Commentary on GB Hiring

@rorie: Sorry, I thought that was sort of pertinent to the conversation with you bringing her up.

Freedom of speech has nothing to do with this. I'm arguing that hate speech is not a social right or privilege. Society doesn't endorse or give you a free hate speech token if someone throws it to you first. We should agree that it's not the right thing or the best thing to do, and that should help avoid this mess in the first place.

And the hiring of Patrick was a great choice when they had enough chemistry and personality at the center of the website in SF with Ryan and Vinny. They went with diversity of opinion and a dude who could deliver cool new content. Diversity is great but it isn't going to keep this website afloat. Just ask Polygon if you can run a website with high minded ideals alone. Giant bomb needed to rebuild a strong core before they could try diversifying again and they did just that.

This makes me feel really awful, so I apologize for not responding earlier. We've had discussions to this end in the past but obviously events like the E3 chat and today are giving it a new sense of urgency. We'll be talking about how to react to this going forward but it will take some time.

I don't think it's a question of weeding it out. It's not a problem that can be moderated away, the only thing that can get rid of someone like that is culture change around here. This community's culture can't be one where women don't feel welcome (as is clearly the case now), it needs to be a culture where that guy doesn't feel welcome.

@tadthuggish: Nothing she has said anywhere is going to excuse people sending her death threats. Ignore people if you disagree with them; don't attempt to silence them.

A couple of quick thoughts:

It is never okay to respond with hate speech for any reason, even if you disagree with what the other person is saying. Having read the initial tweets involved, some of them made their cases poorly for various reasons, being they reacted emotionally or used Twitter, which is a terrible platform for stating any view as has been proven time and time again. Nothing they said however was worthy of the kind of childish, stupid, misogynistic crap that followed by some.

One thing that is being distorted by some here is that there were not two positions for journalists: there was one position for a/v and one for a journalist. Giant Bomb's a/v crew just also happens to take part in Quick Looks and podcasts. But I hate seeing some of the "so and so didn't get the job and instead they hired two white dudes" responses as it's attempting to strengthen a point by one side through a simplification.

The issues being brought up here are extremely complicated. I do not believe there was any deliberate attempt at sexism/racism involved in the hirings here. However, there are very valid points brought up by many that that is a latent sexism/racism in video game journalism brought about by the demographics video games largely appealed to in the 80s and 90s. This is not really new and plagues many industries. You then have one side claiming that they can't hire a minority as they don't have the experience, yet there was no chance for them to get that experience due to whatever. Even now I'm simplifying a complex problem in the interest of being brief(ish).

Long story short, I personally hit the point after far too many years on the Internet where you come to understand that you can disagree with an opinion while (shock) respecting the other person. I would love for GB to bring in a female to create some diversity. On the other hand, I think Dan's a wonderful hire and it means more wrestling podcasts, so that's perfectly fine by me.

@rorie said:

Exactly. People need to stop pointing at other people as saying "but look at what a huge clown that person is" as if it is some sort of excuse for anything. Her comment would have gone no where if no one had responded. But here we are because people decided to respond. It was their choice to do so.

Been a terrible day all around, for everyone involves. My question for these boys club mentality people in gaming is "why?" I love the fact that my gf game. I love that my sister game. Imagine if you can share a hobby as expressive and wonderful as gaming with EVERYONE you know. You can meet new people and instantly strike up a conversation about the newest gaming release that week. You can go start off a conversation with a girl with corny gaming lines and not be laugh at in a bad way but in a good way. We should want MORE women/people to get into gaming as possible. I just do not understand why, as a gamer, anyone would want to exclude anybody.

I'll second that.

Wow. Listened to the bombcast this morning over a cup of coffee and was super excited to hear about/from the new members of the crew.

Come home from work and this is happening? Hmmmm, guess it just goes to show that the internet is going to be the internet.

Oh yeah! Like I said in the podcast comments "Johnson County KS Represent!"

Thank you Rorie for your excellent handling of this situation.

I'm just so sad this happened. No one is happy :( This should be a good thing.

If Dan wasn't one of my favorite people in the games industry then I definitely would've rather they hired someone else such as a woman. This whole argument that "oh america is mostly white and gamers are mostly dudes so what did you expect" makes no sense and in no way justifies the lack of diversity in the industry as something that is okay.

@rorie: In my opinion there was no other way this could have ended and thats not GBs fault. Those people exist if they are allowed to post here or not and as long as creating an account is as simple as the click of a button you can't really prevent them from "joining" the community. On the other hand it can't hurt to enforce the "don't act like an idiot" rule with bans, temp bans or the like. That would mean more work and responsibility for the moderators though - which can pose a problem in itself.

Some functionality that lets me mute or ignore people for a given time period would be great to. Like a personal temp ban.

I haven't been following all the hoopla, nor do I have any knowledge of Jason's and Dan's backgrounds (Giantbomb is the only videogame site I have time to follow), so my comments may come off as totally ignorant:

Do people want more racially and gender diverse hires so they can bring in diverse opinions from the original core? If so, are they not acknowledging that gender and race are not the only contributing factors of diverse opinions? I mean, Jason and Dan can have different backgrounds/educations/cultural upbringings that would lead to opinions and perspectives that are different to the rest of the GB Squad. I believe the members of the original GB Squad have different backgrounds, which lead to their specific perspectives and interests on various items.

Never excused a thing, duder. I think it's awful.

i think the big thing to take out of this is you shouldn't take different opinions as attack on yourself personally.

@devoureroftime said:

Seconded. If there's one thing that makes me hopeful that things will change it's Rorie's outstanding work and attitude. Whatever they're paying that dude it's not nearly enough because he's a goddamn superhero in my book.

its also just plain untrue.

Went on a bit of a tirade on Twitter about this, so I might as well throw it here on the off chance that Rorie actually gets to it.

Seeing the rhetorical byline of "today has been a learning experience for Giant Bomb" is fucking infuriating.

Honestly, I'd respect the guys far more if they came out and said, "yeah, we knew this wasn't going to be popular" and opened discussion.

But when they paint this as a hat-in-hand baww guys we didn't know you'd be mad by acting like this is not A Thing, it's an insult.

Unless the crew is utterly divorced from reality, they had to have expected a certain amount of ire re: hiring decisions.

Because handwaving this away as an ephemeral "learning experience" - doesn't acknowledge accountability.

And in doing so, it means that Giant Bomb doesn't need to actually take steps to make this shit right.

The thing that gets me is, why is this such an issue? People like to scream about how "lack of diversity" is some sort of hate crime, or racist/sexist ordeal. Funny thing about that is the extremist views of such individuals makes other people in their OWN communities look like they believe the same, much as the hate returned made the GB community look like we are all on the same side of the fence as well. This sort of social action only serves to put us all back and perpetuate bigotry, all the while exacerbating the issue at hand.

People, it's not about who is more "privileged" or "right". Humans are humans, there will always be a disparity in the beliefs of humankind, but we need to learn to accept humans as humans and stop overgeneralizing and overreacting about every little thing. We need to stop looking so much at what we all disagree on, and focus on what we AGREE on. Else-wise we are only going to continually dig this rabbit hole deeper and deeper. I think Bill and Ted said it best: "Be excellent to one another".

Sorry about the rant, but as a member of the LGBT community, AND the GB community, I just felt it necessary to point out. /rant

Where are you seeing any editors saying that "this has been a learning experience," in even rhetorical terms? You may want to read through the editor's tweets and my many comments in this thread before you accuse us of attempting to wave anything away.

@muttersometaxicab: How were they to know that hiring these dudes would be unpopular? They're not omniscient beings. Also by saying that it is a learning experience they are acknowledging that they made a mistake, if apparently such a thing had been said.

All I saw first hand was people using Giant Bomb's acceptance of criticism as a free pass to be jerks, and other people responding to them like jerks, resulting in a whole mess of garbage that made me wish this site had some sort of ignore function to automatically hide posts from the handful of people that kept going back and forth. It's a shame some people can't be mature and that they feel the need to harass people that they disagree with.

Taking a stance like that always worries me that a person who took Fawkes as a username on other sites before I could get it turns out to be some kind of jerk. :(

@muttersometaxicab: Make what right? What did giantbomb do wrong?

@cabbagesensei I'll reply here since the podcast page has been locked. But yes, they have. No one has said it in those exact words, but the constant crying about a lack of non-white dudes is always happening. The constant bemoaning of white people being a part of a site is just getting old. Just let the guys who started and who run this website do whatever they want. I highly doubt that diversity in terms of skin color or genitals is something that any of them think about...at least I hope they don't. Because that stuff shouldn't matter. All anyone should focus on is the person's personality and what they can offer. And just being a different color or different sex does not equal true diversity.

@mrnood1e said:

I'll keep refuting these as they come, but NO ONE said that.

I only meant that in terms of being rude in this forum to people who are commenting on this stuff on Twitter. I don't think we have the capacity to moderate people for stuff they say on Twitter. Although that would be fucking fantastic right about now.

No one is saying that they should hire only based on gender or race. If anything, most people are saying "Wouldn't it great to have people from backgrounds with unique experiences (that can only come from being a woman or a minority) in regular Giant Bomb content?"

This times this

What should happen ideally is the staff formally speaking about this on the site and preferably on video. Not the just the occasional tweet denouncing behaviors like this. Jeff in particular never really gets too involved publicly with matters similar to this but can otherwise talk just about any subject with a lot of authority and the community on GB is very easily influenced by whatever he says. Just for once if he could put as much effort addressing this more directly as he does pushing his anti yoshi agenda it could make a great change in things.

I understand your frustration, but I honestly do think there was never any malice or ill-intent intended with any of this from the Giant Bomb employees. I know people are frustrated now, but I really do believe things will be better for everyone moving forward because of this.

Exactly, this is the problem with the other side of this whole mess, people don't understand that all giant bomb was trying to do was hire someone they thought was the best for the site, how could they possibly predict this level of backlash?

Yeah I remember all of that. For a long time I was pretty sympathetic to the fact that she got so much shit for those appearances (appearances which I actually found pretty enjoyable). However since then, she hasn't exactly shied away from kicking that hornets nest whenever the opportunity arises. She's made a few too many sour tweets about this situation for me to just brush them off. Which is not to say that her harassment is justified of course, I just wish she would let go of that grudge, because it's likely only making things worse for her.

I don't think that the new hires are unpopular. Its quite the opposite. Thats the whole point. Just because some people that feel the need to complain about everything, start complaining about the new hires does mean literally nothing for the GB community as a whole. Its the internet, theres always someone beeing rude and offensive that doesn't like what you do or say. Expecting 100% approval for anything is just not possible.

You're right, it shouldn't matter... in an ideal, fair, balanced world. We don't have that. Thus, it should matter.

Sounds kind of like what Twitter uses now with the 'mute' function. It seems work pretty well over there. Don't know how practical it would be in this case.

this. this. this. giant bomb is so unique in the way the do stuff that i want to see all parts of gaming get that treatment.

This is exactly the kind of dog-whistle comment this community needs to stop tolerating.

Maybe we should just get rid of twitter? Also, welcome Dan and Jason, I am excited for the future of Giant Bomb!

My God, that post is disgusting.

On one side are the asshats who can only argue in the most aggressive, angry way possible and on the other are the people who will often talk of rational calm discussion, all while being dismissive of opinions that don't match their own because they've found their moral high ground which provokes side A even more. I feel like I've seen these two sides every time I've been in stream chat and a solid amount of the time I've been on GB forums when something controversial happens. Just why.

@rorie: I would like to know GB's or your opinion on the comments made about the new hires. We obviously know that GB and you don't support the things said back to these people and you have said as much. But what would you say to the other side?

@flacracker: I wasn't involved in the hiring process so I'm not very qualified to answer any of those concerns.

I remember back in the days when I used to be in IRC chats that users had the ability to block individuas' comments, ideally so you wouldn't have to put up with them. What I learned is that in practice, it in some ways does more harm than good, because it generally just meant that you could badmouth someone without the target ever taking notice. What was supposed to help could easily be turned into a tool for passive aggression.

I echo these sentiments. I wish I all of the staff the best, and I'm sure Dan and Jason will do a great job. But the bile that gets spewed whenever a discussion about diversity comes up is too much for me. Even if most of the people engaged in outright harassment and bullying were drawn into the discussion from other sites, it seems like there will always be a large segment of Giant Bomb conflating a desire for more representation with a demand to throw out qualifications in the hiring process, or making asinine comments like "people won't be satisfied til they hire a black transgender paraplegic lol", where the whole punchline is that such a hire would be ridiculous, because the more minority groups you fall into, the more of an absurd joke-person you are. It's fucked.

@clonedzero said:

If I can be allowed this one criticism; I think what Giant Bomb did wrong was having an open call for applications when that really wasn't what it was. Jeff said on his Tumblr (all the way back on May 21st) that he "had an idea" of who he wanted and that hiring the person only required "a few more hurdles [to overcome]."

To me, I think, that is where all this crap got started. If the site (or CBS or whatever) had decided to just quietly hire Dan and Jason (or who knows? Maybe they weren't first choices) and then surprise everyone with it I don't think this would have gone nearly as poorly as it has. That's the bitch about hindsight. Sometimes we can't see the iceberg coming and we kick ourselves afterward.

The thing is, everyone has been an asshole in this whole ordeal. Everyone. Saintly patience from Rorie notwithstanding (seriously, how he has dealt with today I have no fucking idea), this whole discussion has been a mess. Some people have used this situation to talk about wider reaching topics like diversity in games journalism overall, and some people have used this situation as a platform to get out their hatchets and start scalping. Then we have other people saying that we should Purge the Heretics™ and other people, thankfully, saying "no that's stupid."

I really don't know how any of this gets fixed, and at this point I'm too tired to think of a solution.