The anti-Patrick stuff is really getting out of hand.

The Walking Dead show and comics are TURRIBLE, though. Patrick is right.

Oh is it now?

My favorite revelation of this topic;

"Patrick doesn't like The Walking Dead, the show or book."

"It's up to Patrick whether or not he likes The Walking Dead, you can't tell him he's not allowed to dislike it."

"Well, I don't like Patrick's output on Giant Bomb."

"STOP HATING PATRICK! THERE'S NO VALID REASON TO DISLIKE PATRICK!"

All this anti-Brad stuff is getting out of hand!

I personally don't like Tom McShea or Jim Sterling or Patricia Hernandez. So if someone makes a topic and says "what do you think of Tom McShea" I'll post "I think Tom McShea is a twatty populist kissass". It's only with Patrick that people circle the wagons and say there's no reason to have a problem with him and that if you don't like Patrick then gert ourt.

Pretty much this. If he didn't try to push his opinion on everything, or talk over everyone, and he appeared a bit less, people might feel less animosity towards him. I really dislike him, but it doesn't stop me enjoying the website. I just ignore the things he's in. It's that easy.

'LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!'

amirite guise?

@digiwth: The series sure, but the COMICS are bad??... Ah well, to each their own. See? We can all get along.

Patrick is the 8.8 of GiantBomb.

Personally, I don't see all the hate. But it's all subjective in the end.

This reminds of people who would reply to comments saying things like "in your opinion." No shit it's my opinion. It was text in a little box with my name on it.

@MildMolasses that's just like, your opinion, man.

There is a difference between an opinion stated in a mannerly fashion, and bullying. This thread is about the former, how is that so hard to understand. No one is saying people aren't allowed to not like him, it's about people being DICKS about it, or worse. So stop with this white knight bullshit, it's just pathetic and misses the point of the thread so much it's embarrassing.

Exactly my feelings on the matter.

Except that there are probably about a million other things you would find more offensive about YouTube comments, aside from some anonymous comments on Patrick's videos. There's no real point to this thread and it was inevitably going to turn into drum beating. Threads like this one never actually help, other than venting frustration.

@Kohe321 I find it amusing to hear how there's a difference between disagreeing or disliking Patrick and malicious attacks on him when they've been conflated for this entire topic, arguably this entire discussion. Any rebuke on Patrick's actions results in the same "leave Patrick alone" line regardless of the actual content of the rebuke.

If the grand total of this topic was to inform Giant Bomb users that doxxing Patrick is wrong, well then NO FUCKING SHIT. But it's not what this topic is about. It's to take a delinquency of social mores and use it as a rhetorical bludgeon against people who have not harassed or performed criminal actions. The use of "hey people who dislike Patrick, don't criminally harass him" is exactly like saying "hey blacks, don't steal". "Hey men, don't rape". It's textbook conflation.

Furthermore, what's the likelihood that the people who actually are harassing him on a criminal level are going to stop because a bunch of people said it was bad? We already have laws that say invasion of privacy is bad, but getting entrenched, forming the Scoops Defense League, that'll change their minds? Not bloody likely. And painting anyone who thinks he doesn't have insight or he's pretentious or he talks too loudly or whatever their reasons are, painting them as criminal harassers will only succeed in making them dislike you as well.

I actually don't want to get into these kind of discussions all day long, but my God. I almost want to go back to the days when the arguments were about Xbots and Gaystations and ... I don't even know, Nintendumbs? Sega Dumbcast. Oh snap son.

While I am not a fan of Patrick being in video content and the podcast I think saying shit about his family and wishing he broke his neck is fucked. This thread serves no actual purpose though. It is just bringing more attention to those people. The hate for Patrick wouldnt be as bad if people would stop making these stupid threads.

I don't understand. Why aren't we allowed to dislike people?

I by no means hate anybody, certainly not Patrick, but that doesn't mean I have to like him. But hey, I don't like some of my colleagues, I guess I should just quit my job right?

@brodehouse: if the culprits are not from this website, then where are they from? also, people just want this forum cleaned up period, such a thing is not unlikely if enough pressure is put out there, so put that in your textbook and conflate it.

It's still a stupid thing to lose your shit over.

@laserbolts: it serves a purpose, a good purpose, it's sending some of the heat back at some of the dicks, it's highly unlikely that none of them will take heed, right? one or two might wake up to a thing or two, right? so there you go.

@canteu: bit of a simplistic interpretation, don't you think?

WE'RE NOT COOL AT ALL.

It totes sucks and the comics are just as bad, but hey I haven't read all 100+ issues of it, so heads up, I'm clearly misinformed and not worthy to judge it.

Not sure why people defend the show at all-- it's a soap opera for dudes, clearly not everyone's wheelhouse and absolutely not something that requires a person's undivided attention to grasp its subtlety. If you like it, cool, but it should be clear why people would think that it's trash.

And hey, can we permaban anyone who uses the term "white knighting" in a non-ironic way? Because it makes me vomit in my mouth a little every time I read it. I mean, it's a good gauge to know who to ignore, but still.

If the culprits are from this website they certainly don't post like that here. What clean-up are you talking about - removing threads that perpetuate arguments about Patrick? Like this one?

@rockyraccoon37: I know right, I just wandered in from Tumblr and Giant Bomb is not a safe space, to my horror!

If you told 'em to stop, even if it's just one or two of them, some of them surely will stop. I'm mean these threads worked in the past, that's why we don't have hateful comments towards Patrick anymore. Wait a minute...

Flag them / report them to mods and ignore them. No point paying attention to these sad, bile-filled children. You can carry on living your life knowing you are so, so much happier and well adjusted than they are. I'm not exaggerating when I say these people have serious mental issues, and they'll help or destroy themselves on their own.

I love Patrick's stuff, especially the monster hunter quick look recently. Great primer for when I bought the game last week and now have sunk 30 hours into it.

no, dude, what? removing loudmouth egotists who do nothing but get off on the power trip internet anonymity gives them.

People who don't like a writer guy on a video gaming website are mentally ill.

@hh: You'd end up banning half of Giant Bomb with such a vague definition.

I wouldn't say that, but the people who feel the need to voice their opinion are probably unstable or missing some meaning in their life.

Sounds good!

I agree. Those crazy people having a different opinion than me are some messed up fuckers. Some of them even pay for this site and still have the balls to criticise aspects of it!

@rockyraccoon37: I'll take criticising the content over criticising the criticism of the content, every time.

uh, guys, no one lost their shit in the walking dead comments, they were just pointing out how dumb patrick was to shittalk something he's barely read thats all. way to blow it out of proportion guys

But it's all criticism, so what's the difference?

@rockyraccoon37: Neither is invalid, but I was disagreeing with your statement that "[if they] feel the need to voice their opinion [they] are probably unstable or missing some meaning in their life." They're equivalent measures, if one makes you 'sick,' so does the other.

go read the walking dead comments again. theres a few over the top comments, nothing major. most of the comments were merely pointing out how weird it was that patrick made such specific and harsh judgements of something he never read.

theres about 20 comments going "OMG these comments are ridiculous!" for every one comment who criticized patricks opinion. again, a vast majority of the comments disagreeing with patrick were perfectly rational and polite.

so yeah....uh please actually read stuff before spazzing out that people are attacking patrick, it wasn't that bad lol.

@clonedzero: read the OP, and find out what we're actually talking about, the walking dead whatevers is a sideshow.

I was totally joking around. I think it's weird when people feel the need to voice things like "this person talks too much" or "Their laugh is so annoying" or whatever.

i did. this thread derailed into a side walking dead discussion. so i was just clearing it up. a specific and recent example of over the top patrick hate would make this thread actually worthwhile.

@rockyraccoon37: Nothing about your post indicated it was a joke. Why is it weird to complain about someone "talking too much" or being "annoying" when they're putting out content that's supposed to be entertaining / informative? Seems fair to me.

@clonedzero: also, i think most of the comments in question are on the youtube listing.

exactly didnt patrick even mention that he took comments about him interrupting people to heart and was working on being better about that? he's seemed alot better about it lately.

This is always the case, sadly. Out of hundreds of negative comments there will maybe be ten borderline spam comments by users who conspicuously have a few posts and no avatar. This is then used as the rule rather than the exception of critical posts.

Case in point, that comment section. Not even a week later and it's already being revised, so that it's supposedly full of Patrick's bullies.

Yes, Patrick has stated many times that he wants feedback on his content. He has thicker skin than his would-be defense squad.

Pretty much. I was in that comment section and it was basically just people commenting that Patrick shouldn't be discussing his "theory" about why The Walking Dead is a bad comic and Kirkman is a bad writer when he has barely read the comic. That was interspersed with people strawmanning the arguments and trying to turn it into an anti-Patrick thing, which it wasn't. I hate the stupid anti-Patrick nonsense as much as anyone, but that's not what was going on; i'm sure people would be annoyed with Jeff or Ryan or anyone else if they were to say something like "I read the first issue and I guess Watchmen just isn't a very good comic and Alan Moore just stumbled upon it by accident".

You might be in too deep if you think that saying people are unstable for judging a person's character on the internet isn't a clear joke. Just an FYI, but I'm not a goddamn lunatic.

Those complaints are entirely subjective and unless an overwhelming majority of people believe it it isn't worth considering. Especially when you factor in that these are personality driven websites, and you're essentially asking a person to change an element of who they are, or how they express themselves so you can enjoy them more.

It's an unreasonable complaint.

I mean, that's a more specific example. I don't have a problem with people saying things like "I wish this person was more sensitive about spoilers", or "this guy needs to tone down the hyperbole". I get those issues, most of the time my reaction to those complaints would be that they don't bother me at all, but hey I see where you're coming from.

It's the "constructive criticism" of personalities that irk me. If you don't like a person on the team, then simply avoid the content they put out. If you're then complaining that that person is in a lot of content, then maybe find other sites to explore-- maybe you'll find something else to like out there.

On this site, it's no stretch. I've been told to do everything from stop posting to killing myself, so being told I'm mentally unstable is par for the course.

Actually, Patrick has accepted criticisms on his tumblr / formspring about talking too much and interrupting others in quick looks and promised to work on these issues. He even said if you don't like him as a person it's fine.

I see what you're saying, but ultimately people will complain about what they want to and not make distinctions of it being someone's personality.

I don't recall the entire thread, but much of it was initially dominated by people upset at Patrick for voicing his opinion on the Walking Dead tv show and comic series. Then that quickly devolved into a debate about whether or not the show was any good (HINT IT'S TOTALLY NOT).

But I think you're doing exactly what you complain about -- this thread doesn't have a bunch of people saying how horrible the comments in that quick look are, but instead voicing their opinion about a vocal minority of the community who feels the need to chastise Patrick for voicing his opinion in a way that offends them. It's hardly the "defense force" you make it out to be. The OP here may have been over zealous, but I'm not seeing a litany of people here calling for death to the people who criticize Patrick.

I don't see people coming to Patrick's defense here, just people voicing their opinion, much like you feel you have a right to do.

All I'm saying is, you can't have it both ways.

The outrage would make way more sense if the Walking Dead was actually a good show.

I have no problem with users posting whatever they like, it's this thread and some of the posts within it that suggest this forum needs to be "cleaned." That is what I object to, and I sort of need to object to their posts to do so, even if I respect their right to post.

I think we should permaban all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons but I'm unreasonable so there's that. TWD show's 3rd season is ok. I mean I don't watch a lot of shows and of those shows not all of them need to be of the quality of Breaking Bad or Mad Men. I mean I watch Downton Abbey and that show is pretty rough dude. Also way, way more of a soap opera then TWD is. Also the last time I watched professional wrestling it had the same concepts and plot developments as a soap opera just with dudes beating each other up in between so dudes don't have a lot of room to begrudge soap operas. Not that you or all men watch wrestling. Just saying.

@HH Oh boy. I can't wait for this 'clean up'. Instead of a 'clean up', let's call it a 'purge'. That sounds more accurate. And who shall we purge? After all, the promotion of invasions of privacy, doxxing, stalking campaigns are _already against the rules_ and already result in forum bans, maybe we need to increase the scope of what qualifies. Maybe it should be a certain of critical posts? Once someone makes four posts critical of Patrick for whatever reason, the reasons don't matter, they'll be purged. After all, it stands to reason anyone who would publicly state some issue with Patrick is likely to be one of the people being aggressively abusive to him.

At a certain point, we have to think about how it starts. If you let people make three negative posts before purging them, it will only embolden others to make their three negative posts. For the good of everyone, we'll have to lower the amount of negative posts allowed before purgation to 0. If people see that 1 negative post results in being purged, they'll stop posting negatively altogether, and thusly, we will have no twitter harassment of Patrick.

Of course this might not stem the problem. People could remain silent and completely anonymous and still harbor I'll intent to Patrick. Many people who have been critical of Patrick have said they've stopped watching videos he's involved in... Therefore you can root out harassers by checking people's watch history. Someone who doesn't watch Patrick videos is a possible harasser and should be purged. Those who don't watch enough will be purged. Those with Twitter accounts and youtube accounts can send hateful anti-revolutionary messages. They will be purged. Giantpurge.com. It's a website. About Patrick Klepek.

Of course you don't have to like him as a person, but that doesn't mean that you can come into his yard and take a shit and not expect to hear about it. I obviously don't think there's anything wrong with voicing some criticism in a constructive manner, but most of what I've seen is the same people complaining about the same things over and over again in a snarky, angry tone.

And to be fair, you've probably been told some of those extreme things by people in threads regarding the representation of women in video games -- if I remember correctly (and oh god I'm so sorry if I'm wrong) said some pretty gross things in those threads and shown some disdain for that entire conversation. Not saying that justifies people telling you to kill yourself! But that's obviously a heated conversation and very different from criticizing a member of the GB staff.

Anyway! Point being that tone matters, it doesn't matter that this is the internet and it should be expected.

FOLLOW THE MONEY