unforum

[awakeasaurusrex]

My take:

Evan using "queer" like that was not OK. He accepts that and has apologised. Jeff accepts that and apologised. Vince's e-mail was horribly counter-productive because the dictionary bullshit was just plain splitting hairs, and not even very convincingly, so he just came off as trying to explain away what Evan did. But he's apologised subsequently so I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on that. No doubt that the HYBRIDs done goofed there, but sooner or later everyone goofs, I don't think anyone can actually put hand on heart and claim they've never said anything racist or sexist or able-ist or homophobic or transphobic or whatever in their entire life.

That said, it's not for straight people like me to decide whether the apology was enough. Jon has every right to remain offended if he feels the apologies weren't sincere.

That said...

It's pretty clear by now that this isn't about the use of "queer". Jon has, in fact, said as much - he considers that aspect of things pretty much sorted, and now he's just ripping into EMH for the sake of having a flame war. Flaming for the sake of flaming is completely fucking juvenile to start with, but when you kick that off under the guise of actually making a stand about a serious subject - and homophobia is a hell of a lot scarier and more dangerous than Slender Man at the end of the day - then you're not just being a dick, you're hijacking a real and legitimate cause to better enable you to be a dick. That's the opposite of helpful.

It's also become clear that Jon just isn't that smart. His insistence that EMH are breaking the fourth wall is baffling when they clearly aren't; at other points in the uStream they were talking about Marble Hornets, and it's clear that IG the HYBRIDs believe that Marble Hornets was a cool story but wasn't the real thing, whereas their Slendy is real. That's an important point, which Jon simply isn't grasping: EverymanHYBRID is a postmodern Slender Man story, in which IG all the other Slendy blogs and vlogs exist, but may or may not be fictional in-universe. This sets it apart from, say, MH or Jonclubs113, in which as far as we can tell none of the other Slendy blogs or vlogs exist in-universe, and those of the Slender blogs which operate under the assumption that every damn thing anyone ever writes about Slender Man is real.

Under EMH's premise, it makes perfect sense for the HYBRIDs to make reference both to Marble Hornets and use the term "Slender Man" to refer to Slender Man, both of which seem to be things which Jon considers major no-nos. But when they do that they aren't breaking the fourth wall, they are in fact remaining entirely true to the in-universe logic of their story. At no point in the uStream did the HYBRIDs imply that anything depicted as happening to them was in any way not real, and consequently they not only didn't break the fourth wall, they didn't even touch it.

The fact is that on some level Jon just seems kind of dumb, because he's incapable of grasping that point. That or he's decided not to acknowledge that he was wrong in accusing them of breaking the fourth wall, but there's a point where pretending to be stupid for the sake of keeping up an argument becomes, in itself, a really dumb thing to do.

[LexiTeeRex]

you're right, awake. trololo, i think it's dumb. i mean, you're right - they were never out of character, so they weren't "breaking" in that context.

...

but isn't breaking the fourth wall what ARGs are really about?

[LexiTeeRex]

EDIT: dang, doubles. check em.

[awakeasaurusrex]

[Snippet]

You'd only break the fourth wall, if you'd talk to RL!Evan, Jeff and Vince. Meeting them or having livestreams ICly is in no way breaking any walls. I'd even say it's building higher walls, since it adds up to the credibility of IC!Everymans.

And I totally agree with kaleeshwarrior and awakeasaurus. I strongly believe, that Jon was just picking on the whole "queer" - affair to fuel and spread his hatred regarding emh. He didn't give me the feeling, that he really felt with the people who were hurt by Evans use of the word.

[Anonymousity]

I think - even if some of us may disagree about how queer was meant and if it was OK to be said to a friend or if Vince's mail was OK - we all agree on the same things concerning the videos and concerning general dislike towards persons which was thrown out a long time ago before it happened.

[Punk V]

Even though Vinnie made and asshatish post back to Jon he sounded sincere on the ustream about wishing to apologize if that had offended anyone

[OmniMan]

His facebook really confuses me.
http://www.facebook.com/satyrcynic

[Anonymousity]

[Didz]

So was Jon saying stuff about the EMH guys before or after the "queer" thing? I'm totally confused now.

[Punk V]

I concur whats so strange about his FB

[Snippet]

Didz:

IIRC, he wrote a harsh review of EMH before. It can be found somwhere in the Slendernations forum.

[Didz]

[Norrior]

[BritishHobo]

My favourite moment of this made up 'flame war' was the Jonclubs guy announcing himself as the creator and giving out his real name ON his Slender channel, before going on to say 'Don't break your fourth wall EMH, you're ruining Slender Man'. Good work, genius.

Now, I'm not the biggest EMH fan, but that's more to do with plot reasons than anything, and I still love the main characters, they're the reason I continue to come back. But even if I wasn't a fan of the characters, I'd never resort to personally attacking them. I was kind of sympathizing with Jonclubs until I realized he was an absolute aching great bellend on his Slender forum.

Besides, Jonclubs was shit. At least EMH is doing something awesomely fresh and original, even if it is too fast for my tiny brain to follow. And I might have been a bit more sympathetic to Jonclubs if he hadn't already been a total knobend about EMH. You never saw TribeTwelve doing that, and those guys took a LOT of shit in the early days of their series. Seems like they are the ones with testicles, not this clown.