Fish and Cherries Productions

JESUS BLOODY FUCKING CHRIST!!!!!

Those four words couldn’t be more perfect in summing up the massive storm of e-drama I just witnessed in the last 48+ hours. It’s absolutely mindboggling. I’m going to skip over the clever segue I normally do and dive right in. The Spoony One of That Guy With The Glasses and other internet fame has become the center of a massive controversy on Twitter and everyone has just watched him hit rock bottom. And honestly, watching someone who used to be one of my favorite reviewers go into a self-destructive crazy has come as a real blow to me. I hate to quote True Capitalist Radio unironically but, “Ah’m jaded, fer Christ sake. Ah mean, AH’M DEPREEEEEEESSSSSSSED!!”

All right, let me pedal backwards and bring everybody up to speed. The Spoony One, or Noah Antwiller, is a comedic internet reviewer with his own site called the Spoony Experiment and a big name on That Guy With The Glasses, the website I’d hoped to be picked up on). Friends of mine who don’t frequent either site might remember him as the man who reviewed Yor: The Hunter From The Future and the Warrior comic. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t owe a lot of my comedic timing in my reviews to him and his quirks. Anyway, when Spoony started out, he was pretty humble; he would constantly thank his fans for where he was today and even though he had a temper, he would always be described as one of the nicest people on the sets of there crossovers.

As time went on, though, things… changed, for lack of a better word. Not on the set, I believe he was still a gentleman there. But his twitter account told a different story. A lot of his feed became surprisingly negative and confrontational. More often than not, it would be a string of posted. He did a play-by-play bile spit at everything he hated about the recent Oscars, even lashing out at some fans who pointed out fallacies on his part. He called everyone who didn’t like the ending of Mass Effect 3 stupid for not seeing the ending coming and brought the confrontation to a live stream. He berated people for liking Cabin in the Woods and was rude to people (and co-workers) who asked him politely not to spoil anything, again bringing the confrontation to his live stream. Volatile, yes, but something I hoped he would get better with in time. Turns out, it was only the beginning.

So here’s where the story gets ugly. A little while ago, he made a very off-color joke on Twitter to one of his female co-workers at TGWTG (her name is omitted out of respect). It basically said, “If things don’t work out between you and your boyfriend, I can take you down to my basement, chain you to a pipe, and show you some good loving. My way.” Ignoring the fact that you probably shouldn’t even be saying that in private to someone (unless you’ve known them for years and it’s referencing some kind of inside joke), it’s definitely not something you want to say in a place as public as Twitter, especially when it’s in full view of her boyfriend. He apparently apologized in private, but that’s not where the story ends. Another female reviewer by the title Obscurus Lupa (her name is not omitted because she has not behaved in a respectable way in this scenario) called Spoony out on the comment and things started to heat up as it got brought to everyone’s attention. As a result (or because of something different), Spoony got suspended from TGWTG for four weeks. He said that he agreed with the decision and that should have been that.

But then he… snapped.

There’s no good way to say it, he just flew off the handle in every single imaginable way. He made post after post just raving and even for him, the tweets were vile. Case in point, and I quote, “See what kind of thin-skinned cunts I have to work with?” He and Lupa got into it, Lupa’s boyfriend burst into it too, and the whole thing just degraded exponentially. The man was going on a full self-destructive spiral with rant after rant at his opponents and even his friends and fans, talking in a way that I haven’t seen anyone above seventeen talk. To give you an idea of how jarring of a change this is, it’s like if I suddenly started doing cocaine and ran out of Horton Plaza naked and screaming, “FUCK THE MEXICANS!” To make matters worse, he actually started lashing out at the coworkers and fans that were trying to help him. Whenever someone would say something like, “Dude, seriously, get help, it hurts me to see you like this,” he would respond with something like, “Advice accepted and ignored, now fuck off.” Jesus Christ, MovieBob isn’t this tactless. I can’t believe I just said that with a straight face. Someone actually showed less tact than Bob “Everyone who thinks Metroid: Other M is bad is just a japanophobe racist/The people who made BioWare change the ending of Mass Effect 3 are whiny crybabies who will hurt gaming” Chipman! When the hell did this world go upside-down?!

As of now, Spoony and TGWTG have parted ways and official story is that the reason wasn’t because of the lewd comment. But I’ll be damned if it and the drama that followed wasn’t a massive straw that prepped his back for breaking. If this were a retrospective on the matter, I would talk about how Lupa was out of line for attacking him for something that happened a month ago and for bad-mouthing him on a live stream that night and basically just adding fuel to the flame. But this musing is titled The Self-Destruction of the Spoony One, so we’re talking about Spoony. And in that regard, there is no excuse for him treating his friends and fans like that, not Lupa, not his depression, not any lingering issues, not anything. There are some people who say that, because he posted it on Twitter, that it’s his business, not TGWTG, and that it’s just between him and the offended party. The problem with that is that not only is Twitter a very public place to wave your dirty laundry, but when your office is the internet itself, you can’t just say whatever on there.

And what does this mean for me? It’s shaken me up quite a bit, to be honest. Seeing one of my favorite comedians and partial idol just destroy his own reputation and berate the fans that he once praised is the most humbling thing I’ve had to experience. It’s gone past being depressing and become downright heartbreaking. This blow has been so hard that I’m not even sure I want to continue doing videos anymore. I feel like my faith has been shattered, but faith in what, I couldn’t tell you. The system? This whole fiasco seems to prove that the system works; guy makes inappropriate comment, acts like an asshole, and he loses his job. The internet? If anything, this has shown me that the internet community is slowly beginning to stand up against misogyny. The friendliness and family nature of the website that I hope to get picked up by? Honestly, apart from a few, most people turned away from Spoony when he went rabid and even then, some of them are still his friends. The maturity of Spoony and/or some of the other reviewers? I could have told you that was obvious from a mile away. I really don’t have an answer or a way to convey how I feel, but it seems like the business I aspired to join became a lot more hostile and if internet fame is going to make me tear out my friends’ throats like that, I want no part in it. No, don’t tell me that I’ve got friends and a good support network. Charlie Sheen had those and look how he turned out. No, don’t make a “winning” joke right now. The man was in danger of losing custody of his kids and getting cut off by his father. He is not “winning” by any stretch of the imagination.

I have no idea how to end this post, just like I have no idea what the future of TGWTG will be. Nobody came out of this looking good, except for the original offended party. It’s her I feel bad for, too. She was involved in, at worst, a little behind the scenes drama that could have just been repented for and moved on from, but instead we got a virtual nuke of a situation. Reputations will forever be ruined, some friendships will never be repaired and all I’m left with at the end of this post is a flickering screen in front of me and an empty microwave dinner tray to my side.

I hope that when we die, we go to Equestria. Even when the ponies were kids, they behaved more like adults than this.

EDIT (10/2/12): As of a few months ago, Spoony and Lupa have officially made up and moved on, as evidenced here (http://www.twitlonger.com/show/i6dop4) and here (http://obscuruslupa.tumblr.com/post/26601307257/apologies-and-moving-forward). Both have also acknowledged that they acted poorly in the situation and are putting the whole thing behind them. On top of that, Spoony seems a lot more balanced, which probably has to do with the new medication he’s taking. So we can safely put this incident behind us and look towards a brighter tomorrow.