Post by basmaticathury on Sept 28, 2021 1:07:00 GMT
Marvel’s Shang-Chi star Simu Liu has become one of the latest examples of why you should periodically delete old social media posts. Last week, fans began sharing screenshots of Reddit comments the actor allegedly made years before he was well known. To say they were “not great” would be an understatement.
Though the “NippedInTheBud” profile—which has been credibly linked to Liu via a searchable GitHub tool that archives Reddit accounts—has since been deleted, multiple screengrabs of posts tied to the account have been making the rounds online and causing a certain degree of backlash because of their content and where they were initially written. In addition to making casually sexist remarks about women being inferior athletes to men, and inelegantly expressing disdain for extremism in a way that carried Islamophobic overtones, NippedInTheBud (and by extension, Liu) came under fire for participating in r/AZNidentity, a subreddit that’s known as a hub for an Asian-identified subset of the Men’s Rights Activist community.
Though r/AZNidentity purports to be a space that’s “against all forms of anti-Asianism (anti-Asian racism)” the subreddit has a well-documented history of being a meeting place for aggrieved men who launch coordinated attacks typically against women—some of whom are Asian themselves—that they’ve identified as being “race traitors” in some way or another. While none of the screenshots making the rounds have directly linked NippedInTheBud to any of the group’s more vicious behavior, the account being at all present associated with r/AZNidentity raised eyebrows because of what kind of place it is.
Somewhat more concerning than the digital company NippedInTheBud kept, though, were ideas expressed in a post likening pedophiles to gay people. In a comment posted back in 2015 (when Liu would have been 26), NippedInTheBud described how they’d done “a significant amount of research” for a show in which they portrayed a pedophile, and how the experience made them “much more sympathetic to anyone who is born with those urges.” The deleted post read: “From a biological standpoint, it’s no different than being gay - a small mutation in the genome that defines our sexual preferences. Depending on what area of the world you were born and what time, it also may have been a perfectly acceptable thing to act on those urges.” The post also made clear that the person writing it felt that people preying upon children was wrong, as is the history of queer people’s sexualities being pathologized by both the medical and criminal justice systems.
Though the “NippedInTheBud” profile—which has been credibly linked to Liu via a searchable GitHub tool that archives Reddit accounts—has since been deleted, multiple screengrabs of posts tied to the account have been making the rounds online and causing a certain degree of backlash because of their content and where they were initially written. In addition to making casually sexist remarks about women being inferior athletes to men, and inelegantly expressing disdain for extremism in a way that carried Islamophobic overtones, NippedInTheBud (and by extension, Liu) came under fire for participating in r/AZNidentity, a subreddit that’s known as a hub for an Asian-identified subset of the Men’s Rights Activist community.
Though r/AZNidentity purports to be a space that’s “against all forms of anti-Asianism (anti-Asian racism)” the subreddit has a well-documented history of being a meeting place for aggrieved men who launch coordinated attacks typically against women—some of whom are Asian themselves—that they’ve identified as being “race traitors” in some way or another. While none of the screenshots making the rounds have directly linked NippedInTheBud to any of the group’s more vicious behavior, the account being at all present associated with r/AZNidentity raised eyebrows because of what kind of place it is.
Somewhat more concerning than the digital company NippedInTheBud kept, though, were ideas expressed in a post likening pedophiles to gay people. In a comment posted back in 2015 (when Liu would have been 26), NippedInTheBud described how they’d done “a significant amount of research” for a show in which they portrayed a pedophile, and how the experience made them “much more sympathetic to anyone who is born with those urges.” The deleted post read: “From a biological standpoint, it’s no different than being gay - a small mutation in the genome that defines our sexual preferences. Depending on what area of the world you were born and what time, it also may have been a perfectly acceptable thing to act on those urges.” The post also made clear that the person writing it felt that people preying upon children was wrong, as is the history of queer people’s sexualities being pathologized by both the medical and criminal justice systems.
gizmodo.com/simu-lius-alleged-old-reddit-account-is-why-you-should-1847708695