noyka:

500daysofevilexes:

JonTron is a comedian who makes fun of games online. He has a fanbase that rivals the most popular of YouTubers, and up until today very few people had anything negative to say about him.

At some point today, he used the word “retarded” to describe a PS4, and everything went to hell. If you asked Tumblr or Twitter, you’d have thought that the guy burned an orphanage to the ground.

Now here’s the deal: When you’re that famous, nothing gets past your fans. You can’t say “retarded” to describe anything or anyone (no one should, really). So JonTron made a mistake here and used an offensive word in passing to describe something frustrating. 

And the internet exploded. 

I want everyone to know that I’m not “siding” with JonTron here, because I’m not a fucking 12-year-old who “takes sides.” He made a mistake and didn’t publicly apologize for it, and that can be frustrating. However, how did all of this blow out of proportion anyway?

It goes back to the bizarre mentality of ganging up on people via the internet, hashtag hate, and clicktivism. JonTron is well-known and made a mistake, and it’s easier for us to blindly attack as a group than to attack as individuals. Countless studies have shown that human beings want to feel as if they belong, especially people who don’t normally feel like they belong anywhere (which is a majority of people of Tumblr). So they will join internet crusades in sorry attempts to take down YouTube celebrities because, you know, it’s a bandwagon that they can feel high and mighty while a part of.

I think that a large majority of social justice warriors suffer from the mentality of “I need to feel like I belong.” It’s why they knock so many innocent people down in awful ways while simultaneously boosting other lonely, desperate people up. 

In reality, however, this whole “attack on JonTron” did nothing but prove how ridiculous hashtag hate and clicktivism really is. People have been reblogging things like “I hope JonTron gets shipped up to Israel and gets blown up by a missile”, which is infinitely more offensive than JonTron’s original slip-up.

Why is it that responses and threats to people who have offended you are allowed to be more violent and offensive than the remark made by the person you’re attacking?

I can’t believe that I need to say this, but there are so many worse things happening in the world than an internet celebrity calling a video game system retarded.

To close, let me just show all of you clicktivists how you look to the rest of the world:

Way to save the world, guys.

I love everything about this

As a disabilities rights activist, caregiver, and autistic woman myself I have to say a couple of things:

First and foremost retarded is definitely a slur and very personal to many in the community. That said it’s a word and most who use it don’t mean harm, they use it out of ignorance not malice. When you blindly attack like many do you aren’t helping anyone. All you are doing is confusing people and causing more division between neurotypicals and non-neurotypicals.

Okay, I’m no fan of game grumps and frankly, I find jon tron to be overrated but I hate idiots who have to make everything so politically correct that it takes away the true meaning of whatever it means.

Retard comes from the french verb retarder, which means to slow down.

Retard in english means slowing down or holding back development/progress such as fire retardant retarding fire or stopping the fires progress.

The PS 4 AND the Xbone ARE retarded in that they are slowing down the progress of videogames by focusing more on making it like television. As a console, they are holding back videoggame development and are therefore retarded with retarded being the right term.