She was divisive enough and well publicized enough to not need me at all.
It is simply not possible for me to be the font of Anita Sarkeesian's harassment.
So you can take that the fuck back, especially when we go on to what I'm going to show you next.
These are the most relevant videos I could find on my channel regarding Anita Sarkeesian.
And in none of them do I incite, harass, or do anything other than try to dissuade people from doing anything to Anita.
I want you to watch all of these.
I will list them in the channel description with all of my other sources.
And I want you, Hank, to sit down and watch them.
If you can find anything in these videos that is not legitimate criticism, you can let me know.
Because I know I have done nothing but discourage people from harassing Anita Sarkeesian.
In fact, I call her a professional victim because that's how she makes her money.
Here are just a few clips that I found going through these videos to see if there was anything in anything I had ever done that would incite harassment.
Even though she regularly receives donations?
Death threats.
Oh yeah, of course.
The donations come after the death threats.
She receives death threats from people too immature.
Hang on, do you know who the people sending anonymous death threats to Anita Sarkeesian are?
Because I'd like them arrested.
Turned very real when her online attackers published her social security number, her home address.
I have left a link to the FBI's cybercrime division.
Please contact them.
Please find the people responsible.
I don't want Anita Sarkeesian getting death or rape threats either.
Contact them so the individuals can be caught, they can be brought to justice and we can all get on with our lives.
And not only that, I have featured criticism by feminists leveled at Anita Sarkeesian's work because you will not find someone who will defend her criticism because her criticism is terrible.
Now, I actually do have some criticisms of Anita Sarkeesian myself.
For example, I'm not particularly fond of the way in one episode she refers to sex workers as prostituted women.
I think that she, a lot of the times in her series, she tends to focus on female characters that can be white.
She is not really particularly good at exploring, I guess, the intersection of how, for example, a black female character or a female character from of another ethnicity might be sort of treated differently or exoticized or something like that.
Another criticism I have is that she tends to rely too much on tropes and tropes are difficult to use as a basis for critique because they have poorly defined boundaries and they can be subject to all sorts of different subversions and it's easy to argue whether or not something even counts as an example of a trope.
And those are just a few of the things that I have that I disagree with her on.
I have even gone as far as to make videos to try and investigate into who is harassing her.
To find those people so I can stop them because they are as much my enemy as they are hers because they are a weapon she can use against me.
I don't want to be lumped into the same category as the people who are harassing Anita Sarkeesian.
And you know what you find?
You'll find what I found.
She released an entire week's worth of the harassment she received on Twitter.
I went through each and every one.
As far as I can tell, it's just kids.
It's just Call of Duty playing kids who absolutely loathe her because they call her a bitch.
I don't agree with it.
I wish they wouldn't do it.
What do you want me to do, Hank?
But I very much doubt that these twitchy Call of Duty kids are listening to my 30 minutes plus political videos.
I would be very surprised if they were interested in my content.
So let's take a look at the statement Anita Sarkeesian made after she abused me.
This is a statement that you are defending if you are defending Anita Sarkeesian.
This is the statement that informs everything you know about this, because you didn't take any time at all to come and talk to me.
She says, To kick off the Women Online panel at VidCon last Thursday, the moderator posed the question, why do we still have to talk about the harassment of women?
I replied, because I think one of my biggest harassers is sitting in the front row.
This is not true, and I have proven this.
He showed up with several others.
Together, his group took up the front two rows of the panel.
Their presence was plainly not, as one of them said later in an apology video he posted to Twitter, to give us the chance we never gave them, and to hear us out, but was instead to intimidate me and put me on edge.
Nonsense.
She is not a mind reader.
We know why we turned up.
We were quite happy to hear her out, and instead, she took the liberty to abuse me.
They will no doubt plead innocent and act shocked that what they characterise as the outrageousness of such allegations.
It's only because they are outrageous.
This too is part of their strategy, gaslighting, acting in a way intended to encourage me and their other targets to doubt themselves and to wonder if all of this just isn't in our heads.
But to anyone who examines the patterns of behaviour with clear eyes, the intentions of their actions are undeniably apparent.
Rather ironic, don't you think, Hank?
You know, given that she was the abuser here, as you have admitted already.
We had to take up two rows on the right-hand side, because half of the front row was reserved for people who didn't turn up.
But I tell you what, we're just at the beginning of the crazy rabbit hole that you have signed off on.
Carl is a man who literally profits from harassing me and other women.
He makes over $5,000 a month on Patreon for creating YouTube videos that mock, insult and discredit myself and other women online.
And he's not alone.
He is one of several YouTubers who profit from the cottage industry of online harassment and anti-feminism.
Together these people have millions of followers who are regularly encouraged by the videos and tweets of these individuals to harass me and other women who make videos daring to assert the basic humanity of women.
People of colour, trans folks, and members of other marginalised groups.
This is of course not true.
You can check this for yourself by simply looking at my channel.
Here is, for example, the last year's worth of videos that I have made.
Apart from this recent kerfuffle, I have hardly mentioned her at all.
As far as I can tell, there have been two videos in which she has been tangentially referenced, as in, she was not the main focus of the video.
Look at all of this.
This is not about her, this is hardly about women at all, and it's certainly not about women as a class or anything of the sort.
This is about ideology.
This is about political events, and this is why I make $5,000 a month on Patreon.
And Anita is so powerful that she can merely dog whistle the amount I make a month, and suddenly Patreon is investigating me over my apparent harassment of her.
Because of this event, Patreon is investigating me for violating its code of conduct through my behaviour at VidCon, a representative confirmed to Mike.
Because of what happened at VidCon, it has been on our radar, so we have been looking into it.
Unfortunately for Anita, two hours later, Patreon followed up an email to say that I was in the clear.
While distasteful and definitely not something we agree with, Sargon's content and conduct do not violate our policies.
She has lied, Hank.
And her lie was an attempt to defund me.
This is something I could have sued her over.
But more importantly to me, I have a family to support, Hank.
This is the kind of sociopath you are defending.
Do you understand that?
She is a liar and a bully and not afraid to exercise her power whenever she can.
And she does not care who she hurts.
And Patreon are supporting me over it, even though they say that my content is distasteful and not something they agree with.
But it doesn't matter to Mike.com, who are apparently Anit Sarkeesian cheerleaders.
They say, I have not posted content to my account since November 2016.
In addition, we have received very few complaints about his page.
What do you have to say, Hank?
Unlike many Patreon users who offer exclusive content in exchange for donations, I publish my material on YouTube and I keep my Patreon clean, essentially using it only to cash in.
If you appreciate my work and would like to reciprocate, $1 a month on Patreon is the best way, I write on my page, offering no rewards.
Because I'm not trying to incentivize people through, I don't know, means I find distasteful.
I don't want to try and bribe them into supporting me.
If they think I make good content, they might choose to donate a dollar.
And thankfully, 2,500 plus people do.
Because I work really, really hard.
Interestingly, I think Anita Sarkeesian is confusing me with Thunderfoot, who still does, on a regular basis, make debunking videos regarding her assertions.
I'm personally not really interested in anything Anita has to say because she has been revealed to not know what she's talking about years ago.
This is not interesting to me.
This is pointless to me.
Nobody thinks she's right.
Nobody thinks she's telling the truth.
But I suppose someone has to do it, and I'm not going to say there's no value to the work he does.
And just to be completely clear, Thunderfoot is not in favour of harassing Anita Sarkeesian either.
He also actively discourages it, so don't even think about shifting the blame.
Getting back to Anita's statement that again, I remind you, you clearly must agree with, if you think that she's right and I'm not, without having spoken to me, because of the constant flood of threats and harassment I have received over the past five years, again, I've been doing this for about three and a half years, simply for being a woman who argues for the basic humanity of women in a deeply misogynistic culture,
do you honestly think in the West we live in a deeply misogynistic culture?
I mean that is an insane statement.
No one is arguing against the basic humanity of women.
But that's what you must believe, Hank.
That nonsense is something you must believe.
But it gets better.
I went for a very long time rarely participating in public conversations.
Being the target of cyber mob harassment is a traumatizing experience.
The harassers seek to deny this.
One of their tactics is to dismiss the very idea.
To say that everyone online is treated the same, everyone gets called names sometimes.
Well, I've already given you the proof of that, so we'll carry on.
In fact, there is simply no comparison between being occasionally mocked or insulted online as a male anti-feminist who occupies a position of power in an overwhelmingly sexist and patriarchal culture and being a woman who receives a never-ending torrent of abuse while fighting tooth and nail to create an online culture that is a little less misogynistic and a little more equitable.
Paranoid nonsense.
Men get more abuse.
This is a matter of fact.
She is wrong.
You are signing off on something that is wrong.
You are just factually incorrect.
You're going to have to make another fucking retraction like you did with that Crash Course environment one, Hank.
Don't think I've forgotten that, buddy boy.
Get your shit in order.
She essentially repeats talking points that I have already debunked in this paragraph.
So I will skip to the coup de grace, the absolute pinnacle of stupidity, the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard in my life.
Now he and his followers are acting as if me publicly calling him a garbage human is the equivalent to what he has done to me.
Oh no.
Oh no no no no no no.
What she's done is way worse.
I've never called her a garbage human.
I've called her exactly what she appears to be.
The bully, an abuser, all by your admission, John.
In truth, he and his followers cannot begin to imagine what it is to constantly have to beg for and fight for your basic humanity in a culture that fundamentally refuses to acknowledge it.
She thinks we live in a culture that does not accept the humanity of women.
He cannot imagine what it is to spend years and years being the target of floods of harassment and hate, despite the fact I am the target of floods of harassment and hate, often generated by Anita.
The companion of his who made that apology video I referenced earlier also tweeted that women are powerful enough to deal with things like the workplace harassment to rape as if power is in accepting a culture in which women are second class citizens.
Hank seriously think about what she's just said there.
She thinks women are second class citizens in Western countries.
She's on a panel with all women speaking down to an audience that contained a large number of men who feel utterly marginalized by her.
And she's saying women are second class citizens.
This is the most insane, misrepresentative and outright paranoid thing I can imagine.
And you're signing off on it, Hank.
Do you think women are second-class citizens?
I would love to hear your thoughts on it.
Please give us a statement on whether you think Anisarkeesian is telling the truth here or maybe, just maybe, she's crazy.
Why do you think someone got up and asked her, look, do you believe the things you say?
I think at this point I have categorically proven my points, but I'm not done.
Because I predicted all of this in advance.
Because I know exactly how these bullies operate.
This is a clip from a very hungover interview I did with journalist Tim Poole about what I thought was going to happen at VidCon.
Is this, you know, you're coming here to set people off, to troll them, or illicit emotion?
Maybe.
I mean, I think our very presence is going to do that.
I don't think we actually have to do anything to do that.
Just the fact that we are here is going to annoy them enough.
Because I think they'll view this as their domain.
And we shouldn't be in it.
And yeah, we've paid for our tickets, so we deserve to be in it.
They're not more like that.
Well, I mean, dude.
We've seen in this fighting with, you know, SJW, anti-Strip, whatever you want to call it.
I think there's a strong possibility.
They might go to the organizers and say, hey, these guys are Nazis.
These guys are dangerous.
We don't feel safe.
Things like that.
I think so too.
And I'll certainly record it if they do that.
Because I think it's worthy of being documented.
Because obviously that would be a lie.
I don't appreciate doing a lot about it.
Is there any seriousness coming to VidCon?
Is there any real value outside of the shenanigans?
I'm sure there are, you know, it'd be interesting to connect with people.
And I mean, it's nice that because we all know each other online, but none of us have really met.
And so it's going to be nice to actually meet those people on the floor.
And that's the point of VidCon, right?
So you're actually going to have a normal VidConnect.
We are actually here legitimately for legitimate reasons, and it's probably going to get blown out of proportion.
And it absolutely was.
But I'm not surprised, because blowing things out of proportion is how these people pay the rent.
Tim also informed me that there had been some rumors going around that I had been the one who attacked her by storming the stage and abusing her despite video evidence to the contrary.
I did.
So what was the, what did you hear?
Somebody, a friend of mine who was a speaker at VidCon told me, she asked me, she's like, hey, did you hear that there were a bunch of guys who showed up to a women's panel and started like yelling at the women?
And I was like, why are you talking about like the Sargon thing?
And she said something like Sarkinson or Sargon.
I think she was making Sarkeesian and Sargon up.
And I was like, I was like, yeah, apparently he sat down in the front row and she yelled at him.
And then my friend was like, no, I heard that he yelled at her.
And I said, no.
Apparently she called him a shithead garbage human and then he said, I just want to talk.
And she was like, I don't know.
I heard he was yelling at her.
And after being graciously invited onto his podcast at the last minute, I told Joe Rogan that after this podcast, you would see a spate of articles painting me as the aggressor and her as the victim.
There's a narrative going around the progressive journalists that has already been debunked by an actual journalist called Tim Poole and the video evidence of the event that I personally took that I stormed the stage and started screaming abuse at her.
saying that.
Who's saying that?
Journalists and like the actual journalists?
Like pull up of an actual article that said that.
There probably aren't any yet, but I bet you, tomorrow or going on, there are articles about me and some of them will say something like, I abused her.
Imagine my shock when that's exactly what happened.
From the Polygon article, Sarkeesian says that it's clear that I and my entourage, namely my friends, were there to intimidate her.
He had come with several others and together they took up roughly the first two rows.
Of course he wanted to be seen and I knew because he was filming the panel he would use it to harass me and potentially drive harassment to my co-panelists.
So I used the first question as an opportunity to let him and the audience know what was happening.
If individuals like Anita Sarkeesian can stand up to such aggression, why can't these huge and powerful organizations?
The answer is of course because we're not violating any of their rules.
Anita Sarkeesian lives in a delusional fantasy land and uses this to gaslight everyone around her and uses these publications and the feminists that print these articles to defame and lie and bully anyone who dares contradict their narrative.
And you might think, well, you're just doing this because you hate feminists.
You couldn't possibly get along with a feminist you've disagreed with in the past.
You couldn't possibly.
Except I can.
This is popular internet feminist Lacey Green.
And that's me with my arm around her after she had been crying on my shoulder.
We met outside a bar with other YouTubers and I apologized to her.
Not because I'm responsible for her harassment, which I don't believe I am, but I had said things that I regretted.
They weren't very nice.
I had been mean to her on a personal level that I wasn't happy with.
And the thing is, I can understand that from her perspective, it might well look like I am responsible for this.
But I'm certain that I am not.
But just in case, there were some people who somehow misinterpreted any of my videos to think that there was any chance I wanted any of them to say anything to her on my behalf.
I apologized.
And it was actually a really touching and emotional moment.
And I'm not going to go into the details of the apology because it was a personal apology from me to her.
But this is her video that she put on Twitter after it.
And I think you'll be able to judge the tenor of the exchange that we had.
And I now find myself very well disposed to her.
Hey everyone, thought this was probably better suited for a short video rather than a stream of tweets.
I know a lot of you saw a picture that Carl, aka Sargon, posted last night.
You may or may not have noticed that at the picture, I look like a fucking hot mess.
And that's because I was.
You know, that picture was taken after about 15 minutes of crying and hugging and talking in the street on a street corner with Carl.
And, you know, I know people have a lot of strong feelings about Carl.
People are aware of how he has treated me in the past.
And for me, like in the whole anti-scene, all these communities, I would say that Carl is the person that has contributed the most to my very human pain.
I think that, you know, mistakes were made.
And last night, we finally talked about them in person.
And I was just, it was a really powerful, intense night for me because this is something that I've held on to.
You know, some of the things that he said about me, the way that he's treated me, have been really hurtful.
And last night, you know, he held me and apologized, told me, you know, why he was sorry, demonstrated a real understanding of the pain that he had caused me, and a willingness to stop doing that kind of shit.
And for me, you know, I meant a lot.
And, you know, I'm working on repairing my relationship with him, having a relationship with him that's more healthy.
You know, we're not going to see eye to eye.
And, you know, he may do stuff in the future that I disagree with.
You know, the fact that he was able to do that in such a genuine, authentic way, and also apologize on Twitter, having, you know, a moment of self-awareness about some of the other pain that he may have caused other people in the community.
You know, Anita specifically, I think was a really pretty solid good faith gesture.
And, you know, that makes me really happy.
But more than happy, it makes me feel like I can.
Oh, God.
Such a baby.
It makes me feel like I can heal, forgive, move on.
And I don't expect anyone else to feel that way.
I'm not, you know, reconciling with Carl as a reconciliation between feminism and the antis.
It's a recognition between, it's a reconciliation between two human beings.
It's for me and me alone.
And, you know, anyone who's going to freak out about that, it's none of your business how I handle the ways that I've been treated online.
It's none of your business, you know, how I go about that and how I try to move forward.
For me in my life, forgiveness is very important.
It's central to who I am.
It's central to how I live my life.
It's central to my mental and emotional health and my happiness in this world.
And I needed to be able to forgive him.
And he finally gave me what I needed to start doing that.
And, you know, we still have a lot to talk about.
And, you know, a lot of things I'm excited to talk about because we have very different perspectives on things.
but yeah i just wanted to give a little bit of context you know a little bit of my thoughts on it and uh people are already you know i received it uh my phone blew up this morning with all of the feminist folks being angry about it And you know what?
They're entitled to their anger.
They can feel however they want to feel.
But for me right now, this is about my pain and my experience and being able to move on and forgive.
That's, you know me.
It's just me.
So, you know.
Lacey Green is not an abusive person, to the best of my knowledge.
I've never seen her do anything like Anita Sarkeesian had done.
And I guess when you're a culture warrior like me and Anita, it is hard to humanize the other side.
But I'm willing to make the effort.
Which is why I went to her panel.
I was hoping that we could talk.
That maybe we could do what I tried to do when I was drunk.
And I had my Twitter account hacked by someone.
And again, thank you to Keemstar for helping me to get that back.
And I was feeling contemplative.
And I thought, you know what, I'm happy to extend an olive branch.
We're both in the same area.
Maybe, maybe we can do the same thing.
And so I tweeted at her.
From a second account, because I was unable to get back into my first, it occurred to me that this account wasn't blocked.
And so I tweeted at her that I learned from Lacey that some people who said they were my followers did horrible things.
If the same happened to you, I am sorry, Anita.
Because I am possibly the world's softest drunk.
And even my worst enemies can become my friends.
Naturally, I received no reply.
This is a piece of artwork done by an artist called Brent Cherry.
This is what this looks like to us.
Anita Sarkeesian seems like a tyrant.
She seems to have surprising control and power.
She's protected by the institutions that give her a platform with which to abuse other people.
And the men in the audience didn't see this coming.
We thought she was going to just comport herself like an adult, like she was reasonable.
It was the women in our audience, so accurately portrayed here, base Mama and Barbara, who are just fuming at Anita.
And they have got many, many reasons to be angry with Anita Sarkeesian.
And among those reasons is the fact that Anita is given a platform to abuse people that they care about.
And you're standing behind it.
You're on the wrong side of this issue, Hank.
We have done nothing wrong.
Anita has done much wrong.
And eventually it's going to catch up with her.
Think about how that's going to reflect on you and VidCon.
And just finally, going back to your debrief, you say, this is a difficult situation to build policy to alleviate, but we ask all of the people involved to consider the power of our actions and statements, both online and in the real world.
But one more specific note.
If people attend VidCon to collect footage to later use in videos that criticize not just ideas, but focus the outrage of their followers on individuals, they will not be welcome back.
You have defined this inaccurately throughout your statement to your own admission that you're ignorant of what's happening and that you don't really know the genre.
You don't really know what's going on.
And yet you are trying to gag us to protect Anita Sarkeesian from the ridiculous things that she has said.
I and my friends, I imagine we will be trying to attend VidCon next year.
And I think that you should consider whether you let Anita attend next year.
Because she is the one running around abusing people, not us.
We are actually here to build bridges.
And if you wanna change the world, then speak real clear and make sure someone's listening this sunning.
And if you wanna break my heart, then stay right here and don't go anywhere.
Do you love me now?
Do you love me now?
Everything comes in pieces Fucking prove it.
Try to ask yourself: Are you really different?
Know that your life is more frightening than writing a song.
It's an action of perfections.
You're dancing along in these oceans of emotion.
Well, crash once they hit the shore.
I promise you.
And it's the closest I will get to sincerity.
Every phrase I make just looks so fake and rude to me.
And it's the closest I will come to your rage.
Simulation steps and follow me.
Deal not today Do you love me now?
Herders made up of She'll see through.
No, I'll be shifting through lists of these possible loves with this hate in my brain.
It feels scattered light up through the sky.
Where my eyes cannot be drifting towards.
Recently, and it's the closest I can be in your ego's interesting Someone, like sense of objection, will sneak behind and tear at me And it'll send me to the drills into reality And I'll deal with my despair and see, Do you love me now?
Do you love me now?
Do you love me now?
Don't you love me now Don't you love me now Why don't you love me now Why don't you love me now
This is where I fall down Shattered on the floor As I'm swept around with a million more pieces of my songs I once learned to lose though it never helped me forget the truth
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