Nothing is safe

The anti-SJW faction of #GamerGate is proved correct once again. It’s not about the subject at hand, it’s about whatever the Narrative happens to be at the moment. SJWs will attack anything and anyone they deem offensive. Forget video games, comics, and tabletop, even pigs are a potential battleground as far as SJWs are concerned.

One day I embarked on what I believed to be a simple, innocuous project: provide a list of cute little pigs being cute little pigs. Around the internet, these creatures have a few interpretations. Some call them micropigs (also known as mini pigs), believing them to be a special breed of animal that stay the size of a tiny piglet.

Some believe the whole micropig idea to be a hoax. From my research, I found the reality of the micropig to be somewhere in the middle. Sure, there were specially bred pigs that were smaller than their massive farm-dwelling counterparts, but they certainly didn’t stay baby-sized. They were, however, gosh darn cute in their younger years, so I decided to make a list of them being adorable while making sure to include a caveat that what you see is not, in fact, what you always get if you purchase a micropig.

I then added a few pictures of micropigs at an adult size for good measure. At the end of the day, though, I had the comfort of knowing that no sane person would look at a listicle of cute pigs and decide to purchase one the same day without, you know, doing a slight bit of research before throwing a few thousand dollars at a breeder.

I trusted in people’s ability to make smart decisions for themselves. When it comes to writing things on the internet, that is not a good decision….

Almost immediately, my list of cute pigs was seen by some very vocal people as a damaging portrayal of the micropig myth that leads to the abandonment and death of pigs around the globe every day. I was a monster, I had created a monster, and I should be shamed publicly for my creation.

The comments began, as they always do, on Facebook. The traffic for the piece was, at the time, record shattering for the site. But as the post started spreading, the comments started accumulating. Some genuinely appreciated the article for the cuteness it provided. Some tagged their friends to enjoy the cute pictures.

But some were enraged. Some worked in animal shelters that had pigs abandoned by people who thought their pet would stay a baby forever, but some were simply fighting the good fight for all people everywhere. I was wrong and, fueled by the ever-intoxicating assumption that they were right and needed to teach the world why I was wrong, they went on a tear.

They needed to save the public from themselves and, most importantly, from me, a caption writer on a listicle website.

Was I taking this too personally? Here’s the thing: When people are angry on the internet, they get personal. And they get mean. And boy, do they get creative.

Soon, people weren’t just commenting on the article. They found me on Facebook, on my photography website, and on Twitter.

 SJW delenda est. Identify and eject them without hesitation wherever you find them.