Yet another one for the oopsie pile

I had a similar experience. A couple nights ago, winding down for bed and getting high. I open up Nebula for something to listen to as I fall asleep, but my subscription feed was all full of either miserable (I feel obligated to learn about the atrocities of history, but for my mental health limit that content) or academic. I had exhausted most of the happier, lighter content like Tale Foundry, Razbuten, Austen McConnel, etc.

I never heard of Geller until i subscribed to Nebula a few years ago, so I would occasionally go back and just binge watch his content when I waa in the mood for something chill and easy to watch. So a couple nights ago I searched for him and the only results were a handful of videos where he appeared on other people’s channels.

At first I figured it was just Nebula’s search being weird and only looking st video titles and not the channel names, because he probably doesn’t have any videos with his own name in the title. So I scroll through the list of channels I subscribed to and… He’s gone. So I assumed he just ended his relationship with Nebula for business reasons. So I go to the internet to see what is up, wondering if maybe Nebula had done something terrible like sell out to private equity.

I’m sad. I’m disappointed. I’m tired.

You are obviously welcome to do what you want, but acting like the people upset about him are somehow not also upset at the president is whataboutism and just plainly false. If you’re interested in hearing a different perspective: https://youtu.be/IVkkBMDRuwk

investigated and held accountable. Suspended for one semester, couldn’t have been that serious.

This must be the first time you’ve heard about a university investigation of sexual violence. Bless your heart.

If all that happened to the Cornell seven was that some of them had to write an essay, imagine what he did to get suspended for a whole semester…

Suspended for one semester, couldn’t have been that serious

This thinking is precisely the problem. The seriousness of the offense is unknown and completely unrelated to the consequences.

Universities have created these strange sort of pseudo a societies with their own perverse versions of what a justice system should be. The goal of the university is simple: profit. They want wealthy parents to believe their children will be safe going to school there. The incentive is to silence and squash and manage the “reputation” that the school has first, and everything else is tertiary. It is very possible, likely even, that it was a very serious offense that was swept under the rug with a slap on the wrist. Geller even said in his own statement that he felt like the consequence was too mild. Geller did not face the criminal justice system: he faced some school administrators for what should habe been a criminal offense.

The problem is that in the US, the actual criminal justice system really is an organized crime syndicate with its roots in finding runaway slaves, who exist today to protect capital and not people. When people cannot trust the government to administer criminal justice fairly, vigilante justice rises to take its place. And vigilante justice is terrible. Remember the time Reddit managed to “find” the Boston marathon bomber for example. Vigilante justice often becomes a popularity contest, or a measure of social influence. A lot of people right now blindly repeating the phrase “believe women” are conveniently forgetting about how many innocent black men have been lynched for that.

The lack of trust in the criminal justice system ALSO precludes any opportunities for societal forgiveness or growth. Norway, for example, has a system focused on rehabilitating criminals to become safe members of society. The US system is built around perpetuating slavery, providing a sense of vengeance for victims, and trying to pretend that the threat of a terrible life in the prison system acts as a deterrent to crime. The vigilante justice system, even one as mild as “cancel culture”, is similar. It de-humanizes perceived offenders and leaves no room for forgiveness or rehabilitation. Cancel culture also is not universal: there have been plenty of celebrities that have been "canceled"who still have successful careers making money off people who dont participate in that culture. Jacob Geller still has his YouTube channel, which is likely his biggest source of income, where he has not posted anything at all regarding this. JK Rowling is still a billionaire.

A lot of people ARE angry about Trump. The problem is that rapist won the popular vote in the last election, meaning more than 40 million people decided they didn’t care. There are probably a lot more people who are not angry at Geller than there are at Trump.

This just plain sucks. I’ve been a Nebula subscriber for years and I enjoyed Geller’s content a lot. I will miss it. I’ve considered “what will it take for me to be comfortable watching him again?”. I don’t have any solid answers, but I have some ideas.

One is turning himself into the police and admitting to it as a crime. Not sure what the statute of limitations is, and as I said above this would not be all that productive. Him being subject to slavery, sexual assault, and likely antisemitic violence in prison for a few years doesn’t really make the world a better place.

A statement from the victim could help. She does not owe him or me or anyone else anything here though.

Community service? Significant commitment to women’s charities? Maybe. Charities are a whole other issue: they are often sources of tax evasion, corruption, and reputation-washing.

Maybe the answer is that he just needs to find new, less public work and I need to find a new, less problematic content creator.

Look, I found this out today, I thought of the quote, and put 2 and 2 together. I thought it’d make a semi-ok shitpost so I made and posted it.
I absolutely agree with you, I don’t want to stir the shitpot. You’re allowed not be angry about this, god knows I’m not, and I recognize there are more important rapists that need to be relieved … uh <DATA EXPUNGED>.

But also, we’ve all seen memes about the rapists in charge and this is just a bit of variety.

Agreed. With the current situation I don’t cancel him. I want to live in a world where redemption is possible