This was the last photo I took with Etika. It was only three days before he disappeared. I felt you all may want to see this, as the thread honors his memory.
Thank you for sharing this. I'm sorry for your loss.
I only had the faintest idea of who Etika was until about a week ago, but there is a pattern around here of an unhealthy and unempathetic relationship to celebrity, and it's high time for the people complicit in this culture to take some responsibility. I only wish it didn't have to take an event like this.
Unless you have that order of magnitude of followers on your channels or social media, you truly have no idea how much pressure and scrutiny you are under day to day, even as a minor public figure. And yet we enable people who blow up every perceived transgression into an industry headline, as though they were doing some kind of noble service to the world as the only ones who will ever hold social media personalities to account. Everything is unforgivable and everything is permanently attached to your name. Can't have a conversation about them without someone butting in edgewise and dropping the opposition dossier, hiding under the excuse of keeping everyone informed, when all it amounts to is gossip and salacious gawking.
It's not enough to "talk" about mental illness and suicidality when for a high-visibility figure, talk just invites more goading and hands out more ammunition to be used against you.
All my sympathies to those who held him dear.
Mods need to allow people to openly discuss this. Reading the mod message in the locked thread, if the problem is bad actors hijacking the conversation, then address those people specifically, that's your job. Don't lock down discussion altogether so you don't have to bother moderating, this is one of the biggest issues people had with the prior place.
First things first, RIP Etika. You made mistakes, it seems like you tried to take accountability for them in the end, and I'm sorry that you didn't get the help you needed. I just saw an article about how he was in the real battle scene also in New York. Seemed like a talented and charismatic kid.
A lot of people here, moderation especially, seem to want to stymie the discussion around internal reflection about how this site deals with these situations. It reminds me of Republican politicians saying now is not the time to discuss gun control after a major shooting. They just want thoughts and prayers. The hypocrisy is blatant, but unsurprising.
I never participated in the discussions around Etika because I never followed many YouTube celebrities. That being said, after reading through the thread, a lot of the moderation here is, and has always been - terrible. There is no transparency, despite being one of the principles this site was founded on. We have to PM mods privately to even make a complaint and aren't allowed to voice and discuss things as a COMMUNITY. EVERYTHING seems to get shut down - meta discussions about the site are deemed "unproductive" in an almost Trumpianpian way of shutting down discussion. Not every discussion or point brought up is in "bad faith".
I'm really sorry to hear about how some of you with mental health issues have been treated on this site, and I truly hope things change - especially the moderation here. It's insane how inconsistent they are and the ban hammer is so quick for innocuous things at times, yet so lenient for other horrible things.
Sorry for Etika as a fellow New Yorker especially, it hits differently. We need to start really thinking about how social media is effecting some people.
Good posts. I'm glad to see some open blowback here against site policies that can only be described with one word—cowardice—and which can be said to be actively causing harm. (The comparison to "thoughts and prayers" is especially inspired.)
Apparently we can't talk about moderation without inviting the trolls, so we can't talk about moderation. Does the staff not realize that this policy only serves to feed the trolls? They have no shortage of oppositional communities and back-channel gossip boards to run off to and complain, while the people
least able to have their voices heard are the ones who mostly want to be here, who contribute to this place, who want to see it be better, and would strongly prefer to steer clear of those other places. Everybody gets a word in about Era
except for those of us who want to use it.
Those who want to trash this place in bad faith have no limit of places to go. Those who want to improve this place in good faith have nowhere to go. It's the same familiar absurdity as providing written ban reasons to put on a charade of transparency, but burying them instead of making them available in a readily accessible in-house log. The policies here have created a situation where it is
more convenient for those with minor grievances to run off to self-declared enemies who wear their bans proudly on their sleeves. Does the staff not see how this undermines the community's integrity? How that has only deepened the climate of paranoia where enemy trolls are around every dark corner, ready to strike? Do they not see the utter lack of trust and confidence in hashing anything out over PMs when the public face of the moderation team, ex-mods included, is one of condescension, snide dismissiveness, and shameless apologism for their own?
A lot of prominent outrage members in this community are really no different than trolls on 4chan, except they're more disingenuous with their intentions. You can expect a 4chan poster to shitpost and be an asshole, but these guys hide under the guise of great causes like social justice to get away with murder. They look for these slipups (people make mistakes, we're all human) and then use that to rationalize and justify hurling the absolute worst vile shit. Basically it's like the greenlight for these posters to try and destroy these people (their reputation, their livelihood, their means of making money) and get others to pat themselves on the back about it. I don't think most 4chan posters even go as far as I've seen some people out for blood on here have.
Just like anyone that has posted here or lurked here over the past year or two. you've seen it time and time again, but this is the first time that I'm aware of that this has ended in a suicide. Not in any world is ERA responsible for Etika's death, but with a forum as popular as this, I'm sure he's been here before and seen some of the hate thrown his way.
GAF had this shit as well, and I don't know the solution to this. I'm 99% sure that some of the worst offenders are too entrenched in the community to be removed at this point.
Quite right.
Those who have normalized this, by participation or by policy, are neither innocent bystanders nor paragons of accountability. They are enablers; they are gossips.
