Name: Feeling sad about tragedy
Uploaded: 2020-03-30T03:40:43.000Z
Duration: 13 min 9 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of degree

As those who follow me know, I have a lot of practice in analyzing things from above

Participle clauses

and I'm resisting doing that this time, resisting doing what is easy for me.

Friday evening, Christina Grimmie was shot.

Christina Grimmie was shot, we're going with shot not murdered because we're going in order

and for many hours we did not know if she would live.

Not because I knew her personally or particularly followed her work, I didn't, I didn't even

know her, but because she and I have a lot in common.

Not in an "it could have been me" kind of way, though I suppose it could've, more in

a "it shouldn't have been her" kind of way, because she did everything right and I knew

this kind of thing could happen but it shouldn't have happened to her, these words running

around and around my head, it shouldn't have happened to her.

So I got my first real death threat, y'know, specific threat that included my address and

Always an entertaining icebreaker conversation when you find yourself in a group of highly-visible

internet or entertainment people, particularly women and LGBTQ+ folk and people of color

anyway when I was in my mid-teens, before YouTube even existed, I was pretty active

in some internet and gaming communities and I got a lot of attention and just, when you're

a kid you pretty much get used to whatever's around you as normal.

Of course when you beat a dude at an online video game he's gonna find it to be a genuinely

hurtful blow to his manliness, his identity, and he might stalk down your address and threaten

And of course when you play with the same people enough, some of them will become obsessed

with you and call your family home phone number and tell you that he's holding a gun to his

head and will kill himself if you don't love him.

If you want to engage with the internet community that's just part of the territory, right.

And it just never even occurred to me to, what, call the police?

This was the early 2000s, back when the internet world was separate from real life, it was

other, I didn't even think to tell my friends about any of it.

I was bored, I had time, so I'd usually engage with it and dance the troll dance and mostly

they were just other bored kids and we'd get along just fine in the end.

I got very good at dealing with internet trolls and not very good at being a human being and

I was a kid and why would I ever tell anyone about anything bad that happened to me ever

when I had no trust that anyone would take anything I said seriously, even if they did

believe me, which they probably wouldn't, or if they did they'd make a big deal of it

and probably blame me anyway, and it's not like I'm a saint, and I put myself in this

situation by going on the internet, by playing games, by engaging with these people, I talked

...I learned that reaction and those instincts and that lack of trust very early in my life

What does this have to do with Christina?

We both started on YouTube in mid-2009, we're in the same order of magnitude of subscribers,

we're both gamers and singers and fairly successful but not super famous but well respected by

a lot of people who are, and we sometimes do events and meet and greets, not within

the well-oiled machine of hollywood with their protocols and security and money, but in that

youtubery space where we have all this attention, often very personal attention because of the

intimacy of the medium, and basically I have a lot to identify with as far as where she

I don't know the extent to which she got death threats or had obsessive fans or stalkers,

but for any woman at that level of visibility I can be confident that she did.

For anyone in a group that commonly gets marked as "other", it becomes likely at relatively

low follower numbers, and at a certain level of visibility everyone has to deal with it.

Sometimes male friends ask me how I deal with the threats and the attention, or they get

upset about comments they see on my channel or on twitter, and they want to know how it

is that I'm brave enough to be this visible, when so many decide it's not worth the hassle.

How could I possibly worry about what I get on the internet as Vi Hart when that's harmless

compared to what I get in real life as nobody?

I didn't get internet-famous until I was 22.

I got used to internet threats by 16, and in the time between I went to college, I lived

in a few different cities, I travelled to conventions and conferences alone, I'd go

out to eat and drink and dance alone, I'd walk down the street alone.

I'd been in the world, and since I got internet famous I've been in the world some more.

How is it possible to be concerned about internet strangers that I can just ignore when I've

encountered so many men who I would have encountered whether I was on the internet or not and who

Most people have no idea how common sexual assault and violence against women are because

people get taught pretty early on that keeping it to yourself and pretending it's not a big

deal is very much preferable than even the best case scenario if you talk about it, and

forget pressing charges, it's kind of amazing that anyone bothers.

I learned early in my life to have more faith in the humanity of angry men than in any of

As a teenager I would to turn my trolls into my friends and I usually succeeded.

But now I'm 28, I just don't have the time, and it seems the same bored kids who naively

did this stuff 15 years ago are still doing it as adults, plus a new crop of kids, plus

I'm more visible; all I can do is ignore, block, ban, and continually discover that

all that leniency and attention I used to give people is something they feel entitled

Same way male strangers act towards me in real life.

Just give me a chance, no, I mean a real chance, if it were a real chance you'd see that

I'm a nice guy, so give me a chance to do this the nice way.

Christina Grimmie was shot at a meet and greet and I kept refreshing the news waiting to

find out if she would live, but also because I needed to know whether it was someone she

knew or someone who targeted her because of her fame.

I knew that most likely it was an ex boyfriend, a current boyfriend, a family member, it happens

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Feeling sad about tragedy

instinct

engage

straight

urge