As Editor-in-Chief here at Hipsters of the Coast, I see the responses generated by the articles we publish. Mostly we get the “that’s great” kind of feedback, though we get our fair share of criticism and dismissive eye rolls. And that’s to say nothing of the silence we get from virtually everyone on earth who either never visits our site or does so without feeling the need to say anything about it. Overall, I would say Hipsters’ oeuvre has been welcomed with varying degrees of acceptance, appreciation, and ambivalence.
But sometimes the feedback we get is a bit more hostile. We have a long and proud history of publishing writers who are perceived to fall outside the “normal” Magic community of “youngish whitish dudes”—and a vocal cabal hates that we do. The word “normal” is Loaded AF, and the entire concept of what is “normal” feels these days like a battleground. There’s a concept known as the Overton Window that deals with the range of ideas that are acceptable to discuss. A cabal of hostile folk want to forcibly keep the sexual objectification of women within that window. They see anything that challenges their comfortable “locker room talk” as the enemy.
This is nothing unique to Magic, or gaming culture, or any subset of our society. The cabal has mostly coalesced around the term “alt-right” and pervaded our politics in the United States. Harassing women to maintain their oppression is big business for these folk. Look at the failed attempt to manufacture false rape reports against Alabama Senate candidate (and actual monster) Roy Moore. James O’Keefe has been a shitlord ne’er-do-well for years, a protege of Andrew Breitbart and Steve Bannon. This scumbag gets paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year as a foot soldier in this war on decency.
I don’t even want to think about how much money the current President and his family are making off their exploits, and all the hangers-on getting rich at the vile trough. And it’s even bigger than that fell family. Fox News has paid more than $100 million—that’s a lot of money—to conceal their pervasive hostile work environment. Here’s an article about their recent $90 million settlement to their shareholders alone, and that’s the sort of secondary payment a company makes after settling with their actual victims. All I can think of is the famous bathhouse scene from Spirited Away:
Harassment is big business. These people make a lot of money off their weaponized hatred, latching the ad revenue spigot onto the pipe of raw sewage. Katie wrote bravely yesterday about her abuse from Jeremy Hambly, a toxic content creator who makes money from Patreon and advertising on various social media platforms and uses that money to wage war on our community. Hell, this Hambly idiot managed to get preview cards from Wizards of the Coast—something that I can personally attest is not easy to do—out of his hateful platform.
He’s not the only one making money in Magic off hatred, though.
So, I guess I’d just been lucky enough to dodge it for a long time, but I found out about a FB group (modded/created by @TravisWizard) that featured a draft of female Magic personalities based on their bangability.
I’m shaking I’m so angry.— Emma Handy, Tournament Grinder (@Em_TeeGee) November 28, 2017
Yesterday afternoon, news broke that Travis Woo organized a private shitposting group on Facebook that was even more putrid that you might imagine. We shall see where that story goes and what will be uncovered as a result, but I think it’s safe to say now that Travis has used this forum to build his personal brand as a Magic content creator. In other words, he’s making money off this shit.
With that in mind, we published a guide for reporting hostile content to the platforms on which it appears. These harassers and shitlords profit off their hatred. It gives them power and reach. And these people do so in violation of the terms of service of many of these platforms. Report them! Let’s take back our streets.
Carrie O’Hara is Editor-in-Chief of Hipsters of the Coast.