by ersatz_cats
This is His Honour Judge Ken Barlow KC, District Court of Queensland, former barrister for North Quarter Lane Chambers. He is also recognized by Guinness World Records as the most gullible person on Earth.
Okay, I made up the Guinness part. But man, is this guy a massive sucker. And I don’t say that lightly, or with joy in my heart. As we’re about to see, this label is well-founded.
Obviously, we’re here to talk about Judge Barlow’s dogshit ruling in the Karl Jobst / Billy Mitchell lawsuit. Keep in mind, when I discuss gullibility, I am keenly aware of the distinction between credulity and complicity. (You have to know the difference to engage in U.S. political discourse.) If it ever comes out that Ken Barlow was posing for photos with Billy or taking favors or whatever, I reserve the right to change my assessment. But except where otherwise noted, my first assumption is not that he’s crooked, or out to be intentionally dishonest. I accept his sincerity of attempt, at least on some fundamental level. I also don’t think Barlow is unintelligent, as that would imply only stupid people fall for swindlers. I infer gullibility both because of how wrong Barlow got this ruling, and because I don’t see how any of this helps Barlow or his reputation. Dude was always going to get dragged for a ruling this ass, on a case so many people are so passionate about. I would’ve much preferred to write about Barlow’s triumph, or at least a rueful lamentation of a disappointing but understandable assessment. Instead, as you’re about to see, Barlow chose to be Billy Mitchell’s fool, and he chose to do it for free. This makes him a colossal dupe, who as a professional judge allowed a practiced hustler to manipulate him. And all the evidence he needed was right in front of him the whole time.
Ultimately, I can’t stop Billy Mitchell from schmoozing and bamboozling people, including those in positions of power. So what I write here may not have any effect in the legal framework of things. But I can at least report the truth, for those who want it. I may not get paid for my writing, but figuratively speaking, my “job” as an independent journalist obliges me to utterly trash an opinion as bankrupt as Barlow’s. Judges like him typically have minimal oversight, and are used to sitting in the big chair, wielding all the power and commanding the room’s respect. But I don’t have to respect that chair. Judges can be flat wrong. And plaintiffs can lie, and even prevail doing so. At the end of the day, journalism – even extremely niche geek journalism – is the truth’s last line of defense.
So today, we’re gonna go through Judge Barlow’s entire 100-plus-page ruling and dissect everything there is to discuss. Helpfully, each passage is identified with a bracketed number, like [34]. If I don’t point to a particular passage, just assume that means “No notes”. You can follow along with the document on another screen if you wish, but I’ll try to make this standalone readable. Since I’m going in order, flow may be janky, and impactful things will tend to cluster together, but we will get a nice crescendo of credulity as we approach the home stretch. I know this piece will go into fine detail, and not everything will feel super-impactful. Hey, fine detail is what I do! To make this easier to skim, I’ve given special –[brackets]– to items I consider more important, so you can Ctl-F for only those if you wish. I’m going to assume some basic familiarity with prior coverage of this case and of Billy Mitchell in general, because otherwise we’d be here forever. Oh and as usual, much ridicule and vulgarity will ensue, this time with notes of cope and seethe.
I should be absolutely, perfectly, fundamentally clear on one important point: I do not speak for Karl Jobst. I did not consult him on this piece. I did not seek his input in drafting this. And Karl has no idea what I’ve written. This represents strictly my own observations and assessments, as an independent journalist, backed up by the facts and research available to me. At least, all of that is true of the initial iteration. With that said, I do intend this piece to be a standing resource going forward, sorta like the “Evidence against Billy Mitchell” compilation, and I’m not going to refrain from discussing this subject matter with anyone into eternal perpetuity. (Though obviously I will always speak strictly for myself and never for anyone else.) In light of this being a permanent resource, I reserve the right to add, modify, or remove anything without giving a bunch of notices each time. In other words, you “gotcha” trolls should screencap all of this right now. This piece was last edited on April 16, 2025.
Some other quick acknowledgments are in order. Obviously I’m not going to dispute Barlow’s interpretation of the law unless given serious reason to do so. I acknowledge that he is an expert on Australian defamation law, and that I am not. (Conversely, I put myself as an expert on the facts of Billy Mitchell cases, whereas Barlow is not.) Keep in mind that courts have rules about the admission of evidence, which I do not have to follow. I will happily point out inaccuracies in the ruling, but those don’t necessarily draw an inference of “Barlow should’ve known better” without a bit more foundation. When reading the ruling, note the difference between “Mr Mitchell says X”, which may be true, and “X”, which may be false. Given all the time Barlow obviously put into crafting this asinine ruling, I believe it should be important for a judge in his position to make that distinction clear. Barlow’s position does entitle him to declare certain claims and legal contentions as “facts” under the law, but I would hope that when he does so rule in that capacity, he would be clear he’s doing so. This ruling also uses Australianisms, some of which I’ll point out as I go. The one to know at the start is, Barlow uses the word “evidence” where Americans like me would use the term “testimony”. So when the ruling says “Mr Mitchell gave evidence”, that’s not meant to imply Billy handed over documents proving anything; it literally just means “Billy Mitchell said so”. (Billy Mitchell wouldn’t lie under oath, would he?)
Oh, and in case you somehow stumbled upon this without knowing, this story does involve a very real and serious act of self-harm. And yes, I crack jokes about the related lawsuit anyway. I do it because I’m a terrible, uncaring person, who has already written about this situation a gazillion times, and gave up trying to separate my humorous interjections from the serious bits long ago. Call it “dark humor” which you may regret on my behalf.
Now…
[2] [3] Barlow lists a bunch of Billy’s claimed video game high scores, including the three cheated Donkey Kong scores. I know, it’s not a big deal, and I’m not getting on Barlow particularly for this. After all, Guinness recognizes these fraudulent scores, so Ken could consider them “verified” in a sense. I just wish to highlight how the manner in which Billy frames things – including the way Billy directly threatened Guinness into compliance – gives him undue credibility when that framing is accepted uncritically.
[4] Judge Barlow has officially decreed that “speed running” is two words. So all you “speed runners” who accept this ruling are now contractually obligated to write it that way, too. I don’t make the rules. Also, it seems minor at first, but Barlow puts Karl’s occupation of “professional YouTuber” in quotes, like it’s not real. Had he put the word “YouTuber” alone in quotes, I wouldn’t say anything, since that is what one does with newer words one doesn’t yet accept as plain English. But Karl is literally a professional at his paid occupation. Is it possible Barlow doesn’t take Mr. Jobst’s work seriously? Would Karl’s journalism be more accepted if he worked for the ABC?
Note also how Billy’s claimed records are accepted at face value in his introduction, but when it comes to Karl, he “said that he has earned” world records. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Karl has a Guinness World Record as well. One of the reasons Billy gets that treatment everywhere is, his perceived gaming records are basically the most important things in his life, so he insists on them with everyone. Karl, on the other hand, doesn’t go around insisting everyone recognize him for his speed run marks, putting more value in other life accomplishments.
–[5]– Barlow quotes the Twin Galaxies website. Reading this, I immediately was like “I don’t think that was part of trial evidence.” Indeed, Barlow added a footnote clarifying that it was not. I don’t know entirely how Australia courts work, but it seems Barlow was entitled to do his own external research. He just chose not to look into, you know, Billy’s extensive and highly documented history of pathological dishonesty. Anyway, just keep this in mind.
[6] [7] [8] Not important, but Barlow ponders whether Guinness “may take into account” TG adjudication of high scores, which is good for a laugh. I will acknowledge that Barlow’s characterization of TG dispute adjudication is accurate.
–[10]– Once again, Barlow cites an externally researched passage. This time, he yoinks a description of MAME straight from the MAME website. Unlike other items, which are given specific locations within the trial bundle, this is not identified as being part of proper evidence. The footnote just offers a URL and basically says “I found this handy description on the Interwebs.” It’s a shame he didn’t try finding an externally researched description of Billy Mitchell from his old web domain.
–[14]– Barlow accurately says that Apollo didn’t mention Billy in his “goodbye video” or accompanying text. But there’s a simple reason for that, which Barlow does not acknowledge here. On my first pass, I marked this to say “Oh, Barlow clarifies this later in passage [XXX]”, because I thought surely he would… except now I’m on my second pass, and… he never did? I’m surprised. I know this was discussed during the trial – Day “7” to be precise. Does Barlow not want anyone to know?
Fine, I’ll elucidate it here again.
(Imagine me explaining this to Barlow like he’s literally five years old.)
Okay, Kenny. Apollo made a promise to Billy. A super-promise. He promised to never mention Billy in any way. Couldn’t even talk about him. And if he did, he would have to give Billy $25,000, each time he did it. Later, Apollo decided to leave, and when he left, he wanted to give all his money to his family. It’s called an “estate”. But if he even mentioned Billy, $25,000 of that “estate” wouldn’t go to his family, it would go to Billy instead. So that’s why Apollo didn’t say goodbye to Billy, even if maybe he really, really, really wanted to.
Barlow does mention the $25,000 penalty elsewhere (in [13] and [67]), but he never connects it to this point about Apollo not explicitly blaming Billy. This topic comes up again in [71] and [72], so you can read more there.
[16] In a footnote, Barlow says Karl “published the video containing the offending words on two occasions”. But this is some silly legal semantics. Karl edited the words out, then later restored the original, all at the same YouTube URL. It wasn’t published “on two occasions” as you or I would understand it. This becomes more relevant at [426], where Barlow discusses damages, so jump to that if you want to read more.
[17] Here, Barlow outlines Jobst’s defense, including “contextual truth” imputations, and the fact Billy had a pre-existing bad reputation. Note that, on this point, the only example of these contextual characterizations Barlow lists is Billy’s reputation as a video game cheater, which honestly has been the least of Billy’s crimes for some time now. Barlow makes no reference in this passage to Billy’s offensive text messages about Apollo, which were a significant element to people’s reactions to Karl’s video at the time it was published. In other words, Barlow is clearly soft-pedaling things that hurt his cli… I mean, the plaintiff. Anyway, if someone read this casually, and they thought “Oh wow, Karl thought it was okay to say that stuff about Billy because he was a cheater?”, that is not an accurate impression, even though it is the impression reading this passage from Barlow may give you.
To that point, [19] is where Barlow concludes that Billy was defamed despite having “the previous reputations alleged by Mr Jobst”, and is within a screenshot’s reach. So it seems to a casual reader like it’s telling a full, informed story, when it is not. Note that Barlow concludes that Billy “suffered substantially more personal and reputational harm as a consequence” of the video. Funny, everything I’ve been hearing lately is that everyone forgot what this entire case was about.
[22] Barlow describes Billy’s hot sauce business, before adding simply “Apparently it is very successful”. Listen, judges do try to have dryly ironic fun sometimes. Look up the ruling against Billy’s Cartoon Network lawsuit as an example. So this should be judged in that context. However, after one reads the whole ruling, this does stand out a little. Mr. Barlow, who told you Billy’s business is “very successful”? And why is this pertinent?
[24] Barlow acknowledges that Walter Day “clearly became a good friend” of Billy’s. No mention that Day was also a business partner of Billy’s on many occasions, including during Billy’s ownership of the Twin Galaxies arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa.
[25] Barlow says Billy became famous due to his “skill and success in obtaining high scores”. I feel like one or two details may have been left out here.
–[26]– This is confusing. So Billy “said that virtually all of his scores” were obtained at TG events, but his “subsequent world records” were obtained away from prying eyes? My dude, you’re so close to understanding. It’s adorable. I know, the video game cheating is more important to me and probably you than serious court stuff – although, legally, the way Billy went about that cheating does constitute outright fraud. But what is important is that Billy Mitchell lies all the time about everything. And people have this weird way of stumbling upon such lies and going “Well, that was weird, but it probably doesn’t mean anything”. (Like I said: gullible.) Also, Barlow sounds a bit dismissive at the end. “Oh, everyone sends in tapes, but it seems it’s controversial when Billy does it.” Yes, and the reason it “seems” that way is because Billy used that method to commit fraud.
[27] Barlow includes a passage from a 2015 article fluffing up Billy’s historical recognitions in Guinness. I’m not gonna relitigate it all here, but a bunch of that passage is incorrect. I spelled it out back in “Dot Five”.
–[28]– Hey, listen, I’m here to be a fair fact-checker and tell you the truth. In this passage, Barlow actually undercuts Billy’s portfolio. No, I mean it. 100% sincerely. Barlow talks about the movies Billy’s been in, saying “they all appear to be related to video and arcade games”. But he left out Billy’s appearance in a 2019 fiction film called The Fiddling Horse”, where Billy played a horse racing promoter or some shit. I don’t know, I haven’t seen more than a clip of the movie. But I know it has nothing to do with video games.
Remember, the fact that I’m always pointing out Billy’s lies isn’t a vendetta, or the result of some extreme bias. It’s because Billy Mitchell lies all the fucking time, and the people forced to deal with him are at least trying to be reasonable. If Billy told the truth more, or if facts benefitted Billy’s case, I would simply report that instead of his falsehoods.
Meanwhile, in that same passage, Barlow discusses “King of Kong”. He says of the movie:
It appears to be a documentary, but one might more accurately describe it as a “docu-drama:”
But that’s just not true. It’s literally a documentary. It just is a documentary. There is nothing not-documentary about it – and that includes its few factual errors and omissions. Sure, it’s more socially outlandish than a nature flick, and more entertaining than like C-Span or something. But it strictly is not fictionalized, nor does it stand out in that regard compared to any other popular documentary you’d see in national theaters. Billy wants you to think it’s a, dramatic air quotes, “docu-drama” to plant the idea in your head that he isn’t really as ridiculous as the actual, genuine events seen in the movie made him out to be. Barlow, who later acknowledges having watched the film (see [357]), says “some of the scenes appear to be very staged rather than spontaneous”, without giving examples. And worse, Barlow says “Mitchell confirmed [this] was the case”. Holy shit, dude! Get another source.
Oh, but it gets worse. It turns out, HE DID GET ANOTHER SOURCE. If you scroll down, you’ll find Barlow’s footnote 19, which clarifies that Billy’s friend “Triforce” also testified that the movie was a docudrama. Except… Triforce was literally never present for any of the filming. It is accurate that Triforce described the movie as a docudrama, and it’s true that none of this shit really matters, but I feel like citing that in that way in a court ruling is skirting rather close to hearsay. (Though to be fair, it may be incumbent on the opposition to dispute that testimony as hearsay as it happens.)
Also, minor note, Barlow uses “docu-drama” both with and without the hyphen. I don’t care which one you do, man, just pick one. Cuz now I gotta use both in quoting you.
[32] This passage refers to the original MAME evidence presentation, published by Jeremy Young a.k.a. “xelnia” on Feb. 2, 2018. Just so everyone knows, Barlow makes clear he did not read that presentation, or anything from the dispute thread. I’m not saying he needed to. Typically, there are court rules regarding the consideration of outside evidence. I just find this noteworthy, both to frame his remarks, and to highlight the times he does seek outside sources.
[33] I just want to clarify something folks may have missed, which I did at first. Here, Barlow quotes from the California Court of Appeals ruling on TG’s anti-SLAPP motion. Upon seeing this, I was skeptical whether this was formally entered into evidence. In other words, was this more “external research” Barlow conducted on his own? At first glance, the footnote appears to cite the case directly. However, if you look closely, the citation begins with “TB[26]”, which refers to the “Trial Bundle” (either item 26 or page 26). So yes, this was formally entered by someone.
–[38]– lol Oh, Kenny.
Let’s go back to the vault, shall we?
That’s from an exhibit attached to a June 2020 declaration from Billy Mitchell, in the big Twin Galaxies litigation. Billy claimed “Convention Appearance Losses” from no fewer than FOURTEEN events, attributable directly toward TG’s statement about his Donkey Kong scores.
Here he says the number was one. In the other lawsuit, it was FOURTEEN. That is a 1400% discrepancy.
And that’s only counting 2018. Billy claimed “Convention Appearance Losses” from ELEVEN more events in 2019, still over a year prior to Karl’s video.
And Barlow knows all about this.
How do I know that?
Because I included all this in “Day 2”, when Karl’s barrister asked Billy about these very lists, showing them as exhibits during his questioning. Which means the lists were definitely tendered into evidence.
Believe it or not, this item somehow gets even more ridiculous and insane when Barlow calls back to it again later. But you’ll just have to wait until we get to [194] for that.
[39] Billy did stream on Twitch, and after a couple years he did eventually surpass even his highest cheated Donkey Kong score. But Billy’s characterization of having done this “more than 20 times” is laughably overblown. Billy may have weasel worded his claim to include his so-called “beyond perfect” Pac-Man re-release scores, even though Barlow interpreted it as relating strictly to DK. But I don’t think Billy’s done twenty of those, either. I would give you an exact figure of all such scores, but I don’t have every last one of Billy’s streams, which he often insta-deletes. Hey, he might sue me if I got the figure wrong. And besides, maybe he marathoned all these twenty scores offline, in private, with only his dad as a witness, like with his beloved Centipede “world record” that definitely for sure really happened.
[48] This is exactly how Billy would frame these events. It’s not that any specific item is particularly incorrect in a factual sense. (I would point out that Billy’s records were most certainly not “reinstated” to the competitive leaderboards they once occupied, but the public settlement statement does use the word “reinstate”, certainly as a settlement concession.) However, this summary would give an uninformed reader the entirely wrong impression. Also, just to be clear, this “expert opinion” is the one from professional creepo Michael Zyda, and as has been explained, was not worth the figurative paper it was written on. Lastly, it should be noted that even if that opinion were accepted, a “malfunctioning” “degraded” machine would still have justified everything Twin Galaxies had said about Billy’s scores. But we know there was no such “malfunction”. Billy just lied and cheated. It’s that simple.
[49] Here Barlow does note that Billy’s scores weren’t reinstated to the regular leaderboard. However, he also writes that “Mr Mitchell said” TG didn’t previously have a “historical database”, suggesting it was created for his score reinstatement. And that’s not correct.
[50] Using “Mr Mitchell said”, Barlow repeats Billy’s story that he only filed a separate lawsuit against TG in Florida to “preserve a limitation period” in that state, since he didn’t know if California would accept jurisdiction of his main lawsuit. However, this makes no sense. Yes, TG was technically a Florida entity at the time, but they had an established business presence in California, TG had offices in California, and the CA suit was filed within the one-year statute of limitations for defamation. (In Florida, it’s two years.) There wasn’t any legitimate question about jurisdiction. Also, you’re not really supposed to file the same complaint for the same alleged grievance in multiple venues at the same time. Most likely, Billy either wanted a backup plan if the CA suit got insta-tossed, or possibly wanted to use the alternate suit as leverage or for other lawyerly purposes (like with discovery).
Billy’s story also doesn’t jive with his personal efforts to keep the Florida suit going long after the California court had already denied TG’s anti-SLAPP motion in California. Do you remember the bit where Billy was pleading with the magnificently bowtied Judge Keathan Frink (an actual good judge who didn’t let Billy manipulate him)? That’s the case we’re talking about.
Billy Mitchell just lies about everything.
–[53]– So this is apparently something I missed in my “Day 3” write-up. I’m accepting Barlow’s representation of the testimony here, because he has the actual transcripts. The above passage relates to Billy’s lawsuit against Jeremy Young, the late Jeff Harrist, and Donkey Kong Forum. Billy has previously tried to say that lawsuit was just about “preserving evidence” (or words to that effect), which was always a dubious claim for a few reasons. But now, he has a whole different story? Billy “decided to proceed in California”… even though no suit against the DKF folks was ever pursued in CA? His voluntary withdrawal in Florida even said he wished to retain the right to refile “in another jurisdiction such as Alaska” (Harrist’s home state). And Barlow kinda notes that this doesn’t line up with the evidence. But oh well, I must’ve misunderstood I guess lol.
[55] This one’s about Billy’s Guinness reinstatement. Barlow noted that Billy “did not appear to accept that the threat of litigation was Guinness World Records’ reason for reinstating the scores.” Yeah, no shit. Billy doesn’t “appear to accept” a lot of things.
[59] There are corrections to be made here, regarding Billy’s lawsuit against David Race. But I’m like 70% of the way into a big multi-part write-up covering that suit cover-to-cover, so I’ll just leave this note for now.
–[61]– More on the David Race lawsuit. What’s important here are the citations. Here’s footnote 41:
Race v Mitchell, 357 So 3d 720 (2023).
Other citation references to the David Race lawsuit refer to an “Exhibit” number, or like “TB[14]” indicating its location in the trial bundle. This Florida 4DCA ruling doesn’t have anything like that. It’s just cited directly, by name. And in case you think I’m somehow misinterpreting the citation, later in this same passage, Barlow then cites the Supreme Court of Florida ruling, where they tossed Billy’s lawsuit out altogether. That was in November 2024, so that definitely wasn’t part of trial evidence in September and October.
It appears Barlow just plucked these from the Florida court websites. Honestly, I don’t object to that. Hell, I wish he’d done that a lot more with Billy’s bullshit lawsuits. This just makes the times Barlow chose not to do this stand out.
[63] This comes with a footnote 44 indicating his descriptions of Billy’s lawsuit against Apollo come from the filing itself, as it was entered into evidence. (This becomes important later.) Meanwhile, this may be nitpicky, but Barlow’s review of outside evidence did not extend to Apollo Legend’s video on Billy titled “The World’s Most Infamous Donkey Kong Player Caught Cheating”. Would that have been relevant for him to see? Would it have established backstory behind Billy’s relationship with Apollo? I’ll let you decide. Obviously, Karl’s team did not have it entered. Instead, Barlow acknowledges Billy’s characterization of the video.
[64] More second-hand accounts of other Apollo videos on Billy. Again, outside research seems to have not extended here. It is fair to note that these videos are no longer at their original location, and Barlow may be wise not to trust random reuploads, lol. But Barlow could have acknowledged “I’m literally unable to review them”, and did not, so I interpret it as a choice not to try.
–[65]– That’s one of those “technically true if you look at it from a very selective angle” untruths. The amount Billy sought was not listed in the “claim”, meaning the proper complaint as filed. But that claim was filed with a cover sheet, which is publicly accessible, and which identified that Billy was seeking $1,000,000. Note that, per my “Day 1” summary, I don’t believe Billy was asked about this in testimony. Footnote 44 suggests Barlow got it himself from the claim, which was included in the trial bundle.
Hilariously, in the very next item [66], Barlow says Apollo published a video titled “Angry Cheater Sues Me for $1,000,000”. And yet Barlow doesn’t go “Wait wait, is there something Billy didn’t tell me?” I guess it depends on how you parse the last sentence of [65]. Was it “The amount of damages Billy sought was not stated in the claim”? Or was it “The amount of damages, Billy told me, was not stated in the claim”? With the lack of commas, it’s probably the former?
FWIW, Barlow’s list of Apollo’s videos on Billy did not include two titled “Billy Mitchell Will Be Sued” (May 2020) and “Guinness World Records Endorses Fake Scores” (June 2020), nor a few videos from his alternative “Apollo Live” channel. I believe that these were not included in the settlement handover, which explains why Barlow would not know about them. (Which also means Billy doesn’t own them!)
[67] Barlow discusses the terms of the Apollo settlement. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe the settlement has ever been published, so this is the first public confirmation of the terms. Everything looks accurate to my knowledge, including that Apollo would owe Billy $25,000 for each breach of the settlement, which would’ve included saying anything disparaging about Billy (with “disparaging” no doubt being defined as broadly as possible). Barlow also identifies six as the total number of videos Apollo handed over to Billy. And hey, look at that! In my notes, all the way back in 2020, I had identified six videos as part of the settlement, based on variant YouTube error messages. Guess I know what I’m doing after all. (For those who need to know, they are the six videos listed by Barlow in [63] [64] and [66].)
[70] Not sure Barlow knows how YouTube comments work. Karl’s reply to Apollo’s settlement statement isn’t “the first comment recorded”. It’s just the highest upvoted. In fact, checking in as I write this, someone else’s reply from one year ago saying “You can rest easy knowing that Billy has lost” has now floated to the top.
–[71] [72]– Here, Barlow circles back to the argument he made back in [14], that Apollo Legend didn’t explicitly name Billy in either his “final video” or the accompanying video description. Barlow makes a point to say that Apollo did name two other YouTubers in what was effectively his suicide note, but I won’t repeat their names here because I consider them blameless and frankly that was a shitty thing for Apollo to do. (If you’re just coming here to magnify the shitty thing in the comments, you may instead kindly not.)
Whereas before it was a passing reference, this time Barlow makes his case quite clear:
One might think he is identifying the people using those monikers as having in some way contributed to his decision to commit suicide. Again, he did not mention Mr Mitchell, nor any consequences of their settlement.
But again, as I laid out in response to [14], had Apollo named Billy, Billy could have easily filed a claim against his estate for $25,000. Apollo made clear in his video how important it was for him not to burden his family financially. So there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for why Billy was not named – and as I said earlier, Barlow knows this. He just chose not to add that clarification.
Now to be fair, it’s not as though there isn’t any merit to Barlow’s point. He’s saying, as a matter of public discourse, Apollo himself didn’t introduce the “Billy’s responsible” narrative, which Billy is (falsely) attempting to attribute to Jobst. So I get that. But honestly, much of this document reads as though Barlow is specifically trying to craft a narrative that incites public ire at Karl Jobst. (Barlow discusses the need for judgment publicity later in [464], so public reaction was definitely a consideration on his mind.) And in that light, this passage reads as though Barlow is trying to infer that it would be unreasonable for anyone to make that connection without Karl’s later input. Selective facts are presented to suggest Apollo held Billy blameless, which we don’t know, and honestly feels absurd on its face. But the fact Apollo didn’t mention Billy in his last moments has been a popular talking point among the “Billy did nothing wrong” crowd, who it seems felt very catered to by this ruling.
–[74] [75]– Here we get Barlow’s hatefic imagination of who Karl is. Karl lacks “any concept of tact or diplomacy”. He’s “very hard to dissuade from a view (whether an opinion or as to the existence of a fact) once he had formed it”. (Despite Karl literally issuing a retraction in this very matter.) He “has a self-aggrandizing and perhaps self-protective tendency not to admit error and not to back down once he has taken a stance”.
And what are the examples Barlow gives?
Let’s see…
Karl once said “I will never back down”. (Well, I guess Tom Petty and Johnny Cash are fucked.)
And Barlow’s other demonstration of Karl refusing to admit error? Here’s Culpable Kenny in his own words:
He also demonstrated that trait in his videos about Mr Mitchell, continually calling him a cheat and asserting that his legal proceedings against others (and against Mr Jobst, in this proceeding) were frivolous, bullying and bound to be lost by Mr Mitchell.
LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ARE YOU SHITTING ME!?!?
And wait, I thought this lawsuit wasn’t “about cheating allegations”? kappa
Notice that Barlow doesn’t even really dispute these claims factually. He’s just like “Yeah, but you saying it is the problem.”
And before you say “Well, technically, this lawsuit wasn’t ‘bound to be lost’ by Billy”, it should have if Karl hadn’t drawn the most gullible man alive as his judge. At any rate, it feels a bit circular when it’s coming from the very guy who handed Billy the win, don’t it?
As a quick aside, someone from the “Karl misled everyone” circlejerk told me the judge specifically ruled that Karl misled his audience about the nature of the lawsuit. This does seem a bit silly on its face, as that wasn’t something the judge was being asked to decide, unlike the alleged imputations and such. Anyway, I was never given a source. This last passage of [75] was the closest I could find, and Barlow is clearly not saying that. I don’t think the person I spoke to was lying (as opposed to misinformed), but certainly whoever came up with that story was full of crap.
Anyway, getting back to Barlow’s fantasy, he says of Karl: “These character traits are clear in his videos”. And yet, in the very next passage, Barlow’s like “Herpaderp, haven’t actually seen hardly any of these other videos I’m judging Karl on”. Yeah, thanks for the input, jackass.
[76] Barlow seems very confused here. He says Karl didn’t produce any YouTube videos on Billy “until late 2019”. But then later he notes that Karl’s first such video was in June 2020? (And for the record, that first video was actually July 2020.) Don’t tell me he’s using Billy’s roadmap again. Also, per footnote 51, Barlow still doesn’t understand YouTube (specifically thumbnails).
[77] Barlow is correct about something here, which I’ll highlight. Karl’s later videos on Billy weren’t just about him cheating; they were about Billy’s lawsuits (mostly the ones in the U.S.). Yes, those lawsuits related to cheating – i.e., the red joystick. But I would say it was fair reporting on Billy’s depositions, and new evidence in those proceedings, and other such current events.
–[87]– Okay, this one honestly is pretty outrageous, if not procedurally then at least as a matter of public perception. To be clear, there was much more evidence for a financial settlement than “a post on Reddit”, as I’ve outlined elsewhere.
I will readily grant that, by rule, Barlow is not in a position to take that other evidence into consideration. And I explained why that is back during “Day 4”. (In short, the evidence relates to a line of argument Karl’s lawyers didn’t properly plead heading into trial, which was their error.) However, given that exchange, it also demonstrates that, right away Barlow should have some idea there was more evidence.
Given Barlow’s consideration elsewhere for acknowledging what evidence he does or does not have access to, or what he hasn’t seen, or what’s disallowed from consideration, it’s frankly irresponsible for him to represent to the public, to you readers at home, by way of this ruling, “This was the extent of Karl’s evidence of a settlement”, when they tried to broach the subject at trial and he shot them down. I will acknowledge that Barlow doesn’t literally say “This Reddit comment was Karl’s only piece of evidence”. But Barlow presents it as such, both here and later in [506], and that’s how many folks have read this passage (even some unnamed folks I’ve spoken to who should know better). Unlike the trolls currently trying to accuse Karl of “lying by omission” by not discussing his ongoing lawsuit, this really is a massive lie of omission on the part of Barlow.
This passage is bad enough on its face. But it gets even worse when paired with the later passage [98]. That one features an email, where Karl posits to Apollo’s brother:
I was hoping you wouldn’t mind confirming something from me. In the video I mentioned that as part of Ben’s settlement with Billy he was required to pay money. I received this information from a few sources but not from Ben directly.
“A few sources”, huh?
So Ken Barlow can’t even hide behind the “I didn’t know anything about it” excuse. The guy who said “You’re not allowed to argue this, so shut up and don’t tell me any more evidence,” turns around and effectively tells you, the public, “There was no more evidence”, when HE FUCKING KNOWS THAT WAS NOT TRUE.
And sure, if you comb through the over-100-page ruling, you’ll find Karl’s reference to “a few sources” somewhere, but of course you won’t see that acknowledged in Barlow’s print soundbites at passages [87] and [506].
Instead, what you do get is the following footnote, which doesn’t help:
Again, shocking failure on the part of Karl’s lawyers. (No wonder Karl doesn’t like lawyers!) But that aside, Barlow doesn’t understand that a Twitter DM is not a Reddit post. He doesn’t have any clue the nature of the evidence he’s discussing, but he’s comfortable conveying to you that it must not exist.
Worth noting also is that, in this Australian bench trial, the judge can just ask their own questions of the witnesses directly. And Barlow did exactly that, about the Reddit comment, as I described back in “Day 5”:
Getting back to the proceeding, at this point Judge called back to Karl’s earlier reference to a Reddit post, asking if he considered Reddit a reliable source of information. Karl said it depends on the circumstances, explaining that Reddit is not really a “source” but rather a place for people to post information from all sorts of sources.
Given the other questions Barlow freely asked of witnesses, unprompted by either barrister’s lines of interrogation, I don’t think he would have been out of order to ask Karl for a minor clarification on this point. For example, “Mr Jobst, it’s been said here that you made the claim of a financial settlement with a Reddit comment as your only source. Now, I’m not looking to weigh the credibility of any sources you may have had, but for my own curiosity, I just want to put this to you directly: Did you have other sources for that claim, or was it just limited to that single Reddit comment?” And Karl could have answered this narrow question with the benefit of being under oath. But that would have required Barlow to actually want to know the truth, and now that we have this lengthy written opinion of his laid bare, I’m not convinced he hadn’t made up his mind well before Karl ever took the stand.
If Barlow had just added a clarification, saying “There may have been more evidence, but it could not be entered due to blah blah procedure”, my note would just be “Here’s a link to those sources”. Because then [87] would be self-explanatory. People would see it and go “Okay, there’s stuff involved that isn’t all acknowledged here.” But now, I gotta deal with buttheads spreading the word that Karl was gullible enough to accuse Billy Mitchell of something serious based solely on a random Reddit comment, and as with the Guinness “reinstatement” of Billy back in 2020, the idiots get to tell me “Hurr durr teh judge said so, you think you know more than teh judge?” (Apparently, I do!)
And that’s what’s shocking to me. It is as if Judge Kenneth Barlow went out of his way to defame Karl as reckless with the truth in this irresponsibly crafted ruling. There are themes of this throughout the written judgment, but this example especially stands out.
On a strictly personal and perhaps amusing note, I have never spelled my handle “Ersatz Katz” lol. Was that Barlow’s doing? Or the stenographer who typed the testimony Barlow is sourcing? It’s literally just two actual English words. The term has a plain dictionary meaning: Things pretending to be cats. How hard can this be? Does he think my bald head means I’m trying to cosplay as Dr. Katz? Or do they imagine the Internet as a place where everything is spelled as convolutedly as possible? Maybe I should get with the times and change my handle to “Uerpszatce Qathzueue”.
[88] Barlow doesn’t know how Reddit works, either. Billy, who says every comment is explicitly labeled “anonymous”, may or may not know that’s untrue.
[91] Look, Imma be real with you. I do not believe for one second Billy and Junior would have gone to all the trouble of making their response video and then not posting it. Their video only helped amplify and preserve the claim of a financial settlement, as it amplified and preserved an implication of the settlement (financial or otherwise) being connected to Apollo’s suicide. I have no doubt Billy and son were trying to fan the flames, and are lying to cover this motivation. But of course, Barlow doesn’t see it that way, and frames Junior’s testimony favorably.
One thing of note here is Junior’s timeline of events. According to him, early in the morning of June 4th (Florida time), he checked and saw the “offending words” were still in the video. Karl claimed in testimony that he removed them on June 4th, Australian time. This doesn’t mean anyone is incorrect. While Austalia is usually a day ahead of the United States, there is a window when it’s the same calendar day in both Florida and Brisbane.
[92] We’ll get into the “vendetta” stuff later, but I love (not really) how Barlow spells out Billy’s dramatic “expect me” threat, and is just like “Hm, this is fine, certainly nothing to read into.”
[93] Billy’s response video was, in fact, taken down at some point. I can’t say for sure exactly when.
[94] This is a factual recounting of how Karl handled initially being told by Keemstar the claim may be false. In fairness, I should note that Barlow cites Karl’s testimony here as true, without scrutiny or qualification. One obvious reason why it’s fair to do that for Karl and not for Billy is because Karl tells the truth, and Billy can be shown to have lied a bunch. It is also possible this characterization is based on supplied evidence like direct messages, but they aren’t cited in this passage.
[95] This one’s for the super-curious. In the process of his back-and-forth with Billy, Karl removed a segment of the “offending words” from the “Conmen” video, then restored them, then removed them again. However, the two removals were cut off at slightly different points. I still retain copies of the different edits of this video, downloaded at the time the changes were made. Given the propensity for inaccuracies in this ruling, I double-checked, and this passage does accurately reflect what was removed in the “second version”, i.e. “first edit”. It differs from the version viewable today, in that the first sentence – “I haven’t spoken about this publicly […] settling with Mitchell” – was retained in the final edit.
[97] Karl testified that he removed the “offending words” on June 4th, prior to watching Billy’s response video. This can appear to conflict with the given timeline from [91], and one may detect some skepticism from Barlow in this passage. However, this does actually line up. During his “Day 4” testimony, Karl said he didn’t bother watching Billy’s legal threat until the next day.
–[98]– Here’s where Karl messages Apollo’s brother and says the claim was based on “a few sources”. YOU DON’T SAY!?!? As I argued in response to [87], it was pretty irresponsible of Barlow to present to the world that this was all over a single Reddit comment.
Just to be clear, Barlow is walking through the timeline of events here. This email to Apollo’s brother is indeed placed in that timeline when it was sent. However, the reply came several days later.
–[101]– Barlow seems offended that Karl restored the video on June 9th, despite previously having told Keemstar he wouldn’t do so without concrete evidence. But I do think it’s fair that, when the assurance was made, Karl wasn’t expecting Billy to do a video declaring (to paraphrase) “Karl’s telling a bunch of lies about me, I have the proof in my hands that will prove everything I say, but no I won’t show you, neener neener, you just have to trust me”.
By the way, in doing so, Billy did indeed lie about the settlement. It seems I haven’t written about this aspect of the case yet, so I have nothing to link as a quick source. But in short, Billy claimed the settlement “had no long-lasting impact on [Apollo’s] life, and did not exert any impact aftewards”. In reality, Apollo did have to remove profitable videos from his channel, and was forbidden from making future videos on Billy (at least without Billy’s approval). In fact, as discussed during the trial, Apollo would be heavily penalized for disparaging Billy or his family in any way. So when Billy says “our situation was completely resolved”, and posits “That is why he didn’t say anything about me in his final moments”, Billy knows there is another key reason he’s leaving out: Apollo’s estate would’ve been liable for $25,000, and Apollo wanted to leave that money for his family.
Even setting aside what we know about the settlement now, Billy already had a notable reputation for making bogus declarations, and waving around a stack of papers claiming them as proof, before we finally discover the papers prove nothing he said. Obviously all that wasn’t part of the trial, but does Barlow really think non-contractual assurances are just universally binding? “Well, you said you’d help that guy move, doesn’t matter that he went insane and defamed you to all your friends, you went back on your word!” Yeah, no shit, because circumstances changed.
I would say, as a general rule of thumb, Billy asserting something without showing proof makes it more likely to be false than if he had said nothing. And by that logic, the claim was more believable after Billy’s video. There are all kinds of weasel words to misrepresent something, and as seen above, Billy did indeed use such words.
I get that the way people deal with Billy can seem extreme to someone who sees him as some occasionally confused but otherwise respectable businessman. Once you realize he’s a psychopath-level liar, these measures make perfect sense. And so, this does circle back around to Barlow’s inability to see when someone’s lying to his face. I mean, this guy is an actual, literal judge. This is literally his job. Does he not understand how liars work?
[105] It’s funny reading Barlow refer to “a particular type of gaming called ‘no hit'”.
[107] A lengthy transcript of the relevant part of Karl Jobst’s retraction video. Just to be sure, I checked it against the actual video, because I’m super-diligent and check that sort of thing, and not because I’m insane and need help. Anyway, the transcript was all perfect right up until the very end, when it reads “enjoy his videos” instead of the proper “enjoyed his videos”. So close.
[109] “Mr Mitchell claims that the video containing the offending words was published online on two separate occasions.” To be clear, what this means is, the original video had “the words”, then they were taken out, then that same video at that same location was restored.
[111] [112] This one’s for all the people reacting to my coverage going “Ho ho ho, you tink yur smarter tan teh judge?” I’m not “smarter”, because that’s not how intelligence works you dummy. I definitely know this case better, and I’m apparently more able to spot obvious lies. But these passages are Australian law interpretations, and given Barlow’s expertise, I accept his interpretations of this at face value. So there you go.
[116] Triforce thinks Karl’s video “blew up the Internet” and “went outside of the realm of normal gaming”. I’m not at all surprised Triforce would lie, even under oath. Somehow, if he was pressed to show a single news article about the video itself (prior to Billy’s legal threat or lawsuit), I suspect he would be unable to do so. Hey, I wonder if that makes this testimony hearsay?
–[122] [123]– Barlow discusses the proportion of overall replies to Karl’s video, and the ones pertaining to the “offending words”. First of all, if you crunch Barlow’s numbers, the relevant comments total less than 5%. For something that’s supposed to be outrageously defamatory, that’s a pretty small reaction.
Barlow also offered what he felt was an “appropriate” sample of the comments indicating defamation. But some just don’t carry the imputations Billy’s solicitors alleged. Take this for instance:
I wanted to say I respect you so much for removing the portion about Apollo’s passing. I know was hard and Billy’s video he posted was dumb. Hell, he said they reached a settlement, flashed a folded paper. Makes me think of the “Arcade Board swap” for DK and DKJr. Billy may have driven Apollo to what happened, even if money wasn’t spilled.
So this person was well aware of the available facts, including the offered correction, and still arrived at their own conclusion? Hmm, if this narrative really was about money changing hands, maybe Billy could have quelled it by simply showing the proof rather than taunting everyone that he might have it.
One comment refers to “stress” Billy piled on. That stress is acknowledged, regardless of the inaccurate statement. Billy’s own response video showed a message from Apollo saying the lawsuit was adding to his stress. One points to “billies lawsuit and harassment” being a factor in Apollo’s choice, and explains why they feel that way, but makes no allusion to a settlement or finances. This is the big shocking sample Barlow picked out for us to see as evidence of an imputation?
And of course, a bunch of replies express disgust at Billy’s texts joking about Apollo dying. One appears to make a connection between “the whole Billy Mitchell episode” and Apollo’s suicide, but emphasizes that “Billy’s reaction” was “absolutely disgraceful”. Another opines “it’s not murder” but adds “Billy’s remarks are detestable indeed”.
And that’s setting aside stuff expressing a pre-existing disgust with Billy, such as “I knew billy was a scumbag”. Gosh, it’s almost like the thing Billy claims to be so upset about, and all the actually true things he’s done and said that have harmed his reputation, are at this point inseparable.
Lastly, as someone who runs a blog and moderates replies, I would be failing you all if I didn’t point out that any of these comments, especially the ones trying a little too hard to make legally viable connections, could be from literally anyone, including Billy or his associates. I’m not saying any particular one is. I have no evidence this happened. But I doubt Mr. Barlow gave the possibility much consideration.
[125] Credit where it’s due, Barlow acknowledges Billy’s testimony that people won’t see something buried at the end of a video, and how that testimony can also apply to the “offending words” Billy was so butthurt about.
[128] The guy who doesn’t know how YouTube works thinks people would have watched the first part of the video about Billy, skipped over the stuff about Todd Rogers, and then just resumed watching the later section about Billy. Your honor, sir, I think you’ve gotta give Todd the Fraudzilla Mr. Activision himself more credit than that.
[140] Barlow discusses and cites case law to the effect that people engage in different forms of media differently. For instance, you’d read a book with more care than a newspaper, you’d digest information from something you can re-read more than you would a one-time television show, etc. The case law author also discusses how sensationalism will result in readers not expecting a high degree of accuracy. That would seem to be arguing that people wouldn’t take stuff like YouTube too seriously, right?
–[142]– Barlow cites a 2012 case to define an “ordinary reasonable person”. One part that stands out to me:
The ordinary reasonable reader considers the publication as a whole, and tends to strike a balance between the most extreme meaning that the publication could have and the most innocent meaning.
I did say I wouldn’t dispute Barlow’s interpretation of the law without reason to do so, but I think I have good reason here. I don’t believe Barlow has followed this guidance in deciding that only the most outrageous interpretation of Karl’s words was conveyed, rather than “There were a bunch of factors, including health and stress, that contributed to Apollo’s choice to take his own life months after his settlement with Billy.”
As I’ve said before, at the time, people weren’t jarred by any connection Karl made. They were shocked by Billy’s texts joking about Apollo. That was how people were connecting Billy’s lawsuit against Apollo to Apollo’s death, and that connection was based on elements that were not inaccurate.
[143] Same deal, quoting from a different case:
He can read in an imputation more readily than a lawyer and may indulge in a certain amount of loose thinking, but he must be treated as being a man who is not avid for scandal and someone who does not, and should not, select one bad meaning where other non-defamatory meanings are available.
In fairness, for those not reading along with the document, the next item [144] includes a passage that can probably be summarized thusly:
[The words] can convey a meaning of suspicion short of guilt; but loose talk about suspicion can very easily convey the impression that it is a suspicion that is well founded.
–[146]– Barlow continues defining a “reasonable viewer”, citing a judge opinion from 2008:
A distinction needs to be drawn between the reader’s understanding of what the newspaper is saying and the judgments or conclusion which he may reach as a result of his own beliefs and prejudices. It is one thing to say that a statement is capable of bearing an imputation defamatory of the plaintiff because the ordinary reasonable reader would understand it in that sense, drawing on his own knowledge and experience of human affairs in order to reach that result. It is quite another thing to say that a statement is capable of bearing such an imputation merely because it excites in some readers a belief or prejudice from which they proceed to arrive at a conclusion unfavourable to the plaintiff. The defamatory quality of the published material is to be determined by the first, not by the second, proposition.
If I may paraphrase, I read this as: “It’s one thing for an ordinary person to view a video on someone, and think ‘This guy’s a scumbag’ based on the material and their own experiences and values. But it’s another thing for an ordinary person to view a video on someone, and think ‘Oh, I know about this guy, I already knew he’s a scumbag, and this only proves it’. As a matter of law, we should be focusing on the former, not the latter.”
The latter approach definitely favors Karl’s position, however I think the former reads in Karl’s favor as well.
Before I continue, I’m aware not everyone shares my view on the “offending words”, and that’s okay. You can adjust my analysis according to how you perceive the actual words Karl said. But I do ask you to base your conclusion on the words themselves, as seen in passage [15], and not strictly on how others like Billy (and some unaffiliated ragebaiters) choose to frame those words. If I told you Jeff and Steve went out boating, and they were reckless, and Steve died as a result, I’m not saying Jeff murdered Steve. And if you went around telling everyone I called Jeff a murderer, that would make you an asshole who puts words in my mouth.
Getting back to the “offending words” from Karl’s video, the particular alleged imputation is heinous. But a reasonable person, ignorant of Billy Mitchell’s background, is unlikely to jump to that imputation without that foundation. Unfamiliar with the person, they’d be inclined to stop and say “Wait, the suicide happened four months later? Did something else happen to the kid in the meantime? Is it possible lawsuit guy didn’t know this would be the outcome, and it was just an unfortunate series of events?” The words mean nothing without the background, and the especially more heinous imputation relating to Billy mocking reports of Apollo’s death, which suggest intent and satisfaction, and which did not involve a factual inaccuracy.
Barlow frames the aforementioned quote with his own opinion:
Furthermore, the reasonable viewer is not someone who already has some prejudice against the plaintiff that is confirmed by the offending words, or in whom some prejudice against the plaintiff derives from the words and leads to a conclusion unfavorable to him.
So I guess it was Barlow’s job to discern how the publication influenced the segment of the population who watches Karl’s videos but who didn’t already dislike Billy Mitchell? Do those people exist? Well, I guess this means you should toss the “I knew Billy was a scumbag” replies out of your sample from [123] at least.
–[147]– Barlow writes:
It became apparent to me during the trial that many members of the online gaming and YouTube “communities” are not people whom the majority of society would consider to be “reasonable”, at least in their manners of expression and their willingness to insult, belittle and verbally attack other people in online forums (usually anonymously).
LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Nice try, Kenny. Nice try. It’s like he knew this was coming.
I haven’t wanted to play the “Boomer” card with Barlow, but I do think there’s a generational thing here. Granted, I’m late Gen-X (born ’78), which technically makes me the same defined generation as Billy Mitchell (born ’65), but I spend most of my time interacting with Millenials and Zoomers, and I operate in that culture. This isn’t about “online gaming and YouTube”, which Barlow finds peculiar. It’s about how younger people engage with media. They don’t watch my parents’ style of news anchors, like Peter Jennings or Tom Brokaw. They watch Jon Stewart and John Oliver, and they do it because (as they see it) those hosts tell it like it is, and aren’t afraid to clown on some fools. Young people today don’t get political commentary from Meet the Press, they get it from South Park. And while the comedic element is certainly a factor, it’s not the only one. There is media saturation out there. People today are only gonna keep reading or watching you if you’re compelling. As someone advised me when I began writing two decades ago, you should infuse your work either with humor or, as they put it, “ginsu-sharp logic”. And Barlow obviously doesn’t share those tastes, so he doesn’t understand. This is equivalent to him strolling into a given borough of London and coming to a judgmental conclusion about the local culture because the people there insult each other all the time.
This train of thought doesn’t necessarily relate to the “offending words” or how they’re interpreted, but I do think it absolutely relates to Karl’s broader coverage of Billy Mitchell, and what appears to be Barlow’s displeasure and disdain for that coverage. As I’ve said many times, had Billy Mitchell promptly apologized for the things he got caught having done (cheating at Donkey Kong, lying for years, accusing innocent people of trying to frame him, etc.), very few would be mocking him today, and there would be no reason to make all these videos documenting his quest to silence criticism through the court. Karl and his viewers aren’t unfair to pile on Billy. That’s how dishonest figures like Billy are held accountable in the modern media age. We can’t physically stop Billy Mitchell from lying, but we can sure as hell roast his ass for it. As I said in the introduction, journalism is the truth’s last line of defense. And whether Boomers like it or not, this is what functional journalism looks like today.
As for Barlow himself, if he didn’t want me to say these things about him, he should not have allowed himself to act like such a dumbass.
[155] Here we start to get into the foundation for Barlow’s legal conclusions. Obviously, I disagree with his overall interpretation of the case, although that by itself doesn’t make him wrong or gullible. And as acknowledged, he’s the expert on Australian defamation law, and I’m just some tosser trying to make sense of what he’s saying.
However, as Barlow begins dissecting the “offending words” and what they mean, I would point out a significant misattribution.
This was a message from Apollo, to Billy’s friend Triforce. Apollo was discussing the raised stress he had encountered from the lawsuit, even before a settlement was reached. So, as documented, that stress existed independent of any claims of a cash payout, or debt, or additional work. And while a claim of “debt” can now be stricken given knowledge that there was no payout, “additional work” is still a fair inference, given (per testimony) YouTube was Apollo’s only source of revenue. And what do you know, Karl made sure to point out Apollo was unable to work. (Karl did not substantiate that claim in the video. I didn’t know Apollo well enough to say, but I did hear rumors to that effect. But since it’s asserted as part of the “offending words”, it needs to be considered when analyzing those words, even if that claim also turned out to be untrue.) And so, per Apollo’s own words, the inference of “stress” is hardly unfair.
Also, while Karl’s video didn’t make a reference to the community humiliation Apollo forced himself to endure to resolve Billy’s lawsuit, that’s certainly a factor we would be reasonable to consider as adding to that “stress”. At any rate, per today’s theme, Barlow dismisses this evidence without acknowledgment, and adopts the framing most favorable to Billy.
In this light, I think another perspective should be considered. It is simply a fact that Apollo took his own life in December 2020, about five months after settling a potentially life-altering lawsuit. One can speculate reasons, but those facts remain. And Apollo’s “goodbye” video gives no indication of mental illness or lack of lucidity. Thus, if one wanted to conclude the reason was totally independent of the settlement itself, or of Billy Mitchell’s conduct – which is absolutely one’s right – the only other available indications would be stress, humiliation, and financial ruin, two of which were specifically noted by Jobst. Are those not to be considered “major contributing factors” or whatever? Is it “defamation” for Karl to not note the role humiliation may have played in Apollo’s choice (as if some viewers wouldn’t then attribute that humiliation to Billy’s actions anyway)? Should Karl have listed each potential contributor, equally, and made clear that the cause could have been any combination of one or multiple of those?
I still contend that very few watching Karl’s video, who did not already carry the “Billy killed Apollo” viewpoint (based on very public knowledge of the lawsuit and settlement), would not have newly jumped to that conclusion based on the video without the added context of Billy Mitchell expressing joy at the notion of Apollo’s death. And the problem is, those texts from Billy factually exist, so it’s hard to argue that they’re “defamatory” (in an illegal sense). And we’ll get to those texts below. But again, none of this seems to be considered, and Barlow fully bought into Billy’s framing of events.
[156] Barlow continues discussing the second alleged imputation – that the supposed financial settlement with Billy was “a major contributing factor” to Apollo’s suicide. Here, Barlow discusses the replies to Karl’s video, and how they could potentially be used to evaluate Billy’s claim. I discussed the small sample we were given in [123], and how they don’t seem to represent what Billy’s barrister and Barlow are arguing. (Later, in [387] and [388], we’ll see similar treatment of replies to a video by MoistCr1tiKaL, hereafter “Charlie”.) Also, as I discuss later in [208], people were already attributing Apollo’s death to Billy well before Karl’s video, but Karl’s lawyers failed to argue this point. However, all of that said, as illustrated in [161] and [162], Billy’s barrister argues that the judge shouldn’t rely on those comments to evaluate whether the video carries the second alleged imputation, but should make that assessment of Karl’s language on his own. And Barlow agrees.
[163] [164] This may be nitpicky, but I feel like Barlow kinda gives himself away a bit here. “[T]he settlement between Mr Mitchell and Apollo Legend was a significant contributing factor”. Okay? What if it was? Again, the error isn’t that there was a settlement, or that it may have played a part. The only error on Karl’s part was that the settlement included money. Again, it seems like Barlow lost sight of this, and just accepted Billy’s framing that any connection between the settlement and the suicide, however factually based it may be, unfairly makes him look bad.
–[165]– I found this shocking to read. Billy’s barrister apparently didn’t even try to argue the third imputation (that Billy “hounded Apollo Legend to death”). So, as a matter of legal procedure, should that point not be considered conceded? And yet… Barlow just went ahead and accepted that imputation on its face anyway?
How long was it again, after the settlement, that Apollo took his own life? Four months? Did Karl allege Billy of anything during that span?
Indeed, in [167], Barlow spells out the facts alleged, and admits none of these elements described in the video portray Billy as having “hounded” Apollo to death. But then at the end, he basically goes “lulz Whatever, Karl suggested the settlement led to the suicide, so that’s close enough to ‘hounding to death’ to me”. (Normally I’d assume readers would understand that to be a paraphrase, but I guess I’ll be extra careful and make that clear.) And these same gymnastics are repeated in [168] and [169].
And to be clear once again, Billy literally did hound Apollo, at least by his own admission. He claimed in his lawsuit against Apollo to have hired a private investigator to track down his real name. (And remember, Barlow acknowledged having considered that very document back in footnote 44 accompanying passage [63].) Setting aside the monetary claim, given this demonstrated “hounding”, and Billy’s expression of satisfaction at hearing Apollo had died, a reasonable person could – emphasis could – infer that Billy intended to hound Apollo into silence, and didn’t care if that silence constituted death. All based on facts. Thus, this “third imputation” is hardly defamatory, which could be why Billy’s own barrister didn’t really bother arguing it. Lucky for them, Bungleboy Barlow was willing to carry that torch alone.
–[171] [172]– These brief passages seem a bit tenuous. I’d say the key passage is this:
If I had not found that the second and third imputations arose, this imputation would nevertheless arise from the video.
This is basically saying “Even if I’d found that Karl did not say a payout was a major contributing factor to Apollo’s suicide, and even if I’d found that Karl did not accuse Billy of hounding Apollo to death, I would still have found that Karl said Billy’s conduct was a cause or contributing factor to Apollo’s suicide.”
So Barlow thinks, even if Karl got nothing factually wrong, it would’ve been defamatory (as you may understand the term) for Karl to say that Billy sued Apollo, that the lawsuit was frivolous, that it added to Apollo’s stress, and that Billy joked about Apollo’s death, without expressing specific conclusions, because… Why? Because some people might walk away thinking Billy Mitchell is a bad person?
I wasn’t going to put this as an important item with special brackets, but this is actually just insane. Does Billy have to literally admit “Mwa ha ha, I sue my critics hoping they kill themselves”!? And if he did, if one followed Barlow’s logic of inferences, one might think it would still be defamatory (in an actionable sense) to report that in a way Billy himself doesn’t approve. Is there, like some explicit legal framework I’m unaware of where a person is so awful and so despicable that you’re not allowed to talk about them at all?
–[176] [177] [178]– So these relate to the question of whether the claim of a monetary settlement was “defamatory”. This is entirely setting aside other outcomes, such as Apollo’s death. Simply, is it “defamatory” to report that Apollo had to pay Billy a bunch of money to settle the lawsuit? Honestly, this point could be one of the most important ones in the entire document, as it relates to Karl’s only strict inaccuracy.
Here’s Barlow, in his own words:
Man, I got really worked up over this one on my first pass – so much so that I’d be embarrassed to show you what I originally wrote, lol. I was ready to throw some chairs around like I was the Undertaker. But it turned out, I was misinterpreting what exactly Barlow meant by “defamatory”. When I use the word, perhaps owing to my American context, I mean “damaging and untrue”. Sort of like the old saying, “It’s not defamation if it’s true”. But as you’ll see later in [320], when Barlow uses it, he means “damaging, regardless of truth”, and thus a defamation plaintiff would have to prove both “defamatory” and “untrue” uniquely.
(Before any jokers say “Ohoho, well maybe you misinterpreted everything else Barlow said”, he’s made too many fundamental errors about known evidence and shown too much outrageous bias for me to assume that. But if you believe I have interpreted any other particular language of Barlow’s incorrectly, I would like to hear your clarifications.)
Anyway, with that distinction in mind, these passages don’t read nearly so poorly, lol. It doesn’t excuse the imputational stretch Barlow made a moment ago in [171] and [172]. But yes, you can say Billy Mitchell cheated, or that he lies a lot, even if doing so hurts his fee fees. I do think Barlow is unfairly mixing imputations a bit here. Remember, Billy’s lawsuits against Apollo and others really were meritless (this judgment notwithstanding), and so melding it with the inaccuracy of a financial payout unfairly frames things against Karl. But hey, what else is new?
So…
This is where I would point you to the passage where Barlow assesses the truthfulness of these various alleged imputations.
And I would be happy to do so if he ever did offer that assessment.
I’ve looked and looked, and I don’t see it. I see lots and lots of discourse later about contextual imputations, some of which carry some overlap. But not a straight up “This alleged imputation was substantially true, this one was not,” applied directly against Billy’s claims. (And certainly not a “This alleged imputation was justified by evidence” that Barlow barred from consideration, however such a finding may factor into Australian law.)
In fact, in [421], Barlow writes that “Mr Jobst defamed Mr Mitchell” (using his definition of “defamed”), that “four of the five contextual imputations were also made and were substantially true”, and that the harm of the main imputation “outweighs his pre-existing reputation and the contextual imputations”. So the contextual imputations were weighed as “substantially true”, but whether or not the specific characterizations Billy was upset about are actually true doesn’t even make it as a bullet point.
The closest I could find was [501], which references a document I don’t have access to wherein Karl is “deemed to have admitted” certain allegations by way of not sufficiently articulating a denial. But if that were about the video’s main alleged imputations, it feels out of place in a section dedicated to “aggravated damages”. Shouldn’t that have deserved a mention here? Wouldn’t the truth of the video be something you settle prior to deciding if any damages are warranted at all?
Is this on Barlow? Is this on Karl’s lawyers for not properly arguing any truth defense? All I can say is, if you had over a hundred pages to spell out everything short of what you had for breakfast last week, I feel like “What did Karl say that was untrue” should have merited at least a passing mention.
[179] [180] Same idea, but for the perceived connection between Billy and Apollo’s suicide, and the insinuation that Billy “hounded” Apollo. When Barlow says it’s “defamatory” here, he means “It hurts Billy’s reputation, whether or not it’s true, which is a separate matter to discuss”.
[182] I wrote my first pass on the above passages thinking “Well, maybe Barlow’s just laying out legal abstractions, and the next section will deal with veracity.” But, no. Barlow moves right along to the question of how Billy’s reputation was or was not meaningfully affected.
–[184]– Hmmm, the first aspect of credibility (or “credit” as Aussies sometimes call it) is “[Is] the witness a truthful or untruthful person?”
Here, Barlow quotes a Judge Muir as saying something I feel becomes quite relevant:
I am conscious that there is some doubt of the ability of judges or anyone else to tell truth from falsehood accurately on the basis of appearances.
Muir goes on to say that conflicts or implausibilities should be resolved “by reference to the objective facts; to any contemporaneous documents; to the witnesses’ motives; and to the overall probabilities”.
So not the witnesses’ demeanor (or “demeanour”).
There are also some interesting bits about how the passage of time affects testimony. A subquoted Lord Pearce says that “contemporary documents are always of the utmost importance”. And another subquoted Judge McLelland had this to say:
Furthermore, human memory of what was said in a conversation is fallible for a variety of reasons, and ordinarily the degree of fallibility increases with the passage of time, particularly where disputes or litigation intervene, and the processes of memory are overlaid, often subconsciously, by perceptions or self-interest as well as conscious consideration of what should have been said or could have been said.
Anyway, just keep this all in mind.
[185] Another historically quoted passage on how the assessment of courtroom credibility has evolved. Reading this, and knowing how badly Barlow dropped the ball overall, I can’t help but feel these blockquotes are not here to signify deeply held guidance, but rather to cover Barlow’s ass. I will note, the passage seems to relate to witness demeanor in the courtroom in particular. So Barlow may feel entitled to assess Karl’s credibility on the basis of confidence outside the courtroom, even though the underlying message – that the credibility assessment should focus on material evidence – falls on deaf ears all the same.
[187] Barlow gives a favorable description of Billy, which reminds me of various podcasters Billy has schmoozed. To paraphrase those podcasters, “Oh, but he’s so nice, and generous, and professional. I can’t imagine why people have this irrational thing against him.” Billy charms people in useful positions into completely forgetting the six lawsuits and more legal threats, all based at least in part over how he faked evidence and lied to the gaming community for years. But Barlow at least acknowledges that Billy “has a tendency to attempt to control others”.
–[190]– Hmm, well that… certainly reads as though Barlow is assessing Billy’s credibility based on his demeanor. Oh, well. It’s probably a one-time thing.
–[192] [193]– Barlow is laughably credulous here, and apparently eager to run cover for Billy Mitchell’s obvious lie. I recall this being a shocking moment in the trial. Mr de Waard – “KB” to his friends – didn’t beat Billy over the head with the year, probably because Billy would realize he was about to be tagged in a lie (though that didn’t stop Billy from walking into the red joystick with Tash), but KB did make the year he was asking about sufficiently clear.
Let’s look at this another way. What happened was, Karl released the video in May 2021, and then six months later Billy made a paid appearance with invoice, where he made a big spectacle of playing a supposed perfect score on Pac-Man’s jumper revision. (That’s the one where he was 5,090 points short, and lied to everyone in the crowd.) Then, the following year, he dropped in with no payment just to say “Hi”.
So Billy knows full well Karl’s video didn’t affect him at Music City Multi-Con. This was supposedly during his gloom-and-doom “Everyone hates me cuz of Karl” time, but there Billy went to Tennessee and hammed it up. That’s not an issue of mixing up years. That’s a sequence of events. Billy’s just lying.
Barlow should be assessing Billy’s answer based on the posed intent of the question: Was your attendance at Music City Multi-Con affected following Karl’s video? But Barlow invents a proactive excuse about how COVID probably pushed things off a year, even though that still doesn’t make sense as an explanation of Billy’s story.
This is a common thing I’ve seen covering this Billy Mitchell situation for years. “Billy couldn’t possibly be lying that brazenly, about that many things, some of which are so obviously disprovable. So there must be some other explanation. He must have just been confused.”
As someone once said, there’s a sucker born every minute.
–[194]– Oh, Billy’s MANAGER prepared the false lists of convention losses in the Twin Galaxies lawsuit. You know, the lists we discussed way back in [38], with the 1400% discrepancy? The ones that were presented as true in the TG proceeding, but which are a little inconvenient now that Billy wants to say his woes are all due to mean ol’ Karl? lmao Glad we cleared that up.
Okay, I know it’s not a shock that Billy lied about something for the gazillionth time. But this is as much about Barlow as Billy, and so I do want to be clear on this. The two lists of “Convention Appearance Losses” from 2018 and 2019 are in evidence. They have to be, for Karl’s barrister to ask Billy about them, as he did during “Day 2”. But the lists themselves aren’t signed, so Billy could attempt to disavow any culpability. However, this would fail to acknowledge that the lists were attached to a legal declaration from Billy as “Exhibit 50”, where he presented them as true. In fact, in his own declaration text, Billy repeated the claims about specific convention losses from Classic Game Fest and Chicago Pinball Expo. Heck, don’t take my word for it. Read it for yourself. Sure, the exhibit itself carries no signature, but the declaration sourcing it is signed by Mr. Bowel Movement himself.
So was the declaration proper in evidence in this case? I can’t say for certain, but I would ask you to re-read this bit from passage [194]:
In a “declaration” made by Mr Mitchell in that proceeding, he said that he had lost income of $133,000 in 2018 and $68,000 in 2019.
That’s exactly how these claims are described in the declaration from Billy I linked:
With all events considered, I lost $133,000 in 2018. The damages continued in 2019, where I lost $68,000.
Sure seems like Barlow has that document. You’ll notice he puts the word “declaration” in quotes, which I guess means they call them something different in Australia. But it’s given a footnote that reads:
Which appears to be a similar document to an affidavit in this court.
Does Barlow even know what the hell he’s citing? Does this man have any idea what’s going on!?
I feel like I shouldn’t have to educate judges how to do their jobs, but if any are reading this, I would suggest paying attention to whether one party is just fucking lying to you, and maybe consider that this should impact that party’s credibility.
–[195]– So much for Barlow’s blockquotes in [184] about the passage of time. Now it’s “Gosh, that testimony was four years ago, you can’t really hold him to it or take it that seriously.” Let’s be clear, just because that testimony was given four years ago from now, doesn’t mean it wasn’t a fresh matter at the time.
Barlow’s position seems to be “Since Billy wasn’t sufficiently grilled about these losses when he claimed them in the TG case, it’s unfair to contrast that with his testimony now.” But this is actually just insane, especially when dealing with documented facts involving convention fees and invoices, regardless of whether those documents are entered into formal evidence in this case. Is there not an expectation that Billy give informed testimony? Does he really have a blank check to say anything he wants, any time he wants, even about demonstrable facts?
This gets more hilarious if you call back to my “Day 2” write-up. During cross-examination, Billy’s only way of reconciling these accounts was to say of the lists provided in the TG case, “It’s there, so it must have been true at the time.” What the fuck does that mean? Those were convention losses attributable to TG at the time, but now years later they’re not?
How blatantly does Billy have to lie before you go “Wait a second, I think this guy might not be trustworthy”?
[196] [197] Barlow thinks Billy’s fake phone plot doesn’t speak to Billy’s credibility. I’ll admit, it’s a bit complicated, because Billy never says “I am going to tell lies about this”. But his intent to mislead was plainly clear, and self-expressed. If that was Billy’s only blemish, then sure, you could say Honest Billy did a stupid. But surely that must weigh in on all these other incidents, no?
Oh, minor note, Barlow thinks the 1.062m score (the “Boomers” / “Big Bang” score) was the one depicted in “King of Kong”. That is not accurate.
–[199]– After illustrating an inconsistency with Billy’s deposition testimony in the TG case, Barlow writes:
It does appear that Mr Mitchell’s evidence in his deposition was wrong in that respect.
But then, as with a little child who didn’t mean to do all those bad things, Barlow runs cover again:
But again his evidence was not tested by reference to any document or otherwise.
Oh, “He didn’t prove it, he just said it, so it doesn’t count”? WTF is this!?!?
When I questioned him, he accepted that what he had said was wrong.
Sure, when backed into a corner, of course he’s going to say “The thing I asserted in the old lawsuit that’s over is the one I got wrong, and now I’m telling you the truth”.
Holy hell.
While one might take this as an indication that his evidence should perhaps be treated with some circumspection unless supported by contemporaneous documents or other evidence, on its own it is not sufficient to persuade me that he is a generally untruthful witness rather than one who occasionally makes mistakes.
HE WAS JUST CONFUSED LMAOOOOOOOOOOOO
I can just imagine Barlow and Billy on a road trip together, headed somewhere Billy the navigator doesn’t actually want to go. “Turn left! Turn right! Oh, we missed the exit. Huh, there’s supposed to be a road here that disappeared, guess we gotta backtrack to Rochester.” And the whole time Barlow’s driving all he thinks is “Wow, they didn’t make this easy to find!”
–[200] [201] [202] [203]– Barlow acknowledges that Billy attributed a number of medical conditions (atrial fibrillation, a hernia) and resultant stress to Twin Galaxies’ statements. For one thing, back when this was first reported, everyone got a good laugh at how Billy claimed being called a cheater gave him a hernia. Most likely, Billy was trying to falsely further his lawsuit against TG by attributing any condition he could even minimally justify. But of course, none of this perked Barlow’s ears, nor did Billy’s attempts to attribute that same stress to this proceeding. Barlow basically offers (to paraphrase) “Well, I could see a situation where maybe Billy wasn’t necessarily lying in either case.”
–[204] [205] [206] [207]– This was one of the most shocking moments of the trial. KB asks about the stress from the TG lawsuit, and because Billy’s trying to emphasize this lawsuit, he volunteers that the TG matter was “nothing compared to this”. Then, KB plays video from Billy’s TG deposition, where he’s asked about stress related to his case against Karl, to which Billy replied “That’s minimal compared to this.”
Any reasonable person would hear this and think “Oh, this guy might possibly be in the practice of saying whatever he thinks will get him rewards in any given moment, regardless of how true it is.” Barlow even acknowledges this argument:
I understood Mr de Waard’s submission to be that this inconsistency indicates that Mr Mitchell will say whatever he thinks he needs to say to support the case in which he is, at a particular time, giving evidence. Therefore, he cannot be considered a credible witness.
So what was Billy’s answer? Basically, “OHHHHHH, I thought you were talking about stress from GAME SCORES. OHHHHHH, if you were asking about stress from Karl and Apollo, my answer would have been exactly the opposite.”
This is like a fucking Simpsons gag. “No no, I didn’t say ‘minimal’. I said ‘minnnyouuumental‘.”
But the farce just keeps going:
I consider Mr Mitchell’s explanation in re-examination […] to be a reasonable explanation for what otherwise might have seemed to be an important inconsistency, indicative of someone who gives evidence to suit the day.
Honestly, that last part almost feels like Barlow is taunting us, like he knows he’s full of shit, and wants us to know it, too. But I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s just minyoumentally gullible.
Barlow concludes [207] by trying to stitch together Billy’s different accounts on his behalf. Embarrassing.
–[208]– Again, Barlow makes reference to historical warnings about credibility assessments based on demeanor, and yet he proceeds to do exactly the thing he insists he is not:
In considering Mr Mitchell’s credibility as a witness, obviously I take into account what he and other witnesses (and documents from the time) said. But I also take into account how Mr Mitchell gave his evidence, while conscious of the warnings about judges’ fallibility in determining truthfulness or otherwise from a witness’s demeanour. Overall I considered him to be attempting to answer questions, while sometimes becoming frustrated or emotional in the light of the questioning.
This section quotes testimony from Billy, where he talks of the alleged accusation that he “hound[ed] a young man to commit suicide”, adding that “Nobody had ever made an accusation like that at me whatsoever.” As I’ve discussed previously, that’s not true. Some people were blaming Billy for Apollo’s suicide the moment it happened, months before Karl’s video. Maybe Billy’s relying on the words “at me” as a rhetorical caveat? Like, maybe people chattering on social media aren’t “at him”? But then, is Karl’s video “at him” either? I also can’t prove at the moment Billy saw or interacted with such social media messages, but given’ Billy’s propensity for fake victimhood, I doubt his sincerity.
[209] Barlow quotes Billy’s testimony that he made his video responding to Jobst’s words because he “wanted everyone to know that it was premeditated, it was calculated and it was deliberate…” Note that Karl had actually done very few videos on Billy at that time, so it’s unlikely Billy would have had any reasonable basis for believing this about Karl. Billy just lies. He’s just a liar.
[210] Barlow quotes some Billy testimony. The crocodilest of tears. Had Billy been that concerned, he would have shared the Apollo settlement proving there was no financial payout, which would have settled the matter. Yes, it was “confidential”, but that confidentiality ended when Apollo died, and it didn’t stop Billy from blabbing about it verbally. Instead, Billy insists that people take the word of the guy who lies all the time, and frames our incredulity as bias. Because he’s a liar.
Notice also here, he’s planting the idea that Karl wanted Billy to sue him, framing his choice to pursue legal action as a regrettable last resort (as opposed to a first resort, as indicated by his others “Concerns Notices”). Billy does that, too. He’s the victim, and the people he sues are the aggressors. He’s told stories of the Cartoon Network lawsuit as if he had no choice, like the law required him to sue over a cartoon. Truly pathetic.
Normally, I don’t give regular people a hard time for falling for Billy’s lies. After all, he is an accomplished manipulator. But Barlow here… is a judge. Does he let every swindler walk into his courtroom and utterly bamboozle him? Imagine how many cases this guy must have screwed up.
[211] Barlow laps it all up like a good boy. Demeanor, demeanor, demeanor.
[212] [213] Barlow addresses arguments from Karl’s barrister that Billy was, as Barlow puts it, “mocking of the process”. Remember Billy’s response video, where he waves around a stack of papers and says things like “This cannot be ignored”, “I plan to respond the way that everybody anticipates for me to respond”, and “Expect me”? All immediately before filing a Concerns Notice? Billy was asked about that during the trial. And Barlow quotes from Billy’s testimony as follows:
He removed the words and then he put out a tweet, “Billy Mitchell says he’ll sue me for saying Apollo Legend paid him money”. I never said I would sue him for paying money. I never said I would sue him at all. I told him to expect me.
If this doesn’t fool you, congratulations, you’re less naive than at least one judge in Queensland, Australia.
–[214]– It’s insane. After going to all that length back in [184] to illustrate how a judge shouldn’t base their assessment of credibility on demeanor, Barlow describes Billy’s credibility strictly in terms of demeanor. “Well, gosh, he didn’t seem aggressive or emotional to me! He felt pretty honest.”
I’ve already drawn attention to a few times Barlow narrowed in on demeanor, and I will continue to do so because frankly it’s fun. But I do want to be clear, I’m not suggesting one should be silly enough not to observe a witness’ demeanor whatsoever. I’m just saying, a perception of confidence or truthiness should never override one’s skepticism for outlandish claims and contradictions, because that’s how you allow yourself to be manipulated. And it’s not like you even have to take that from me. Barlow himself made the case back in [184]. I just wish he took his own advice.
–[217]– Here’s where Barlow gets into describing Karl, and the bias here is fucking bonkers. Barlow says Karl “rarely admits that he is wrong”. And his example of this is because Karl still believes Billy is “a scumbag and insane” and that Billy tries to ruin the lives of his critics. Does Barlow factually dispute this? No. Does this conclusion still have at least some basis in evidence? Yes. Is this description of Billy particularly inaccurate? No. And yet, to Kenny Boy, this is Karl being unable to admit he’s wrong.
In the very next fucking sentence, Barlow acknowledges Karl’s testimony that he would no longer necessarily say Billy is “evil” as he had before.
The. Very. Next. Sentence.
“hE aLsO rArElY aDmItS tHaT hE iS wRoNg”
Oh, and in Karl’s own testimonial words, he still believes “the settlement agreement harmed Apollo Legend in multiple ways that would’ve definitely affected him negatively,” in a way that “wouldn’t have helped his decision in the end”. I know, quite a hot take.
[218] Believe it or not, the contested video was only Karl’s third video focused on Billy. (Two others had brief mentions.) So while Barlow refers to an “obsession or a vendetta” in framing Karl’s supposed “desire to be sued” at the time of the video, none of that was in evidence when the video was published.
[219] Barlow says “This obsession or vendetta started no later than June 2020” when Guinness reinstated Billy. This is pretty ridiculous, given it could have started no earlier, considering the dearth of Karl’s video commentary on Billy prior to his Guinness video in… *checks notes* oh, July 2020.
[220] Barlow then cites a tweet where Karl literally says “I have restrained myself from talking about this.” So the narrative Barlow is buying doesn’t even make sense on its face. Did Barlow think about Billy’s feigned victimhood for even two seconds?
[225] [226] Barlow disputes Karl’s characterization that Billy had “already started legal proceedings”, when in fact Billy had sent a Concerns Notice. I’ve discussed this elsewhere how it’s a two-way thing, where it’s fair for someone to say “Billy’s suing me” in response to a prerequisite Concerns Notice, even if a proper lawsuit has not yet been filed. Using the term “legal proceedings” adds an additional layer of vaguery. Again, a Concerns Notice is a required first step toward defamation litigation. So, in casual non-court-y terms, yes, Billy had “already started legal proceedings”. But Barlow frames this as a lie from Karl nonetheless.
[227] Barlow illustrates Karl as anticipating video revenue from these proceedings. Hmmm, I wonder where that narrative comes from. He also attributes to Karl an ulterior motive for his stance on Billy, suggesting “He clearly wants to protect that reputation by not backing down on his allegations against Mr Mitchell”. (Something, something, demeanor.) Oh, and this is just a typo, but Barlow’s year is off by a decade.
While this was not in trial evidence, I think it’s a good time to point out that Karl had, at one point, publicly sworn off all future Billy Mitchell content, unless he was sued, which he was:
[229] Here’s where Barlow ties the narrative together. In his words, “I considered that Mr Jobst’s evidence was coloured by his obvious dislike and adverse views of Mr Mitchell and his promises to his viewers that he would not back down in this litigation.” So Karl refusing to let Billy bully him strains his credibility, but Billy sending four legal threats and escalating at every step of the way is just par for the course.
Dude, just because Billy winked at you and promised to put you in his next movie doesn’t mean he’s your friend.
[230] Karl’s current views on Billy and Apollo are cited as evidence of Karl refusing to back down in a way that taints his testimony. As if he was obligated to change them?
[231] Barlow lists five reasons why Karl should have had to not restore the “offending words” into the video. However, Barlow can’t seem to comprehend that three of these are just “Billy said it wasn’t true”. Like, Keemstar didn’t have special info on the settlement, he was just relaying what Billy told him. And the Concerns Notice from Billy’s solicitor was just an allegation, just like the previous one Karl had received for saying Billy cheated. It is true that Karl told Keemstar he wouldn’t restore the words without “concrete evidence”, and that after Billy’s legal threats he did so without such evidence. But when Billy’s waving around a stack of papers saying “This is the proof, but I won’t show you”, as he had done in other matters before, at that point it’s fair to think you’re being fucked with. And the assurance clearly didn’t quell Billy’s litigious intentions.
Barlow highlights the following quote from Karl: “I don’t believe anything Billy Mitchell says.” I guess Buffaloed Barlow continues to be sold on the idea that you can’t disbelieve someone just because they lie all the time. You wouldn’t want anyone to think you have an obsessive vendetta.
[232] [233] [234] These relate to Karl’s retraction. Basically, the allegation is, he deliberately hid it at the end of an unrelated video, hoping nobody would see it. The retraction video ended up being much more highly viewed than the original video with the “offending words”, so obviously this didn’t help. As I’ve said elsewhere, newspapers routinely print corrections on back pages, and not on page one.
[235] [236] Barlow takes issue with Karl’s claim from the retraction video that Billy “[did not] attempt to get in contact with me to clear up any misinformation I may have had”. Karl stands by this, on the basis that Billy sent a third party (Keemstar) and had his solicitor send a legal threat, and that Billy himself never attempted to get in contact directly.
Barlow sees the initial claim as disingenuous, and suggests that Karl’s testimony was resultantly disingenuous in an attempt to stay consistent. If Barlow wants to believe that, fine. I disagree, to some extent, but not entirely. Sure, you can definitely say Billy attempted “to get in contact” with Karl by way of third parties. I think the statement in the video was fair to say in one sense, even if it doesn’t hold up well to the stress of cross-examination. Of course, I can’t help but wonder where this level of applied scrutiny was when assessing Billy’s multiple, objective falsehoods.
I would also add that the Concerns Notice at least was not an attempt “to clear up any misinformation”. It was either a threat intended to silence criticism, or a required first step along the unwavering road to litigation, either of which are entirely different from an act of education. If Barlow does accept Billy’s premise here, then it does leave me with questions at to how Barlow’s world works. If Ken Barlow arrives home and comes upon burglars moving out his furniture, and they tell him “Oh, we’re the cleaning agency hired by Ms. Barlow,” is he going to say “Oh good, glad we cleared up that misinformation”? Or is he going to… I don’t know… want some proof? Or even better, would he operate under the initial assumption that they’re lying and trying to steal all his shit? Is evidence not how misinformation gets cleared up? But then again, Barlow seems less interested in evidence than demeanor, so…
[243] Barlow says Billy Junior struck him as “an honest witness giving credible evidence”. A dubious proposition, I’d say, but that’s a story for another time.
[245] Barlow says he has “no reason to doubt [Walter] Day’s evidence simply because he is a good friend of, and has benefitted from his associations with, Mr Mitchell”, while noting that this relationship does make his testimony “overly enthusiastic and perhaps unconsciously exaggerated”. I’m not going to rehash everything Walter Day here, but if you want to see an illustration of Walter’s longstanding deference to everything Billy tells him, check out or nine-part series “The Video Game Fraud of the Century”.
[247] I’ll have to do a full write-up on Isaiah “Triforce” Johnson at some point, but he’s a long-established liar, con-artist, and grifter, particularly well known in the fighting game community. But of course, none of that gets entered into court here, so Barlow “[does] not consider there to be any reason for me to doubt any part of Mr Johnson’s evidence”.
[249] Barlow repeats an assessment from Billy’s barrister to the effect that all of Karl’s witnesses either had no personal observations of Billy, and thus just got their information on him from unsourced Internet rumors, or alternatively, that they had an “axe to grind” with Billy. I know, I know. The fact that former colleagues like Carlos Pineiro and David Race are rightly outraged at how they were used by a pathological liar is framed as some kind of unfair bias against that liar. If this were it, I wouldn’t be writing all this. But how you gonna see this trail of abused associates and then not see it when Billy lies to your face?
In fact, in [252], Barlow even illustrates that very process, where David Race believed Billy’s high score claims, worked extensively to prove Billy’s innocence, and ultimately discovered Billy had been lying to him all along. But in the Tammy Wynette tradition, Barlow stands by his man.
[253] Notice how David’s attempts to educate and warn the gaming community about Billy are used as evidence against him. Apparently, you can educate, or you can testify as “unbiased”, but you can’t do both. I’m sure Billy Mitchell would love for his loudest critics to be relegated to the sidelines.
I also found this passage interesting:
He accused Mr Mitchell of suing Apollo Legend for $1,000,000, Donkey Kong Forum and Jeremy Young for $2,000,000 and Twin Galaxies for $1,000,000.
“He accused”? It’s literally what Billy did! Oh, except the actual figure for the TG lawsuit in Florida wasn’t one million, it was ten million. Where was Barlow’s inclination for international legal research here?
[254] And there we have it. “He’s clearly just trying to hurt poor, innocent Billy.” Of course David hopes Karl prevails, he’s appearing as a favorable witness, and any reasonable person who reviews the totality of the facts should want Karl to win. But again, that gets you banished into Barlow’s “Billy doesn’t like your narrative” zone.
[256] So Charlie testified to Billy’s established historical reputation. And Barlow’s basically like “None of that shit’s relevant, but I’ll still use it to impugn your credibility anyway.” I’m sure Billy and his crew are laughing their asses off.
[257] Well, we got Barlow to type the word “farted”. Afterward, Barlow recites Charlie’s testimony to the effect that Billy always lies and manipulates people, but doesn’t seem to go “Wait… Does that mean those inconsistencies in Billy’s testimony… might mean something?”
Instead, in [259], Barlow’s like “Geez, this guy’s super-biased and exaggerates stuff on his YouTube channel, I’d better make sure not to consider a word he says.”
[261] It’s true that Carlos Pineiro signed contradictory statements given to him by Billy under threat of lawsuit. And it’s fair to consider how those could hurt his credibility. However… I feel as though the story of how those statements were forced on him (as recounted in the following passages) might be relevant to Billy’s own credibility? I’M JUST SAYIN’. Pushing statements witnesses disagree with certainly should raise some eyebrows.
Also, I think it’s worth noting that Karl was not threatening Carlos with a lawsuit if he didn’t favorably testify. Folks like Carlos and David are offering their testimony freely out of the goodness of their hearts. I would even go so far as to say, unlike Billy’s family and business friends, the only real connection David and Carlos have to Karl is that they’ve all been wronged by the same guy.
[266] [267] Barlow expresses that he’s willing to overlook and excuse Carlos’ changing statements, since one of them wasn’t sworn and thus was strictly unofficial. So, fair play, I guess. But he alternatively dismisses Carlos’ testimony about Billy’s reputation saying it “was minimal and of little assistance”. I guess only the people Billy allows into his circle can testify to Billy’s reputation.
[270] In fairness, Jimmy Nails does get the Day-Triforce treatment of “Well, you’re buds with one party, but whatever, you’re cool.”
[277] Billy’s wife Evelyn did not testify, despite being in a position to have better knowledge of Billy’s and Junior’s stories of daddy’s distress. KB suggested that Barlow could make an inference that her failure to testify casts doubt on their stories. Barlow mostly dismisses this, except insofar as KB was unable to cross-examine Evelyn on a particular point.
[278] For those following along without the document, here’s where we get into “contextual imputations”. Basically, you’re allowed to get some negative detail wrong as long as the media you published contains other substantially damaging imputations that are true. (You know what’s coming there.)
[279] Karl’s side alleged five contextual imputations from the video. Three related to lying about and cheating on video game scores. The fourth was that Billy “callously expressed joy at the thought of Apollo Legend’s death”, and the fifth was about Billy abusing the courts to force recognition of his scores. (Note that this list is similar to one given in [283], which broadens the abuse of litigation to include silencing critics, and which adds that Billy ostracizes people who threaten his Donkey Kong scores.)
Billy of course disputes all of this, as outlined in [280]. Curiously, he says the first four “relate to a different sector of Mr Mitchell’s reputation” than the Apollo settlement claim. I would concede the first three ones about cheating are different, but the texts about Apollo absolutely should inform people’s impressions of the settlement.
–[281]– Obviously, I don’t wish to dispute Barlow’s interpretation of the law unless given serious reason to do so. (I’m the expert on the facts of the case, he’s the expert on the law.) However, I do find this passage about contextual truth interesting:
The rationale for the defence is to deny a plaintiff an entitlement to recover damages where the plaintiff has selected, and succeeded in establishing, a less serious imputation than the more serious imputations which the defendant selects and is able to prove are substantially true.
Remember, no matter what Barlow claims, Karl Jobst absolutely did not say Billy “hounded” Apollo Legend to death, or whatever. The worst imputation, owing to one factual inaccuracy, was that Billy sought money from someone who was unwell, and didn’t care if it led to their suicide. That’s the worst takeaway any reasonable viewer could have from that set of alleged facts.
But the problem is, we also have those Apollo texts, which are absolutely real. They were sent without knowledge of how Apollo may have died. One reasonable inference a person could draw from those is that Billy wanted Apollo to die. I won’t go so far as to say that is the one and only reasonable conclusion, but one could surely draw that inference from the facts. And I would submit that “Billy Mitchell’s actions led to Apollo’s suicide in a possibly inadvertent way” is a less damaging imputation than “Billy Mitchell wanted that to happen.”
So right there, it sure sounds to me like contextual truth is on Karl’s side.
[294] This one’s kinda shocking to me. I don’t have access to the inside paperwork of this legal battle, so there are a few items here I’m learning for the first time. And I’m taking Barlow at his word, which admittedly could be a dubious proposition. But apparently, in Karl’s defense pleadings, only two documents were entered to substantiate the contextual imputation that Billy cheated at Donkey Kong: Jeremy Young’s original MAME presentation, and the dispute ruling from Twin Galaxies. And even worse, per [295], they didn’t even bother entering the Young analysis into formal evidence.
[deep breath, says to self] Stay on topic…
However, again in [295], Barlow says there’s testimony about the Young analysis, and since that testimony was not objected to, he can consider it secondarily.
[297] Billy’s barrister contended that the TG statement did not actually accuse Billy of cheating, but just that he didn’t use original, unmodified hardware. Of course, TG wisely chose their language to attempt to avoid a lawsuit (the key word being “attempt”), while disqualifying all past and future Billy scores from their leaderboard. But we’re not all stupid court people. Billy cheated. That’s what he did. And to Barlow’s credit, in [298] and [299], he does explain why “any reasonable reader” would conclude Billy cheated. (Though to be doubly fair, Barlow’s conclusion to that end should mean nothing to us gamers in the real world.)
[300] In this passage, Barlow addresses Billy’s reputation as a cheater more directly. However, this language is tepid compared to what Barlow has to say in [395], so I’ll go into more detail there. For now, Barlow here is just agreeing that Billy was alleged to have cheated, and that he had a reputation as someone who had cheated. That’s all.
[305] As to the imputation that Billy was banned from TG, Barlow basically says “Well, duhhhhh.”
–[313]– Oh my fucking word.
“Well, uh, he couldn’t pass off the video as his 2010 score, because he wuz gonna say in the video that it’s a new 2018 score.”
Barlow has no clue what’s going on here. You can read all about the wacky phone plot at this link, but in short, there were to be two tapes. One would be a direct feed only, with no talking, which Billy (per his admitted plan) very much did intend to pass off as a resurfaced copy of his old score. As Billy fantasized, everyone would misattribute the tape to his 2010 score, and all the haters would claim it was definitely MAME, even though that was never in a million years going to happen. And then later on, continuing with the fantasy, Billy would release the second tape, saying “Ha ha, you dummies fell for it”. He did not, in fact, indicate his intention to identify the first tape as being from 2018 at the time of its release. Because if he had, none of the other stuff would have made any sense.
“oVeRlY sUsPiCiOuS mInD”
Kiss my ass. It’s called being able to read, and having at least some idea of what one is talking about.
I still can’t believe this is the guy the Video Game Trial of the Century came down to. Truly the dumbest timeline.
–[318] [319]– Okay, Billy denies having expressed joy at Apollo’s death, because of course he would. But… he also argues that even if he did, it wouldn’t be “defamatory”?
Do I understand that right?
“Just because I mock the death of some youngster who made a YouTube video criticizing me doesn’t make me a bad guy.” – Genghis Khan, probably
That last clause of [318], oh boy. Surely, that’s an undeclared continuation of Billy’s denial, and not Barlow’s genuine standalone interpretation of the facts… right?
And then in [319], Billy’s like “It’s not true that I was expressing joy about someone’s death because, when I expressed joy at their death, I was only cracking jokes about joy at their death.”
Dude just tells you who he is, but Ken Barlow is like “Nuh-uh, he’s not like that, I can change him.”
[320] If I may briefly interrupt the foolishness, notice here how Barlow says this imputation is “defamatory” even if it’s true. As I noted earlier in [176] through [178], many of us use the word to mean “damaging and untrue”, while Barlow uses “defamatory” to mean “damaging, regardless of truth” (with falsity being the next prong to prove).
–[322]– Barlow quotes an additional passage of text messages Billy sent to Jace Hall two days before the more heavily publicized Apollo texts. Actually… I have an idea. Why don’t I just call them up as seen in Jace’s declaration from June 2020:
That’s Billy, prior to the texts about Apollo you’ve seen a gazillion times. Yes, Billy Mitchell speculated about Apollo’s death, then immediately cracked jokes about it, more than once. I do kinda wonder, though. Billy says it “Couldn’t happen to a nicer jackass”. What couldn’t “happen” to a better person, Billy? What were you referring to that is the thing that would “happen” to Apollo? Was it the “die” part? That seems to be the only example you offered.
Of course, the catch here is that Billy remembered to add a disclaimer: “Everything I am stating is in a facetious manner”. Hmmm, I wonder what Spin Master Barlow will have to say about this one…
Also, of minor note, the March 21 texts to Carlos were not “later that evening” as the same ones to Jace. They were received within one minute of each other, with the Carlos copies indicating a slightly earlier arrival. Note that Jace’s screenshots reflect California time, while Carlos’ reflect Florida time, three hours apart.
–[324]– Billy said he did not believe the reports of Apollo’s death because one of the two sources was Reddit, which he considered unreliable. But Billy couldn’t remember the other source. So what was it? The Guardian? The New York Times? The book of Revelations? Also, some factual information does make its way to Reddit. And even then, even if you knew the report was not true, how does that make it okay to crack jokes about an effective stranger dying? Remember, dishonest framing is part of how people like Billy Mitchell lie to you.
Barlow also contrasts Billy’s response to the 2018 reports of Apollo’s death to his claimed reaction when Apollo really died. But again, Barlow is just taking Billy (and Billy’s son) at their word. “Sure, I was an insensitive twat when you were looking, but I promise you I was very sincere when you were not.” And even then, by 2020, Apollo had bent the knee, so it’s believable Billy felt different about him. Again, how does Ken Barlow not see what’s going on!?
–[325] [326]– “Oh, he didn’t mean it, and even if he did, he regrets it, and even if he doesn’t, it wasn’t public, and…”
Barlow’s at least willing to say the Apollo texts were “still inappropriate”, though he doesn’t seem willing to acknowledge that one can indeed be “joking” and still mean what you say. What also strikes me is Barlow’s use of the words “no doubt”. Barlow doesn’t just believe Billy didn’t mean it, he has NO DOUBT of Billy’s sincerity here. But hey, what do I know? I’m just a girl, in the world, that’s all that you’ll let me be.
So does this mean you can just say whatever you want, to anyone you want, as long as you tell one of those people your words were secretly facetious, wink wink? Does that really work? Here, let’s try it:
“Hey everyone! Judge Ken Barlow of Queensland is a corrupt swindler and embezzler who takes cash bribes for convictions. But of course everything I am stating is in a facetious manner!”
Concerns Notice in 3… 2… 1…
[327] Here, Barlow discusses the imputation that Billy was “using litigation to force others to recognise his achievements”. Billy “denies that the imputation arises”. Decoded from court-speak, that means Billy’s saying “Nuh-uh, you didn’t accuse me of that.” And of course we also get the “But even if you did, it wasn’t a bad thing, and even if it was, it wasn’t true.” (All paraphrases, of course.) I get that it’s good legal practice to oppose as much as you reasonably can, but denying that Karl attempted to impugn the legitimacy of Billy’s lawsuits seems a bridge too far. If this is the kind of ground they refuse to concede, at what point should Barlow question the sincerity of Billy’s proceedings?
And then in [328], Barlow lists no fewer than five short passages from Karl’s video that relay this imputation on the nose. So again, why did Billy want to argue this point? Then, in [329], Barlow gives a lengthy explanation for why the imputation arises from those five statements, when a simple “Obviously” would do. But to be fair, by this point, I wouldn’t have been that surprised to see Barlow taken in by this one as well.
–[331]– Then we get to the question of whether the imputation that Billy uses litigation to force recognition of his achievements is true. Billy claims it’s not because – get this – the lawsuits were for “defamation” for saying his scores were illegitimate, and were not seeking a literal court order to reinstate scores. I shit you not, that’s his story.
What did Barlow say about Billy’s testimony earlier in [211]?
It reflected his honest feelings and thoughts. It was, in my view, reflective of his evidence as a whole: he tried to answer questions fully, honestly and candidly.
But the real juice comes with the accompanying footnote:
As you recall, Twin Galaxies agreed to quote-unquote “reinstate” Billy’s scores, but only to a historical database, reflecting how the leaderboards looked at the time Jace Hall bought TG. As others have said, it’s kind of like a Wayback Machine capture of how things used to be, including several other known cheaters like Todd Rogers and Mike Damiani. But Barlow here gets suckered into Billy’s framing that the scores “are now recognized by each body as having been world records by Mr Mitchell”. This is true only in the most obtuse, philosophical sense. They were previously considered “world records” until it was discovered they were bogus, and that discovery is why they are not on the actual leaderboards today. It’s really simple, so much so that I have to think even Boomer Barlow can understand this concept. And even if he can’t, he chose to buy Billy’s explanation and reject Karl’s more reasonable explanation for why they were not “reinstated”.
Worth noting is that, in this context, analyzing alternative imputations arising from the video, Barlow’s faux pas actually kind of helps Karl’s case, in that it supports Karl’s claim that the imputation of “Billy sues people to recognize his scores” does follow from the video. And indeed, in [332], Barlow acknowledges this is the case. But it still highlights how Ken has no idea what’s going on, and adopts Billy’s dishonest framing and rejects Karl’s sincere explanations for even basic elements of the case.
[336] For those following along without the document, Barlow does find that each of the five alleged imputations was made in the video, and that four of them were “substantially true”, excluding the one about the phone plot discussed in [313] above. Gosh, sounds like Billy Mitchell’s an unpleasant fellow! Surely, some of these will factor in to Barlow’s judgment…
[339] Barlow actually quotes from a book, supposedly titled “Defamation Law in Queensland”, written by “P George”. I swear to you, I wasn’t going out of my way to fact-check this trivial detail, but I did google it right quick, just to see what would come up. And it seems the quoted book by Patrick Thomas George is actually titled “Defamation Law in Australia”, with basically no results for the title-plus-author given by Barlow. I want to say it’s an honest mistake, but not knowing what the book you’re citing is called is a little more than some random spellng eror.
Anyway, the point of the quote is that reputation witnesses don’t have to know the plaintiff personally. Just keep that in mind for when Barlow considers the reputation-related testimony of Billy’s friends to be more credible than the reputation testimony of Karl’s witnesses.
[342] This is where Barlow gets into Billy’s pre-existing bad reputation. Barlow suggests that Billy’s reputation for having cheated at Donkey Kong refers “only to five online article, only one of which was tendered in evidence”. He just means, those are the only ones discussed in Karl’s case. In the real world, there were approximately a gazillion outlets reporting on Billy’s disqualification when it happened.
[345] Apparently, with regard to Billy having a known reputation as someone who ostracizes anyone who threatens his Donkey Kong records, Karl’s attorneys just said “Bro, go watch King of Kong”. And, I mean… they’re not wrong, I guess. But if Billy can befuddle Barlow into thinking it’s a “docu-drama”, it doesn’t seem like that point would stick the landing.
[352] Well, look at that. Barlow argues that since King of Kong was a film-slash-docudrama, “it is likely that an ordinary reasonable person would realise that Mr Mitchell’s true character may not have been correctly portrayed in it”. That’s certainly not how I remember Billy’s reputation prior to the MAME evidence. Remember, for the most part, the movie’s a documentary depicting facts and real events. And given Billy’s many stories over the years, actively trying to separate himself from how he’s portrayed in the movie, I think he knows full well that people’s default impression of him was negative, based on a sense that the movie was an accurate portrayal (which, by the way, it was).
[353] [354] [355] David Race, Jimmy Nails, and Charlie each convey how Billy came across in the movie. But in [356], Barlow is like “Well, that’s just your opinion, man.”
–[357]– And so, Barlow watches King of Kong for himself:
The portrayal of Mr Mitchell in the film, as I perceive it from watching the film, appears partly to reflect his character and is partly a dramatised and probably exaggerated portrayal of a person who does not like to be challenged. However, I do not consider that his portrayal in that film equates to or necessarily contributed to his reputation, as opposed to his fame.
On my first pass, I was like “The fucking balls on this man. You don’t think this movie would’ve affected Billy’s reputation? What, do you own a time machine?”
As we all know, “King of Kong” was Billy’s reputation, for many years. It was a one-to-one equivalency. I’ve literally known avid gamers who, before the MAME evidence, didn’t know Billy’s name. They would just say “Yeah, the King of Kong douche with the hair.”
But no, on subsequent review, I can see Barlow’s doing a bit of lazy, imprecise writing here. What he means is, “I’m not being asked to consider whether Billy’s portrayal in that film contributed to his reputation”. Or at least, I think that’s what’s he’s trying to convey. Indeed, I checked my own trial updates, and found the moment this was discussed in “Day 5”:
KB indicated he would also be tendering a full copy of King of Kong into evidence, adding that he thought Judge wanted to see it. Judge said he didn’t say he wanted to, just that he would. BB noted he’s content with its conclusion as long as it’s taken strictly as evidence of what people saw when they watched it. Judge agreed he would not treat it as truth of anything stated within it.
I definitely meant “inclusion” and not “conclusion” there. Hey, cut me some slack, I was trying to pound out those court updates ASAP from upside-down land.
Anyway, Barlow’s observations on “King of Kong” continue:
An ordinary reasonable viewer […] would not conclude that it was necessarily accurate, recognising that it was not a straight documentary, but had clearly been dramatised to make it more likely to attract audiences (as it did).
But again, as I remarked back in [28], in what reasonable way was it “not a straight documentary”? The interviews? The on-location filming? The fact that different crews followed different events in different locations? Oh, I know. It was the fact some irrelevant details (like Sczerby’s former world record) were left out.
This is the thing. Billy does outrageous shit to achieve his goals, and then goes “Oh, I was only kidding” after said goals are achieved. And clowns like Barlow go “Well, his conduct was so preposterous, he couldn’t have been serious about all that…”
–[358]– Barlow chooses to focus on Billy’s interactions with convention attendees as a measure of his reputation at the time of Karl’s video. Note that this may be procedurally deficient, given that there’s some inherent bias in this approach. People generally aren’t going to go up to a promoted convention guest, especially one who looks physically intimidating, and verbally berate them. I recognize Billy as a dangerous person and possibly a psychopath, and so if I randomly saw him at a convention, I would know to steer far clear of him. But I doubt those sorts of evasions get entered into this “interaction” calculus. Billy’s also an accomplished entertainer and schmoozer who enjoys the “I was in a big movie, so I’m a big star” factor. Perhaps more importantly, this approach bakes in a bias of what accounts you’re going to hear. Billy’s family and friends, who spend long amounts of time with him at these events, will be perceived as being more knowledgeable about the breadth of Billy’s interactions than those guests to whom Billy would alert security.
And like clockwork, in [359] [360] [362] [363] [364] [365] [366] [367] [368] and [369], the convention-related testimony of Billy’s family, friends, and business partners (Billy Junior, Walter Day, Triforce, Michael McNutt, Preston Burt, and Steve Grunburglar) is all taken at face value.
The one exception to this trend was Jimmy Nails, organizer of the Australian Kong Off, and witness for Karl’s side. In [371], he’s quoted as saying Billy’s reputation was “very shook” following the TG dispute, and that this reputation was not affected by Karl’s video. However, as seen in [372], Jimmy still invited Billy to his 2019 event, and expressed by email that Billy’s appearance made it his “most memorable” event.
[374] Here, Barlow frames the dichotomy, where Billy’s witnesses portray his reputation as unaffected by the TG scandal, whereas Karl’s witnesses said Billy’s reputation was “shot”, and that he was known as a cheater.
Now… I’m not bashing Barlow on this point, but let’s be real. Billy’s witnesses are fucking lying if they said the TG scandal didn’t affect his reputation. Regardless of Billy’s “previous lawsuit, doesn’t count” claims of convention losses, the scandal may or may not have significantly curtailed his event appearances, since organizers like Jimmy Nails may be drawn to the controversy rather than repulsed by it. Some definitely dropped Billy, while others obviously thought they could invite the movie guy and generate traffic off the hot topic of the day. But that doesn’t necessarily translate to what Billy’s “reputation” was, nor does it establish that either this reputation or his ability to garner appearances was affected by one inaccuracy in Karl’s reporting. The “pro-controversy” organizers willing to invite Billy in 2018 and 2019 were surely just as eager post-COVID, undeterred by Karl’s critical coverage or Billy’s own well-documented toxic behavior.
I realize one could try to twist this argument to support Billy. “Well, if you can’t say for sure that Billy was materially affected by the TG score dispute, then how can you say Billy was in dire straits before Karl’s video?” But the thing is, I don’t have to make that argument. I don’t have to photocopy Billy’s private planner, or know his full slate of invitations (only a percentage of which become public appearances). As we’ve seen back in [38] and [194], Billy himself testified that the fallout from TG was an unmitigated calamity for his reputation, and his business. If you’re not going to hold someone to their word when they’re under oath, when will you ever?
[375] [376] Barlow expands on Billy’s reputation as conveyed by Karl’s witnesses, saying he was described as a “spiteful”, “vindictive person” “who will go after you with lies”. Barlow then notes that none of Billy’s witnesses were asked about that aspect of his reputation. I’d say that was a mistake, but let’s be real, what would you expect them to say? You think fucking Triforce is gonna choose that moment to tell the truth for the first time ever?
[378] [379] Billy’s testimony about hearing about the Apollo connection and being asked about Apollo at conventions and seeing all the replies to every video Karl puts out about him – which remember, he doesn’t watch because he never watches anything about him – all of it is taken at face value. Since we’re just getting Billy’s characterizations of what he approximately recalls people saying, perhaps to some extent it should fall into hearsay.
[380] Junior describes a sudden outburst of Twitter replies to his dad’s account saying things like “You killed Apollo Legend”, all around the time of Karl’s video. As Barlow puts it, “He had not seen any such tweets before”. (Not “He claimed” or anything.) Once again, no examples given, because why wouldn’t you take literally Billy Mitchell Junior at his word?
–[382]– Here’s where we finally get to Elliott Watkins, who I considered to be Karl’s best witness. Before this passage, Elliott only got a brief mention in [117], in a listing of all witnesses who claimed to have seen Karl’s video. He was not discussed in passages [249] through [270], which specifically evaluated the credibility of Karl’s slate of witnesses. Granted, this wasn’t unusual. Jeremy Young and Apollo’s brother weren’t mentioned there, and neither were Michael McNutt, Preston Burt, and Steve Grunberger in the section dedicated to Billy’s witnesses. What does make this unusual to me is that, as I took pains to illustrate back in “Day 6”, Elliott was an exceptionally good witness for Karl. He made important points, he stuck to his guns, and he didn’t let aggressive cross-examination derail him. Oh, and Watkins has no business relationship with Karl, unlike basically all of Billy’s witnesses do with him, so I figured Elliott would be very hard to dismiss.
I was very interested to see what Judge Barlow had to say about Watkins’ testimony. Which is why I was so disappointed when this is what we got:
I… what!?
Barlow’s characterization of Elliott Watkins is just flat out wrong. For starters, I was able to understand him clearly, even through his healthy Australian accent (although not the strongest I’ve heard, lol). This was on a remote viewing day, where only the single broadcast was offered, and yet I still was able to convey his testimony in great detail. Meanwhile, Barlow has access to full transcripts and audio to review at his leisure. I mean, did I just conjure that entire exchange between Watkins and the barristers out of thin air? I would say Watkins spoke slowly at times, likely just being careful with his words, but that should make him only more lucid. Watkins did briefly explain some content creator stuff that Barlow may not be familiar with, but none of it was germane to Billy.
“Stream of consciousness”. “Difficult to understand”.
This is what you say when someone is making eloquent sense but you’re rolling your eyes because you don’t want to hear it.
This is important, because this is the guy who emphasized the most that any poor reputation Billy may have had following Karl’s video owed specifically to those nasty text messages Billy wishes he could forget. Elliott was entirely credible. And no, what Barlow’s suggesting about Watkins’ cross-examination is also bunk. Elliott did refer to the video conveying “a new level of evil” on the part of Billy, and sure, it did come from “the particular words about which Mr Mitchell complains”. But remember, Billy claimed defamation from the entire passage, including the bit covering his texts about Apollo, which are just fact. And despite the best efforts of Billy’s barrister, that last part is what Elliott pointed back to every time.
And just like that… he was gone. Barlow offers one more passing reference to Watkins a bit later, in [398], and that’s it. The testimony of Billy’s friends and business associates is all treated as automatically credible, and gets repeated for emphasis. The guy with no business ties to Karl, being very clear that the texts are what hurt Billy’s reputation – he gets banished, exiled, vaporized. Gone.
Hey, it’s not like nobody was trying to warn Barlow about his buddy.
–[386] [387]– Barlow discusses a bundle of replies from one Charlie video, which was submitted as evidence. Barlow notes that most relate to Billy being a cheater or a serial litigant, or are otherwise irrelevant. Out of over 100 pages, seven are identified as being relevant to the “offending words”. And of these seven presented by Barlow… Only one explicitly blames Billy for Apollo’s suicide, and I’d say only three others potentially fit the characterizations Billy’s argument is looking for. One literally says “Never forget what [Billy] said about Apollo”. How is that evidence of an unfair imputation? Does the false claim of a financial payout somehow relate to that? One said Apollo “exposed Billy Mitchell and was driven to suicide shortly there after”. Okay? Two others say “Lawsuits” took a toll, with one citing mental health. Curiously, on page 127, is a comment that had the entire timeline of events mixed up. Is that Karl’s fault? Would I be liable if someone replies to my post claiming a sequence of events I did not describe?
How are these references to Billy and Apollo in the same sentence Karl’s fault? Everyone knew Billy filed a lawsuit against Apollo Legend. It was well-publicized at the time. Does Judge Barlow really think the entire discussion of Apollo and Billy’s feud sprang from this one video?
–[388]– Replies to another Charlie video are given the same treatment. Three apparently said “RIP Apollo Legend”. Literally, okay? One person said [sic] “I remember his videos on Billy Mitchell before got sued and committed suicide”. That’s what we’re going with as evidence? A higher percentage of these examples do attribute blame, but why pad it out with nonsense? Oh, and one person suggested Apollo’s death “Wasn’t suicide”, and that he was [sic] “Taken out by a billy shill”. So If I write about Billy, and someone links my article and says “Yeah, and Billy Mitchell murdered Mother Teresa”, does that make me responsible?
[390] Admittedly, I like that an actual legal document contains the sentence “Finally, it is necessary to mention again, the film The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.“
–[391]– Wait… Hold up.
In cross-examining Mr Mitchell, Mr de Waard showed him two extracts from the film [King of Kong]. The first extract shows Mr Wiebe playing Donkey Kong at an arcade (which Mr Mitchell described as having been created in an empty warehouse to look like a Guinness arcade), being watched by a crowd and achieving what a spectator (describing what happens by telephone to Mr Mitchell, who is shown somewhere else) describes as “the first million point game of Donkey Kong” and Mr Day is shown describing Mr Wiebe’s final score as “1,047,200 points is the highest I’ve ever seen.”
LMAOOOOOOOOOOOO Bro I am literally dead. 💀💀💀💀
If you haven’t seen “King of Kong” in a while, you probably didn’t catch this, as it does kinda sound vaguely like the movie. I do know the film quite well, and I was very confused for a moment, until I saw the score of 1.047m, which I immediately recognized as Billy’s first cheated score (excluding the previous 1.014m tape that vanished). Also, I happen to know that Wiebe did not have a million point score that was not disqualified (gummy substance, taint of Roy Shildt, etc.) until the one he’s shown hitting in his garage at the very end of the film.
As a refresher, about midway through the movie, the film crew goes to Funspot, in New Hampshire, and they film Wiebe playing Donkey Kong there live. During that time, Billy sends in a tape, and a crowd of people watch that, a little ways away from where Wiebe’s playing. And the score on Billy’s tape is announced, and Billy’s on the phone from his home in Florida, “World Record Headquarters”, yadda yadda.
Later on, toward the end of the movie, there’s a special Guinness event in Pompano Beach, Florida. It’s got Guinness logos everywhere, and it basically does match Billy’s description of an ad hoc thing in a warehouse area. This was the part where Billy refused to play, even though it was so close to his home, and he snubs Wiebe at the event, etc.
What’s happening here is, Barlow is watching the Funspot scene, and he thinks Funspot is a fake Guinness arcade, because that’s what he interpreted what Billy Mitchell told him. And Barlow is seeing Wiebe playing, interspersed with cuts to people watching Billy’s mail-in tape, and he thinks Wiebe is playing the score on the tape. And so, when Walter Day announces this as the new top score, Barlow thinks Walter Day is praising Steve Wiebe.
If you haven’t seen the movie in a long time, you might say “Okay, this all sounds familiar”. But Ken Barlow evidently watched it a lot more recently than you have. Yes, in the given quote, he’s describing an “extract” of the film, but Barlow does say in [357] that he was judging Billy’s portrayal “from watching the film”, which I assume includes all of it, and not just the opening half hour.
Nobody who ever saw “King of Kong” got the plot this wrong. I don’t care if they play video games or not. The whole arc of the entire movie is about Steve Wiebe the underdog, and how his scores aren’t being recognized. This is like watching “Infinity War”, forgetting that Thanos is in the movie, and thinking the second half is about something else.
I mean, the interviewees in the movie, like Robert Mrcuzek, go on and on about Funspot being a permanent destination of choice for arcade gamers. But Barlow’s like “Well, Billy said it was some temporary Guinness thing, so I guess I have to go with that.”
You just know Barlow was in his office, begrudgingly half-watching the movie with one eye, while fapping to the latest issue of Disrobed.
Now, one might be tempted to say “C’mon, the movie doesn’t matter”. But it’s not the feature film that’s important here – it’s Barlow’s regard for the evidence. Footnote 18 says the movie was included as “Exhibit 78”. It was entered into consideration for a reason. If you’re familiar with “King of Kong”, then you understand, perhaps with the assistance of my explanation, how badly Barlow botched this. But then what happens is, you read all the other facts and evidence he discusses, which you’re not necessarily familiar with, and you go – imagine my most mocking voice – “Well, I don’t know, he’s the judge, so he must know something.”
No. Ken Barlow has no special insight into this case. None. He has an opinion and a chair, and both of them smell like ass.
[392] Barlow accurately describes the scene at the actual Guinness event where Billy snubs Wiebe and says, as Barlow writes, “There are certain people I don’t want to spend too much time with”. (FWIW, the film contains an on-screen caption which differs, beginning with “There’s certain…” I would say neither interpretation of the audio is invalid.) Then, in [393], Barlow says Billy “did not accept that the first extract represented him as shunning Mr Wiebe”. But it sounds like he meant to say “second extract”? The one where Billy is described as shunning Wiebe? BTW, Barlow accepts Billy’s story that this “shunning” sequence was unfairly edited, and I don’t think Barlow was offered a counter-narrative. However, it should be noted, this scene has long been a point of controversy, with Wiebe and the filmmakers both insisting the sequence was accurately depicted.
–[395]– Okay, I’ve seen this one shared around, as if to say “At least the judge confirmed Billy cheated.” But Barlow isn’t saying that. You have to read through the legalese to see what he’s actually saying.
First, Barlow acknowledges as true that Billy “had been publicly exposed as a cheater” and that he “had been banned” from TG. This is important here because it’s things Karl suggested in his video, so these alleged reputations are being weighed in that context. But “publicly exposed as a cheater” is not the same as “did, in fact, cheat”. And earlier, in [331], Barlow disputed the characterization that Billy’s scores were not “reinstated”, hence the past tense phrasing of “had been banned” at the time of Karl’s video.
Later in this passage, Barlow clarifies his finding that Billy had a reputation, both as having been exposed for cheating, and as someone who had been proven to have cheated. But he’s not asserting either as facts, just that it is a fact that Billy had both reputations, if that makes sense. If you’re trying to discern the difference between the two, I suppose one could consider the Minecraft “speed runner” Dream, who had a reputation of being exposed as a cheater, but who was not proven to have cheated.
But Barlow isn’t saying it’s “substantially true” that Billy cheated. Nor does he say it back in [300], which briefly acknowledged Billy’s cheating reputation. In fact, in [301], and in footnote 221, Barlow specifically points out he doesn’t have to adjudicate that question. As has been discussed widely recently, while the cheating allegations play a role in these proceedings, they’re not the core of what this case is about (at least on a technical level).
And honestly, even if Barlow said “Yup, sure looks to me like Billy Mitchell cheated,” so what? Who the fuck is Ken Barlow? How could he possibly have anything material to add to the already mountainous pile of evidence demonstrating Billy’s fraud? I get that the legal system assigns judges and juries to decide facts, but out here in the real world, we can just see the evidence and come to our own obvious conclusions. The evidence says overwhelmingly that Billy cheated. It’s just proven. And if you don’t trust your own eyes and ears, the most knowledgeable Donkey Kong technical experts and the top like fifty DK players all believe Billy cheated. They’re the experts, not Kenneth Barlow.
[397] Barlow doesn’t believe Billy’s wacky phone plot had any lasting impact on his reputation, either before or after Karl’s video. This may be fair, only because that particular item got lost among all of Billy’s other lies related to his cheating, and because outside that context people fixated more on things like Billy’s texts about Apollo. Sadly, the Uerpszatce Qathzueue fellow who first reported it just doesn’t have that much reach.
–[398]– Okay, when you look under the hood of what’s going on here, this is exceptionally outrageous. First, Barlow does acknowledge Billy “expressed joy at the thought of Apollo Legend’s death” (albeit reluctantly, as we discussed in [325] and [326]). But then he says Billy didn’t have a reputation for that, either before or after Karl’s video?
Let’s be clear about one thing. That was literally everyone’s main takeaway from the video, at the time it was released. “Holy shit! This dude was joking about Apollo dying, and then Apollo died!” I know Billy wants to make it about the other thing, which involved a factual inaccuracy he could latch onto. But those very real texts, demonstrating Billy’s psychopathically callous joy, were what stuck with people, who wouldn’t have remembered what the claimed details of the settlement were.
You could say “Well, maybe insufficient evidence of this was admitted into the trial, so Barlow couldn’t really consider it”. First, note that this isn’t the same as there being “no evidence that […] Mr Mitchell had a reputation to that effect”, which is how Barlow presents it to the casual reader of this judgment. Again, Barlow seems more interested in trashing Karl’s position than in laying out facts.
But this is where we get to what’s really heinous about this passage. Barlow does call from available evidence, and his choices are shamefully selective.
He says the “only evidence that anyone was aware of this imputation or the facts on which it is based (the text messages)” consisted of three sources.
Read that again, because it’s very clear. According to Barlow, we’re talking about “only” “three sources”.
One example Barlow gives is “the comment at page 127 of exhibit 88”. This is one of the YouTube replies listed back in passage [387], and reads as follows:
It’s not about defamation or his feelings, it’s bullying, hence why he got satisfaction and amusement when he hear Apollo ended his own life partially due to the financial stresses he was dealing with.
Okay. Barlow also says “the response to the comment at page 75” could, his words, “possibly” qualify. Here was that response:
Yeah and then went on to gloat about it afterwards. People don’t realize the toll Lawsuits can take, frivolous or not. Both financially and mentally. Apollo already had mental health trouble, something like that would easily push somebody over the …
So someone mentioning Billy “gloat[ing]” counts as “possibly” relating to Billy literally gloating.
But you know what Barlow doesn’t offer as an example?
How about this comment, from page 76:
Never forget what he said about Apollo.
How the fuck could that be about anything other than what Billy said about Apollo? Also, maybe this is just me, but “never forget” suggests the commenter knew about those texts prior to Charlie’s video, and just wanted to bring them up and remind everyone. You know, the way one would do if the texts were part of Billy’s reputation.
Or how about this one, apparently repeated three times in reply to the second Charlie video:
RIP Apollo Legend.
If you recall my response to [386] [387] and [388], you probably see what I’m getting at. Replies that vaguely suggest a connection between Billy and Apollo are being accepted as indicative of a reputation stemming from the specific settlement claim Karl made. But those same replies are only accepted as stemming from the “I will not shed a tear” texts if that connection is made outright and explicit. Barlow isn’t saying it, but he’s doing it. Even with something wholly generic like “RIP Apollo Legend”, it’s framed as proof that the settlement claim harmed Billy’s reputation, but not accepted as proof that Billy’s own words about Apollo harmed Billy’s reputation.
Holy hell.
Of course, Barlow couldn’t totally ignore the third bit of evidence, which was the unwavering testimony of Elliott Watkins that those text messages were at the heart of Billy’s reputational problems. But Barlow did the next best thing – basically “Oh, sure, this guy said so, but it doesn’t count.” And we never hear from Elliott again.
And then Barlow has the gall to wrap up basically saying “Well, nobody knew about these text messages, but I fear this litigation will be what brings it to people’s attention.”
Are you for real!?
I know, I’m coping at this point. But I still can’t believe an actual judge blew all this so badly.
[399] This one’s about Billy’s reputation for abuse of the court system. Nothing Barlow says here is objectionable, but he does add a couple qualifiers – “whether or not [the reputation] was fair”, and “however undeserved”. It wasn’t Barlow’s job to adjudicate those claims as factual, and so he’s allowed to point out that he’s not doing so. However, given the tone of the rest of this document, I can’t help but read into this a bit. If he felt there could be truth to the idea that Billy abuses the courts, would that not be reason to be at least a little on guard for Billy’s lies? And especially Billy’s contradictory testimony between this proceeding and the TG deposition? Knowing what we know, I can’t help but read these qualifiers as smugly dismissive.
[405] Barlow lays out the different arguments over whether the claims against Billy involve the same “sector” of his reputation as the other negative reputations Billy had. Billy’s barrister Mr Somers argues that the allegation of hounding someone to suicide is distinct from any malfeasance he may have been up to strictly in the sphere of gaming, such as filing vindictive lawsuits over high scores. Of course, Somers gives himself away a bit, by arguing that Billy’s “callousness” (one word for it) is also some separate, unrelated thing, relevant only in the context of his gaming persona. I personally would think there’s plenty of reputational overlap between, as it has been framed, “hounding someone to suicide” and “mocking someone’s death”.
At any rate, to Barlow’s credit, in [409] and [410] he says this is all bullshit. He uses the example that, if Billy was going around poisoning his hot sauce, that would reflect on his reputation as a restaurateur and hot sauce peddler, but wouldn’t necessarily affect his reputation as a high score gamer. All of these reputations and imputations come down to Billy taking his high scores more seriously than even the lives of others, and thus they can all be considered.
[413] I can’t speak to the validity of this as a point of law, but it does seem a bit weird. Barlow is saying that, since Billy was already known as a cheater who uses litigation to silence criticism, Karl discussing those things couldn’t have had any effect on Billy’s reputation. I guess it only counts if it’s fresh news? Except, what if it’s fresh evidence confirming an established perspective? And what about news that’s sorta-known, but is being amplified because it was semi-forgotten.
While I can see an argument for this, I would think there’d be at least some proportionality. If you make a four-hour video on someone, in which 235 minutes are devoted to them being a known vindictive slimeball, and 5 minutes discuss some unrelated new thing, I would think people’s main takeaway from the work as a whole would be the nearly-four-hour thing. People didn’t watch hbomberguy’s video on James Somerton, finish the video, and then immediately say “I can’t believe that joker didn’t know how to spell ‘shonen’.” But of course, the law doesn’t always make sense the way we think it should.
[416] [417] The one reputational imputation Barlow accepts as both based on a perception of truth and not mitigated by a pre-existing reputation is that Billy “callously expressed joy at the thought of Apollo Legend’s death”.
Karl’s barrister argued some of the same points I have – that it’s possible to unintentionally contribute to someone’s stress leading to their choice to commit suicide, but that expressing joy at a possible suicide is much more plainly repugnant.
However, Billy’s barrister basically argues that the offensive texts don’t sufficiently overshadow the alleged imputation based on the factual inaccuracy. I mean, I guess he has to argue that. In the process, either he or Barlow do that thing people do where they describe harmful actions as generically and inoffensively as possible. So, as Barlow represents the barrister’s arguments, Billy joking about Apollo’s death becomes “thoughts conveyed privately to two individuals”. Wow! That was the golden ticket all along? I’ll remember that next time I plan a bank robbery.
When we discuss these competing imputations, and how they’re weighed, remember that Barlow didn’t just find in Billy’s favor, with a modest penalty. He threw the fucking book at Karl, and awarded almost the maximum damages he possibly could. So, it doesn’t seem as though Barlow took these arguments very seriously.
–[418]– Indeed, Barlow dismisses the position of Karl’s barrister, and finds that the imputation of bullying someone into suicide is meaningfully worse than that of expressing joy at an untimely death, potentially inclusive of suicide.
However, at the risk of reiterating myself, the “hounded” imputation is based on a forced interpretation, that some observers may embrace, but not all will. The “expressed joy” imputation, on the other hand, is plain as day. And whereas the previous one relies on Karl’s word (and mine, and collected evidence which had not yet been published at that time), which could lend itself to skepticism, the latter was based on observable fact, which Karl displayed on screen.
And of course, in [419] and [420], Barlow asserts that Billy’s reputation “has been substantially harmed by the publication” of Karl’s video. And he cites the barely dozen YouTube comments – fucking YouTube comments – half of which are just like “RIP Apollo”. And Barlow suggests these are proof that this imputation “has persisted for some years”.
But the biggest blind spot of all here is this, in Barlow’s own words:
No such assertions were ever made and Mr Mitchell did not have such a reputation before the offending video was published.
That’s just not fucking true. Granted, I can’t really peg this on Barlow himself (excluding whatever authority he may have for outside research). This is on Karl’s attorneys for not bothering to argue this point, and for not introducing contrary evidence, both of which were mind-boggling mistakes. Indeed, Barlow may be fairly interpreting this failure as an acknowledgment that no such evidence exists. But a fact remains: People were blaming Billy Mitchell for Apollo’s suicide the moment it was announced. Karl did not introduce this narrative. People commenting on Charlie’s videos can’t just be assumed to have gotten their impression from Karl. Any discussion of a link between Billy and Apollo’s death does not automatically flow from Karl’s video. The whole narrative is not true… and Billy knows it’s not true.
But Billy’s narrative is accepted in full. In [421], Barlow posits that Billy was significantly harmed, and that all of Karl’s defenses have failed. From this point on, the judgment focuses on damages, including any mitigating factors that could play in Karl’s favor.
[423] Right away, Barlow notes that “the recovery of more than nominal or moderate damages may require proof of harm to reputation”. Given the judgment was over three-hundred-thousand dollars, this “proof” better be good! (Spoiler: It’s not.)
[426] Barlow cites Australian defamation law to the extent that only one amount of damages can be awarded per publication, no matter how many defamationisms that one publication conveys. However, he reserves the right to grant multiple awards in this case because Karl restored the original video, since Barlow interprets that as “more than one publication”. I see quite a few problems with that. The URL remains the same for each version of the video, so it doesn’t have any larger footprint for this “more than one publication”. The little red bar along the thumbnail, indicating that you’ve previously watched a given video, remains constant throughout these edits – in other words, YouTube is telling you “You’ve already seen this one” throughout the edit and re-edit process. But what stands out most is, this “more than one publication” only happened because Karl took the step to remove the “offending words” in the first place. So Barlow is effectively asserting the right to punish Karl for his attempt to mitigate undue harm. At any rate, while I don’t give Barlow a pass for this nonsense, this “republication” framing could be seen as a statutory or jurisprudential blind spot where the law hasn’t caught up to the various quirks of modern media. (Unless they have, and Barlow’s just winging it on this one.)
[428] One basis for general damages is to “assuage the plaintiff’s personal feelings”. Bawwwwwwwwwww. I’ll admit my bias here, but give me a fucking break. Billy doesn’t care if people see him as a monumental asshole. If he did, he wouldn’t go around being a monumental asshole. But he definitely wants the money, and will tell people whatever he has to to get it.
–[430]– If you’re in the flying-car future and you’re reading this as an historical account, the most common reaction to the Jobst/Mitchell judgment recently has been surprise from so many people who thought the case was about cheating allegations, and not over statements about Apollo Legend. As I’m going to keep reiterating, this surprised reaction demonstrates that Billy Mitchell was never meaningfully harmed by Karl’s video. Most people had forgotten all about the important shit, and even those who followed the case and knew these details also knew about the Apollo texts, which I maintain were far more damaging to Billy’s reputation.
I’ll elaborate more on this topic in [461], but when Barlow here discusses the role of damages in “vindication of the plaintiff’s reputation”, that’s not really what’s going on here. Yes, Billy wants “vindication” of a sort, but it’s for all the other very true things Karl has repeatedly accused Billy of over the years. The problem, of course, is that those other things are true and most are demonstrably so. I don’t think Barlow is lying when he lays all this out. I just thinks he’s a massive sucker to believe Billy’s stories about needing resolution on this one supposed blemish on his reputation.
–[431]– At long last, we get back to Barlow’s sheer and utter credulity. He says Billy was “forthright” in recounting how Karl’s video affected him, adding that “His evidence about his reaction was telling”. By way of footnote, Barlow calls back to his remarks in [208], about which I wrote the following:
Barlow makes reference to historical warnings about credibility assessments based on demeanor, and yet he proceeds to do exactly the thing he insists he is not:
But hey, Billy was “forthright”! He asserted a claim, and the guy who asserts lots of conflicting claims every time the weather changes definitely wouldn’t just say whatever he thinks will get him his way.
–[432]– Again, Billy’s over-the-top descriptions of his Karl-related symptoms – nausea, vomiting, insomnia – are all taken at face value. That “proof” we were talking about a moment ago? Like a tavern patron at 3am, it sure seems to have lowered its standards.
[433] Billy describes how his response video came about. And Barlow again gives away his lack of understanding of YouTube. Following Billy’s response, Karl used YouTube’s own editing function to remove the “offending words”. I’ve used this as well, to clip out a portion of an existing video, leaving the remainder intact at its original location. But Barlow calls this process “the publication of the second video”.
[434] Barlow describes the sequence of tweets and Concerns Notices, and how Billy was asked about his feelings during this sequence. Per Barlow, “His answer, given with clear emotion and convincingly, was striking.” (There’s that demeanor again…)
[435] For future reference, here’s Billy acknowledging watching a video about him, which he always insists he never does.
–[438]– Billy describes personally reading the replies to Karl’s video, how negative they were toward him, and how they made him “sicker and sicker and sicker” and “more angry and more angry and more angry”. I have no doubt that some in his position would be drawn to and unable to escape the negativity, creating a self-damaging cycle. But Billy has always portrayed himself both as someone who doesn’t care whether people think he’s a bad guy, and as someone who doesn’t read or watch any commentary about him. Somehow, I suspect his description of his actions and reactions might be a bit self-serving.
–[439]– Is this demeanor again? I dunno, you decide. Billy is somehow aware of such replies “every time Mr Jobst puts out a video”, despite never watching them, and apparently not providing any examples.
–[440]– Barlow says he “set out above Mr Mitchell’s evidence that people still raise the allegation with him”. But of course, if you follow the footnote back to [379], it’s just more “Billy says so”. Apparently, any time someone raises the topic with him, it “brings back the same anxiety and the same unhappiness that I had […] in early June 2021”. So to be clear, not when Apollo died, but when Karl released his video. Gosh, it’s almost as if dude only cares about himself and his reputation.
[441] [442] Billy Junior backs up his pops, though, so I guess that’s all you need. Wouldn’t surprise me if they split the proceeds.
–[444]– Okay, this one’s peculiar. Barlow notes again that Evelyn Mitchell did not testify, and that he is allowed to infer that her testimony would not have helped Billy. So far, so good. However, Barlow adds that “any inference cannot operate to infer that her evidence would have damaged his case”. And he indicates this was explained previously, with a footnote pointing back to [271] through [277].
But if you actually follow that footnote back to [277], Barlow sure seems to be saying the exact opposite [sic]:
I may also more readily draw any inference unfavourable to Mr Mitchell where Mr de Waard may have been able to prove a relevant fact in cross-examination of Mrs Mitchell, if she had been called, because she seems have been in a position to cast light on that subject.
Did Barlow forget a “not”? Or is he just not used to obsessive gamer nerds fact-checking his rulings?
[445] But it’s okay. Barlow’s like “Meh, I don’t really need to hear from her anyway, I’ve heard from Billy Mitchell and Billy Junior, and their word is bond for me.”
–[446]– Barlow once again describes Billy’s emotions and “loss of any ability to control what was happening”. Barlow then writes:
The obvious pleasure that Mr Jobst took in attacking him and his gleeful anticipation of litigation simply added to Mr Mitchell’s emotions.
It’s only journalism if it comes from the Associated Press region of France. Otherwise, it’s sparkling dramamongering.
Barlow also referred to the following tweet from Karl:
But as I’ve said elsewhere, Karl isn’t saying there that “It’s definitely still true”. At the time, we still had evidence of a financial settlement, and no counter-evidence besides Billy’s word (lol). But the act of removing the “offending words” itself suggests there may be doubt. Karl was just being clear that he wasn’t removing it because he considered it a factual inaccuracy. But of course, Barlow takes on the framing most favorable to Billy.
[447] Barlow declines to attribute Billy’s atrial fibrillation to Karl’s video, because no “medical evidence” was supplied. Probably wise, considering Billy tried to attribute that same atrial fibrillation to the Twin Galaxies lawsuit.
–[448]– Barlow clearly identifies with Billy’s cause. Check this out:
It is clear that the ongoing comments upset and anger him and contribute to a feeling of helplessness in being unable to stop them. The necessity of attending and giving evidence at the trial, including listening to Mr Jobst and his witnesses, was also clearly emotionally hard for him.
To be clear, I was present for five days of the trial. Billy didn’t cry, or exude any depression. His only emotion was, he got angry, especially when confronted on his lies. I’m also curious about Barlow’s assessment of Billy’s demeanor during Karl’s witnesses. Billy went on the stand first, so he didn’t testify to any of that. Was Barlow watching Billy during that testimony? Shouldn’t such observations be indicated by a footnote or something? Or is Barlow just sitting there, half-listening to Karl’s witnesses, and thinking the whole time “Oh, that poor dear, it must be so hard for Billy to have to listen to this”. Maybe that’s why Elliott Watkins’ testimony went in one ear and out the other.
I can’t help but notice that Barlow doesn’t seem to make any effort to identify with the YouTube journalist (and yes, I will call Karl that), who received no fewer than four legal threats by the same guy, and is being sued over a single factual error across dozens of videos. Maybe it’s because Karl doesn’t have a “real” job, like listening to a week’s worth of evidence, ignoring all of it, and then handing an oversized “Price Is Right” check to the guy who sounds more angry.
–[451] [452]– Okay, here’s where we get to two twin doozies. You may recall way back in “Day 1”, Billy was asked to confirm two event cancellation emails he had received, one from John Weeks and one from Ryan Burger. During the proceeding, I was only able to hastily scribble down brief portions of these emails, which I felt conveyed the gist. But here, we’re given the exact text of both emails. First, from John Weeks:
As per our previous conversation, I apologize for our decision to withdraw our agreement with you to host you at our auction due to the allegations from Karl Jobst that you played a significant role in Apollo Legend’s decision to take his own life. We made the decision strictly for business reasons and I do not feel personal discontent with you, but the negativity brought by the claims presented too large a risk to us strictly from a business perspective.
Billy claims that one email cost him $50,000. The other cancellation email given was from Ryan Burger:
Due to the toxicity and negativity brought by Karl Jobst’s claim that you played a role in Apollo Legend’s decision to take his own life, Old School Gamer Magazine feels compelled to withdraw its $5,000 per weekend paid appearance offer also for the Midwest Gaming Classic.
I had hoped that this would have faded by now so we didn’t have to cancel this event similar to Des Moines Gaming Classic and Planet Comicon appearances that we had withdrawn earlier this summer, but I think it’s best that we allow some time to pass given the current climate.
lolololololololololololololololololol
What are these people at fucking gunpoint? “Hey, you’ve gotta specifically say it’s because of allegations from Karl Jobst that I played – listen to me – that I played a role in Apollo Legend’s decision to take his own life. Those exact words. Now, repeat ’em back to me.”
This is like when an Israeli ministry leaks secret audio of someone speaking Arabic in a Hebrew accent saying “This is Hamas Field Lieutenant reporting to Al-Qaeda Supreme Commander. We have hidden ze veapons in ze hospital as you ordered, and are now en route to commit our quota of minimum five war crimes per day. Death to all white people!” Not even the pro-Israel hacks would believe it. It’s just rhetorical ammunition they can use in the information war. But Judge Barlow here would be like “Well, I don’t know. He did say it was the SUPREME commander. That does sound pretty important.”
If your name isn’t Ken Barlow, you will catch on pretty quickly that Billy at the very least put his chucklefuck friends up to say these things for use in this lawsuit, and that these messages are almost certainly not genuine. I mean, hell, Billy really did attend the John Weeks event, as seen on September 24th, despite that appearance supposedly being, air quotes, “withdrawn” by email days after the event (per Barlow’s footnote). At the very least, any supposed inference of negativity around Billy Mitchell obviously wasn’t enough to not have him around doing publicity for the event.
And that’s even assuming the emails aren’t completely fake. It’s not like this would be the first time Billy did something like this. Billy’s September 2019 legal threat to Twin Galaxies was loaded with made-up bullshit signed by friends like Rob Childs. He lied about there being a secret Pac-Man plaque that named him “Video Game Player of the Century”, and then had two fake plaques created to justify this lie, and got his friends to participate in a bizarre switcheroo to hide them away. This is what he does. This is who he is. You can’t trust a thing he says, and you often can’t trust what his “friends” say, either.
But even if you want to set aside Barlow’s laughable credulity and focus on procedural issues, these emails are what we call mega-hearsay. Neither Weeks nor Burger testified to them, or their intentions. And that’s required because, out in the real world, when you’re not under oath, you can just say anything. (Well, almost anything.) Billy can testify that he received the emails, and that they were sent from a given email address – although even that is subject to spoofing (not that Barlow would have any idea what that is). But Billy cannot testify to who was behind the keyboard. And indeed, footnotes 297 and 298 point out it was submitted only to demonstrate what Weeks and Burger told Billy, and not as to the truth of the claims expressed.
And yet, in [453], Barlow factors those emails into his analysis as if they’re genuine:
Whether or not the reasons given in those emails were true, the withdrawal of the offers demonstrated a harmful effect of the video on Mr Mitchell’s reputation and the receipt of the emails affected Mr Mitchell’s personal reactions to the video.
Did Barlow write this in his sleep?
–[454] [455] [456]– “Billy and his son threw a bunch of numbers at me about how many paid speed runs he did, and although there were some discrepancies, I take them at their word anyway. After all, they did show me a very real email they got from someone, and nobody ever lies on the Internet.”
I swear, if I’m ever back in Brisbane, I’m going to walk right up to Judge Ken Barlow on the street, tell him I’m the wallet inspector, and go to town with all the funny rainbow money he hands me.
–[457]– Barlow writes:
The nature of online comments about him changed after the publication of the video, in that not only did they refer to him as a cheater and an unjustified litigator, but many also referred to him as having driven Apollo Legend to commit suicide and urged others not to forget that.
How the fuck do you know? Was a sufficient sample size of Billy-related commentary from early 2021 entered into evidence? Did you do an analysis, comparing online comments before and after Karl’s video? I see no footnotes, so I’m guessing, no, you did none of those.
–[458] [459]– Karl’s barrister contends that Billy “appears to have attended just as many exhibitions or other appearances before as after the video”. And Barlow counters that, while Billy did still attend some events, possibly owing to attraction to controversy, “the number of invitations dropped considerably”.
First of all, the way Barlow frames it makes it sound like the kind of arguments twelve-year-olds have, over factual things that can just be checked in an encyclopedia or something. (Yes, we still had those when I was a kid.) Of course, I don’t necessarily accept Barlow’s framing of the argument, because I’m not a doofus. Maybe KB’s written submission had everything laid out in detailed charts, and Barlow was like “Nuh-uh, I think charts are the work of Satan.”
However, upon second reading, perhaps the distinction is that Karl’s barrister argued Billy’s “appearances” sustained while Barlow countered that his “invitations” dropped? Still, none of this appears supported. Lemme guess, “Billy threw a bunch of stuff in my face, and I don’t know, I couldn’t really assess it all, but he just seems like he’s trying to tell the truth.”
–[461]– Here Barlow starts going into detail on the role vindication plays in a settlement award. I discussed this a bit back in [430]. But here’s the thing: This settlement isn’t going to “vindicate” Billy as to the imputations he alleges.
Remember, the only material fact needing “vindication” here is that Billy, in actual truth, really did allow Apollo Legend to settle cash-free, without even reimbursement for legal bills, and did not badger him into massive debt. So Billy sued the guy, and threatened financial ruin, but okay, he let the kid go in the end. Kudos. However, the other conclusions and inferences people choose to draw, including the suggestion that Apollo suffered lawsuit-related stress, or that Billy cracked jokes hoping to find confirmation of Apollo’s death, don’t need “vindication”. They’re based on uncontested evidence.
Meanwhile, as I’ve mentioned, the fact people were recently so surprised to learn this case was about Apollo Legend speaks to the fact Billy was never really “defamed” in the way he alleges. Billy concocted a story that people only blamed him for Apollo’s suicide based on one factor – the notion of a financial payout, which alone turned out to be false. The idea seems to be, without that claim of Apollo paying Billy money, nobody would’ve blamed Billy for anything.
But some people still have, and still will, blame Billy for Apollo’s death, based strictly on lawsuit stress, settlement humiliation, and on Billy’s prior joking about that outcome. And each of those three elements are just facts. I genuinely don’t blame Billy for Apollo’s choices, but some have, and some will continue to do so. And the reason those people will not stop is because, unkind as their conclusion may be, it’s based on true circumstances which Barlow the Bamboozled swept away as irrelevant.
So none of this will “vindicate” Billy in the way Barlow thinks. But this will, in a sense, “vindicate” Billy in a totally different fashion. Obviously, it’ll serve as a massive deterrent to others considering discussing Billy’s provable lies. But more directly, it will also signal to the world, “Hey, this Karl Jobst guy was super-sloppy with his reporting on Billy, he messed up a bunch of stuff, so you shouldn’t believe what he says.” Which, in a practical sense, “vindicates” Billy in all the other matters – lying, cheating, faking evidence, filing frivolous lawsuits. And let’s be honest, that’s what Billy really wanted from this. And it won’t matter that this negative perception of Billy-critical reporting will be based on a single factual inaccuracy, which there was evidence for at the time it was made. The massive judgment will speak louder than any words.
This is why judges should not be issuing awards this outrageously high when issues of existing reputation are this complex, and especially when those judges have no idea what’s going on in front of them.
[462] Barlow laments that members of the public may not “read the detailed reasons for judgment”, and so a high award is required to penetrate the public consciousness. Believe me, I wish I didn’t have to read Kenny’s “dEtAiLeD” reasonings and correct all his blatant horseshit either.
–[464]– Barlow writes:
This wide publicity of and interest in the trial, as well as the large number of comments on the videos of both Mr Jobst and Mr White, demonstrate the breadth of the audience to whom vindication of Mr Mitchell’s reputation needs to be made.
Oh, honey.
My darling. My sweet summer child.
Honestly, as infuriating as this whole outcome is, this right here is adorably naive. He isn’t saying it outright, but Barlow is basically trying to explain why it was so important to stream the decision summary on YouTube, with no invitation requirements, and with a big announced lead-up, so everyone could see it.
Barlow,
Kenneth,
Ken Ken Kenny boy,
Karl’s and Charlie’s audiences aren’t going to like Billy Mitchell because of this ruling. Those communities aren’t going to think more of Billy. They’re not gonna go “Gosh, maybe we were wrong about him.” They dislike him for several fact-based reasons entirely independent of the “defamation” factual inaccuracy Billy convinced you his entire reputation is hinging on. But of course Billy does love it that you broadcast slander against Karl Jobst far and wide.
And this is why I made a clear distinction in the introduction between gullibility and complicity. If Barlow was getting some measured benefit out of this process, I would say “That guy’s a crook, he lies for money”. But he’s not. He just allows con-artists like Billy Mitchell to manipulate him for free.
This isn’t going to make Billy Mitchell look like an exonerated person. What it has done is make you, yes you, Judge Ken Barlow of Queensland, it made you look like a ginormous tool. (“Tool” means “dumb and gullible”, Ken.) This isn’t going to make people like Billy. It’s just going to make people dislike you, and doubt your credibility and judgment. Even if they don’t remember your name, they’ll still call you “That bozo judge who blew it for everyone”. And honestly, you deserve that for this abortion of a ruling. Maybe you should have paid attention better before launching an innocent man into financial upheaval.
People like Billy Mitchell don’t have “friends”. They have people they use. And he used you, Ken. Welcome to the club. Enjoy your stay. Breakfast is at 6.
[470] In discussing the “grapevine effect”, Barlow refers back to all the replies to Charlie’s video supposedly blaming Billy for Apollo’s death. But as I said back in [398], many of the examples given don’t stand up to scrutiny. “RIP Apollo Legend” doesn’t have to mean what Barlow assumes it means, no more than if someone in the Donkey Kong community said “RIP Jeff Harrist”.
[471] [472] Karl’s barrister points out how Billy’s own response video amplified the “offending words”, and added such direct characterizations as “murderer”. Thus, Internet remarks following that video and using variations of “murder” are just as attributable to Billy’s own video.
First, I hope that people at the very minimum can understand why I say Billy’s “response” video was clearly done in an intentionally inflammatory fashion, surely in the hopes of priming a defamation lawsuit, rather than out of any sincere desire to quell outrage and clear up misinformation. After all, since Apollo was deceased, Billy could have just shown the settlement, instead of waving it around and making claims about what it says. (And as I said back in [101], Billy did indeed misrepresent it.)
Nevertheless, Barlow outright dismisses any effect Billy’s own publication had on his own reputation:
I am satisfied that the recent comments about Mr Mitchell being the cause of Apollo Legend’s suicide stem from Mr Jobst’s original publications.
Again, such comments did indeed predate Karl’s video by months, but Karl’s lawyers didn’t attempt to enter them into evidence, because they are boneheads.
[473] Barlow believes the grapevine effect here works against Billy to this day:
This ongoing publication of the imputations was a natural and probable consequence of Mr Jobst’s publication.
It’s hilarious how fully bought in Barlow is on this narrative, like with his whole body and soul. He really thinks Billy is hounded by allegations over Apollo, all strictly because Karl once did a single unfair video about him four years ago.
–[480]– Barlow notes that Billy could have gone about his response video in a way that didn’t inflame the situation. (Gosh, I wonder why he didn’t!) But what I find interesting in this passage is the chain of claims Barlow describes.
One may wonder, perhaps this case wasn’t about the factually inaccurate claim itself as much as Karl merely conveying a certain feeling or vibe by discussing someone’s legal battle, and then discussing someone’s suicide, in a way such that viewers may perceive a connection between the two. Like, even if every stated fact is true, merely mentioning the two events adjacently could be what did Karl in, especially under a poor set of defamation laws.
I can’t really speak to Australian defamation law on that point. But I think Barlow does give that game away here. To him, the claim of a financial payout is a key element in the chain of events. The way Barlow puts it, that was the thing that led Apollo to committing suicide. And indeed, Karl’s “offending words” can very much be interpreted that way. (Although, again, Karl also points out other factors and doesn’t assign blame.) But if you follow that, it opens the door to discussing Karl’s basis for making the claim, which (as I’ve outlined elsewhere) he had good reason to believe was true.
At any rate, I felt it worth pointing out that Barlow’s reasoning would seem to fall apart if the factual inaccuracy had been shored up.
[481] Barlow seems to enjoy these Air Force analogies of “calling in an airstrike on [one’s] own position” and such. Who knows, maybe he’s enamored with Mr. Video Game Cheater because he shares a name with the old Air Force guy?
[484] In discussing Karl’s correction, Barlow cites case law to the effect that “the prominence given to the correction or apology as published in comparison to the prominence given to the matter in question as published” should be taken into account.
Based on that, one may think it would be appropriate to correct an inaccuracy made toward the end of one long video by way of a full dedicated segment at the end of another long video. Consider that, if Karl had issued a correction by way of a social media post or Twitch stream, that would have drawn its own complaints. But as you can see, this “prominence” standard Barlow discusses evaporated as soon as it was indicated.
–[487]– Okay, there’s a bunch of subtle stuff to unpack in this one. Let’s start with this from Barlow (footnote omitted):
Critically, Mr Jobst did not apologise to Mr Mitchell himself, but only to his viewers for providing incorrect information to them and he even again provided false information to his viewers in stating that Mr Mitchell had not attempted to contact him to clear up any misinformation.
I expand on this later in [528] and [529], but Karl not apologizing to Billy directly is perfectly understandable, when you account for the fact that Billy’s camp were the original source of the claim of a financial settlement. (Unless you believe people from Billy’s circle who were clairvoyant about many other details made up this one story on their own, which I do not believe.) It would be fair to point out again that Karl’s lawyers screwed up and didn’t argue this point, and that evidence toward it was not tendered into the trial bundle. However, as I pointed out way back in [87], Barlow is at least nominally aware that such evidence exists. All I’m saying is, while Barlow is busy spreading defamation about Karl Jobst, it would be nice if he added a footnote to acknowledge that such evidence may exist outside his purview for consideration.
The bit about Karl saying Billy didn’t attempt to contact him to clear up misinformation is up to interpretation. Billy asked Keemstar, “Tell Karl it isn’t true”. And then Billy sent his solicitor, “Tell Karl it isn’t true”. But as I discussed back in [236], Billy wasn’t offering the proof he claimed to have; he was just commanding Karl “Stop saying that!” So is that really, to paraphrase, “trying to clear up misinformation”? If I stand on Barlow’s roof and piss on his head, can I tell him “Hey, it’s just raining”? Karl also based his statement on the fact it wasn’t Billy himself reaching out to do any of this. I also discussed that in [236]. I get why that clause doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, even if it’s true in one sense.
Barlow is also miffed that the thumbnail for Karl’s correction video doesn’t indicate any part of the video relates to Billy. In hindsight, Karl should have included such a notification in the preview. But again, newspapers print corrections on back pages as a matter of practice. The prominence argument would also seem to come into play. The thumbnail of the original “conmen” video gives no indication there’s anything about Apollo Legend. If the correction can be said to have been given little prominence, then the “offending words” were given just as little prominence in their original context.
But all that stuff’s nothing.
You will not believe this one.
The wildest part of passage [487] is at the end:
Oh my god.
Oh. My. God.
You have to be kidding me.
Does Ken Barlow not know how to fucking read!?!?!?
Karl reserved his opinion on “the impact of the settlement on Apollo’s decision”, which is entirely fair, but added that Apollo’s decision ultimately “was no-one’s responsibility but his own”.
His.
Own.
Not Billy’s.
Not a third party’s.
Not Rainbow Brite’s.
Not Mikhail Gorbachev’s.
His.
Own.
Yeah, no wonder Barlow believes Karl’s out on some zealous truth-be-damned crusade against Billy Mitchell. He lost his fucking glasses!
[Barlow squints] “A-ha! That looks to me like more proof that Karl Jobst is some punk kid who needs to be taught a lesson!”
“Sir, that’s the menu.”
I didn’t want to delve into ageism. It’s one thing for Barlow not to be hip to all the latest tech and lingo and youth culture, as long as he makes a sincere effort to understand it. But if I choose not to attribute major, judgment-altering blunders like this to corruption or malice, and if I assume he’s not suffering an undisclosed head injury or a career-long trend of outright incompetence, that leaves age as the only reasonable explanation. He clearly needs to be put out to pasture if this is how he evaluates actual evidence. I feel bad for anyone else’s life this guy is screwing up in other cases we never hear anything about.
–[488]– Here Barlow explains why he rejects Karl’s apology video as a mitigating factor. I actually don’t disagree with some of what Barlow says here, as I’ll explain at a later date. And I’m not going to rehash it all again at this moment. But this clause caught my eye:
he corrected only one aspect of the offending video
Yes, because there was only one aspect that was factually inaccurate. Why should Karl have to “correct” other, demonstrable facts? Because they hurt Billy’s fee fees? Would Barlow like to explain exactly what else should have been “corrected”? Or is Kenny boy just irritated Karl badmouthed his guy?
Oh, and Barlow suggests Karl’s retraction video could have actually aggravated Billy’s damages. Because, at this point, why not? It’s not like we aren’t already knee-deep in clown feces.
[499] [500] After writing at length about the legal framework behind “aggravated damages”, Barlow notes that such damages can be increased if there is “a lack of bona fides in the defendant’s conduct or it is improper or unjustifiable” (in quoting from some case law). You probably see where this is going. Billy accused Karl of lacking those very bona fides, exacerbating his pain or heartache or ulcers or tennis elbow or whatever he claimed to have suffered. And this sets up what will be a list of examples.
[501] Barlow cites “the allegations in paragraph 16 of the statement of claim”. Admittedly, I don’t believe I have access to this document, so we may have to infer those particulars. However, Barlow says, “in my view” Karl didn’t give a sufficiently direct description of his denial of those allegations. “Therefore,” as Barlow puts it, “he is deemed to have admitted those allegations.” But Barlow deigns to go through the list all the same.
[502] I don’t wish to belabor this point too much yet again. There was sufficient evidence at the time the claim was made that it was most likely true. (No, not enough to say it was 100% confirmed, but enough for it to be reasonably believed.) The court proceeds under the assumption this evidence would not have helped Karl, or else obviously Karl’s lawyers would have had it entered, obviously. And as stated back in [87], Barlow knows some quantity of evidence exists, which he seems terrified to acknowledge on even a hypothetical level.
It is worth pointing out that, in this passage, Barlow is just paraphrasing the arguments of Billy’s barrister. But casual readers seeing clips won’t necessarily pick up on that. They’ll read it as the judge blasting Karl for reckless reporting, which indeed is Barlow’s uninformed opinion throughout the rest of the piece. Again, this whole judgment that’s supposedly about vindicating wrongs to the public is instead just slandering Karl Jobst to that very public.
–[503]– Barlow builds on his already shaky foundation by turning Karl’s testimony back on him. Karl said during witness examination he was “unsure of the truth” of the imputation that Apollo’s settlement contributed to his suicide. Indignantly, Barlow calls this “an astonishing non-admission”, which I guess for him would be like me calling something “The single most shitwitted clusterfuck in the prolific and venerated history of shitwitful clusterfuckery.” (Hey, I just invented a word.) More to the point, Barlow rhetorically asks how Karl could be “unsure” of the imputation today if he had knowledge otherwise at the time the video was published. But again, that’s because there was evidence, which Barlow knows about, at least on a general level. I’d like to think Kenneth isn’t straight up lying on Karl’s name out of malice, but excluding that, he has to be so bedazzled by Billy that he can’t see straight.
–[506]– Once again, Barlow frames “a comment on Reddit” as if it’s the totality of Karl’s sources. (He does say Karl gave “some evidence”, but remember, that just means verbal testimony.)
siiiiiigh
I just went over this two seconds ago in [502]. The reason I keep bringing this up over and over is because some people will use this write-up as a resource, and will search for a certain passage, and then go “Oh, ersatz doesn’t have anything to say about [506], guess that means this really was all over a single Reddit comment.” So every time Barlow misrepresents the truth, I have to add a direct response.
At least here, Barlow does acknowledge that he rebuked Karl’s barrister, who tried to submit evidence justifying the financial settlement claim. But Barlow is either lying by omission, or completely oblivious to the fact that cutting off a line of evidence means cutting off everything downstream. Was Karl’s barrister supposed to push every such piece of evidence, and piss off the judge each time he crosses that line? Apparently he was, because moving on has been taken, even in a broadly rhetorical sense, as proof that no other such evidence existed.
Again, if Barlow had been clear in these specific passages, “There may have been other evidence, but it was all pre-emptively rejected on legal procedure”, my only note would be to link what exactly the evidence was. Meanwhile, I personally have had people message me in the last several days, asking “Wait, this was all over a single comment on Reddit?” No. Just like how you can’t just take Billy at his word, you also can’t take whatever Ken Barlow tells you at face value, either.
–[507]– Barlow does a fair amount of rhetorical exploration throughout this ruling. “Even if a viewer did not draw that meaning”, “Even if I were to have regard to this evidence”, etc. But Barlow never offers an “Even if I accept Karl had sufficient evidence to support his claim” analysis. The best we get is (to paraphrase) “Even if I accept this Reddit comment, that’s hardly enough basis to believe something”. (Exactly! That’s why it was based on a bunch more stuff!)
And as I explored back in [87], Judge Barlow was empowered to ask his own direct questions of the witnesses. With a jury trial, you have to be careful what information a jury is exposed to. But a judge is trusted with the ability to compartmentalize information, and weigh it according to its merits and procedure. Hell, Barlow was even conducting his own outside research. So if this point was important enough to Barlow to repeat over and over, why didn’t he simply pose even a conditional question about it to Karl?
All of this leads me to believe that Barlow actively did not want to know what justification Karl had for the claim. It really is like Barlow made up his mind early on, and didn’t want facts to get in the way of his feelings.
[509] I discussed back in [101] and [231] how Karl was ethically within his right to restore the original video following Billy’s misleading video threat, where Billy waves around a stack of papers and refuses to show it. Here we see that Barlow considers this act by Karl a strike against his “bona fides”. However, no such consideration is given to the fact Billy had multiple chances to share the no-longer-confidential document and simply settle the matter. Billy issuing legal threats, while concealing evidence, like the truth is a game of litigation poker, is somehow not a strike against Billy’s “bona fides”. Total kanga… welp… yeah… kangaroo court.
[510] [511] Speaking of the restoration of the original video, Barlow recites Karl’s testimony over how he still believed at the time that the claim was true. Further, since removing the contested portion wasn’t preventing Billy from initiating legal action, Karl saw no reason to keep the words removed. In the real world, Karl sounds perfectly reasonable here. Of course, when put alongside Barlow’s framing in the surrounding passages, “he still believed” is made to sound like he just had a hunch, rather than an accumulation of evidence.
–[513]– What exactly the fuck was Karl supposed to do? Remove the words and not say anything? Remove the words and say they’re false, even when your evidence (at the time) still says they’re true? Remove the words and tell your audience “Uhhhhh, I had to, cuz the lying lie-lie-liar who lies all the time told me it wasn’t true, and I’m a scaredy cat.” No, at the very least prior to Billy’s legal threat, Karl handled it professionally. To paraphrase, “I’ve removed the words, but to be clear, I’m not saying that they’re false, I’m just doing this out of legal caution.” And yet, to Biased Barlow, this “demonstrates a complete lack of bona fides.” At some point, I’m at a loss for words.
–[514]– I had to look up “contumelious”. What Barlow’s saying is that Karl restoring the original words showed a contemptuous disregard for the truth.
And Bumblehead Barlow’s basis for saying this?
Ah, Karl “had been told three times” that the claim was untrue, and Karl had not received any confirmation from Apollo’s brother.
And those “three times”? Those “three” sources Karl had, that Barlow finds so convincing?
- Keemstar, who just accepted and relayed what Billy told him;
- Billy’s solicitor, who just relayed what Billy told him;
- Billy himself, sharing no evidence but his word.
That’s not three sources. That’s just Billy, and the clowns (paid or otherwise) who believe him.
Is this how Judge Barlow does his legal research? Does he just peruse the top three Google results and call it a day? “Wow, this Wikipedia person sure does write a lot.”
I can imagine Ken Barlow, in his judge robes, sitting in perfect posture at his computer. And he gets three emails, one from a Nigerian prince, one from the assistant to the Nigerian prince, and a third from the treasurer of the Nigerian prince. “Well, that’s three sources! It must be true!” In fact, in abstract that scenario almost feels less gullible than taking Billy Mitchell at his word. After all, I can’t say I’ve ever been lied to by a Nigerian prince.
Why is Barlow offering none of his scrutiny toward Billy’s actions and motivations? How can he possibly not see that Billy wanted this lawsuit from day one?
–[515]– What the actual fuck, dude? Okay, so Karl took the words out when he got actual confirmation from an actually reliable source that the claim was untrue. But then Barlow throws in that Karl “still implied that he thought they were true anyway”?
Care to offer an example, sir? Are you talking about Karl’s tweet from before hearing from Apollo’s brother? Are you talking about Karl’s testimony? Or some other claim you’re misreading from Karl’s retraction video? Or are you once again buying Billy’s framing, scrambling up the one inaccuracy with anything else Billy didn’t want Karl to say?
Does Ken Barlow not like being fact-checked? Maybe he and Billy Mitchell really are two peas in a pod.
[516] Karl responding constructively to reliable sources, and with little regard to laughably unreliable sources, is framed by Barlow as “no regard for the truth”. People like Billy Mitchell would love for everyone to be as gullible as this dude.
[517] [518] [519] Karl acknowledged in a declaration in his Twin Galaxies proceeding that he uses “hyperbole, sarcasm, parody and humour to make [my videos] interesting to viewers”. As I illustrated back in [147], that’s just standard practice in the YouTube context and environment. Sorry that good journalism today isn’t all Ted Koppel and Nightline. Karl denied sensationalism when saying in the video that Billy is “legitimately evil”, “a scumbag” and “insane” – at least two of which are just plainly valid opinions. (“Insane” could be said to be a medical diagnosis, but I also often also use the term in a more informal sense.) But of course Barlow considers that answer to be “an example” of Karl being “disingenuous”. And all those viewers Karl ropes in? That’s gotta be about harming Billy, and not… you know, keeping your videos engaging so you can feed your family.
[521] “Karl Jobst still believes Billy Mitchell’s a scumbag? OUTRAGEOUS!”
[522] This is framed as though Karl was mocking Billy’s “complaints”, when it would be much more accurate to say Karl was mocking Billy’s lawsuit threats.
[523] Remember kids, if you’re covering Billy Mitchell’s voluminous lies, frauds, and life-altering lawsuits, don’t say any unkind words about him, because that would be malice.
Ken Barlow strikes me as the kind of twerp who would see someone bullied on the schoolyard, would give a total pass to the bully’s behavior, and would go up to the bullied and give the worst sort of advice imaginable. “You have to be more restrained. Perhaps it would help if you showed fear. Maybe if you give him what he wants, he’ll go away.”
No, Ken. None of this shit helps. And if this is how you view interpersonal conflict, you absolutely should not be a judge.
[526] If you follow the footnote, it seems Barlow thinks Patreon is like a tip jar?
[527] I’ve been freely pointing out Barlow’s inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and bias. So it’s only fair I point out that he dismisses the suggestion that Karl’s “pecuniary benefits” are indicative of further malice. In other words, making videos people want to watch is literally Karl’s business, and means of feeding his family. Oh, and Karl “has not repeated the relevant defamatory statements in order to generate that revenue”. Almost as if Karl does have regard for the truth after all?
[528] [529] Here we get to Karl’s retraction video. Barlow suggests that, even if a defendant denies an alleged imputation, they ought to offer a conditional apology. Barlow’s example of such is “If that is how my words were understood, then I apologise”. But what really sets Barlow off is that, while Karl apologized to his viewers for the misinformation, Karl did not apologize to Billy directly in even a conditional way.
I’m gonna be frank on this one. I get why this can seem unreasonable to a judge stepping into this whole mess from the outside. But in the real world, my honest take is, you just don’t apologize to ghouls who do everything Billy Mitchell has done to so many innocent people – at least, not without any apology from him. This may be a topic for a longer conversation, but I am a firm, unwavering believer in the “Asshole Tax”. It’s not that some things aren’t worth apologizing for, it’s that some people are only seeking the satisfaction of watching you submit. If Billy wants to be a part of the grown-up accountability circle, that would actually be great, but he has many such bridges of his own to mend first. Karl made clear in his correction segment that it’s not okay to tell lies about people like Billy no matter what they’ve done, and that’s good enough for me. (But of course, since Billy’s the one taking everyone to court, he gets to frame the infractions of others in isolation from his own.)
I know some won’t like that answer. And Grandpa Barlow certainly wouldn’t, lol. But if it helps, it turns out that either Billy or his son (most likely both) were the original source of the financial settlement claim, as conveyed through third parties. And that was all based on information we had at the time. So why would you apologize to the guy for making the claim he himself floated out as true? If Billy actually wanted accountability from the guy who claimed Apollo paid him big bucks, he could find it in the mirror. But we know that was never what this lawsuit was really about.
Apologies for the lengthy diatribes here at the end. We’re almost done.
Getting back to Barlow’s ruling, he’s also raised about the retraction being put in a separate segment at the end of a long video. (Barlow disdainfully refers to it as “the last 45 seconds or so of this video”, when in reality the runtime of the correction segment was over double that.) But again, he seems to have forgotten his own considerations from [484].
–[530]– As I pointed out in [487], Judge Ken Barlow can’t fucking read. So this ought-to-be-appeal-worthy mistake by Barlow seems to have factored into his damages assessment significantly. Barlow also highlights this point by paraphrasing Karl’s testimony in his own words. (I guess I should be careful when I say “his own”, Barlow will randomly think I’m referring to Billy Mitchell.) As Barlow says, Karl “still believes that the settlement contributed to Apollo Legend’s decision”. But that’s… entirely reasonable? I’ve discussed this elsewhere. It takes two to tango. You don’t have to blame Billy for Apollo’s choice to settle in order to think the humiliation of such a public settlement contributed to Apollo’s choice, which Apollo alone is responsible for, which is what Karl said (regardless of what Bobblehead Barlow thinks Karl said).
There’s also a double-standard at play here. Remember, we’re operating with some tenuous imputations to start with. “Apollo settled with Billy, that settlement included a cash payout (so-believed at the time), that cash payout put Apollo in debt, Apollo had a bunch of other stresses and health problems, months later he took his own life.” And in Billy’s framing, that all gets shortened into “Karl called me a murderer”. (These are all paraphrases.) And yet, Karl openly acknowledging a factual inaccuracy isn’t given that same breadth of suggestion. It isn’t treated as “Hey everyone, I got something wrong, it may have factored into your takeaway from the video, whatever meaning you gleaned may have been inaccurate, feel free to consider this correction and please remember that claims without evidence are unreliable.” Karl is expected to correct not only the single claim he got incorrect, but also everything else Billy feels marginally aggrieved by.
[531] By the sound of it, Karl’s correction only made aggravated damages worse? Man, Barlow fell hard for Billy’s spell.
–[535] [536]– After discussing Karl’s podcast appearance (which was obviously a mistake on Karl’s part), Barlow offers these concluding thoughts on aggravated damages. To be clear, while I always thought Karl should win outright, I was prepared for a loss wherein Billy is awarded some minimal amount of damages. “The video hurt you this much, but not as much as you’re claiming”. But the exorbitant amount of damages awarded is frankly outrageous, and not commensurate with the facts of the case.
The most telling part here is that last sentence of [535]. “Mr Jobst’s ongoing conduct has also continued to damage Mr Mitchell’s reputation”. Yeah, no shit. Reporting the facts on Billy Mitchell makes him look terrible. But remember, Karl hasn’t discussed the Apollo stuff in any detail since. So that couldn’t be “ongoing conduct” that “continued to damage” Billy.
Given Barlow’s focus and language, it’s clear he means “You’re still making videos about Billy, so you’re still hurting his reputation.” That’s what he’s been suckered into adjudicating and penalizing. It’s not about the one thing Karl got wrong. It’s about “How dare you keep hurting this poor, innocent man.” (Because, again, that’s what this lawsuit was ever really about.)
Hmm, I wonder if Barlow’s language about crusading knights hoping to slay dragons is all projection…
[547] Barlow discusses a bunch of previous defamation cases, and how their damages were calculated. I found this passage interesting because, in one case, the fact that the defendant maintained on the stand that they still believed what they had said about the plaintiff was true was used against them as a basis for awarding even more damages. Hm, sound familiar? Sad to say, I’ve got too much to do to dig up the specific circumstances of that old case to come to an informed opinion on it. But it does have me wondering if maybe Australia defamation law is just completely fucked.
[552] Barlow’s illustration of Karl’s actual words continues to be outlandish. He describes it exactly the way Billy would, no differently than if it were Billy in a Barlow mask up on the bench. And of course Barlow leaves out that Karl explicitly cited Apollo’s ongoing health issues. Think what you will of Karl’s words, it definitely doesn’t fit the narrative here.
[553] In the footnote, Barlow’s like “Junior testified that there’s still a copy locatable on the Internet.” Yeah, Billy’s own fucking channel was still hosting the “offending words” for years. So start there, I guess. (I get that, ostensibly, this is about a full copy of the whole video reuploaded by someone, somewhere. As if Billy himself wouldn’t do that anonymously if he thought it would boost his legal claim.) Oh, and Junior’s testimony of like “Uhhhh, I think like one copy is still up somewhere”? No examples given, totally at his word. Junior probably could’ve claimed it was in fifty locations, and Barlow would’ve said “Oh my gosh! That means, like, fifty times the damages then!”
–[554]– I’ve gone over this so many times now (see [208] and [440]), but Barlow again totally buys Billy’s framing, both that this connection to Apollo has been badgering him reputationally, and that it all started with Karl. None of it’s true. So many people forgot that any of this had anything to do with Apollo at all until the verdict reading. And randos and trolls were blaming Billy for Apollo’s death starting the moment it happened. Barlow doesn’t know this, because he doesn’t know the case very well.
[556] Not to let Barlow off the hook, but here you get yet another indication of how badly Karl’s lawyers screwed this. Barlow assessed damages not only in terms of “RIP Apollo” references that have already been made, but also mindful of any “new shoots” from the grapevine into perpetuity. Probably a big mistake to implicitly concede where those roots draw from.
[560] “Billy my man, I would’ve given you more aggravated damages if you’d asked for them. But we’re still bros, right?”
[564] I realize the grapes are long sour by this point, but here Barlow discusses lingering evidentiary objections from the trial. Billy doesn’t need to substantiate convention losses, sketchy emails, or ballpark numbers, but damn if you’re a witness for the defense and refer to “mainstream articles” that aren’t particularized.
[568] This very last passage relates to the lawyer bills. Australia uses the UK system, where the party who loses the litigation is expected to pay the legal costs of the winner. Ostensibly, this policy is meant to dissuade unfounded litigation, but that doesn’t really work when lying litigants can show up and win massive judgments with little more than angry outbursts and crocodile tears. In that case, tacking on legal costs actually makes it worse.
Anyway, on its face, this passage reads as pretty ridiculous. “Both parties have to agree to an amount for legal costs, and if they don’t, I will award them in Billy’s favor in full.” Like, WTF? If I don’t agree, do I get the iron maiden?
Again, I’m not accustomed to Australian proceedings, but I would guess that what’s really going on here is, Karl’s being given an opportunity to negotiate non-monetary remuneration in lieu of lawyer costs. In other words, hypothetically, Karl could agree to post a video of himself sucking Billy’s insecurely microscopic wee-wee, and in exchange Billy could agree to call it good on the lawyer bills. Obviously that won’t happen, and I wouldn’t expect Billy to be reasonable in any such negotiations, as he has shown himself to be unreasonable throughout. I’m also not sure why this extension period is strictly necessary, given that you can just negotiate things like this against debts any time you want. But that’s what I took this to mean.
So that’s it for what actually made it into the ruling document. I hope folks understand why those of us on Karl’s side were so confident there was no way the judge would come down so firmly in Billy’s favor, but Billy certainly got the judge he wanted. Believe it or not, I actually have more to say about Ken Barlow, the person, and my mid-trial assessments of him, in a future write-up. For instance, I was surprised to see that the following rather shocking moment didn’t make it into Judge Barlow’s considerations:
I was handed that note on “Day 2”, I published it the following morning before court, and then (as detailed in “Day 3”) Barlow was promptly notified of it. I was asked by Karl’s solicitor to contact the person who wrote it, in case they were willing to testify to what they saw, and so I was absent during the next sequence. But so I’m told, Barlow asked Billy about it, Billy effectively said “Oh, my son and I were just talking about dinner plans,” and Barlow basically went “Cool story, absolutely nothing to see here!”
One may immediately ask, if this was about innocent dinner plans, why the need for secrecy? Why not simply retain these innocent messages, so it can be demonstrated how innocent they were? Why the specific directive to delete your conversation if you were just chatting about getting Macca’s!?
And yet, Barlow bought this rather dubious story hook line and sinker. So much so, that he didn’t think to include any mention of it in this lengthy ruling, when discussing the credibility of Billy and his son. So much so, that Barlow didn’t even bother asking Junior for his side of the story, just in case his account didn’t line up. (Junior was not allowed in the courtroom during his father’s testimony, and I was present during all of Junior’s testimony.) The dude whose job it was to decide how trustworthy Billy Mitchell was decided “Oop, better not think about that.”
Judge Ken Barlow is an absolute sucker. He’s willing and eager to carry water for con-artists like Billy Mitchell, and worse, to do it for free, at the cost of his own reputation. He has nothing important to add to the Billy Mitchell conversation, and aside from the power he wields, nothing he says should be taken seriously. I can’t exactly say the ruling was “worthless”, because it was obviously worth a lot of money to a certain carny swindler out there, but it was total rubbish for those of us who care about the truth. Barlow’s written opinion is actually worth less for the fact that it was delivered electronically, because if it was on paper, at least then I could use it to wipe my ass.
Judge Ken Barlow, thanks for absolutely nothing. Please, do everyone a favor and retire. Oh, and watch out for those drop bears. I hear they’re dangerous!
Oh, and on a personal note, to anyone who told me, “You think you know more than the judge?” Help yourself to a big, nutritious bowl of eat shit. No, no, trust me. It’s delicious.
Anyway, like I said, I still have more to say about this case, and I do intend to discuss Karl’s own mistakes in a bit more detail as well. But I wanted this piece to stay focused on the ruling document itself, what it misrepresented, and what it left out. Thank you all for reading! Trans rights are human rights. And we’ll see you all back here next time.
Thanks for the time and effort in breaking this down, Sir. Much appreciated.
Regardless if you like or dislike Karl Jobst. This is a terrible look for Barlow and his lack of due diligence.
Shocking.
You’re such a blatant homosexual it’s almost insulting.
Oh look 4chanoid apes are already here.
lmao I kinda wanted to leave more of their nonsense up, just as exhibits, but at some point it just clutters everything. Also, the extreme slurs every other word get a bit trite.
Wasn’t 4chan hacked recently and taken down?
This is so embarrassing that you should honestly delete it.
–[515]– What the actual fuck, dude? Okay, so Karl took the words out when he got actual confirmation from an actually reliable source that the claim was untrue. But then Barlow throws in that Karl “still implied that he thought they were true anyway”?
Yeah, he says that because Karl gave evidence in the box that he still believed it was true. See [217] of the judgment: “He also said that he still believes that the settlement between Mr Mitchell and Apollo Legend contributed to Apollo Legend’s decision to commit suicide.”
It seems like Barlow can remain cognizant of the evidence, unlike you.
I can read just fine.
Here’s Barlow’s passage [515]:
> It was not until Apollo Legend’s brother confirmed that the settlement did not
require any payment by Apollo Legend that Mr Jobst again edited out the offending
words, but he still implied that he thought they were true anyway.
Karl did say he still believed Apollo’s choice to settle contributed to his decision to end his life, while making clear that that’s not Billy fault. But Karl absolutely did not say he still believed there was a financial settlement. When Barlow sloppily refers to everything as “the offending words”, and presents a bogus narrative to the public, then I am correct to point out that bogus narrative.
Try again.
Offending words is defined at [15] and [16] to not just be the allegation of payment of money, but that the settlement with Billy resulted in Apollo taking his own life. Which Karl repeated stated he still believed was true, regardless of whether any money was paid.
But hey, if you’re so sure, I look forward to you leading the appeal!
Karl literally acknowledged the “offending words” were not true. There was a factual inaccuracy.
Sooooooooooo…………….
Where’s your issue?
Again, you and Barlow are just conflating a lot of words with one inaccuracy. And you’re doing it on purpose. And if I may say, it’s very rude, and disrespectful to those of us who care about basic truth.
The offending words are the imputation that “Mr Mitchell was a major contributing factor in Apollo Legend’s decision to commit suicide.” See [16].
Apollo said he still believed that to be true.
You seem to think the offending words are that Apollo paid Billy money. If that was all Karl implied, he wouldn’t have been sued.
Let’s see, at [16], Barlow writes…
> the words set out above, to which I shall refer as the “offending words”
C’mon, man. This is embarrassing. Just admit you were wrong.
I do believe Billy would have sued, regardless of the financial inaccuracy. But the fact there was an inaccuracy, while again conflating all the “offending words” together, is part of why Billy was able to bamboozle Barlow into thinking he had a case.
I said this on Twitter (screw the name X) and I’ll say it again here: Billy Mitchell is the opposite of King Midas. If he touches your reputation (aka convinces you to defend him), your reputation will immediately get worse. Guinness, Manning & Kass, Michael Zyda, Judge Barlow, and all of the shills have had their reputations ruined in my eyes specifically because they’re gullible, uncaring, or corrupt enough to enable this vainglorious bastard.
By the way, vainglory was on the original list of Seven Deadly Sins before being combined with pride and I think it PERFECTLY explains Billy Mitchell’s behavior. I could explain if anyone wants.
Hey, listen, you’re not wrong.
Ah, yes. I was waiting for this. I definitely trust strong-agenda-having Internet video game man to know more about Australian law than an Australian judge.
Maybe some day you’ll grow up and just accept that you and all of these YouTube drama grifters were, in fact, the ones in the wrong.
As I said a gazillion times, Barlow is the expert on Australian law, I’m the expert on the Karl/Billy case.
I can’t make you read.
The def case is so much simpler than you make it out to be, writing several novels about it , nitpicking everything the judge has said or appealing isn’t going to get the verdict overturned because the fact is KJ messed up and was never going to win. Anyone who thought so was completely blinded by bias -or like the vast majority- thought the case was about something else.
Wait, you’re not John Weeks, are you?
Thank you for the write up on this! Barlow is the “human element” and frankly it’s people like him that make those in the right make concessions to those in the wrong when threatened with legal action, because you never know if you’ll draw a hack like him.
“Karl and his viewers aren’t unfair to pile on Billy. That’s how dishonest figures like Billy are held accountable in the modern media age. We can’t physically stop Billy Mitchell from lying, but we can sure as hell roast his ass for it. As I said in the introduction, journalism is the truth’s last line of defense. And whether Boomers like it or not, this is what functional journalism looks like today.”
I’m facepalming so hard now. Dude… noooo…
I’m not a journalist, they get monthly paychecks. I’m a contributor to a magazine, who gets paid per article/review. Actual journalists fact-check my work and do the final edits before publishing. I have to follow journalistic principles and stay neutral. I’m not allowed to go “Look at this fucking baboon” when reporting about Mitchell.
Don’t get me wrong. Ersatz and Karl are much better and more experienced at researching and fact-checking than me. But if I write as colourfully as them, I would get fired and prosecuted. Kinda like Karl.
I do smile and giggle at your humour tho – which I do not regret. I just hope journalism don’t take this path.
I respect your position. It would be nice if we had traditional journalism that was willing to take big chances and speak truth about the powerful. But sadly, so many traditional outlets have become press release rubber stamps. I definitely agree that fact-checking is vital. In retrospect, if Karl wanted to make the claim, he should have qualified it as “seriously believed” (or whatever) and shown some evidence, instead of just saying it was flatly true.
Yeah, I don’t agree with ersatz_cats on that either. I mean, I do remember Karl has said that he’s not a journalist either. With that said, he has said many things which are true, including the whole Jirard / Open Hand Foundation and all the stuff in regards to Billy Mitchell cheated records. And I don’t doubt the latter will sue an actual newspaper or magazine anyways, even with all their due processes and such (I mean, he literally sued Cartoon Network of all places lmfao).
I respect your disagreement as well. And you’re right, Karl definitely does not call himself a journalist. That’s just me saying he is.
Remembering how fucking terrible some judges can be (including the judges in my third world, civil law based country) and with everything you have written about Ken Barlow, you just confirmed to me that I should 100% trust my gut and make my own opinion instead of letting a (potentially) clueless judge tell me what to think about a given matter. I’m even more convinced that Billy Mitchel is a litigious scoundrel of a person who would do anything to ruin your life just because you say that he cheated on a stupid fucking video game.
He made the life of Jeremy Young and David Race worse with the stupid lawsuits that ended up being dismissed. He made the life of Jeff Harrist and Apollo Legend so bad that anyone would be extremely gullible (more than Ken Barlow) to not believe that Silly Bitchell had something to do with them taking their lives (and unlike that stupid boomer of Ken Barlow, I don’t believe they have to spell it out loud to believe that). I’m now convinced that Billy Mitchell is using the dumb ass verdict from Judge Ken Barlow to make Karl Jobst life a living hell, without giving a shit that he’s the father of a young family, it’s probably their main source of income and who’s also probably still paying for his house. I wouldn’t be surprised if Billy Mitchell also wants Karl to follow the same steps as Apollo or Jeff Harrist just because he had the audicity to actually say thing the way they are in regards to a stupid ass video game record. And yes Twitter and Reddit, he’s using Karl because of a video game and not because of what he said about Apollo Legend, you snut eating motherfuckers. I can’t believe a man the same age as my mother will do something as fucking stupid as suing over a bitch ass video game.
The same way that a ton of people are lazy enough to let a judge tell them what to think, I really hope those same people are at least capable to change their mind if Karl ends up appealing his verdict and can get an actually competent judge to check his case and that doesn’t get fed up with their pride and ego like judge Ken Barlow. If I was in Karl’s case, I also wouldn’t want to pay $350K in legal fees + Billy’s lawyer costs + sucking Billy’s tiny little “Red joystick of Destiny” that he calls his giant cock!
Fuck Billy Mitchell. Fuck Billly Jr. Fuck Triforce. Fuck Judge Ken Barlow. Fuck Judge Wendy Chang. Fuck everyone who was clueless enough to believe that the lawsuit “wasn’t about BIlly cheating”. Fuck all of Karl’s haters who believe that he should shut up just because a fucking grandpa wants to sue him for saying that he cheated in Donkey Kong, Pacman or when he played with fucking marbles. And fuck anyone who wants to give Billy the benefit of the doubt without considering he’s a lying fucking psychopath.
It’s laughable how these geriatric judges have the capability of ruining somebody’s life for something as asinine as talking shit in youtube videos with flimsy and tamperable evidence that it actually caused significant financial harm. I had a bad feeling it wasn’t going to end well the moment he bought the whole puking for days testimony, which sounded hilariously fabricated.
Indeed. I’m pretty disappointed I had faith in Barlow. What a let down.
I knew, no matter how many times I said, including in the introduction, that Barlow is the expert on Australian law, while I’m the expert on the Karl/Billy case, some fool would stroll in here and go “Hurr durr, you think you know more than the judge?”
Anyone saying that downstream of this comment should be translated to “My opinion can be safely ignored, except when I speak about eating dog turds out of strangers’ yards, which is my one and only area of expertise.”
I came into this fully cognizant of the fact that I’ve read all of the Billy-related material on this website (multiple times in some cases), watched Veritas’s superb nearly 4 hour video on him, and before that have somewhat kept tabs on all the stuff he’s been involved in, and so maybe it would be a bit difficult for me to be objective in assessing the judge’s reasoning here.
But just brushing off the fact that Billy gave exactly opposite testimony, under oath, stating that the stress of [claimed defamation of current case] is nothing compared to the stress of [claimed defamation of other case], and saying that it’s believable that that could be an honest mistake, especially in the face of everything else that Billy has said and done in both cases, is straight up laughable. Like, WHAT??
I haven’t finished reading but I just had to stop and say something about that because wow
I think a lot of this result was just bad “lawyering” on Karl’s side honestly. The missing evidences, not focusing on the important points and Karl’s seemed to have little to no guidance. Like:
They didn’t submit some evidence for why Karl believed his sources more than Billy.
From what I remember they didn’t even push too much that what Billy said about Apollo was worse than what Karl “implied” with his statement, it was just Muselk at the end that pointed that out? Honestly I think if he focused on this more it might have changed (maybe they did and I just dont remember). Personally I see so many people online commenting on how they would love is Y person died, or they would celebrate Zs death that I think Billy might have been able to dodge that anyways (I mean, he did by just saying it was dark humor, but that’s not the point here).
And the whole Karl being too hard to change some of his views, one example was whether billy contacted him or not. The whole thing is about this quote: “He didn’t provide any evidence to back up this claim, nor did he attempt to get in contact with me to clear up any misinformation I may have had.”. That was kind of a weird point for Karl to get stuck on as it kinda “implies” Karl gave more value to Billy’s word than Billy’s Lawyer. Sure Karl said it wouldn’t have mattered if billy entered in contact, but that is him saying this now, while his quote does leave open the possibility that it would have made a difference. My point here is more that this was some hard questions made by Billy’s side that Karl just answered poorly, imo.
To be fair, Im no lawyer and have no idea of how trials are supposed to go, this is just what I my view is based on what I read about the trial from your posts and other people. I do agree that the amount Karl has to pay is too much, but Im not entirely convinced he is not liable. Sure, now nobody is talking or dont even know about the apollo statement, but the lawsuit was about damages done back then, not now, so arguing: “well people now have no clue what the lawsuit was about, so billy must have not suffered any damages” is not really a good defense imo (then again, I don’t think billy suffered that much based solely on this).
I thought you said something about not believing claims made by a person just because they said it. I have watched a lot of Karl, and he absolutely does sensationalize – which is exactly what he admitted in the passage you quote from him:
That’s not a good thing. There are many flaws to be found in this judgement, which you were correct to point out, but I would not put among them a desire to promote some sort of decorum and restraint in public debate. I do not consider it “good journalism” to produce most enraging stuff that technically isn’t false; and neither do I consider an exchange of “LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”s to be civil discourse. Persuasion should be based on factual arguments, not on coming up with ever-stronger condemnations until they lose their force through overuse. (On a tangential note: I occasionally browse your feed on Twitter, and sometimes have to resist the regrettable urge to sympathize with the IDF. This is how eyeroll-inducing I find your brand of activism over there.)
And look, I have been a regular viewer of Karl myself – but what I like about his videos is the in-depth research and explanations, accessible even to someone not immersed in gaming culture, that enables outsiders to appreciate the skill involved in it. The clickbait and sensationalism was something I forgave him, but this judgement, even as flawed as it is, is making me reconsider.
Speak for yourself – you certainly don’t speak for me, an actual Millennial (born 1992). The fact that I see lots of comments to the effect of “I stopped watching Karl when he transitioned to mostly drama content”, tells me that I am probably not alone. I am also reminded of Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe S4E5. Seriously, you have no justification to paint a whole generation within every culture (including cultures not as laissez-faire about speech as the US is) with the same brush of your narrow cohort of peers.
I am not sure who expressed it first, but I agree with the sentiment that if you consider approaching people as intelligent beings to be snobbery, while taking them to be morons with zero attention span to be treating them with respect, then I guess we understand “respect” differently.
I appreciate the respectful candor. If I’m to be honest, I think you give away a faulty mindset a bit with the IDF stuff. Like, even if you disagree with the facts reported, that’s all serious life and death stuff. Why would you sympathize with them… just because I vigorously badmouth them? Is that truly the sign of a moral compass, or an emphasis on decorum above all?
You do make an excellent point though about painting entire generations with too broad a brush. I don’t think it’s so much that people are different. I’ve said elsewhere, if you dropped the young speedrunners (excuse me, “speed runners”) of today into 1980s arcades, and brought the early arcaders into the Twitch speedrun era of today, it wouldn’t have changed anything. Liars and cheaters would still have risen to prominence in the low-evidence era, and people who consider themselves so skeptical today would’ve still rallied around them because “They’re just so good, I’ve seen them play, why would they have to lie?” Whereas, if Todd Rogers and Billy Mitchell were young today, they’d get found out and humiliated pretty quickly.
What I’m getting at is, I don’t really think it’s about the people themselves. It’s the media environment. When you had limited TV channels, they could be a little lackadaisical. They would broadcast like the Jerry Lewis telethon for hours, because what else are you really gonna watch? But there’s literally too much media to watch it all today. That’s why the landscape has changed.
“I can excuse the IDF whitewashing a genocide, but I draw the line at ersatz_cats being cringe on Twitter” You can excuse a genocide lol? I’ll be glad to redirect you to Martin Luther King Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963)” in regards to his feelings for “moderates”, which not only applied to his fight against bigotry, but I believe it’s also a very important read that relates to modern activism and the fight against injustice in any shape or form. I know it’s pretty silly (Bitchell) to mention this on a thread about the legal shenanigans between two gamers but stil, here’s the link to an extract from said letter (http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/060.html)
And sorry for chiming in my unsolicited opinion, but you should probably extend your line of thinking in regards to Karl sensationalism and consider how likely you are from being convinced by “persuassion” and “factual arguments” v.s. how much you are being swayed by “public opinion”, by letting someone else tell you what to think (hint: you should probably re-read the article to get an idea on who I’m talking about) and I absolutely hate to use this term as a self-identified leftist, but “Political correctness” as well.
I’m also not sure how much you can extend the idea of “approaching people as intelligent being” to a serial lying psychopath like Billy Mitchell or to any of the people that ended up associating with him for that matter. I mean, it seems like Judge Ken Barlow relied on your idea a little too much (from my POV) and you can probably see why we got the verdict that we ended up getting (seeing that you agree how flawed it was). Just sayin’…
I’m at work reading through this installment and have reached half way, phew 😴
I still need to read the rest, so I might make a coffee when I get home and power through the remainder, which will probably take me to 2am irish time 😬
But yeah, so far I’m feeling angry of how blind the judge has been. I did initially say that I didn’t trust him, that his actions, words, and positive attitude towards Mitchell at the beginning of the trial seemed extremely odd. And my initial hunch was right.
Do you think an appeal is a good step to take? Would it be the same judge? I’m thinking if Karl can appeal and have it that it doesn’t cost much more, maybe it should be an option 🤔
Yeah, you were right. In retrospect, the whole “I’ll have some Rickey’s hot sauce with my popcorn” bit, at the time I thought “That’s probably nothing”, but in retrospect, it’s very telling.
My understanding is that it would be different judge(s) adjudicating the appeal? I would think there are enough procedural faults in this ruling, but I’m not an Aussie lawyer, so who knows?
If it will get reviewed/revised by a different judge, (or even a handful of judges) I do think an appeal would be the right step to take.
I have no idea how much that would cost, and if Karl can manage to pay for it, but it could go some way in making up for Barlows shocking result.
It might also stop some of the trolls on Karl’s videos. The comments are absolutely appalling.
The man is 1/2 million $ in the negative and they are blaming him for fraud and misleading his audience 😑
It’s a very sad state of affairs.
You know the judges see an article like this and are more likely to side with Billy right?
Seeing a judge, friend or not, attacked with an article linked to Karl due to Karl’s friendship with the author will not help his case at all.
The same would of happened if Billy did the same thing. It doesn’t matter who does it, attacking the judge is a stupid move.
Well done for so detailed an autopsy of the horror-show judgement, it’s already high in the Google search results for Barlow’s name so hopefully he might read it!
He reminds me of the late British Judge Pickles, who once infamously asked “who are the Beatles?” in court well after Beatlemania. Although I think this iinstance is a perfect example of someone who knows enough to be dangerous – i.e. his misunderstanding of gaming/youtube culture was not so ridiculous as to make it obvious to all lay folks that the decision was flawed but his jumping on stuff like the Reddit post clearly clouded his view, as you discussed. So those of us who do “get it” are left exasperated.
I’m still not sure I’d recommend an appeal, as those judge(s) would likely hold a similar worldview- what would you advise?
Thank you! I know, my blog post with the written note was brought to his attention within like a couple hours. So at the very least, he’d probably be made aware of this that way?
Hi! First time commenting here, so I wanna begin with, thank you so much for your frankly insane quality work on all of this, it’s been invaluable.
Two main things I wanted to say following the ruling. First, like you and many others, I was so shocked and disappointed by this ruling in what should have been a slam-dunk case. From your daily write-ups it sounded like you had confidence in the judge being intelligent, but today’s write-up is absurd in how much of a complete moron and biased it shows him to be. It’s unbelievable and very disheartening that something like this can just happen and Billy Mitchell will get away with this bullshit, yet again.
The other surprise though, was the large backlash I’m seeing from people. I don’t know if Karl had a preexisting hater community, or if a ton of them had some vague feeling about not liking him and think a judicial decision automatically vindicates them, but I’m under the impression there’s a ton of people who don’t know the most basic things on his case (as you’ve shown) yet have extremely strong opinions on Karl being fully deserving of this judgement. They’ll say stuff like “of course you can’t just imply Billy caused Apollo’s suicide, that’s defamatory” and I want to scream at them to read your articles because it’s obviously not as simple as that. And so many people are claiming Karl intentionally misled people about his lawsuit being about the cheating allegations, and I don’t know how to answer to that beyond what you’ve said on that matter already, it just boggles my mind that so many people are just factually wrong, and nobody seems to care or know about your work.
Now, I don’t know how law or appeals or anything works, but is there any way this fiasco can be salvaged? Like, say, sending all of this to Karl’s lawyers so that they can fix their own mistakes and correct the fifty billion things the judge got wrong? Assuming of course, that there’s any chance that he could reevaluate things objectively and realize he’s embarrassingly completely fallen for Billy’s lies, but surely with how he criticized Karl for being “very hard to dissuade from a view once he had formed it”, he would have to take it to heart once he’s been shown to be wrong himself, right…? Sigh.
And even if it’s possible, I assume the lawyer cost on Karl would be another significant problem, for something that has no guarantee of changing anything. It’s so depressing.
Anyway, thanks again for everything, and I very much look forward to reading any future articles from you.
Yo! Thank you very much for reading, and for taking the time to comment. Yeah, I was pretty wrong about Barlow during the trial, lol. While I was free with my opinions, I did also want to make sure everyone had the facts. And signs were definitely there. Anyway, I intend to discuss that aspect of it all a bit more in a future piece.
There 100% is a pre-existing hater community out to smear Karl Jobst. Once the ruling was so devastatingly against him, they smelled blood in the water, and they all came out to hash through everything that’s been discussed before. And unfortunately, a lot of good people get swept up in it as well, because Karl has said and done some stupid stuff many years ago. That’s one reason I made a point to discuss framing last time. I hope people consider not just things they see, but why they’re being asked to give it their attention.
Karl does have avenues for appeal, but even with what I’ve laid out, it sounds like success is unlikely. Like I said, judges don’t get a lot of oversight. But ultimately an Australian lawyer would have to weigh in on that.
“It’s called an “estate”. But if he even mentioned Billy, $25,000 of that “estate” wouldn’t go to his family, it would go to Billy instead. So that’s why Apollo didn’t say goodbye to Billy, even if maybe he really, really, really wanted to.”
Flawed reasoning…
1. This assumes that a suicidal person is in the right frame of mind to consider such nuance and potential consequences.
2. Apollo wouldn’t even have to name Billy. There are plenty of ways to hint at Billy, and/or the trial, without explicitly saying his name.
3. Billy would be unlikely to sue the estate because, in my opinion, it would only increase the damage to his reputation far more than the $25K would be worth. The fallout, from the revelation that Apollo named him as a reason why, would already be enough. Going after the family’s money would be akin to launching another nuke on himself.
Settlement*
Apollo never went to trial
These are absolutely fair points.
To 1, I would say Apollo seemed pretty lucid in his goodbye video. I mean, the whole subject’s sad, but he was certainly mindful of how things would play out following his passing, which I perceive as unusual of someone who… how would I even put it… made such a choice not on the basis of mental instability? I think you know what I mean, even if I struggle to find the words.
2, I don’t think the text of the agreement is public, but it’s probably pretty broadly in Billy’s favor. So “Douchecanoe who sued me” may still be actionable.
3, A while back I wrote about “Ellrod’s folly”:
https://perfectpacman.com/2024/10/07/ellrods-folly/
From that, you get an idea of what it looks like when someone enforces a conditional settlement. The material isn’t meant to be publicly accessible. It’s typically a quiet affair, and wouldn’t take very long. If contract says X, it’s a rubber stamp. As to your argument, Imma be real with you, I kinda believe Billy is exactly that person. (I’ve been told by a member of his own family – yes, me speaking directly with someone related to Billy – that he was pestering his own mother to increase his share of the inheritance shortly before her death.) Like, I’m not even sure this hypothetical would be the worst thing he would have done, and yet people still go “Well, he seems cool, he’s not really like that.”
I think mostly the point is that the fact Apollo didn’t name Billy can be easily explained, even if there can also be some debate about it.
It’s hard not to feel disheartened about this all. Searching Karl’s name on youtube right now leads to some pretty bad results, like Youtube’s really pushing the “Hate Karl” agenda and I feel like it’ll only spread. But as much as I’m dissatisfied, I can’t find it in me to turn to the judge and call him incompetent or anything like that. He made his ruling and that’s that. Didn’t think that so much rested on it though, I can’t believe the internet’s turned on Karl now, seemingly arbitrarily. I’ve been wanting to see justice done for a while now, and I guess I’ll have to keep waiting. Seems to be the story of the world lately… I have no real point I’m making here, just sad.
“I can’t find it in me to turn to the judge and call him incompetent or anything like that. He made his ruling and that’s that. Didn’t think that so much rested on it though”
Was $400,000 not enough to see the severity..?
In all seriousness though, I felt compelled to reply because I just felt my body sinking as I read your comment. It’s so raw and sober. I really want to say thank you for sharing your feelings here, and that you are not alone.
Bottom line: The judge’s overall approach and decision can be explained by a refusal to reward a man who was pursuing a years-long personal vendetta. And who made it clear he would use a decision in his favor to expand said vendetta. Yes, there were many judgment calls in the decision that could or should have gone Karl’s way. But the moment Karl said he was going to be a “sore winner” his fate was sealed. Judges like this are old-school and there is no universe where Barlow would have facilitated that sort of thing. You are missing the forest for the trees.
That interview with Karl was definitely a mistake. But I’m not sure Barlow hadn’t already made up his mind before seeing it.
Also, I get that judges are human, and that they will rule on important things on such human bases, but that really doesn’t excuse all the blatant Billy lies being accepted. Like I said, I could’ve handled a ruling of “Both of you suck, here’s a nominal judgment”. And a ruling making explicit where Billy lied. But there’s just no excuse for what we got.
Holding faithful to Ye Olden Guarde should not inform obvious biases, nor excuse blatant lies. But you know that already, and so I wonder who’s really missing the forest for the trees here.
Never mind that the refusal to “reward” a man with a vendetta (in your words) sounds like a bizarre display of schoolyard logic in a decision worth effectively millions of dollars with the wellbeing of multiple families and a decade of public controversy on the line. Sorry for the pointed statements here; I should probably be directing these points at the judge and not you, assuming your comment is intended to be neutral. I probably shouldn’t assume things on the internet either.
I’ve realised how much current anti-Karl sentiment hinges on the supposition that he WANTED to get sued (and “scam” his viewers into funding his defence, as the YouTube comments suggest), despite the fact that a literally ideal outcome would see him financially breaking even—not accounting for the personal toll of, you know, being sued. And now I’m starting to see how this public perception has trickled down from Barlow’s decision itself. Is this really the conspiracy? You do know Karl is the defendant, right?
The claim of his intent to “expand said vendetta” also treads water if you take Karl’s old Twitter post at face value, that he was going to cease commentary on Billy Mitchell unless a lawsuit actually went forward. He wanted to be a sore winner because he was on his way out of the game, and Billy pulled him back in. You can choose not to believe Karl, and that’s fine. But in any case, consider the hypothetical that the judge will have acted upon, according to the logic you’ve presented:
‘Defendant will have bragged about winning a (thusly frivolous) lawsuit against him in 2025, and I find that personally uncool, therefore he instead must have been guilty of defamation in 2021.’
That shit is sad.
Thanks for the write up, it encouraged me to read through the rest of the judgment and be further baffled by the judge.
Ultimately I think it came down to the judge’s opinion on whether the contextual truth that GBF took joy from considering harm befalling Apollo versus the imputation that GBF hounded Apollo to his death, which is kind of bananas when you think about it.
I don’t understand how a case can be so scattershot in terms of what the defense is looking for (that Karl imputed that GBF was a contribution to Apollo’s decision, as well as the major contribution to the decision, as well as hounding him to his decision), as well as Barlow saying that even if he had found what I consider the two lesser imputations (he was a contribution and he was the major contribution) to be unfounded he’d still be accept the worst one, that GBF hounded Apollo to death, which so much mental gymnastics even outside of the fact GBF’s team didn’t even make an arguement on that point!
It’s even worse when Barlow accepts KB’s argument that the word “hounding” suggests a sustained and repetitive campaign – which nobody in their right mind can draw from the “offending words” – but still finds that is indeed what was imputed, and even though KB also argues that Apollo’s decision may have been an unintended consequence of GBF’s legal action, still somehow finds that as worse than being a sadistic fuck that takes pleasure in bringing bark to other people, that he accepts as part of Karl’s contextual truth defense? Get real, man.
Overall, it looks like Barlow’s foundation for the entire thing was either “I like GBF”, “I dislike Karl”, or both.
I also don’t understand the “sectors” stuff he was on about, acknowledging that all of his lawsuits are about protecting his reputation as a gamer, but still extends his argument about damages beyond that. I might be misreading though, I was getting tired at that point.
Anyway: thanks again for the write-up. I’m in broad agreement, and as baffled by you that he gives the proven serial liar and his witnesses that all had existing relationships with him the benefit of the doubt constantly, but never does the same for Karl or his witnesses, particularly the ones with experience of GBF’s chicanery. Sounds impartial to me…
Oh, and of course, how could we forget how utterly bananas it is that Barlow refers to a quote from Karl’s retraction video in which Karl implies that he believes Billy has some culpability for Apollo’s decision, but ignores the quoted next sentence in which Karl EXPLICITLY FUCKING STATES THAT THE ONLY PERSON RESPONSIBLE FOR APOLLO’S DECISION WAS APOLLO.
Thank you for this post! Your witty jokes and flowery metaphors make it a very joyful read, even if the matter is anything but cheerful. After reading all of your cover-up of the whole trial and its aftermath, I cannot help but think that Karl and his lawyers should have been more straightforward in addressing Mitchell’s blatant lies, particularly those presented during the trial, as well as in dismantling, point by point, his distorted framing of Karl’s words in his response video. Once the judge came to the conclusion that Mitchell was a credible individual, it seemed that Karl’s chances of winning the case were effectively lost. But obviously no shoulda, coulda, woulda can change the judge’s verdict right now, which is a darn shame. It is demoralising on so many levels, but I am especially upset about the judge’s portrayal of Karl here, as he never struck me as self-righteous, vindictive and whatnot. And I simply refuse to accept we live in a world where standing up for your rights is viewed as a negative trait.
My only worry is this post will be read by the judge and might ruin karl plan to appeal ……remember when billy’s lawyer put your entire post on motion to judge chang ….
Personally I am not fond of karl appealing, he need to own up his ego this time, and let’s just move on,the need of him to rebuild and salvage his reputation is more important, but his next video he promising to explain shits might change my mind or even better if it will salvage from the dissapointed audiences.
Oh, I remember, lol. I don’t think Barlow would be deciding an appeal. Obviously I wouldn’t want to make things worse for Karl. At the end of the day, I can only state facts, including that I didn’t consult Karl on this and I don’t speak for him. I would really love to be praising judges in these cases, not putting them on blast.
Barlow not the issue but lets say one of billy motion put this article for the different judge who handle the appeal to read. it might gave away sour taste to fellow judges . Seeing how barlow handle the case as karl’s crusade… while you being another man doing the same crusade against the same “victim” and we have seen 3 dissapointing judges (i also count the one accept billy v twin galaxies to pass anti slapp motion) 4th one definietly more likely than not
Thank you all for the positive response, and especially for taking the time to read this doozy! I try not to be the guy who replies to every little thing. But I do read your kind words, and they are very appreciated. 🙂
I know the “trans rights are human rights” thing is probably a joke that people keep saying you’re trans when you aren’t (because I looked at your twitter), but most don’t. Including it, especially at the end, might give the appearance of spreading an agenda, and could lead to you being dismissed on the false basis of being trans (“this person believes this bogus ideology so I am safe to assume what they’re saying is garbage”). Maybe it’s unlikely this kind of person would see things your way but I wouldn’t say it’s impossible. The appearance of making this about something it isn’t should be avoided. I urge you to change it
You think that someone is going to dismiss thousands of words of in-depth analysis because of five, entirely unrelated words, right at the end?
If someone does that, they’re obviously too stupid to be taken seriously.
I don’t always include “Trans rights are human rights”, but I made not one but two references to South Park, so I wanted to be clear where I stood. The fact that it might upset idiots calling me trans slurs when I’m not trans was a bonus.
“Including it, especially at the end, might give the appearance of spreading an agenda, and could lead to you being dismissed on the false basis of being trans (“this person believes this bogus ideology so I am safe to assume what they’re saying is garbage”).”
Spreading the agenda that trans rights are human rights..? Good lord, that’s enough internet for today.
Let’s all appease 4channers now. Wouldn’t want them to disagree with us! We can convert them!!1!
I get pretty salty sometimes, so no shame intended. It’s just that, I had interpreted the inclusion of this hot, wild, cutting edge, cOnTeNTiOuS statement as a subtle response to the transphobic “kys” response ersatz cats got after the previous post. I figure he probably thought it might trigger them a little bit, which is totally his prerogative. And upon a glance at the comments down below, it seems it has already worked at least once.
I urge the writer not to change it, to continue doing bold and extraordinary things like… making jokes, and… respecting human rights. ദ്ദി・ᴗ・)
“I urge the writer not to change it,”
Thank you! Don’t worry, as a general policy, I do listen to good advice, and I don’t adhere bad advice. 🙂
Wow.
This is impressive.
You should really think about making a documentary about this entire case.
I thought the judge put in the time he needed for this case and understood the matter very well. Karl was arrogant and unhinged throughout the whole process, give the judge points for picking up on this.
This article comes across less like a piece of balanced journalism and more like a reactionary defense built from spending too much time in Karl Jobst’s camp. From start to finish, it reads as if the writer is attempting to rehabilitate Karl’s image or mitigate the outcome of the Mitchell vs. Jobst verdict, rather than genuinely examining what the case was about and why the ruling came down in Mitchell’s favor. At no point does the article meaningfully try to present both sides of the argument, or even acknowledge the legal reasoning behind Mitchell’s victory. That absence of nuance really undermines the credibility of the piece.
The fact is, what Karl did—publishing repeated claims about Billy Mitchell that a court ultimately found to be defamatory—was not some bold act of investigative journalism. It was a pattern of behavior that crossed legal boundaries, and the court determined that it caused real harm to Mitchell’s reputation. Whether people like Mitchell or not shouldn’t override the legal facts of the case, and portraying the verdict as some kind of miscarriage of justice just because Karl has a large online following or a strong personal narrative isn’t a substitute for objective reporting.
The article cherry-picks quotes and attempts to soften or excuse Karl’s role by focusing on his intentions or perceived crusade against gaming corruption. But that completely misses the point: intent doesn’t negate impact, especially when the impact includes defamation with provable damages. The ruling was based on legal standards—not on public opinion, Reddit threads, or YouTube comments.
Even Coronation Street—to borrow the quote included—acknowledged the principle of personal accountability in a somewhat ironic line: “blah blah,” followed by something like, “Apollo is responsible for his own decisions.” That quote, though played off as incidental in the article, reflects a much deeper truth that this piece glosses over: people are responsible for their words and actions, especially when those words are published to a large audience under the guise of fact.
Barlow, in this context, saw through the smokescreen. He didn’t let the noise surrounding Karl’s fanbase or the emotional appeals distract from what was really going on. He recognized that Karl wasn’t being held accountable for speaking truth to power—he was being held accountable for making damaging, unverified claims that didn’t meet the legal standard of protected speech.
At the end of the day, this verdict wasn’t about silencing critics or shielding public figures from scrutiny. It was about drawing a line between free speech and reckless defamation. And from a legal standpoint, Mitchell clearly made his case. Articles like this do a disservice to journalism by ignoring that reality and instead choosing to frame the outcome as unfair without doing the work to explain why the court saw it differently.
> without doing the work
lol. lmao even.
It’s pretty disingenuous to say my piece “cherry-picks quotes” when I include like two or three dozen quotes, some of which aren’t there to support any narrative at all but to fairly clarify what the judge is trying to convey. The whole point was to go item by item, in great detail.
If you want the “Well, maybe Billy’s right, maybe Karl’s right” coverage, you can go watch or read someone who’s willing to provide that. I know, people have been accustomed to accept a sanitized form of “journalism” that refuses to take stands even on ridiculous stuff like “Will flat Earth vaccines cause a zombie apocalypse?” But it’s not a coincidence that the person with enough deep knowledge of this case to dissect this ruling’s many flaws thinks the evidence overwhelmingly favors Karl. I would be doing a disservice if I framed the case in a way to suggest otherwise.
You say people are responsible for their own actions, and that Barlow took that into account with the judgment.
So when Karl published the retraction, hidden or otherwise, is that not taking responsibility to correct his action of providing inaccurate information, and also reiterating that the only person responsible for Apollo taking his own life – which is what GBF took umbrage with – was Apollo?
I’m not really sure how else you can frame that, nor am I sure why Barlow referenced the part about Karl having an opinion insinuating he still believes Billy has some culpability, while also completely the ignoring the part in which he explicitly states the only person responsible for Apollo’s decision was Apollo.
It doesn’t strike me as someone looking at all the facts in the case with a clear, impartial view before they’ve decided what their conclusion should be. It very much looks like someone who has decided “this Karl fellow is a bit of a bell end” and has then found ways to present the evidence to support that, ignoring the parts that say otherwise, in order to justify punishing the bell end.
Perhaps you can enlighten me?
“But that completely misses the point: intent doesn’t negate impact, especially when the impact includes defamation with provable damages.”
In addition to what has already been said in the replies above:
1. Ironically, impact was demonstrably measured by intent in this case, according to Barlow’s own words: all Karl’s witnesses having a “vendetta”, the “knight that slew the Billy dragon”, et cetera. Indeed, intent doesn’t negate impact; but intent is not evidence of impact, either. Your argument seems to suggest that Karl wanted to be seen as a good guy in order to justify what he has said about Billy, which I think is ludicrous; part of Karl’s defence is that Billy actually is a bad guy who has done terrrible things which he deserves to be called out for.
2. “Provable damages” is leaning into deliberate misrepresentation territory. Thousands of words spent explaining how Billy already had this reputation before Karl said anything, how Billy has no reasonable evidence to suggest that any harm has befallen him, how Billy’s own testimony blatantly contradicts itself when he tries to claim that harm—and you dismiss all of it. Isn’t the entire point of this page to explain how the damages are absurd and not supported by the evidence?
TL;DR Your statement about impact versus intent misses the point when this article appears to point out how the judge himself USED intent to manufacture impact that was not real, or was not as severe as the plaintiff claimed.
I read the article. I’ve seen biased stuff before, but this one is just embarrassing. It’s not journalism. It’s a puff piece to make Karl Jobst look like some kind of hero, even though he lost in court. Mitchell won. The facts were laid out. The judge made a decision. Jobst defamed him, plain and simple. There’s no twisting that.
Then, at the end of the article—out of nowhere—the guy adds “trans rights are human rights.” What does that have to do with anything? It has nothing to do with the case, nothing to do with the verdict. And he’s not even trans. He’s just throwing it in there to look good. Trying to boost the article with a hashtag moment, hoping people won’t notice how weak the argument really is.
It’s like he knows the article doesn’t stand on its own, so he adds a line to get applause. But people see through that. It’s fake. He’s trying to use a serious issue to prop up something completely unrelated. That’s not standing for anything. That’s just marketing.
And let’s be honest—the article doesn’t even try to give both sides. It’s all about protecting Karl, making him look like the victim. No accountability. No mention of why Mitchell actually won or how damaging the claims were. The court didn’t side with Mitchell by accident. They looked at the facts and said, yeah, this guy crossed the line.
Barlow knew it too. He wasn’t buying the excuses. He saw what was going on and called it out.
People are tired of this kind of thing. No honesty. Just spin, slogans, and self-promotion. That line at the end wasn’t about trans rights. It was about attention.
That’s the real story, the rest is fake news.
The Real Donald
After reading half of this article, I can say that lawyers might have brain damage, but the speed running community(or everyone Ersatz Katz or karl belong to) are lobotomized.
Wow I’m shocked at just *how* biased judge Barlow ended up being. As an outsider, I just figured there’s some overly broad defamation laws in Australia combined with poor lawyering on Karl’s side.
But reading this, it really does appear as if Barlow decided (possibly very early on) that Karl had some obsession to hurt Billy no matter what it takes, and worked backwards from there to punish Karl.
I can’t help but think that the poor lawyering didn’t even matter, if Barlow was going to downplay all extra evidence Karl’s lawyers would have presented, and fully rely on Billy’s responses to that evidence.
To say something constructive, I think some of these points can be used to help Karl’s appeal that the judge was biased. I don’t agree fully with all of your points about the Honorable Barlow, and some of the points that I agree with you on about like Billy’s claiming of honoraria dropping 1400% I believe can fall into that gray area of “judicial discretion.”
I do think there is a case to be made that Judge Barlow was prejudicial based on many some of what he importunes on Karl, his witnesses, and his choice of metaphors in rendering his judgment and opinions. But if Karl were to appeal, I suggest that he try to get on the judge’s good side this time, because I think he has a decent chance of cutting down a lot of the judgment, reducing down to trivial amounts or something like that.
Hello!
Would it be possible to provide specific links or proof for the following statement please?
“People were blaming Billy Mitchell for Apollo’s suicide the moment it was announced.”
I understand you linked your Day 7 write up, but it would be helpful to have a centralized “bundle” of such proof to refer to. Also I suppose I might as well ask, do you believe that the extent to which people were blaming him before Jobst’s video was enough to be considered as Mitchell’s reputation on the matter?
Thank you, have a nice day.
If you watch Karl’s new video, he does go over the case in detail and explains he never attributed Mitchell to Apollos suicide.
But here he shows many comments from various people who attributed Mitchell to Apollos passing, and they were from forums/comments that were posted before Karl posted his “offending” video.
Sorry, I forgot to reply to this earlier. Karl showed examples in his new vid. Given Billy’s litigiousness, I’ve decided not to highlight anyone making such statements. Conveniently, in “Day 7”, I was able to show someone favorable to Billy referencing it as a then-current phenomenon.
You can find examples on Twitter using advanced search for some combination of “Billy Mitchell Apollo Legend” in the dates after Apollo’s suicide, which was December 30, 2020.
I am a fellow Aussie and I am ashamed of what Karl did. I listened to his new video and I don’t buy it either.
Tough Soup.
t some point, you’ve got to ask yourself—why are you still riding this train?
This article reads like someone who’s still deep in Karl Jobst’s inner circle, defending him long after most people have stepped away. The verdict came in. He lost. It wasn’t close. The court laid out clearly what he did, and it wasn’t brave, it wasn’t journalism—it was defamation. It caused real damage. And instead of taking that as a cue to reflect and move on, you’re still out here trying to spin the loss into some kind of moral victory.
Meanwhile, the internet has already moved on. YouTube creators, viewers, even people who used to support Karl have either distanced themselves or just gone silent. The hype is over. The drama isn’t fresh anymore, and most people have realized that the “truth-teller” act only works until someone gets taken to court and loses. Which, again, is exactly what happened.
I get that maybe you’ve invested time, energy, even some loyalty—but at a certain point, clinging to that just starts to look out of touch. You’re not helping Karl by pretending he didn’t cross a line. You’re not helping your readers by presenting a one-sided view. And you’re definitely not helping yourself by tying your credibility to someone whose reputation is sinking fast.
Time to step back, reassess, and let it go. The internet already has.
“the internet already has already moved on.”
Thank you for the hearty laugh.
Not sure if dangerously disconnected, or accidentally revealing your malicious stance. And even if this were remotely correct, which it laughably is not, then what exactly are you arguing for? ‘I know you defended this guy who you saw as a victim, but like, the hate bandwagon isn’t even a big deal any more! So why don’t you just accept that you were wrong and hate him too?’
I’m sorry for coming down on you like this, but the condescending irony of your post is staggering. Consider that other people have their own opinions.
“I am no fool who believes that the world becomes better because it praises me or, worse, because it censures me.”
If you have any factual objections with specific claims I’ve made, I’m happy to hear them!
I’m interested in the truth, and in making sure the truth is available, both currently and long-term. I would prefer people not be taken in by liars like Billy or fools like Barlow, although I can only give folks the tools to educate themselves. I do apologize it took so long to get this out, but this was a lot of work, and I wanted to make sure I got everything right. (And even then, I’m sure I missed some detail in all this, because that’s just the way truth works.)
Again, any factual disputes, let’s hear ’em. But talking about my motivations and the fickle nature of Internet culture aren’t arguments for anything, and you’re old enough to know that.
No offense intended, but this attitude is exactly what is wrong with the whole internet hype train. What does it say about us as a society if we choose to simply “let go” and move on when judicial mistakes occur?
I often wonder this: Do people simply fail to see such obvious problems? Or do they see them but not care? Saying “lol, that sucks, let’s move on” benefits nobody. Problems need to be addressed, not bypassed on the way to the next hype station. Hype and internet drama isn’t important. A properly functional legal system is.
hats off for an admirably thorough, entertaining and readable job. it’s hard not to feel hopeless to see those with no care for the wellbeing of others inevitably stream out of the woodwork to decry “the implications” while wholly and gleefully doing the exact same implication schtick themselves. this applies just as much to those that proudly don’t give a fuck like Mitchell and the trolls in these comment sections as it does to Apollo and Jobst over the years. the saddest part is that i can understand to some degree those who can’t muster much sympathy for Karl at this point, even if they can be made to understand how abuse of and by the courts makes life worse for everyone. the hate train can’t just be entirely explained away by the dumb shit Karl said and did years ago, as they were fully engaged in the implication schtick as recently as December of last year. the thing that gets me is it always seems to boil down to the pettiest bullshit. Mitchell can’t let go of ancient irrelevant scores, Apollo weaponized themselves about some YouTuber (the same one Karl later had a implications tirade about over nothing), Karl can’t let go of some inconsequential YouTube video that didn’t give them enough credit years ago. i just want to believe that at least some people out there care for the wellbeing of others, not just about covering their ass and subtweeting and implying things and then claiming “oh poor me who could have foreseen how those soaking in the same internet bullshit as me would react to the thing i didn’t explicitly say”. i don’t know what’s to be done about this but really sets one to thinking about “the master’s tools”
Karl’s lawyers really had the easiest fucking job in the history of the world.
All they ever have to do, including to win an appeal, is to call ersatz cats as a witness and he can walk the judge through the entire case
This probably sounds sarcastic but it isnt, I legit am begging that even a fraction of this level of detail and analysis was presented by competent lawyers at trial, asking the right questions and understanding the forest bigger picture that links it all together.
The fact that your cosmic degree of snark can actually be followed by ‘no, but seriously’ really shows how fucking wild this case is, and what a joke the lawyers have been.
Trufax. I would’ve done it, too.
Breakdown like this is actually is going to make things worse for Karl because I know billy Mitchell ‘s lawyer is going to use articles like this to showcase Karl and his friends have no respect for the law and the judge. Some of these points are just not valid in a court of law . A judge has every right to look at evidence favorable or unfavorable to one side and it’s up to the lawyers to change the judge mind. The problem is Karl lawyer never cross examine a witness and he never gave the judge an argument that he could actually considered!
Well, first of all, Karl’s lawyers did cross-examine I think every one of Billy’s witnesses. I do fully understand Barlow won’t like me, lol, but I don’t think he’ll have much more influence on this case, and it’s not like me not saying anything would’ve made him reasonable. I would’ve much preferred singing his praises, but Barlow has to do a good job to earn that. At the end of the day, people have a right to know what happened.
This surely will do wonders for me appeal.
This guy lied about the settlement with Apollo Legend and is ruining your appeal by attacking the judge.
Why are you trusting him by using this for an appeal after the crap he did to screw you so far?
At this point, if you lose the appeal if you end up fileing it, this is your fault for believing your own Hubris and giving Billy an easy win.
You do realize that’s not actually Karl Jobst you’re speaking to, right?
I’m still friggin shocked that people are turning on Karl.
I knew what the suit was about. A lot of people did.
People need to be mad at themselves for making assumptions and being ignorant by not doing their research.
Karl has nothing to apologize for. Nothing.
His responsive video, BTW, summarized everything nicely. It’s just too bad that some people will find things wrong with it.
People rarely challenge their own beliefs and positions because that takes courage and honesty. It’s much easier to mindlessly agree with whatever the trendy position is than it is to actually think hard and self-reflect.
I think it’s really this simple: a lot of people are turning on Karl because they have a poor understanding of the case. They don’t understand or even really care about the facts; they merely want to be on the winning side. If this legal mess ever gets challenged on appeal you can bet most of those same people will flip-flop yet again, and will claim to have been on Karl’s side the whole time. I think others wanted their donations go towards handing BM a loss in court, and when that didn’t happen it was easier to simply blame Karl than it was to really educate themselves on what happened. Public opinion is always fickle and silly, and it gets even worse when the important details are buried in hundreds of pages of legalese.
Honestly, this article sometimes reads like a personal attack at the judge. I get it, you’re on Karl’s side, so now the judge is the worst person in the face of the earth for you, but implying Barlow’s age made him favor Billy is a stretch.
Well, to be clear, there are many much worse people than in Barlow, and I don’t think it’s fair to frame my work in that way. I’m not the expert on those other awful people, so I may opine on them, but it’s not my place to give the authoritative rebuke like I can here.
I don’t think it’s a stretch that Barlow was out of touch on this one.
Clearly your also not an expert on settlements either given Karl exposed that you told him about the “settlement” on Apollo Legend that Karl got in trouble for.
So not only did you make Karl’s appeal worse by attacking the judge, but also opened yourself to legal action from Billy due to being one of the sources responsible for the defamation that got Karl in trouble.
I don’t like Billy, but this is not a good look after Karl threw you under the bus and you think the best move is to attack the judge.
I don’t like misinformative nonsense, but I’ll leave this one up, because it’s an opportunity to clarify something:
Karl didn’t “throw me under the bus”. I gave him permission to use two historical clips from me in his new video. I’ll discuss those clips in my next write-up.
Also, you may be confused, but this was posted prior to Karl’s video.
I agree it’s an attack on the judge, and a proper attack at that. Barlow tied himself into knots with the sheer volume of contradictions in his judgement summary, casually sweeping things under the rug even after acknowledging them to be true. My 5 year old isn’t as gullible as Barlow who accepted everything Billy said as truth. He’s either incompetent or willfully ignorant, and it calls into question if he even knows how to interpret the law correctly. Judges are supposed to be impartial. It’s not often people get to see the intricate details of a case in the same way that we have been able to see it here so people are understandably frustrated. Nobody likes to see conmen win.
I didn’t like seeing O.J. walk free either, his trial was far more publicized, with plenty of fair criticisms about its handling, but mocking Judge Ito by creating dancing versions of him wasn’t one of them. Same here: painting Barlow as a ‘clueless boomer’ is a cheap shot unless you can show how his age or unfamiliarity affected his defamation ruling. Instead I see: ‘Haha, he thinks speedrunning is two words’ he’s so out of touch, let’s stretch this to say his can’t do his job.
Ah, the old classic where the most irrelevant bit of my analysis suddenly represents the whole thing. I would’ve poked fun at Barlow for using two words for “speed run” even if Karl had overwhelmingly won, although in that case it would’ve been in much more good humor.
I never called Barlow a “clueless Boomer”. Somehow, I seem to have forgotten to use the word “clueless” at all! I think the only times I mentioned age related to him being out of touch with modern media, his unfamiliarity with video game score adjudication, and his inability to evaluate basic evidence, which I’d like to assume hasn’t been a career-long issue.
Also… O.J. walked away with a double-homicide… and you’re offended at people mocking Judge Ito for letting it happen?
Thanks for the reply, ersatz cats. I didn’t say the ‘speed run’ jab was your whole analysis, I can’t possibly refute all of it in one comment, nor do I want to. I agree with you on some parts, but I wanted to criticize this point specifically. This is what my comment thread was about. Apparently, I can’t do that without demolishing your entire article, according to you…
It’s just an example of the personal tone I mentioned, which feels out of place in a serious critique. You say you didn’t call Barlow a ‘clueless Boomer,’ but tying his age to being ‘out of touch’ with media, gaming, or evidence evaluation still implies it affected his ruling. Can you show specific parts of his judgment where this unfamiliarity led to a legal error? Without that, it’s still a stretch.
On O.J., you misread my point. I’m not offended by people mocking Ito, nor am I defending him. My analogy was about how personal attacks on judges are unfair unless they’re tied to actual mistakes in the case. Ito didn’t ‘let’ O.J. walk; the jury acquitted him, and there were plenty of systemic issues to critique without mocking the judge. Same here: let’s focus on Barlow’s ruling, not his age or terminology.
Howdy Pedro! Sorry, I can’t reply directly. Once a thread gets so deep, it’s just like stacked replies instead of an infinite thread.
I genuinely appreciate the feedback and the candor. Sorry if I was overly snarky, the troll ratio has been high lately, but it sounds like you’re not offended, and I am not either.
I disagree a bit on Ito, although we can disagree and that’s fine. There was that tremendous Oscar-winning ESPN 30-for-30 on the OJ case, which was like 12 years ago now. Insane. Anyway, I don’t want to pose myself as the expert on that case, but it did seem like Ito gave OJ’s team a free hand in way too much stuff. The bogus tour of his home is one example I recall. But you’re right, it was the jury, and the jury would’ve let him walk regardless of what Ito did. Though I still think it’s fair for people to mock Ito because he didn’t help, and also, he’s just a public figure. Like, can we not mock politicians?
I really didn’t point to Barlow’s age much at all, honestly. [147] is the bit about him not understanding modern media, which it seems factored in, but not nearly as directly as other things. There was the shocking bit at [487], where I struggle to attribute the error to anything but his age. And then in [331], he doesn’t understand high score adjudication, but that’s not even really age (even though I do jokingly call him “Boomer Barlow” there), as lots of younger people don’t understand it either.
Fair enough, no worries. My intention wasn’t to offend, and I’m not offended myself. Thanks for mentioning the specific brackets.
I have never seen a more forever virgin” article in my whole life.
Surely you look at your diary every evening?
Thanks for the thorough write-up, was morbidly interesting to find how this case which I thought was a slam dunk turned out so bad in the end. I would say that some kind of TL;DR is needed to get the main points across to anyone who isn’t curious enough to through the whole epic. Stuff like the very suspicious emails, the ways the act of taking the accusations down were misconstrued to be malicious, the more evidence outside the reddit post…
I also have to wonder why the judge singled out Jobst for roasting lol
Thank you for reading! Yeah, TL;DRs… lol. To be fair, the title basically is the TL;DR. I considered doing double-special brackets for the best items, but I decided not to make it any more confusing.
Which laws has he not applied properly? As far a character and witness assessment, they are not easy to appeal.
I think this is on Karl’s lawyers for not properly arguing any truth defense. In law, claims are presumed to be false, unless truth is pleaded.
That’s absolutely part of what contributed to Karl losing, and it’s a part that he can’t appeal because it’s his own attorney’s blunder.
But it wasn’t the contextual truth defense. Karl’s counsel DID plead that and Barlow even said he was good on those five elements, just that they didn’t outweigh the recklessness of the imputation.
The part they failed to plead in pre-trial, and thus could not raise at trial and were thus deemed to have admitted they failed to do, was that Karl had done some diligence on the payment claim, as shown in e.g. the text message captures shown in his previous and current videos with Ben’s family and others. Ersatz cats pointed this out at the time in his trial coverage, expressing concern that it hurt Karl’s case a lot. And verily, it did.
Had Karl been able to show evidence at trial of his entire diligence, which wasn’t great but also wasn’t zero (Karl himself admits in yesterday’s video that it was less vetting than he wished that he had done), it would have helped him show that the offending statements were not made recklessly, which was a required element for Billy to prove defamation.
Barlow being suckered in by Billy made a huge difference too, but without Karl’s attorneys making that gigantic mistake, Karl would have been on substantially stronger legal ground than he ended up being.
I appreciate the time taken to write all this down. I actually prefer a blog to a video, with information such as this.
After reading this, I honestly think Karl deserves to lose his appeal —not just because of the case itself, but because of the toxic environment he’s allowed to grow around him. This kind of post, where the judge is attacked with zero nuance and replaced with pure venom, just proves how detached from reality Karl’s inner circle has become. It’s not advocacy, it’s not justice —it’s a witch hunt. And it reeks of desperation.
Ersatzcat’s behavior in particular is incredibly damaging. Every article is basically just a hit piece aimed at whoever Karl doesn’t like, with no effort at objectivity. It’s childish, obsessive, and deeply anti-social. Instead of addressing real legal issues, we get an angry screed against the judge—someone whose only “crime/ was not giving Karl what he wanted. That’s not how the justice system works. If your casse falls apart under scrutiny, maybe the problem isn’t a conspiracy, -maybe the problem is you.
What’s worse is that this kind of behavior gives people like Billy Mitchell the moral high ground. When Karl’s supporters act like rabid fans attacking anyone who stands in their way, they stop looking for people who tell the truth and start looking like bullies. And honestly, it’s exhausting to watch.
This whole situation is a perfect example of how arrogance and a refusal to accept responsibility can destroy a case from the inside. If Karl had spent more time addressing the actual weaknesses in his position, and less time fueling this kind of scorched-earth nonsense, he might’ve had a fighting chance. But now? Between the toxic fans and the performative outrage, it’s hard to feel any sympathy.
He’s not losing because the system is rigged—he’s losing because his entire camp refuses to grow up and deal with the facts.
So no factual disputes?
Chad W’s post was written by chatgpt, so no.
The irony of this being a point of derision after Karl had an AI tell him “yeah you’re gonna win, bud!” is astonishing.
Take a second to think about that.
If he thought the AI could win it for him, why pay a legal team hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of a few years to prep his defense, for something he could get for free, nigh instantaneously from AI?
Is it possible that he was maybe joking around with people?
lmao I find it funny people keep fixating on the AI thing.
This was all after the trial. Karl and at least one other person fed the available material into different AI services, not as a way of helping anything, but just as a lark. “Who do you think will win?” Every time, it came back in Karl’s favor, overwhelmingly.
I think so-called AI is silly. But literally, who cares?
Jobst had been found to have defamed Mitchell by an independent person.
He carried on in videos, which didn’t help his cause, and should have kept quiet until the court case. Saying he wanted to effectively destroy Mitchell makes him come across as a petulant teenager, which didn’t help his case either. Many other Australians thought there was a 50:50 chance Jobst would lose, unlike the 95% of those from overseas.
And he’s come out and posted a video today, naming you as one of the sources that misinformed him about Mitchell paying Apollo.
I think he should go quiet if he intends to appeal. What’s your take on Karl naming you (and others)?
“Independent person”, sure. My contention isn’t that Barlow is not “independent”, just that he demonstrably struggled to evaluate evidence, and was massively gullible.
As I’ve said elsewhere, I gave Karl permission to use two historical bits from me. One was previously shown in court. The other has been public for a long time.
Karl blatantly claimed that Billy caused Apollo’s suicide. No amount of article-vomit will negate that. THAT is what this case what about – it had NOTHING to do with Donkey Kong (despite Karl’s lies). That is why Billy rightfully won.
>Billy sues dozens of people and companies over Donkey Kong scores
>Billy sends four concerns notices to Karl Jobst, three of which are about Donkey Kong scores
>causal origin of the current case, Billy’s lawsuit against Apollo Legend, was over Donkey Kong scores
>Billy accumulates ten years of public, serial dishonesty about Donkey Kong scores
>Billy weaponises his serial lies to aggro Karl Jobst, then switches to something that ISN’T about Donkey Kong scores for literally the first time ever
>judge believes Billy’s lies in the courtoom, on the witness stand, on his phone, and in his movie, without exception
>Billy uses awarded money and clout to continue lying about Donkey Kong scores to make more money and clout
>”it had NOTHING to do with Donkey Kong”
Sometimes I reply to lazy haters when I’m bored.
“blatantly claimed”
You know that’s just a lie.
Like, I get why people on the soundbite Internet gobble up easily digestible lies. But why do you think that’s going to work here?
Do you actually believe the average person is too retarded to perceive subtext? Placing “Billy put Apollo into financial trouble” and “Apollo killed himself due to all his troubles” literally one sentence apart conveys an obvious message. Karl playing Jordan Peterson semantics about how conjunctions work doesn’t undo that.
It’s probably of waste of my time to engage this comment, but call me a masochist.
Do you actually believe that “put Apollo into financial trouble” and “killed himself due to all his troubles” (keyword: “all”) are somehow the mind-twistingly “blatant” and “obvious” claims that, according to Mitchell’s lawyers, Billy “hounded Apollo to death”? You’re pulling mental gymnastics on your OWN examples to defend the sensationalised tactics of millionaire lawyers.
Semantics matter, a lot, when the entire case is about “offending words”. If that premise somehow offends you, then you might want to look up what semantics means.
On that note, given the overt malice, I’m going to chalk up “Jordan Peterson semantics” as a fascinating Freudian slip. I don’t think Karl is the neoliberal icon that you think he is, especially not if ResetEra and Reddit told you so.
Evidently what happened here is Barlow succumbed to a bribe consisting of a lifetime supply of Rickey’s Hot Sauce. His comment about the popcorn was a little joke for those in the know, but I’m onto him.
You’re doing a fantastic job outlining the evidence and facts surrounding this case. It is quite rare that I see myself criticizing your statements but this one has been bugging me. I see that you’re open to feedback thus I post this here.
You mention that it is common practice for newspapers to post retractions on the back pages. Though the judge should absolutely consider this when it comes to damages, this does not mean that Karl made good practice from an ethical point of view. In fact, while the Canadian Association of Journalists states that “there is little industry standard about where corrective notes should be placed”, they indeed advocate for prominent placements. (This is a just an example that came up on my internet search.)
Instead, the focus of the argument could be around how the retraction was viewed around the time of publishing. Karl claims that neither Billy, nor his lawyers nor any associates of his demanded the retraction to be more prominently placed. Indeed, in his recent video, Karl shows an e-mail from his lawyers to Billy’s informing them of the retraction and included a timestamp.
Seeing the current backlash, I wanted to know what Karl’s viewers’ reactions were at the time. Surely there must have been a sizable number that have seen both the original claims regarding the supposed payment of Apollo to Billy, and the retraction. So, today, I downloaded all comments from Karl’s retraction video with a cutoff date of April 1st 2025, the day of the ruling. There are 5727 comments in total.
I searched these comments for the keywords: retract, billy, mitchell, apollo, apology, money, correct. Here are some of the results of my analysis. 10 comments suggested the placement of the retraction at the end was bad practice. 16 comments thanked Karl for the retraction. 2 comments expressed annoyance by the retraction in general. 7 comments learned from the retraction of Apollo Legend’s passing.
My conclusion is that this demonstrates little engagement at the time, compared to the outrage that is happening right now. Further, while there were some that recommended a more prominent placement, a majority expressed gratitude for clearing things up. It is also interesting that some viewers only learned about this case because of the retraction. Perhaps it could be argued that if Karl made the corrections more prominent, he would amplify any defamatory statements that he may have made about Billy.
Thanks again ersatz for your great work. I look forward to reading more of your posts.
Thank you!! That is some outstanding work. <3
And yes, I am always open to constructive feedback. Please don't misunderstand me when I swat down trolls who are like "Uh, well, I just read all o this, and it's total bullshit". I don't like nonsense. I love not-nonsense.
My next piece is gonna be assessing the reasons Karl lost. And honestly, it does seem Barlow just had it in for him, so I'm not sure a better retraction would've mattered much. But yeah, the retraction should have had more prominence, even if it is possible to point to newspaper standards as an example otherwise. (And yes, on important matters, newspapers themselves should probably make corrections more prominent than back pages.)
So I had to remove a comment which was otherwise genuine and constructive, but I felt went a bit too far in assigning blame for a certain suicide on a certain still-living person, if you get my drift. I’m not saying you can’t have that opinion, but it would probably be best to label it as your opinion for legal reasons. I’m also very hesitant to allow suicide-blame in general, and have squashed many comments trying to blame others to that end. Also, let’s be honest, there are also legal reasons why it’s prudent for me not to allow such opinions that are too on-the-nose here, especially when I can’t really confirm whether they’re coming from the litigant himself.
Anyway, no hard feelings. But please just keep this all in mind.
This is extremely persuasive and well done. You flipped my opinion on this issue.
It’s also eye-opening, and more than a little alarming. I had to read your analysis side by side with Barlow’s full reasons, because it seemed unthinkable that his decision-making process was really as naive as you portrayed it to be! Do all Australian judges believe they are human lie detector machines? Do all judges everywhere? Being an American, I’ve never before seen a judge lay out their thought process in 118 pages of detail. Now I wish I could unsee it.