Out of curiosity (I have no horse in this race aside from ‘I like Joel’) — what’s your beef with Skizz?
Uh, I'll try and put it as succinctly as possible- while I don't really have beef with him, as I do truly think that it's nuanced, as all things are-- at the start of June a donor asked him to say trans rights and he refused as he believed it would be political, as well as having several moderators that are Trump supporters and conservative. He then doubled down and said he just "doesn't like being told what to do" and proceeded to continue streaming with said moderators that are, and I cannot stress enough, very conservative that have actively spoken out against trans people and people of color. As a lot of people have compared-- if you have a bar that accepts both Nazis and minorities, you will only get Nazis.
(The rest of this post has been put under the readmore to avoid blocking up people's dashes).
I don't like, think Skizz should die or be homeless or anything. I don't think that should happen to anyone, in fact! (Unless it's Elon Musk or Trump). But as a trans person, his words hurt me personally, and as a result, I don't really want to see him in content anymore. I don't feel comfortable contributing financially (though I did buy those pins for my birthday hngh which I feel kinda bad about and I will be selling Skizz's), as I do not want to contribute monetarily to someone who pays people who want me dead. Pretty simple. As a result, I have stopped watching GIGGS and supporting non-mcyt content, as much as it pains me to do so.
(For the record, Skizz did put out an apology. I do not accept it. Look it up if you haven't seen it.)
Mostly? I have moral OCD and am capable of spiraling really badly. So everytime I interact with Skizzleman it kind of sends me down an intrusive thoughts spiral. It's already really easy for me to spiral, so I've been avoiding him for a month as best I can. BUT I also have a terrible hyperfixation on Joel, and I don't mean "haha he's my interest", I mean our Joel has been hosting and fronstuck for months and I can focus or think about little else. It is genuinely debilitating, and that paired with my moral OCD spirals when I see Skizz is gonna make watching Past Life pretty... difficult.
I'm not saying this to like, tell you to not watch Skizz or anything. I genuinely do not really care what other people do, you do you, it's up to you whether you continue to support Skizz. I'm just saying that as someone who has been a huge fan of Skizz over the years, his words and actions have hurt me, and I refuse to give him any monetary support, and struggling with compulsions from OCD and mental illness have made the situation have a particularly significant effect on me. I don't "hate" him or want him to die (though I very VERY deeply dislike him-- right after one of his mods was outed as a conservative AGAIN, he streamed with her like. Right afterwards. He's made it kind of... very clear, where he stands). Any negative posts I've made have been me expressing frustration about him teaming with Joel so soon after such an unfortunate turn of events, and him making me deeply uncomfortable as a result. And, for the record? I think Skizz should experience the consequences of his actions. I think he should learn that he can't just act like an entire subset of people doesn't deserve human rights without losing a lot of his fan base. I do kind of think the people that are defending him are nuts. But again, I'm not going to hold it against people. A lot of people in this fandom are very young and don't know how to handle this. I get it. I lived through 2020.
(Also, I'm worried about how him winning is going to affect the fandom, as a lot of people (myself included) are either very deeply uncomfortable with him as a person or flat-out despise his guts (fair), and if he wins or does anything particularly significant in Past Life it'll cause a fandom civil war. Genuinely, I don't know what I'll do if Skizz wins Past Life. Right now, I'm currently trying to pretend he doesn't exist and has never existed at all, and that will get very, very difficult if he wins.)
I think a big part of the fandom struggle is for years Hermitcraft fans have had a holier-than-thou attitude in a space that has had a lot of controversies and bad people (as a DSMP fan...), and a lot of people genuinely do not know how to process that someone from the space could be bad. When Isk*ll was outed, it was easy for people to turn to the No True Scotsman fallacy, claiming Isk*ll was never really a Hermit and the rest of them aren't like that, as Isk*ll has not been very active the past few years. But Skizz, who is very deeply rooted in Hermitcraft culture, despite being new, because of people affirming his spot in the server, as well as his outside content with members, scares people. (That's ignoring that some other people in the server aren't exactly shy about being conservative leaning or centrist, either, but I won't go into that as this post is already very long. Xisuma's talk channel and Doc's twitter are.... unfortunate, is all I'll say. And don't get me started on the H*rry P*tter jokes everyone STILL makes.) They don't want to accept that he might not be the perfect person they idealize, and therefore they're bad people. When in reality the people you support has no merit on your actual morals, and thus should not be taken into account. People don't want Skizz to be a bad person, or even a good person that has done bad things, so they're excusing his behavior and passing it off as fine. But it's not fine. My existence is not "political". I am a real, human being, that deserves rights. To say otherwise is jaw-droppingly ignorant at best and extremely bigoted at worst.
A lot of people throughout history have said that inaction is sometimes worse than direct opposition, and that tolerating inexcusable acts is just as bad as committing them. Nazis weren't just the soldiers that were killing people. They were the people that smiled and waved and turned a blind eye to people being murdered so as to not jeopardize their finances. Acknowledging that the murder and oppression of trans people is wrong is the least he could have done. And he did not do that. Because he's scared that he'll lose his conservative audience. As Joe Hills said-- you must kick those people out from the beginning, so they know they don't have a home in your spaces, so you do not depend on them financially.
Again. I want to reiterate-- I do not fully hate Skizzleman, nor do I want anything bad to befall him. He's a middle-aged man from Arizona, and he's not exactly the first person with unfortunate politics on Hermitcraft. (Though he seems to be the catalyst for a larger fandom divide.) But I will not be watching his direct content, will be avoiding or ignoring him in any group projects he participates in, and will not be including him in any of my fandom works for the foreseeable future. I am also not writing this post to tell anyone that they should not watch Skizzleman-- while I have no plans of curating a positive space towards Skizzleman fans, I do not hate you and will not block you or something.
I don't know. I feel I could have put this better and repeated myself a lot, but I don't know how to phrase it otherwise. He was transphobic. I'm not gonna watch him. My moral OCD is acting up really bad and the past month has felt like walking on hot coals online.
TL;DR: Skizz said some very transphobic things a month ago, employs Trump supporters, and his apology was subpar, and now his existence makes me very deeply uncomfortable and I will be avoiding any content fandom or otherwise with him in it.
