TG As An Industry - Past, Present, Future - The Something Awful Forums

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG As An Industry - Past, Present, Future

Rand Brittain: Mar 25, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

I managed to say some pretty nasty things about Beast and got moderators wandering in to compliment me rather than ban me.

Maybe people should just get better at doing criticism without insulting people? It's not that difficult!

# ? Oct 25, 2017 00:13

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# ? May 8, 2024 04:57

Cool Dad: Jun 15, 2007; It is always Friday night, motherfuckers

Nuns with Guns posted:

It doesn't seem appropriate to what-if about a situation where an innocent person's life is destroyed by false accusations when the accused here seems to have quietly owned up to it and quickly withdrawn from public spheres.

But, this is not one situation. This is a pattern of incidents throughout, essentially, western culture going back indefinitely that is starting to come to light and get the attention it deserves. It is going to become extremely necessary very soon for places like RPGNet (and Something Awful for that matter) to have a very clear and specific process for dealing with harassment between users and especially by staff. We absolutely have to assume that other moderators and site admins on various websites are going to be accused of doing horrible things. It is completely appropriate to discuss, in the thread about this industry, how these situations are going to be addressed in the future, and to look at an immediate and current situation as an example.

rkajdi posted:

I'd be more accepting of this attitude if it actually resulted in anything getting done. We just had a woman come forward about something less serious about a man in the RPG community with actual chat logs, and nothing's really getting done about it. He's still working and acting like he's a decent person, and she's getting slammed by the usual types and not believed. For an older crime that just passed off as he said/she said I don't expect any level of justice to be done here. And again it's hyper worrying since there's fairly good odds given his self-described profession McFarland works or worked with kids.

This is a fair criticism.

rkajdi posted:

I also don't see what it has to do with one of the bog standard "Maybe it's false/Let's hear his side" kind of MRAish responses that always seems to come out when a woman brings forward an allegation of rape. That's the point Enola Gay-For-Pay brought that I'm responding to. Again, this is serious poo poo and is basically as tangentially involved with RPG stuff as the NeoGAF thing is with video games. Acting like McFarland should be dropped for making even as lovely a game Beast is instead of being a rapist is just impossible for me to comprehend.

I don't appreciate being lumped in with MRAs. My entire problem is that you just branded this man as a rapist and demanded that he be fired based on an anonymous internet post and that feels really uncomfortable to me, but at the same time I agree with you, this is serious poo poo, and there should be consequences for it. I don't think I am being a red-piller by being a little conflicted here, ok?

rkajdi posted:

It's worth discussing Matt McFarland for the same reason I brought up the Metzner stuff here originally. The nerd community in general has been a victim of the nerd social fallacy, and that's let a bunch of creepers like Metzner and worse into the community. I want to clean house on sexual harassers and sex criminals, and I don't honestly see a lot of reasonable counter-arguments to the position. I do see a lot of cowardice from people in power about doing the right thing and booting them, and it's actively helping to make the community a worse place.

This I 100% agree with, and I don't think anyone is arguing with you about it.

The Wyzard posted:

I disagree with this entirely. Even if her accusations are totally fabricated, Matt would have to be batshit crazy to come out and make a statement.

I think it's easy, when one spends a lot of time on the internet and internet forums, to overestimate their importance in the grand scheme of things. I doubt that even 5% of the people who purchased Beast, for example, have ever partaken of any of the forum shouting about its various problems (which are real, although sometimes overstated.) The accusations against Matt could have repercussions rather beyond whether he keeps posting on big purple. Silence is his best friend right now.

Source: I am a lawyer. Matt is playing grown-up games now, and they don't involve exploding d10s.

This is a very good point and I appreciate you making it.

# ? Oct 25, 2017 00:18

Daeren: Aug 18, 2009; YER MUSTACHE IS CROOKED

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