Former Star Trek: The Next Generation actor Wil Wheaton got a bitter taste of his own mob justice this week when he was blacklisted from a social media site.
Another way of putting it is that after the online mob Wheaton helped create found him guilty of being impure, they lynched his candy ass.
And it was glorious.
Wheaton is best known for his short-lived stint as Wesley Crusher on Next Generation, and I say “short-lived” because his character was so hated by the fans, he pretty much disappeared after the first season and was removed altogether after the fourth. Putting a 14-year-old (who looked 11) on the bridge of the USS Enterprise was too much disbelief to ask even of we Trekkies — or are we Trekkers?
It doesn’t matter. Next Generation is not really Star Trek because everyone knows that anything titled Star Trek that does not star William Shatner is not Star Trek… it’s just lame.
Anyway, Wheaton, who is now 46, had been enjoying something of a second career as an insufferable Nerdboy Social Justice Warrior on the Twitters. And, naturally, after Donald Trump won the presidency, Wheaton added the Resistance to his résumé.
Last month, along with CNN, Wheaton was one of the blacklisting blacklisters desperate to have Alex Jones blacklisted. When Twitter refused to blacklist Jones, Wheaton piously announced he was leaving the social media site for something more pure, an alt-Twitter site called Mastodon.
And it was here that Wil Wheaton got a taste of life in a world of Wil Wheatons…
It all began when — and how perfect is this? — Wheaton pretty much introduced himself to the Mastodon community by calling for someone to be blacklisted after this someone played an innocent “bofa” joke on him.
“Bofa” jokes go like this:
“Hey, did you watch that awesome show on Bofa last night?”
“What’s Bofa?”
*points to crotch* “Bofa deez nuts down here.”
Innocent, dumb, hilarious…
But joyless Wheaton didn’t think so (he was on TV, you know), and instead of responding with a good-natured “LMFAO,” Wheaton reported this person for abuse.
There was just one problem: Wheaton is a straight white male (which is the long way of saying Hitler), and the person Wheaton reported for abuse is a transsexual. And as we all know, transsexuals are now on the highest rung of the identity politics ladder, and straight white males are Hitler.
And then there were Wheaton’s other sins, his past impurities…
Wheaton is close pals with Talking Dead host Chris Hardwick, who was recently indicted for (and cleared of) a #MeToo incident involving a former girlfriend. Wheaton is not only guilty by association with Hardwick; he had the gall to not condemn his friend.
Finally, (the Ace of Spades rundown on this is a must-read) there is the incident involving the transphobic blocklist…
During the whole GamerGate uproar, Wheaton received and disseminated a blocklist (a massive list of WrongThink People blocked by CorrectThink People). Apparently, there was a number of transsexuals on Wheaton’s blocklist (it originated with a feminist angry at men who become women, or something), and a genetically inferior straight white male like Wheaton banning transsexuals is un-for-giv-able.
And so, the mob of tattletale hall monitors Wheaton helped empower had him blacklisted from Mastodon using the fascist online rules Wheaton helped normalize.
And now, Wheaton has retreated to the only place he has left, his own blog, where he is using this incident to prove to the world he is not a man:
This lie that I am anti-trans, or anti-LGBQ, is deeply hurtful to me (I know it’s nothing like the pain LGBTQ people deal with every day, as they simply try to *exist* in a world that treats them so badly, but it is still hurtful in its own way to me)…
I’m leaving the Fediverse [Mastodon], which has treated me with more cruelty, vitriol, hatred, and contempt than than anyone on the birdsite ever did.
I know that I’m well-off, well-known, and as a CIS white hetro dude in America, I live life on the lowest difficulty setting. I know that I have very little to complain about. But I still have feelings, and I really do care about the world and the people in it. What I see is a lot of anger and cruelty directed at the IDEA of me, from people who I just hope don’t realize that it really does hurt me, in my heart, to be accused of being someone I am not, and to be the target of a hateful mob
Wheaton has closed the comments on the post.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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