The Giant Beastcast: Episode 224

@Itachiitachi the first accuser is not known for their dishonesty except among a small cult like group. And theirs was one of at least 4 individuals providing credible stories of abuse, along with individuals (Matt Thorson, Grayson Evens, Danny Baranowsky) who have corroborated aspects of the abuse. And the sister said it was true. The abuse happened. And Alec is responsible for Alec being gone.

@SethMode the Post Millennial? That Canadian wannabe Breitbart or Quillette? Shouldn’t be surprised. There is a cottage industry of Canadian sites popping up to rake in ad revenue from alt-right page views. Any site that willingly publishes a white supremacist like Lindsey Shepard or a bigot like Barbara Kay is as reputable as a pile of poo.

@tomservo50: Yeah, a quick jaunt to the home page of the site was all that I needed.

Yay my favourite crew! and its three hours. Perfect for a sick day

@tomservo50: And by the people who have worked with her, and by her business practices, and the people she's been in relationships with, and anyone who is familiar with her past accusations, and the fact that it seems that she plainly contradicts herself.

Oh look someone resorting to attacking the source of the information (with lies that are easily verifiable as false) rather than the actual information itself.

@bisonhero: The point is if those tweets are accurate it flatly disproves the claims that she was physically confined, isolated from the outside world, or had to hurriedly flee.

@itachiitachi: Where is your response to me?

I’d say it flatly disproves nothing. Social media is such a small portion of someone’s life, and as I mentioned earlier, people tend to use social media to emphasize the good parts of their experience while glossing over the negative. Also nothing in the random collection of tweets contradicts anything directly.

“That she was physically confined”

About her confinement, Quinn said “He wouldn’t let me leave the apartment without him and refused to give me the code to get in.” No one thinks she was locked in a tower like fucking Rapunzel, but the claim is that Holowka was controlling of her ability to come and go. Nothing about the tweets proves or disproves this. Yes, she went outside to buy things, to do a podcast, to do an indie game meetup. Since she didn’t sign off each tweet with ”I left the house with/without my boyfriend’s permission”, tweets are not a useful way to test the validity of this claim.

”Isolated from the outside world”

About isolation, Quinn said “While I was in Winnipeg he slowly isolated me from everyone else in my life...He convinced me to talk the 3 friends out of getting a shared place with me there.” Again, nothing about the tweets proves or disproves this. She went out to buy things, to do a podcast, an indie meetup. It is not clear from a random collection of old tweets whether Quinn was or was not able to spend her private time contacting friends and family or if Holowka was very controlling in that time.

”had to hurriedly flee“

I don’t know where you or the Post Millennial got this idea that Quinn left in a hurry, because she never claimed this, and sure enough the tweets don’t indicate it either. About leaving what was originally planned to only be a 2 week stay in Winnipeg, Quinn said “I wouldn’t get home for a month, and only then it was because my roommate used his miles...I got even more scared when the two weeks had passed and he kept putting off the agreed plane ticket home...My roommate started to get scared and asked me if I needed help getting out. I said yes, and Alex barely looked at me as I left.” That’s it. The claim is that Holowka was delaying the purchase of a plane ticket, and Quinn’s friend had to use air miles to get her the ticket. The tweets don’t prove or disprove this. The Post Millennial calls this account a “rapid, anxious escape” but that is never claimed.

In any case, getting a bunch of old, vague social media posts or DMs is never going to paint a very full picture of what was happening in a person’s life.

It’s regrettable that Holowka died, and even further regrettable that he died without publicly responding, because now people can say what they want about the allegations and we’re not ever going to hear whether 2019 Holowka would own up to or deny the allegations.

@Itachiitachi let me clean up that quote of yours. “*They are considered reputable* by the people who have worked with *them*, and by *their* business practices, and the people *they’ve* been in relationships with, *and by most if not all the staff at this very site*, and anyone who is familiar with *their* past accusations, and the fact that it seems that *they* plainly *are consistent about themselves.*” There, fixed it for you.

I’m old enough to remember them being described as a disingenuous liar in these comment sections for having the audacity to make a game about depression, because women can have sex at any time and therefore cannot suffer depression. Boy, that really feels like eons ago now.

And others have detailed the problems with the article itself, but boy oh boy is that site a textbook example of non factual, biased clickbait crap written without any sense of proper journalism to appeal to alt-righters. Yeah, I’ll attack a source like that. It seems anyone can write a “Zoe sucks” article and be believed by cult members.

@tomservo50:

@bisonhero:

Yeah, any article can carry a bias or quote people selectively. If we're just talking about Zoe's credibility, I would listen to their supporters, since they don't have an ideological bent against feminism. Many of those women have worked with Zoe IRL, and now describe Zoe as a chronically dishonest person:

https://archive.is/LpZ9X

http://archive.is/y9xZN

https://trashoverride.tumblr.com/

Altogether Alec is the 5th person Zoe has described being sexually assaulted by. But there is nothing indicating that any of their accounts are false, including Zoe's story about stabbing to death an attempted assailant in Boston.

Still, multiple people backed the claims that Alec was a real jerk, but it's not clear how siccing an internet mob on him was supposed to "help". Zoe themselves was nearly driven to suicide by a similar internet mob after she was also accused of sexual abuse by an ex. A second person claiming to have been sexually abused by Zoe was forced to retract after being bullied into it by Phil Fish, Zoe, and their followers:

https://imgur.com/a/eoIo7bj

Zoe said they wanted to encourage Alec to get medical help, but if they had only talked to some of his peers Zoe could have found out that he was already getting help turning away from who he was back in 2011. This is the worst possible outcome for all parties and with some communication it could have been avoided

For more context, Alec talked about his struggles with suicide back in 2016:

https://imgur.com/92AbN5t

I mostly feel bad for the people in the replies cheering him on, and telling him he was no longer the jerk they knew from 2011.

@bisonhero:I assumed they where quoting something from somewhere else. If those where supposed to have been from the included tweets then I agree that the article is dishonest and anything that author reports should be viewed with skepticism. She still comes off as dishonest and the more twitter information that comes out the more dishonest she looks.

@tomservo50 Your disingenuous because you slander people rather talk about facts unlike what Bisonhero is doing

Sometimes I'm not sure people here know what disingenuous or slander mean.

Did they not actually watch the Nintendo Direct that they literally show the USB-C port on the SNES controller?

In Creature in the Well, the map is very useful, but maybe took me until the 3rd dungeon where I was looking at it. As Bakalar said, the mini-map is very small, but the map in the pause screen will keep track of your progress in terms of room completion. Also, there are a lot of secret rooms to open to a) get a new weapon, b) get a new cape or c) find an upgrade for your character. Great little game. Finished it 100% in about 8 hours.

@11111110: Yeah, the evidence against them is years in the making and is frankly one of the reasons I stopped following their social media stuff. That said, there's a world of difference between pointing this stuff out and sending more harassment their way.

@bladeofcreation: Yikes, I just realized I misgendered Zoe. Fixing that now!

Man Austin!! I've missed you. You certainly raise the level of discussion whenever/whatever you're on. Come back soon!!

@11111110 man, going over every discredited claim against Zoe is tiresome (I was around in 2014. Heard all that B.S. Been there, done that). There is no proof they said they stabbed someone, nor do any of the other claims hold up (can read up on some of them: https://tinyurl.com/yxudpuu5). Maybe someday something credible will emerge about Zoe being a bad person, but so far all that gets circulated belongs in the same milieu as Pizzagate.

Anyway, I wanted to more engage with some really questionable framing on your part about victim statements and victims of abuse in general. First, it is sadly common that abuse victims will suffer at the hands of more than one abuser. Abusers target vulnerable people, and if a person escapes an abusive situation that doesn’t mean their life suddenly became less vulnerable. Add to that the big lesson that should have been drawn from the last couple of weeks: the video game industry is currently structured in such a way to make most people working in it vulnerable, and as a result abusive individuals are thriving.

Which brings up another thing, this “angry mob” that gets cited with no proof. I never saw any “mob” regarding Alec or any of the other names that week, save Alexis Kennedy. People were angry, but most of the anger was directed at the industry in general for creating abusive environments and not speaking out against abusive individuals.

And from this I return to the questionable framing when you said Zoe was “siccing an internet mob” on Alec when detailing the abuse they suffered. Why do you think the purpose of abuse survivors telling their story is to bring anger on the abuser? Why should a victim put aside their own well being and only consider the well being of their abuser? Why do you think the abusers well being is more important?

When abuse victims tell their story, there usually is a dual role. One is to raise a red flag of warning about an abuser so there are no more victims. The other is dealing with the trauma and healing. It’s difficult to ever move past trauma if it’s something you’ve locked away as a secret.

It was pretty clear from Zoe’s story that they weren’t “attacking” Alec. Neither revenge nor a desire for justice was behind their account. They wanted to release something they had held in secret, because they wanted to deal with the trauma instead of continue avoiding it while also raising a red flag so others could beware. Which, as more stories emerged about Alec, seemed pretty wise. In the end, Zoe’s story both matched the other stories of Alec that emerged and reflected in tone and content what other abuse victims had written about their abusers.

Zoe was responsible for their own well being, not Alec. A victim owes nothing to their abuser. Alec was ultimately responsible for his own well being. Was Alec getting better? Who knows. His sister’s statement said he was in treatment and had been better the last couple of years. He had also been abusive to a fellow developer earlier this year, and appears to have had a history of appearing to “get better” to some people when he had in reality just shifted his abusive behavior to others. To claim he was “doing well” until this story broke is a claim without any solid proof.

Finally, let’s cover an example of what siccing an internet hate mob using a false tale really looks like. Gjoni. He was angry about being dumped and engaged in a period of stalking Zoe before he decided to write his missive. He crowdsourced his document, getting input from Zoe haters how he could best shape his writing to hurt and stir up hatred against Zoe. He spammed links to his opus in every forum where he knew gamer dudes groused about women, and encouraged attacks against his target. He was and is a narcissistic abuser, and his manipulative manifesto reflected that. To see it as in anyway comparable to the stories real abuse victims tell is insulting and displays a disturbing lack of critical analytical skills.

@tomservo50: Thank you for the detailed response, I appreciate it. I agree with most of your points about victims, although there's a couple of errors. The url and blog post you shared is from 2014, but most of the testimonials about Zoe are from 2016 onward. It also predates when Mallorie released unredacted versions of the emails where Zoe repeats the story about stabbing a man in Boston. You can read it in the facebook link I posted: https://archive.is/slqGR

It doesn't really address the multiple trans women that worked for her online abuse support network, only to walk away feeling that Zoe wasn't running it in good faith. I don't really think multiple unconnected women sharing the same experiences is the result of a Pizzagate-style conspiracy. They felt Zoe abused and manipulated them, and they know Zoe better than either of us, so I see no reason to doubt them. I'm not sure why you do

And if Zoe says she's been sexually assaulted by five different men, I see no reason to doubt that account either.

In regards to how internet mobs traumatize targets with mental illnesses: have you read Zoe's book? I did, it was pretty informative. They talk about the ways in which tech companies fail to respond or recognize forms of internet abuse, or punish those responsible for instigating mobs. It's not exactly a coincidence that Zoe faced a wave of twitter harassment after a blog post was made describing her as abusive. And it's not a coincidence that Alec also faced a wave of twitter harassment and threats after a very similar blog post. Fortunately, in both cases most of the threats were deleted, but archive links exist. Still, Zoe was nearly driven to suicide when an ex publicly accused her of abuse, and he was considered 110% responsible for the trauma she faced. Especially since Zoe, like Alec, had been struggling with mental illness and years of suicidal ideation. To assume that Alec took his life randomly is to discard everything Zoe had been warning us about online abuse.

I'm comparing Zoe's claims and Eron's claims because they contained highly similar accounts of abuse. They both describe emotional abuse, manipulation, forced social isolation, and vague implications of sexual abuse. In Eron's case, he included chatlogs backing his account, and his description of Zoe's abusive behavior matched what many other women have said over the years. Both Zoe and Eron claimed they didn't want their abusers to get attacked, but they wanted to deal with their own trauma and warn future victims. They wanted to share their stories with as many people as possible, Eron used forums and Zoe used her 75,000+ twitter followers. As you said, it's not humane to expect them to hold it in secret. Fortunately Zoe had been telling members of the industry and Alec's social circles about what he had done, for years prior to her public tweet. Whereas Eron had only told a few female friends and family members before posting his blog post

I agree with your larger point that abuse victims shouldn't have to pay deference to the public reputations of their abusers. But it's clear that the reactions both Zoe and Eron provoked went above and beyond and hurt people in ways that they didn't intend.

Anyway, I recommend giving Crash Override a read. It details the many ways in which relying on the court of twitter mobs inflicts greater trauma on mentally ill targets of social media backlash. Some sections of the book read as out-of-character since they were written by unpaid ghostwriters (the aforementioned members of Zoe's support network), but it all holds up.

I don't like it when GB decides to take a stance with weird social politics and happenings. It kills the vibe of what makes GB so fun. I also don't like how Austin Walker commandeers conversations the way that he does, be it news or games. Ultimately, they aren't conversations. They are Austin telling you what to think. He's not pleasant to listen to.

Just popped in to say Astral Chain is the best new Nintendo IP in a decade & the best Platinum game yet. Don't let the discussion from Austin change your mind if you're thinking of picking it up. The game is fantastic.

@passingthrough: It's how I've spent my last week. I love it.

@tomservo50: @11111110: Great posts by both of you. I keep putting off Crash Override because it feels like it will be a hard read. Also, this announcement of their DC comic on Twitter is a perfect encapsulation of how the hate mobs tend to always be focused on victims. You cant find this level of shit dealt at abusers. At least, not to my knowledge.

https://twitter.com/UnburntWitch/status/1173496480558014464?s=19

@sethmode: I think it encapsulates that being an abuser/victim is not a binary state, often times abusers were once victims or become future victims. I believe all of Zoe's claims about being abused, but I also believe the former supporters that describe being abused by Zoe in the same manner. It's a self-perpetuating cycle, which is arguably the worst part about it

Crash Override isn't too hard of a read, the worst part is probably when Zoe implies that Eron raped her after writing the blog post. She also includes samples of the vile things trolls wrote, fortunately they're almost all things 4chan has said about her rather than direct messages or threats. Her harrowing into chapter describes being raised by abusive parents, and later goes into industry-wide problems which are probably the best parts. But it ends on a weird note by implying that the Crash Override support network was shutting down and that she was relying on the readers to carry the torches. It's never explained why, the former volunteers for the network later described being shut out without explanation and being blocked by Zoe

Physical media is gross. Get it the fuck out of my house.

tag austin please