The Problem With (Certain) South Park Fans

I’ve been active on the internet for almost a decade now, and what primarily got me active on the internet was fanfiction. I started out with fanfiction of Digimon, and from there I became involved in the fandoms of Shaman King, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Invader Zim and Jhonen Vasquez’s other works. There was a lot of overlap of fans in these shows/comics, and another common franchise my internet acquaintances shared was the South Park fandom – which, naturally, I eventually fell into as well. This is all circa 2005-2006.

In 2007, I got married to my first husband, who severely controlled my access to the outside world (along with the fact that I had also suddenly become responsible for the welfare of children, which would have kept me off the internet for long periods of time anyway). This hiatus lasted until our divorce in 2010, and by then, it was like Rip van Winkle waking up after centuries to find that the world he knew no longer existed. Most of the acquaintances I had once considered my internet “friends” either didn’t remember me or vanished off the face of the interwebs themselves. I was able to reconnect with a very small percentage (as well as make some new net buddies), but what really bothered me was how much everyone’s ideologies had changed…for the worse: girls who were once hand-holding lipstick bisexuals with online girlfriends were now claiming to be genderqueer (even though there was no prior hint at gender dysphoria), they preached feminism and follow-the-herd leftism even though they (unlike me) had little to no experience with any of the injustices they complained about, and what’s more, they started to shit on every perceived controversy in the very shows and comics they had loved for years (while still claiming “fan” status). This is when I realized something: these people have no fundamental understanding of of the media they claim to enjoy.

This is most notable with certain fans of South Park, particularly after the Season 19 episode “Safe Space” debuted. Instead of taking an introspective look at their immature college campus mentality or even just deciding not to watch the show anymore, several fans took it upon themselves to create a community called “Safe Park” (which ironically, is full of bitching about the “problematic” elements of the show that supposedly trigger them in the first place). This shows that they don’t give a Lemmiwinks’ ass about taking the responsibility and protecting themselves from things that might not sit well with their convictions, they just want to be part of the zeitgeist. A retrospective look shows that this has always been the case.

There was a particular fanfiction writer back in the day who basically made up her own canon for her fandoms, and then it became Word of Dante among everyone in the fandom, whether they read her works or not. She was the one responsible for the popular idea that Craig’s last name was “Donahue” (even though it was later revealed to be “Tucker”) and that Kenny’s dad is physically or sexually abusive (which may be hinted at, but Stuart McCormick is never shown to be hitting anyone in his family other than his wife in a mutual fistfight). While fan theories and artistic license are not necessarily a bad thing, the fact that the majority of South Parkers have chosen to rely on deuterocanon rather than drawing inspiration from the source raises a lot of red flags – perhaps they have been unaware of the show’s nature from the very beginning.

Then again, I think the opposite might be just as true. Much like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, South Park often falls victim to having the satirical elements go over people’s heads and having the audience instead focus on the bizarre. I’ve been noticing that a lot of older episodes more or less predicted the current social justice warrior trend, and may have inadvertently fueled it. For instance, in “Mr. Garrison’s Fancy New Vagina,” a man who is notorious for exploiting his sexual orientation for controversy once he comes out of the closet decides to up and get a sex change without any of the prior counseling or hormone treatment that is involved in proper sex reassignment, and later this inspires Kyle to become a tall black man and Gerald to become a dolphin. Years later, we have Brianna Wu, Rachel Dolezal, and a fuckload of “otherkin” and other genderspecials. Were these assholes inspired by South Park? Did they completely miss the point of the episode (that you can’t just randomly make yourself what you want to be physically without understanding what it is you’re getting into) and think “Oh hey, this is what I am, I’m gonna do this”?

The truth is, I don’t know what’s wrong with these people, or why they all changed in the exact same way while I went off in the other direction. I can only speculate that it had to do with me missing a crucial period of an internet hivemind or being a part of a certain fandom. But it’s certainly something to think about, isn’t it?

The Lost Sheep Syndrome

I don’t know if I ever explicitly stated it before, but part of the reason the whole internet social justice warrior fad bothers me so much is that it has corrupted people that I previously considered to be friends. About ten years ago, I was pretty active on the internet with a lot of these people – in fandoms, in art/writing communities, whatever – but in 2007, a lot of serious life changes happened to me that kept me out of the loop for about five years until my divorce left me with some bitter resentment and free time. I probably would have gotten sucked into the same mindset as my former comrades had I not posted an opinion that a bunch of said assholes disagreed with and realized that they weren’t as smart as they’d like to believe. While I don’t fully disagree with everything these keyboard crusaders rant about, I do think that most of them are just parroting rhetoric without taking the time to research their “cause,” and many of them – being my age and younger – have not actually experienced life enough to make an informed opinion on such.

Which brings me to my next point: most of these SJW followers are middle class, white or half-white, and have some sort of debilitating issue that makes it difficult for them to function socially – a disability, a series of neuroses, autism/Asperger’s, a history of abuse – which leaves them home-bound (living with parents, no less), with the most prominent connection to the outside world being the internet. And that’s how the SocJus get them.

There is one person in particular that comes to mind when I think of this “lost sheep syndrome,” as I’ve come to think of it as…this person was someone I was acquainted with on DeviantART about a decade ago, through a mutual friend. They started off as a relatively normal teenage girl, albeit with an autoimmune illness that kept her indoors and off her feet most of the time, but she had a loving family, a boyfriend who had been with her longer than any of my relationships (including marriages) have lasted, and a penchant for many of the same fandoms that I was active in. Fast forward to the Tumblr Age, and suddenly she’s a nonbinary, rhetoric-spewing feminist/social justice slactivist. What the fuck happened? Well, I don’t presume to know this individual on a personal level, but seeing as she is a very public person, there is a lot to go on as far as speculation is concerned:

(Note: This image is only a representation, not the actual person I’m talking about.)

First, let me clarify that unlike previous SJW analyses I’ve written, this is not meant to judge the person in question, but rather a critical analysis of what makes someone open to this level of conditioning. Therefore, I’m not going to include screenshots in this one. Also, I’m using feminine pronouns in this segment as not to make this more of a grammatical clusterfuck than it already is.)

A 2012 post on her alternate DeviantART account documents that she had broken up with her boyfriend of about half a decade – whom she previously revealed had become her first (and at that point, only) lover – and that she had just gotten a Tumblr account. While I believe that this was the catalyst for her corruption, it’s worth noting that her biological father walked out on her as an infant and never returned and she was raised as the daughter of her rather liberal mother’s common-law husband, which may or may not have played a part in her susceptibility toward a Tumblr mindset. Granted, she had gone through the “bi with an internet girlfriend” phase that most of the teenage girls I knew on DeviantART were part of way back when, although she still identifies as bisexual to this day (and has a nonbinary “girlfriend” to show for it).

While she had previously been very open about sex and social justice, she had taken more of a humanist approach to both, even criticizing the male virginity stigma (on a journal that her bitch of a friend harassed me on, but that’s another story). She was a part of many fandoms that are very anti-SJW in nature, such as South Park, Dan Vs., MLP: FiM (two of which have openly voiced against the politically-correct “safe space” mindset in-universe). I remember about a year ago, she made a Tumblr post crying that she hated the fandoms she had voluntarily inserted herself into and made a plea for a safe space against them. Slowly, she spent less time focusing on art and more time focusing on making her now-generic opinion known on posts about feminism, cultural appropriation, and gender identity. Then out of the blue, she suddenly began to identify as “genderqueer” and use “they/them” pronouns, despite having not even the slightest previous hint of dysphoria in all of the time I had known her – and once again, this is a person who has less shame than I do when talking about themselves, so it stands to reason that if she had any confusion or uncertainty about her status as a female, it would have come out. Furthermore, she continues to present as feminine, and even had the audacity to call out a nonbinary female who dressed androgynously as being a poseur simply because she didn’t like their opinions on unrelated matters.

Not too long ago, I finally gathered some courage and asked her anonymously (for fear of other “friends” coming after me) on Tumblr about all the changes. She was fairly tactful about it, which I respect, but her reasoning behind the transition (as it were) was that her views have become “more nuanced and complex since [she] has learned more and matured.” This tells me exactly what I speculated before – that she has too much time on her hands and, in her desire to do good for the world, she has been sucked in to the social justice cult that is poisoning the minds of socially awkward but otherwise well-meaning twentysomethings that want to feel useful or have some sort of recognition.

Once again, I want to make it clear that I have no ill will toward this person, but rather concern – had I not been busy dealing with life kicking my ass from 2007-2010, I probably myself would be sitting in a dark corner of my mom’s trailer with a rainbow-colored mowhawk and a box of Twinkies as I blamed men and Republicans for not paying me enough welfare cheese. To further this example, I should note that my best friend – who is a year older than me – lost both of her parents in the span of a few years and was also forced to sink or swim, and she too is over this social justice bullshit that the younger generations are coddled by. Perhaps, then, these poor lost sheep only need to encounter a parental tragedy in order to pull their heads out of their asses – there’s no time to question how much of a woman you really are when it’s fight or flight time. Or maybe nothing so grim – maybe they just need Jesus, or a hobby, or a job weaving baskets for charity that keeps them off of the far left corner of the internet and allows them to fully experience life – and draw their own conclusions from it.

Matthew Reynolds-Hollon is an Asshole.

We all do some crazy things when we’re young, dumb, and full of cum – but it’s easy to chalk it up to hedonism when you’re not the victim. While a one-night stand or a few drinks with fair-weather sycophants might be remembered as “good times” for some, for others, it may be the biggest mistake of their lives. Yeah, that’s right – I’m venting about crap from the past again.

Flashback to two years ago: October 23, 2012. Obama is running for re-election against Mitt Romney and “Gangnam Style” is still relevant. I’m 24 years old, my divorce is final, it’s about ten days after I published my first (and to date, only) graphic novel, and I’m feeling pretty invincible. A couple of weeks earlier, my first boyfriend from high school, Matthew Reynolds-Hollon (known back then by a different surname but was later adopted), and what started out as simple catching up soon evolves into a “road not taken” scenario:

Wait a minute, didn’t I write something about this guy already? In brief, yes. In fact, that’s probably the summarized version of what happened – but the story runs a lot deeper than that. I’ll leave out some of the messier details, but I don’t think I’ll have true closure until I bring out the bulk of it.

So anyway, eventually we get to reminiscing about the past, and then sexting, and eventually agree to meet up one day after I get out of class for “catching up” before he left to be stationed at the USAF base in Lakenheath (which we all know was code for “fucking”). This was at a time in my life where I was young and stupid, and I had that Elliot Rodger mentality of thinking I was missing out on life by not having causal sex and that I was owed a shot at the wild life for my shitty upbringing…this is also the incident where I realized the hard way that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

So, Matt picked me up at my campus…I got into the passenger seat of his car and we immediately hugged, passionately. He kissed my neck and I hugged him tighter, and I sought to make our lips meet (which they did). We drove off to the Holiday Inn Express in Beaumont, talking, listening to music, exchanging knowing glances with affection…we parked and walked hand-in-hand to the elevator, up to room 243, where we removed shoes, backpacks, sweaters…and resumed making out on the king-sized bed. I won’t go into the play-by-play of what happened next (though I have all the cheesy details elaborated on in my diary), but I will stress the significance of what transpired: the experience left me feeling freshly devirginized, in a sense, and just the way he did what he did with me made me feel more…connected than I had in previous sexual experiences, even those with my ex-husband. I guess what I’m trying to say is that even though it was supposedly “just sex,” it felt like more to me, and he let me believe that he felt the same – eye contact, gentle caresses, whispered sentiments…things you don’t really get with a normal fuck buddy (if you do, don’t kid yourself you’re not getting attached to them).

Anyway, after that we went out with some of his friends to a bar, where I had my first drink since before I turned 21 (but those are stories for another time). One of those friends, John, became my boyfriend later (which I’ll get to in a moment), but at this time we were all just friends having a few drinks. I did get tipsy enough to make out with Matt while nobody batted an eye, though, which should have been my first clue that this guy was probably a sleaze and that his friends would cover his ass no matter what God-awful stunt he pulled. But as I was saying, we were having some drinks, and one of the friends had a little too much and things went badly – I touched upon that incident before, so I won’t elaborate again, but let’s just say I showed my human side that night and it did not go unnoticed. Later, Matt and I went back to the hotel and spent the night, and the next day we went to see his family and out to Olive Garden with them and another friend. Finally, Matt and I said our rather bittersweet goodbyes, even going as far as to say “I love you”…but as you know, I’ll be the first to confirm that the phrase means nothing without explanation. In my case, I meant it as one would think it would mean when said to someone you’ve recently slept with, but in Matt’s case, I wasn’t entirely sure. Granted, he did eventually send me these texts:

But of course, not before he sent me these (and many other messages that were similar):

And most significantly, this one, which shows that there wasn’t a misunderstanding over the definition of “I love you” in this context and that he truly was leading me on:

(I forgot to censor the phone number out, but he changed his number before he was deployed to England, so that one is no longer current.)

Now, I understand that there are instances of unrequited love where one person goes to far and you wake up with your pet rabbit boiling on the stove, but once again, I have to emphasize that up until his conscience finally got the better of him and he told me a month or two later that he “loved me as a best friend, but nothing more,” he was stringing me along while feeding into my fantasy that he and I could actually be together in spite of the circumstances. And once he did tell me that it was “over,” as it were, I backed off and left him alone. Matt, on the other hand, decided not to take any half-measures against what he perceived as his would-be stalker.

The friends from the bar/Olive Garden that I mentioned earlier became Facebook friends as well, and while none of them knew what was going on between me and Matt at the time (to the best of my knowledge, although now I suspect otherwise), one guy in particular – John – seemed to take an interest in me and help me feel better about my heartache. I was a little attracted to him, but had no intention of pursuing him. However, when I went to his birthday party at the beginning of December, we got drunk and one thing led to another (which I also made reference to before). Now, I don’t consider it rape because a) we were both drunk by choice and 2) I might have slept with him even if I was sober, since I was volatile. But all the same, I think I was set up to be in a position where I was meant to be taken advantage of, and I think Matt and his friends were the ones pulling the strings. You see, that was the most alcohol I’d ever had to drink in my life at that point, a fact that I had alluded to back at the bar when I told them I wasn’t a drinker, so they would have known I wouldn’t know how to control myself when it comes to alcohol. Then one of the friends refused to drink at the party, citing the excuse that she didn’t like the kinds of drinks John was serving, but if she was as good a friend as John claimed her to be (she also happened to be one of his exes), why wouldn’t he have had something there for her? Why did she just leave when we went off to the room together when she may have known he couldn’t be trusted? And why did John suddenly want to be my boyfriend when we woke up together, only to forget I existed three months later? I think these people set me up because Matt wanted me away from him.

But even without the conspiracy theories, there is no doubt that Matt is an asshole. I mean, I know for a fact that he blocked me from Facebook chat while pretending to be “busy” – I found this out through John. And even though John himself wasn’t a great person, I feel sympathy for him because he had recently lost his grandmother (who had basically raised him) and was struggling with alcoholism and possible depression – which just proves my point further that Matt is a piece of shit, because he was willing to use one of his alleged “closest friends,” who was going through a crisis, as a patsy in an attempted assault just to make a girl he was done using go away. But I guess it’s not entirely Matt’s fault that he’s a shitty human being. In fact, I blame myself entirely for everything. And I myself am not the greatest person alive by any stretch – I once convinced a guy I gave him HIV, I logged into my then-fiance’s email and sent a letter to his ex begging her to give him a second chance just so I could be rid of him, I found nudes that an ex-girlfriend of a different cheating ex-boyfriend had sent while he and I were together and posted them to his MySpace, I posed as a guy on Facebook and friended John to get evidence that he was cheating on me, and I once planned to leave a flaming bag of my own poop at my ex-husband’s door and take a video of him stomping it out. I am a horrible human being, but as such, I’ve faced the consequences for all of these actions. However, I did absolutely nothing to Matt to deserve to be humiliated, used, and hurt by him and his allies – even Hitler doesn’t deserve what Matt did to me. But Matt can keep partying all he likes – one day, karma will catch up with him and knock him the fuck out.

 

EDIT TO ADD, 8/22/15: So, apparently the douchebag in question got wind of my blog post about him (it’s been up for almost a year, and only after I reposted it the other day on my friends only FB does he say something? How uncanny) and had some things to say that weren’t very nice…so I got nasty right back. And to be fair, if he had asked me nicely to cease and desist my diatribe, I would have.

As expected, he not only blocked me to keep me from responding, but is continuing to send out his groupies to do his light work. (I wanna say it would be nice if I had friends like this, but then I remember that my friends are tactful and capable of independent thought, so never mind the trade.)

So let’s see where this goes. If I get a day in court, I’ll keep ‘ya posted. 😉

Take This STEM Job and Shove It

There is a lot of encouragement these days for women to seek out careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Most of this “encouragement” comes in the form of whining on Jezebel, of course, but this is still an important subject to think about…I mean, careers in the STEM field are important, obviously, but what makes them so damn special compared to careers in the arts and humanities? If women are that important to STEM, they’re obviously important to the other fields of study as well – and as a woman with an AA degree herself, I’m going to defend my field of study.

Career fields in the United States are, as far as diplomas and degrees go, divided into two categories: Arts and Sciences. The way I see it, the Science field teaches you skills that are needed to build a productive life, and the Art field teaches you skills that make said life worth living. There is usually overlap, especially in community colleges, and many people are good at both areas of study…but I’m not, so I don’t want the First Church of Gloria Steinem telling me what to do with my education choices.

Why should all able-bodied and able-minded women be recruited to STEM? We need our women here in the arts and humanities. Fields such as Psychology, Sociology, and History fall into this category, as well as Fine Arts (the few lucky ones in this field make more money than your average 9-to-5 engineer ever will, so there goes bridging the wage gap). If we’re going to make feminism an issue here, let’s take a look at the problems that already exist in the arts and humanities that will only be made worse by seducing women away from them:

• There aren’t many well-known women in these fields that don’t suck. I’ve already mentioned that women who go for bullshit degrees often don’t amount to more than being internet famous Feminazi bloggers or trophy wives to men with actual income-producing jobs. If women are going to be encouraged to blog or write, there needs to be more variety than the usual first-world women’s problems sites or mommy blogs that seem to be the female comfort zones these days. Does anybody remember when fratire was popular? Maddox, Tucker Max, AngryJerk…they actually write about stuff that’s interesting, offensive, and funny. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I am the only woman on the internet who comes anywhere close to touching the subjects that they do (that I know of, but I’ve looked), and even then I spend a good time bitching about my exes, angsting about how nobody loves me, and talking about my children. That’s not to say that I think women should appropriate fratire for their own use – even men need their own space to vent – but I think more chicks on the internet can stand to blog more like me.
• If more women go into STEM careers, more men will go in the other direction. Hey, fair is fair…as an egalitarian, I can’t really complain. But considering how bad the guys I’ve known do when it comes to domestic basics, I don’t have high hopes for what they have to offer in terms of careers that typically appeal to women. For example, lots of women become nurses of some sort, but many patients are typically more comfortable around female nurses than male nurses, so that can be somewhat disheartening…and then you have writer John Green, who I’m almost certain has his novels ghostwritten by his reclusive wife, because he specializes in a sophomoric writing style and cliché subject matter that is generally exclusive to female authors. So while women may have a lot to offer the world of STEM, men don’t seem to have much to contribute to the field that is being left open as the cows migrate to greener pastures.
• Minimum wage jobs aren’t getting any better. It’s hard enough to be a US citizen getting a job that most baby boomers equate with high school dropouts (though that’s entirely the fault of US citizens, but that’s another rant), but even immigrant-status jobs are hard for women to get because of all the physical labor involved…even if I can lift fifty pounds or whatever the requirement is these days, if I don’t look like I can do it at first glance, they won’t hire me. It’s more to do with liability and less to do with sexism, but everyone has to start somewhere, and in today’s US economy, the starting point is usually where it stops. Long story short: we should focus on making lower level jobs better and more accessible before we start nitpicking over how many female doctors are in a room.
• Quilting is badass. What exactly is so great about STEM jobs, anyway? Sure, at best they save lives and advance cultures, but as I said before, without things like art, philosophy, and trophy housewives with frill degrees, what’s the point of living? Take this quilt block, for example:
  
  I made this, not science. Granted, there is definitely mathematics involved (measurements, geometry, etc.), but those are more applications of everyday life rather than something for Rosie the Riveter clones to cream their coveralls over. It is assumed that most educated people can do basic mathematic functions such as add small numbers together, read a ruler, and push two right triangles together to make a square. I’m proud of the things I make and design, and since I am good at those things, I wish to base my career choices around it. Which brings me to my next point…
• Not everyone was meant to be a scientist. One of the last classes I took in community college was Chemistry 100. I remember doing one experiment where I had to heat a strip of magnesium over a Bunsen burner and then observe its properties. So I did, taking care not to look at it directly (due to ultraviolet rays and whatnot), and nothing happened…but then, with a blinding flash, it disintegrated into nothingness on the counter. I don’t think that was supposed to happen. As for math and technology and other such fields, I do okay with Algebra (which is essentially just basic math with unknown variables), but everything else is over my head. I know jack shit about programming (which is why I don’t like Linux) and what little I know about any script of any technological language I have to find on the internet – I think the extent of my scripting knowledge is limited to some basic HTML. In other words, I’m not good at STEM fields and I would not be an asset to any career that required high levels of STEM-field knowledge.

Women who excel in the sciences should be encouraged to acquire STEM jobs, if that is what drives their passion and they have the motivation for such. I don’t, lots of people don’t, and for all that encouragement to get “girls to like math,” women who push for other women to get into STEM jobs obviously can’t read the numbers that show that women generally don’t pursue those areas of study. It could be a psychological sexual dimorphic quality of some sort, or maybe even some kind of residual gender role grooming, but more than anything, I think it’s just that there are women like me out there who won’t bother being part of a circle-jerk if they’re not getting their due reach-around.

So I’ve Got a Frill Degree…

As of December 2013, I completed enough of the corresponding credits at Mt. San Jacinto College (a community college in San Jacinto, CA) to receive my associate’s degree in the field of Art. I filled out the application for graduation at the beginning of the semester in August of that same year, it was accepted, and I’ll be receiving the physical certificate in the mail sometime in February. I’m also welcome to attend commencement in May (they only do one a year), which I will most likely do.

Now, what can I do with an AA in Art? I can go for a graduate’s degree, which I probably would if I had the money and I wasn’t completely burned out on school. I can try to find some sort of niche job that actually takes an AA in Art into account, because I’m now potentially overqualified for several minimum wage jobs simply because I finished college (they’ll look for any excuse not to pay you what you deserve), but that’s currently a work in progress. Or I could do what other women with frill degrees that I’ve known in my life tend to do – act like they’re better than everyone else and assume that their bullshit opinions are valid simply because they are educated at all, regardless of what the degree is actually in.

That is not to say that all women with useless college degrees tend to act the same way; on the contrary, those who do can generally be divided into two groups: lipstick feminists with inferiority complexes (Anita Sarkeesian) and homemakers to successful businessmen who desperately want to be viewed as more than a trophy wife (my ex-husband’s sister). They try to make themselves feel useful by writing for The Huffington Post or telling other people how to raise their children while being shitty parents or childless altogether.

There’s this one chick – ahem, strong independent woman – who goes by the name of Jess d’Arbonne on the internet (if this nobody suddenly gets internet famous overnight because of this blog post, I want 25% of the royalties) who falls into this category. Her bios on various yellow journalism sites give her actual career title as everything from “book publishing” to “writer and editor” – in layman’s terms, she’s probably just another fucking blogger who happens to be as attractive as she is opinionated. Apparently she has a graduate’s degree in “Publishing,” which sounds like a frill subject in the realm of Gender Studies or Sewing for Suffragettes, and is an excellent example of the type of affected attitude that said women exhibit on a daily basis. She typically writes about things that are en vogue with a lot of self-depreciating girls these days – nerd stuff and feminism – to the point where even so much as one of her Twitter or Tumblr responses is some loaded social justice opinion. It makes her seem insincere, as though she never breaks character. At least, I hope it’s a façade – I would hate to think that she’s literally one of those nutjobs whose step-daddy hugged them a little too tightly in their teen years and thinks all men are out to get them – but I seriously doubt her “feminist nerd girl” schtick is legit, because she somehow managed to get some long-time male partner of hers to sign some papers at the local courthouse…oh, but she’s taken care to overemphasize how she kept her own last name and is not, under any circumstances, going to have children! I mean, what kind of hick state does she live in where people still give a shit whether or not she lives up to the standards set for the main character in The Bell Jar? Granted, Denver, CO is a pretty traditionally conservative area, but they legalized pot over there so it can’t be entirely white-bread.

Then of course you’ve got, as I mentioned in brief, Anita Sarkeesian, the eye-candy feminist vlogger known for stating only one side of an argument weakly and reacting to critique and criticism like a wounded puppy. According to Wikipedia (strangely, the only neutral source of information about her on the internet), she has a BS in “Communication Studies” and an MS in “Social and Political Thought” – basically, the kind of degrees you’d expect some underpaid civil servant to have. Yet instead of filing her nails behind a desk in some welfare office, she’s making opinion videos on the internet to the tune of over $150,000 worth of Kickstarter donations. I won’t go into any conspiracy theories regarding her alleged pyramid scheme or the dumbasses who harassed her over the internet, but instead I’ll focus on the content of her videos:

• Almost all of her arguments lack valid counterarguments. You can’t have a valid argument unless you look at both sides and address why your side is the better of the two. I took an entire course on how to do this in the summer of 2012 during my AA pursuit, why the hell didn’t she learn how to do this within the seven or so years she was achieving her Master’s?
• She doesn’t fact-check any of her sources, which is always a bad thing when you’re not speaking from personal experience. My blog is an opinion blog, and I still do my best to link to appropriate sources when the situation calls for it.
• She tries to sound too academic most of the time (despite liberal use of the word “crap,” which would never fly in a professional/academic setting unless you were screwing the dean or something), which makes me wonder if she’s still in school and doing the whole Tropes vs. Women gimmick for a grade. It comes off as condescending to an audience that probably uses the numeric keypad to type out sentences.

All of this, and she still remains a feminist darling – she even got cited in Newsweek magazine’s “125 Women of Impact” alongside Middle-Easterners who are actually fighting for civil rights in the face of death. I find that kind of insulting.

It is also worth noting that I was able to make a parody of her Feminist Frequency videos as a vehicle to promote my graphic novel using only a Kodak Easyshare M1033 camera, Adobe Photoshop CS3, and various freeware (most notably, Freemake Video Converter). I used a single-color panel of fabric as a backdrop and taped gold-colored keychain rings to my earlobes to mimic her signature earring style. Where’s my internet popularity?

Of course, let’s not forget about my former sister-in-law, whom I’ve already addressed twice in the past. I can’t remember what exactly her MS is in – some sort of Psychology degree – but for years she wasted her talent as a half-assed housewife, living off of her then-husband’s (a Peruvian immigrant whom she personally groomed from a valet parker to a successful car salesman for this very purpose) salary. I don’t know what the hell she did in her spare time, but it wasn’t parenting – her son is one sleepover away from getting his picture posted on the Megan’s Law website and her daughter is basically a teenage trainwreck for the sake of being a teenage trainwreck. I don’t know what she does now, except sit pretty on a pile of alimony while her license to do actual work in her field expires. And yet, she still found the audacity to tell my ex-husband how to raise his kids, bully him into doing her light work, and show open favoritism amongst her niece and nephews. That’s not to mention how she used me as a pawn in her pissing contest as well…and for what? In her teenage years, she was a drug addict who got knocked up by a patient in a mental hospital (or something to that degree). Then she was given the opportunity to turn it all around, and she still took the easy way out while making everyone else think that she’s the star of the latest rags-to-riches story. I don’t see what makes her better than me.

Well, I’ve done enough bashing for today, but I must also point out that I’m clearly not exempt from this frill degree trend either – it looks like I’m already started down that road. I’ve got a fiancé whom I’m sometimes convinced is only with me because I’m the only girlfriend he’s ever had who wasn’t online or fictional (though he has also made statements to the contrary, but whatever, guy logic), I’ve moved with him to Anaheim partially to get out of my former living situation (though I don’t think I’ll ever be a successful social climber), and then there’s the fact that he knows I feel this way and still puts up with my shit. Plus there’s this very opinion blog here that I post my arrogant opinions on…well, I may not be a very nice person, but alas, I just proved my own point – women with frill degrees often end up being nothing more than lazy, opinionated snobs. Now congratulate me on my AA in Art!