Arthur Chu is a laughing stock. Despised by the progressive left for his milquetoast liberal activism and condemned by the far right for his unabashed hatred of white people, Chu is a pariah.
Jokes about the man usually target his know-it-all personality, and his views that seldom line up with reality. His Twitter meltdowns over Donald Trump are the stuff of legend.
He first made a name for himself on Jeopardy! Using a predetermined strategy, he amassed almost $300,000 in winnings – enough money to allow him to quit his insurance job and launch his budding celebrity into the limelight, which he capitalized on by penning a series of articles about feminism, social justice, and nerd culture.
Something of an egotist, Chu agreed to partake in a documentary crowdfunded by co-directors Scott Drucker and Yu Gu that chronicled his feminist crusade on the Internet, along with his forays into acting and public speaking. The finished product is anything but flattering. Drucker informed me that while Chu backed the project, he had no influence in its creation.
“I can assure you we went through the process without his support,” he said.
At the dawn of his fledgling career as a columnist on The Daily Beast and Salon, Chu set his gaze upon the GamerGate movement, which to him represented everything wrong with nerd culture.
Sandwiched in between articles arguing for The Hulk to be Asian and scolding Trevor Noah for his comedy, Chu penned more than a few articles describing gamers and geeks as “entitled and belligerent.”
His piece on misogyny and nerd entitlement made the rounds on social media, marking him as “one of the good guys,”—someone who really understood the culture.
Emboldened by the popularity of these articles, Chu directly engaged his detractors—the supposed “misogynists” whom he encouraged others to shame.
It made him a target—and one that some of my own critics (at the time) were more than happy to confuse me with for the sake of mocking two “extremely woke” Asian guys.
Chu was proud of his identity, and even declared on Facebook that he routinely purged himself of unthinkable thoughts to become a “social justice stormtrooper.”
In a review by Joanna Connors on the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Arthur Chu documentary is anything but flattering to the champagne socialist. He is instead cast as a self-centered moral crusader addicted to online fame, signaling his virtue as a male feminist ally even as he neglects his ailing (now ex-) wife, Eliza Blair.
Connors writes:
Meanwhile, though, the self-involved Arthur neglects and pretty much marginalizes his own wife, Eliza, who suffers from a debilitating chronic condition but puts what energy she has into supporting Arthur’s hopes and dreams. In one telling scene, she tries to talk with him about her own struggles, and her own dream (writing a sci-fi novel), while Arthur scrolls through his phone, never looking up at her.
Arthur – who has less depth than a full-length documentary requires — repeats his noble goal of doing something positive a few too many times. He appears driven more by his need for attention and fame than by his need to be a hero.
Will Arthur Chu achieve his dream of becoming the living embodiment of social justice? Only time will tell.
Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at @stillgray on Twitter and on Facebook.
This article has been amended with corrections to Chu’s involvement with the documentary.
