• CrimsonSage [any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Did the grooming allegations ever go anywhere? He just kind of vanished after that?

    • BoldTake [e/em/eir, comrade/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      A neurodivergent person withdrawing from public life after being the target of a harassment campaign isn’t particularly surprising.

      The guy disappeared for months after Bernie ate shit and that didn’t even relate to his actual personal life. He has a history of ghosting as a stress response.

      • CrimsonSage [any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Oh I am not accusing him of anything. I just know some accusations went on and ge vanished. I didn't know if anything else had come out.

        • BoldTake [e/em/eir, comrade/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          For sure. I was in the “wait and see” category at first, but it’s pretty obvious at this point that it was a chud weaponizing SV to go after a leftist public figure.

          • activated [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            I'm the opposite.

            It had been a rumor that people parroted as fact on right wing channels until they all thought it was true (see also: Patton Oswalt killing his wife, etc.), and so when the allegations came out my first thought was, oh look a pol poster decided to actually make a go at him over this. Given how anonymous and sketchy the details were.

            But him refusing to just call it a right wing hoax has given me pause and made me wonder if there's truth to it.

        • BoldTake [e/em/eir, comrade/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Yeah, I 100% agree he didn’t handle it well. The guy has enough money for someone to handle comms and hire a lawyer. Could be possible he hired a lawyer too and was told to not interact with allegations at all. :shrug-outta-hecks:

      • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        extremely weird and sus of a situation to have a person supposedly get more or less cleared of something and still just fuckin' ghost into the aether.

        • Sushi_Desires
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          It's hard to know where to stand on this... on one hand, I went back and looked at the thread and there seem to be a bunch of Red Scare types circling around it (and hexbear users may recall that individuals from that camp have tried this sort of thing before). On the other hand, Virgil could have simply said the words "it's not true" before disappearing into nothingness, or even asked one of his co-hosts to deliver that message on his behalf and be done with it. Esha, who I feel is generally trustworthy, did find an old archived post on a random forum hanging out there in the net that seems to corroborate the accusation, though the site hosting it is an absolute cesspool.

          At first, I thought Virgil might have been seeking legal counsel or something, but it has been like 4 months at this point. Personally, each passing day feels like a tacit admission of guilt

          • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Yep. That's exactly the way I feel about it. I've seen other people on hexbear state that the accusations didn't really go anywhere, but the fact that there have been so many months of just radio silence on it and everything else just feels like the dude is guilty, knows he's guilty, and took the patreon money and fuckin' ran.

            • Sushi_Desires
              ·
              3 years ago

              I have chosen not to be irritated by this, but I have to ask because I am genuinely curious: what is it that you hope to accomplish with this comment?

                • Sushi_Desires
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  Perhaps I could have avoided offending your sensibilities if I had phrased my initial response "hard to ascertain the veracity of the accuser's claims" rather than "know where to stand." Why even come into this thread if you can't bear the thought of people discussing the events related to the topic? People talk, they gossip, they form opinions on on things they encounter in their daily lives and I can't imagine a mode of society where that would be untrue. I just don't understand your need to be so negative toward me.

          • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
            ·
            edit-2
            3 years ago

            did find an old archived post on a random forum hanging out there in the net that seems to corroborate the accusation

            Well, not really, it's not a corroboration. It's just the same accusation. How do we know that wasn't written by the same person who made the twitter accusation, or that the twitter accusation wasn't made by someone who first saw that post?

            Do we even have any clue what Virgil's real name is? Do we have any evidence that he has told even the people he works with his real name? If not, it seems very unlikely that this is the person who would know his name. Some poster on some cesspool right-winger forum.

            • Sushi_Desires
              ·
              edit-2
              3 years ago

              How do we know that wasn’t written by the same person who made the twitter accusation, or that the twitter accusation wasn’t made by someone who first saw that post?

              This is true, even though it was from 2016, if Esha could find it, presumably a malicious actor could too. Not to be combative or snarky, but this is why I used the phrase "seems to" in my sentence

        • emizeko [they/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          agreed, there was something recently about a scheduled appearance in upstate new york but I didn't really investigate it further

        • chlooooooooooooo [she/her]
          ·
          3 years ago

          cleared? i'm not fully aware of the story, did something come out which cleared his name or something?