The Unfortunate End of the ContraPoints Saga
Critics won, but it’s unlikely the battlefield is rife with much loot.
Unsatisfied with whatever explanation ContraPoints had for her gaffes in recent months, the anti-Contra mob can finally settle for a swift, but bittersweet victory after Natalie Wynn finally gave up on maintaining a presence on Twitter due to the ensuing harassment. The announcement came after Wynn was forced to endure hordes of dissenters all focusing on trivial aspects of her YouTube content and social media presence, and to the disappointment of many — myself included — the purported empathy of leftist Twitter did not bear itself out as it was the main culprit in denying Wynn and many of her supporters a peaceful presence, thinking that coercively submitting to their every whim is somehow indicative of good praxis.
How we got from ContraPoints being the undisputed champion of minorities online to now becoming a notoriously-hated figure by the fringe crevices of political left Twitter isn’t all that immediately obvious–though, it follows a similar pattern seen from much more popular creators wherein being more present in the limelight exposes them to much more criticism, to the point where considering that much of it at once becomes a hindrance to the creative process.
Natalie ‘ContraPoints’ Wynn was slowly starting to dip her toes into being principally disagreed with as soon as she started to gain mainstream recognition, with a Verge article by Katherine Cross describing her as the “Oscar Wilde of YouTube” fighting the fierce winds of far-right extremism with “decadence and seduction”. The article — while generally flattering of Wynn’s methods in adopting feminine aesthetics to counter the patronizing harshness of the far-right — was but a mere convenient framing device for media, who’s always looking for a compelling story, in which the heroes and villains are clearly defined. ContraPoints served as a good candidate for the former, especially seeing as how trans representation in online media was confined to the narrow realms of being its own punchline up until that point. There was a noticeable shortage of trans presence, especially on platforms like YouTube, where the topic wasn’t strictly that of the trans experience or intrinsically tied to Beauty YouTube in some way. Wynn…
