Bad Publicity?

[MiK]

49 minutes ago, GenuineGerman said:

sacrilege, cucumber sandwiches are amazing 😄 

Crusts on or off ?

[EvilMonkee]

@Adolf Hamsterwatch the whole video mate, its pretty clear KM is an unreconstructed unashamed racist from those and other evidence presented.  

 

However, I do question the point of someone posting this again and perpetuating the shit storm, could they also be argued are fanning the flames for their own purposes?  

At this stage I know 3 things - I loathe KM and all that he purportedly believes, I loathe the anti KM brigade for the damage they are doing to the sport and I wish they would all shut up and go away.

[GenuineGerman]

11 minutes ago, MiK said:

Crusts on or off ?

Crusts off im posh don't you know haha

[Skara]

8 minutes ago, EvilMonkee said:

I wish they would all shut up and go away.

Just ignore the whole thing, as everyone should.

[GenuineGerman]

I bought this up again as i think we should all know what is happening whilst we merrily just ignore it. And whilst we ignore what is happening these clowns will decide the future of the sport whilst we just ignore it. So if you want to ignore please do but don't complain when airsoft ends up in the news for the wrong reasons. we as sensible players should contribute and not hope it just goes away

[Tommikka]

2 hours ago, Adolf Hamster said:

 

....

 

i might have been on board the train that wanted to sort out the problem km and similar youtuber's content is having in terms of harming the image of our hobby, but at this point i am definately out.....

 

 

From Kicking Mustangs YouTube output - he’s a dickhead making money from clickbait and drama

 

From the other things - he’s a racist dickhead 

 

From an airsoft point of view - he’s kept them separate. 
The anti Mustang ‘campaign’ is feeding drama and if anything is damaging to airsoft, the ‘Campaign’ is the greater contribution 

[GeorgePlaysAirsoft]

I know someone else who was accused of being racist:

 

[Adolf Hamster]

1 hour ago, DrAlexanderTobacco said:

I think you should keep watching the video tbh. Some of those tweets were vile.

 

1 hour ago, EvilMonkee said:

@Adolf Hamsterwatch the whole video mate, its pretty clear KM is an unreconstructed unashamed racist from those and other evidence presented.  

 

 

at this point i'm not particularly sure i want to because:

 

45 minutes ago, Tommikka said:

From an airsoft point of view - he’s kept them separate. 

 

is a very valid point.

 

this hobby is about escapism, and whilst i have my own opinions on the minefield that is modern culture with regards to problems such as racism etc, i don't want to deal with that shit when it comes to my hobby.

 

one of the things i enjoy about airsoft mirrors @Dogsbody100 insofar as not needing to give a crap about what the other guys age/gender/race/political and religious beleifs are (not that you can tell that easy under layers of camo, equipment and face protection anyway) and only judging people by their actions, which in this sphere is being an honest player who takes the spirit of the game seriously.

[Impulse]

There's a lot to unpack here, so let me just drop my two cents on the matter. I'm a little sick and tired of modern day social media culture, so bear with me.

 

So, as we all know, Kicking Mustang's videos are clickbait. Do I have a problem with this? Of course I do. I hate clickbait and I generally dislike the content of his videos, as it paints the hobby in a bad light and we really don't need to give politicians any reason to stamp on our hobby; "banning firearms" is an easy vote winner because people don't know anything about airsoft or actual firearms in general, so it's an easy sell. Let's not forget all the instances in America of people wanting to ban all fully-semi-automatic assault weapons! However, can I see why he does it? I can. I worked as a journalist for a time and we were all essentially instructed to write the most clickbait articles and it's a major reason why I didn't continue in that career. The world has a problem at the moment in that everything is so tribal, so partisan, and the way the media works these days rewards fear-mongering, clickbait hate content. Positivity and hope doesn't sell, it doesn't get you clicks which in turn means it doesn't make you any money. Usually I'd say "don't hate the player, hate the game" and I believe there is an element of that. I can't hate Kicking Mustang for posting clickbait content. However, I won't be saying that in its entirety as his actions could have wider implications for our hobby. Usually, clickbait content can't be weaponised as easily by politicians looking to gain votes. Kicking Mustang's content could be easily weaponised by a politician looking to gain support from the public and in Parliament; if I, someone with no experience being a politician, could do it, you can bet that an actual politician could.

 

Now onto the second part of the situation. Firstly, he has always kept his politics separate from his airsoft persona. Also, I've been online long enough to know not to believe everything I read. Do I think some of the tweets made by Kicking Mustang on his other account are wrong? Yes. Even if you're against things like Islamic extremism or the BLM riots (openly Marxist organisation) that had cities burning for months amidst their mostly peaceful protests, you shouldn't make inflammatory statements, or racial slurs to put your points across as I observed in some of his tweets. However, and this is a big however, I do believe that the tweets could have been taken out of context and weaponised against him. Do I think this earns him a pass? No. If he is actually a racist (and I mean that not by today's standards where you're a racist xenophobe sexist if you're traditionally conservative), then I believe he's an abhorrent individual. Though, what I will say is I've seen this happen before. I've seen it happen to so many people before where content is taken waaaaaaay out of context to suit a particular narrative or agenda. This is another reason I left journalism, as we were essentially encouraged to sensationalise everything. It's super easy to take quotes and spin a story in a particular way, as nuance is lost in print and language is easy to manipulate. For a recent, larger, real-world example, and some of you might disagree with me here so please try to be civil, we have the situation with Gina Carano and LucasFilm. She made a post referencing 1930s Germany and the Twitter mob who hated her and have been trying to get her fired for years caught onto this, calling her out for being anti-semetic under the #FireGinaCarano hashtag, which did actually get her fired. Was she actually anti-semetic? No. Not at all. The tweet was taken out of context and weaponised against her. The Kicking Mustang hate groups are definitely psychotic enough to do this. I've seen their rabid fanaticism that just makes them look like some sort of "Kicking Mustang is Satan" cult. I can definitely believe they have taken stuff out of context.

 

In conclusion / TL:DR, Kicking Mustang is a dick who makes clickbait content that is potentially harmful to the hobby. It also turns out that Kicking Mustang is at least a bit of a racist too, though to what extent I will reserve judgement on as I firmly don't believe everything I see on the internet and definitely think there is some exaggeration in how it has been framed, but to his credit he has always kept his political leanings separate from his airsoft persona. These people going after a completely unrelated political commentary Twitter account he has is only going to further harm the hobby. Now, politicians don't have to say "we're cracking down on firearms!" as they can now spin it like "we're cracking down on alt-right militia training groups AND their firearms!" which is an absurd statement.

 

This is why I pine for the "good old days" of airsoft like some sort of old person, and I'm not even 30 yet. Back when I first started in 2006ish, I never saw any drama or had any major problems with the hobby. We were just a bunch of guys who met up at our local airsoft site every other Sunday and played toy gun fights in the woods. People didn't run hot guns, there were never any issues with headshots and we all just had a good time.

 

 

[lukeB]

There's a reason politicians make a career of talking a lot but never saying anything

[alxndrhll]

6 hours ago, Impulse said:

This is why I pine for the "good old days" of airsoft like some sort of old person, and I'm not even 30 yet. Back when I first started in 2006ish, I never saw any drama or had any major problems with the hobby. We were just a bunch of guys who met up at our local airsoft site every other Sunday and played toy gun fights in the woods. People didn't run hot guns, there were never any issues with headshots and we all just had a good time.

 

 

I tend to disagree with this as a generalisation, it was just much easier to be oblivious to. In my case, partially because I was younger and there were things I simply didn't understand back then... and partially because social media was less of a thing. Granted this was back in the age of the ASCUK forums where you still had a host of 'grumble' threads which tended to take very similar patterns to threads you see on here.

Thread about cheating:
'I hate cheaters.'
'I wish we could all be honest.'
'Marshalls should be better.'

[Someone mentions headshots]

'Just wear full face pro, if you don't it's your own fault.'

[Macho man storms in]

'Who cares it doesn't even hurt.'

[Someone asks if using 0.25g BBs is considered cheating]

'Someone questions why you'd use 0.25g when 0.2g BBs go further' (Note, as we now know this is not true.)

... So on and so forth...

 

Seriously, read through commonly occuring topics and tell me they don't largely wind up taking a very similar path until they fizzle out. I have no doubt that folks who have been around for a while have that 'here we go again' reaction when certain topics crop up.

 

Hell the only thing that's a huge amount different is now half of the threads include someone asking a question regarding UKARA (which wasn't a thing for a decent portion of my time on ASCUK).

 

TLDR, it's always existed... it was just easier to ignore/not be aware of.

 

P.S. Not intended as a dig at this, or any other forum for that matter, forums have been my prefered way of being involved in hobby communities for a long time. Threads on forums for more general topics around a niche hobby tend to be very cyclic, to a point dejavu can set in as you're reading through threads at times. My preference for forums over anything else is that it's simply much easier to filter what I do and do not wish to read and/or participate in coversation with.

[EvilMonkee]

@ImpulseI understand your point re context but go and listen to and actually read the evidence as presented. Its difficult to find any context other than him being a massive fucking racist, its not borderline being misconstrued, its downright offensive to most sane people.  

 

As for is it relevant to airsoft?  I would argue it is.  If he, as a high profile member of the 'community' (I really dislike that word) is holding such views then it reflects on the rest of us if we allow him to remain part of that grouping and any failure to act to express our condemnation of these views could be viewed to be tacitly condoning them.  Therefore, its is absolutely right in my mind to link the two and call him out on them.  HOW you call them out on them (emphasis added) is the part that has been going wrong.

 

PS You say Marxist like its a bad thing

[GenuineGerman]

You really have to view this as someone who has no interest in airsoft or has no connection to airsoft and may want to get into it. 
 

you see what’s happening what conclusions do you come to?