This was a surprise, to say the least. For those who're not in the know, Zaid Magenta, or MisAnthroPony, he was a content reviewer. You may've heard of him through his less than pleasent discussions of Doug Walker, The Last of Us Part 2, the new Star Wars movies, and if there was anything else he did it pales in comparison.
Those of you who followed me way back would know I didn't particularly like him. While I'm no fan of toxic positivity, that owed to something more personal, Zaid fit the opposite extreme to a T. I felt like he embodied the worst aspects of those who support the causes he preached, referring to his views on media. He's essentially what those on the other side consider that side to be, negative, aggressive and petty as fuck.
When it comes to progression and how far you push your support, it can come off as disingenuous at best, as if you just took an idea at face value and ran with it without any sense of what you are fighting for, or you just took a kernel of what's going on and sought to inflate it based on the words of others alone... or you were just trying to be cool and thus put little thought into how to present yourself, or worst case, you're hopping onto a bandwagon to cover the fact that you're attached to something ten times worse than what you're trying to confront.
Zaid isn't a predator, he just has a fixation on par with Star Giant Productions.
Throughout his heyday, it was clear that Zaid had no filter, and he had the idea that if someone tried to talk him down he took it as a personal attack, and he stuck with that mentality no matter what. It doesn't help that a lot of his comments came off as immature, I mean, compared to parody accounts where he comes off the most like a self-parody, it's hilarious, no cap.
He had no self-awareness, it was his way or no effin way when it came to what he wanted to talk about. Naturally such behavior got him in trouble. Case and point, Cartoonshi. Cartoonshi to me is a mixed bag, but I will never deny that he has faced constant harassment because of his opinions on cartoons people enjoy, and that neither he, nor anybody, deserve that. But if you want the full scope, I'll provide a link to the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l7CsbPDc5A&pp=ygUMemFpZCBtYWdlbnRh
And somehow, in spite of all that, he kept a devoted following. I mean then again anyone could get a following so why complain. For a time, Zaid had managed to get into a circle of friends consisting of LioConvoy, Tek-No, among others. It began earlier, but really began to set in following a call between Lio and meat puppet Rosa Rey Ramsey regarding constant discussions of Star Wars.
Don't get it twisted, I'm not here to justify either side here, Ramsey especially, because keep in mind, she was complicit, she had turned a blind eye to not one but apparently two predators in Star Giant's Discord server, and I say apparently in the event it's on Star Giant's head for the second, Sean Sohn.
Because of his connections at this point, as well as the fact that Zaid's biggest enemies happened to be total goons like Crimson Mayhem and Star Giant, in a way Zaid felt like he was essentially untouchable, that if anyone tried to criticize Zaid in any way, it would be met with a counter-attack. When it comes to the internet, never make anyone feel like they are invincible, because chances are you're gonna slowly destroy them.
Of course he even had the bright idea to make a documentary relating to his haters, a documentary that surprisingly I was not considered for given how much shit I talked about him. While it would've been funny to see it come out... it didn't, and it's never going to.
Fallout
To nobody's surprise, Zaid's attitude and actions would soon cause him to collapse in on himself. To make matters worse, these events came after he claimed he would try to improve himself. But bad habits die hard, his continued negativity, and we're talking destructive negativity here, even making burner accounts to harass those that blocked him, the message was clear. Zaid can't change.
He would make a community post and a video vowing to be better, with the latter featuring a blatant case of emotional manipulation. If I were his father and he was holding my heart, it would surely ignite from the anger in his soul. And then, after all that, he quit. He lost everybody that stuck with him, with the big one being LioConvoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nstv_VQlBLE
And with that, he's gone. His YouTube, his deviantArt, his Facebook, his Twitter longer ago, they're all gone. All that's left is his now empty Patreon profile, along with any burner accounts he forgot to delete, hypothetically.
Is he ever going to return?
To reiterate, what led Zaid to finally close his account, beyond the negative comments he got, was his own friends telling him that he's fubared, he burned his bridges and cannot possibly restore any good faith, and that all he can do is just leave.
Worst case, he would frame this as him leaving the internet for a while to clear his head... or just hope the drama died down long enough to trick newcomers into backing him up. Maybe he'll come back under a more discreet identity, who knows?
I'm going with the majority on this one, he's not ever gonna change for the better, and we'll be better off if he never comes back. Any good he has done is easily overshadowed by the bad, and if we supported him in his more toxic episodes, we'd give him validation and make him believe he'd never do anything wrong.
So what's the lesson here? If you see a fire, keep an eye on it, otherwise it will grow out of control.
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