The Grossest Corners of the Internet Had a LOT of Thoughts On John Oliver's Online Harassment Segment

By Vivian Kane | Miscellaneous | June 23, 2015 |

By Vivian Kane | Miscellaneous | June 23, 2015 |

As you’ve no doubt seen (YOU’VE SEEN IT, RIGHT? If not, go watch it now!), John Oliver did a fantastic and fantastically depressing segment this weekend on online harassment. He focused primarily on revenge porn and touched on other ways women are threatened and harassed online, but you know what word he never once uttered? Gamergate. Still, he did reference the threats made against one female gamer and, worst of all, he dared to air footage of the group’s self-declared arch nemesis Anita Sarkeesian. And so those trolls lost their f*cking minds. In fact, they were ready to lose those minds before the segment even aired.

Hey #GamerGate Get all your pro GG media ready Flood the tag when that John Oliver stuff Airs Break the slanderous narrative

— ¡Pixelated Parrot! (@PwnParrot) June 22, 2015

As some of you mentioned in your comments on Cindy’s coverage of the video itself, that video’s YouTube comments section is NOT a place for the faint of heart or protective of sanity. And normally I would not want to give one speck of attention to YouTube and deep subreddit cretins, but I’m going to make an exception in this case, for two reasons. First, it’s important to keep an eye on the crazies. And this is not some negligible group. They are the minority, but not by nearly enough. Just look at the video’s ratings.

Of course, YouTube thumbs are not an accurate representation of all of humanity (I hope— oh god do I hope), but it doesn’t mean nothing. Oliver’s other videos pretty much all have a few tens of thousands of upvotes and a few low-hundred downvotes. This is the only video (at least of the recent ones) that comes anywhere close to a full third of dislikes.

Second.. their spelling and grammar and logic are so bad and that’s fun to laugh at. So while you are watching John Oliver and appreciating his brilliant brand of truth-humor, just be glad you aren’t any of these people:

The people who make no sense and probably still wouldn’t make sense if they could spell.

The people who refuse to see any two issues as related.

Or apparently refuse to acknowledge there’s even a problem.

ANY problem.

The people who are totally feminists. Like, way better feminists than you.

And they just don’t want to lumped in with those “bad” feminists. If not for them, they’d really like this video.

Actually, if Oliver would change basically everything about the video, THEN they’d like it.

Really, they really just want things to be fair.

All #gamergate wants @iamjohnoliver is fair representation. We are diverse and multi-faceted. All walks of life have come together.

— Mistress Abyss (@countingthetoll) June 23, 2015

Because dudes get harassed, too. Where’s their Last Week Tonight episode?

And, finally, there are the people who could not abide insults to their white penis.

They really hated that white penis line.

They hated it as much as they love to misquote it.

Don’t be mad at the monsters. Just be glad you’re not one of them.