Mencius Moldbugman

There are a number of news reports and trending tweets right now saying that angry men are calling Arya Stark in #GameOfThrones a “Mary Sue” character (a female character who can do anything). But is this actually true?pic.twitter.com/2yo7KH8oBU

Not a single news article out there actually features a male or female reporter terming Arya as a Mary Sue. Plenty of journalists reporting that people are saying it, but zero evidence of people actually saying it.pic.twitter.com/85ThYVxs6M

These articles themselves, once clicked, fail to name anyone who is actually calling Arya a Mary Sue. All we get is claims attributing the sentiment to “men”, “dudes”, “dudebros” or “people”. But where’s the evidence? Plenty of rebuttals, but zero actual claims.pic.twitter.com/I0OObrBPnF

In this article by Glamour magazine this is the best they could find. One tweet by an obscure twitter account with zero influence. That’s it. They mention one critical tweet but were able to feature 11 tweets from blue checks angry about people using the Mary Sue term!pic.twitter.com/m10jpS67CQ

Ottism Jesus has just 117 followers on Twitter. In contrast, the accounts going wild over the supposed hordes of upset men terming Arya Stark a Mary Sue have hundreds of thousands.pic.twitter.com/AxMoZ3QT1g

A twitter search for the trending term Mary Sue reveals no results at all of men terming Arya a Mary Sue character. There may well be some out there, but the first 50 tweets I looked at were journalists reacting to something that doesn’t seem to actually exist.pic.twitter.com/RGnf3XlhVc