I've been caught up in the recent outing of Reddit scumbag Violentacrez, legal name Michael Brutsch. I'm kind of panicking, internally, about what has been going down on Reddit.
To give you the simplest version of how Reddit operates (for those unaware, as I was originally), it goes a little bit like this:
People can create any little subpage they want, with whatever content they want, as long as it's legal. The rules of Reddit are pretty simple. No doxing other users, no illegal pr0nz (child porn), and don't fuck the website up so that it crashes.
Basically, this allows users to create subpages (subreddits) on fucking anything. Porn is abundant on this site. And that's fine. As long as it's not child porn.
Violentacrez clung to his anonymity to do two things, 1.) Annoy the shit out of people, a.k.a. trolling, and 2.) post extremely questionable content. Some of his subreddits include things like r/Jailbait (sexualized images of clothed underaged girls), r/Chokeabitch, r/Picsofdeadkids, r/RapeJokes, r/Creepshots etc. The list goes on.
r/Jailbait and r/Creepshots are the two that bothered me the most (sad, I know). These two subreddits featured clothed women and girls (level of clothing varies, but usually the women were mostly clothed, shoulders to ass cheeks with cleavage displayed). Jailbait exclusive posted clothed underage girls in an extremely sexualized fashion. Creepshots had women of various ages (underage and above) featured, but was typically focused on the ass or boobs of the subject. These images were typically done in a public place; a student teacher at a high school was fired for doing this in his school, taking pictures of underage girls' boobs and butts (completely clothed) and posting them on Creepshots for other people to ogle.
Two things bother me about this:
1.) The people taking these photos and lauding them about hide behind their anonymity because they know what they're doing is socially unacceptable. They cling tenaciously to their anonymity but disregard the anonymity and privacy of these women they photograph and post.
2.) Apparently, nobody can expect any level of privacy in terms of their bodies being photographed in a sexualized manner if they are out in public. I did not know this.
That could mean there are pictures of me, of my cleavage, of my butt in my jeans, floating around the internet and people fapping to it.
I'm not okay with that. At all. It creeps me the fuck out.
But it's not illegal. So there's nothing I can do about it. The only thing I can actually do is publicly call these people out and strip them of their anonymity as they have done to the women they've photographed. Public shaming does wonders.
Case in point, Michael Brutsch got fired because his subreddit content is socially unacceptable. He didn't care about the anonymity of the subjects in the photos he shared on his subreddits, and yet cried like a bitch when he was outed.
I watched a CNN interview with him. He apologized profusely for making a mistake. What does that sound like to me? "I'm sorry I got caught." What a load of horseshit. This guy is despicable. He parades around the 1st amendment (which does NOT apply to the area in which he was posting; it reads "Congress shall make no law" not "Nobody shall make no rules", fuckwads. Private companies can make any rules they want about what content is displayed on their website). And he clings tenaciously to his anonymity when he gives not a shit about the women in these photos.
Another reasoning of his for posting these images is that they were already posted some place else on the internet. So the fuck what, that doesn't make it socially acceptable you douchenozzle.
I'm irate. I'm sick of this mentality of "Internetz keep me anonymous!" The only reason you talk big is because there's a monitor and so many miles of separation between you and your audience. If you had been in public with these people, you'd turn your habits inward and nobody would know about them.
I can attest to this behavior. I knew a handful of people on the interwebz, through World of Warcraft, that were absolute jerks through that medium. In fact, I thought my now-husband was a giant asshole. Then I met him in person and he was a very sweet and shy kind of nerd. Just like me.
I also met a handful of the rest of them. There were a few people that were nice to chat with, and they were even more fun to hang out with in person. But the jerkwads were completely different people in person. They were fun, hilarious, and super cool people.
Get them back behind the monitor with a mic and they would say some of the most disgusting and vitriolic things I've ever heard. Even when their anonymity had been removed, they still managed to turn in to jackasses again once they had many miles and the internet in between them and their audience. Baffling.
The lack of personal responsibility Brutsch has for his actions is appalling. Look, I don't know how many of you know this (in that all of five people probably read my blog), but I used to take nudies of myself and post them on amateur pr0nz sites. I loved the attention. My self-worth, at the time, was pretty much attached to that approval I was getting on the interwebz.
Meh. I don't regret it. Shit, I had fun at the time. I was young, impressionable, and naive. Then I grew up. Oh well. It's in my past, I learned from it. I no longer attach my self-worth to this kind of thing. But I fucking admit to the fact that I did it. And if anybody ever asked me about it, I'd admit it. A lot of people find what I did extremely unacceptable behavior for a young lady. Well, sorry, I don't know what to tell you. I was a fucked up teenager and had validation issues. I'm a better human being now and learned from that experience.
But Brutsch couldn't do that. He couldn't just say, "Yes, I know what I did was socially unacceptable and I have to be held accountable for the things I said and did because of that. I knowingly did these things that upset people and are perverted and disgusting. However, I am not sorry for doing them. But I will not do them any longer because of the fact that it has totally screwed up my life and I need to get my shit together to be a contributing member of society." He just said "I'm sorry I made a mistake." Most non-sincere apology in the history of apologies. He might as well just have said "I'm sorry you got offended, BUT free speech, yo," or "But Reddit let me do it and I got addicted, so it's a mental disorder just like alcoholism."
It's your fault you got offended by the content, and it's Reddit's fault for letting him do this for so long.
/eyeroll
Grow the fuck up, grow a pair, and own your shit. It stinks just like everyone else's.
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