Hello! It's been a while since I last updated my website. It's much too early for me to be awake with these thoughts but I cannot leave them unsaid. Because I'm writing this at night, I can't say this will flow together like an essay would.

I was just browsing for JOJO videos using a program called FreeTube. FreeTube browses for YouTube videos and plays them without any of the extra tracking or distractions. Unfortunately, YouTube is blocking requests from FreeTube and forcing me to open up the website in a browser. It's these times that make me wonder why Google can't settle for their existing profits instead of targetting the privacy-oriented alternatives to their data harvesting... but I digress. Money is money and corporations will eat endlessly.

Anyway, one of the nuisances of YouTube is the algorithm that pushes sensationalism to the forefront. Bright thumbnails and titles that leave you on a cliffhanger will catch more attention than "plainer" videos, so YouTube pushes those popular videos into many users' recommended pages. I try not to give the time of day to these videos. Most of the time, it's physically painful for me to do so because of the high color saturation and speed that the commentor talks with. But today, I noticed a concerning trend. Two recent videos from users Shoe0nHead and Christine Grace Smith appeared in the recommended videos, both having titles that degrade women in some manner. (It's worth noting that I had cookies off and had not used YouTube in a browser for over a year until today, so the recommendations are not tailor-made to me.)

I refuse to spend over an hour listening to either of these videos, but I still have many thoughts. I'll begin with Shoe0nHead's title and thumbnail.

Shoe0nHead's video, titled "The Female Dating Strategy", has a thumbnail with Shoe0nHead placed between two angry female characters drawn in a meme artstyle that is popular on the website 4chan. They are overlayed over two screenshots of messages are likely to be perceived as obsessive and desperate. A caption on the image reads "Date me... or else..."

Writing that description alone makes me want to stop typing... I can't speak for the content of the video itself because I am sparing myself from watching it. The hook Shoe0nHead uses is free game though. It uses the misogynistic (and ableist) stereotype of hysterical women who desperately "need" a man in their lives but are too crazy to keep him. Shoe0nHead's title calls this the "Female Dating Strategy" in her title, broadly applying it to all women. The statement is that "This is how women are acting." Despite being a woman herself, Shoe0nHead uses a misogynistic hook to present and attract interest to her video. The audience a hook like this will draw is almost guaranteed to look down on women, regardless of the subject matter of the video. Adding on, the use of images that are common on 4chan of all websites is extremely likely to appeal to its far-right userbase.

I did not know much about Shoe0nHead before today. The most I had heard of her was when Soulbunni called out the rebranding of several racist, alt-right YouTubers into leftists. I assumed she was in that category and didn't bother to learn any more. Turns out I was right. This article by Kayla Labyrinth goes into detail on how Shoe0nHead rebranded herself as a left-wing YouTuber despite her previous mingling with transphobes and literal White nationalist Lauren Southern. She is still a self-proclaimed "anti-SJW" and holds anti-feminist views. I can only guess that she's trying to be "one of the good ones" when she dives into misogyny like she does with her most recent video title. There are also various tweets from 2016-2019 in the article which show Shoe0nHead's racism, islamophobia, and a very concerning alignment towards Nazis and other White supremacists.

If you were thinking, "Well, some of those tweets are from the 2010s", try again! A tweet from February 10th, 2024 has her complaining about leftists being "fat ugly mentally ill losers who think being healthy is fascism and cant even own guns because they will [kill] themselves." That is a direct quote. Another absolute gem is her saying "the media is genuinely so sick and whoever is pushing this story should be in prison" about a Kansas City Chiefs fan in both blackface and a culturally appropriated headdress. Her thoughts on Israel and the USA committing genocide against Palestinians are expressed in this video posted November 3rd, 2023. It should be noted that her previous discussion of Israel included Nazi jokes ("our greatest ally"). She is not criticizing Israel or the US for being agents of colonialism, but rather painting Israel as a money parasite. I should not have to say why this is antisemitism.

Christine Grace Smith's video is more aggressively misogynistic than Shoe0nHead's, titled "Women LEARN The Hard Way That They Need MAN" with a thumbnail of crying women from a reality TV show where a team of men and a team of women try to survive on an island. Smith's channel is generally a bigoted mess of a podcast, ranging from transphobia to body-shaming to racism. She has such amazing thought pieces such as why women being in leadership positions is bad or red flags every man should know about women. You get the idea. Her videos attract misogynistic, often American nationalist men who are into movements like MGTOW, MAGA, passport bros... It's another "one of the good ones" situation. Speaking of that...

Both Shoe0nHead and Christine Grace Smith are listened to by alt-right types because they are the "good ones" or "good women." They are both conventionally attractive, cisgender, heterosexual White American women who submit to and uphold sexism alongside other forms of oppression. Any deviance from that archetype and they would've been stamped down by the audience they attract. I think that they are viewed more like tools who spread their agenda than they are seen as people. That's not to say they're innocent, because both of them are grown adults who willingly appeal to misogyny and racism for a platform.

...My messy thoughts conclude here! I should really get some sleep. I'm tired of these people who make stepping stones of others for power.