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The Shredded Moose (Non)Conspiracy |
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Posted Feb 20, 2014 - 15:43:47
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So... this "thing" happened on Tumblr. I don't know how to describe it, other than "holy crap, people like this are real." I thought about listing this as a Craptacular World entry, but frankly the person is far too unimportant to warrant such attention.
But I had to write something about it.
As you may know, I'm a fan of David Willis's comics, including Dumbing of Age. David Willis has a tumblr blog dedicated to just that comic, and he encourages people to submit to it and ask questions. Well, last Saturday, the most insane thing was submitted to his blog by the tumblr user Shreddedmoosememorialwebsite.
In it, SMMW (which I will refer to the tumblr user by from here on out) said:
David Willis, you and your cohort Jeph Jacques are responsible for poisoning the webcomic community and creating the current depression it exists in today.You mindlessly shove SJW propoganda into all of your comics and are spreading the acceptance of toxic SJ beliefs that will someday be the DEATH OF OUR FREEDOM
I realize you'll censor this post just like you're censoring freedom of speech BUT hopefully you'll still read this post and realize some of us webcomic fans are not mindless cattle. And if not you'll probably sic your syncophantic fans on my tumblrs but I hope you know that what you're doing is killing the 1st amendment. For the record, I am NOT a hater, I am spreading the truth. I am transsexual myself and I cannot accept what you are doing to the webcomic community.
I just want you people to know that you killed a webcomic called Shredded Moose which empazized freedom of speech and belief. Now the only thing that remains are "progressive" "safe" "handholdy" mindless drivel that will destroy our freedom of individuality.
My first reactions were first "What the f***?" followed quickly by "What the hell is Shredded Moose?" because I had never heard of it
Googling Shredded Moose, it appeared to be a webcomic that was, frankly, fairly terrible. It was full of frat boy humor, misogyny, and relative mediocrity. Was it the most misogynist webcomic I've ever seen? No. Was it the worst drawn? Far from it. But it wasn't, y'know, good. And because of this, it got fairly negative reviews.
Like many webcomics in the grand sea of the net, the authors (for reasons never communicated to the readers) eventually gave up and ended the comic. And because they were paying for hosting, eventually stopped paying the bills and the comic disappeared into the ether.
This is not an uncommon story.
So one has to ask, what the hell do webcomic artists David Willis and Jeph Jacques have to do with this? How could these unrelated artists have killed a webcomic that likely wasn't even on either of their radars? Why do people have no clue what the first amendment actually says?
I felt the need to find out.
So I went to their tumblr and submitted an ask (and got the following response:
John Soloman is a guy who used to write webcomics reviews. There's an archive of his stuff out there if you feel like googling him. The "Bad webcomics wiki" is exactly what it sounds like. Neither of these though have anything to do with Willis or Jacques. Hell, John Soloman wrote a fairly negative review of David Willis's work back in the day too. This response prompted me to dig deeper.
It actually took me a while to figure out how weird this answer to me was. First they say that "kill" is just a metaphor, but then they propose that there was something
physically preventing readers from accessing Shredded Moose. This person honestly believes that's a possibility. Sadly, I didn't immediately pick up on that.
Somehow I had "slipped up" apparently. How?
And here's the crux - the person running this tumblr can't accept that it died a natural death. I mean, seriously. SOME lowly read webcomics keep going, while OTHERS die off. The only difference is whether or not the creators keep making them. That's it. No external player has a part in this. I was, frankly, done at this point.
So apparently, somehow, "Social Justice" propaganda magically prevented people from reading the comics. And that lack of readers made the creators give up. Except that makes no sense. Because if the so called "Social Justice" community had the power to shut down sites... lets just say they'd go after a target a little more important than a comic
no one was reading.
I could go into this more, like how the
person running the tumblr accused the critics of Shredded Moose of being Transphobic. Because apparently we all knew that she was a transwoman (I have independently verified this claim as true to the best of my very surprised ability).
Which, y'know, we didn't. Because why would we? Especially when they're ranting about the evils of "Social Justice." You know, that same "Social Justice" umbrella which includes fighting for trans* rights.
The person has since wiped out almost all of their tumblr, including my asks - but it's slowly filling up with new weirdness. For a while I thought it was a troll, but after digging into this person's background, I honestly think this is an unbalanced individual who needs to get help. That's why I'm not talking about who they are.
But damn it, they're kind of entertaining.
Update! SMMW found my tumblr post about her, and the interaction has continued to be hilarious!
Another Update! It's gotten a lot less hostile, but even with a change to her Tumblr username... it keeps going.
- Traegorn
