^This is Geo Godley. There are probably few things more
awful than making a woman – even if it was Paula Abdul – want to hurl after
seeing your tackle.
For the lucky ones who have never heard of him, Geo Godley
is one of those Youtube celebrity dolts – the fact that someone can be a celebrity
from “vlogging” massively offends me, but that’s another rant altogether. As of writing, Mr. Godley has over 10,000 videos on his Youtube account. The vast
majority of his caustic uploads are his “flirts”. Essentially, Godley meanders
around London and makes videos consisting of awkward come-ons to random women
in the street. What’s worse is because all of these desperate attempts are
filmed, everyone watching can see just how unsettling Godley’s antics are. It’s
clear from a lot of the videos that the targets are uncomfortable as they try
to lose Godley one way or another and, frankly, it’s difficult viewing.
Whilst he’s arguably not causing any immediate harm, he’s not only normalising
harassment of people but he’s filming and
documenting it as if it was socially acceptable.
Now, Godley himself will dismiss criticisms like this in an
instant. A month or two ago, he uploaded a video where, after walking past a Pret
A Manger and catching a girl’s eye very briefly, he went in to the restaurant
and sat next to her. Unsurprisingly, he was met with indifference, as the girl
basically ignored him and tried not to respond as other people in the
restaurant just looked on in disbelief at his creeping attempts. After rightly
being called up on this video by many people, Geo posts a response saying that
all detractors are in the wrong; the woman gave him “an inviting glance”, he’s
had “tonnes of positive experiences” doing his video flirts and “the women
enjoy it”. Essentially, he throws his harassment off as harmless flirtatious
fun, firstly forgetting the fact that flirting requires two active parties and
secondly, clearly grossly unaware of any semblance of social boundaries (the
claim of ‘fun’ is further lambasted by videos where Geo gets annoyed when girls don’t respond well to him [around 1:30 it gets weird] or he gets indignant about someone blocking the view of
the woman he was filming from his window).
Maybe Geo isn’t intending to cause harm. And to be
honest, looking at some of his other videos, he may have had some bad life
experiences that have warped the way he approaches people. But despite this, he
obviously is causing distress and the fact that he’s oblivious to it is genuinely
disturbing. In a social climate where something like the the harrowing #ShoutingBack has taken off as an organic documentation of the harassment that is accepted as standard, Geo’s deluded attempts to defend his flirt footage as nothing more than a “positive
experience” only serve to exemplify just how ingrained a problem street
harassment is. There is nothing “positive” about filming women who don’t want
to be filmed as you publicly harass them. If anything, it seems like you’re
building up a bulk of evidence of things that will eventually be used against
you in court – and with good reason. This is not how you treat people.
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