Tag: media

That was interesting. I started a Periscope talking about my own experience as a “crisis actor”, which is simply another way of saying “roleplayer in a training exercise”, and most of the people trying to watch it were blocked. I could see the number of people joining and then dropping out going up and down by scores before I shut it down.

It’s remarkable how desperate they are to stop “crisis actor” from becoming the “fake news” of 2018. Apparently these people are unfamiliar with the term “Streisand Effect”.

Nor is Periscope the only Big Social platform to do so:

On Wednesday, one week after the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., Facebook and YouTube vowed to crack down on the trolls. Thousands of posts and videos had popped up on the sites, falsely claiming that survivors of the shooting were paid actors or part of various conspiracy theories. Facebook called the posts “abhorrent.” YouTube, which is owned by Google, said it needed to do better. Both promised to remove the content.

The companies have since aggressively pulled down many posts and videos and reduced the visibility of others. Yet on Friday, spot searches of the sites revealed that the noxious content was far from eradicated.

UPDATE: Definitely some sort of flag on the term. I did a second Periscope using the name “The Streisand Effect” and had no issues. This is actually an opportunity to redpill some people by showing them the strings; encourage them to put the term “crisis actor” in a YouTube, Facebook, or Periscope title and see what happens. It will definitely convince them that Big Social is suspiciously desperate to conceal specific forms of badthink.

What President Trump should do is call out “crisis actors undermining public confidence in the media,” both on Twitter and in a White House address. The response would make last year’s Fake News meltdown look downright sane and reserved in comparison.

First Things gets the Alt-Right wrong by concentrating solely on the anti-Christian, media-dancing minority:

Almost everything written about the “alternative right” in mainstream outlets is wrong in one respect. The alt-right is not stupid. It is deep. Its ideas are not ridiculous. They are serious. To appreciate this fact, one needs to inquire beyond its presence on social media, where its obnoxious use of insult, obscenity, and racism has earned it a reputation for moral idiocy. The reputation is deserved, but do not be deceived. Behind its online tantrums and personal attacks are arguments of genuine power and expanding appeal. As political scientist George Hawley conceded in a recent study, “Everything we have seen over the past year suggests that the alt-right will be around for the foreseeable future.”

To what is the movement committed? The alt-right purports to defend the identity and interests of white people, who it believes are the compliant victims of a century-long swindle by liberal morality. Its goals are not conventionally conservative. It does not so much question as mock standard conservative positions on free trade, abortion, and foreign policy, regarding them as principles that currently abet white dispossession. Its own principles are not so abstract, and do not pretend to neutrality. Its creed, in the words of Richard Spencer, is “Race is real. Race matters. Race is the foundation of identity.” The media take such statements as proof of the alt-right’s commitment to white supremacy. But this is misleading. For the alt-right represents something more nefarious, and frankly more interesting, than white identity politics.

The alt-right is anti-Christian. Not by implication or insinuation, but by confession. Its leading thinkers flaunt their rejection of Christianity and their desire to convert believers away from it. Greg Johnson, an influential theorist with a doctorate in philosophy from Catholic University of America, argues that “Christianity is one of the main causes of white decline” and a “necessary condition of white racial suicide.” Johnson edits a website that publishes footnoted essays on topics that range from H. P. Lovecraft to Martin Heidegger, where a common feature is its subject’s criticisms of Christian doctrine. “Like acid, Christianity burns through ties of kinship and blood,” writes Gregory Hood, one of the website’s most talented essayists. It is “the essential religious step in paving the way for decadent modernity and its toxic creeds.”

Alt-right thinkers are overwhelmingly atheists, but their worldview is not rooted in the secular Enlightenment, nor is it irreligious. Far from it. Read deeply in their sources—and make no mistake, the alt-right has an intellectual tradition—and you will discover a movement that takes Christian thought and culture seriously. It is a conflicted tribute paid to their chief adversary. Against Christianity it makes two related charges. Beginning with the claim that Europe effectively created Christianity—not the other way around—it argues that Christian teachings have become socially and morally poisonous to the West. A major work of alt-right history opens with a widely echoed claim: “The introduction of Christianity has to count as the single greatest ideological catastrophe to ever strike Europe.”

This is little more than Churchian virtue-signaling. The author should be embarrassed by making a mistake very similar to the one that he criticizes the mainstream media for making. Nor is his attempt to marginalize the Alt-Right as an intrinsically anti-Christian philosophy even remotely coherent, as one cannot both a) characterize its Spencerian aspects as defining its limits while simultaneously b) claiming that it is 100 years old and traces its intellectual roots back to Oswald Spengler.

What most people don’t realize is that the mainstream media still regularly contacts me for “the Alt-Right perspective” on current events. However, I no longer talk to them because they never, ever, quoted me in the pieces on the Alt-Right they subsequently ran, even when I provided The New York Times, or The Atlantic, or CBS with direct, substantive, and unevasive answers to their questions. The reason they never ran any quotes, of course, is that my words did not fit their preconceived narrative, while the media-dancing performance art of Richard Spencer and Andrew Anglin did, just as Greg Johnson’s anti-Christianity and homosexuality fits the narrative that Matthew Rose and First Things are pushing in order to discredit and demonize the Alt-Right in the eyes of its readership.

But their efforts will fail and they will only discredit themselves, because they are observably not rooted in the easily verifiable truth. The Alt-Right doesn’t just stand for the European races, but for the West. And Christianity is as integral and irreplaceable an element of Western civilization as the European races; it is one of the three pillars of the West. The Alt-Right supports genuine Bible-based traditional Christianity, not the evil globalist Churchianity that presently wears so many nominally Christian organizations like a demon-possessed skinsuit.

To be clear, I’m not blaming Greg, Richard, or Andrew for the fact that both the mainstream media and the Christian media happen to find their particular perspectives to be useful. I am simply pointing out that, once again, the media simply cannot be trusted to report on philosophical matters such as these in an accurate, honest, or intelligent manner.

The Alt-Right is not an anti-Christian philosophy. It is pro-Christian and anti-Churchian. And as Instapundit noted, “with most churches being temples of social justice”, the open enmity between the globalist Judeo Christ-worshiping Churchians and both the Christian and non-Christian factions of the Alt-Right is hardly a surprise.

Buzzfeed is taking up the baton from Bleeding Cool and intends to take the next crack at noted comic artist Ethan Van Sciver. Bounding Into Comics has both the loaded questions as well as Van Sciver’s responses.

BuzzFeed News looks to take the attacks on DC Comics artist Ethan Van Sciver to the next level. Reporter Rachael Krishna informed Ethan Van Sciver he would be the subject of an upcoming piece on BuzzFeed News.

She elaborated the piece would be “about ‘comicsgate’, more specifically accusations that [Ethan has] used [his] influence and power in the industry to encourage far-right harassment campaigns online and thet you have relationships with accounts involved in the targeted harassment of people in the comics industry.”

Krishna then goes on to say she’s “been told a number of anecdotes about [Ethan’s] behavior from other writers, illustrators, and people involved in comics.”

Those anecdotes include a number of debunked stories as well as instances that Ethan Van Sciver has already addressed. But since these attacks continue, Ethan spoke with us and addressed each of her supposed pieces of “evidence” against him. We will go through each of BuzzFeed’s allegations word for word and show Ethan’s response to each of the allegations. Each of the allegations are directly quoted from BuzzFeed News reporter Rachael Krishna.

BuzzFeed Allegation: By asking Darryl Ayo to appear on your show, then continuing to tweet about this, you opened him up for abuse from trolls and encouraged this.

Ethan’s Response: “Darryl Ayo is a stranger to me, and yet since last May, he has been sending tweets out that I am a White Supremacist and a Nazi. I am NOT a White Supremacist or a Nazi. I find racism deplorable, I find bigotry disgusting, and I have never engaged in racial politics or “Naziism”. My children are Jewish!!!

I am a moderate Republican.

Darryl’s tweets circulated, influenced other twitter users, confused my fan base and made their way back to me. This caused me and my family intense stress, to the point where we were afraid to travel because of personal threats we were receiving, all of them using the word “Nazi.”

I ignored Darryl, as he continued tweeting lies about me through August.

Soon, after having established a successful and growing YouTube page called ComicArtistPro Secrets, in which I endeavored to present left wing creators to my audience in a cooperative, conversational light, I grew brave enough to invite Darryl Ayo, who I believed was an intellectual left winger who simply didn’t know me at all, to my show to interview him, and hopefully humanize myself to him.

There would have been an enormous audience. Had I abused him in any way, I would have been condemned, dead to rights, on video. I wouldn’t have…I have a history on my channel of conducting interviews with viewpoints as diverse as Mark Waid and Vox Day. I allow them to speak, I let the audience decide.

Darryl declined to be on the show. He said it was midnight, which it was, but he was up tweeting, which is how he saw my tweet.

He then began to tweet horrible things about me, wanting to attack him, etc. I responded, incredulously, and we had a short spat in which I realized I wasn’t going to accomplish anything. I blocked him, he continued cursing my name…and continues to. My fans see my name, and they try to defend me. He tells them all, no matter how polite, to go f*** themselves. But the more he name drops me, the more my fans defend me, and the more his fans attack ME.

I quietly left twitter under the harassment.”

If you remember Ethan Van Sciver has been threatened with physical violence on multiple occasions. He was first threatened before an upcoming fan signing at Gotham City Pizza in Florida and then most recently if he happened to show up at Emerald City Comic Con.

And Ayo definitely referenced or called Ethan Van Sciver a white supremacist and a Nazi on several occasions.

You know, it is evident that by demanding that Ethan Van Sciver answer these questions, then continuing to write about this, Rachael Krishna opened him up for abuse from trolls and encouraged this.

This is obviously yet another case of SJW journalistic corruption, helping other SJWs guilty of harassment and online abuse deny their actions by reversing victim and offender. They do this because there are few things that SJWs hate and fear more than people who demonstrate their ability to effectively defend themselves against SJW attack.

Read the whole thing. All of Krishna’s very loaded questions are posted there.

Bleeding Cool is the most embarrassingly SJW of the comics fan sites that try to pose as real journalistic organizations. They don’t cover much actual news, they prefer to devote their efforts to fan-squee over failing Marvel comics and striking blows for social justice at every opportunity. They’ve run hit pieces on my erstwhile opponent Ethan Van Sciver before, but now Rich Johnston is jumping on the campaign by four minor artists that has the objective of getting Van Sciver fired from DC.

Ethan Van Sciver is a successful superhero comic book artist. Beginning with his own character Cyberfrog, he would go on to draw New X-Men, written by Grant Morrison; Green Lantern Rebirth by Geoff Johns; go exclusive with DC Comics; and more recently draw the DC Rebirth series Hal Jordan & The Green Lantern Corps.

Van Sciver has also continuously exhibited a rather fractious online personality, and has been accused of being an agitator and a troll. Over the course of much of his professional career, he has generally characterized such behavior simply as over-the-top, often ironic, bombastic banter, but last year even he seemed to accept the notion that it was something beyond that.

“I’m going to try to focus on being kinder. I try every day, but I have this mean streak…”, he said in part, at a candid moment in May 2017.

While Van Sciver has echoed that desire for a kinder focus on social media in more recent times, there are many who would say that this mean streak still in large part defines him, and guides his current intent in ways not too far removed from that pivotal moment last year.

Public and Private

At that time, some of his privately posted comments became subject to public scrutiny. While in a heated discussion, Van Sciver suggested that another user — someone who had been suffering from depression — should kill themselves.

View image on Twitter

This seemed to be a critical moment for the artist, and for the people around him. Many creators spoke out about the incident, and he seemed to realize he’d gone too far. Indeed, DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson was made aware of the situation, and responded to it in private email that was CC’d to Dee Dee Myers, the head of corporate communications at Warner Brothers, which we are running for the first time here. Replying to concerns that a fan expressed to her, Nelson stated that Van Sciver’s comments were offensive, did not meet their standards for their creators, and that his actions did not speak for DC Comics.

Dear Deeply Concerned Individual,

Thank you for taking the time to write. I couldn’t agree more that the comments Ethan van Sciver made on Facebook were offensive. His actions do not meet the high standards we strive for from our creative community. They are inconsistent with the values of Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment, as well as those of the pantheon of the DC superhero characters.

Ethan is just one of hundreds of members of DC’s freelance creative community, and I assure you his actions do not speak for the rest of us. That said, I completely understand if fans choose not to purchase Ethan’s work.

Thanks again for taking the time to craft such a thoughtful email. It’s appreciated.

Best,

Diane
President, DC Entertainment

He publicly apologised and committed to changing his ways, vowing “not to vent” on social media anymore. He also closed two of his three Facebook pages and withdrew, stating, “I’m going to try to focus on being kinder. I try every day, but I have this mean streak… I’m sorry. Truly. I’ll be a better man.”

So, the question is: has Van Sciver made good on that apology and promise? Or has his “mean streak” gotten the better of him?

Friends In Low Places

Van Sciver has shown glimpses of the better man he vowed to be in that dark moment. He has spoken up against instances of abuse directed at LGBTQ comic book creators. He has tweeted about the need to treat each other with kindness. But overshadowing those glimpses, he has continually invested considerable effort into elevating voices whose intent seems in direct opposition to those words.

He started a YouTube channel, ostensibly to share the secrets of comic book artists, to present his commentary on the industry and engage with figures from Vox Day to Chuck Dixon to Mark Waid — but more often, Richard C. Meyer, the commentator behind the Diversity & Comics YouTube channel, which stands accused of propagating bigotry, hate speech, and harassment. Meyer’s followers have aimed abuse against many members of the comic book community.

For transparency, that often includes me.
Van Sciver has hosted a number of videos with Meyer now, equivocating away Meyer’s actions, past and present.

It was in the light of this that Van Sciver openly posted an invite to one of his critics, cartoonist and comic store employee Darryl Ayo, to come onto a live YouTube show to debate comic artist Jon Malin, with Ethan as moderator. Malin recently found himself at the centre of criticism after comparing Hitler’s ideology to that of “social justice warriors”. Ayo declined. But the requests kept coming.

Ayo, also a heavy critic of Bleeding Cool, nevertheless invited me to look into this. I reached out to Van Sciver, who initially agreed to take and answer questions about this and other matters. But before I could begin, he rescinded his agreement (more on that later). So I talked to Ayo.

Rich Johnston: Darryl, what is your history with Ethan Van Sciver?

Darryl Ayo: I don’t have a history with Ethan Van Sciver prior to January 23rd, 2018. He is a known superhero artist and I’m a minicomics creator and comics critic. I’ve never interacted with Ethan Van Sciver and haven’t made any attempt to interact with him. We are from different parts of the comics art form and industry.

RJ:  So what led to his recent invite to you?

DA: In professional terms, nothing. There was no reason for Ethan Van Sciver to even be thinking about me, much less talking to me.

That said, Ethan Van Sciver decided to invite me (and I don’t necessarily see it as an “invitation,” per se) to appear on his show after I had been highlighted and targeted for harassment by an online person called “Diversity and Comics.” At the time, “Diversity and Comics” had been focusing his attention on me and targeting me for abuse by his fans for about a week.

The supposed purpose of Ethan Van Sciver’s initiation of contact was to discuss a superhero artist named Jon Malin, who had made bizarre comments earlier that day about Hitler being an “SJW,” which is a derisive term applied to liberals, progressives and leftists. The idea of Hitler, one of the most notorious and brutal right wing thugs in the twentieth century being equated with a term that essentially means “progressive” was appalling and many people throughout the comics industries, including, but not limited to me, expressed disgust at the comments of this Jon Malin person.

As I was about to shut off my computer and go to bed, I noticed a string of notifications to my twitter account. There was a discussion and there were replies. The origin was Ethan Van Sciver, who I had never spoken with before, mentioning me on his twitter and asking/telling/pleading/demanding that I join some debate that he was currently having on a podcast that he apparently hosts. This is the first time that I had any contact with Ethan Van Sciver and therefore, the casual tone of his tweets was disturbing as they seemed to indicate a familiarity or at least a preexisting relationship between us. There was no preexisting relationship. I had never agreed to appear on this podcast and I certainly was not going to be coaxed or goaded or railroaded into appearing in public in such a manner. I made a post to my own twitter account, not as a reply to Ethan, but a plain text post, indicating that I was not appearing on an Ethan Van Sciver podcast.  Ethan pressed the issue by tweeting to me and attempting to sustain the illusion that there was a mutual agreement about a desire to debate. There was no agreement. There was no prior discussion or contact.

RJ: How did this invite and the repeated requests affect you?

DA: I thought it was all quite annoying and unprofessional. And since it opened me up to further trolling and harassment by the same parties that have already been attacking me, I was furious.

The entire affair was manipulative and frankly, insulting. The notion that anyone would drop everything and appear on a podcast to argue with a stranger at midnight just because someone goaded them is preposterous. The more Ethan tried to talk me into this nonsensical idea, the more certain I was that it was an attempt to publicly humiliate me. All of this became even more obvious after Ethan Van Sciver eventually dropped his pretense and admitted that he was angry with me about a comment that I had made months prior regarding reports that he, Ethan Van Sciver, had named a book of his after Hitler’s book.

As Ethan Van Sciver continued to tweet about me and at me, he would exaggerate this to his audience, spinning a fantasy that I had personally led a mob of hatred against him. Nonsense; many people publicly expressed disgust about Ethan Van Sciver’s Hitler-referencing title at the time of that particular report. However, since I was designated as the enemy of the moment by “Diversity and Comics,” Ethan sought to lie to his twitter followers and insist that I had led a hate campaign against him “for six months.” In other words, a comment *made* six months prior was recast as an ongoing campaign *lasting* for six months. Lies, outright lies. Flagrant lies. And of course, this further enflamed the angry bigots who, as I have said above, were already targeting me and friends of mine for abuse and harassment.

RJ: What outcome would you like to see come from this?

DA: Who cares. I’m already a target of abuse by the “Diversity and Comics” person’s followers. I’m already a target of abuse by the alt right. I don’t see any outcome. If you’re asking me whether Ethan Van Sciver, for his part, should lose his contract with DC Comics: absolutely. This reckless and dishonest behavior would get anybody fired from a traditional employer. But since that’s not going to happen, I don’t care. They should all definitely stay away from me and everyone I know.

A New Age Of Heroes

Van Sciver is a freelance artist working for DC Comics, and discussions with the publisher have focused on the difference between this role and that of a staffer, in regards to how the company would view their actions.

However, I have been made aware that senior DC creators have been vocal within the publisher, some going as far as refusing to work in any project Van Sciver was affiliated with, in a similar manner as some refused to work under editor Eddie Berganza. Berganza was a champion of Van Sciver’s work before he was fired following several allegations of sexual harassment. I understand that a number of letters by senior DC creators have been sent up the chain, objecting to Van Sciver’s behavior online.

It is notable that despite his critical reputation, Van Sciver was not part of the DC New Age of Heroes lineup, alongside peers of a similar background such as Tony S. Daniel or Kenneth Rocafort.

Regardless, the subject has been getting more heated. Comic book creators have again been making public statements — some about Van Sciver and some about Meyer, whom they see Van Sciver as supporting and promoting. And these creators have called on comic book publishers to do something:

I approached Van Sciver to discuss all of these issues. He initially agreed to participate, but after I asked that he not screencap or post extracts of our conversation before publication, he declined to proceed.

If Van Sciver had continued, I would have asked him about the reaction from his fellow comic book professionals, from DC President Diane Nelson, senior DC employees and other freelancers and commentators. I would have asked him if, like Trump, he saw “very fine people on both sides” regarding this.

Most of all, I’d have asked him if he felt that he was living up to his promise to be a better man. And if his expressed desire to bring unity was working.

Because it seems to be having quite the opposite effect. And I am told by a number of DC sources not to expect to see Ethan Van Sciver’s name on any other upcoming DC projects after his current run on Hal Jordan & Green Lantern Corps.

Many comic book fans enjoy Ethan’s artwork and he has a solid body of work behind him. But his self-described “mean streak” has blunted his own creative potential.  It has ruled him, rather than served him. I suspect even Ethan knows that too. I’d have liked the chance to ask.

As of yesterday, he has deleted his Twitter account with the apparent intent to move his comics commentary and work to YouTube.

Neither DC Comics nor Van Sciver chose to comment on this story.

There are a lot of interesting details to be mined from the SJW behavior here, but among other things, this is yet another lesson in never apologizing. And notice how heavily converged DC Comics is. The Hillary Clinton fundraiser who runs the show reports to Dee Dee Myers, who you may recall served as the White House Press Secretary during the first two years of the Clinton administration, worked for Alan Sorkin as a consultant on The West Wing, and wrote the book Why Women Should Rule the World.

Who better to know what young men want to read, right? As bad as Marvel’s convergence has been of late, you can be very confident that DC’s will be even worse within 18 months.

Anyhow, this is simply more of the same SJW DARVO that we saw the busted Googlers attempting via Wired and USA Today last week. They swarm and harass until their target hits back, then run screaming to Mommy Media that the bad mans hit them because Nazi. It’s the same disingenuous routine every time; notice that the media never quotes what provoked the initial response from the target.

And if the comics-SJWs think that Ethan Van Sciver, of all people, is far Right and has a mean streak, well, then the VFM and the Dread Ilk are going to have a seriously GOOD TIME these next few years. The poor sensitive bastards clearly have no idea what the Evil Legion of Evil has in store for them. Ethan and his fans aren’t the bad guys.

We are the bad guys.

Hey, it worked for The Most Popular Blog in Science Fiction. Lie about your traffic, secure the contract, then pray that no one notices the way in which your subsequent performance doesn’t quite line up with your supposed influence. What’s wrong with a little traffic inflation among friends?

The publisher of Newsweek and the International Business Times has been engaging in fraudulent online traffic practices that helped it secure a major ad buy from a US government agency, according to a new report released today by independent ad fraud researchers.

IBTimes.com, the publisher’s US business site, last year won a significant portion of a large video and display advertising campaign for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency. Social Puncher, a consulting firm that investigates online ad fraud, alleges in its report that the ads were displayed to an audience on IBTimes.com that includes a significant amount of “cheap junk traffic with a share of bots.”

The CFPB’s ad budget was the subject of criticism from Republican lawmakers after the Daily Caller reported last year that it had awarded more than $40 million in contracts to a single ad agency, GMMB, which is one of the top Democratic media strategists. (A portion of money in those contracts was used to pay media outlets for advertising space, and was not kept by GMMB.)

The CFPB was created in 2011 as a result of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. President Trump recently tweeted that the bureau “has been a total disaster,” and installed his budget director, Mick Mulvaney, as its new director.

Neither the CFPB or GMMB are accused of taking part in, or having knowledge of, ad fraud on IBTimes.com.

A CFPB spokesperson told BuzzFeed News the bureau is looking into the allegations raised in Social Puncher’s report…. When it comes to IBT’s fraudulent traffic practices, Social Puncher’s findings align with reporting from BuzzFeed News on IBT India, and with separate data gathered by Pixalate, an ad fraud detection company, and DoubleVerify, a digital media measurement company. (Social Puncher and BuzzFeed News previously collaborated on ad fraud investigations, but worked separately in this case.)

Based on what it described as a detailed investigation, DoubleVerify this week classified IBT’s US, UK, India, and Singapore sites as “as having fraud or sophisticated invalid traffic,” according COO Matt McLaughlin. DoubleVerify is now blocking all ad impressions on these sites on behalf of customers.

I always find it amusing when the SJWs in science fiction try to accuse me of inflating or exaggerating my numbers because I never report anything except exactly the Google pageviews reported by Blogger. But their accusations tell me that they are aware that other people in science fiction do so.

By the way, yesterday’s pageviews were 141,106. It’s been informative to see how neither USA Today nor Wired moved the traffic needle more than a very small fraction, but one brief appearance on The Milo Show has temporarily increased daily traffic by about 40 percent. The members of the maintream media really have no idea how individually irrelevant most of them are. Even with the benefit of a prestigious platform, they don’t have much an influence.