When you give an inch – On Emiru and the Cyberbullies

So, not too long ago, a streamer by the name of Emiru, who’s pretty cool in my opinion, got asked for her stance on ICE, and she answered:

Editorial Note: This is an older post that I just never got around to publishing. I say "not too long ago" here but this transpired half a year ago. Still, I wanted to publish this article after all since I now got around to editing it a bit. After all, I still think that this situation is important to talk about as I hate how people act whilst fighting for what they deem "a worthy cause". So many folks don't realise that they taint their movement this way.

“If you need a streamer who doesn’t even know anything about politics to tell you about politics, you probably just need to like get off the Internet.”

Which is fine as a response, honestly. It just entails that she doesn’t have the expertise to put it into the right words and doesn’t want to just echo platitudes without understanding the subject matter.

If you don’t have the expertise to comment publicly or if you don’t want to just release a public statement echoing platitudes without actually meaning it, then don’t do it, period. Nobody should force any adult to do something they don’t want to do. Taking away their autonomy, forcing them to “say the line” and dragging them through the mud is perhaps one of the most vile things you can do these days, without getting physical.

Not everyone has the spoons to get into it. It makes sense to want to keep politics out of one’s space when one is already surrounded by the many terrible things happening in the world, especially if you live in the United States of America. A lot is happening at the moment, and I find it wild that folks want to get a stance on these matters from content creators who don’t make political content. Emiru mainly does chatting, gaming and cosplay. That doesn’t scream “politics” to me.

Anyhow, so, a lot of people got upset at her for essentially saying the truth that she’s not the place to go to if they want meaningful political commentary or meaningless virtue-signaling.

Then she started getting harassed by folks.

Then she released a statement disavowing ICE and saying where she stands, not because she wanted to but rather because she felt pressured to do so.

Then she started getting harassed more.

Down below, I’ve put together just a few of the many different comments she’s been getting. The gist of it is that she got insulted a ton, called a femcel or nazi or racist, and there are even a bunch of folks calling for her to get sexually assaulted, which is absolutely wild. I’ve decided to censor the screenshots, but I also felt the need to at least show some levels of proof.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

Now, I didn’t want to just repeat the “when you give an inch” thing again, so I decided to go with this one – which is inspired by Shoe’s video over here that I highly recommend watching. I started writing this post a while back, but gosh, this is exhausting. Reading the brainrot that people put out there and the vile, sexist hogwash that people publically share, despite claiming to be “left” or “inclusive” or “queer” or whatever.

I’m not saying that it’s all of the “left” that is doing this, but it’s very much the most vocal bunch of them.

The story “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” by Laura Joffe Numeroff describes a boy giving a cookie to a mouse. The mouse then asks for a glass of milk to go with the cookie. They then ask for a straw to drink the milk, a napkin and a mirror to avoid a milk mustache, nail scissors to trim its hair, and so on and so on, before eventually getting thirsty and wanting another glass of milk, and in the end, they request a cookie to go with the milk, hence completing the cycle.

Twitter and the broader sphere of chronically online people work exactly like this.

If Emiru starts expressing political views like “Fuck ICE”, people on “the left” will ask for commentary on Trump, commentary on Emiru’s friends, commentary on Gaza, commentary on Russia, commentary on China, etc. They won’t stop.

Meanwhile, if Emiru were to say the opposite, the same thing would happen to her with people from “the right” wanting her to also express views on gay people, trans people, the left, communism, immigration, etc.

Since Emiru isn’t a political content creator, her community is probably pretty darn mixed in terms of political opinions, which in turn means that there will be people who feel irked either way. There is no winner, and as such, it makes sense for Emiru to just not talk about stuff she doesn’t have a stance on, stuff she doesn’t know enough about, or things she doesn’t know how to articulate in that very moment.

Since when has it become important to let people who have no clue talk about issues that others have more of a clue about? Like, as a white guy, I can comment on black issues but I’d much rather let black friends of mine who have the lived experiences and know a lot more about the stuff speak on the matter, and I’d rather amplify those voices than take away from their reach by also adding my two cents that don’t have that level of expertise to it. The same goes for trans issues.

The vast majority of these people who are literally bullying Emiru over this are people who don’t go to protests and whose whole identity is being chronically online keyboard warriors, I reckon, who feel comfortable saying this heinous shit because they’re somewhat anonymous in these spaces.

But more than anything, I have an issue with the great amount of people calling Emiru “racist” over this or a “Nazi” or “MAGA” or whatever. She didn’t give her two cents and suddenly she’s a nazi. What?? If that’s all it takes to be a literal nazi, then you’re committing holocaust denial. You’re belittling one of the darkest chapters in human history.

Weaponised Sexism and Hypocrisy

If you’ve clicked on the spoiler up there, you’ll have seen the vile shit people have spouted. From insulting Emriu as a bitch or worse to calling for her to sexually assaulted to validating what her ex-partner allegedly did to her to attacking her for her age or telling her to shut up.

These people are objecting to sexism only when it targets their own side while tolerating and exploiting sexism when it harms opponents. They instrumentalize sexism by turning it from a belief system they don’t agree with into a means to achieve a political objective.

I don’t agree with JK Rowling’s politics and her hate speech whatsoever but I don’t think it should be permissable to be sexist towards her. Sexism is also bad, no matter who it targets.

Allowing it to fester in our movement means turning it into a sexist movement.

I work at a pub, and it happened twice in the past year that I worked there that we had a problem with someone doing a Siegheil or nazi salute (or as the ADL would call it: “an awkward gesture”)… and both times, we promptly kicked them out.

Why? Well, if you permit a nazi in your pub, they’ll invite their nazi friends. Soon enough, other people will stop coming, and the pub becomes a nazi pub. That’s not good. Duh.
And this whole thing of weaponizing sexism is exactly that. It’s hypocrisy at its finest when you allow sexism to be used against your perceived opponents. It also sends a bad signal and it taints the whole movement.

I get that “the left” doesn’t exist. There is no such monolith out there. You can’t expect there to be anything of the sort. Still, sexism is bad. I think we can agree on that?

Telling a woman to “shut the fuck up” and “be quiet” when it doesn’t suit you is sexism. It conveys the ideas that a woman shouldn’t be allowed to express their thoughts. It perpetuates the idea of a smart woman not being ladylike or womanly.

At the same time, these people employ tactics such as pointing to her age in a way that insinuates that “being 30” or “pushing 30” is bad. Ageism. Incels and redpill people will utilize talking points like that to insinuate that women at that age aren’t “good” anymore.

Similarly, people point towards her cosplay, a passion of hers, and try to insult it, acting as if it is sex work (derogatively). Sex work is real work, but she’s not doing that. She just cosplays. She dresses up as characters she likes from games and media. That’s a pretty cool thing. Since when is having hobbies bad? But also, why are we acting like prudes all of a sudden? Sex workers contribute more to society with their taxes than most of these chronically online twats. Are they envious?

And then there are various comments about her looks and voice, as Shoe0nHead also pointed out in her video.

All in all, this is vile and incredibly childish and hypocritical behaviour that shouldn’t be a thing. Period.

Guilt by Association

There are a lot of folks who will also point out how she’s friends with Asmongold but just because he’s a twat, that doesn’t mean that she’s one, too. Just because they’re friends, that says nothing about their political belief systems.

Like, you cannot expect people to just cut ties with others simply because you disagree with those. If you cut off all the people you don’t agree with, you’ll either be left on your own or you’ll be a part of an echo chamber. Neither of those are good things.

I see it offline as well at the university that I go to: Some folks out there actually take the online culture wars into the real world and cut off folks simply for disagreeing on one thing. You can be all on board with everything a person says but disagree on one simple thing… and some of those folks will call you a nazi or bigot or whatever for it.

I’m super left-leaning. I’m very upfront about it. I have many left-leaning friends as well as some folks who are more “liberal” or “conservative” or “moderate” or even a friend who I recently learned was a pretty huge Kirk fan. Some folks out there would probably want me to cut ties with the latter but I don’t see the point in doing so. What do I gain from cutting off a close friend who just happens to like folks I dislike or have opinions that differ from my own? More than anything, I believe that I gain more by being friends with them. Not only are they dear to me and I value them a lot but they’re also someone who can bring a different perspective to the table and help me broaden my horizons. That doesn’t mean that I’ll turn right-wing or whatever but she sometimes has concerns about things and those make me wonder how we should approach right-wing people.

As it stands, most online lefties will just attack right-wing people or even moderates or apolitical folks or whoever else isn’t quite on their side of the left spectrum… and that alienates folks. We’ve seen it with the Democrats during the last election that voter turnout showed incredibly low numbers of young male voters voting for the Dems. There are a lot of black people as well who voted for Trump. Why is that? Well, for one, the Dems and a lot of lefties seem to only care about BIPoC voices or young males when they need them. It feels parasitic. When they don’t need their support, they don’t look at them whatsoever. They don’t care.

It’s the same in other countries, of course. A lot of “lefties”, especially online, act as if they hate men and as if men are demons that need to be eradicated… but when they need them, they wonder why men won’t vote with them. There are a lot of AfD voters in Germany who are young male adults because of this. It’s not just old farts that are voting for the far-right. It’s a lot of young voters.

Rather than ostracise people and attack them for who they associate with, who they watch or what they believe in, we should engage in a dialogue and assume positive intent. We should hear people out and ask them questions, inquire about why they feel a certain way, and then see where we can go from there. Sure, not everyone out there is willing to actually have a conversation. Not everyone out there has positive intentions. And yes, of course, not everyone on “the left” has the spoons to do this kind of work… but if you have the time and energy to attack some random person online and engage in hate speech and calls for violence, I’m sure you have the time and energy to spread some kindness and actually do good work.

Conclusion

I hope Emiru recovers from this. She never had to apologise nor issue a statement. The initial point of “I don’t want to talk about this” or rather “you’re cooked if you want a statement from someone who has no idea” is perfectly valid. She ended up not wanting to say anything and got attacked. She then said something and still got attacked. People don’t give a fuck and just want to be upset about it. I’m sure it would have blown over if she had just not issued a statement. Something like this taking away her agency and forcing her to issue a statement despite her not wanting to do so is fucked up.

Furthermore, yes, she might have lied in her statement about her getting cut out of context or something… but genuinely: Who gives a fuck? Nothing she did or said deserved this kind of treatment. Period.

Also, personally, I’m not even sure if I should have gone through the work of censoring the names and pictures of those people. The amount of men engaging in sexism while preaching feminism was horrendous. These folks may think of themselves as warriors, but none of them shall go to Valhalla.

This post was originally published on Indiecator.

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