The Toxic Empires of Egoligarchies
Don’t roll your eyes just yet. This isn’t about politcs or social justice warrior type issues. Well, I suppose you could apply it to both those topics but this is more about lessons of hubris and bruised egos gone bad within the world of Social Media.
I know what you are thinking; here’s Bill Shatner the King of Egos (if you listen to some of my former castmates) talking about hubris. 🙄He has a nerve. 😤 Maybe so but I also have a point to make here on toxicity of House of Card Oligarchs. The other point I will make upfront is that what follows is my own viewpoints and my side of things. I know there are two sides to every story but I’m going to try to be fair in how I present my side though I know it will be biased toward me.
I have a history of speaking my mind online. I’m heading into my ninth decade alive and I’ve seen a lot of things but enough is enough with some of this bad behavior of people under the guise of a cause. (And this is where you can begin to apply it to whatever you want- politics, social justice, current events, etc… I’m not going to go there — you can if you want.)
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.
Fame and Celebrity have wonderful perks and dire drawbacks. You get special treatment and first available tables at restaurants at times but everyone wants to meet you, everyone wants to get a selfie with you and, in the case of the toxic types, everyone wants to have a go at you.
Over the years I’ve had the most idiotic ‘battles’ with people. I was included in a tweet from a friend: a noted actor and former football star in a tweet that had a number of other people he included. I replied back to my friend; which also included the other people mentioned. One of them; a late night radio host on Fox Sports decided that because I responded and he was included on the tweet that I was his new BFF and as his new BFF I needed to come onto his radio show.
Now I don’t know this guy from the proverbial, hole in the wall but here he is inviting me on his show. I tell him I don’t know you but “Thank you” and I declined as politely as I could in the 2 dimensional text environment of Twitter. Apparently the fact I didn’t know who he was (other than for a CC on my friend’s Tweet to me 🤷🏼♂️) was unacceptable. Now I crossed a line in his ego; I HAD to now make an appearance on his show. He was not taking no for an answer.
As comical as that sounds; it’s basically what happened. So as he wasn’t backing down and I wasn’t going to spend time arguing back; I blocked him.
Another checklist no-no with these egoligarchs.
He decided to get his revenge to my telling the world that I had no idea who he was. He went on his show and told his fanbase what I had done.
Yes, it was horrible; an actor guy didn’t know him or his late night show on Fox Sports. Bad Bill! Shame on Bad Bill! 🙄
I had committed the ultimate sin; I didn’t give him the last word as I blocked him! Let that sink in, I blocked him on Twitter because he was being an ass and I had no idea who he was.
He knew full well what his fans would do: they would attack me. And he would get enjoyment out of it.
And they did it. They harassed me for years. They are such a bizarre bunch of mindless types that spend their time peer pressuring each other to do things. This was their sport. As quickly as I could block them on Twitter they would create a new account. The host show’s producer got in on the action fanning the flames to get fans to continue to attack. So it was over egoligarchism.
As I said this went on for years. It seems everytime there was a lull in news the host would mention my name and I’d wake up to a timeline filled with vulgar tweets from his fans. One has to be pretty sad to carry a grudge that far but then again I assume that late night sports radio probably isn’t the most exciting career to have either.
It all came to an undramatic end when one of his fans donated to my charity to have the host unblocked. I took the donation — the charity benefitted and I unblocked him!
His fanbase screamed victory and I rolled my eyes and giggled like a school girl at this and I never heard from him again. He’s still unblocked by me to this day. BTW, as a side note (and who am I to not take a golden opportunity to promote) my charity is The Hollywood Charity Horse Show. I support 20 or so different charities — mostly children and veterans equine assisted riding therapy and if you want to donate to it you can donate here: Bit.ly/HorseShowTickets
As you can see if you click the link: I offer an option to get unblocked by me on Twitter for $500.00.
What was the point of the years of his fans harassing me? Ego? Spitefulness? I’m not quite sure but he’s the first of the Egoligarchs that I dealt with.
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.
For those of you dismissing this as a fandom battle; it’s more than that. I do understand that fans feel loyaties and sometimes do really stupid things but a line does get crossed when people send their fans after someone else to teach them a lesson.
Some fandom battles are legendary. Star Trek is better than Star Wars (see? I told you I’d be somewhat biased 😉) but it’s all harmless fun. I’ll tell you a secret between the late actress Carrie Fisher and me. Carrie was the queen of Star Wars and I am looked at as the head of the Star Trek world. So when we got together on Twitter and in real life — things were going to happen. Carrie loved her fandom; I love my fandom and we defended our fandoms. Carrie would be vicious so I would get these messages sent by her either apologizing for what she said or warning me she was going to say some unflattering things about me in her tweets. (That was how much she cared about what she was saying to others-she wanted me to know that it wasn’t her true feelings.) It became a comedy routine and the fans loved it.
That’s a legendary fandom battle — no one gets hurt — everyone enjoys themselves and life moves on.
However, what has been happening in the past few years is ugly and disturbing.
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.
What it did was set the line of decency so far off its original mark that everything that came after it that went even further astray was considered acceptable by the social media fanbases.
And even in the world of Star Trek you have these Egoligarchs and it’s not George at all! (How many of you went there, though? George and I are fine our ‘battle’ is petty compared to others.)
There’s a YouTube channel run by a couple of gentlemen (and I use that term loosely) who do a series of “shows” on YouTube. They claim it’s not a podcast but they make fun of podcasters and fan boys. They’ve developed a large following of fans — similar to Egoligarch 1 from above. These fans are mean, reckless and think it’s fun to harass. It’s caused by Hubris in excess.
Let me set up the situaion:
Last year (August 2019) I was approached on Twitter by a blue checked individual from Briebart to do a show with this company named Red Letter Media.
I had never heard of them, I didn’t know what it was so I jokingly made a reference to the Pet Shop Boys (who did a song called Red Letter Day.)
Another person then cleared it up:
The Red Letter Media account then messaged me saying how could you not have heard of us?:
At this point I’m thinking that this is all connected not just some random blue check guy asking out of the blue if I would do their show(which is apparently what happened.)
I then get a link to their YouTube channel (don’t know if they sent it or the blue check or someone else did — that tweet seems to be missing mysteriously.) but I respond to them directly saying I looked at their channel and thank you, but I don’t book podcasts. I answer the podcast question so many times that I created a bit.ly link for it: http://bit.ly/NoPodcasts just so they know that others have asked for years.
Their response:
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 ? 🤷🏼♂️
My early experiences with podcasts were that people who do them really are not professionals (that’s obviously changed since 2013 with many professionals now doing podcasts) but 99% of the requests I get are about general interviews and all they want to ask are questions about Star Trek or one of the other characters I’ve done. They want 30 mins to an hour plus for their show and I just want to get in there, promote what I have to and get out. I give national media 15 mins. Plus the reach of some of these podcasts are grossly over exaggerated— I can post something on my social media accounts and have it seen by exponentially more people for the most part than a lot of these podcasts. So that’s my tirade about why I don’t do podcasts (and please do not try to convince me how wonderful they are — I don’t want to waste an hour or so of my day being asked questions that I’ve been asked thousands of times before.)
My refusal to do their show opened the floodgates of their fans to harass me that how dare I call it a podcast, I need to go on the show, etc… so like the Fox Sports person — I blocked the account, the two hosts and the fans.
All of this happened in August of 2019. Fast forward to this past week. I mentioned their name in, coincidentally, a podcast tweet. A gentleman asked me very politely to be on his YouTube channel to be interviewed. I replied:
I was just covering all bases in case he came back with: “I don’t do a podcast I do a streaming media show on YouTube” or some other snooty reply
Then someone else asked about people having a problem with the word “podcast” and I answered and used Red Letter Media’s name:
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)
I see one guy laughing hysterically while another guy tries to pretend that he’s been called a moron by me (not true) and then makes a phonecall joke using a phaser toy from another Star Trek series.
What is important in this is the “Leave him alone” message. Why would someone do all of this and tell their fanbase to leave me alone unless he knows exactly what they will do.
And that’s exactly what they did, attacked me.
The fact that their fans harass people should not be a surprise to them at all and I don’t think it is. In fact just doing a quick search on Twitter shows large numbers of their fans tagging them quite proudly that person XXX blocked them. It’s a badge of courage and their fanbase is proud that they followed their directions and harassed people.
Apparently they didn’t like CBS All Access and had their fans descend upon them. CBS blocked them and their fans:
Aren’t they supposed to be Star Trek fans? 🤔
Or are they? 🤷🏼♂
And apparently Patton Oswald was on their show and whatever happened he ended up blocking a number of their fans.
In 2016, Red Letter media apparently was telling their fanbase that they were blocked by uber fanboy director Kevin Smith:
When Kevin Smith had a heart attack and his friend Mark Hamill tweeted a get well to him. One of those wonderful “fans” of Red Letter Media took the opportunity (right after the heart attack) to post a tweet to hassle Kevin to unblock Red Letter Media.
So Kevin has a heart attack; heart attacks are serious. Mark tweets his well wishes to his friend and this uncaring fan is demanding Kevin unblock Red Letter Media in the middle of this. Who does that?
I assume that they realized that a new fan disaster was on the horizon because of that tweet by their fans to harass Kevin after his heart attack Red Letter Media had to come clean:
I don’t think there are words to describe this kind of bizarre claim. They told their followers they were blocked to get sympathy? Loyalty?
The reality is that they monetize all their videos and at last count their “Boomer” video on me was over 400K views.
Basically this is the likely reason they do this; they get their fans riled up, direct them to harass in their videos. And you see how caring these fans are for others — Kevin Smith is in serious condition after having a heart attack and one of their fans is sending harassing tweets to him and Mark Hamill to unblock Red Letter Media.
Red Letter Media then has to come clean and say Kevin didn’t block them (even though as far back as May 2016 their fans seem to have received a message that Kevin blocked them.) Then to top it off one of their fans reply to them and says that a colomstomybag reminds them of Kevin Smith! I wonder who called Kevin that name? 🙄
And the fact that I blocked them (which apparently is the topic of their current video) should be really old news as they brought it up in May of this year too in a video:
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!
I found this article: https://mediashark.co/youtube-cpm/ it states:
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.
So who is laughing all the way to the bank?
The Egoligarchs!
BTW, their apparent claim is that they never invited me on their show. So how many times did I decline a non-invitation last year?
And did they ever say —
“Hey Bill, thanks but we didn’t invite you. Oh, and BTW, our buddy Macauley Culkin egging you to do our show and everyone else that’s doing the same? We don’t know anything about they did that. It’s all just your imagination, Mr. Shatner.”
But that’s nowhere to be found instead it’s I lied about it and I’m the villain for blocking them more than 11 months ago:
So apparently if they say it’s not true; then it’s not true (despite the video saying “he’s not going to be on our show”
What appears to be true is that this YouTube show has a history of being blocked by studios and other notables because they send their fans bully them.
I’m still shocked by the fact that their fans tried to hassle Kevin Smith- who had just had a heart attack — to unblock them. What kind of mentality does that take to do something that egregious?
And it all seems to be to get views on their YouTube channel videos which are monetized. If the view numbers are correct, they probably make a nice living off of sending their masses to attack people and flying under the radar in doing so.
I hazard to even comprehend what is next for
Aren’t there bullying rules? Should these gentlemen really be able to monetize videos which stir up people to attack others all while they play victim? If anything, the money should go to fund antibullying campaigns and education to teach young children not to bully.
Wouldn’t that be a kick in the teeth for these Egoligarchs?
The above is just my opinion based upon the materials found online but I do find it disturbing enough to want to highlight the situation and put my cyber stick in the stand on these issues.
My best, Bill
