The Giant Beastcast: Episode 164

Not really. Her firing can be considered separately from his, where his could be seen as less fair or whathaveyou. It doesn't have to be a paired judgment.

I'll just speak for myself and say I'm not commenting on it because there is no one making the opposite claim. There's no one here arguing that the firings do not set a bad precedent that emboldens the hate mob. The critique has ran it's course since anyone willing to chime in on that are in consensus, myself included.

People are focusing on the points that have nuance, and thus disagreements, to them, even if they are secondary in terms of importance in the overall picture.

I find it pretty upsetting that they're acting like Deroir was "patronizing" or being "off-putting or rude" when he wrote the most polite comment imaginable. Just because his comment wasn't particularly helpful, it doesn't mean it was rude or patronizing. And painting Price's reaction to such an innocuous comment as merely being "snippy" when she's calling him names, cursing at him, accusing him of sexism is so gross to me.

There's a lot of fearmongering about how everyone at Arenanet must feel like they're on thin ice and they're afraid they'll get fired if they step even the slightest bit out of line. Don't be a humongous jerk and fling around insults to people being polite and respectful to you, and you don't have to worry about losing your job. It's really as simple as that.

People that benefit from some social media presence are happy to reap the rewards of such but not bear the burden of what "success" brings. The undertone of contempt for the audience I've picked up on from various commentary about the anet situation doesn't surprise me, but it's still difficult to sit through.

Thanks for sharing the video. I already didn`t care for how some people were trying to paint Deroir as a villain, but now those comments and articles seem really gross.

Maybe the thing I find the most frustrating about the internet is how it seems to so many debates into a black and white situation where no nuance is welcomed (both in forum and comment sections and in articles and podcasts from professional outlets). Any attempt at trying to bring complexity into a discussion will either lead to you getting lumped into on of the two camps or getting accused of just saying "both sides are equally bad". It`s an attitude that makes it incredible hard to have a constructive conversation.

When we're talking about 'how arenanet reacted to this debacle' it is IMO completely impossible to separate the two firings. They were not isolated events. To consider one without the other is lying by omission.

Great podcast guys,as usual. Alex at end had me laughing lol

Vinny needs to put his DC fatalities on his Instagram and How has Dan survived to his 30s???

Controversy may rage as long as it adheres to the presuppositions that define the consensus of elites, and it should furthermore be encouraged within these bounds, thus helping to establish these doctrines as the very condition of thinkable thought while reinforcing the belief that freedom reigns.

@reap3r160: I like to believe he was misinterpreted. NO ONE can be so clueless.

Still, a pity that it happened like 1 minute before closing, because those outburst are some of the most entertaining things on the podcast.

Is this a serious comment? I apologize if it should be obvious. I'm rather mentally tired.

A community-driven site without comments is hardly a community anymore.

There's no Pitchfork community. Apart from a pitchfork subreddit that averages at 1 comment per thread. There is a lively & vibrant Stereogum community. Hell, the Stereogum community as a site with a mostly similar taste in music even discusses reviews & articles from 'The Other Site' regularly. It's one of those online communities that i'm not a part of , but like reading because it has a core group of 50-100 people that genuinely care & enjoy eachother's company. It's pleasant to just read these online friends talk about music together and be insightful.

But taking a step away from social media is a very healthy step for sure. People should not necessarily jump to personal accounts to talk about events at GB. GB stuff should mostly refrain to the site.

Jeff B. is right about England. People expected them to get into the quarters or semi-finals for sure after the bracket shaked out like it did, and where they ended is a fantastic result for them if you take previous tournaments in account. But them beating Croatia was not a done deal at all. Croatia's entire team plays in the big leagues, with players like Rakitic, Modric, Mandzukic & Vrsaljko being at top teams.

I cleaned out my in-law's desktop for the first time since they bought it over 15 years ago and I found tons of cobwebs and THE DEAD SPIDER THAT HAD CREATED THEM.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

@josephknows: I'll equate as I please thanks. I have seen this twitter mob tactic of approaching a person's employer to try and get them fired by all political extremes and I maintain it is a shitty, spineless thing to do, regardless of what that person has said. It is particularly galling to see people who purport to be left wing employing this tactic as in doing so they are essentially taking advantage of the power imbalance between employers and employees.

@eastboundspider: We get it. You like Noam Chomsky.

Hi, i'm not gonna touch this trashfire of "but guys, gamergate is really about the ethics!"-level of obtusity, but i just got to the part of the cast that gives the context behind the episode thumbnail and wanted to say that

it's so

so

perfect

@turambar: It was chomsky! Your prize is:

But were there ever any

Writh'd not of passed joy?

The feel of not to feel it,

When there is none to heal it,

Nor numbed sense to steel it,

Was never said in rhyme.

To try to put myself in her shoes as much as possible, if I was talking publicly about an aspect of my job and someone offered a suggestion as to why I was wrong about it and I immediately suggested they were bigoted in some way and called them an "asshat", I do think that I would be fired. Especially if it blew up in this same fashion. It's hard to argue you are not a representative of your employer if you are out there publicly talking about your job. whether you are on the clock or not, your words and actions will effect them.

In dealings between the union and coworkers in my building, you are typically fired and have to go through 3rd party arbitration to get your job back. There isn't really a discussion before your fired. One coworker was fired for 3 months before getting his job back, another for a few weeks. Most just never come back. He didn't get any pay for those 3 months and had to pay his own way to an out of state arbiter and he was not reimbursed. It was a very costly mistake on his part. He wanted me to come with him to "testify"on his behalf but I couldn't afford it. Best I could do was write a letter for him to read at his meeting. I didn't even think his firing was unjust, but I had worked with him for many years and stood by him regardless.

I'd like to add that in the Bombcast comment section about this I said that I personally would probably have not fired her. If she demonstrated that she didn't think she was at all wrong, I would have let her go to avoid future problems. I don't understand why Fries was fired though.

Three things,

One, you can be polite and still be patronizing.

Two, she wasn't on company time, this is more akin to a expert in a field giving an impromptu lecture at GDC and at the end of discussing a challenging topic someone in the crowd stands up and says well what if you just did this one simple thing. To which she rolls her eyes and says "whatever dude." Fast forward 2hrs, our scene is now a hotel lobby and our expert is venting in public about an asshole at the conference when someone overhears and decides to start a campaign to get her and the friend who she talked with fired.

That isn't the same as calling a customer an asshole to their face.

Three, ignoring Jessica Price, the firing of the Peter Fries is indefensible and yet people are ignoring it and focusing on "well she was a rude."

Edit: They really do need to turn off these comments

Wait, what. I'm not saying ignore one of them, I'm saying you can think her firing was justified and that his wasn't.

So she can be culpable for her getting fired, but Fries's firing can be seen as unjustified. Like, it doesn't have to be a group-deal all-or-nothing when it comes to agreeing with ArenaNet's actions, such that when you consider Fries getting fired as well, if you happen disagree with it, it doesn't mean all of a sudden you have to stop believing that Price getting fired was acceptable.

Same goes for the opposite too, if that's how you roll (Fries justified and Price unjustified).

i think Vinny's ability to discuss the controversy of areanet from an industry-relevant perspective was so friggin professional given the political tilt of every other media outlet these days. bravo guys. abby, ur close to my age i can tell u wanted to get a bit of fire in there, its just what they taught us to do in undergrad. refrain, report, rejoice! u guys are great journalists.

@tr0n: lol how long til the goty discussion for "best old games"

@hermes: Agreed, though....you can hear over the shouting him restate something like, "I thought if it got cold it made it raw" and goes on to say for salmonella purposes(which is really only a risk in raw food) you needed to reheat it

Oh Dan, you are America's stupid national treasure <3

I'm the same age as Abby and used to rent soooo many games. It's crazy how quickly things changed for people born in the early 90s.

Turn off the comments.

While there's a grain of truth to this, it's honestly a pretty big stretch. What a whole lot of people seem to gloss over is that her initial response was an incredibly tame "thanks for trying to tell me what we do internally, my dude 9_9". After that Deroir issues a long apology that is roughly one step away from "I'm sorry that you got angry". From there Price has a tweet about people outside the industry telling her how to do her job that begins with "Today in being a female game dev" which implies that Deroir's tweet was sexist without outright calling him sexist (and definitely doesn't come close to saying he was deliberately sexist). Deroir issues a more final, somewhat salty, apology and Price makes her comment about "the next rando asshat". The whole exchange lasts about 5 minutes if you look at timestamps.

About 30 minutes later Deroir tweets on his own feed in response to something that has since been deleted that he's "...found [himself] in the midst of a war..." and ends it with "#IAmAFeminist" and about 30 minutes after that Price has a tweet (not directed at Deroir) about "hurt manfeels" after having her feed flooded by GG'ers for about an hour straight. Deroir proceeds to go radio silent on the matter beyond thanking fans for their support and calmly watches from the sidelines as a mob forms demanding blood in his name.

Deroir doesn't come off as deliberately malicious or sexist. He mostly seems like a fan that is feeling a bit hurt after expecting praise from one of his idols and instead finding chastisement, which is likely exactly what he was.

He also comes off as a bit of a self-pitying wet blanket since he somewhat frames himself as a victim in his apologies and has time to tweet "#IAmAFeminist" but can't be bothered to take 5 minutes to tell a mob forming in his name to calm down and stop escalating a confrontation he was presumably already done with. As a streamer, he should be very aware that sometimes you need to tell your fans to cool it on certain types of behavior, especially since people with 0 relation to GW2 were flooding in and stirring things up.

As for Price, to use a fitting MMO analogy, she's the healer in an endgame dungeon who has just finished explaining the strategy for an upcoming boss only to told, for the tenth time that day, how to play her class by the party's undergeared rogue who has only ever gone through the non-elite version of the dungeon at level 20. She was indeed a bit rude, but the whole conversation was absolutely the kind of thing that happens hundreds/thousands of times every day on Twitter with little to no lasting repercussions and that's exactly what it would have been had the GG crowd not made it explode.

Weird how GB or the people up in arms over the firings never stuck up for Adam Orth or Josh Olin like this when they were fired for twitter comments. Wonder what the difference is...

It's not an either/or scenario. You can think both were excessive.

But yes, I think it's far more ridiculous to think that Deroir had any ill intent with his tweet than it is to think that Arenanet was completely justified in how they handled the situation.

Having not heard of these two instances when they originally happened, I went and looked into them. Seems like defending a bigot from getting punishment for being a bigot and some snarky comments about "always on" seems like you're trying to equate two wildly different things, but okay.

Edit in italics.

@jukeboxjosh: And I'm absolutely shocked that you think people also getting fired for twitter comments is wildly different than what happened at arenanet.

Weird how one of these has the potentially long-lasting ramifications of emboldening an Internet hate mob into sending death threats to people in the video game industry and sending insincere letters to their bosses demanding that they be fired and the other two didn't. I wonder why...

Well, I don't agree with the "always on" comments deserving a firing. Snarky comments online don't deserve a firing.
I don't agree with allowing a hate mob to govern who gets fired because they handled casual sexism in a way some people online didn't like.
Defending a bigot from receiving consequences for being a bigot is kinda a bit different than the other two instances.

I know it'd be much easier to frame this all as "twitter comments get you fired," but sadly there's more context you don't get to just ignore because it's easier to make a point.

@seeric: internet hate mobs got both Orth and Olin fired, so I guess we should have made a stand back then instead of complaining about it now

@bacon: lol Josh Olin defended a racist. Why would I stick up for someone who thinks being racist is acceptable? Fuck him.

Adam Orth's firing was fucked. That story did not blow up like this one though.

@pujklo: I've been plenty rude to customers.

@boonsong: he defended someone's first amendment right to be a racist, and suggested labeling someone as a monster because they have ignorant views when they're almost a 100 years old might not be super productive. People that says racists things are stupid and repugnant, but they're still allowed to be racist.

Love too defend racists from having to face the consequences for their racism

I can't believe I'm weighing in on this, but here we go.

- Deroir isn't a misogynist (someone who hates women). He is probably not even a sexist (someone with prejudicial or discriminatory feelings towards women). What he is, is a man who is ignorant of sexism and how it manifests in regards to female professionals - and a man who, in that ignorance, contributed to that wave of condescension. People have discussed intent - my take is that the absence of malicious intent does not invalidate accusations of harmful actions. The guy was damn rude, in a way that is markedly common to sexists. He calls himself a feminist - he should have known better, and he should have reacted differently when called out on it, but I do not consider him to be much of a bad actor here. He's on the scale of the guy who tells someone with depression to "Cheer up!".

- Price does not have a squeaky clean public image. I don't know the internal logic with the boss team at ANet, so I can't really state whether a firing was justified (and neither can anyone else - it could very easily lean either way, based on information that the public is not privy to), but some form of reprimand was pretty seriously demanded. My uninformed opinion? Unless there was something much more dire behind the scenes, then a better solution would be on the order of something like being prohibited from discussing work, or even gaming news and culture, on her personal social media. She needed something more than a handslap, and a firing is not completely out of line - like it or not, people do represent their companies on their personal time.

- ANet's response is unconscionable. If a firing was warranted, the proper response would be something like "Staff member X's words do not speak for the whole of ArenaNet. Upon looking into the matter and discussing the tweets with the employee in question, we have determined an appropriate response. Our privacy policies will not permit us to discuss this publicly, but the matter will not happen again". The response they gave, if ya'll will let me paraphrase, came off much more as "Oh shit, did you see that? Don't worry folks, she's gone - didn't even let the door hit her on the way out. We're, uh... we're still good, right?" They gave the impression of capitulating to the mob, and while I may just be seeing what I don't want to see, I'm not alone in that evaluation. This seems to be GB's biggest problem with the whole thing - the company response - and I won't say I disagree with them.

- Firing the other guy? That is completely indefensible, and anyone with any sense of decency would not be treating it as an after thought. Anyone who cheers on ArenaNet for firing Price, and doesn't even acknowledge Fries, is probably an asshat.

- Anyone who denies that women like Price face sexism almost constantly needs to spend more time paying close attention to how their male colleagues are treated compared to their female colleagues, as well as spend some serious time of some of the shittier internet message boards. You think those trolls are only shoveling their shit now, because a woman poked her head up? They're there, they've always been there, and they always will be there unless people make the effort to drive them away.

A related read, with a transwoman's perspective on women speaking up in technical fields.

Why, despite all the claims of women entering male dominated fields, do I see so few female Quorans answering questions on physics, mathematics, engineering, programming, automobiles etc.?

This is a five alarm fire bad hot take.

@sethmode: calling an something a "hot take" is a great way to marginalize a stance or opinion that you have no legitimate argument against, I agree, but you could have thrown in a "dog whistle" or "whataboutism" in there too for some next level stuff.

@timeleap: I wouldn't be too surprised that Dan hasn't heard of The Troubles considering I don't think I know a single person who learned about it in grade school in the US. Probably doesn't help it happened during the Cold War and the US was focused on a lot of other things.

Cool, man. I just felt I could keep it brief for someone making excuses for racists and racist apologists.

I read those twitter posts. The guy who responded to her seemed constructive and cordial and she bit his head off. Should she have been fired? Probably not. Was this the only reason she was fired? Probably not. Not to far back in her twitter she is celebrating the death of someone who had cancer. Who knows what else you might find back there. I'm just saying that this twitter spat might not have been the only reason she was let go.

@bacon: Who cares about whether it’s productive or not. There is no place for civility when it comes to dealing with bigoted views.
And that's assuming being nice to a rich asshole is more productive, which it's not.

Vinny just want to say you have a great Instagram account

@boonsong: There is always a place for civility. The fact that has been forgotten is the biggest problem facing political discourse right now. If you don't look to engage in a civil manner with those who hold different views to your own then how do you ever hope to achieve change?