Well, kind of. Frankly, the whole plot is less covert espionage and more revenge-on-a-basement-dwelling-budget kind of thing. In short, a stranger offered the internet $250 if they could find video evidence of me saying something "utterly racist."
Lemme explain.
The thing that spurred this mastermind to take action was an article that I, and Anisa Rawhani, wrote recently regarding a rather racist costume party thrown by Queen's University students. This particular piece of writing seemed to really grind the "my dad will sue you" gang and alt-right anti-political correctness crowd into an angry frothing fury—the kind that makes comment sections an uninhabitable radioactive wasteland.
Read More: Queen's University Students Held a Party and the Theme Was Racism
It also pissed off future Bay Streeter/America regular Ben "Here Comes the Money" Harper—the fruit of Stephen Harper's loins—but that's a story for another day.
However, one internet warrior was so incensed that they "presented to Reddit two bounties." My online Moriarty goes by the name Dittomuch—I wish it was a cooler name but, hey, you take what you can get.
The first of Dittomuch's bounty asked for proof of comedian Celeste Yim, who initially exposed the party on Twitter, saying something racist. For this he would pay $50. That's the price of one, maybe two cocktails at America Restaurant. (I have no idea if this is true, as I'm new to Toronto and I wouldn't be let in there.)
The second bounty was $250 for video evidence that Anisa and I were racists.
So, in the name of good journalism and a bit of sado masochism I reached out to the person who attempted to put an army of Redditors on myself, Celeste, and Anisa. Dittomuch eventually admitted if someone did find something he would pay out 100 percent, but that in the end "it's all a lark and silly joke."
"End of the day I find the loudest virtue signals are generally the ones who are the worst human being in person and I love throwing mud right back at self righteous folks... I hope to get a laugh out of it and hopefully make a couple of people who are closet racists lock down their twitter accounts and scrub the racism from them," Dittomuch wrote to me in a private message on Reddit.
"I'm sick and tired of the bullshit virtue signalling and think it is being done to shame us all, while really we should be calling into the spotlight the views and opinions of those doing the shaming," reads a follow up.
Dittomuch declared victory in the outing of Yim because she states that she's the only "Asian comedian" in her Twitter bio. Which proves the point that the people championing racist humour are pretty lousy at picking up on a joke. Here's a portion of the victory speech Dittomuch posted:
"See we all occasionally do or say something a little racist and in all honesty it isn't a big deal. Racism becomes a big deal when we go beyond something a little bit racist and becomes hate." HMMMMM.
My Reddit nemesis then referenced Animal Farm because of course a Redditor did.
Honestly, we live in a post-social media world that's fucked us millennials. I've had Facebook since 2007 and if you want to find some embarrassing stuff there it's not too hard. But, most likely, it'll just be photos of a drunk 16-year-old kid upset that puberty hasn't hit yet. Look here's one right here:
This one goes out to my homeboy Dittomuch. Love ya bud.
As a man who seemingly makes a living pissing off weird parts of the internet—I'm pretty sure I was hexed recently for an article I wrote about occult magicians using magic to get laid—this is surprisingly my first "bounty." Now while I wasn't too worried about someone finding anything and Dittomuch said no one has come up with anything yet, it still brought about a pretty weird feeling of an invasion of privacy.
Frankly, we've all been young and dumb, some more than others. But we can't overlook the importance of bringing attention to our stupidity when it brings harm to others, as is the case with this party.
If these university students were owning their mistakes and saying "Maybe in the future I won't wear a prison jumpsuit with a sombrero because that's a bad idea and people will be hurt by that" instead of threatening people with their lawsuit-happy papa or sending out rapid fire tweets about SJW's like a malfunctioning bot, well, maybe we would be getting somewhere.
One of the best things that ever happened to me is someone telling me I was being an offensive twat and to maybe tone it down. When that happened I didn't put a bounty on a stranger's head. No, I listened, and you know what, I'm now a better person because of it.
That said, there still exists a dark part of me that revels in pissing people off.
So, with that inner shithead in mind, it was pretty great to learn that an article I co-wrote somehow annoyed a person to such an extreme extent that they put up some of their own hard earned cash in an attempt to fuck with me.
So dude, all I can say is, thanks for reading.
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