So more things have been said in the wake of the Andrew Torrez affair, Eli said much the same as Noah (i.e. that he knew but was asked not to take action) except acknowledging he’d been told in 2017, and it still didn’t really satisfy a lot of people, especially given the further accusations that have emerged of them being told that shit had happened and not taking the charges seriously. I don’t know. The whole story’s faintly sickening, cos I don’t really know the best way to respond to it all, and the emotions it’s generated in people in the Facebook private group have been wearing ones.
What I have done is scale my patronage back; I’m not subscribed to Scathing at all now (I actually only occasionally listened, to be honest—I mostly subscribed cos I wanted to give them a bit of extra money—and when I really want to I can do so via Youtube just as easily) and I’ve cut my GAM subscription from $3.50 to $2. That extra $1.50 didn’t give me enough to be worthwhile.
I have misgivings, because the fact I’m still subscribing at all is, frankly, kind of selfish. Basically I’ve just had too much fun and entertainment from them over the years and I don’t really want to give that up, however ho-hum some of the behaviour has been off-mic, and I have mixed feelings about still supporting that even if I am cutting back on doing so… cos in the end this does come down to people’s livelihoods being affected; Andrew’s co-host on one of his other podcasts is actually kind of relying on that as his main source of income, plus a lot of people are having second thoughts about the GAM live shows which were a big thing for them.
And therein lies the really galling point, cos if something like this were to happen to someone I hate I’d have no issues with them losing out badly as a result. How much pleasure and amusement have we derived from Alex Jones being fined nearly one and a half billion dollars after the Sandy Hook court case? But when it’s someone on my side, I’ve got to wear it when it happens to them. Can’t be a complete hypocrite… a partial one is bad enough. I’m leaving it at that. Sick of thinking about all this, let alone writing about it.
EDIT: just to make everything better, Thomas from Opening Arguments has now come forth with the claim that Andrew abused him as well; nowhere near as bad (as he put it) as what Andrew’s done with others, but he’s still cut up about it cos all this other stuff has, as he said, made him realise that was in fact what happened to him, and how he didn’t feel like he could even talk about it by virtue of him being, you know, a man, cos these things don’t happen to men, do they… he put all this up in an audio post that was hell to listen to cos he’s, you know, processing what happened to him in real time and dealing with what that means for him and how he’s treated other people in his position. The whole thing is hideous and getting more so. I’m pulling out of the PIAT FB group for a few days, cos I don’t know how much more I want to know about all this.
