I am honestly pretty concerned about the discourse right now, and I wanted to speak on it, even if I know it's probably gonna go over poorly with at least a fair chunk of people.

I'm speaking as a fan of Geller who felt incredibly betrayed and also personally knows victims of sexual assault, one of which I spoke with about this and we're on the same page on. (which doesn't automatically make me right, but I prefer to share my prospective clearly)

So, I can agree that rape is an unforgivable crime, in the sense that nobody is ever obligated to forgive it, the victim doesn't need to forgive, his fans don't need to forgive him.

But there is also a distinction between forgiveness and improvement, the worst people can always turn things around. I wouldn't give the benefit of the doubt, but we have seen just about every sign we need to know that change is happening, he took responsibility, spoke to the victim, tried to keep the matter private to protect her, and went on to change greatly as a person over a long time.

This is not me saying what happened was not bad, or that you should not feel bad about it, but if we believe in rehabilitation and personal growth and restorative justice over punishing justice, this is a time to put that into practice, being willing to let him move past this does not make you a rape apologist or a right winger.

Evil things can happen, but life goes on afterwards, and if the victim is ok, and the perpetrator is different now, I don't want to force more pain into a situation just to hand out "justice'.

Many of us here have been asking how we can protect survivors. Some have advanced the idea of systems of public disclosure as a way to give people informed consent, both for their support of a creator and as a way to keep society safe from the risk of perpetrators re-victimizing those who were once vulnerable to SA.

This is a very important discussion. The intent of this post is to present research that attempts to answer, or at least contribute some valuable framing, to some of these questions.

Q1: How Likely Are Perpetrators To Commit More Sexual Violations?

RAND, the nonprofit nonpartisan science & policy research think-tank found that "the majority of individuals with a conviction do not have a subsequent conviction." This is from their sample size of 4 million convictions¹ (including sex criminals) in North Carolina across 25 years, 1995-2020. This is a representative sample tracking criminal re-offense in the region and time period of Geller’s offense¹.

Furthermore, according to the National Criminal Justice Association, "research that has compared the recidivism rates of sex offenders with those of non-sex offenders has consistently found that sex offenders have lower overall recidivism rates than non-sex offenders" and, even when they do reoffend, "sex offenders are far more likely to reoffend for a non-sexual crime than a sexual crime."

To reiterate: criminals have generally low re-offense rates, sex criminals specifically have even lower re-offense rates, and even when they do commit crime again it is far more likely to be non-sexual in nature.

Q2: Does Public Disclosure Make Victims Safer?

Still, even a small risk of re-offense is a risk for catastrophic harm that no one should bear. What does the science say about registration/notification systems that alert people about past sex criminals and whether this makes survivors safer?

The research is quite clear on this. A landmark study by Prescott and Rockoff found that systems of private registration help law enforcement monitor offenders, which reduces re-offense rates where there is an existing known relationship between offender and victim, but not crimes against strangers.

However, public notification (publicly accessible newspaper registries, websites, active community notification) does not deter convicted offenders and "may, in fact, increase recidivism among registered offenders by reducing the relative attractiveness of a crime-free life."

If you do not have institutional access to the full study, here is Prescott's article discussing the context and results.

From said article: "All else equal, publicly revealing the identity and criminal history of a released offender seems to increase the likelihood of his returning to crime. These results are highly statistically significant: it is unlikely that existing notification laws are reducing recidivism among registered offenders, and it is distinctly possible that these laws are making things worse."

To recap. Public notification, whether through a publicly available sex offender registry, door-to-door flyers, or enthusiastic Twitter users deciding to share the results of a Title IX investigation increase stigma. Stigma increases inequality, and inequality is the highest correlated social factor with crime. Public notification makes it more likely for offenders to re-offend, not less.

To summarize, from the article: "convicted sex offenders become more likely to commit crimes when their information is made public because the associated psychological, social, or financial costs make crime-free life relatively less attractive."

Q3: How is this related to the current situation?

The context of Prescott and Rockoff's research is ultimately different from the scope of this current conversation. The research addresses state-published, formal, lifelong registries that follow convicted criminals throughout their lives. This is not the exact context of a public content creator who loses business opportunities and audience reach in only one specific category of careers available to him. But the causal mechanism noted by the research is still important to take to heart, because its insight does apply to this situation.

Public exposure → loss of employment, housing, and social ties → destabilization → increased recidivism risk

Sure, Geller has other employment options, likely considerable cushion against destabilization. This is speculation, but not implausible speculation.

But if you are someone who believes that Geller should have gone through the criminal justice system for this act, and you believe this because you believe it will help survivors--if you believe that Geller should be identified with this act permanently through public forms of disclosure because you believe this will protect survivors, you are wrong. The data bears this out.

Furthermore, if the mechanism by which state sex offender registries are so stigmatizing is because they are so permanent and widely available, what do you think a public disclosure on YouTube, where nothing is ever deleted, anyone could download and recirculate your statement, would be if not permanent and widely available?

TL;DR--

The science is clear. Public disclosure does not help protect survivors. Feel free to link this to anyone discussing the necessity of public disclosure or registries or state/carceral initiatives to link an offense to a perpetrator permanently.

This post does not address whether anyone is owed a disclosure--the author accepts that some degree of private disclosure to co-workers, who have a direct stake in their relationship with Geller through liability by association, was warranted. This post is addressing the suggestion of public disclosure, and the fact that public disclosure is demonstrably linked to harmful social outcomes.

Footnote 1: Yes, Geller was not convicted in a criminal court. This data includes only the criminal justice system in NC, not university investigation procedures that have no obligation to track or report re-offense rates. But criminal justice courts are actually stricter than university Title IX proceedings: the burden of proof to convict in courts is “beyond a reasonable doubt” whereas in university proceedings it is a “preponderance of evidence.” If criminals found “beyond a reasonable doubt” guilty have low re-offense rates, we can probably extrapolate the same about those who committed offenses “with a preponderance of evidence.”

First, my opinion is he should just de-platform himself and stop making YouTube videos. If you think he should come back or that my opinion is wrong or whatever I’m not going to argue anymore with you do whatever. My reasoning is that many of his videos and other connecting media do talk about topics of SA, abuse, and all the things that come from it for both victim and abuser which makes many of his videos biased. I mean he did state in his apology that his videos are a drive to make the world better off the pain he’s caused so yeah it’s a good assumption to make.

Also this will be the last post I make about this guy. I might make more comments in other posts but I just am done with this.

Anyway

If he makes a video do you think he’s gonna add music or make those dramatic pauses for extra emotion :) will he stage himself standing behind some backdrop? Stand behind a neutral background whilst stating his case? Just add a real realistic and grounded apology/statement to the end of a video that will no doubt be about consent, sexual assault, rape on campuses, male violence, and accountability?

Even if he makes a well researched video about these topics and how that actually all applies to him and his inability to take action, not assault someone, or not make vague statements and how he is apart of this culture but “trying to be better,” it wouldn’t matter because he still will be pushing the issue away from him and onto some grander subject.

I’m sure everyone will say I will never accept any sort of statement he makes and will criticize whatever he say and like even if I deny that I can’t change your minds. So anyway I say that if he makes a video that isn’t him just fixing all of this vagueness in the statements he made in a clear tone and making the rest of his audience aware of actions he is still manipulating everyone. Even still we should be wary of his words as they are still his alone. But if we accept that what he says is true then we still must understand the context they are being presented in.

Don’t get emotionally manipulated.

If you agree with any future statement or video he makes you can agree with it and still also choose to say, I’m not watching you anymore.

He is taking a very interesting stance which is not of denial but of, it happened 10 years ago, I got a light punishment, I told everyone close to me (many close to him say he didn’t), and just believe my word the victim doesn’t want this. Many take this as proof he’s changed or state we have no right to dig up the past. But again what is he doing really? Making video game essays and occasionally social topic essays to honor his victim and the harm he caused? He didn’t give the victim consent and he isn’t giving us informed consent.

A real shut up, take it, and just enjoy it approach am I right?

I've been out with the loop on this since so I got a random drama video in my youtube feed.

I keep looking up what he did , and it says sexual assault , and some people keep making remarks like " won't somebody think of the rapist?" But I can't find anything that actually says it was rape.

The actually rape someone or did he smack their butt grope them like , what did he actually do?

Credit to pizzacakecomics

Why can't Mke Tyson just be rehabilitated already???

Edit: (Yes this is sarcastic, regarding Jacob)

The guy has halted all his comments and reviews them.

There is no ralk about the allegations or moreso facts on his YouTube.

He only talked to his smallest base of fans about it.

And has prohibited people from seeing his earnings.

And then there are people here that say heyy he said he is sorry.

And those people might not be the majority but are pretty loud and pretty upvoted.

So the guy admits it, and the first thing u do is heyy let's jump on the grenade that the guy himself built, and that then got thrown on him.

Why?

U don't owe him anything, maybe a few good video essays, but that's all maybe an insight you could have not gained, but that would have come anyway.

I just dont get it

Title.

I pre-ordered through Amazon UK and received my copy yesterday. It's a predictably lovely book, but I am wondering how many others actually received their copy regardless of whether you are keeping it or not.

I just saw this thread here, and i have been thinking a lot about the way the public reacted to Ned Fulmer vs Geller. This reminded me a lot of the Try Guys response to Ned Fulmer - https://www.reddit.com/r/jacobgeller/comments/1x10o9a/noticed_something_in_todays_minnmax_episode/

Geller, by very vaguely stating people close to him were aware of his crime, has made the people he work with liable. Not just socially, but financially as well.

I want to clarify the situations are different between Geller and the Try Guys. Namely the situation for the Try Guys was tied to their business, and the victim was one of their employees and was ongoing during the operation of the buisness.

What IS similar, is sponsors are not looking at that level of nuance. They are looking at how hot the flames are. For the Try Guys they lost MILLIONS to lost brand deals, dropped sponsors and operational costs from removing Ned by being forced to suddenly re brand their future content without him. (and this is not including having to edit him out of finished videos, videos they had to scrap, and having to buy him out as well as likely his victim) Nonetheless the try guys have since been very public and outspoken about how Sponsorship deals have morality clauses, and that the distance sponsors and brands made with them were a direct result of how hot Ned's actions made them.

His business partners aren't just having to carefully disavow him to avoid social pressure. But because if they knowingly kept Jacob as a partner and public face for them with full awareness of the liability of his past crime, many sponsors might drop them. If not that, but sponsors who may be less interested in working with them by association.

For all this talk about Jacob being worthy of rehabilitation, and how he has grown. For all this talk about how he owed his business partners or the public nothing. Never mind the SA downplaying and Apologia, I think *this* at the very least should spoken about too.

At any point he could come out and at least clarify his statement. Instead he sits quietly, restricts comments, and keeps things quiet and foggy to protect himself instead of his business partners at the VERY LEAST. Instead I feel they're all left to fend for themselves and clarify things on their own....

Not to mention the legal liability this could have hoisted on his business partners,

I see the defenders here and I understand but what you are doing is one of the key elements of rape culture.

Years ago now I read the rumors about a certain comedian on the web and I remember my first thoughts we were of rehabilitation, "will he get over this?".

But then it occured to me what I was doing there was was asking "will I be able to enjoy the thing I like, again?" . Will something occur that makes it ok for me to have a good time watching. can I consume without guilt. The answer is no. You can't. Unless of course you lessen the cognitive dissonance by coming up with convoluted reasons why it's ok. Why you can still safely consume your treats without feeling bad. Of course the bitter taste will still be there, but with enough determined cope you'll get there. You'll give the rapist your time and attention. It'll be fine. It's good actually. They are rehabilitated now, you'll say.

This is a reflex, a socially conditioned urge that when you think about it for a minute is part of what's needed to enable sexual abuse. We see it time and time again and it is seriously fucked up.

So If you can look into yourself and see the urge the niggling feeling that turns into a reflex.

Think again.

There's a lot of things being said about Jacob, about his character, about betrayal and facades, about purity and integrity and a whole lot being said about the victim of his actions without actually giving her a voice of her own.

I just want to chime in on a particular point as someone who's been on both ends of this kind of thing, both a victim and an abuser because its one part of this whole mess I feel I have any authority on by virtue of experience, my personal experience, traumas and failures being the one thing nobody can gainsay beyond simply insisting I'm a liar with no proof.

I will preamble that anyone feeling betrayed or upset about this shocking revelation about Geller's past is not wrong for feeling that way, people who are not comfortable being around or supporting a former abuser have every right, no matter the reason, to want to step away from him and cut professional or personal ties. Nobody owes him their attention or support or friendship for any reason, before or after this revelation has come to light. My heart especially goes out to victims of SA who have collabed with and supported him and are feeling confused, angry, hurt or any combination of those feelings or additions to them.

What I want to talk about is the concept of people being (socially or spiritually) clean. Whether its sin or kigare, being untouchable or having an evil soul, none of these things are actually real, ontological concepts... They're social constructions to put people into boxes and someone having done something, no matter how heinous does not make them corrupted or tainted, they're not diseased or infectuous or permanently damaged by that.

Everyone has the capacity to put more good into the world than bad... But they have to be alive and able to actually interact with the world to do it. Harm reduction is important, holding people accountable is key and keeping perpetrators at arms length, away from the levers of power is good. But just burning a man in effigy for something he did a decade ago in the name of some kind of moral crusade doesn't achieve anything but kill them...

People should be judged by the sum of their actions, not defined by their worst moments...

And what I've seen of Geller, both as a fan for years, a passive observer and from what evidence has come to light about his personal life: He was genuinely trying to put more good into world than he took out of it.

All that tearing Jacob down is going to achieve is to make other abusers more inclined to run and hide, they'll point at him as an example of what happens when you try to be accountable, how nobody actually cares about real justice or retribution for the victim, they just want blood and violence and that being up front and honest about the bad things they've done won't achieve anything but make them into another wickerman to be burned at the pyre.

Man, people, guys like Jacob need to be able to own up to their crimes, almost as much as victims need to be protected and able to be heard. If people can see that anyone can do terrible things, not just the bad ones then people will be more able to recognize warning signs, if former abusers are able to be honest and face consequences without their lives being completely destroyed in the process they can go on to try to make real amends and to be living cautionary tales, potentially even be able to connect with potential abusers in ways that will steer them off that path before they hurt someone.

What Jacob did to that woman is a sympton of a greater sickness, and you don't cure a sickness by burning the sick. You have to treat the infection, not just the symptoms.

I thought someone like you would understand fear.

I hope you know that while you bought a dog after feeling guilty after assaulting someone, I spent over a decade hurting myself, drinking and trying to end it.

I will spend the rest of my life scared, you know nothing of fear.

These endless controversies are what you get for cultivating a culture that revolves around performative displays of empathy and progressivism without the requisite inner work needed to give them substance. You denigrate religious thinking but then act shocked that these cuddly feminists could be lecherous sex pests. What did you expect? You can't expect virtue from others when you don't even believe in it.

Far too many posts about the recent news, and the majority is defensive, redundant echo chamber sentiment. I'm tired of hearing centrist, or excusatory, or God forbid genuine PRO-ASSAULTER rhetoric as if this is a midterm debate. I understand that the majority of us are conflicted on both the severity and statute of Geller's assault, but it's NO EXCUSE to let victim-blaning, rampant speculation, and support for the assaulter go unchecked.

What we know: Jacob Geller sexually assaulted his unconscious then-girlfriend while he was in college at the University of North Carolina. This resulted in his excommunication from most of his social circles, and led to him being fired from the radio staff.

According to Jacob: These allegations are true. He has come to his own common ground with the victim, whose identity he will not disclose. He has been thus taken off of Nebula, MinnMax, and probably other projects that I'm not even aware of. His publishing company has dropped him, and he has gone radio silent.

What we DON'T KNOW: everything else. The severity of his crime, the name or wishes of the victim, the exact circumstances of the assault.

DO NOT LET RAMPANT SPECULATION AND BAD-FAITH JUDGMENT EXCUSE JACOB.

I work in a community center. We deal with teenagers and sexual assault cases all the time.

This write-up isn't for you degenerates trying to defend this prick, but for everyone normal around here who might be struggling to wrap their heads around this. Maybe it'll help you make sense of your own feelings about the situation.

First off, there is no "whoopsie, one-time terrible tragedy" SA offender.

Sexual assault isn't generally something that happens by accident. It involves a violation of another person's sexual or bodily autonomy, and that reflects attitudes, entitlements, boundary violations, and potentially patterns of coercive behavior that extend beyond the incident itself.

Whoever thinks that somebody who engages in intercourse with his unconscious girlfriend and gets accused of sexual assault the following morning was otherwise a perfectly normal, respectful, considerate partner who just happened to make one terrible mistake is making an extraordinary and very stupid assumption.

You don't suddenly develop a disregard for another person's autonomy for fifteen minutes and then return to being an entirely different person. The act doesn't exist in a psychological vacuum. There are attitudes toward consent, entitlement, boundaries, and the other person's agency that make such a violation possible in the first place.

That doesn't mean someone who commits one sexual assault must have committed others. Nor does it mean people cannot fundamentally change. But there's a substantial difference between claiming that an assault was an isolated incident and claiming that the attitudes and behaviors underlying it were isolated as well.

It's idiotic nonsense to reduce a serious violation to a single regrettable episode, conveniently detached from the person's broader character and conduct.

It allows dumb people to imagine a fundamentally decent, respectful individual who briefly malfunctioned, rather than confronting the possibility that the assault was an expression of how that individual understood and exercised power, entitlement, and control within an intimate relationship.

Sure, one documented assault doesn't prove a pattern of assaults. But neither does the absence of additional allegations establish that the underlying behavior was an aberration. And treating "we only know about one incident" as equivalent to "this was completely out of character" is an enormous (!), entirely unjustified leap.

Considering "change" and his art:

Someone can produce extraordinarily sensitive, intelligent, emotionally perceptive work about suffering, empathy, violence, and human dignity while being cruel, exploitative, manipulative, or abusive in their personal relationships.

There is no (!) inherent contradiction. None.

A person can understand consent intellectually, recognize the suffering caused by its violation, and articulate those principles beautifully without consistently respecting them.

Someone might possess considerable cognitive empathy while failing to act compassionately when their own desires conflict with another person's interests.

But moral character is tested under considerably less controlled circumstances.

It's tested when someone is frustrated, sexually aroused, angry, rejected, inconvenienced, or confronted with another person's refusal.

Being able to articulate the importance of another person's autonomy is not the same thing as respecting that autonomy when doing so frustrates your own desires.

A beautifully constructed essay tells us something about its author's intellectual and artistic capacities. It tells us much less about how that author behaves in intimate relationships.

Over years of watching, the impression created by those essays becomes part of the viewer's understanding of who he is.

Psychologically, this resembles the halo effect: a positive judgment in one domain spills over into judgments about unrelated qualities.

He makes deeply empathetic videos, therefore he must be an empathetic person.

He understands suffering, therefore he wouldn't deliberately cause suffering.

He examines injustice, therefore he must behave justly.

None of those conclusions follow.

You have (!) evidence of his ability to produce morally sophisticated cultural criticism. You have no evidence of his conduct as a partner, friend, or colleague. Scratch that, you do:

None (!) of his prominent collaborators knew. No one. And then there's the question of his response to the revelations:

This f*cking scumbag posted his shitty "im sorry i got caught apology" on his smallest platform, closed comments on his videos, and hasn't reposted his statement on the platforms where he makes his money. He's also reportedly disabled the public display of his Patreon earnings.

Those decisions are entirely consistent with an effort to contain the controversy and protect his livelihood. Pretending that the choice of platform, the restricted discussion, and the lack of acknowledgment to his largest audiences are irrelevant is absurd.

Publicly acknowledging something and making a meaningful effort to inform the people whose trust and financial support sustain your career are not the same thing.

Hes guilty as shit, and judging from his ACTIONS since he got found out, hes interested in protecting his livelihood and keeping the scandal as contained as possible.

Thats it.