There is a popular YouTube channel called Girlfriend Reviews. It's a gaming focused channel that offers up video game reviews for new or recently released titles. Girlfriend Reviews blend together comedy with personal opinions on the games they review, with the boyfriend (Matt) typically offering up the viewpoint of the player and the girlfriend (Shelby) offering up the viewpoint of a spectator.
Though their reviews are usually highly edited and scripted, the duo released a video today where they were talking candidly with their audience. See, it turns out that the pair have been harassed for the better part of a year ever since they made a video review for The Last of Us Part 2. Matt and Shelby say that they have been the victims of a targeted harassment campaign from the r/TheLastofUs2 Reddit community.
There are a few things you should know about that particular subreddit. There is a good reason why I'm not even going to link them directly. They are a community of people that absolutely despise The Last of Us Part 2 and will go to extreme lengths to make sure their dislike is known. They have made hating on the game a core part of their personalities.
They unironically curse Neil Druckmann, Naughty Dog, "woke culture," "SJWs," plus everything and everyone that they feel "ruined" the series. There are countless posts containing plenty of anti-Semitic slurs (mainly used against Druckmann), plus numerous homophobic and transphobic remarks from users and mods alike. They hate the fact that Joel (major TLOU2 spoiler here) was murdered in the early portion of the game. They hate Abby just for even existing. The list goes on but you get the idea. They are, as you may have already gathered, some of the saddest, most pathetic types of Gamersâ„¢ï¸ around.
Over these past eight months, Girlfriend Reviews did not acknowledge the hate that came from that Reddit community. They instead focused on their own work and carrying on with life. However, there were two particular posts that Shelby felt crossed a line that were posted in that subreddit. She made a tweet about them earlier in July.
After the tweet, a now deleted Reddit user going by the name of TheRealRogerEbert, claimed that fans of Girlfriend Reviews were sending him death threats as a reaction to her tweet.
The Reddit user continued to escalate the issue. They proceeded to encourage others from r/TheLastofUs2 to go after Girlfriend Reviews. Both users and moderators of r/TheLastofUs2 raised pitchforks against the couple. This resulted in numerous attacks both on Reddit and social media against them. TheRealRogerEbert apparently went as far as sending an email directly to the couple where they threatened to get the authorities involved if they did publicly chastise their fanbase for these threats.
Well, as it turns out, TheRealRogerEbert was full of shit. Matt and Shelby were able to determine that TheRealRogerEbert was actually sending death threats to himself. They tried to make it look like those threats were coming from the Girlfriend Reviews fanbase. Matt and Shelby were able to figure out that the threats were fake after comparing messages sent by TheRealRogerEbert with the people supposedly making threats. There were some very obvious similarities between the users that they were able to easily make the connections. Some of the similarities between TheRealRogerEbert and the people threatening him included the non-standard use of "`" (a backquote) when an apostrophe is more commonly used in contractions. The couple also discovered that TheRealRogerEbert and the people threatening him were from the same European country, they both shared similar interests, and both were developers. Sure these could just be seen as a huge coincidence, but what happens next kind of sealed the deal on the couple's assumptions.
Once these discoveries were made known to TheRealRogerEbert, the user proceeded to delete their Reddit account. They also apparently deleted their email account.
In the video posted today on their channel, Matt and Shelby walked their fans through the entire event from start to finish, including presenting the proof they found that tied everything together. They emphasize that people should absolutely take death threats seriously, a notion that I very much agree with based on personal experiences. To put a positive spin on this entire situation, the couple set up a fundraiser campaign for the "Best Friends Animal Society" if you would like to donate towards a good cause.
Please note that the video below does contain spoilers for The Last of Us Part 2.
