These are the people who never expressed an opinion about thunderf00t, but who may lose their jobs anyway.
The owners of Porcelain Tub Restoration have released a public statement regarding the recent onslaught of negative reviews and straight-up trolling they have received as a result of YouTube MRA and Patreon-dependent "scientist" Phil Mason.
In a Fund Anything campaign to cover their employee's salaries during this troll-caused work shortage, the owner of P.T.R., Paul Burns, said this of the situation:
I don't agree with my wife's letter writing campaign that started this in the least. I have made mistakes in my life which she has forgiven me and I'll forgive her. That's what you do when you love someone. My dear wife made a really bad decision and Dr. Phil Mason sent his 400,000 YouTube subscribers and fan boys to destroy our small local business and reputation.
With your help we hope hope to offset the work shortage that we are experiencing from this cyber review attack on our reputation, so no employee's will have to be laid off.
I wouldn't even know who to layoff, as all of our people have been with us for many years. It's like asking which brother or sister won't get fed?
We are not looking to stuff our pockets I assure you. The recession has dwindle our resources. All unnecessary personal items have been sold, IRA's liquidated to keep our doors open till the economy recovered. ...
We've work really hard to earn a positive reputation online and now it's being destroyed.
We are getting slanderous lies about our services and people posting deplorable images on review sites, as well desecrating our star ratings and customers calling. No one clicks to a service company with 1 star rating.
They are angry with my wife for attempting to stand up to a man on YouTube who targets feminism, promotes misogyny and are trying to take my business down and destroy the lives and families of our innocent employee's.
This group could easily target you or any business, destroying your livelihood, which had nothing to do with a YouTube channel. I was completely unaware of what was going on and now that I have looked into it, I don't condone her actions and wished she had not gotten involved in these battles.
With your help we can be sure to keep their income coming in and our lights on till we can weather this evil storm and regain our injured reputation.
Will keep you posted on our Facebook Page how we are using the funds https://www.facebook.com/...
We set a small minimum for what our monthly bills call for, but are hoping for dear life we can exceed that, with the anticipated income shortage we expect with this attack through winter months.
It takes one million a year just to break even with the mortgage, insurance, operating cost, payroll etc. I built this business from scratch rubbing two nickles together, hard work and a lot of dedication and it would be a great shame for it to come down.
Looking at the video Paul Burns posted on the crowdfunding page, it's evident that the people on Baphomet are working as hard as they can to ruin this small business on Phil Mason's behalf. The company's Facebook and Google Plus pages have been take reviews and gross images, and Burns shows the hundreds of fradulent Yelp reviews made against his P.T.R. that didn't make it past Yelp's troll filter.
It seems terribly unjust to me that the legal acts of speech from one woman - Burn's wife, Jennifer Keller - are sufficient cause for the livelihoods of 20 families to get destroyed, particularly since nobody but Keller herself expressed any opinion of Mason before this debacle.
But it is obvious that Mason/thunderf00t is willing to throw 20 people under the bus, if it means neutralizing an adversary to his misogynist polemics (for which Mason gets paid nearly $3,500 per video.) And it's obvious that these online hate mobs are willing to hurt anybody connected to Mason's enemies, even if their only crime is guilt by association.
By the time this diary is posted, I will have given to Porcelain Tub Restoration's campaign, because I don't want to see middle class families pushed out of business by Patreon nerd-lords with armies of fanboys willing to follow virutally any order their dear leader hands down.
I hope that folks here on Daily Kos will give generously to this campaign as well, or better yet, that DC Kossaks with worn-out tubs will hire Porcelain Tub Restoration to fix them up because the Vice President stood up to Thunderf00t. That would be the just desserts for these cowardly spibs, who treat the livelihoods of complete strangers as a game of revenge.