It has been revealed in the past day that Hbomberguy, a Youtuber popular among the left sphere, recently released an apology about his behavior with regards to a person who was seriously uncomfortable with the actions of a producer on his videos, who was also a mod on his personal discord. Much of this on the surface seemed fairly sufficient, and many members of our mod teams at first glance thought that this was a proper self-criticism. When further context came out such as skype logs and images from his own discord, it was made abundantly clear that this was not an apology, but in fact a cover and an unwillingness to be held accountable for his behavior, whether intentional or not. (We want to add that intention is irrelevant here, because ppl come out with "his heart's in the right place" bs that we really want to avoid.)
We will be provide links to provide further context so you can judge for yourself, but the short and simple of it is that Hbomberguy refused to believe a person who is a rape survivor when he came up to Hbomb about the fact that a close friend of Hbomberguy, also serving on his production and mod team, had in 2011 made innapropriate harrassing and rapey comments towards this person. It was also acknowledged that the person in question was perceived as being "creepy" by his and Hbomberguy's female friends and fans in the live streams he participated in. Hbomberguy even shows that he knew on some level his response was wrong, but he then later said things that effectively gaslighted this person and called into question their own memory and perception of the accused party. Hbomberguy, instead of taking the time to listen to what the person had to say about his friend and keep an open mind, casted doubt about their whole experience because he didn't want to believe that his friend was sexist and a creep despite the clear evidence to the contrary.
The person had tried to originally post the details on another subreddit where the discussion could be constructive, but the mods turned it down, so he posted this on his tumblr because he had no other choice and this revelation needed to be heard and acknowledged. After it was public, people and fans got angry and had questions, so Hbomberguy responded with an apology.
After Hbomberguy released his apology on tumblr, the person released another post revealing how Hbomb's apology was not only terribly insufficient, but actually was an attempt to cover his image. Much of the discord evidence revealed the mod team to be incapable of handling a situation where someone is uncomfortable with a production member/mod's behavior. Instead of ripping the bandaid and explaining publicly to his users and fans why what he did was wrong and what he will do to rectify it, he instead tried to shut down any discussion and further casts doubt over this person's experience. Furthermore, H went as far as to claim that this person's Skype logs were faked and altered in order to further shut down discussion and avoid having to properly confront his behavior.
It should be made clear that this is NOT how you handle a case where someone has an issue with any member of your circle's behavior, much less a mod and production team member. What this shows is Hbomberguy clearly does not know how to go about handling situations like this, and in a great demonstration of irony, he actively tried to manipulate the situation and perpetuate the same culture that his very videos critique. This shows a basic and fundamental misunderstanding of what fighting against patriarchal relations is about.
