The Giant Beastcast: Episode 278

Good to hear Abby address last week's pod.

Inviting Merrit was a mistake because yeah.. it happened. Merrit got platformed without proper vetting, she got to showcase the best side of her and shout out her socials so people can support her. Sadly there was no audio-insert on that podcast to let all listeners be aware that there is a massive cloud of allegations following this person. Not entirely sure what Abby meant with her being in a relationship, but perhaps that was inside info someone shared with her. What i found were the allegations that she was part of a community for queer folk wanting to make it in the videogame industry and that a newcomer to that scene alleged that she and some of her cronies were abusive in various ways (house eviction, bathroom monitoring, pressuring people to hurt other trans people, blacklisting folk from the industry, medical neglect, social isolation, making sexual advances, practicing obligatory BDSM in the community and erasing work.)

Luckily Abby does actually address that Merrit being on the pod was a colossal fuckup in the audio itself. Any regular listener that might have been swayed to support Merrit based on the last episode, now has also heard that they should look into the allegations that swerve around her before doing that.

That said, i do still think that the previous podcast should have an audio-insert at the start to let anyone that stumbles on that beastcast know what they're in for. Not everyone is going to listen to the following episode afterwards. If you truly feel it was a fuck up to include Merrit in that content, putting an audio-insert shouldn't be too much to ask right? It wouldn't erase the content as if nothing happened neither.

On a lighter note, Abby's reaction to Alexis Alexander was glorious and made me go tearyeyed. Also, Bakalar's humor continues to hit with me.

AA Navarro

I never said they did. My response was to the other poster who made that statement about infallibility. My point is simple, GB has over the years called out others, whether they be a person or a group for wrong doing. In most cases those call outs were justified, like calling out racism, sexism, unfair work practices, etc. I'm all for it and have nothing against it. But that doesn't mean GB is immune from being call out themselves if people felt they dropped the ball on something. I remember years ago, GB was calling out sexism and racism, and people responded: "yeah, you talk, but your website is filled with white guys, no women and no people of color." They responded by hiring Austin Walker, and eventually Abby and Jan. They didn't rush to hire them, they made sure they were a good fit at GB. I respect that.

And let me make myself clear, because I don't want to help turn this thread into another near 400 post soapbox. I have nothing against Abby as a person. I like her at GB. I respect that she is trying to add diversity to the site and refuses to compromise who she is as a person. I've said I don't blame her for the Merritt K situation. But she also warned that it might happen again. My point is, along as it happens within the margin of human error, which is a long distance apart, that is acceptable. But if it keeps happening more and more often, then that's a problem with the vetting process.

Well Said Abby. Don't listen to anyone who still giving you a hard time.

@refused: The is continually repeated, yet even after the fact when people try to vet Merritt K, it isn't exactly easy. A group of people can try to do better and still miss things. I swear, some of you use that statement as a cudgel and it's crazy unfair.

@sethmode:

I'm not particularly bothered about the Merrit K situation specifically, or trying to place any blame. But if you're going to vet guests, then maybe actually vet them or at least talk about what it would entail. It just seems to be "well we weren't aware of anything in our social circle", which isn't vetting at all.

Again, not blaming anyone in GB specifically. In fact I think Abby should be applauded for attempting to bring in more diverse guests, especially on an episode where she's solely in charge of hosting. That shit can't be easy.

I follow a lot of interesting and entertaining people on Twitter. Not all of them are mutuals; many of them don't follow me back, but I still occasionally interact with them and reply to their tweets and have positive exchanges. Some of these people are also followed by many other people I follow - not just my friends, but other people in related industries whose character and judgement I trust and/or value.

If I ran a podcast and one week my regular co-hosts were all unavailable and I decided I wanted to invite some popular or interesting guests, many of these people would likely be at the top of my list.

The thought that I should "vet" any of them - people whom I've followed for a while, have had nothing but positive experiences with, and who are also followed by other great people I know and trust - would never even cross my mind. Vetting is for random people I've never heard of and have no existing rapport with - not people I've come to know and consider an acquaintance or possibly even a friend.

I'm looking at the list of people I follow who also follow Merritt on Twitter, and let me tell you: it's a lot of well-known, well-respected, intelligent, kind, and diverse folks, including ones who are active and even at times in the forefront of LGBTQ+ or anti-harassment activism in online geek spaces. This is by no means a defense of Merritt, but to point out that these people must clearly be unaware of the accusations. It's so easy for people on the outside looking in to underestimate how easy it is for things to remain hidden on Twitter; how even with publicly available tweets and links to articles things fly under radars all the time and remain completely out of your view because they just haven't penetrated your particular feed yet.

People still angry at Abby for not properly vetting her guests last week need to seriously let that go. Abby acted entirely in good faith to bring on a much needed diverse group of female voices to Giant Bomb and naturally reached out to friends or acquaintances that she very reasonably felt would be great fits and well received. Demanding that research have been done before selecting any of them is unreasonable and unfair.

Love ya, Abby!

Please stop with this false "Grandma is going to get so confused" thing with the Xbox name Alex and Jeff. There is a $200 price difference. The DS line from Nintendo just got discontinued the other day. Look at the list of names for that, how many Christmas's were ruined?

Good on Abby for talking about last week right off the bat. You're a good one, Abby. The haters can suck an egg.

I also speak to myself when I'm on that WEEEEED. I talk to myself a LOT. I wonder if it's just about not caring that much about things that don't actually matter... I'm more comfortable performing music when I'm not sober as well. If I was a more calm fella when sober I think I probably would just babble and hum to myself all day long like the manic little rapscallion that I am.

@sethmode: @sethmode: because they aren't in good faith, like Vinny says. It's just bag on Abby crew that runs in here sometimes.

@garwalk: Great post. Thank you!

@bsmittel: I don't want to paint with quite a broad of a brush but I do agree in general. It feels like yet another situation where nothing Abby does is good enough.

My condolences, Alex. RIP Thelma.

Clearly all this viewer anger is coming from jealousy that Abby has an Office with a Fireplace. For shame.

That argument only really makes sense if you have proof that no or next to no christmases were ruined by wrongly purchased DSes. Do you have that data, or do you assume that no christmases were ruined by granny buying a 2ds? What about when granny got to the store and realized she had no idea which of the DSes to choose so she got a gift card instead, leaving the young kid with a voucher for fun that can only be cashed in two days later.....

There are some holes in your reasoning. Also, Alex and Jeff are right. Granny is gonna be confused. You shold think less of grandmothers.

My condolences, Alex.

Edit: as a Bi dude, Abby's explanation makes a lot of sense and it would be a huge loss to the site if they felt like they couldn't bring in guests anymore.

Reverse Jeff is clearly Jeff Forward-alar. Dropped the ball on the dad joke there Vinny.

Didn't know this stuff about the guest from last week. Abby addressed it well, I don't think she really knew about it. You'd really have to do some digging to even see that stuff.

I'm with you. The sentiment is more important than the literal words that are used. Thanks Abby! You're killing it.

Congrats on the PS5 Alex.

Wasn't this same apology said not that long ago where they said they'd vet better?

My God. It's a podcast (loosely) about video games. They're not doing background checks for CIA applicants. How much digging into a person's twitter history does anyone at Giant Bomb need to do to be able to safely assume that that person is not a dirtbag of some sort, or to see if they have said/done a shitty thing at some point in their life? How much "vetting" is even fair to reasonably expect?

Call me naive, but I'm pretty sure that Giant Bomb isn't intentionally featuring people that have weird skeletons in their closets. And that's the keyword: intention. To me, that matters. Did Dan Ryckert intend to give a person with Jack Gallagher's history a platform? Did Abby intend to give someone like Merrit K air time? Of course not. If that shit were common knowledge, then they wouldn't have been allowed anywhere near the site as featured guests. Thus, an acknowledgement of a flub in the form of an apology, or whatever, should be enough. And if it isn't, then I think that you really need to take these guys off of whatever weird pedestal that you've got them on. They're just a bunch of journalists (?); they're not infallible.

A total non-apology ("I can't be expected to know everything!" - really?). These hosts would (and regularly do) crucify any other media outlet/company for a similar response.

The first round of Spellbreak is against bots.

I'm glad we are onto podcast two of comments being taken over by scene drama

@homelessbird: People are enjoying themselves. It's the disgusting state of society right now.

@homelessbird: People are enjoying themselves. It's the disgusting state of society right now.

Thank you! I spent way too much time as well trying to find out what Merritt K did that was so horrible but I literally could not find anything. The closest thing that I found to "controversial" was that Merritt said some things on Twitter that was found offensive by just a few people, yet that particular incident was even grasping at straws... People need to stop choosing to be offended by everything and expecting forced apologies for something that is in no way a serious issue.

Have mercy.

The amount of, like, false equivalence I’ve been seeing around is really frustrating. Please do not pretend that Abby bringing a guest is even close to like, major companies histories with bad practices or supporting serial abusers.

So did nobody find the baby face Bakalar photo/article from 2008?

@adamantypants: Is it this?

@thataintfalco said:

Yes. But you will notice how they didn't say "We will be prefect in the future" but did say they would make mistakes in the future and try to correct them.

Great job on acknowledging the issues with the last podcast Abby.

Don't listen to the people saying this "wasn't enough". It was.

I have no idea who this person is and there are no coherent allegations made in this thread, man I feel fucking old and I am only 26.

The way ya'll were acting I thought they had a fucking Neo Nazi on or someone convicted of abusing their partner.

i can’t believe a bunch of Gamers are getting mad at two women in games that is just shocking

Great episode!

There are some commenters in this week and last week's thread trying to turn an honest mistake into a crucifixion which is a sad state of affairs. If one of the "old guard" made this mistake it would have been water under the bridge immediately, but for some reason whenever the newer generation make a mistake it's time to grab the pitchforks and riot.

The probability of listeners remembering last week's podcast in a month's time is slim-to-none. For the vast majority of listeners GB podcasts are single-use and primarily a source of background noise they can chime into occasionally to hear funny people talk about their hobby.

This isn't 60 Minutes, it shouldn't have the same degree of scrutiny and accountability when the showrunner has clearly shown remorse - both as soon as she found out using the (poorly hidden from a developer standpoint, I think everyone agrees) show notes and on this episode.

I normally only listen to audio on these out of habit, from listening to these during commutes. But with working from home I may do video more now. It was really cool to see you all. @ybbaaabby love your workspace.

RIV Thelma, always sad to lose a loved one =(

Sorry about your loss Alex. One of mine I had for 17 years passed about 2 years ago and I still miss him.

@mostlysquares@bsmittel: I worked in electronics at a big box retailer during the Wii U launch, and let me tell you we ended up having to make a policy of asking anyone trying to buy a Wii U game if they actually had a Wii U and not just a Wii after too many returns with complaints about games not working. The amount of times we heard "Yes of course I have a Wii, just not the touch screen bit. But I don't want that." And then having to explain that yes, that one little letter at the end makes all the difference.

So I'll never doubt the confusion generated by naming conventions like that again. Grannys are definitely going to be confused by the Xbox naming convention, and no the price difference won't matter because they don't have context for the pricing anyway. There is definitely a non-zero amount of little Billys out there that are going to get a One X or a Series S instead of a Series X for Christmas out of market confusion.

I remember that incident and blog post from Ryan. It was a dumb thing to say, especially on a livestream. But he also followed up as soon as possible with a thorough apology that appeared at the top of the main page so no one who visited the site could miss it.

Although I'd hoped for this recent event to have been addressed sooner and better, there are some differences to keep in mind.

1. It was a staff member that said something offensive, not a guest, meaning it was even more important that an apology from Ryan was needed.

2. People who watched that The Running Of The Lanterns livestream years ago were most likely people who visited the site regularly, therefore it made a lot more sense to have the apology written and posted here. Something like that would still not be seen by all of those who listen to the podcast but never visits the site. Which is a lot of people, based on what the staff has said many times over the years. Editing in something at the start of the podcast would have been the best, but the second best was to at least mention it on the next episode.

That said, I agree on that I'd expected something better to be said in an apology. Especially after the hearing all of the staff calling out others for not addressing similar mistakes in time and properly.

RIP Thelma. I'm sure she had a happy life in Alex's home.

Abby has been an amazing addition to the GB team. I'm not going to blame her for this mistake. Seems like it was pretty obscure to begin with. I don't think it's realistic to expect GB to investigate the entire background of every guest.

At most, maybe it would be a good idea to add a spoken disclaimer to the beginning of that podcast, and/or edit out the part where Merritt gives out her social media stuff? (assuming it was there, I don't remember)

@adamantypants: I tried and was unsuccessful. There's a chance it's on the AdAge site, but I ain't paying to subscirbe to that.

@sirdaemos: Compare the GB response here to theIr response during the Max Temkin and Alec Holowka incidents.

Still can't believe my former employer owns this website now. If you would have told me in 2011 when I started there that the company I worked for would own the website of the podcast I loved listening to on my drive in, I would have questioned your sanity.

I hope it goes well. It's been a few years since I worked there, but many of my friends are still there, some of which are big fans of CNET, GS and GB. I'd say they're in good hands.

Well, that was a weird non-apology coming from a site that's usually very vocal when other people/companies give half-assed non-apologies on similar issues. Some of the statements here pretty much contradict statements made some podcasts ago when these issues were tackled, it's very disappointing to see how GB handled this.

I'm not expecting them to be infallible, that's pretty much impossible. But I was expecting them to at least practice what they preach. If you're going to hold others by a higher standard, you should follow that standard yourself.

I'm also not blaming Abby for the person she invited and it's pretty obvious she didn't do it on purpose, it was an honest mistake. But that mistake should've been handled better after the fact.