#oneaday Day 156: Salem

I thought I should follow up on yesterday's post given what's been going down.

For those unaware, there was some Internet drama yesterday concerning YouTuber ProJared, someone whose content I have always enjoyed greatly — and someone who I have cited as an inspiration for my own video work on more than one occasion. I have no connection with him — I just like his work, enjoyed his style and have followed what I thought was the good role model he exemplified in terms of content creation.

Let's not get into the specific details because I'm not a tabloid and I don't have first-hand knowledge of the situation, but suffice to say that some pretty unpleasant allegations have come out about Jared, supposedly with a lot of evidence. As a result, Jared hasn't been seen on social media since yesterday, his channels haven't updated with the usual schedule of videos and the former creative collective of which he was a part, NormalBoots, has severed ties with him. NormalBoots supposedly knew about these allegations since the beginning of April due to an unsolicited email they received, but they have only made a public statement now since the whole thing blew up.

Jared's actions, if true, are stupid and inexcusable, and assuming the evidence that has been presented is actually real, it looks disappointingly likely that the allegations are true. This is all a big "if", though; I'm immediately skeptical of anything the Internet immediately proclaims to be an unequivocal, unarguable truth, particularly when it results in an immediate dogpile on someone that a lot of people have clearly held a grudge against for a long time now.

The reason this is hitting a bit close to home for me right now is that I've been on the receiving end of exactly the sort of harassment campaign I've seen Jared suffering since yesterday… and I know for 100% fact that I didn't do anything.

Back in 2013, I suddenly received a message on Twitter accusing me of being a paedophile. This subsequently escalated to increasing numbers of people filling my Twitter mentions, Facebook comments and blog comments with accusations; I even ended up with an Encylopedia Dramatica entry about me.

Where it got really scary was when I started getting messages from friends, colleagues and family telling me that they had been receiving phone calls making accusations and threats about me. My parents and brother received such calls, and so did the owner of a site named Games Are Evil that I was running at the time. The harassers had tracked down people connected to me via a combination of the WHOIS data for websites I owned, and social media posts.

There was, of course, no evidence, because I hadn't actually done anything wrong. You want to know where these accusations came from in the first place? Because I had publicly stated that I was an adult-age man who enjoyed the TV show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. That was it. That was literally it. Someone explained to me that the group responsible for the harassment, known as the GNAA (don't look that up), had a habit of picking out random people interested in that show and attempting to smear them as a paedophile. Why? For the lulz.

I went to the police with a mountain of evidence. They told me they couldn't do anything. So all I could do was ride out the storm, close what social media accounts I could and lay low until things blew over. They eventually did, but it made the Internet a traumatic and scary place to be for a while, and I'm not sure I ever quite recovered from the experience, which is why I'm rather uneasy interacting directly with strangers online today.

The reason why the ProJared situation makes me so uncomfortable is because it seems to be unfolding in a very similar manner. There are people flooding his comments sections and mounting organised campaigns to deplatform him, and it seems pretty apparent that someone at Twitter has a beef with him, since he quickly lost his "Verified" badge (supposed to be nothing more than an indicator that the Twitter account for a public figure is who they say they are — but which appears to be treated more as an "Endorsement" badge by Twitter these days) and on top of that, there was a Twitter Moment highlighting the whole horrible situation, which I found incredibly distasteful.

The difference in Jared's case is that there appears to actually be evidence that he has engaged in wrongdoing… though ultimately that evidence is still just a bunch of pictures on the Internet. If the accusations are true, this "trial" should be going through legal channels, not through the kangaroo court of public opinion… but as ever, people would much rather start tearing the flesh from someone the moment they smell blood than follow appropriate, fair procedures to ascertain innocence or guilt… and to get actual justice for those wronged.

To clarify: if Jared has done the things that he is accused of having done, I am heartbroken, upset and disgusted, and hope the victims see justice done. I am steering clear of his content until (if?) the full truth comes out. But I cannot and will not be part of any kind of torches-and-pitchforks attempt to destroy both a man's livelihood and his very life based on some social media posts.

To be frank, given what I know of Jared's mental health, I'm somewhat concerned he might not actually survive this. I'm not talking about his career, which is almost certainly over at this point. I'm talking about his literal life. I really hope I'm wrong about that.