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My 15 years old cousin was destroyed by JonTron beliefs

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H

Hayama Akito

Member
First of all sorry if my english sounds terrible. Also if some mod wants to move this thread to Gaming it's okay, but I prefer Off-Topic because I feel this is something more personal than anything.

You probably already know, but this 2017 has been a very, very bad year for JonTron. If you don't know about this, there is a GAF topic about this issue.

Good old Jim Sterling wrote about this topic in his site The Jimquisition. He says: "Keep all that in mind, and now remember that JonTron and PewDiePie are more relevant to a younger generation of people than Richard Gere will ever be (...) JonTron has a less titanic three million subscribers, but that’s still an incredible amount of people watching and he’s still more important to young audiences than many “mainstream” media sources now".

He is right... he is SO right.

I have a teen cousin who loves YouTube but mostly loves JonTron to death. I'm from Chile so english is not our language, but she loves videogames and JonTron so much she started to learn english when she was 10 thanks to his videos. She saw the Daikatana review with spanish subtitles made it by a fan in 2012 and she just exploded. I can't deny JonTron was fun at the time, I like his Banjo-Kazooie Nuts and Bolts review, so I was okay with this. I know JonTron is DEFINITELY not the best thing for a 10 years old, but I'm not her father.

She started to share her love for JonTron with her friends in school. She has a kind of innocent fanclub in her class. I'm pretty sure that her humor and taste in games were molded by this guy, specially because she loves retro games. She is 15 now and her english is pretty advanced for her age. I learned english thanks to videogames on the SNES era and I never had a proper english class at school (as you can see), so I feel kind of identified with her.

Today she came to my house and started to talk about the racist stuff. She shares her love for videogames with me because I'm the nerd of the family and her parents aren't very involved in her hobby honestly. She saw the Destiny debate, and she didn't understand too much about what they were talking about (there are some english words that she still doesn't understand well), but she was shocked because she understand that Jon was talking "ugly stuff" and people in the Destiny chat were mocking him.

I started to explain to her about the situation. It was hard... she of course understand what racism is and all that, but she was not ready for hear JonTron talking shit about race and white supremacy.

She started to cry. She cried a lot.

"Why he doesn't like people different to him"
"Why he hates people from his own country"
"Why he hates black people"

We are not from the US, so I tried to explain to her (in the most easiest way possible) the political situation of the country. Definitely something in her died today. It was a call to reality. She will talk about this in her class for sure tomorrow.

I feel so bad for her. I gave one of the most honest hugs in my life to her.

Honestly I just wanted to get that off my chest than anything else and I apologize for this messy and overdramatic thread. She of course will overcome this but fuck him. What an unpleasant moment.
 
P

Pai Pai Master

Banned
You did good OP. Finding out people we admire are actually horrible people is a part of life these days - it's not gonna be the first time it happens to her so it sounds like it was a good thing that you were there to explain it all to her and help her figure out her feelings.
 
A

Air

Banned
This is an unfortunate lesson for your cousin to learn that sometimes your heroes are assholes.
 
F

frontovik

Banned
I must be out of touch with what's trendy nowadays. Kinda absurd and amusing that Jon had such a following among the youth. He's too vulgar as an individual.
 
N

norm9

Member
This is probably a good psa for parents to occasionally check what their kids are watching on the internet. My littlest nephew loves all these youtube oersonalities and luckily sticks to shrieking mine craft and roblox people instead of people like jontro
 
A

Akuun

Looking for meaning in GAF
It's sad that one of her heroes turned out to be an asshole, but good on you for doing what you could for your cousin.
 
B

buddha0991

Member
frontovik said:
I must be out of touch with what's trendy nowadays. Kinda absurd and amusing that Jon had such a following among the youth. He's too vulgar as an individual.
Click to expand...

He is honestly rather tame (his channel I mean) among things I have seen kids into these days. Kids LOVE edgy and vulgar stuff now
 
CrimsonSquall

CrimsonSquall

Member
Take this as a positive. Now she is exposed to the second layer of his humanity rather then the surface level of hobbies and jokes.
 
G

Glix

Member
I remember when my world was shattered by Doc and Daryl. Its a hard lesson to learn.

And I still haven't fully learned it...

I would be crushed if I found out Lin Manuel Miranda beat the shit out of his wife or something.
 
G

G0523

Member
OP, your English is actually pretty good.

As for your cousin, yeah it does suck that one of the people she admired turned out to be a horrible human being, and it does suck that she's realizing this at 15 years old. Unfortunately, it's a part of life. Not everyone we look up to or like are good people. But it's good that you're there for her to guide her through this mess.
 
A

Azuran

Banned
Yaboosh said:
Which is curious really.
Click to expand...

It's sad. The moderates are the worst because they refuse to speak out if something is wrong just because they are afraid they are going to lose their racist and sexist audience.

Money does speak louder than words when some people are happy having pieces of human trash like that among their audience.
 
M

MadLaughter

Member
Send this story to Boogie and TotalBiscuit and Colin Moriarty (Who recently started following JT on twitter) and all the rest.

If you're a person with a platform, words have fucking power. Listen to Uncle Ben, you fucks.
 
B

Bass260

Member
It's a problem in itself, that we have ill minded people like Jon Tron serving as a role model to a lot of easily-influenced youth. You did good for explaining that to her OP.
 
L

LionPride

Banned
There's a YouTuber I watched who worked for RT, don't know if they do anymore, but they said nigger a lot. To 12 year old me, I was fine with it, thinking about it a few years later...I was not, at all.
 
C

ClosingADoor

Member
And that is why these Youtubers should be held accountable just like every other media personality. Good for her for recognizing he guy was in the wrong. I'm more worried about the kids that watch this and are influenced in a negative way by thinking these are normal "opinions" to have.
 
Grizzlyjin

Grizzlyjin

Supersonic, idiotic, disconnecting, not respecting, who would really ever wanna go and top that
LionPride said:
Yo, so many YouTubers are pieces of shit or "moderates" or just all around assholes. So so many.
Click to expand...

Basically. You see a lot of this on the gaming side anytime representation comes up.

"I don't even notice this stuff."
"Why can't it just be about the games."
"Don't make this political."
 
T

The Last Wizard

Member
BlazinSkatinAxel said:
Those 12 year olds saying "n*****" on Xbox Live grew up.
Click to expand...
Definitely one way to look at it that I've never thought of.
MadLaughter said:
Send this story to Boogie and TotalBiscuit and Colin Moriarty (Who recently started following JT on twitter) and all the rest.

If you're a person with a platform, words have fucking power. Listen to Uncle Ben, you fucks.
Click to expand...
They don't care cause they possibly hold the same opinions. Birds of a feather.
 
N

Noema

Member
The Last Wizard said:
They don't care cause they possibly hold the same opinions. Birds of a feather.
Click to expand...

Boogie's response was basically: "I don't agree with him but he's my friend and he has a lot of subscribers and I don't want to lose subscribers so I won't call him out".

Fuck him.
 
Guiberu

Guiberu

Member
okp66FD.gif
 
P

Poppy

Member
^ why dont you believe it, and why are you being a dismissive asshole about something that actually seems quite sad
 
M

Mesoian

Member
Very early lesson in, "never meet your heroes, they will only disappoint you".

My condolences, but be proud of her for being able to see through the bullshit. Plenty of people cannot.

Yaboosh said:
Which is curious really.
Click to expand...

Eh.

Lot of people were brought up with the idea that internet views aren't to be taken seriously, or at the very least, literally. People grew up on 4chan being taught that getting mad at outrage was stupid and it should be laughed at because the people getting mad and the people causing the outrage are just stupid tryhards that don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Jump 10 years, now these people are making streaming profiles, getting success on youtube, the internet is paying them (not individuals, the internet as a collective because there are no individuals and if you think you're an individual, you're stupid for thinking you're a special snowflake), and you never have to change.

And you find out that the world that you grew up in is, and always was, much smaller than you always thought, and that behavior isn't acceptable in 99% of public situations, and now you're being called out on youtube because using the words "faggot" and "nigger" isn't the funny adjective you were taught it was, it's real hate speech. The consequences start crashing down around you. You have had 0 days of media training, but you're speaking to the world, and you realize, you don't know how to react, so you double down on what you always knew to be true.

If anything, I expect these sort of meltdowns to be way more common in the near future, and I expect the defense force for them to be smaller but louder every time it happens because, "why should we have to change, it was always this way, but then these god damn normies showed up and started wailing. They should be the ones to change. It's not my fault, it's them. It was always them."

::SHRUG::

Noema said:
Boogie's response was basically: "I don't agree with him but he's my friend and he has a lot of subscribers and I don't want to lose subscribers so I won't call him out".

Fuck him.
Click to expand...

Boogie is a real good example because all of the internet strife he's ever had, literally all of it, comes from the idea that he has to double down in everything that he knew and protect that as the status quo, even when it makes no sense to. He got killed during Gamergate because he NEEDED to speak up for those people around him who were being mislabeled as misogynist, even when those same people were openly and publically being misogyist.

A little media training, if your friends are being douchebags in public, don't then get on a separate soap box and say, "well, I don't agree...BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT....". It makes you look bad 100% of the time.

Boogie will recover. Most of the people who are going to lose 100k-500k subscribers will recover. The fact that they will recover should not be the reason why they feel emboldened to follow in the path of someone who, very likely, will not recover.
 
N

NinjaCoachZ

Member
Guiberu said:
okp66FD.gif
Click to expand...

Come on, man.

Edit - Op, to prevent stuff from getting derailed to much, that is heartbreaking. On the bright side, I'm glad your cousin sounds like a good person and that you have her back. I hope this inspires her to take action and not be afraid to speak out against this kind of BS. Anyone who doubts the influence of these YouTubers needs to read this.
 
M

Miles Quaritch

Member
Your 'heroes' will always let you down, it's better she learnt this lesson now rather than later.

Although to have reached 15 years old and not be jaded or cynical is in itself a damn good achievement.
 
P

PeakPointMatrix

Member
It may have been crushing to see your cousin despair like that over someone she was a huge fan of, but take solace in the fact that she is a good person to know what he said was unjust and wrong. So many of his followers are defending and handwaving his garbage, and it's good to know your loved one isn't like that.
 
C

Corpekata

Banned
Is Sterling like the only video game personality (as far as ones big on video) to actually have a decent take on this? Hell, most just don't say a damn thing. Boogie and Totalibiscuit's attempt to spin it as "the evil media attacking the underdog youtubers" were ridiculous.
 
J

jellies_two

Member
Why is google monetizing this stuff?
Do advertisers know?
If google would actually replace algorithms with humans they might see start to grow a spine and be more picky about how they dole out cash for views and then the worst of it wouldn't thrive.
 
Z

zeemumu

Member
I'm sorry OP. That's gotta be rough hearing someone who made you laugh and influenced you in a big way spewing toxic stuff.
 
H

Hayama Akito

Member
Thanks all of you for your words. I wanted to share this because JonTron is from the US, and probably 90% of GAF are from there. Is really incredible the power of YouTube around the world. Also I really feel so bad for my cousin, I love her.

norm9 said:
This is probably a good psa for parents to occasionally check what their kids are watching on the internet. My littlest nephew loves all these youtube oersonalities and luckily sticks to shrieking mine craft and roblox people instead of people like jontro
Click to expand...

The problem with this case is that her mother just saw my cousin watching "A guy talking about videogames in english" and she doesn't understand a word. But yeah, I dig ya.
 
B

broncobuster

Banned
Doesn't help that these YouTube guys are in their late twenties and everybody calls them and treats them like kids to avoid responsibility.
 
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