Actor Wil Wheaton, one of the pioneers of social justice-focused social media call-out culture — which “outs” actors, entertainers, and comedians over their “problematic” tweets — has reportedly been driven off both Twitter and its “safe space” alternative, Mastodon, by fellow social justice warriors.
Wheaton has long been a leading SJW voice, often supporting the practice of “de-platforming,” or denying a voice to people on social media who hold “controversial” views — that is, people who aren’t sufficiently progressive enough or dare to disagree with the progressive mainstream.
He left Twitter as part of the “#DeactiDay” protest, where prominent left-leaning “verified accounts” deleted their own accounts on the social network in order to force Twitter’s administration to boot InfoWars host Alex Jones (Jones is still on Twitter).
But since Wheaton couldn’t live without micro-blogging, he set up shop on Mastadon with his fellow SJWs, some of whom found Wheaton insufficiently social justice-y for the safe space network.
According to the A.V. Club, Wheaton, in the midst of a blocking frenzy several years ago, reportedly insisted his allies use a “block list” “created by a woman named Randi Harper — which, unbeknownst to him, contained a lot of users who were trans or supportive of trans voices. He also reportedly failed to side against his friend, “Talking Dead” host Chris Hardwick, when Hardwick was accused of abusing his ex-girlfriend, Chloe Dykstra.
Hardwick denied the allegations, and an investigation conducted by his employer, AMC network, could not substantiate Dykstra’s claims. Wheaton called the report of his anti-trans block list one of a “series of lies.”
After falling victim to the unfair call-out culture he often employed, Wheaton declared in a post on his website that he was leaving social media for good.
“I found a harsh reality that I’m still trying to process,” Wheaton wrote. “[T]housands of people who don’t know me, who have never interacted with me, who internalized a series of lies about me, who were never willing to give me a chance. I was harassed from the minute I made my account, and though I expected the ‘shut up wesley’s and ‘go fuck yourself’s to taper off after a day or so, it never did.”
“I don’t deserve to be treated so terribly by so many random people, so I’m not going to put myself in a place where I am subjected to it all day long,” he continued. “Please do your best to be kind, and make an effort to make the world less terrible.”