YouTuber SidAlpha made a video about the Rape Day situation, offering his opinions on the matter and how despite the game’s subject matter being offensive, he felt that Valve’s decision to ban the game based on outrage culture sets a dangerous precedent. Even though a lot of his viewers enjoyed his evenhanded take on the situation, and the ratio was positive, apparently another group of individuals did not like the content and proceeded to harass him over the situation and threatened his family, so he won’t be discussing the issue any longer.
On March 9th, 2019 SidAlpha posted a string of tweets explaining that he would no longer be discussing the topic of Rape Day due to all of the threats and harassment coming from a certain sect of individuals who have been attempting to target him and his family, calling him a “pedophile” and a “rape supporter”. Across multiple tweets, SidAlpha wrote…
“I’m officially done talking about the whole rape day debacle either on social media, in YouTube comments, DMs, or email. As a result of my statements that the game should not be denied existence based on it’s narrative elements without anyone bothering to verify the content involved and my knowing this will set a precedent for an ever-widening chasm of censorial behavior on the part of those that seek out any opportunity to claim victimhood and offense whenever possible, I have been inundated with nonsense.
“People making logical gymnastics leaps in order to call me a Ped0 supporter over something that has nothing to do with that shit (I am not, by the way. Some people are too fucking stupid to comprehend that), I have been issued numerous death threats (those actually gave me a good laugh. I feel bad for anyone attempting it) I have been called a rape apologist, a literal rapist, I have had people threaten to call CPS to try and have my daughter taken away from me (good luck, won’t work), and I have been buried under an avalanche of bullshit from a subset of people that from what I can gather made up of less than 7% of those that actually watched the video. So I’m done.
“Those vitriolic piles of walking human fecal matter do not deserve any more time or attention being expended on them. I have been more than fair in the amount of time I have invested in being open to discussing the topic with them fairly and in as unbiased a manner as I possibly could. No more. Y’all done fucked it up for everybody else. Those that have issued threats have spoiled it for everyone else. Go back to your echo chambers. I am no longer interested. Good day.”
Since March 7th, 2019, SidAlpha has been providing some evidence for these threats and people harassing him calling him a “rape apologist” and a “pedophile”.
I swear, some people are just fucking lunatics. pic.twitter.com/mook0MLFnN
— SidAlpha (@SidAlpha) March 7, 2019
In fact, the very first response to SidAlpha’s tweet chain was someone arguing about why he did the video in the first place.
What part of “I’m done talking about it” do you not comprehend?
— SidAlpha (@SidAlpha) March 9, 2019
NO, I was absolutely right to speak my mind on the matter. I get that you don’t agree. I do not care. I have had death threats issued, people threatening to try and get my daughter taken away, and people attempting to label me anything and everything they can in order to
— SidAlpha (@SidAlpha) March 9, 2019
The thread goes exactly in the way you would expect it to.
This comes after his initial video about the subject matter was posted up on March 6th, 2019. The nine minute video covers the outrage over the visual novel Rape Day, which is about a serial murderer and rapist who goes on a crime spree during a zombie apocalypse. SidAlpha criticizes the game for its edgy content but also criticizes Valve for folding to the outrage culture led on by game journalists and Social Justice Warrior activists like Zoe Quinn and Rami Ismail.
The video was well-received and liked by a majority of viewers since most people agreed that this opens the door for other games to get banned from Steam based on outrage culture.
Ironically, SidAlpha actually had not planned on t doing a video because he didn’t want to feed into the outrage culture.
He originally called it a “non-issue” on March 6th, earlier in the day before actually doing the video, writing…
“I am STILL getting inundated with requests to cover the Steam game “Rape day” in spite of my repeated assertions that the game is nothing more than outrage bait on the scale of “Hatred” from 3 years ago. I am loathe to produce a video on this but so many people fail to comprehend why this is a non-issue.
“Wishing to ban a game merely because the subject matter is offensive is an appalling stance to take. It is a subjective standpoint that can’t be clearly defined which reduces the offensiveness to be arbitrary in nature. It also begs the question, who determines what’s offensive? Who is qualified to become the moral arbiters of what should or should not be done within a video game?
“It’s one thing if it is something like an asset flip that does cause actual damage to the income of legitimate games, another if it is a dirty dev that causes harm to their own customers in some fashion or another. The existence of morally objectionable subject matter should not be cause to ban a game from existing. The fact that so many are willing to call for the game’s removal based on solely that reason is both appalling and terrifying in what it represents.
”Do I support the game? No, absolutely not. Not in the slightest. But it is these moments that define our own character and moral fiber. Are we so fragile that we cannot tolerate the existence of something that offends our subjective sensibilities? I would certainly hope we aren’t, but then again I am but one voice. Ultimately it will not be up to me.”
After a variety of people argued against SidAlpha’s point, goading him into working on a video to cover the topic, he eventually did. However that’s when he was hit with the backlash from people who didn’t want him to criticize Valve for banning the game and ceding the principles of their hands-off curation policy to the outrage mob.
It’s also not unlike what happened when Niche Gamer editor-in-chief Brandon Orselli was harassed by Social Justice Warriors for pointing out that ResetEra had fabricated fake outrage over Catherine: Full Body. The SJW trolls went as far as to try to get child protective services involved to take away Orselli’s kid, all because he called out outrage peddlers in the SJW camp for spreading lies about Atlus’ game.
(Thanks for the news tip Lyle)
