Far Left Eats Its Own, Wil Wheaton Censored, Suspended
Wil Wheaton has been smeared and lied about, insulted to the point of deciding to leave social media. After leaving Twitter he went to far left Mastodon which went after him to such an extent that even though he broke no rules they decided to suspended him instead of those targeting him. Wil is now echoing the rhetoric of so many conservatives who have been banned or lied about.
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If you follow the media, you're probably going to hear that it's the anti-social justice groups constantly attacking and marginalizing social justice activists, or SJWs as they call it.
You're going to hear about conservatives and the right and Gamergate and the alt-right and just how awful these people really are.
But is that true?
If you were to ask me, I'd say, it's just the internet.
Everyone can be awful.
And what ends up happening is, because people at these media companies tend to be left-leaning or left-wing activists, most of the ire they receive comes from the right.
But we have seen a phenomenon of the left eating itself.
It seems to happen all the time, and it could just be that the left is a very large group.
Today, let's talk about Wil Wheaton.
Wil Wheaton, not that long ago, announced he was going to deactivate his Twitter account.
After 30 days, if it remains deactivated, Twitter will delete that account entirely.
And he had around 3 million followers.
He said that if, within this time, Twitter deletes or bans Alex Jones, he will come back.
And he said, you know, Alex Jones is abusing, he posts abusive information, and there's a lot of harassment, and Twitter needs to do something about it.
Well, Wil Wheaton promoted two alternative social networks, Mastodon and Countersocial.
He said that's where he will be.
Mastodon is an alternative to Twitter that is far left.
They actually defederated from Countersocial, another alternative, because they said it was fascistic and blatantly racist.
Mastodon is an open-source, decentralized version of Twitter, where it's dominated by far-left voices.
Well, what ended up happening to Wil Wheaton?
He was harassed into oblivion.
He said it was the cruelest place he's ever been to, and he was ultimately banned from the site for being anti-trans.
That's right.
Will Wheaton, who is a far-lefty, member of the resistance, was banned from a far-left social network because he wasn't far-left enough.
They called him anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ, and he says these charges are false, but it didn't matter.
He was harassed endlessly, and ultimately the admins decided to ban him.
They suspended his account, even though he broke no rules, and he was the one being harassed.
So let's take a look at exactly what's going on with these alternative social networks, and just what happens when a social media network becomes dominated by far-left politics.
First, the story from just a couple weeks ago.
Wil Wheaton vows to leave Twitter in protest of abuse and misinformation.
Will Wheaton, one of the most popular ambassadors for nerd culture on Twitter, has now vowed to leave the social media platform altogether.
While it remains unclear how many will join Wheaton in leaving Twitter, his movement could lead to many more either permanently or temporarily leaving Twitter.
The Deactoday movement is a recent one, spawning less than a week ago, but is trying to hold Twitter accountable for the sometimes vile and hateful rhetoric it has allowed to be fostered on the social media platform.
They posted this quote from Wil Wheaton.
Twitter is broken. You deserve better than an app that tolerates and welcomes the spreading of abuse and
misinformation.
Being part of this is not doing us any good. Personally, politically, socially.
For a day, a week, forever, your call. It's just a good time to go.
Wil Wheaton started promoting an alternative website, two of them actually, Mastodon and CounterSocial.
These are alternatives to Twitter and they're part of the Fediverse, a federated group of servers that form a
decentralized type of Twitter.
Because of alleged racism from CounterSocial, they were removed from the Fediverse, becoming their own private instance that can't interact with the other site.
Essentially, they were once one social network, kind of, in a decentralized network, and CounterSocial was removed.
So now you have Wil Wheaton on two of these platforms.
But something crazy happened.
Will Wheaton was harassed relentlessly on Mastodon, and he published a statement.
From willwheaton.net, he says, He talks about how he was on Twitter from just the beginning.
He thinks that he was the first couple thousand accounts.
He says, I remember when it was just a smallish group of people who
wanted to have fun, make jokes, share information and tips on stuff that was interesting.
And oh so many pictures of our pets, it was awesome.
I thought that if I left Twitter, I could find a new social network that would give it some competition.
Twitter's monopoly on the social space is a big reason it can ignore people who are abused and harassed while
punishing people for reporting their attackers.
So I fired up this account I made at Macedon a long time ago.
I thought I'd find something different.
I thought I'd find a smaller community that was more like Twitter was way back in 2008 or 2009.
Cat pictures, jokes, links to interesting things that we found in the backwaters of the internet, interaction with friends we just haven't met yet, What I found was not that.
I found a harsh reality that I'm still trying to process.
Thousands of people who don't know me, who have never interacted with me, who internalized a series of lies about me, who were never willing to give me a chance.
I was harassed from the minute I made my account.
And although I expected the shut up Wesleys and go F yourselves to taper off after a day or so, it never did.
And even though I never broke any rules, on the server I joined, one of its admins told me they were suspending my account because they got 60 reports overnight about my account, and they didn't want to deal with the drama.
And this right here is Wil Wheaton's Mastodon account.
We can see that he only had 3,870 or so followers, much smaller from the 3 million he had on Twitter.
But he posted a series of messages about what was going on.
He started by saying, This lie that I am anti-trans or anti-LGBQ is deeply hurtful
to me.
I know it's nothing like the pain the LGBTQ people deal with every day, as they simply try to exist in a world that treats them so badly, but it's still hurtful in its own way to me.
I just want to make it extremely clear, that is a lie, and the people spreading it are misinformed.
So I'm leaving the Fediverse, which has treated me with more cruelty, vitriol, hatred, and contempt than anyone on the bird site ever did.
He ends with, Take your victory lap and collect your prizes.
You've made it clear that I'm not welcome here, and even though I disagree with the action this admin is taking, banning me when I didn't break any rules doesn't seem right.
I respect and support the admin's decision to run their instance the way they see fit.
Please do your very best to be kind to each other.
The world is a terrible place right now, and that's largely because it is what we make it.
Bye.
Everyone can be mean.
It doesn't matter what faction you're a part of.
It doesn't matter if you're on the left or the right.
You can be mean.
And now it seems like we have two rather extremes in terms of alternative Twitters.
We have Gab, which is populated by a lot of people who are white nationalists, far right, or anti-semitic.
Not the entirety of Gab, but it does have these people.
And then we have Mastodon, which is dominated by the far left.
And we can see what happens.
Well, on Gab, you're going to eventually see some posts that are probably racist and anti-semitic.
But you can't ignore these people, and you can't block it.
Gab says they'll uphold your free speech, and as much as I don't like the idea of racists and white nationalists having free run of things, I also recognize I can just ignore them, and this is the internet.
And it's much better being able to ignore people than being falsely accused and run off of another social network.
Look at what happens with Will Wheaton on Mastodon.
Will thought Twitter was so bad, and he went to Mastodon, he went to Counter Social, and Mastodon banned him!
I should say they suspended his account, because people were lying about him.
That's rather terrifying.
These things happen, they're called false flags.
It happens on YouTube, it's happened to me, it happens on Twitter.
Many people will get falsely accused of something, and these massive social networks can't deal with the overload of reporting, the brigading, so they'll just suspend somebody.
But to see what happened to Will is just totally... Well, it's absolutely terrifying.
I think Will Wheaton can be a snarky dick.
I think he can be a very mean person in a lot of ways.
I think he lacks empathy for a lot of people who aren't inside his bubble.
But I totally respect his right to do the things he does.
I think he's worthy of criticism, and I've criticized him.
I think leaving Twitter was a mistake because he had a huge platform there and he actually mattered to a lot of people.
But look at what happens when he tries to support the far left.
They destroyed him.
He said it was the most cruel, the most vitriol he's ever experienced.
That is absolutely detestable.
Look, man, I have a lot of criticisms of Will, but that kind of treatment of somebody is just wrong.
And I know he probably received a lot more on Twitter because Twitter's much larger.
But look what happens.
Twitter supported Will.
He was a verified account with millions of users.
And look what happens on Macedon, a decentralized network.
He got the boot.
He was falsely attacked, they lied about him, and they got rid of him.
And this is what happens when you side with authoritarianism.
You might not like Gab or these other networks because they have a high density of people who are racist, but they're still going to be more libertarian and allow you to express your thoughts.
You might have to fight against some racist ideas you don't like.
You might have to just block them.
The same can be true for Twitter, but Twitter does ban hate speech.
But when you look at Mastodon, they're much more authoritarian.
They will get rid of you if other people lie about you.
Again, Wil Wheaton broke no rules.
As it seems, I don't think Wil Wheaton's broken any rules on Twitter, and I really doubt he broke the rules of Mastodon.
But they're gonna suspend him anyway, because the mob said so.
And this is what's terrifying about a left-dominated social media platform.
And it's one of the problems I think the right has.
They're not willing to play dirty like this.
Sometimes they are, absolutely.
There are some people who are more authoritarian on the right, for sure.
But they don't play these kinds of games.
Gab allows the nastiest people onto their platform to do whatever they want.
Well, not necessarily whatever they want.
They've actually had to remove some people because of external demands by other companies.
But for the most part, Gab is trying to uphold your free speech, probably because Twitter will remove people for saying things that Twitter doesn't like.
But look what happens on Mastodon, which is far left, which the far left advocates for.
How they can support this is beyond me.
It's absolutely insane.
Wil Wheaton is a smug dude, but he certainly deserves to have his voice heard.
He certainly deserves to exist without being harassed relentlessly.
And so Wil Wheaton ends by saying that he's done with social media.
He said, maybe I just don't fit in whatever the social media world is.
I mean, the people who are all over the various Mass.
Night Incidents made it really clear that I wasn't welcome there, with a handful of notable joyful exceptions, mostly related to my first baby steps into painting.
And it seems as if I was just unwelcome because I'm me, I guess?
Like, I know that I'm not a transphobe, but holy S that lie just won't die.
And right now, as I am writing this, someone at Macedon is telling me that I am.
Because people said so.
And I should apologize to them.
I mean, how am I supposed to respond to that?
When it happens over and over and over again, you've been lied to about me, please give me a chance, just doesn't seem like a viable way forward with people who are, for whatever reason, very, very angry.
And these people seem to have an idea of me in their head that doesn't fit with the idea of myself that I have in my head.
It's honestly caused me to rethink a lot of stuff.
Like, am I really the terrible person they say I am?
I don't think I am, but I'm doing my best to listen and when I say, please stop yelling at me and let's have a conversation that I can't grow from, I get yelled at for tone policing.
And honestly, I just get exhausted and throw up my hands.
Maybe I'm not the person they tell me I am, but I represent that person in their heads.
And they treat me accordingly?
This is one of those times when my mental illness makes it very hard for me to know what's objective reality and what's just in my head.
Will Wheaton echoing the sentiment of so many conservatives and centrists and moderate liberals who have been attacked relentlessly not understanding why.
You know, last night I was watching South Park, it's an older episode, about how they wanted to change the South Park flag because it was racist.
In it, Chef wants the flag changed.
Chef is the high school chef, that's his name, and he's a black man.
And when the kids say they don't understand why the flag is racist, he just yells at them and insults them and they say, we don't know what you're talking about.
And when I watched this, I felt like it was a really good example of what's going on right now.
Will Wheaton doesn't understand why you're attacking him.
And by insulting him and just calling him a word, transphobe, when he doesn't understand why, he doesn't accomplish anything.
All you do is run him off social media.
And this is a very influential guy.
You are now pushing him away.
And he's expressing sentiment that is more equated with conservatives.
I can only imagine that behavior like this is going to cause these people their ultimate downfall.
The far left, the regressive left, whatever you want to call it.
The more they eat their own and lie about people, the less support they're going to have.
Will Wheaton had 3 million followers on Twitter, he's very influential, and you just attacked one of your most influential allies.
I'd rather have to press block on someone I thought was racist or mean than get banned from a social media site when I didn't do anything.
We want to protect the innocent.
People, they're going to say nasty things, and we want to protect everyone's right to free speech.
But what happened with Mastodon is the perfect example of what happens when you give people the power, when you give them the authority to control what you say and what you hear.
Because you will be banned even if you do nothing wrong.
So let me know what you think.
How do you feel about it?
I know there's gonna be a ton of people saying, well, we deserved this, and that's absolutely not true.
He's allowed to have his opinion.
He's allowed to believe in moderation of Twitter, and not be harassed by people.
If this is the future that he advocated for, I hope he realized that it's not a particularly good future, and it's caused him mental anguish.
At the same time, I'm never, never going to defend people who would harass and insult Wil Wheaton.
He did not deserve this.
He doesn't deserve it on Twitter.
Nobody does.
But it's a part of life, and it's very difficult to deal with this because people are just mean sometimes.
It's better to have a platform that's sometimes mean, and a lot of people are mean, than a platform that can ban you for no reason.
But how do you feel about this?
Do you think Mastodon was right to ban him?
Do you think Mastodon is a scary vision of the future?
