I don't really get the general vitriol for Hussie

I think you might have missed out on some significant developments over the past week.

I think people just developed a parasocial hate for the creator of the comic they like. and get mad when the creator tries to interact with the very thing they created. I still have't read the full article (its just so long my brain kinda just glazed over (im going to try to read it again)) but I've seen the Sarah Z video a long time ago and I know Hussie has a precedent for threatening lawsuits. And doing that over a youtube video is a dick move. But I think acting like Hussie is the spawn of Satan is too far. The Homestuck website is literally being worked on, they aren't killing homestuck. People are just too parasocial imo. Also I'm not trying to be a defender and I encourage ppl to take my comment with a grain of salt. Also I did just wake up so another grain of salt for my statement.

Also i feel like this user did a really good analysis on the mob mentality that occurred [https://www.fruityrumpus.com/forums/reply/68976c90eb0e1f3bca2db4c3]

I just wish people could be neutral and wait patiently. That's what I'm doing (Or at least trying to.)

@versity I didn't miss anything, I'm just not sure why people are so quick to pile on Hussie when given what is obviously a biased account of events by a guy who has on 3 separate occasions done smear campaigns on the Homestuck team and also has self admitted he exists in this fandom to do shit like this?

@Alm3v Both Sarah Z videos were framed incredibly badly (and also weirdly enough also used Gio as a primary source. Instead of WP employees. And when they were reached out to by WP employees they explicitly said they ignored them which is a really weird way to do unbiased journalism) I think threatening legal action was a dumb move but I also do think Sarah's video was tantamount to slander with how it framed everything.

Yeah that is very true. Like I said take my comment with a grain of salt cus I frankly have bad memory rip. Not speaking to WP employees is really weird and Sarah Z seems very biased. If a video gets made about this situation in the future I hope she doesn't do that, and someone more neutral and detached from the situation can review and analyze it instead

I would hope so but I've found this is a pattern with Sarah so I don't think that'll happen lol

Okay, just one thing I want to ask, is there a specific reason people think the Sarah Z video is biased. I haven't watched it, but i want to know the consensus.

Yeah like I said up there the first video she hand waves all the shit gio's done and his history of harassment and lying hate campaigns (Not to mention harassing multiple HS team members off the internet entirely) she acted like Gio is an equivalent source to first hand accounts of people who worked directly with Hussie, WP and the homestuck team, and then in the second video said people from those teams explicitly reached out to her and she ignored them entirely because they were 'chasing clout' then proceeded to frame the entire legal action as Hussie and the WP PR person look like they're doing everything they can to extort fans when they disagree with them.

Yeah, a1m3v is right, it's a parasocial hatred. Hussie's certainly done their fair share of things to warrant backlash, but on the wonderfully strange anonymity-and-mob-mentality-fuelled social environment of the internet, hatred often takes on a life of its own. Hussie could do everything right and be canonized after death as Saint Hussicus, or they could cause a new and worse drama every year from now until the end of time, and either way you'd still get people regularly dunking on her for a good while. Maybe that'll change someday, maybe not -- the internet is a fickle beast.

Ah, yeah, the SarahZ video. I watched that while I was away from the fandom and I remember just thinking "wow. shit's crazy over there". This whole situation (and the fact that she shouted out Gio's blog post immediately) definitely makes her videos a bit more questionable in hindsight >_>

It just feels like the opposite of the JK rowling thing where she's degraded over time and her IP is still going strong but Hussie's only gotten better over time it feels like and people still act like her hobby is kicking puppies

fully agree with this topic. the parasocial hatred for Hussie is absolutely ridiculous and the fact that so many people take the various smear campaigns against them at face value is completely unacceptable

I personally reacted on the matter with my own opinions inside my house and they did not once leave and made a mark on the internet.
If anything, the best thing to do in this situation is to see for what everyone has to say and listen.

Not tryna defend hussie at all since he is not all free of sin but this is probably the reason why he is so isolated in the first place because he thinks everyone is out to get him atp​​​​​​

re: Squiddo,

Harry Potter has a maaaasssssive appeal to a pretty broad section of the public, and Rowling herself isn't that symbolically tied with it -- she's not a fade-into-the-background kinda creative for sure, but I think it's fair to say that most people who're talking or thinking about HP are not talking or thinking about her at the same time. So a lot of people, even people who would personally object to her views, find it pretty easy to keep interacting with HP without getting too much cognitive dissonance from it.

Hussie, on the other hand, is literally in Homestuck. For all of her narrative wars against her own fandom, she's been in close quarters with both the fans and the actual HS narrative the whole time. So Hussie is pretty much always gonna come up eventually in any Homestuck discussion, and the fandom has a lot stronger -- for better or for worse -- feelings towards them specifically.

he did homestuck (unforgivable)

@hallurium it's not even about the most recent situation, like this amount of vitriol has been around for hussie for a long time for seemingly no reason at all. I think there's some where feedback loop people got into about ironically hating homestuck and hussie until a bunch of people were convinced that's just the way to be when you're a homestuck fan and now andrew hussie can't post a cookie with salad in it on twitter without getting a cascade of slurs

@scaldingsunshine oh my god.. I did not know that.. cries

me neither but then again, i find hussie's controversies funny more than anything.

Unfortunately I think it is mostly a matter of Hussie being the first easily-accessible author that people could literally just message over the internet and would actually respond. I don't think there was really a precedent for that scale of fan interaction, and I struggle to think of any other author who has been so involved with the fanbase. They didn't really anticipate that Homestuck would be as popular as it was, so of course she didn't bother to set up a PR team or "brand" until after the harassment got to the point it was needed.