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inklesspen posted:Well. Your boss seems to know what's up with Z. Maybe that'd be a good place to start? Caeder do this. Also eat the eggs
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Aug 28, 2016 23:16
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It's the usual Skeletor "People say I'm against freedom, but He-Man is a prince, who's really against freedom?!" end-run sort of argument.Kwyndig posted:The best thing to do with Z is put him on ignore/block on every social media you encounter him in, and if you find people quoting him, encourage them to do the same.
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Aug 28, 2016 23:18
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Skeletor had some good ideas. But seriously Zak is human garbage, unfortunately he doesn't understand how humans interact so arguing won't do any good. The only way he'll exit the hobby is when his harassment enters definitively, actionable criminal territory.
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Aug 28, 2016 23:27
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LongDarkNight posted:Skeletor had some good ideas. Or enough people with an empathy level north of "terminator" just ignore him and and try to help the people he's hurt. I have a dream that one day that rear end in a top hat's entire fandom will be just him, raggi, and grimborough well-actuallying each other in a room somewhere. Error 404 fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Aug 28, 2016 |
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Aug 28, 2016 23:34
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My dream is he becomes 'old man yells at cloud' levels relevant. That's unlikely though.
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Aug 29, 2016 00:05
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Error 404 posted:Or enough people with an empathy level north of "terminator" just ignore him and and try to help the people he's hurt. I wish I had your faith in humanity, but I read the news every morning.
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Aug 29, 2016 00:14
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Caedar posted:So this post is now being talked about by Zak here. The challenge with writing up any rebuttal to Zak at this point is how so much of it is scattered across dozens of different websites and threads. The mutual hatred between Zak and SA started back in the classic grognards.txt thread, so you could dig that out of the goldmine. I see that Zak decided to take the time to get a random smear of Anna Kreider in his big link post, and i think she's the one that made some detailed rebuttal to him on her "go make me a sandwich" blog a while ago if you want an idea of how Zak develops his pervasive hate boners over the most petty things and nurses them for years
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Aug 29, 2016 02:19
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inklesspen posted:Well. Your boss seems to know what's up with Z. Maybe that'd be a good place to start? MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Aug 29, 2016 |
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Aug 29, 2016 02:45
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MadScientistWorking posted:Isn't his boss the person who basically did exactly what we criticized Diaz for? That's the thing with Diaz. If he'd just said "wow I didn't really understand the situation, sorry I hosed up" most of us would accepted that. There'd still be room to critique the fact that he should have looked into it first because it's not some giant secret. Instead he doubled down in the most cowardly, predictable, enabling manner possible.
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Aug 29, 2016 02:50
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There's really no point in trying to engage him at all, much less by playing his game. His output is just fractally tainted by whatever it is that's wrong with him. Everyone would be better off ignoring him, though of course he does his best to take that option away from a lot of people.
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Aug 29, 2016 03:20
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Comrade Gorbash posted:IIRC Hicks later issued a mea culpa and apology for it.
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Aug 29, 2016 03:23
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Comrade Gorbash posted:IIRC Hicks later issued a mea culpa and apology for it. Did that ever get followed up on, or did he just go silent on the matter after his "let's wait a year and see But yeah, there's ample evidence of Zak being a complete poo poo. The aforementioned blog post, Ettin's post on how Zak ran that one harassment blog, and other things, plus pretty much any example of his posting really. He's probably not worth engaging directly, just show reasonable people proof of his awfulness if it comes up. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Aug 29, 2016 |
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Aug 29, 2016 03:24
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MadScientistWorking posted:Your missing the part where he kind of whined and doubled down on it in the same exact way Diaz did. Like if he did that I wouldn't have had as big of problem but he just got really passive aggressive and whiney about people pointing a white cis man maybe should shut the hell up. Yeeeeeeep, bad times when a, 'both-sides' neo-liberal who can't take a definitive stance to save their life, is all you got as far as 'one of the good folks' go.
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Aug 29, 2016 04:59
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JSYK, Caedar, if you don't completely capitulate to Z's demands, you're going to go on his poo poo list. For example, I believed and supported Mikan, so a year later Z listed my handle and name in a blog post where I'm one of his 36 psychotic Salieris.
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Aug 29, 2016 05:42
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Caedar posted:For due diligence, I'm going to read through Zak's post, but I'd also like some context from this community. If anyone has the energy, could you fill me in? (Probably through PM, since it sounds like this is something that people are tired of talking about.) I have him blocked and I'm not reading this, but I'm going to take a punt here and guess there's at least one post about how whoever he is sulking about this time is mentally ill and he is a rational ubermensch. 
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Aug 29, 2016 05:53
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Caedar, dude, I'm sure you followed the link where he claimed you were "helping harass" Shanna Germain just to see what he was talking about. I can promise you that every one of his links about Fred will be equally damning. And I assure you that every single thing he posts will have that level of integrity behind it. This is exactly the same tactic as the giant lists of links to DNC emails where rear end in a top hat redditors write a nasty-sounding description that does not fit what will be found in the link, just hoping that people won't bother to click through. He didn't even link to your post so anyone who did bother to click through would then have to scroll around to find which post he meant. (And then get confused when none of your posts on that page were even remotely harassing in even the most skewed interpretation.) Don't loving bother. Just put him on ignore like Fred did. I honestly enjoy reading posts by assholes with interesting or disturbing points of view, but Zak doesn't even merit that - his posts are just a mendacious, misleading series of smears.
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Aug 29, 2016 05:56
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He's also probably reading this thread as we speak, taking screenshots and encouraging his sycophants to dig up as much personal info on us as possible as he expands his red-yarn-adorned list of conspirators. "I have here in my hand a list of two hundred and five people that were known be members of the SomethingAwful Traditional Games subforum"
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Aug 29, 2016 07:06
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gradenko_2000 posted:He's also probably reading this thread as we speak, taking screenshots and encouraging his sycophants to dig up as much personal info on us as possible as he expands his red-yarn-adorned list of conspirators. Hi Zak! When you put me on the list, make sure to spell Error with all 3 Rs! 
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Aug 29, 2016 07:26
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I don't mind talking about this but how about we don't poo poo up the thread with messages to some offsite dweeb?
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Aug 29, 2016 07:31
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So, my takeaway here is that Zak s is just a total unrepentant rear end in a top hat and shitheel, while Fred may have faults and be a hand- wringing liberal, but is at least trying to improve our hobby. Is this about correct?
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Aug 29, 2016 08:47
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Magnusth posted:So, my takeaway here is that Zak s is just a total unrepentant rear end in a top hat and shitheel, while Fred may have faults and be a hand- wringing liberal, but is at least trying to improve our hobby. Is this about correct? Pretty much
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Aug 29, 2016 08:51
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Kwyndig posted:The best thing to do with Z is put him on ignore/block on every social media you encounter him in, and if you find people quoting him, encourage them to do the same. This is the best advice. One of the things that helped convince me that Zak was full of poo poo was that everyone he accused of being ringleaders of a harassment brigade against him had taken pretty much every possible step to never have to interact with him again while he would never pass up an opportunity to grandstand or get into a pointless, soul-draining argument with someone.
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Aug 29, 2016 08:52
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Jimbozig posted:Caedar, dude, I'm sure you followed the link where he claimed you were "helping harass" Shanna Germain just to see what he was talking about. I can promise you that every one of his links about Fred will be equally damning. And I assure you that every single thing he posts will have that level of integrity behind it. Well you see, engaging with Shanna Germain because she decided to engage and defend the use of "beaners" when someone tweeted @montecookgames is harassment, while trawling Google+ for mentions of Fred Hicks or Ettin or whatever and ranting at any vaguely positive mention unrelated people make is not because Zak says so. And Zak has the moral authority here because he knows he's an edgy artist with a heart of gold. He coos that in the mirror at himself every morning before he goes and refreshes the Traditional Games forum of Something Awful for mentions of himself because every instance of his name here gives him a monstrous orgasm
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Aug 29, 2016 12:11
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Can we just have a filter that changes mentions of his name to "that guy with an awful haircut" or "that failed porn actor"?
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Aug 29, 2016 12:38
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Can someone summarize what happened to Mikan? I don't even know what KS she was running.
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Aug 29, 2016 14:54
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My understanding is that Mikan designed the Last Stand rpg and ran the associated kickstarters. At some point after the publication of the original book she transitioned. Before this Mikan was also among the many TG regulars who browsed the original grogs.txt thread at the time Zak S obtained an account here. He followed discussion to the thread because the only thing he loves more than reading about people talking about him is taking about himself. He developed an abiding dislike of Mikan among other posters because Mikan gave him feedback on how to post without without everything he said descending into an incoherent argument. That might've occurred on Zak's blog or here idk, but Zak took that very personally. Maybe the feedback was presumptuous since it was unsolicited but afaik that was the only personal interactions between the two of them. Anyway Zak decided Mikan was a leading voice here even after she'd long ago self-banned and left. When people were speaking out about Zak's paid consultancy on 5e Mandy Morbid (Zak's significant other) made a tumblr post which stated that the majority of the blowback from the consultancy was a SA-instigated smear and dropped the irl names of a few TG regulars including Mikan's pre-transition name. When people pointed out that Mandy dead named a trans person it was not corrected and as far as I know the post remains largely intact. The post and dozens of follow-up post led to a great deal of irl harassment so Mikan withdrew from the internet rather than sort through the toxic mess. I hope this clears up stuff for the half dozen posts that have asked in the past week and I don't plan to restate this again later. Zak: please note that this is not an attack on Mandy and I hope she is happy and healthy  Zak and Mandy say they were also harassed during this period and at the very least they definitely were when GBS found Mandy's tumblr. Edit- actually I just found the post that originally deadnamed Mikan and mention of her old name has been removed. However the deadnaming would still be present in any pre-edit reblog of the post that wasn't manually edited by the rebloggers Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Aug 29, 2016 |
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Aug 29, 2016 15:48
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There was also the time Zak made a list of people, using their real names, for them doing things as minor as +1ing a G+ post that was critical of him and distributed it to his followers, declaring all those people to be enemies of the hobby. Was that pre or post-5e, out of curiosity? I'm pretty sure it was in response to the 5e stuff, and therefore after Zak and Mandy deadnamed Mikan in their attempts to smear her name publicly. I'm asking because I once engaged Zak on G+ after said list was made, and, because he is an rear end in a top hat, he decided that, rather than being yet another person on the Internet who hates him for the things he's done, I must be a Mikan sockpuppet. and repeatedly referred to me as such. Using Mikan's deadname and explicitly referring to her as "he" in other comments in the thread, which, again, if this was post-all-of-the-above, was after he knew it was a deadname and thus was doing it deliberately. This incident is also why I never directly engaged with him except the once. Not because I know better (my posting history here proves I don't, or at least have lapses in judgment long enough to do and say stupid things), but because him being an rear end in a top hat who overreacts to the mildest slights and holds grudges forever (and, again, makes actual enemy lists with real names on them to give to his followers) means he may well remember my name (real, not user; this was on G+, again) and is still convinced I'm actually Mikan, and thus me engaging him again could get him to restart his harassment against her despite her basically disappearing from the Internet.
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Aug 29, 2016 22:20
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Roland Jones posted:There was also the time Zak made a list of people, using their real names, for them doing things as minor as +1ing a G+ post that was critical of him and distributed it to his followers, declaring all those people to be enemies of the hobby. Was that pre or post-5e, out of curiosity? That was a year or three before 5E, over one of the Desborough rape-apologia things. Before
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Aug 29, 2016 22:40
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And there was the time Mikan among others privately contacted Mike Mearls about concerns with Zak being a special consultant for 5e, and Mearls shared all that information with him because the best way to identify possible harassment is to have the harasser verify it?
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Aug 29, 2016 23:11
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Is it actually helpful to Mikan at this point to bring them up and extensively rehash what happened every time Zak does something new and lovely - I kind of feel like we could cover 'why is Zak a tool' in other ways.
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Aug 29, 2016 23:17
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That Old Tree posted:That was a year or three before 5E, over one of the Desborough rape-apologia things. Before Ah, right. Looking at the dates on some things I saved, though, my argument with Zak happened about two years ago, so it was still probably post-5e (it was in the same window at least; unfortunately I don't have more accurate dates than "2 years ago"), though.
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Aug 29, 2016 23:38
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I feel like grognards.txt at least drove the futility of worrying about what the Asshats of TG are doing this week out of me. I can still laugh at it but can't be bothered to actually worry about it unless criminal charges can be leveled.
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Aug 29, 2016 23:40
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I really do miss grogs.txt, if only because it was the only place on the internet "who to avoid in gaming" was explicitly and reliably spelled out.
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Aug 29, 2016 23:49
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I was angry when it was killed, but yeah it's pretty much accomplished all it needed to while it was up. If nothing else it's abundantly clear nowadays that a lot of gamers are horrible broken individuals.
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Aug 29, 2016 23:51
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I feel like grognards.txt at least drove the futility of worrying about what the Asshats of TG are doing this week out of me. I can still laugh at it but can't be bothered to actually worry about it unless criminal charges can be leveled. This, yeah. We know who the worst people are, they're identified, and the best tactic used against them is to ignore them unless they do something arrest-worthy.
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Aug 30, 2016 01:00
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Slimnoid posted:This, yeah. We know who the worst people are, they're identified, and the best tactic used against them is to ignore them unless they do something arrest-worthy.
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Aug 30, 2016 01:02
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Roland Jones posted:There was also the time Zak made a list of people, using their real names, for them doing things as minor as +1ing a G+ post that was critical of him and distributed it to his followers, declaring all those people to be enemies of the hobby. Was that pre or post-5e, out of curiosity? I'm pretty sure it was in response to the 5e stuff, and therefore after Zak and Mandy deadnamed Mikan in their attempts to smear her name publicly. Zak admitted that he was also collecting together the tumblr handles of everyone who reblogged or liked the tumblr post about his involvement in 5e as a consultant to construct a list of names he could distribute to his industry ties to ensure they'd never work in the hobby. I wonder how successful that was...
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Aug 30, 2016 01:07
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Nuns with Guns posted:Zak admitted that he was also collecting together the tumblr handles of everyone who reblogged or liked the tumblr post about his involvement in 5e as a consultant to construct a list of names he could distribute to his industry ties to ensure they'd never work in the hobby. I wonder how successful that was... Considering his industry ties at this point are Jack and poo poo I'd say not very.
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Aug 30, 2016 01:17
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Kwyndig posted:Considering his industry ties at this point are Jack and poo poo I'd say not very. I'd make a Mike Mearls joke here but I think you just beat me to it.
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Aug 30, 2016 01:26
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A long time ago, I dreamed of working for a game company. Nowadays I just want to self-publish. Though I wouldn't mind writing other people's RPGs for a living, it doesn't seem like a steady way to actually make a living.
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Aug 30, 2016 01:27
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