Mastodon has seen one of its periodic growth spurts over the last week as a bunch of left-leaning sorts finally decided they had had enough of Twitter’s awful moderation policies and the not-ignorable possibility that it might be run by people at least a little sympathetic to Nazis. This is the most recent growth spurt Mastodon has had since, well, the last time people decided they had had enough of Twitter’s awful moderation policies, which was when I personally signed up on mastodon dot social (mightygodking, of course, because whatever my other sins may be I resolutely remain on-brand). And I tried it out for a while, and I went back to Twitter. I’m back on Mastodon again now, mostly because people I like are trying to use it again and I want to see what they say.

There are a lot of reasons for this. Partially, of course, there is the issue that social media, for many people – including myself – only really has value once it obtains a certain level of critical mass. Twitter has that; Facebook has it; Instagram has it. Mastodon does not, not yet. The largest Mastodon instances are about 100k-150k strong, except they’re Japanese instances mostly dedicated to sharing lolicon so they’re not really emblematic of how big Mastodon is generally. Dot social, at around 110K users, appears to be the biggest instance whose growth is not primarily driven by Japanese not-quite-technically-child-porn-but-close. This sounds respectably large, except that not all of those users are active by a long shot; plenty of those accounts are people who migrated once, got an account, and then went quiet because they decided not to use the service. I mean, Ello has over 1.5 million registered accounts and it’s not exactly thriving. And then you hit the issue of people who have multiple Mastodon accounts on different Mastodon instances (which is where the service starts to hit headache levels for me).

But there are other reasons than lack of critical mass, I think, that Mastodon does not provide a lot of Twitter exiles with what they want. Let’s be honest; what Twitter users annoyed with Twitter mostly want is Twitter except with better harassment policies and no Nazis, and Mastodon at first gave the illusion of offering this (the fact that the basic Mastodon homepage looks a lot like Tweetdeck and that Mastodon is generally modelled after earlier Twitter builds helped quite a bit in this regard). But, and this is key: Mastodon does not, in fact, offer either of these things. Individual Mastodon instances might offer these things, but the problem with decentralized power structures is that when you need central power to exist in order to stop certain things, decentralized power structures cannot, in fact, do anything to stop those things. Mastodon’s advocates inevitably argue at this point that participating in your chosen instance fixes these problems, because if your local instance bans Nazis, for example, then that solves the Nazi problem. However, this solution only works on the most local of levels.

Here is one fairly obvious abuse vector for Mastodon I have not yet seen a solution for: let us say you have an account on a large, non-controversial instance like dot social. I want to cause you harm, so I steal your avatar and username and replicate it on another instance dedicated to “free speech” (e.g. shitposting) where moderation essentially does not exist, and I know the moderators will not stop me from impersonating you and then penning, say, racist screeds under “your name.” If I am technically adept enough (and the demand of skill here is not impossibly high) I can even go ahead and set up my own instance so now I’m my own moderator and can even use your own moderation requests as an additional vector for abuse.

Twitter’s moderation policies are shit in most regards, but their track record with malicious impersonation is (or at least used to be, although I haven’t seen any complaints about this aspect of it of late) reasonably solid, because it has to be in order to maintain their high-profile corporate clients. But – and if I am wrong about this I would like to be corrected – that seems to me to be a dealbreaker for using Mastodon with any seriousness.

Beyond the abuse issues with decentralization, though, Mastodon’s appeal for me as a social network is limited because it’s more or less intended to be non-expansive by design. That’s really the point of decentralization in the first place: you reduce the amount of abuse by reducing the number of users, so that moderation is not so onerous that it can be handled by a minimum of humanpower. When you consider Mastodon in this light, you realize it’s not really a Twitter replacement so much as it is an update on the private and semi-private forums that dominated internet communication in the early 2000s before Facebook started approaching critical mass. And those were fine then and they’re fine now for what they are, and I take no issue with people who want to retreat to walled gardens or semi-walled gardens for their internet socializing.

But realistically, that’s what Mastodon is. It’s an opportunity to sequester yourself rather than a choice to participate, and I think a lot of people enthusiastically endorsing Mastodon as an alternative to Twitter don’t really appreciate that yet. I’ve been watching the local timelines on several instances and while they’re polite and respectful (because the instances I’ve been visiting are filled with people who are trying to diverge from Twitter because it’s not respectful enough) I do find it definitely less… daring? Seeing people request that other people use the content warning shield for punchlines for their jokes is weird enough on its own – but, more than that, the demand on dot social (and it is, in no uncertain terms, a demand) that people use the content warning shield for discussing politics to any extent is really enough to kill most of my interest in the service; regardless of the expressed sentiment that “it’s all cool, just use the CW,” it still feels unwelcome, and my natural preference is not to transgress and so… yeah. I understand that people can find political discussion unpleasant or even stressful, and I don’t have a problem with them wanting a safe space. But I don’t really want to hang out in that safe space too often even if I am invited. (And I totally understand that this is, in part, because I am a straight white dude and can be comfortable much more easily than average. I mean it when I say I don’t begrudge people wanting a safe space.)

And that isn’t just about my preferences but also muchly about wanting to be exposed to ideas and beliefs other than my own. It was centralization and critical mass which introduced me to Black Twitter, for example, and less frivolously allowed black people to communicate to white people much more directly how they were being abused by police. (The frequently less-than-stellar responses from white people aren’t because of Twitter, at least.) Similarly, it’s good to see and be exposed to, on a regular basis, what people with different belief systems from me think. I might think that they’re stupid, of course, but at least it’s direct knowledge of belief from a primary source and that does matter to me.

In the end, Mastodon’s “federation/instance” jargon is a really terrible way of describing it (one quirk of open source programming is that you inevitably end up using whoever’s terminology sticks first, and this can be either a blessing or a downfall and Mastodon is obviously the latter); one user suggested “galaxy/planet” as a better way of describing it, which is more poetic, but since humanity hasn’t really mastered interstellar travel as of yet I think the appropriate metaphor is “country/cities in, say, the mid-90s.” In 1995, you might live in, oh, Atlanta, and most of the people you know live in Atlanta, but maybe you talk on the phone regularly with your good friend who moved to Philadelphia, and a couple of your college buddies who live in San Francisco, and you get a very incomplete idea of what life is like there as a result. You’re all still Americans, but you’re all inhabiting different subcultures and because of a lack of exposure you don’t get the full picture – and yes, in the “individual forum years” in the early 2000s, the internet still mostly felt like this.

And that’s what Mastodon feels like to me now; it feels like when people move out of the big city to a small town, and explain to you that they love it better in the small town because it’s more relaxing and they don’t have to stress all the time. Which is fine and I’m glad it’s making some people happy – I really am – but it doesn’t appeal to me as it stands. Maybe it’ll change. But right now, I think I’m just gonna check in every so often and see how it’s going.

I’ve been watching Anita Sarkeesian’s Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, and have generally enjoyed it. You know who doesn’t? A Mister, um, DanimalCart on the Kotaku forums. To be fair, his complaint is more eloquent than some of the crap Sarkeesian has dealt with, so I thought it was worth further examination:

I don’t agree with the majority of Sarkeesian’s work and many of the examples she brings up don’t strike me as overtly based in sexism. However I also don’t begrudge Sarkeesian for trying to point something out and she deserves respect just like any other human on the planet. I can even agree that some sexism does exit in gaming I am just trying not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

If it’s not clear which baby is being thrown out with the metaphorical bathwater, it will be shortly.

Sarkeesian typically shows evidence and uses examples that only go in service to support a thesis she has already made before researching a topic. She does not consider financial issues, publisher/developer relations and other factors that contribute to story/character decisions.

It seems to me that Sarkeesian’s approach boils down to 1) discuss a basic androcentric cliche and 2) cite a dozen or more instances where video games have utilized same. I’m not sure how much more research DanimalCart thinks she needs to do to justify her position, or how he knows she is cherry-picking data to support a predetermined conclusion.

As far as mitigating factors are concerned, I think she thoroughly addressed the way financial issues and publisher-developer relations affect the use of, say, damsels in distress as a plot device. Video game publishers have a financial issue in that they want to make money. Video game developers are obligated by their publishers to make games that will sell. Games about male characters rescuing helpless female characters are reliably easy to sell to male audiences. This is a motivation for sexism, not an excuse for it.

If you have played ICO, you will know that the character Yorda works with ICO as an equal to escape together throughout most of the game and she has mystical powers that ICO does not, is taller than ICO and more mature as ICO is a boy. Yorda even saves ICO’s life at the end of the game, and is no mere damsel. The game also features beautiful environments, great atmosphere and is a truly unique and beautiful experience. Sarkeesian reduced one of the greatest games of the PS2 into another example of sexism, which may be why some are so put off by these videos.

I’ve never even heard of Ico before this week, but nothing in this paragraph proves that Yorda is not a damsel in distress. From what I can find online, Yorda is helpless to escape her plight, in spite of mystical powers (or height I guess), without the help of a male character controlled by the player. It may be more complex than Mario saving the princess, but the male is still the subject and the female is still the object of his efforts. Acknowledging that is not tantamount to dismissing everything good about the game.

Frankly, I don’t sense that Sarkeesian is arguing that the games she criticizes are necessarily bad, or even that the tropes she discusses are inherently bad. Her main point is that the tropes are used excessively, with little thought given to what they say about the video game industry’s treatment of female characters. The Legend of Zelda can be an awesome game and a rather un-feminist game at the same time. There’s no harm in admitting that, unless maybe you think it’s awesome because it’s not feminist, which would be kind of weird.

Women don’t want to be portrayed poorly or reduced to sex objects and Men don’t want labeled as misogynist pigs. Sexism is bad, everyone can agree to that and no one wants to be accused of it or have it applied to them. When tensions start at such an elevated height, a certain level of tact is required when trying to talk about them on a larger forum. To gamers, Sarkeesian displays all the tact of an uninvited construction crew coming in your living room at 5:30 in the morning and Jackhammering.

Here’s where we get to the root of the backlash against Sarkeesian. Like I said, I enjoy Tropes vs. Women, but when I watch it I find myself becoming defensive. I know she’s going to challenge my preconceptions, and I don’t want her to suggest that behavior I take for granted is sexist. If I played more of the games she discusses, the show would probably make me uncomfortable, so I can see why gamers would liken her to an unwelcome interruption. DanimalCart’s fallacy, though, is to suppose that Sarkeesian ought to maximize his comfort while lecturing him about feminism, when he would be most comfortable if she didn’t lecture him at all. There is no fun way to be told “your favorite games aren’t very good at depicting women,” and she isn’t obligated to make it fun.

Notice that it’s DanimalCart’s living room and Sarkeesian is the uninvited pest, even though she clearly enjoys video games as much as he does. Because she’s questioning the sacred cow, whereas he’s reflexively guarding it. The gaming community, like any other fandom subculture, is devoted to the purity of a common interest (in this case video games) and tends to be pretty insular and jingoistic, especially if they feel bullied by outsiders. In this worldview, you’re either with gamer culture or you’re against it:

The gaming media is running a giant game of guilt by association. By running articles and putting a spot light on these nasty comments [by gamers against Sarkeesian], perceptually they were not outliers anymore; they were the voice of the community. How in a span of 20 years did the stigmata of gamers go from “nerds who live in their parents basements” go to “every white male gamer is a sexist, misogynist asshole”?

Simple: Twenty years ago people didn’t know what nerds in the basement were saying or thinking, but now you can go on the internet and see. The issue isn’t so much that gamers are all misogynists, though. It’s that, far too often, their response to stories about misogyny in gaming is to circle the wagons and defend gaming from external criticism, rather than address internal ugliness. Thus: Sarkeesian criticizes video games, gamer culture harasses Sarkeesian, gamer media critcizes gamer culture, therefore the problem is Sarkeesian and the media!

Look at how this very site trashed Katie Couric for her uneducated and research viewpoint on video games. Kotaku ran four articles about “Couric-Gate” calling her one episode “one-sided, fear-mongering”, encouraged gamers to tweet at her with challenging viewpoints and did a victory lap when she offered a mea culpa. Where is that for Sarkeesian’s work? Couric ran one 40 minute episode on gaming; Sarkeesian plans to run 13 parts each over 60 minutes in length making just as grandiose claims of the ramifications of gaming. Where is the analysis in the gaming media?

“Analysis” here may be read as “knee-jerk defense.” Whenever someone suggests the entire medium of video games is to blame for something–Joe Lieberman, Jack Thompson, Katie Couric–the community rises as one to protect gaming from the ignorance and fear of outsiders. It’s a comfortable position to take, hunkering down with one’s “countrymen” against some boogeyman in the name of an unimpeachable cause. It also reduces a fandom’s capacity for self-examination. Gamers who are uncomfortable facing Sarkeesian’s arguments choose instead to pretend they’re a persecuted minority, under attack from all sides and finally betrayed by their own news outlets. They want her to be the next Jack Thompson, because that simplifies the conflict.

So here’s where we get back to that “throw the baby out with the bathwater” business; in this rush to reduce the debate into absolutist terms, Sarkeesian’s critics end up accusing her of dealing in absolutes. She thinks games aren’t feminist because she doesn’t understand them! She identifies sexist tropes in games because she wants those games to be eradicated! Combating sexism is fine, but this nut thinks all gamers are sexist, and she wants to destroy all video games! Absolutely none of this comes across in Sarkeesian’s videos, but since she doesn’t go out of her way to deny it hard enough, gamers feel free to assume it’s true.

I do think DanimalCart is right that Sarkeesian would do better to take into account the extraordinarily thin skin of her audience. Nevertheless, the greater onus is on her audience to grow the hell up.

I went on a bit of a mini-rant yesterday on Twitter about assholes using the #falseflag hashtag immediately after the Boston Marathon bombing, mostly because people who scream “false flag” are almost always assholes, because yelling “false flag” doesn’t really have anything to do with the plausibility of a conspiracy theory, but instead relies on the desperate need of people – and, let’s be honest, generally white dudes, because it is white dudes who comprise the overwhelming majority of conspiracy theorists – to feel victimized when something bad had absolutely nothing to do with them.

Like, we’re going way beyond “I got passed over for a promotion because I’m white” levels of victimization here. False flag theories are inevitably stupid – like, well beyond “the moon landing was faked” stupid. I mean, the fake moon landing theory you could feasibly pull off with about a couple dozen people (leave most of NASA clueless, set up a stage somewhere else and just hijack the radio signal with a couple of key inside guys, then get the astronauts to say “yeah, we did that” afterward), assuming nobody simply looked at the moon afterwards and noticed that the lander and flag weren’t there (which they are).

Compare this to the Newtown shooting false flag theory, which involves the Evil Black Helicopter People Who Are Directly Commanded By Obama (or whoever) disappearing an entire classroom full of kids, hiring numerous actors to portray Newtown residents, bribing or threatening dozens or even hundreds of journalists and local residents – this is insane. And it’s all the more insane when you remember that falseflaggers explained that the point of this supposed conspiracy was to get restrictive gun laws enacted – something everybody was grimly saying, right afterwards, would not happen because the gun lobby owns one party entirely and has deep roots in the second. (And what has happened? The most conservative Democratic Senator and a conservative Republican Senator worked “bipartisanly” to create a bill that requires background checks for some, but not all, non-gun-store sales of guns, and which incidentally also outlaws a federal gun registry and makes it easier to transport guns across state lines – and conservative Senators from both parties are refusing to vote for it because it’s too restrictive.)

And so we come to the Boston false-flag theorizing, which is even stupider because all that happened was that an asshole built a bomb and set it off to hurt people, which assholes have done before and will do again. But the falseflaggers are out to explain that, no, this was military-grade ordnance that was used (based on no evidence whatsoever) and that this happened because the Gubmint wants to put more restrictive laws in place to interfere with your civil rights. Of course, the government has been doing that for decades and they haven’t felt the need to bomb anybody because they know perfectly well that they can just restrict civil rights by passing laws and nobody will say boo to a goose, most of the times, because “it’s not my problem” trumps civil rights concerns for ninety percent of the population (just ask any black person about how nobody seems to care when their civil rights are trampled), but whatever, bombs away, am I right?

But falseflaggers don’t care because their theories aren’t about logic or reason or anything at all. Their theories are about making tragedies that happen to other people about them. It’s a fundamentally narcissistic response to tragedy – to not only ask “how does this affect me” but to twist the facts of the event to create a narrative so that you are more likely to be affected. It’s an asshole move, plain and simple, and falseflaggers deserve to be treated like assholes, because they’re assholes.

(And finally, can we again be pissed off once more at police departments who planted agent-provocateurs in protests, who all by themselves gave the entire false-flag belief far more steam than it ever deserved to have?)

Energy-Puking Boy (and others): Community Alignment Chart?

I’m not going to do what somebody else already did perfectly well just for the sake of doing it with my particular chart design. You can quibble if Abed and the Dean should be switched or if Britta and Troy should be, but it’s reasonably accurate. (If you want to see an awful Community alignment chart that rips off my design, here you go.)

Unstoppable Gravy Express: So is that Brad Paisley / LL Cool J song racist or not?

Ta-Nehisi Coates answered that better than I ever could.

Rbx5: re there any Big Two/Image titles you are, in fact, following, and why?

A fair amount of Marvel, actually. Avengers, New Avengers, Uncanny Avengers, Wolverine and the X-Men, All New X-Men and Uncanny X-Men. The current F4 stuff isn’t bad at all but it doesn’t really grab me, mostly because after the Jonathan Hickman run on that franchise it just sort of pales in comparison, and Hickman is the reason I’m reading his two Avengers books – he’s currently my “I will read any comic he writes” writer, much in the way that Grant Morrison was such ten years ago.

I’m not buying anything DC prints new; given their current treatment of creators (this is not to say that Marvel is great shakes, they aren’t, but DC these days seems determined to actively fuck creators over in every possible respect) I try to avoid giving them money. I bought a copy of The New Deadwardians used and it was really good, and I am glad DC didn’t get any of my money for it.

Image… I picked up Sex, which is Joe Casey’s book about a Batman analogue post-Bat-life sort of a thing. It was okay-to-decent but the lettering was so distracting I gave up on it after two issues. I’m reading Saga in trades (it is very good) and The Manhattan Projects because Hickman, and I tried out Prophet which fell into the “it’s good, but not my thing” category.

switchnode: How long do you expect/intend Al’Rashad to run? Are we a significant way into a fast, hard-hitting story about a particular flashpoint, or still in the setup phase of something much longer and more sprawling? On a related note, do you think of it more as a webcomic, or as a comic book that happens to be on the web?

It’s going to run eight “issues,” with issue eight planned to be oversized (e.g. more than 28 pages, less than a full ninth issue). Currently we’re midway through book six, so you do the math.

And it’s a comic book that happens to be on the web. The fact that people keep complaining about things which get revealed 1-2 pages later probably should have been a big tip-off there. Davinder and I wanted to do a comic, and I don’t actually like the episodic/strip format of many webcomics for the purpose of a larger narrative. So there you go.

Murc: Any chance of maps at any point for Al-Rashad?

They’re definitely in the queue, although they might end up being bonuses for the print edition.

Further to John’s excellent post about Steubenville and rape culture over the weekend, my good friend Shannon is running an Indiegogo campaign to fund her creation of classroom materials designed to teach kids from a consent-culture perspective, which will upon completion be distributed for free online.

So, put your money where your mouth is, guys. This is a chance to put money towards something that actually has a shot at creating real change.

Torontoist does its yearly Heroes and Villains at the end of every year, and my hero was the Toronto Marlies, for their equality pledge.

(My Villain is still forthcoming. Regulars can, uh, probably guess.)

Peyton, over in John Seavey’s post about the Fake Geek Girl bullshit which I am glad he wrote because honestly at this point I just do not have the energy to engage with that bullshit for what feels like the tenth time, writes:

As a complete aside I also wanted to thank MGK, John Seavey, and Jim Smith for this site. As someone said upthread, it’s one of the few places, along with Scalzi’s Whatever, Evanier’s blog, and Jim Hines blog and a few others that, as a female nerd, feels safe and supportive.

I’m just gonna say that I feel very proud to have received this comment, since I decided quite some time ago (like, years) that this was going to be one of my primary goals for the site. As I get older1 I find myself getting more liberal rather than less, which is a pleasant thing to realize, and John and Jim and everybody else I’ve invited to the site were invited, at least in part, because I knew they had no truck with all of the bullshit that nerd-dom encourages in celebration of the straight white guy norm. And I say that as a white guy who mostly invited straight white guys, which happened mostly because whenever I’ve encouraged guest bloggers to apply, they are usually straight white guys.2

This really isn’t just about the blog, either, but what I do generally. I mean, I’ve said before that Al’Rashad is adapted from a screenplay I wrote about a dozen years ago, but the simple truth is that the comic is much better than the screenplay ever was. The big action beats are for the most part the same thus far, but:

– Originally Rayana was much less proactive as a character. Even then I wanted her to be kick-ass, but as written in the screenplay, she was not nearly at the nigh-Brainiac-Five level of intelligence and competence which she is at now, and she works, I think, so much better now than she did previously. Having Kahal be her personal engine of destruction adds a new twist to their relationship which I like quite a bit as well; I like that Kahal takes his lead from Rayana whenever it isn’t a “right now we fight desperately” moment.
– Apali was originally male, and moreover was not nearly so important to the story as she is now. Making her female actually broadened her quite a bit and let me do more with her. The fact that she has essentially been Rayana’s surrogate mother isn’t something I’ve explicitly written in a page yet, but I think it’s pretty obvious, and that simply wouldn’t work as well if she were male as she was originally.
– Also, Joro really should have been a girl, as I’ve written previously, but the ship sailed on that one. Sometimes you realize things too late.
– Finally, there’s one more major character aspect that hasn’t been revealed yet (and might not even be revealed in the first story arc) but to which I gave serious thought, then discussed it with Davinder, then discussed it further with a few people whose opinion I respect in order to make sure that it would work with what had been written already. I think when it gets revealed people will accuse me of pandering (as always happens in these instances), but again: it’s something that makes the overall story simply work better. This is because different races and genders and sexual orientations and all the rest: they’re not checkboxes you have to fill in to pass a test. To blatantly steal from Pratchett: they are all different metals, and alloys are stronger.

I’m drifting a bit here from my original point because I started talking about my comic (which you should all read and adore, of course), but to get back to it: it’s a damn shame that the internet needs places that are “safe and supportive” for female nerds and gay nerds and non-white nerds and all of the other nerds who are not typical nerds, because everybody should have the right to act like a goddamned overgrown child about some irrelevant piece of pop-culture if they so choose because that is what we are all doing, really. The question should not even have to be posed. More people who I can argue “but Superman would TOTALLY beat up Thor” with is always going to be a benefit. More people who will argue whether the Enterprise could blow up a Star Destroyer are always welcome.3 I really don’t care if they have tits or different amounts of melanin – I care that they have fresh perspectives and new ideas, because more ideas is always better.

But so long as those places are necessary, I am determined that my place will be one of those places. This is not an ironclad promise that I will always be perfectly enlightened, because we are all works in progress and nobody ever gets it right one hundred percent of the time. But I think it is important that I try.

Okay, soapbox mode over, and tomorrow if I have time I’ll write the essay about Wreck-It Ralph that lots of people have been demanding for some reason.

1. IMPORTANT CAVEAT: I AM NOT OLD OLD, JUST, LIKE, OLDER AND STUFF [↩]
2. Unless Jim Smith is actually a pseudonym for “Laverne Washington,” which it could be. You never know with Jim. [↩]
3. Right answer: The Battlestar Galactica nukes both of them. [↩]

Twitter right now is aflame with the news that Kevin Clash, the voice of Elmo, has resigned from Sesame Street after multiple allegations that he had sex with underaged boys. And, to be honest, some of the reactions to the news worry me, because overwhelmingly what I am reminded of, more than anything, is how Jerry Sandusky’s defenders reacted when he was accused of sexually abusing boys while at Penn State.

Now, before we go any further, I want to be clear about what I am not saying. I am not saying the allegations prove that Clash did in fact have sex with teenagers. I am not saying that Kevin Clash is morally equivalent to Jerry Sandusky. I am not saying the allegations against Clash are equivalent to those against Sandusky. After all, Sandusky was caught in the act of molesting children, while the allegations against Clash come from the supposed victims who are now adults, and the allegations against Clash appear to be at least potentially questionable. (But I don’t know if they’re true or false. Neither do you.)

But what I am saying is this: the overwhelming flood of reactions that are defensive of Clash are exactly the same in tone as those who defended Sandusky last year. There is the same mix of denial based on defamation of the accusers (the “they just want to get rich/famous” slam), the same wish-fulfillment in place of reason (we’re talking the “I love Elmo so therefore Kevin Clash must be innocent” line of reasoning, the same resentment of the media for reporting what is, by any reasoning, a newsworthy story. The only difference is that this time it’s coming from fans of the Muppets rather than fans of Penn State football.

That last one particularly bothers me because it is a reminder that people are all basically the same when it comes to bad news, which is to say that, at gut, we never really want to hear it or engage with it. It is quite possible that Clash is innocent of the accusations made against him, and frankly I hope that is the case, of course, because how could I not? But I have to admit the possibility exists that he did in fact do these things, and the fact that he is a beloved performer for children does not weaken that possibility. (Frankly, if anything, it strengthens it: child predators so often work with children for the same reason lions like to hang out where the antelope are, and since we all at heart never want to believe that someone who is good with kids might have become so charming in order to take advantage of them, it sometimes feels like every molestor is described as being a really good person.)

And it would be nice to think that a thorough investigation which exonerated Clash would make the problem go away, but of course we all know that that wouldn’t happen. And that’s another problem with humans.