Came across this article http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2015/07/22/voice-actor-troy-baker-quits-twitter/ from the excellent Erik Kain,

Seems to be more typical internet outrage nonsense followed by harassment, but what I have found interesting is that none of the usual websites, (kotaku, polygon and the like) seem to be covering this at all and they usually jump over this time of stuff which seems strange.

Seems rather sad to me as everything ive seen of Troy he seems a real nice incredibly talented guy, plus his album he made is actually pretty decent.

The Internet cannot take a joke. We've taken the greatest sharing of information the world's ever produced and turned it into a giant take-offense machine. I miss the days when one could poke fun at serious shit and not get tarred and feathered for it. Mel Brooks would roll in his grave if he were dead.

I can't recall the last time I saw something on Twitter that wasn't a complaint, a reaction to a complaint, or so-called mob justice.

Sucks for Troy, but that's the state of the internet right now.

Glad he chose to just quit rather then engage in this stuff. That never ends well.

I never would've figured that many people would want to defend Brett Micheals.

Troy Baker was at a fan convention the other week in Ireland and he was by all accounts one of the nicest dudes ever. The convention isn't that big (couple of hundred at the door at most) and he took hours to sign and meet them all and have a talk with each one.

He made the right choice here.

It has less to do with twitter and the internet and more to do with the age we live in. Everyone is now always offended by everything. You can rarely joke about anything without someone somewhere getting offended then using whatever platform they have at their disposal not to simply voice their opinion, but to make sure your's is silenced.

Fuck, read the news, every day someone is getting in trouble for the smallest, most insignificant shit you could imagine. This is especially true for comedians considering how many try to poke fun at current news and events. Emphasis on the word "try" there because these days...they can't.

The internet outrage machine at work, ladies and gents. I still think Twitter is one of the worst thing to happen to the internet. The fact that this story isn't showing up on some sites (like the examples you provided) is an other whole can of worms.

Twitter is like some weird other dimension earth where comedy was never invented.

That was a really, really shitty joke, though, and it's even more shitty that he didn't just fucking apologize.

Him being harassed is shitty but he's not exactly making himself look good here.

It's almost worse when the people you align yourself with are wrong. When your enemies are crazy it's easier to dismiss. It hurts. I guess that's my takeaway from this kind of stuff. The internet is such an echo chamber for the righteous though that my opinion has zero value.

"Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men people."

-John F. Kennedy

You were just following the wrong people then. My twitter feed is usually full of either interesting cool shit people wanna share, jokes, or just innocuous daily living.

@error52: Why would anyone have to apologize for that? I'm not trying to be dick, I'm genuinely asking.

I haven't dug through his timeline so I don't know what exactly people were saying to him, but the article doesn't say he was harassed off Twitter, just that he quit. It's certainly possible — likely, even, given the platform — that he was getting abuse, but neither he nor the article suggests that.

Anyway, that joke was kind of shitty, so I can understand why people might have been upset. Obviously that's not license to abuse someone, but people have a right to their feelings. On that note, can we please stop saying people "choose" to be offended? You can't choose to be offended, any more than you can choose to be irritated or upset. Besides, half the time what people perceive to be outrage isn't even that. Like, I get annoyed every time I hear a lousy Irish accent on American television, but that doesn't mean I'm offended by it. There's a whole spectrum of emotions and reactions that one can have to shitty behaviour, and we should learn to better parse that before, ironically, frothing at the mouth in outrage over "outrage culture".

I think Erik Kain is starting to lose me bit by bit every time I see him comment on this stuff. What does Kain mean by a scuffle? His ending argument that people should be able to make bad jokes but criticism of those bad jokes should be held back because reasons makes little sense.

There's not even any example of the blowback Troy Baker received from his tweet all we know is a "Scuffle" took place. With the information we're given in this article Baker comes off as the more sensitive one for not being able to take criticism.

@conmulligan: *slow clap*

Also, I completely hate the internet is being labeled as a "take offense machine" and not a more accurate "asshole machine."

@carcass427: The joke is basically presenting a trans woman as ugly and masculine which is super lame

He makes a twitter joke, that some people took as offensive. Then he gets tweets back at him that he finds offensive so he quits twitter?

He made a joke and it bombed. I'm not sure what Brett Micheals looks like these days so maybe it was funny, but to me it was a miss.

@error52: No it isn't. The joke is at the expense of the two men, not the woman.

It should be noted that he himself didn't make the joke but instead retweeted it from someone else.

Though even besides this event it's hard to miss how dark humour is often attacked for offending somebody in some manner. However I do think that Troy's use of ''choose to be offended'' was a poor response. He should have just let well enough alone, if not at least express sympathy that some of his fans don't happen to share the same sense of humour as he does.

"Assholes" are often enough people with opinions other than the majority. Yes, we could certainly do without some of them, but I dread the day there are no assholes left.

It must be exhausting to give such a shit about what people say on twitter.

@error52: I don't see how that is the case. The joke seemed to be at the expense of Bret Michaels and Mickey Rourke, not Caitlyn Jenner. “Brett Michaels looks like Mickey Rourke tried to become Caitlyn Jenner.” But I don't even think that matters. Should people not make jokes about any subject that has the potential to offend people? I didn't think it was funny either, but wanting someone to apologize for making a dumb joke seems kind of ridiculous to me.

Regardless of who made the joke it was kind of shitty and RT it just endorses the thing that you RT. The problem here is that Transgender folks have been the butt of jokes for a long long time its not that "you can't joke about specific groups" and more thats pretty much ALL the transgender community sees. So yeah, I can understand when people take offense to that.

@carcass427:You're completely right.

Also, are people allowed to voice the fact that they find some people, who happen to trans, ugly? I feel like it would be immediately labeled as transphobia regardless of the context and phrasing. Even if Troy Baker directly said that he found Caitlyn Jenner ugly, I would find no problem with that as long as he didn't link it to the fact that she is a trans woman. At least, it wouldn't be anymore problematic than his joke about Rourke and Michaels. Trans people are people too, so they can be called ugly just as well, as stupid as this kind of joke may be.

It was a shitty transphobic joke and I was really disappointed in him when I saw that this had happened. His response to people calling him out on it was the fucking worst.

I'm also disappointed (but not surprised) by the general reaction I see here.

Really there should only be exactly as many assholes as there are people. It seems askew right now.

Edit: Also, I didn't read the story and have no actual context for what's going on. I do think it's funny that people are complaining there's no news coverage of "guy quits using Twitter" though.

I just googled Brett Michaels, and I can't say I disagree with him. But then what if at the same time I'm not transphobic?! How does humour work how does brain work how does rationalisation work how does compartmentalisation work

You do choose to be offended, though. It's entirely your right to be offended, and be offended at everything if you want. The problem is that some people don't understand that being offended doesn't do anything. It doesn't give you the moral imperative to harass somebody. It doesn't give you the moral authority to tar and feather somebody. All it does is make you feel kinda bad for a couple of seconds before moving on with your day. At least that's how reasonable adults handle it.

All of this lynch mob bullshit is just idiots who get a hard on at the prospect of being righteous. Never mind context. That's unimportant. Who needs context when you've got a perfectly acceptable target just asking for it because they retweeted a dumb joke on the Internet?

This is what happens when someone who isn't a comedian tries to tell an offensive joke. Leave offensive comedy to the professionals.

I should have stopped at "the excellent Erik Kain". *sigh*

The problem is that these days, they get in trouble for it too. Even comedians who are known for being clean are getting in trouble for jokes that weren't trying to be even remotely offensive.

That's a bit of the takeaway I get from this as well, he isn't the first person to do this as well. I think Louis C.K. had a "uhhhnnngg I'm quitting twitter toooooo" spat a while back.

It's like people forget the golden rule of dealing with people they don't like on the internet, just don't pay any attention to them. Seems like Twitter is only as full as assholes as you allow or want it to be, if someone says something to you that you don't like, you literally have a button on twitter that blocks said person, so just block, ignore, move on, who gives a fuck.

This shit only gets worse the more you respond/give in.

He seems like a good dude but that joke was in poor taste. Also it was amazingly unfunny. But he can do whatever he wants.

I straight up don't understand any of this.

Also, quitting twitter don't mean shit. Troy Baker is a big enough name that I'll still see plenty of Troy Baker being a sweet heart that I don't really care.

Also I don't know why people got offended by that tweet. I'm pretty sure if that joke references any other transgender person nobody would care... unless they are big Brett Michaels fan WHO THE FUCK STILL CARES ABOUT BRETT MICHAELS?

Don't people on Twitter sarcastically say shit like "I quit Twitter" everyday... and then continue to use it? Aside from this whole typically inane and idiotic situation, this just seems like a dude frustrated today, who'll keep on a' tweetin' tomorrow.

Kain is taking huge journalistic liberty by assuming those three words are Baker's last straw and this is some huge thing without even reaching out to the guy for conformation. Especially without showing any of the blowback against him at all.

Dumb. All. Around.

@nicolenomicon:Why do you think this joke was transphobic? I honestly don't see it. This joke is mocking the physical appearance of individuals, regardless of gender groups. He's not saying that trans people in general are ugly or that MTF transition makes you ugly, he's not even saying that Caitlyn Jenner is ugly. He's making fun of Mickey Rourke and Brett Michaels, basically saying that Michaels looks like an effeminate Rourke, and that they're both awful looking. Now, criticizing people's physical appearance for fun is shitty, there's no denying that, but it's nothing against trans people or any gender group in particular either.

And the feeling in this thread shouldn't surprise you. It's clear that LGBTQI people are experiencing serious discrimination in our society, online or offline. However, there's been a backlash in recent years in the form of people on social media attacking lots of posts mentioning minorities that are not neutral commentary or clear praise. Jokes at the expense of anybody who's trans/queer are automatically taken for bigotry, even if it's just about the person as an individual and not his/her race/religion/sexual orientation/gender identity. Mob justice is too strong of a word, there's lots of insensitive and ignorant idiots out there who deserved to be told what's what, even if it's done bluntly. Making harmful generalizations on trans & queer people is fucking terrible and should be called and treated as such, but around the edges you have lots of collateral damage. Harmless people making obvious jokes made of sensitive words, quips that common sense should filter out as stupid fun. But instead, some users take it as a direct attack on a community of tens of millions, wasting precious energy by making hurtful assumptions on somebody who just wanted to make a dumb joke. As a result, it's feeding the myth that "you people should just chill out, it's the 21st century, homophobia and transphobia are behind us".

I'm not saying anything goes, but I'm not saying none shall pass either.

Justice is a weird term to use. People who shout at someone for making a joke that they find offensive is not helping anyone. If you want to help someone volunteer at a soup kitchen, march for equal rights, or donate to charity. It's faux activism, and doesn't serve any purpose other than to make one person feel the smallest that they can feel, because the internet calling for their blood. That's not to say that people should make fun of transgender people, but seriously, who is this really helping? All it does is make all the dip-shit "GamersGate" people feel more empowered, and make them think they're the ones getting picked on, when in reality they are cancer on the culture that surrounds video games. With that being said, I didn't think the joke was very funny, I would have said that he looks like Mickey Rourke got plastic surgery to look like a Ken Doll, 'cuz Bret Michaels doesn't look anything like Caitlyn Jenner, but I digress. I don't think the joke was directed at Jenner, and I seriously doubt that Baker intended to belittle or insult her. If you don't think it was funny, that's fine, you can even tell him that, but people telling him to commit suicide. I mean come on, that's real, real shitty. Sorry for the huge block of text.

Edit: Also what the guy above me said, he phrase it way better than I could.

I hope people don't give into this outrage culture. Stop apologizing for everything and don't quit. This shit is hopefully just a phase.

What's wrong with Erik Kain?

There's a lot of sensitive discussions taking place in this thread, so let's keep this civil please, folks.

@ratamero: Why?

@ratamero said:

Haha, yeah. I'm increasingly of the opinion that Erik Kain is just bizarro Ben Kuchera — people only seem to like him because he aligns with them politically and acts as a culture warrior, not because he has anything of value to say.

I don't think he's on the approved reading list of the perpetually outraged denizens of twitter. I can't say I've ever thought he was particularly great, but I haven't read anything especially bad from him either. He seems like a perfectly capable if rather bland writer.