A roundtable discussion with Chloe and Allistair

Since the last thread was sadly closed and I thought that this one deserve a Thread and a new chance to talk about it due to the current situation of Allistiar being fired by Destructoid.

Here is a roundtable discussion which happened a few days ago between Chole and Allistair.

http://gamersagainstbigotry.org/2013/05/chloe-allistair-roundtable/

I think it was really an interesting talk between these two. Really sad that Destructoid took the cowardly way and fired Allistair. I still think he did the right thing and seeing how chloe regrets her actions now i can feel for her. You can always make mistakes in life I think we all did this. The most important part however is to stand up to your mistakes and see what you did wrong.

You toss those names out like I should recognize them.

Dude, Allistair was the best character in Dragon Age.

He was by far the best "Vanilla Male Bioware Companion" character.

Can you bring us up to speed on wtf this is all about?

Wow, I was just about to post this. ha. I think this deserves to get more notice, as well. An odd instance of people actually trying to understand one another and work through things.

I'm a good bit baffled that Allistair was fired, as well(contrary to what he thinks in that roundtable), but I suppose there must have been some friction since the suspension.

And while I still don't trust Chloe and continue to criticize what she did(as she is now willing to admit was wrong), I hope she will continue to get better and eventually receive her surgery.

People make mistakes and act rashly at times. But that shouldn't mean they are dead to you afterward. And it certainly doesn't mean you have to have a vendetta against them forever. Even if they're some random person online, they're still a person. And we can all forgive, even if we don't necessarily forget.

Obviously he's talking about Tested's Will Smith's dog Chloe...right?

Can someone please summarize the situation?

For those not aware of what any of this is about:

Here's a decent story about it: http://leagueofmediocregamers.wordpress.com/2013/05/14/report-indie-developer-of-homesick-chloe-sagal-attempts-suicide-live-on-twitch-tv/

In my own imperfect summary, an indy dev, Chloe Sagal, lied on a crowdfunding campaign allegedly for a post car crash surgery, and it was, at the time, shutdown for unknown reasons by IndieGoGo. Allistair Pinsof of Destructoid posted on his Twitter a while later that she had revealed to him the full story, that the car crash story was made up and the money was actually for a trans surgery. In revealing this, Allistair also outed Chloe as trans.

Destructoid had told him not to mention the story, but he did so anyway. Thus, he was suspended(and later fired) and people have been critical of Allistair's outing of her, regardless of the fact that it was part of uncovering a misleading crowdfunding campaign. Many people on the Internet have also been harassing her since the campaign was shutdown, believing her to be a scammer deserving of no mercy. She subsequently tried to commit suicide live on Twitch.tv, but she is alright now and receiving treatment.

They had this recent roundtable discussion to try to get their voices out together and explain how they feel at this point.

Looks like Destructoid are very sneaky in this regard.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=58297908&postcount=1275

WOW destructoid. That is very very low. Respect ZERO!!!!

@theht: @brendan: I provided my own summary above, and gave a link to an article about it. Though, this is just the best that I understand it from many different sources online. I am not aware of a set, definitive article explaining it. I think I give a decent enough representation of what happened though. Some people may disagree, and if so, I encourage them to chime in with their own interpretation of the situation.

Also, there was an awful Giant Bomb thread about this before, but it was eventually locked:

http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/general-discussion-30/report-homesick-dev-commits-suicide-on-twitch-tv-1435985/?page=1

@darji: I would be hesitant to trust NeoGAF DMs, but if that is true, that certainly paints an even worse picture of the situation.

I doubt people on Neogaf would fake this. And seriously I do not believe Allistair would lie about this either.

@truthtellah:

Thanks for breaking that down. While this while misadventure is filled fill of scary nuance I hope everybody ends up okay in the end.

I only caught bits and pieces of this story until now (part of which being that rather despicable Giantbomb thread), but this whole thing is pretty depressing. (Although I'm glad there's at least some positive to the resolution.)

This just feels like more proof of the awful mob mentality of the Internet these days. It seems like these types of things are escalating more and more lately.

Real journalism in games media gets punished. This is why it's a fucking joke.

@truthtellah: I know most of the story, it was the Alistair getting fired part that I missed. I wasn't sure whether he got fired for outing a source, or otherwise. From your description in the thread it seems as if he got the boot specifically for outing her as transgender. Thanks.

In an odd turn of fate, Chloe and Allistair seem like just about the only ones willing to move on, and the Internet venom piled on both of them has, as the roundtable pointed out, given them a strange instance of shared experience.

The Destructoid founder claims he got fired because he was not silent after his suspension and therefore his contract was terminated. Either way he just told the truth of the story and he needed to do that to tell the whole story. And Chloe also agreed and is not angry that he did that as you can read it in their discussion. And this is the real disaster. All he did was doing his job as an honest journalist.

Chloe was attempting to commit fraud. Journalism is supposed to be the pursuit and revelation of fact.

No problem. It's a crazy situation, as it seems like more good could have come from him staying on with Destructoid and having a honest dialogue about this. I could understand the suspension for going against them saying not to post it yet and doing it in a less than great manner on Twitter, but getting fired is quite surprising. I'm guessing friction during the suspension led to the eventual termination. There's almost always more going on behind the scenes with internal disputes like this.

@mlarrabee: Did you read the roundtable? People should read the roundtable.

I can understand being unhappy with Allistair's termination, but the roundtable is really the point here.

I understand why Pinsoff exposed the fraud. That's a good thing, given we're at a very strange and precarious place right now in terms of consumer trust, crowdfunding and journalistic integrity. There was no life saving surgery needed, it was pointed out, IndieGogo shut it down, and the the backers were refunded.

What I don't understand is why Pinsoff subsequently thought it necessary/wise to 'out' Sagal as transgender on Twitter as the reason for the fraud, especially since he was apparently instructed by Destructoid notto do this, who presumably, ran this information past their legal and decided they might be held liable if something like what occured happened.

I mean, by his own estimation in the roundtable, he 'put Chloe in direct harm and pushed her off a cliff that there is no getting back from'. Couple this with his employers telling to not to, and I wonder what on earth this guy was thinking.

I can absolutely understand why Destructoid would ask Allistiar not to run the story when she was threatening suicide, but after she attempted suicide--and Allistiar in part SAVED HER LIFE--I can also see why Allistiar would no longer feel the need to remain silent, and why Destructoid asking him to do so could be interpreted as cover-up journalism.

I'm also in the group that feels that she surrendered her right to privacy once she attempted fraud, and I think it's ridiculous to expect a journalist to essentially say "I've uncovered that she was not in a car accident, and intends to use the money for another purpose" and expect people would just accept that without demanding to know the intended use of the money.

No journalist on earth would sound believable when saying "I've found out that this is a lie, and I could tell you what is really going on, but I'm not going to because of a privacy issue. You're just going to have to trust me on this." Even if someone did do that, it would just be creating some giant mystery for people to obsess about until the truth came out, and it would likely be far more discussed at that point.

Having said all that, I'm glad to hear that she's getting the help she needs, and that both parties have forgiven each other for the pain that they caused one another. And much respect goes to her for saying that she feels Allistair shouldn't have lost his job.

And after reading that, I have yet another reason to never again visit destructoid. As if I needed another. Ugh.

Oh she is in a life and death situation but she lied about the reason for that. And he did out her to tell the whole story. And chloe also did understand why he did that. That is the problem the one person who should be really upset is understandable why he did that but since Destructoid seems to fear the bad publicity this got needed someone who takes the blame and that was Allistair.

Well as far as I can tell, Destructoid only suspended him indefinitely, not fired him. And whether you like it or not, they had a pretty iron clad reason to do so; he was instructed not to reveal the details of his investigation 'pending further information', but he did anyway. As a result, something very, very bad nearly happened which could make Allister and Destructoid very liable.

Now, you're saying Destructoid did this because they feared the 'bad publicity', and that's probably partially true (and they seem to have acted pretty scummily after the fact as well). But I do know that if in my job, which while not strictly in the media is in a field with similar rules regarding disclosure and social media, if I was to reveal privileged information via Twitter, and my employers found out about it, I'd likely be sacked.

Which brings me back to my original question; Allister must have understood this himself. What washe thinking?

@truthtellah: I did, and I'm glad Chloe feels that remorse and has managed to rise above some of the despicable reactions.

But the fact remains that someone was fired for doing their job, and more than that, their duty, by the very people who hired them to do the job. The--poorly conveyed I'll admit--thrust of my post was my opinion of Destructoid's avoidance of their duty: to present honest news coverage.

@darji: While I agree that Allistair's firing is sad and some things paint Destructoid's management in a bad light, I concur with your original point of highlighting the roundtable discussion they had. I think it's rare that we have an instance of people really sitting down and coming to an understanding, and people should just reflect for a second on the lessons within their willingness to listen to one another and hash things out even while acknowledging the mistakes they both made.

People hopefully realize that a thread like this doesn't just have to be yet another excuse to get angry about something. There are enough threads like that every day. This is an actual chance to think about something and read a good exchange between adults treating one another as adults.

This is simply not something Internet "feuds" see very often, and I really hope people will look at your original post, read the roundtable, and think about what they're doing and saying there. There is plenty of time to be mad about Allistair's firing. Can't we focus for at least a little while on that roundtable?

Well neither of those things are really facts; he wasn't fired, and obeying the instructions of his employer in regards to the disclosure of privileged information is definitely part of his job.

No he was fired officially on Monday and Allistair got the message on May 17th. And what was he thinking? He was going for the real story because it bothered him as a human being and journalist. He had to tell this story as a Journalist and it was the right decision to do so. Only because of that Chloe now really gets the help she needed and as far as I read the roundtable and after comments right. They can call er officially a woman in June which was the whole reason she scammed her Indigo project.

Confusing, as the roundtable, which apparently took place the evening (6pm-11pm) of May 17th has Allistair saying he still had his job. So did they inform him...after 11pm?

And right after posting this, I see the founder of Destructoid posts this to NeoGAF:

This doesn't have anything to do with journalism, fraud, or transgender. It really doesn't. Furthermore, not a single person at my company will say that Allistair is a bad journalist.

My company is also not in any legal trouble regarding the transgender stuff. I'm holding my tongue for other legal reasons.

In other words, "I'm not going to explain, you're just going to have to trust me on this."

Well nobody involved, Allistair included, seems to think what he did was right (unless we get into speculation about if this is how he really feels). I'm also rather dubious this was the only way for Sagal to get the help she needed.

Seems a rather ballsy move on his part if that was his motivation though.

Yeah, I'm guessing the eventual firing is an extension of this whole escapade, not necessarily a direct result. In other words, the suspension for the tweets led to a conflict within the company built upon a basis of an already present issue that is probably bigger than just this one story. In other other words, maybe Allistair and his bosses just had a professional falling out brought to a head by all of this.

Yeah sorry about that. You are right the real discussion or talk should be about Chloe Allistair and the roundtable. I apologize for that.

I see where you're coming from--and I completely agree that both parties are to be commended for talking things out like adults--but that doesn't change the fact that the roundtable happened several days ago, and is old news when compared to Allistair claiming to have been fired on the 17th, or the owner of Destructoid taking to NeoGAF to defend his site with what amounts to "you're just going to have to trust me," which literally happened less than three hours ago.

It's funny to see just how much NeoGAF has fully accepted this official Destructoid explanation:

No, you had every right to fire an employee that doesn't listen to your direct orders. But given the information we have (and a tenuous "there's more to it than you think" won't change any minds), you gave him bad orders, and he went with his conscience. Until we hear information otherwise, you and your site are the ones that should be held to the fire. If legal reasons are keeping you from doing so, that sucks, but if the PR is that important to you, you can always disregard your lawyer's advice.

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There is no way you guys look like the good guy in all of this, sorry. You made a shit call and tried to keep the guy quiet about it afterward. Sure, you can fire him for disobeying orders as is your right. But your site's integrity is now damaged. Hope it was worth it.

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So he was fired because he wanted to run the story and you felt the need to bury it and hide evidence of the scam?

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I don't understand the point of coming here and trying to defend your site if you're going to use so many words to say absolutely nothing.

What a surprise that people don't tend to accept "I'm not going to explain, you're just going to have to trust me." as an answer.

@danm_999: Proof of attempted fraud, however naive the attempt, isn't privileged information.

Hey everyone,

Allistair here. Though I hardly (ever?) interact with the community here -- mostly out of fear of becoming addicted to another forum -- Giant Bomb is my favorite site on the internet, so it's very cool to see some of you guys say nice things about me. All while misspelling my name in every way possible. Awesome! I just wanted to say thanks for the support. You can send me messages here and I'll respond. I can't talk about things right now, but I'm hoping progress will be made soon.

By the way, please don't look at my embarrassingly awful blogs I posted on here ages ago. :)

you are the best character in dragon age

Oh what a surprise^^

Seriously you did the right think and I hope you and Chloe will come out fine out of this. Just watching all these sites now even defending Microsoft and their stance right now. I hope you will never fall into this "hell" and always do what you think is right even if it can hurt people.

PS: Sorry for my bad English or misspelling your name. I often just type a bit to fast without much thinking about grammar but rather about my opinion or feelings on something^^

This whole thing is just silly. Silly through and through. Lots of drama, little details. Too many presumptions and too little context. Gaming Journalism is fine, none of this personal drama matters anyway. Anyway, get better Chloe! Be who you are and not someone else.