Accountability by Association rant I made

 I made this Twitter rant after I streamed last night. I don't know if I want this big wall of text on my Twitter for that long, especially something that people could easily misconstrue in tweet form. So I'm moving it here and then deleting it from Twitter.

The text is a little blurry on my end so to future-proof this as much as I can, I'm going to type out what they say here too:

Okay, maybe I'm fucking stupid but I feel like "you need to address this terrible thing this YouTuber did because you have kind of associated with them in the past or you are *just* as bad" is stupider than I am.

Probably not that black and white but a thread, if you will:

It's weird if they're *really* quiet about a certain topic. Like, if they're online friends with someone and have done a lot of videos and stuff together, then it turns out the one is a pedo. That might be worth addressing or at least cleaning up the channel.

What made me think about this enough to tweet about it is this; someone I follow is an artist who makes cool YouTube videos too. She was friends with and inspired by some popular asshole that I don't know much about but a lot of people liked this fucker who was recently outed.

Hey! Present-tense me again! Since we're not on Twitter anymore, I can address this without fanning a fire. The artist is Thumin. She makes really cool stuff. The "popular asshole", as I so eloquently put it, was Creepshow Art. I don't even know much about that one. I never followed her because everytime I hear about her it's just drama on top of drama. Turns out she has recently outdone herself in 2021. Thumin has been publicly linked with Creepshow so fans are lobbing questions and hatred at Thumin left and right instead of... y'know, the person actually being transphobic. Even beyond the transphobia and outing her own fucking sibling while they were in the ICU, I can't even follow the Degrassi bullshit she's been known for prior. So like, if you don't already know about it, feel free to look for Creepshow drama on your own. I don't even want to put out a source because I feel like anything I find could be misinformation. I have no idea what's up with this dummy. Thumin, however, I recommend following.

People are DMing and freaking out about this creator I follow that... isn't a freak by any means? They're yelling at her and sending racist shit to her trying to get her to address this other channel. They have cut off ties with their channel and the freak's channel anyway.

So here's the kicker of that story.

The event happened recently and this creator HAS addressed it on at least two different platforms, INCLUDING fucking YouTube where it would be the most publicly relevant.

To clarify because this seems so stupid that you might be thinking "no, I clearly read something wrong here". I would be. Thumin tweeted about this and put out one of those YouTube messagey thingies. Not a video. You know. That text thing you can do on YouTube so all your subscribers can see it.

The response was so prompt that it was how I found out about it happening

Unfortunately, that wasn't good enough for fans. At least up until yesterday, people have still been pestering her about the situation. I read her take on the whole thing. It isn't like 9 pages long or anything but I felt it was thorough enough. To loop back into the point of this whole blog post, I thought Thumin's post was more than what should have been expected.

Another reason I've been thinking about this kind of sensationalism recently, other than personal drama that doesn't need to be unleashed onto you guys, is that I've been pretty into Continue? recently.

If it isn't obvious, I have no connection to any of the channels or creators I am talking about here. My "personal drama" is what it sounds like and should be taken as such.

Continue? seems like a group of decent dudes. As far as white, cishet bros on the internet go, I feel pretty comfortable with them as an audience member and on a moral level.

But you probably know where I'm going with this:

n*rmalb**ts

"Normalboots".

For those of you too young to know about N*rmalb**ts; good. Half of the fuckers involved with it were shady at best. Two very popular ones are still going strong, one of them on Twitch as well. One is a white supremacist and the other sexually manipulates women and followers.

This is referencing "JonTron" or Jon Jafari who argued pretty strongly for strongly enforced immigration laws for the US and/or ethnic cleansing. When he caught flack for trying laughably to back up a lot of racist ideology, he made an "apology" video where he basically still tried to reinforce his points and said he would "stay out of politics". Idiot. The other idiot I'm referring to is ProJared or Jared Knabenbauer. That guy cheated on his wife with another YouTube creator who was, at the time, married to yet another YouTube creator, so the drama really splattered on all the walls that month. His wife partially found out about the events regarding the cheating because Jared also likes using his influence to solicit nudes from fans, some of which are under the age of 18. Back in the day, they all had this network called "Normalboots". JonTron, ProJared, and Continue? were all a part of this network. Normalboots basically kicked JonTron out by wording it in the most professional (i.m.o. pussy) way possible. Years later, people finally caught on to Jared's stink en masse. This caused Normalboots to disband entirely. Now you're up to speed on that. You can look up more details on your own but I think that was pretty comprehensive if I do say so myself.

Unfortunately, there are still videos with those people on Continue?. However, they have been increasingly making jokes against big conservative/centrist talking points for years, including all of the things those people and their current fans do.

Don't know why I worded this how I did. Probably just because I was in physical pain, it was late at night, and I was in full rant mode. Continue? had this thing back in the day called "Drunkstravaganza" where they would try to do their normal video game shtick but with guests. The first one was with JonTron. That's still on the channel. The second one was with a bunch of people, some shittier than others. If I remember correctly, JonTron was in that too but really all I remember is Satchell Drakes being there, a dildo on the wall, and Will Stamper's ass. Though it might be cool to see Continue? condemn Jon Jafari in a more specific way or see them at least remove the videos they are all in together, the points that make Jon Jafari's entire existence controversial are made fun of pretty frequently on Continue? They have progressively been harping on bigoted bullshit. I feel like if you know their heart is in the right place or at least they publicly condemn that behavior regularly, the argument of whether they should or shouldn't do something with their channel seems trivial to me. Vaguely irresponsible at worst.

Although I don't think Jared was ever in any of their videos, they mention him in a supportive fashion once or twice. I'm not sure if they still have those videos up. I wouldn't be surprised if they even remember mentioning him. However, after Jared's specific controversy, they make fun of him extensively for the specific bullshit he did in an episode not long after the public dust settled.

When the two were outed, they unfollowed the accounts and didn't say much. They don't directly talk about it (I'm unaware if they have) but they also don't condone the behavior actively. Unlike most big sketchy YouTubers, they make fun of similar idiots.

Is that not enough?

If you are actually a fan of the person or people, do you actually want accountability or do you want drama because you are on the internet and stirring the pot is something to do?

This is why I bring up Continue? In relativity, they are accountable for any remote association???

I won't bring up the one person I follow because that discourse is still burning. It is still current because people are perpetrating it. I don't see a logical reason why because again; they already addressed the fucking issue point-blank.

This is just bringing it all full-circle. I'm reiterating that Thumin was in the crosshairs of this sort of stupidity even after doing everything she could have done with the situation. What more do people want? Is it a video? Because that seems like you really want the spectacle more than you want some ambiguous sense of accountability.

In the case of Continue?, there is a greyer discussion. Although (to my knowledge) they didn't directly acknowledge everything, they still did most of what the end result would have been and try to culminate a diverse community that hates right-wing bigots.

For me, that's obviously enough or else I probably wouldn't still be watching and smmmmashing that liek buttin on Continue? videos.

They didn't "talk about it" but the end result is the same if they kinda do that all the time.

Even if you're going to argue "when it happened they shouldn't have stayed silent", they were still a part of Normalboots when both major controversies started actively buzzing. They helped come to the conclusion that action should be taken against them or at least stood by those actions. You wouldn't be wrong though. They could have done more. Still, unlike politically and morally ambiguous channels with a big following, Continue? have made their stances on a lot of issues pretty well known in their regular content. This is why I thought they were such a good example to illustrate what I'm talking about.

I dunno. Just something I've been mulling over.

I truly don't believe there's a concrete right or wrong answer to any of this.

On the other hand, I feel like some people are just not satisfied with what strangers online do in reaction to other strangers online.

Some are irresponsible (like p*wd**piss). I get that.

Just mathematically, I bet a lot of you went through a shitty fucking Pewdiepie, Markiplier, Jacksepticeye, Cryaotic or however you spell that, CinnamonToastKen phase. People don't fucking call Markiplier or Jacksepticeye nazis for not calling Pewdiepie anti-semitic, even though Felix is definitely anti-semitic. So either we're all flawed and this whole "guilty by association" mentality is pretty fucking toxic and pointless or you are the god of morality and I deserve to burn eternally for even going down this line of thought.

That's my soapbox for the night. I can't think of any more points to add that aren't kind of redundant. Hopefully, you got something out of this spiel. Something to think about.

Yeah, that sums it up. I figured it would be easier to clear some of my points up on almost anything other than Twitter. I'm going to go delete those tweets now. Stay safe and healthy out there. I mean on the internet but I guess that goes for your life not spent on the internet as well.

If you tell me why I'm stupid, I'll feel bad (CW: kind of mentions pronoun refusal)

 This is purely a rant. My hair is drying because I am currently too lazy to get up and dry it faster. Maybe this rant will help me. Maybe it will help you with something. That college essay isn't going to distract you from doing it all by itself.

I don't know a one-to-two-word term for this so I'm going to make up a fake quote here. I think, once you read this, you will know exactly what I'm trying to say:

"This is an interesting conversation about this heated topic. I can kind of see all of your points. Just so you know though, for future reference, if you scream 'you're an idiot' at someone and mob against them, it becomes a lot harder to take your point seriously."

NOW...

Some people will read that and go "lawl, I see idiots like this pretty often. I know exactly what you're talking about". Others will agree with the statement above. I feel like this is part of the reason I'm making this rant.

This is partially inspired by the showrunner of an undisclosed, animated, and frankly, infantile YouTube video series that has been going on for way too long and has far too much twerking for my tastes. Again, the inspiration will go undisclosed. I'm usually not afraid to name names but I have not really watched this stuff. That is to say, everyone has probably seen this if they have spent a lot of time online in the past decade but I have never been a fan. Because it looks like something I would fucking hate. 

Anyway. The only reason I bring the showrunner up is that they were like "hey fans, you like my series that I pay a bunch of people to work on because I'm not actually very creative? NFTs of this brand are coming soon!" This was also in the heat of the more recent NFT discourse, despite the fact that NFTs are not a 2021 thing at all. Not throwing anyone under the bus here. I have done a little research into crypto but it wasn't until 2021 that I really looked into NFTs and learned more specifics on how crypto is made. For anyone wondering; I am against NFTs. I wouldn't murder someone or stop being friends with someone for having a passing interest in crypto, in a very general sense. I do, however, give these friends shit for being into crypto because I have personally always found the entire thing to be shady. If we're going to talk about NFTs, which we won't be after I'm done with this paragraph, I take a much harsher stance against it and am actually glad so many people took so many large L's on that one. This post isn't about crypto though, it's probably not even the best example for illustrating my point.

A lot of people, including fans of this undisclosed series, dogpiled the creator on social media. This is pretty warranted given any and all context I can fucking think of. The creator was like "okay, I'm all ears, but give me GOOD reasoning that isn't whiny or meanie, or else I won't listen!" Again, this was at the rise of the recent NFT discourse where a lot of people didn't even fully understand what they were mad about anyway. They were right, they were just kind of misinformed is all. I am still no expert myself. After a few hours of this, the guy pretty much said the made-up quote I gave a bit ago. So basically, for being mad about publicly being okay with destroying the environment and then being a smug douchebag about it after the fact, the people with actual factual information are the assholes because they raised their Twitter voice.

So that is what I want to rant about. Not crypto.

There are extreme examples we can give to what's a bit too much and all that. Threatening somebody's family over this sort of thing is an obvious example of "a bit too much" or at least I fucking hope that's an obvious example. But let's change one of the variables in the equation I spent too long explaining above. If it wasn't crypto, maybe it is whether or not we should care about other people's pronouns and whether or not saying "whatever" to the whole thing is problematic or not (it is).

So MinecraftFabio265 (not checking to see if that's a real screenname somewhere, if it is, I apologize, this isn't about you, and if it accidentally seems like it is, continue reading; you've got some learnin' to do, Fabio) makes a post saying "lol imagine being bent out of shape about having obvious breasts and people don't call you he/him". Most of us know, they would use a harsher phrase than "bent out of shape" but I digress. So this post is directly transphobic to transmasculine people who have not had top surgery and strictly do not use "she/her" pronouns, as many transmascs do not. Also weirds me out that tits are the deciding factor in respect for a lot of people considering literally everyone has them or is a dismembered corpse but this is also beside the point. A bunch of people get together and call out MinecraftFabio265 for his stupid post. So as I have explained so far, on paper, these people are in the right and MinecraftFabio265 is in the wrong. If you can't tell from the tone of this whole post up to this point, no matter what transpires, MinecraftFabio265 is still absolutely in the wrong. That said, let's move on.

I personally feel like most people would see the responses and point at the responders as the bad guys here. This melts a lobe in my noggin. Let me take you down the Willy Wonka chocolate cruise for a second here, just humor me. Let's go down the hypothetical train of thought that the naysayers in this hypothetical scenario are whackjobs and bullies. The original poster ever so simply said that if a transmasc person has not undergone top surgery or has other features that another individual may see as feminine, it is okay for the individual to refer to the transmasc person staunchly as a woman. It is then implied that it is the job of the trans person to deal with that responsibility. That any assertion that the person might heavily prefer other pronouns is absurd and/or none of the other person's business. So how do we respond to this?

Angrily? Yes!

It can be well-articulated or it can be CAPS LOCKED and feral but I honestly don't blame anyone for getting fucking infuriated at the OP for regurgitating such nonsense. "Well, he didn't say that! Never said that! You're making up drama for clout!" In such few words, MinecraftFabio265 absolutely implied a lot of things there. The "lol" is actually important here, you see. He finds it laughable that someone would expect someone to give this person basic respect. I was thinking about this earlier today. MinecraftFabio265, who we have established is a man, would probably start feeling kind of blue if a lot of people started referring to him as "her". I mean, this is the MinecraftFabio265! A man of notoriety. Surely, this trend would catch on, and bam! Now you have a couple thousand people calling MinecraftFabio265 her royal majesty; queen of pronouns. None of these people ever consider the shoe being on the other foot. Isn't that strange? Genuinely. Is that not just a very weird thing that these people never consider?

Also, a lot of transmasc issues are swept under the rug constantly. Transfemme people still face many scary issues in 2021 but at least in 2021, these issues are gaining more visibility. I rarely see anyone in any position of power doing anything to boost transmasc people. This is part of the reason why everyone freaked the fuck out about Elliot Page. He was worth freaking out about. Name another transmasc person even one tier of popularity down from Elliot Page. Yup? Yup. All this to say that I am of the opinion that saying things like what MinecraftFabio265 has said this very day are very arguably hate speech. I think a lot of people would say "that's not even an opinion, you are absolutely right". I have my moments.

So then (this is where it all comes full circle) one has the goddamn gall to even remotely insinuate that the person saying "bad take, Fabio" is the toxic one; the hateful one. MinecraftFabio265 is most likely to say something like "yall are just haters lol I am just voicing a simple opinion and all these sjws come to attack me lol". I really hate that this MinecraftFabio265 quote is not one that took me more than one minute to make up because I see stuff so close to it all the fucking time. I would say at least once a month and my timeline is fairly clean of bigoted dummies. To my knowledge, it is as clean as it can be. I still see "hoes mad" when it comes to just hatred. I think passive hatred is one of the worst things I can think of. It is the notion that because "you didn't mean it" erases hundreds of years of history behind a sentiment. MinecraftFabio265's post wasn't even fucking funny. There isn't anything about it that qualifies as a "joke".

People post problematic stuff, especially with 0% added creativity or nuance. Other people see this and either calmly or angrily call them out. OP and the OP's fans blame the people sticking up for basic human respect or their own basic human respect for this getting "out of hand". "Cancel mob".

I could have summed this up in a tweet but here we are, like a half-hour of writing later. If you didn't take this journey with me though, I would have gone one day of my life not conjuring MinecraftFabio265 into your psyche. Very subtly, I may add. I was very good at it. Now you can never forget the character. MinecraftFabio265. From YouTube. Who plays WoW 40 hours a week. So I thank you all for experiencing this moment with me. For those who originally were okay with this:

"This is an interesting conversation about this heated topic. I can kind of see all of your points. Just so you know though, for future reference, if you scream 'you're an idiot' at someone and mob against them, it becomes a lot harder to take your point seriously."

I hope you learned something today and realize how easy it is to just listen when a bunch of people from a community gets mad at you. For one second, entertain the thought that when a swarm of people comes at you with what may look like pitchforks and torches, you are not fucking Belle from Beauty and the Beast so these farmers might have something worthwhile to say to you tonight. They might even know what they're talking about and wish to share such wisdom with you. I hope you accept it.

Lexi Karma: Self Titled Synth Medley is out now

Hey, you like links?

https://open.spotify.com/album/0rVIFPhNA6pIzsEbf1zid0?si=c7kfEdZyRN6oHjTkIOGdug&dl_branch=1

Self Titled Synth Medley is out on Spotify now. It's also out on almost everything else you could think of but I like to advertise it on Spotify because you can listen to it for free.

The title is long and obnoxious to look at due to CD Baby's distribution stipulations. In order to keep the word "Medley" in the title, I had to point out all of the songs in the medley. The format examples seemed to imply upwards of three songs. Not eleven. But okay, I didn't argue.

Self Titled Again and Fake and Stupid are still coming out later this year. Mixing is going pretty alright, slowly but surely. In the meantime, enjoy my strange attempt at chiptune.

Burnout While Still Inspired as Gosh Dang Hecky

 This is going to be kind of stream of consciousness. I feel burned out. I don't know what else to define it as other than "burned out". Lately, my days have been consisting of fucking around with things I shouldn't be working on until mid-to-late afternoon, forcing myself to eat dinner, and then trying to sleep so I can have the same defeatist cycle the next day. A few days ago, I woke up around 9am and didn't do a whole lot of anything until 8pm. I worked on mixing the music I'm putting out this year for about an hour and then Reaper crashed a few times. That broke my entire source of energy. I was just done and this is not the first time something like this has happened. Probably even within the last year. Incomplete sentence. Oopsum.

This is not going to be a "woe is me" blog post. This is just a genuine thing in hopes to inspire someone to overcome this or realize that you don't have to go 200% every day. And people will say "there has to be a balance" to which I say "no, there fucking doesn't". I think if there is any point to this post, that's it.

Time was invented by humans as an organizational tool. Because we don't have a definition for what we perceive as the foregoing of existence, we just call that feeling time. I actually think there is a term in-between there but I don't feel like looking it up right now. You probably don't know that term. Most people don't know it. On the other hand, if I say "the old 9 to 5", you know exactly what the fuck I'm talking about. Time is something everyone fucking loves. Time is a thing the government, corporations, and the 1% of people sucking the dicks of those two fucking love. They love time because they don't need as much of it as you do. As I do. Don't worry, this isn't going to get political. Not that there would be anything wrong with this post if I were to go down that route, of course. I just need to set this up to prove my point that labor has been pegging time for centuries. Some people would deny that statement if I just said it outright. I had to preface it with all those other words to nullify that denial. Until time stops or humanity goes extinct, this is probably going to be true. That's just the way this goes now and I cannot do anything about it. Sorry.

So I write stories and blog posts. I write, record, and mix music. I used to make videos and want to make more. I stream on Twitch. These are things I enjoy doing but none of this can take me anywhere on its own. Where is a place I would want something that is not a vehicle to take me to? None of these things I do can take me to a physical place, so what state of being am I striving for? One with money? I suppose because again, the whole 1% thing. If "the 1% thing" wasn't an issue, I wouldn't have to put up such a fight to do things that people would benefit from.

When I'm not writing stories, writing blog posts, writing music, recording guitars, recording singing, mixing music, mastering music, editing some video, or streaming on Twitch, I'm grinding a job I do not want to do. I tolerate this job because it fits where I am at right now. It is as comforting as it is fucking sickening, tedious, obnoxious, and in my case, physically destructive. This has been a decent approximation of my state of being for the past four years.

"Take some risks". "Make a change". "Do that grind". "Go somewhere for a nice vacation." "Go on dates". "Buy a house". "Change your diet".

Shut the fuck up?

I do not think, for a goddamn minute of any given day, that I am the only person currently hitting this wall. Still, I think the fact that I cannot overcome it every minute of every given day is part of the reason why it takes me longer to put out things that I am genuinely passionate about. See "take some risks", "buy a house", "move to a new location", "see the world", "get laid", okay maybe not that last one; these are all things that would actively hinder me from what I want to do. Now, I think that these things would be good advice for someone who doesn't know what they're doing. Not in a quirky millennial "lol I have no idea what I'm doing with my life so I bought a gummy bear the size of my golden retriever" way. I know what I want to do and at this time, I know why I cannot do half of it. Outright. Cannot. I have a decent grasp on why a lot of it can be done but for the same reasons I cannot do these other things, this half of the aspirations will take so much more time. Unfortunately, a lot of this simply boils down to money.

So I should work more hours. Welllllll fuck it is physically hurting me. I'm weirdly physically resilient for a human stick bug. That said, I have started noticing pain that I haven't noticed before and it doesn't go away after one day. A lot of the time, it takes two or three days. I only get three days off at this. The other four days of the week are spent getting ready to spend my entire fucking day at this place and then spending the entire fucking day at this place. So my three days off must require some form of work on Lexi Karma or anything else I might want to get done. In between, I also have to do basic stuff we all do like basic hygiene and cleaning up my living space. I have been slacking on the latter. I'm still weirdly hygienic for being this fucking depressed. 2020 didn't even keep me from that. Laundry kind of sits between those two doesn't it? I drive to a laundromat to escape my awful neighbors. Other than the trek, it would cost about the same anyway. When I wait for the washing and drying cycles, I'm on my iPad, often working on something. Not thinking about breathing in fresh air. I am not thinking about mindfulness or how in love I am or where my "career" is heading. I am just thinking "I have to do these things I want to do because they will not be fucking done if I don't do them and nobody can help me because I can not afford to compensate these people fairly". This isn't an invitation for free work, by the way, fucking respect yourself.

I am dropping down from full-time to part-time at my job because I got a raise. I will now be able to afford basic living expenses while breaking my body less. Note: "less". I have a degree now but it's like, what am I even supposed to do with that? Get a job that will fire me in three weeks anyway? This is my mindset. The real thing holding me back from job-hunting is that even with a Bachelor's, I'm still underqualified for shit I know I could do. The tasks needed to perform these jobs with flying colors are tasks I could knock out of the park but I am "underqualified". So I stick to physical labor.

The other day, there was a guy there I had seen around. They had him in a wheelchair for a bit. He was on a walker that day and it looked like he could barely keep it together. The guy had to have been no younger than 70 years old. I don't think I'll be that guy but I also don't have any solid proof that I won't be at this point in my life and that kind of scares me. I'm not trying to be a tough guy here, it doesn't keep me up at night. It really just scares me at the "kind of" level.

All this to say, what the hell do we do with this wall then? You sat through all these words and it can't just lead to nowhere. It can't just lead to nihilism. Well, it can but it won't. Most of the time, like right now, I'm really stuck on something that I really want to show the world. But there's that wall. I guess I pick out pieces of that wall that I put there myself. That's my best advice. It might not sound like enough but you would be surprised. I can't do anything about the US having a fucking inhumane health care system. I can't do anything about the pompous fortress that is trying to make a big production out of something with other people. I can't help that I don't have the money to hire people to help me do these things. I don't have that ability because of the problems I pointed out right before this issue. So you see, it trickles down. You break down more and more of this wall or at least outline how to. Then you start to see "fuck, this brick is made out of tofu". That tofu brick might be sexual trauma or just a basic fear of failure. Tofu's a bad analogy because those two examples can be absolutely paralyzing.

And here's another important point: sometimes making a blueprint of what to do with that wall is okay. Some days, that is what you had to do and you can bulldoze tomorrow because the weather today isn't good for it.

The main inspiration for writing this is that I feel lately, it is getting harder and harder to start that bulldozer up. I guess if you're reading this, you are also having ignition issues. Especially after 2020, I think a lot of us feel like we need a blueprint day every fucking day. For this, I don't have an answer and even if I did, it wouldn't work for every person. No way in Hell. For me, and hopefully, this works for a lot of people if not for everyone... For me, I have a day like this and realize I didn't do the dishes, I didn't vacuum the carpet, I didn't record voice-over, I didn't record that one guitar track, I didn't write a single fucking word of this glorious web-comic that will probably never fucking come out at this rate but when that day hits I remember that person who will berate me for this. I remember the cloaked man with a hook for a hand and a pistol in the other and he's just waiting outside my bedroom window waiting for me to fuck up. When I finally have mold growing in the sink while I'm watching the 80th let's play video I watched that day, that dude is going to come in here and wear my face on his abdomen. If you haven't caught on yet, this guy doesn't exist and you probably don't know him either. So any version of that is all in your head. Fuck that guy. He doesn't get to exist but you do so you're not the biggest waste of flesh in the universe. You just want to watch that kid's cartoon you've already seen five times all the way through. That's fine.

As an end note, I don't like telling people how to live their lives. If you want to amputate one of your hands and replace it with a fucking hook, buy a gun, and hang outside my apartment with a clean shot for when you can see the dishes from the next building over, fucking go for it.