Game Grumps

Again, why would this suddenly be OK if he was exclusively going after 30-year olds? The years-old rumors was that he was sleeping behind his girlfriends' backs with multiple women in their 20s, which while sleazy isn't illegal or all that notable by itself. The real news to me is that he's been messaging these women for years ahead of time, aka a premeditated process of emotionally preparing them for exploitation, aka grooming

It's not the mass cheating and con hookups-gone-awry that I had initially thought they were, and disliked but thought was still a forgivable sort of black mark.

Edited by AlleyOop on Mar 22nd 2021 at 10:54:18 AM

While the latter wouldn't be great, it's at least not quite sexual predator territory. Still there, but it's not a years long grooming campaign.

Edited by M84 on Mar 22nd 2021 at 10:53:25 PM

It is manipulation and well I am probably not going to watch Game Grumps anymore (for more reasons besides this.) but well this is well the rocker stereotype and he had talked about it in the videos many times.

/shrug its just absolutely not surprising at all. Just 22 and 30 are way WAY out of the illegal pitchfork territory.

Edited by Memers on Mar 22nd 2021 at 8:01:18 AM

No, this is a lot worse than the rocker stereotype I had initially believed and heard it to be.

If it stopped at just being a trashy and promiscuous holding of serial one-night stands at cons, which is what the equivalent of the rocker stereotype actually would've been, while not great, would've been at least tolerable.

Also as has been said multiple times the age is not even the biggest issue here, just the most obvious, and we've largely moved past it, so continuing to harp on being the crux of the complaints is a strawman.

Edited by AlleyOop on Mar 22nd 2021 at 11:03:18 AM

Apologies for wading in on this here but I am way too scared to do so on Twitter.

This is a... weird situation to me. On the one hand, it seems beyond any reasonable doubt that Dan has been acting shitty. Exchanging DMs with women and sleeping with them and then ghosting them is a shitty thing to do. But I am also uneasy at how casually people are throwing around the words 'grooming' and 'predator' and 'pedophile'; admittedly the last one was not on this site, but it was how I first saw someome talk about this on Twitter, 'smh cant believe dan from game grumps turned out to be a groomer and a pedophile.'

I'm not trying to defend the actions or diminish the shittiness of them, it's just, like... the 30 year old woman who slept with him and then he ghosted her, that's definitely him being a dick, but there would need to be far worse evidence of him being far more manipulative and vindictive before I could consider that anything close to predatory or grooming.

It's more that there are multiple accounts of this happening and that they've been around for years. Were it one, two, three instances, I could call it just a salty fan or maybe he was in the middle of a depressive spiral and carried himself poorly for a period of time. But this many and for this long? That strongly suggests a consistent pattern of willfully predatory behavior.

I do think the pedophilia term gets thrown around too fragrantly (hell, I've seen people criticize a fictional Slash Fic relationship between a 40-yo and an unambiguously adult 25-yo get accused of being pedophilia, and that anyone who ships them are also pedophiles) and I wouldn't be surprised that some of the people currently doing so are in the latter camp. Or that just interacting with someone younger than you by as few as two years over a period of time before dating them fairly (because according to these folks, having an age gap of any kind creates an inherently insurmountable power gap) is grooming and that they literally believe you should never date someone unless they are the exact same age as you. Or that interracial relationships between white people and other races are toxic and to be avoided because the white person holds power over them.

But people being oversensitive about terminology because Twitter is a discourse-loving shithole, doesn't change the fact that whatever Danny's been doing here and whatever you call it, it's deeply wrong and he should be expected to answer for those.

Edited by AlleyOop on Mar 22nd 2021 at 12:16:08 PM

Honestly, this is one of those things where I'm not too surprised having learned. Dan as a whole was far too cavalier with making jokes and oversharing his sexcapades when the Game Grumps fanbase as a whole skewed younger.

And I think arguing semantics over it all just undermines the issue. Even ignoring the ages, it was still a gross abuse of power dynamics on his end, and it was evidently a pattern that would've likely continued with none the wiser if this had never come to light.

Also as an aside, people latching onto all of this to push a "Jontron wasn't so bad after all" can fuck off. He's still a racist, xenophobic piece of trash.

Edited by Lionheart0 on Mar 22nd 2021 at 12:16:16 PM

I was a young adult already familiar with most sexual terminology when I started watching him and even I felt a bit uncomfortable about the way he talked about his sex life. Sure, Jon and Arin made a lot of sexual comments, mostly as a form of Toilet Humor, but Danny's talk gave me vibes that he saw himself as a bit of The Casanova.

Now, I very much do support sex positivity and the destigmatization of people having a healthy sex life because of how much harm Puritanical values have done to the US's culture and mental health (just look at the Atlanta shooting for instance). But the particular way that Danny characterized his sexual history, less than the fact that he talked about it at all, suggested he had a very skewed view of his partners as conquests, and so on.

It could just be because I haven't been a fan of Game Grumps as long as most people here (only started in early 2019) but I don't really recall instances of Dan being that outspoken about his sex life. Hell, Arin was generally the more likely one to fall into that territory.

Although, like I said before, Dan could still make comments that were very uncomfortable sounding. Case in point the Wind Waker playthrough, which probably didn't help with any rumors about Dan being a pedophile.

Dan: "She's gorgeous!"

Arin: "She's 10..."

Dan: "Stop being 10!"

For what it's worth I don't think Dan is necessarily a pedophile, or the kind of person who sees minors as attractive as-is, but rather someone who recognizes that they're future conquests-to-be once they hit the age he's attracted to and after applying the right kinds of preparations.

Ehh... That doesn't sound a whole lot better.

Exactly. Which is why people debunking the pedophilia accusations (which, I suspect, have gotten disproportionate attention over the other, IMO more egregious issues here due to the social media game of Chinese telephone) aren't really proving Dan's innocence as much as they think they are.

The original poster who got the topic trending on Twitter has retracted their original statement, now claims the source is sketchy.

Well,too late to retract the post I think

He still acknowledges that Dan using a fan for sex is still pretty questionable, and there still exist other women who have had negative experiences with him.

It’s still a far cry from child grooming and the other accusations going around.

He’s more of a garden-variety asshole than most high-profile Youtuber jackasses as of late.

Yeah more that is coming out now reminds me of everything I hate about rantgrumps specifically as a whole. Because now that the waters have truly been muddied, you'll see people handwave away other serious aspects of the accusations.

Kind of like when the Projared stuff surfaced. People latched onto the "oh he's a pedophile" and downplayed the actual accounts of him being an adulterer and emotionally abused his ex-wide, and when he proved the pedophile accusation was inaccurate, suddenly the rest got thrown out too.

Edited by Lionheart0 on Mar 22nd 2021 at 4:40:12 AM

What kind of fucking sociopath would lie about something like this just to destroy someone they dislike?

Fucking hell, this is a mess. I actually believed it for a while too.

It's as they say, some men just want to watch the world burn...

Okay, I haven't been following this that closely but from what I gather what happened is that Dan had consensual sex with adult women who were longtime fans of his work, and they were annoyed that things didn't continue beyond that.

Am I missing something? This is just giving me major "What do you mean that stripper isn't really into me?" vibes...

The scummiest part that everyone agrees on is that Dan apparently ghosted them once the sex was had, meaning he cut off all contact with them, even if they tried to get in touch with him after.

I confess the Black Comedy part of my soul can't help but find it ironic that he's in trouble for what is kind of the exact opposite of unwanted sexual advances on women.

Edited by sgamer82 on Mar 22nd 2021 at 6:34:23 AM

And my question is what were they trying to contact him about? Not feeling it after one date together is a different beast than not wanting to admit paternity is a different beast than avoiding the girl who tried to steal his cat...

The impression I've gotten is that they were in frequent contact up until they finally had sex, then Dan cut it off. So it creates the image that once he got what he wanted he was done with them.

Let's not forget that there is a power dynamic imbalance between celebrities and fans. It's not so different from the one between bosses and employees.

Insider: Relationships between influencers and their fans are inherently problematic, experts say

Edited by M84 on Mar 22nd 2021 at 9:42:25 PM