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[EviLore]

What is a EGOligarch? It’s someone who has some kind of following but isn’t necessarily widely known outside of a certain geographical or topical area but uses the fanbase they have to satisfy their egotistical needs to show and teach people that they are SOMEONE. That’s my loose definition. I’m trying not to be super critical but it’s hard not to be when you try and wrap your head around some of these types.

I think the paradigm shift in toxic fandoms probably was best illustrated in Gamer Gate. I’m not going to get into the particulars or choose a side in what happened but a lot of really cruel and unnecessary actions by both sides showed how ugly and toxic social media has made fandoms and their members. Personally I think it was the spark for many other causes that got ugly.

Then even Macaulay Culkin encouraged me to do their show. You can see the reply — I joked about how the Nerdist Chris Hardwick begged me for 3 years to go on his show and when an opportunity came up for a contractual need to do a podcast; I booked the Nerdist. Also I say again, I give major media outlets 15 mins and I get bored after 10 so it’s not a good fit?

How many times have I turned them down at this point?

My policy is that I don’t book podcasts; I do it for some friends like Alton Brown, Adam Carrolla and Mike Tyson and when I have a contractual obligation to do a podcast to promote a project I get the company whom I signed the contract with to book a podcast of their choice. When one particular company asked me what podcast would I prefer to do — that’s when I remembered Chris Hardwick’s requests and they booked with him. I had a good time, Chris was great. Alton I love to death, I think Adam is funny, and who could say no to Mike Tyson?

It’s a pretty simple rule. I just don’t like to do podcasts. I’ve turned down most of the major podcasters so why would I do a podcast of a group I’ve never heard of ?

So apparently they got wind of it and they took the path of Egoligarch #1 — they did a video calling me out.

I honestly haven’t watched it but someone sent me ‘the most important part of the video’ as a clip to watch because “Mike is crying because he is so upset.” (Note: I honestly don’t know if this is even in their video or if it’s from some other video of theirs but it is the two of them)

It continues from there.

This is the (pretty entertaining) video that RLM released the other day that escalated the Shatner drama:

 

[ManaByte]

Shatner doesn't do any "streaming media" shows. That includes YouTube and podcasts.

 

[Nymphae]

Link to the article wasn't working for me, hmm.

Edit: Nvm got it

 

[Stiflers Mom]

Have seen the Boomer Fight video..
The sad part of this is, that Mike Stoklasa is like the hugest biggest TOS Star Trek Nerd around, and probably the only person that thinks that William Shatner is an amazing actor and not just a buffoon.

What a colossal misunderstanding..

 

[ManaByte]

This is 100% true:

People are no longer seeing the word “social” as anything more than a chance to debase and wallop people. What they think their eventual prize is; I do not have a clue. It’s what they do, however. Social Media platforms seem to be the latest primordial soup recipe that breeds these toxic types online.

 

[teezzy]

Lol Mike's childhood hero fucking despises him. It's hilarious.

Shatner had always been kind of an odd pretentious duck.

But yeah, misunderstanding 100%. Shatner was always great on Stern - plus this:

 

[ManaByte]

So what they are doing is using the fanbase they have cultivated into a mob of trolls to get eyeballs on their monetized videos without a care for anyone and nobody has heard of these guys but if all of their videos are getting hundred of thousands of views then they are laughing all the way to the bank!

So doing the match taking the lower $6.00 per thousand views figure: a 400K view video nets $2400.00 and then YouTube takes 45% of that number so they made $1320.00 at the very least on that one video by pushing their fans into an attack on me.

 

[-Arcadia-]

I'm just going to point out that a 90 year old is well studied on GamerGate.

Bless this man.

 

[Stiflers Mom]

Read the whole text now..

I can understand the direction that Shatner is coming from. If you are a bit famous, people start acting like you owe them something, and it's sometimes scary.
If you are in that bracket where Bill Shatner and comparable stars are, life must feel like hell sometimes, and you need to take care about every step you take.

In the end though, this is still just a huge misunderstanding.
I am sure Mike didn't wish bad unto his childhood hero.

 

[ArchdukeChocula]

He could love them if he fell out of the social media spin cycle and just watched a full goddamn video.

 

[ManaByte]

I'm just going to point out that a 90 year old is well studied on GamerGate.

Bless this man.

Shatner has been active on Twitter since it launched. He's who I signed up to follow in 2009.

Read the whole text now..

I can understand the direction that Shatner is coming from. If you are a bit famous, people start acting like you owe them something, and it's sometimes scary.
If you are in that bracket where Bill Shatner and comparable stars are, life must feel like hell sometimes, and you need to take care about every step you take.

In the end though, this is still just a huge misunderstanding.
I am sure Mike didn't wish bad unto his childhood hero.

And he seems to be on Twitter 24/7. From experience that just makes things worse.

 

[Stiflers Mom]

Shatner has been active on Twitter since it launched. He's who I signed up to follow in 2009.



And he seems to be on Twitter 24/7. From experience that just makes things worth.

I have always avoided Twitter like the plague.
This place is the largest amount of negativity that I can take. And here we have a good batch of humor as well.
Why people endure Twitter, I don't have any idea to be honest..

 

[ManaByte]

He could love them if he fell out of the social media spin cycle and just watched a full goddamn video.

He has watched their videos. Shatner doesn't like anything that shits on fanboys (despite his Get a Life phase in '86).

 

[nush]

William Fucking Shatner by Wil Wheaton. It's a classic.

 

[Bladed Thesis]

William Fucking Shatner by Wil Wheaton. It's a classic.

Wouldn't be a story about pretentious Star Trek actors without a Wil Wheaton appearance.

Hilarious story though.

 

[TriSuit666]

Shatner doesn't do any "streaming media" shows. That includes YouTube and podcasts.

Except there's footage of him doing exactly that in the RLM video.

This is really really sad and depressing. Bill has taken RLM's approach completely the wrong way, and mis-construed it as an attack, when it's anything but. Makes him look a complete tool.

Twitter continues to make the axiom 'don't meet your heroes' absolutely true.

 

[nush]

Spock and Bones have gone, not long now.

 

[Manstructiclops]

There's no misunderstanding. Carry on acting like a retard for the yucks and you'll eventually get treated like one for real.

 

[Stiflers Mom]

William Fucking Shatner by Wil Wheaton. It's a classic.

Never seen this before. That's amazing..

 

[Stiflers Mom]

'don't meet your heroes'

For me that was a 50/50 ratio so far.

Some of them were complete assholes, some really cool.

 

[oagboghi2]

There's no misunderstanding. Carry on acting like a retard for the yucks and you'll eventually get treated like one for real.

That is a bit rich coming from William Shatner.

By your logic, RLM should have treated like the miserable asshole he is, and advertises himself to be. Instead they treated him with respect that he does not deserve.

 

[infinitys_7th]

Let's get Keemstar in on this and set up some bloodsports between Mike, Jay, and Rich and Shatner.

 

[Deleted member 17706]

I'm just going to point out that a 90 year old is well studied on GamerGate.

Bless this man.

Holy shit, he's 90? While it's impressive he's so up-to-date about everything, what the hell is he even doing fighting with people on the Internet at that age?

 

[infinitys_7th]

Holy shit, he's 90? While it's impressive he's so up-to-date about everything, what the hell is he even doing fighting with people on the Internet at that age?

So people keep living for family, for friends, or even for fucking (RIP Hefner). Shatner lives to troll Twitter.

 

[Revolutionary]

As much as I love RLM and their content, Shatner isn't entirely wrong here - a sizeable portion of RLM's fans are weirdly obsessive in a bad way. But, as he also mentions, it's not something that is limited to just RLM's fandom.

Fandoms + Social Media = a toxic cesspool

I don't subscribe to the idea that RLM is "sending" their fans after him, though. It's just the obsessive weirdos that ruin it for everyone.

 

[davepoobond]

i really can't believe its actually shatner doing all of the this, at least by himself. taking screenshots, sitting around summarizing old tweets which he has to find by himself

 

[Deleted member 1159]

Eh this seems like a sort of misunderstanding aggravated by shitty fans. Shatner is pretty consistent in his “policies” or whatever and fandoms are consistently filled with cunts, and RLM guys seem like decent folk who wouldn’t want to start real beef or anything.

Let’s get the popcorn

 

[DisguiseArrsick]

i really can't believe its actually shatner doing all of the this, at least by himself. taking screenshots, sitting around summarizing old tweets which he has to find by himself

The man's being use cell phones and facetime since the 1960's. He's well prepared.

 

[Stilton Disco]

Shatner isn't entirely wrong, and RLM are no where near as bad as he's painting them out to be, while both sides behaviour is in many ways absolutely the root cause of their 'spat'.

It's kind of hilarious that Shatner is defending the new Trek and it's fans from people taking RLM's criticism too far, while RLM are the ones defending Shatner and his Trek from new Trek and it's fans.

 

[BlackOlivesMatter]

Shatner is.....

 

[GAMETA]

You know, social media as it is should be discontinued.

 

[infinitys_7th]

As much as I love RLM and their content, Shatner isn't entirely wrong here - a sizeable portion of RLM's fans are weirdly obsessive in a bad way. But, as he also mentions, it's not something that is limited to just RLM's fandom.

Fandoms + Social Media = a toxic cesspool

I don't subscribe to the idea that RLM is "sending" their fans after him, though. It's just the obsessive weirdos that ruin it for everyone.

It's interesting - this is the first time that RLM has let themselves get pulled into controversy.

RLM (the main trio anyway) have managed to avoid falling into lolcow status because they have actively avoided drama and ignored "controversy" over stuff like their edgier jokes (making fun of rape, child molestation, etc.). Even with an obnoxious nut like Jack being around them and obviously getting wrangled into not going full SJW like he does on Twitter or them delisting the Max Landis episode after his rape allegation, they keep everything quiet. This is significant achievement considering that their "onscreen" personalities (smartass, sarcastic, crass, and sometimes even surprisingly cruel) seems to actually be the real "them", and that has fucked over tons of similar content creators like the Walker brothers, Spoony, Brad Jones, etc. Other successful angry critic/riffing creators, like AVGN, fully created characters to separate themselves from the show.

Of course, with them being relatively true-to-life in BotW and their other series, they enable the parasocial relationships that plagued TGWTG creators. Even then RLM has been wise in reining them in. Outside of what happened with Mike's girlfriend early on in BotW they have not really let the more pathological fans have any control, and even then her appearances ending was done silently. When the Gilchrist stuff happened they also did not respond and did not create any idea of internal tension between Mike and Jay and Rich. They kept their fans controlled by and involved with their content rather than drama. Again, that is pretty impressive - most similar content creators failed hard at that (see Brad Jones and his neverending trailer park drama).

So them becoming actively involved in this drama is a big mistake. It could fade away, but it would have been better for them to just ignore it or communicate privately with Shatner. It should never has escalated and gotten their fanbase focused outside their content.

 

[iconmaster]

I'd hate to be on the losing end of a Shatner beatdown, either IRL or on the internet.

 

[triplestation]

 

[#Phonepunk#]

dude. hah. holy shit.

Shatner just stuck his foot in a beehive. lol going on a crusade against "toxic empires". on Twitter no less!

either he is a giant S rank troll or he is a clueless boomer wading into dangerous territory...

the "ego" stuff seems to be based on him misreading the initial RLM joke Tweet ("you never heard of us?")

its not like the guys constantly self promote and talk about themselves. you watch any BOTW or HITB and 90% of it will be about the films themselves.

but Shatner's gateway into RLM has been Twitter. Twitter would be a shitty way to get introduced to ANYTHING. the medium itself is toxic. nothing good can come of it.

 

[Manus]

What's a podcast?

 

[slugbahr]

What's a podcast?

A white supremacist's tool to enable their systemic racism.
Probably.

 

[King of Foxes]

Im conflicted, I hate their shittng on the prequels but love their shitting on the sequels.

I have no opinion on star trek

 

[Dr Bass]

What a giant wall of text from someone who clearly misunderstands absolutely everything that happened. Kind of insane to put that much effort into something you don't get at all.

 

[PSlayer]

As much as I love RLM and their content, Shatner isn't entirely wrong here - a sizeable portion of RLM's fans are weirdly obsessive in a bad way. But, as he also mentions, it's not something that is limited to just RLM's fandom.

Fandoms + Social Media = a toxic cesspool

I don't subscribe to the idea that RLM is "sending" their fans after him, though. It's just the obsessive weirdos that ruin it for everyone.

There are people who believe you can control what your fanbase do or say, which is insane giving that RLM has at least 1 million people following them. The same happenned with Pewdiepie years ago. When you have this amount of people following you there will be a sizeable amount of trolls and you can't do anything about it.

 

[bender]

Hoping this is a long con.

 

[Jon Neu]

Writes an essay on egotistic people and he somehow doesn't see the irony.

 

[SLoWMoTIoN]

This feels more like free advertising for RLM more than anything. This is good for them. I haven't seen any of their videos in forever and I might just catch up. (the fuck happened to Jay's hair?)

Holy shit, he's 90? While it's impressive he's so up-to-date about everything, what the hell is he even doing fighting with people on the Internet at that age?

What else is he gonna do? Old people fight all day on social media with zoomers.

 

[Birdo]

The whole rant is doing what he's accusing them of doing.

Basically getting your own fans to be angry at someone you don't like.

 

[Karma Jawa]

 

[Clear]

Shatner is a legend and these guys are semi-internet famous.

This isn't a fight they are going to win. Especially against a guy who'd been shit-talked by a lot of people over the years.

 

[#Phonepunk#]

i love Shatner's solo albums so much! u know he had a UFO experience, which led him to make his first record.

 

[Woo-Fu]

Denny Crane for President, the right choice for America's future.

 

[#Phonepunk#]

What else is he gonna do? Old people fight all day on social media with zoomers.

yeah and Shatner has been doing this for longer than they have probably been alive.

i always heard that story that he blew up at some fans at a convention but that was probably a long time ago. he seems to have had more of a self-depreciating sense of humor about it all for the past few decades. tho he no doubt sees his share of crazy people.

part of me thinks he is just trolling everyone w all this.

 

[MajinSweet4]

Shatner is a legend and these guys are semi-internet famous.

This isn't a fight they are going to win. Especially against a guy who'd been shit-talked by a lot of people over the years.

RLM isn't trying to win, or even "fight" him.