Spill.com talks about Ryan Davis and this is how I responded
By MocBucket62 77 Comments
Edit: I've been looking through the comments, and noticed that the trend went from the community saying fuck you to Spill.com to agreeing with the Spill crew that we need to get into shape and that this blog post was unnecessary. I was actually hoping to see what you guys think, and now I'm feeling like I'm changing thoughts on what I said before. I probably should of gave Spill more credit about keeping yourself in shape because it is important for us to stay healthy. Also, I guess I got too sensitive about this and I apologize. It was probably too much for me to expect these guys to know more about Ryan Davis besides his death and I really shouldn't of expected them being more empathic towards Ryan. I might make more edits to this blog later, but if you want to read it now, here it is.
Hey guys, on June 9 I noticed that the movie/humor website, Spill.com, actually talked about Ryan Davis on there podcast show, The Daily Spill, where two of the site's critics, Korey Coleman and Cyrus talk about recent news of movies and entertainment overall. Here's the link to the podcast for anyone who wants to listen to, but I'm going to tell you guys my thoughts on how Spill handled the story.
The Podcast
On there front page, I saw Ryan as one of the four dudes in yesterday's Daily Spill logo where he is in between Johnny Depp as Tonto from The Lone Ranger and the lead guitarist for Metallica. I have a feeling if Ryan saw this picture, he'd probably be stoked seeing it. And I did not listen to anything else they talked about on the show, I just jumped into the Ryan story to see what they were gonna say. I thought if that picture of Ryan was on that logo, maybe Korey and Cyrus (real name is Chris Cox) from Spill actually knew Ryan from the past somehow and wanted to talk about him as a person and why this news is so tragic. Maybe the Loading Bar guys pressured the Spill crew to talk about this because maybe when those guys were on Spill, they might of saw Ryan and Giant Bomb as inspirations for their work. Instead, the Spill crew went this direction:
When they got to Ryan's death, they were stating some facts about what they found about Davis and his death, saying he was a former editor at Gamespot and then became a senior editor on Giant Bomb, mentioned that Giant Bomb was one of Time Magazine's best websites of 2011, stated that he died at the age of 34 and died in less than a week after he got married. Of course they felt very sorry for Ryan as they felt he died too young and felt extremely sorry for his wife, family and friends having to deal with such a loss. This was something I appreciated, they brought up facts about Ryan's career and his legacy and they seemed genuinely sorry for him passing away too early. That said, their podcast went into a direction that I thought was utterly unnecessary.
After stating how sorry and sad they were hearing this news, Cyrus then brings up a quote he found from someone saying "When was the last time you pressed the X button?" This quote would lead to Korey and Cyrus using this story as an example of encouraging people to stay healthy because they brought up that Ryan was a "big guy" in their podcast and assume he might of died from health problems. While they do acknowledge that they themselves aren't in the best shape either and they are right about what health problems can do to someone's life, this to me seemed like an excuse for them to take this story somewhere where it did not need to be because they did not know what else to talk about. Granted later in the podcast, they admitted they never met or heard of Ryan before this story and once they saw a picture of Ryan, they probably thought he did not take care of his body enough and that might of resulted to his death, thus causing them to transition to tell the audience to find time to stay in shape. Right now, I don't know if I should feel angry or not because they really had little to work with because of their lackluster knowledge about Ryan, but at the same time if they are willing to put a picture of Ryan on the Daily Spill logo of June 9, that would imply that these guys knew more about the man besides his death and would emphasize why this news is so tragic for a selected group of people.
The one moment that had me furious beyond belief was right around the end of their discussion on this news as Cyrus says out of nowhere "Maybe his new wife stabbed him to death, who knows". I shit you not. He said that. That was by far the stupidest and not welcome assumption I've ever heard. Sorry if I'm overreacting, but that just pissed me off! It just just doesn't seem right to just randomly assume that. At least Korey stated that he felt really bad for his wife and did not accuse her of something terrible.
And one more thing, they had links to all of the stories they talked about, but for Ryan Davis, the source came from Rueters.com and not from Rorie's blog from this site. They probably went with Rueters because that had the facts about Ryan Davis' resume, but still, I would of rather have them cited Rorie's article. To me, that would of been an honorable move on Spill's part to provide the link.
My Response
After listening to this, I was pretty torn with what I listened too. I was happy that the Spill.com crew bothered to talk about this news and see them send their condolences for the loss. However, moments like them telling people to stay in shape and Cyrus' idiotic assumption about Ryan's wife had me either raising my eyebrows or really upset. So I thought of writing a comment to them, but instead of sounding angry, I collected myself and wrote what I thought was a restrained and critical response to the Ryan Davis bit in the podcast.
First thing I did is to actually provide the reason why he did, and most of us know it was of natural causes. I even provide a source to one of our forums that had the information. I wasn't sure about directly making a source to Mr. Richard Davis' twitter account, because I wasn't sure if directly linking to his account just to find an answer to their podcast was bad or not. So I chose the board that had the quote instead.
Then I stated that I appreciated that fact that they got to talk about this news. Then I stated what I thought about this news in two sentences, saying it was a shame that he died so young because he was an amazing video game personality and approached his job in such a positive and humorous direction. I even made a comparison between their site and Giant Bomb because like what Korey and his crew have done with movie content by providing video reviews and a variety of podcasts, Ryan and his co-workers did the same, with video game content providing excellent content all around that was for the most part, freaking hilarious. I was probably being too hopeful that when they were going to talk about Ryan Davis, they would actually connect themselves with Giant Bomb, but that did not happen.
Lastly, I had to tell Cyrus how I felt about his comment about Ryan's wife. I avoided expressing my thoughts on their direction to lose weight, but that comment had to be addressed. For those who do not know, the Spill crew have a tendency of bashing their members in the comment section whenever the members themselves make rather outrageous comments that the crew might find offensive. I decided not to take that route and say that I just found that comment inappropriate and unnecessary. I also said that based on what I've listened to on their podcasts, Ryan and his wife were madly in love and she would never do such a thing. I then asked him to please never make an assumption like that again if you truly know little about a news story like this.
I hope my feelings seem justified about this. For me if they put Ryan's picture on that logo to talk about this, I would think they would talk more about Ryan rather than starting off sending their condolences and then go on talking about maintaining your shape, which they said is hard to do in "nerd culture" as they call it. If you really know little about the man, why bring this up at all? Now I think about, Spill should of avoided this story if they do not know who Ryan Davis is and just talk about movie news. I also hope my response was the right thing to do. I made a restrained response that wasn't too critical and I wanted them to know more about the man by providing more information. I hope I did not do anything stupid linking the board that was about Ryan's dad giving the reason why Ryan passed away. All I know is that I'm still waiting for Cyrus to respond back to me so he can apologize, because again, that comment should never been on the show.
Man I wanted to get this out! Some feedback about how I handled this would be much appreciated. RIP Ryan Davis
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