Giant Bomb hires Dan Ryckert and Jason Oestreicher

Here I thought it was bad when Patrick joined.

@video_game_king: I was just making a point sweetheart, I'm sorry.

Welcome Dan And Jason, can't wait to see you guys on UPF and see what you bring to the GB team!!

If Dan and Jason are going to both be on UPF this friday (if there even is one this week) I wonder what games they'll bring to play? Their all time favorite, their current game, or something else? Or none at all?

I can't read through the whole thread, what are their personal tastes? I hear Jason is into fighting games and Dan might like Nintendo?

I'm so fucking disappointed in both sides of this. You should all be ashamed of yourselves. This is supposed to he an awesome time for Giant Bomb, but you are trying your hardest to ruin it. Congrats to Dan and Jason and I hope to see a lot of great content in the future.

All I know is this thread was relatively great just 3 or 4 hours ago...

I didn't think through while typing that. I apologize.

However, I disagree with you that nothing was said that was approaching that. It was very much approaching that. I wasn't talking specifically about Samantha, but she also said it was homogeneous to hire dudes for example. I still exaggerated, I realize this. Hence the apology.

@somedelicook: I don't think there will be a UPF this week with 4th of July in the States and all. Maybe have it on Thursday?

@thehumandove: Excepting Patrick, the rest of the Giant Bomb staff including the new hires, have incredibly similar taste in games, music, movies, entertainment (wrestling), food, and booze. That's not my opinion, that's what I've taken away from hundreds of hours of podcasts and live shows.

It's interesting that you keep bringing the conversation back to "having a penis". The homogeneity people are point out goes beyond sex/gender (apologies for writing it like that, I can't remember which is the correct term to use. I DO NO mean to imply that those terms are interchangeable). Do you really feel like Jeff, Brad, Alex, Vinny, and now Dan represent a wide array of opinions and interests, or would it be more accurate to say they like a whole heck of a lot of the same stuff.

@sparky_buzzsaw: man, if they are in the no camp I am just gonna lose my shit. The campaign to exclude the noble Hamburger from the Mighty House of Sandwich must end!

Shitty death threats, threats of rape. One writer who wrote some time ago about hiring more ladies said some guy looked up her home address and threatened to rape her in an alley near her home. Typical shit lord stuff.

I kinda figured, but it'd be cool to see another freedom stream. It would mean more than just the celebration of the 4th of july this year.

A sort of celebrate the past and welcome the future at the same time.

Must be great moderating this thread right now. I do not envy you (right now that is. I do otherwise).

@bravojade: In my experience on the forums which probably amounts to the same input time as yours I'd say I've seen very little of this 'vitriol' and seen plenty of moderation when it arises and a clear stance that attacks on people are not tolerated. There seems to be a general sense of disappointment in how the Giant Bomb community came across in incidents like the Leigh Alexander attacks any time it comes up and those who see no problem with the representation of the community at that time are in the minority and are usually pushed back against in the proceeding posts.

The community isn't perfect, no community ever can be, there will always be one person who's views don't align with the majority even should comments and opinions be policed to an exacting standard. Any one of us could say we align ourselves with a community of our choice and then decide to represent it in horrible ways but that in no way represents the majority of us who all see this as an incredibly unfortunate stain that will linger on the community due to the actions of people we'd rather not have be the brush that is used to tar and feather us whilst also making those on the other side of the exchange suffer through an incredibly rough time that shouldn't be hoisted on anyone.

Decrying the whole community as a hotbed of seething hate and overly defensive vitriol that is a sum of the whole instead of a small subsect whilst also distancing yourself isn't the way to go about this. Be the change you'd like to see, be a positive influence.

RYAN DAVIS JUDGES US ALL HARSHLY!

HARSHLY!

@zevvion: Thanks for clarifying.

The way I see it, it goes like this:

1. This being a personality-driven website, Giant Bomb tends to hire well-established personalities like Patrick and Dan, people who've been at the video game journalism game for a decade or more.

2. A decade ago, female and minority game journalists were far less common, for all sorts of unfortunate reasons.

3. Purely as a result of the first two facts (and almost certainly not deliberately), there has yet to be a female or minority hired to be part of the Giant Bomb editorial staff.

4. Meanwhile, other websites that are more news and article driven tend to be far more diverse because of the need for a larger staff, and a willingness to hire less experienced people.

5. As a result of this discrepancy, Giant Bomb inadvertently attracts a certain percentage of their viewership who, either knowingly or subconsciously, absolutely do not want the perspectives of women or minorities in their video game coverage.

6. The otherwise-cool Giant Bomb community continues to show its ass every single time any sort of social issue is involved.

Honestly, it's nobody's fault. Certainly not Jeff's for hiring the people he decided to hire. But those dudes seriously need to come to terms with the community they've accidentally cultivated, because I think the Giant Bomb crew and the Giant Bomb community are both in denial about it.

@underattack86: it could be /pol/ alright, it's there on their front page

Smart move on Giant Bomb's part. Spread your existing forces (Chicago, NY) and THEN queue up more units.

That response came after the harassment started, actually.

Totally agree, lets try and keep things calm and steady. He was probably just inspired by Alex's "shitlord" post on twitter. Keep up the hard work Matt Rorie!

@underattack86: I imagine looking at posts involving Leigh Alexander's two drunk appearances on the podcast and if I remember correctly she does comment on people trolling/attacking her for the first podcast appearance. Then she drank too much and did it all again except she was more annoying. The resulting shit storm wasn't pretty and she still has problems with this site.

She's likely bitter for a reason and the reason is people who took her drunken outbursts as opening to relentlessly hound her. She isn't helping by stoking the flame but, the fact that there is a fire in the first place is a problem. It isn't necessarily the GB community but, the internet as a whole anonymity giving people the ultimate avenue to furiously shit on people with no significant punishment.

Alright guys, this was intended to be a place to welcome Jason and Dan to the fold. I can tell you guys have other things you want to discuss, though, so I'm going to lock this thread and create two other ones so that we're not simply talking over each other.