Unable to accept that practically no one found Amber Heard to be believable and seeking to blame anyone else but their idol for her own loss, fans of the supposedly-former-Aquaman 2 actress have launched a petition asking YouTube to take action against certain content creators – particularly ThatUmbrellaGuy – by demonetizing their channels.
Started on June 20th by Twitter user @LeaveHeardAlone, the Change.org petition claims that “YouTube content creators such as ThatUmbrellaGuy are making thousands of dollars off of videos which currently go against Youtube’s own policies concerning targeted harassment.”
Offering a screenshot of TUG’s channel feed as supporting evidence, the petitioner believes that said content violates the platform’s ban on “Content that features prolonged name calling or malicious insults (such as racial slurs) based on someone’s intrinsic attributes,” specifically as it retains to “their status as a survivor of sexual assault [or] domestic abuse”.
Citing NPR, the petition then goes on to invoke the image of Gamergate, asserting that it served to provide a “template [that] has been utilised both to radicalise viewers to certain political philosophies and to harass and malign individuals” which eventually allowed TUG to make “over 600 videos just about Amber Heard – a project that earned him approximately $80K in May of 2022 according to the Washington Post.”
It should be noted that the Washington Post’s report, so poorly authored by infamous staff reporter Taylor Lorenz that it eventually required two corrections to bring it in line with basic journalism ethics, cites the upper potential limit of an income range of “between $4.9k and $79.1k” reported by Social Blade as TUG’s factual monetary earnings from his channel.
Further, the petition further accuses TUG of being ” invested in continuing his mass-production of harassment videos revenue model, moving on from Amber Heard and instead targeting Evan Rachel Wood, who was a teenager when her abuse started.”
This mention of Wood refers to TUG’s coverage of her own claims of abuse against her former beau, shock rocker Marilyn Manson.
On both social media and in the HBO documentary Phoenix Rising, Wood has accused Manson of behaviors ranging from brainwashing to sexual assault and blamed the music industry for enabling him.
Manson has since fired back in a California court, retorting in a filing that Wood falsified accounts, tried to hack his email for the sake of using lewd spam to coerce other women to come forward, and even impersonated an FBI agent to create the illusion that the agency had opened an ongoing investigation into the musician.
Circling back, the petition continued, “ThatUmbrellaGuy is only one example of the Youtubers who have turned targeted harassment into profits, and we fear that his success and the success of others like him will inspire others to create similarly malicious content to cash in on the harassment of others. “
Attempting to excoriate TUG and other like-minded content creators, the petition further asserts, “These massive smear campaigns have no place on the internet. They skew public opinion, misrepresent information, radicalise individuals, and cause irreparable harm. We consider it a very small ask to simply stop incentivising the creation of this content by putting more safeguards in place to ensure that content of this nature is not monetised.”
“We consider it a very small ask to simply stop incentivising the creation of this content by putting more safeguards in place to ensure that content of this nature is not monetised,” @LeaveHeardAlone added. “Please, Youtube, take a stand against harassment and bullying and end the monetization of targeted harassment.”
Ultimately, she concluded, “At the end of the day, it does not matter if someone is a public individual or a private citizen — harassment is harassment and Youtube has the ability to become a leader in changing the social media landscape and taking a firm stance against the sexism/misogyny by ending the monetisation of targeted harassment campaigns.”
As of writing, after roughly just one day of being open, the petition has recorded 400 signatures towards its final goal of 500.
What do you make of this response to TUG’s coverage of Heard’s legal troubles? Let us know your thoughts on social media or in the comments down below!
NEXT: Petition Calling For ACLU To Dump Amber Heard As An Ambassador Surpasses 112,000 Signatures