I don’t think I ever talked about this directly, or made a blog post about this specific case. I know I’ve talked with a few of you about it to varying degrees of depth. But anyway, there’s this YouTuber who makes enjoyable videos about movies, TV shows, and assorted pop culture phenomena. Her name is Lindsay Ellis.
Oh yeah, this is happening.
Okay, so fair to say, while I was slow to become a fan of Ellis’s work, I inevitably did. Because she makes extremely long videos about things that interest me. I am all about human communication, the stories we tell each other, and the way advancing societies and cultures and technology change those things. The internet and social media are the change happening to this century’s crop of human beings. And at their best (in my opinion), Ellis’s videos exemplify the phenomenon of communication, culture and (yeah I’m gonna say it) discourse for which I am specifically educated and professionally trained.
The internet, to me, is the proverbial river that provides. I sit here, I live my life, every now and then I go and check my nets and … the internet provides.
Anyway, my point is, she does good stuff. Is she a perfect being with timeless and universally celebrated opinions? Uh, no. No, she’s a human.
It doesn’t even matter what she said to make the infinite monkeys of Twitter angry. She compared a TV series and a movie. Nobody had ever done that before so it made perfect sense for this reaction to happen.
Now, I am not a tolerant hippie, nor am I a woke-scold. The whole line of attack and criticism seemed disingenuous to me. But I have been Saying Things On The Internet for a long time, and I’m always interested in seeing things like this go down. Because sooner or later, everyone says something that’s going to upset someone. And the more people listen to you, the more likely it becomes – and the more likely it becomes that “someone” is actually going to be hundreds, maybe thousands of people.
Ellis deleted her Twitter and vanished for a little while. I was worried she was going to stop making YouTube videos, but she was just taking a break and preparing this response. Which was just … excellent in every way.
So I’m not expecting you to sit and watch an hour and forty minutes of painstaking right-of-internet-reply. I listened to it, and half-watched, while doing a long copy-paste job on my work computer. But here it is, anyway.
Quite a few Hatstanders can, I think, have a laugh at her comment about how (statistically speaking) she’s been on the internet longer than her viewers. Prepare to have your statistics skewed by a bunch of greying internet dinosaurs, young lady! But anyway, fair to say she’s paid her dues. And then some.
In this video response, she covers so much ground. So many subjects I find interesting. And a lot of what defines us as a communicating species of aggressive, conditionally reasoning non-sentient primates.
And she drinks a significant fraction of a bottle of Writer’s Tears, in my opinion the best whiskey ever made. Yeah I said it, cancel me.
The internet loses its mind on a regular basis. It’s one of the most amusing and fascinating things about the internet. People get criticised, and dog-piled, and someone tuts about cancel culture gone mad, and then nothing happens really. It happens all the time and sometimes I even make posts about it. I’ve pulled up shit like this in my nets before, and I will again. Maybe one day I’ll have a following so huge, I’ll have to start watching what I say!
I will never apologise for this Bechdel joke, though.
I’m going to be proven right about the lava drinkers, too. Maybe not in 2025, but one day.
Ultimately, this isn’t about the left eating itself. It isn’t about woke mobs becoming worse than the oppressors and hatemongers. It’s about normal everyday dumb people wanting to be able to say “I’m one of the good ones, and I can prove it because this is happening to her, not me.” And if we’re going to have robust and informed (I’m saying it again!) discourse, we need to be able to stand up and say “this is where I draw the line.”
That’s it for now. It somehow got to be 14:00 and I don’t understand it. Weekend fast approaching. Have a good one.
Hatboy's Hatstand 
It just occurs to me that “discourse” is a mid-90s university litwank buzz-word and I’m just amusing myself with the way I framed it in this post. Oh well. Discourse is where it’s at, people.
WELL SAID! I don’t have time to watch her video right now but you can damn well bet that I will, soon. Sounds like she did a great job. I’d say “as usual” but I’ve only seen one other video of hers, that you recommended. I’m so glad she’s not letting this take her down across the board, and I’ll give her the view and the like and the comment when I can.
Nice! Yeah, it’s a long one but damn if she didn’t earn it.
Hmm. One hour and forty minutes. That would be one hour and thirty six minutes too long for this screen deficit disorder Toonster.
Is there a transcript?
Otherwise I’ll just take your word for it.
Well people were screeching about it on Twitter four minutes after Ellis posted it, so apparently that’s plenty of time.
But no, no transcript. Long story short, people hate a tall poppy and some folks have been trying to tear Ellis down for a long time. Her involvement in gamergate and other phenomena … well, let’s just say this is a long and very involved story.
I might put together a Venn diagram of the people screeching about her. Stick a pin in that.
I wasn’t a fan of her dismissal of Bright. Too many of the videos of hers I happened to watch just seemed to be her shitting on things then trying to pander her own books.
As you know I work for the native community and I can tell you that right now that certain native creators aren’t happy with her regarding her dismissal of their concerns over something to do with the Twilight franchise. Can’t really pinpoint it more, I was just made aware of it tonight.
She did touch on the … I think it was the werewolf as analogy for Native American tribes? But I didn’t pay much attention to it because it was outside my sphere of interest (Twilight) and experience (Native American issues). I was put off about her book and all, but just opted to scroll on instead of getting upset.
And I think I blogged about Bright. I kind of enjoyed it in my own shallow way! But I do tend to hand-wave away criticisms of things I like. Scroll on, that’s a talent.
I did review (and enjoy) Bright, tish and pish to her opinions.
https://hatboy.blog/2018/01/16/interlude-bright-a-review/
I also managed to write the whole review without realising urban fantasy was a genre, which really made it clumsy.
I also don’t really understand why she made it seem like she didn’t mean her tweet as a criticism (aside from the fact that she was overcorrecting on the conciliatory tone), she definitely said the one was derivative of the other in a critically-intended way. And that’s fine. Fucking own it. It’s Disney and they’re selling it on premium to wring even more money out of us stream-buying chumps. Of course it’s gonna be derivative.
That’s less than nothing to do with race or culture though.
At this point she addresses this issue, and explains why she “dismissed” it, ie. did not make it part of her video at the time.
Scroll to 42:30. The “copy link to precise timestamp” feature never fucking works. Why does it even fucking exist.
She addresses that in this video, and there are definitely two sides to the Native issue in the Twilight franchise. In fact, she addresses it quite well in this video (that Hatboy provided).
Also no community is a monolith, another point she makes, and if she hears “it’s ok” from some and “it’s offensive” from others in the community, she might make a mistake and go for it. Many would who live off of the interesting content they provide.
So I’m late to the party but watching now as promised. Only 1/4 in, two comments, one a critique. She’s really not good when she’s reading the whole video like this, I hate it. The other video you sent to me, she was much better.
And that first cancelled example, the woman flying to Africa, sorry I don’t give her a pass in any way. She said AIDS, which has so much stigma as Jenna said, and also is something you get from personal behavior to a certain extent, often associated with homosexuality (well at least it used to be). As you know of course.
I would give her a pass for “Hope I don’t get Ebola!!!!!” because that’s just a matter of proximity to an infected person (and perhaps surface contamination etc.) and has far less stigma (aside from just the “in Africa” one). So I wonder why she didn’t go for that one.
I was fine with it, but I get you. I mean, there had to be a stylistic difference, this wasn’t (so much) about insight and it certainly wasn’t about entertainment, it was a right of reply and as such I thought the essay format made sense. Certainly not as compelling to watch though. You need a certain level of investment in the events, maybe.
I agree. I hadn’t thought about it that much but yeah, there really was no way to make that joke anything but a monstrous punch-down from a place of gross privilege. Now, given that woman’s background she could be excused for thinking everyone would react the way her African friends would, but that was a crazy fucking assumption!
What really hit me with so many of these cases is, well, just how often it is a woman being destroyed. There’s a whole lot of generalisation here so take it with a grain, but when you look at the douchey things male celebrities and nobodies alike say online, they tend to shrug off “cancellation” attempts. Even cases like Rowling, she seems like a pretty shit person and she’s protected by her status and wealth and her non-immersion in the online world, but compare it to male authors who say so much worse.
I was thinking about the Scott Adamses, the Terry Goodkinds, the Neal Ashers. Compare Gina Carano to Kevin Sorbo. Yes, they get hounded out of nerd circles and wind up working in right-wing cesspits, and they cry a lot about being cancelled, but at a certain point it just seems like women are the focus of more vocal and relentless hate. I won’t get into a numbers game but it was the impression I got.
I suspect, again in a very general way, that aggression and response to attack plays a bit of a role in how online bullying lands. And the ingrained cultural roles of gender overlap very strongly when it comes to men and women being dogpiled on social media. If nothing else, more men and women alike will feel safe abusing a woman online than will feel safe doing the same to a man. Because bullies are cowards and cowards will only take on someone they perceive as weak.
So it’s not a totally misogyny-based phenomenon … but it seems like there’s a big part of it that is.
“I was fine with it, but I get you. I mean, there had to be a stylistic difference, this wasn’t (so much) about insight and it certainly wasn’t about entertainment, it was a right of reply and as such I thought the essay format made sense. Certainly not as compelling to watch though. You need a certain level of investment in the events, maybe.”
Totally and I get it that you don’t want to mess up, “again,” in this video where you’re talking about past mistakes. Alleged mistakes. I think she was incredibly fair and generous towards those critiques. While still throwing enormous shade where warranted. LOVED all the shade and sarco.
Also after posting the above comment I got to the middle section, the largest part, of the video and she was just talking to the camera for all of that. So it was all good. She just wanted to make sure she got the main points exactly as she wanted to, in those places where she was reading.
And also, she normally is NOT the sort of youtuber who reads from a script, so of course her reading from a script is going to be bad. I mean, I even think Cody is mediocre at times. He’s almost totally reading a script. Nothin but love though of course!
“I agree. I hadn’t thought about it that much but yeah, there really was no way to make that joke anything but a monstrous punch-down from a place of gross privilege. Now, given that woman’s background she could be excused for thinking everyone would react the way her African friends would, but that was a crazy fucking assumption!”
Yup agreed. And as for critiques of Lindsay, she floored me with her sexual assault stories. Stories seems like the wrong word. You know what I mean, her AND her roommate. Jesus is it THAT prevalent? I can’t say any more but I recently heard a story from someone very close to me, that was kept a secret from me for decades. This person I trust 100%, and it makes me think being assaulted is a fact for a majority of women even in the developed world.
Hopefully it’s not anywhere near that bad, but damn.
“What really hit me with so many of these cases is, well, just how often it is a woman being destroyed. There’s a whole lot of generalisation here so take it with a grain, but when you look at the douchey things male celebrities and nobodies alike say online, they tend to shrug off “cancellation” attempts. Even cases like Rowling, she seems like a pretty shit person and she’s protected by her status and wealth and her non-immersion in the online world, but compare it to male authors who say so much worse.
I was thinking about the Scott Adamses, the Terry Goodkinds, the Neal Ashers. Compare Gina Carano to Kevin Sorbo. Yes, they get hounded out of nerd circles and wind up working in right-wing cesspits, and they cry a lot about being cancelled, but at a certain point it just seems like women are the focus of more vocal and relentless hate. I won’t get into a numbers game but it was the impression I got.”
Yes, totally, Lindsay did a great job making sure we noticed how often it was women being attacked, too. And tying it into rape/sexual assault. Also tying in those who were supposedly worried about Asian American suicide, or other suicide from her other videos, yet were telling HER to kill herself. AND she has some history of depression/suicidal thoughts, she hinted at. You recall, she censored a lot of her personal stuff, left in just enough that you’d know generally what she was saying.
So this whole twitter culture of dogpiling is far more problematic than I even realized.
Now as to some of the women who were “attacked,” I feel it was clearly justified. Unlike Lindsay, of course. So I felt she should have more clearly delineated which ones she meant when making her point about that.
But then, she just blew everything to bits with that Looper video about Airbender and the other thing, which made the EXACT SAME CRITICISM as she did. But it was a male voice, gee I wonder why that video didn’t get ratioed! As she said. So she just nailed it on so many levels.
I” suspect, again in a very general way, that aggression and response to attack plays a bit of a role in how online bullying lands. And the ingrained cultural roles of gender overlap very strongly when it comes to men and women being dogpiled on social media. If nothing else, more men and women alike will feel safe abusing a woman online than will feel safe doing the same to a man. Because bullies are cowards and cowards will only take on someone they perceive as weak.
So it’s not a totally misogyny-based phenomenon … but it seems like there’s a big part of it that is.”
Totally.
The other counterpoint I wanted to make was her talking about all the white people complaining on behalf of POC, and some of the POC accounts actually being white people. I don’t see any reason to assume every white profile picture means it’s a white person, just the same as not every POC picture means it’s a POC person. So I’d be careful trying to make some overarching point about how many of the critiques are from whites.
Like that Dragon Celeste stalker. She has an anime picture, as do many others (or something similar) so you really don’t know who that is. And talk about someone who needs to be dogpiled….
But again overall this was full of great points and I’m glad she’s not quitting youtube.
Also I’ll be getting her book. I knew about it but didn’t know about her.
Exactly, exactly, exactly. I’m in a little bit of a rush but will circle back to this, but really there’s not much but agreement for me to add.
Right? And she had to walk the line, because the stupid thing about not knowing who is really behind the criticisms (more about this later) is that you have to be careful not to dismiss the people theoretically hurt by the original topic that was under complaint. Like Rob was saying, there are Native Americans out there who were upset about her lapses (although I think she explained it at least somewhat) so by all means don’t dismiss the whole thing with a snort … but don’t flagellate yourself too much over it. It’s a video about a book series, and specifically the hate-piling of the author of said series. It’s not actual US government / Native American policy.
In my limited experience, it’s safe to say that however bad we guys think it is, and are horrified to hear – it’s worse than that.
I have no trouble believing it’s that bad. Of course it depends on the demographics and communities you operate in, but yeah. In a lot of places, worse. In some, not that bad. But it is a huge blind spot to me, in imagining that those few exceptions are the norm, let alone that they’re the worst of it.
Exactly. Men have an ages-old arsenal of hate-weapons to use against women in this new communication form. It’s still the same rape and murder men have kept ready to hand for tens of thousands of years.
Point of order. Some of the women who were criticised were criticised for valid and legitimate things that they said or did wrong. That is not an attack, hence your quoteys. However, those same attacks also included waves of death threats, rape threats, gaslighting and other psychological abuse. None of which are criticism, all of which are no-quotey attacks. And no way is that justified, for any of them. Even the most loathsome ones, I know the temptation is there, but it’s still not right. And I know you know all this, but this whole conversation brought it to the forefront of my mind so here it is.
Of course, all things being equal, there are cases of men doing awful things (one, a police officer, just got found guilty of several counts of murder just recently, it was in all the papers). And we often make quiet remarks to the effect that anything that might … happen … to those men while they’re in prison is all to the good, no less than they deserve, and so on. When the traditional demise of the child molester or crooked cop occurs, it’s storybook justice. But those slips into savagery can’t compare to active wishing of those things on people, even if (to quote Deadpool) it may be more sexist to not wish them on women too. And that doesn’t even begin to touch the fact that one is a man who raped a child, and the other is a woman who made a joke on Twitter.
The whole system is different. I won’t go into the female child molester, aka. Hot Teacher trope, but look at the sheer number of “911 Karens” out there. Yes, they’re gross and racist. Yes, there are some male 911 Karens. But also keep in mind, the majority-female ones are most likely operating on a baseline of “I am afraid and could just be assaulted any second.” Is that always true? No, certainly not. Is it an excuse for calling the cops to get a (black) man murdered? Hell no. But it’s not the same as a man calling the cops on a dog-walker or a barbecue. It’s all interconnected and it’s really fucking difficult.
Exactly!
This is an interesting point too (not about the payback dogpiling, the other part). I would say that anonymity, especially once you get up into blue-checkmark, six-figure-followers areas, is not all that. You will generally be able to find out whether someone is white or black or Asian or LGBT or whatever. And I think a lot of her specific examples, she was being careful to identify the people and could say with a degree of certainty that they were weaponising outrage on behalf of the actually injured demographic. But her counterpoint, that “injured demographic” in itself is monolithic and missing the point of the “P” in “POC”, is very valid.
I refer again to Rob’s comment elsewhere, that he had actually gathered direct evidence and phrased it just right: some Native American creatives were unhappy. Good example.
That’s all you can really do, and that’s what Ellis seemed to be doing throughout the video. She had interview and anecdotal evidence of individual people and spokespeople within those demographics – demographics which are just as vibrant and diverse as humanity writ large[1] – giving their opinions about what had gone down. So she knows what those people thought. To say “X opinion is harmful to Y group” is to tell on oneself, I think. And that, regardless of their actual identity, is what the overwhelming majority of the dogpilers were doing.
[1] It’s humans all the way down. Fractal diversity, man, all the way down to the cult of the individual. And maybe not even stopping there.
Agreed.
It kind of sounded like it would be your jam, I didn’t want to push it after our discussions about it (and I am still dubious, but am trying to confront myself about the reasons for my dubiousness), but do tell me what you thought!
Just to expand on this a little with a further experience I have had, or at least read about:
The whole idea of “this is just a white SJW complaining on behalf of others” is difficult, and for more than the reasons you already brought up. It is also weaponised against certain voices. Again this is anecdotal but it has happened that actual Asian pundits / authors / etc. are hit with “she’s not actually Asian” and “she’s not actually the specific Asian nationality she claimed to be” as a way of silencing and deligitimising their opinions.
And yes, I said she specifically. Of course.
Yes, very good points!
“Right? And she had to walk the line, because the stupid thing about not knowing who is really behind the criticisms (more about this later) is that you have to be careful not to dismiss the people theoretically hurt by the original topic that was under complaint. Like Rob was saying, there are Native Americans out there who were upset about her lapses (although I think she explained it at least somewhat) so by all means don’t dismiss the whole thing with a snort … but don’t flagellate yourself too much over it. It’s a video about a book series, and specifically the hate-piling of the author of said series. It’s not actual US government / Native American policy.”
Yeah I addressed his comment directly just now. I think she was fine. There are ALWAYS going to be people offended. As long as you didn’t seek to offend, you shouldn’t be dogpiled.
Also from what you said to me, Bright seemed stupid and not something I’d enjoy. So disliking her for her disliking Bright….
Anyway.
“Of course, all things being equal, there are cases of men doing awful things (one, a police officer, just got found guilty of several counts of murder just recently, it was in all the papers). And we often make quiet remarks to the effect that anything that might … happen … to those men while they’re in prison is all to the good, no less than they deserve, and so on. When the traditional demise of the child molester or crooked cop occurs, it’s storybook justice. But those slips into savagery can’t compare to active wishing of those things on people, even if (to quote Deadpool) it may be more sexist to not wish them on women too. And that doesn’t even begin to touch the fact that one is a man who raped a child, and the other is a woman who made a joke on Twitter.”
Well judge me if you want but I DO actively wish those things on those horrible people. When I’m hinting in those quiet remarks, that is the outward facing of my active wish. And sometimes I make that wish outwardly. And get banned from youtube for it LOL
“The whole system is different. I won’t go into the female child molester, aka. Hot Teacher trope, but look at the sheer number of “911 Karens” out there. Yes, they’re gross and racist. Yes, there are some male 911 Karens. But also keep in mind, the majority-female ones are most likely operating on a baseline of “I am afraid and could just be assaulted any second.” Is that always true? No, certainly not. Is it an excuse for calling the cops to get a (black) man murdered? Hell no. But it’s not the same as a man calling the cops on a dog-walker or a barbecue. It’s all interconnected and it’s really fucking difficult.”
Just posting this to acknowledge it, all well said.
“This is an interesting point too (not about the payback dogpiling, the other part). I would say that anonymity, especially once you get up into blue-checkmark, six-figure-followers areas, is not all that. You will generally be able to find out whether someone is white or black or Asian or LGBT or whatever. And I think a lot of her specific examples, she was being careful to identify the people and could say with a degree of certainty that they were weaponising outrage on behalf of the actually injured demographic. But her counterpoint, that “injured demographic” in itself is monolithic and missing the point of the “P” in “POC”, is very valid.”
Actually I think the dogpiling is appropriate, on a person who has creepily collected a massive list of offenses about someone they don’t even know. Obsessively and stalker-ily analyzing every video, every tweet, every THING for offenses to file away. Do you think Lindsay’s the only person Dragon Celeste has done that to? I don’t. I think she needs help. And if getting dogpiled is the wake up call for her to get that help, I’m for it.
I’m too lazy to do it but I actively wish “she” did get dogpiled. Again you don’t even know that’s a woman. And if she is, she’s attacking another woman, dragging her down. So all bets are off IMO.
“I refer again to Rob’s comment elsewhere, that he had actually gathered direct evidence and phrased it just right: some Native American creatives were unhappy. Good example.”
Sure, I guess. Lindsay said as much herself though. Some people are always offended. I don’t mean the same people, I mean there’s always some number of people offended at whatever.
“That’s all you can really do, and that’s what Ellis seemed to be doing throughout the video. She had interview and anecdotal evidence of individual people and spokespeople within those demographics – demographics which are just as vibrant and diverse as humanity writ large[1] – giving their opinions about what had gone down. So she knows what those people thought. To say “X opinion is harmful to Y group” is to tell on oneself, I think. And that, regardless of their actual identity, is what the overwhelming majority of the dogpilers were doing.
[1] It’s humans all the way down. Fractal diversity, man, all the way down to the cult of the individual. And maybe not even stopping there.”
Yes quite so!
“It kind of sounded like it would be your jam, I didn’t want to push it after our discussions about it (and I am still dubious, but am trying to confront myself about the reasons for my dubiousness), but do tell me what you thought!”
Preorder (which I never do anymore) for an August 2021 release, so it’ll be a while.