Gamers are a touchy bunch. I’ve covered several SJW mob events within the gaming and comics community over the years, but this one might be the dumbest. Cancel culture is that term we use when rabid mobs of social-justice keyboard warriors band together to bully someone out of their life because the mob’s feelings got hurt or because its members were faced with an opinion they found repulsive. Dissent is not tolerated in our new world order.
Todays’ example is Ant Lab Games, a husband and wife team of YouTube creators who review board games. Their channel is completely unpolitical. Frances and Anthony play and review board games. A few years ago, they made a video where Frances gave some advice to women who were complaining about sexual harassment at gaming conventions. Frances, who says she’s a survivor of sexual harassment and abuse, decided to share tips about how to avoid creeps, including how to set appropriate boundaries, how to report if your boundaries have been violated, being aware of your surroundings and non-verbal cues that can lead to trouble. The original video that the mob claims is controversial isn’t available anymore and has been deleted by Ant Lab Games.
Frances gave common-sense advice. But SJW mobs don’t have common sense. Instead, they adhere to the constantly changing far-left dogma that says women have no agency or personal responsibility when they are harassed or attacked. That the moral agency only lies with the attacker. Anyone suggesting that women take care of themselves and don’t put themselves in danger purposefully is to be hounded out of polite society. The mob then labeled Anthony and Frances as homophobic, misogynist, alt-right, Christian bigots. This launched a two-and-a-half-year campaign to destroy them. The mob contacted Ant Labs Games’ business partners and scared them into taking their business elsewhere.
The people who took her comments out of context and slandered her and her husband online never tried to speak to either Frances or Anthony. They instead painted a caricature of them and spread those lies about them on Reddit and Facebook and Twitter. As of yesterday, Ant Lab Games’ YouTube channel was shut down. Anthony and Frances have decided to leave the board game community. Instead, they have launched a new channel called Geek Mavericks where they say they will offer different content. This is a mistake.
If the mob comes for you, never apologize, never delete things, never back down. In fact, whatever you said that angered the mob, you should repeat it again. That’s called a double down. Anthony and Frances argue that their decision to leave the board gaming community did not involve letting the bullies win. In a YouTube video posted on Tuesday, Frances tried to explain their decision to quit.
That video and the hate we received while it contributed to a culture that made us leave, that was not the reason we left. There’s been a lot of this “cancel culture drove Ant Labs off the air”… we don’t feel that way at all. For me it was the culture that has become endemic that led us to the decision that this is not for us.
They’re wrong. If they think that their new channel won’t get targeted by the same bullies who chased them out of board gaming, they don’t understand how cancel culture works. When the SJW mob smells blood in the water (i.e. apologies, deletions) they get worse, not better. They will now get whipped into a frenzy that will not end until not only Anthony and Frances are penniless but anyone who ever knew them and defended them is unemployable, too.
This video Frances and Anthony released explaining their decision to leave the board gaming community is the worst thing you could do if you are targeted by the mob. Never, ever back down. Never give in. Unfortunately, this super nice couple has painted an even bigger target on their backs by caving to the bullies. SJW mobs won’t allow them to have any career, not just a career in board gaming. They won’t be satisfied until these two are unemployable.
“We hope that our leaving…maybe that will be a catalyst for someone to stand up and say this is not okay,” said Anthony. History teaches the opposite.
Jon Del Arroz, the leading Hispanic voice in science fiction, has successfully faced the mob several times. They can’t cancel him because he simply does not care what anyone says about him or his art online. His business has skyrocketed since the mob came for him because he refused to back down and capitalized on the notoriety. He had to live through getting sinister packages delivered to his home where his wife and children live and other terroristic tactics that SJWs will employ to intimidate and drive a person out of their chosen profession. Del Arroz made a video perfectly explaining the attack on Ant Lab Games and how to survive it. I wish the best for Anthony and Frances, but I fear their choice to cave will haunt them forever. This video below gives a good rundown of how we got here.
While Ant Lab Games doesn’t want to name their harassers, not everyone feels similarly. If people are allowed to publicly drive a family out of business by online public harassment, it is only fair that they are known to the public, as well. SJW mobs count on social pressure to do their dirty work. They like to stay anonymous so that the same social pressure doesn’t get put on them. That’s not a fair game. In order to beat the mob, you must name and shame them. Del Arroz knows how this works. Once you do name them and show people what kind of harassment they are engaged in against innocent people trying to make a living, they immediately cry “harassment” and “doxxing.”
Del Arroz’s YouTube channel has been reported and his video is quickly getting kicked off board game sites for supposedly “doxxing” these bullies. But doxxing would involve posting private information about people, such as their home addresses or phone numbers. None of the information Del Arroz is putting out there is private. The crybullies posted it themselves on public social media pages or on public websites. These players are industry people, just like the comicsgate people who tried to take over the industry from the inside.
This is in the SJW playbook: Infiltrate an industry, bring in more SJWs, exert power to show the industry who’s in charge by starting a smear campaign to push a popular industry expert out.
It really isn’t about politics, but about power. They are the Borg. You will assimilate.
In this case, the victims are an interracial minority couple. SJWs have apparently run out of white people to cancel. This is only about the takeover of yet another industry by SJWs. Remember Ms. Monopoly? Now you know why that happened.
Hasbro Debuts Feminist Ms. Monopoly to Jeers and Mockery
As soon as the culprits were named, they turned their accounts private so no one can see anything they’ve written. Ant Lab Games indicated on Instagram recently that they have been keeping screengrabs. If they want to win against the mob, the only right choice is to release them and show the world who they are. Social pressure works both ways. Will we ever learn how to fight back? Ant Lab Games posted this statement on Instagram in response to getting targeted by fellow YouTuber and competition T. Caires.
“We are in a position to speak up against this, and we are no longer going to sit by and watch good people get hurt. We aren’t going anywhere. We’ve been keeping a lot of the names, content, screenshots of us being slandered in private forums and are prepared to release EVERYTHING”
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