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Game Company Fires Two Employees Who Complained About 'Mansplaining' on Twitter (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Verge:
On July 3rd, narrative designer Jessica Price tweeted a 29-tweet thread dissecting the challenges of writing player characters in an MMORPG. A streamer who goes by Deroir responded, "Really interesting thread to read! However, allow me to disagree slightly," and shared a three-tweet explanation of how narrative design influences player expression in the sort of games that Price narratively designs. Price both replied directly to Deroir, tweeting "thanks for trying to tell me what we do internally, my dude," and retweeted his response with the caption "today in being a female game dev: 'Allow me -- a person who does not work with you -- to explain to you how you do your job....'"
Price's suggestion that Deroir was mansplaining game development -- an area where he does not have the same knowledge or experience -- sparked anger among the ArenaNet community. She subsequently responded to those criticizing her on Twitter. [Here's the first lines of that tweet. "Since we've got a lot of hurt manfeels today, lemme make something clear: this is my feed. I'm not on the clock here. I'm not your emotional courtesan just because I'm a dev. Don't expect me to pretend to like you here. The attempts of fans to exert ownership over our personal lives and times are something I am hardcore about stopping."] Price was fired shortly after. Although many fans are comparing this to something like working in a restaurant -- be polite to the customer, or get fired -- Price says it's impossible to talk about this incident without larger context about systematic online harassment, particularly the sometimes abusive relationship between fans and game developers and the failure of game companies to address it. "Game companies are generally unwilling to be honest with themselves about how they're complicit in creating and sustaining that environment," she tells The Verge...
Price adds that she believes her firing was an emotional reaction on the part of ArenaNet co-founder Mike O'Brien. "He fired me personally, and the meeting was mostly him venting his feelings at me," she says. "I understand being afraid when you see the Reddit mob coming for you, but if people with less power can weather it -- and we do, regularly -- so can he...."
"We can probably fire anyone on the GW2 dev team as long we make a big enough stink," wrote one user on the Guild Wars 2 subreddit. "Nobody at Arenanet is safe from the hand of reddit. We're literally running the company now..." UPDATE (7/12/18): That user eventually clarified that their remark was satirical, identifying themself as an angry Reddit user who felt powerless and "surrounded by individuals who are so thoughtless and shitty I was hoping I'd appeal to some sort of sense of decency by writing the most vile shit I could think of... I took it down because I realized that nobody was going to disagree with me."
ArenaNet also fired Peter Fries, a writer who'd worked for them for 12 years, apparently for defending Price in a series of now-deleted tweets. (For example, "Here's a bit of insight that I legitimately hope [Deroir] reflects on: she never asked for his feedback.")
"The message is very clear, especially to women at the company," Jessica Price tells the Verge. "If Reddit wants you fired, we'll fire you. The quality of your work doesn't matter."
Price's suggestion that Deroir was mansplaining game development -- an area where he does not have the same knowledge or experience -- sparked anger among the ArenaNet community. She subsequently responded to those criticizing her on Twitter. [Here's the first lines of that tweet. "Since we've got a lot of hurt manfeels today, lemme make something clear: this is my feed. I'm not on the clock here. I'm not your emotional courtesan just because I'm a dev. Don't expect me to pretend to like you here. The attempts of fans to exert ownership over our personal lives and times are something I am hardcore about stopping."] Price was fired shortly after. Although many fans are comparing this to something like working in a restaurant -- be polite to the customer, or get fired -- Price says it's impossible to talk about this incident without larger context about systematic online harassment, particularly the sometimes abusive relationship between fans and game developers and the failure of game companies to address it. "Game companies are generally unwilling to be honest with themselves about how they're complicit in creating and sustaining that environment," she tells The Verge...
Price adds that she believes her firing was an emotional reaction on the part of ArenaNet co-founder Mike O'Brien. "He fired me personally, and the meeting was mostly him venting his feelings at me," she says. "I understand being afraid when you see the Reddit mob coming for you, but if people with less power can weather it -- and we do, regularly -- so can he...."
"We can probably fire anyone on the GW2 dev team as long we make a big enough stink," wrote one user on the Guild Wars 2 subreddit. "Nobody at Arenanet is safe from the hand of reddit. We're literally running the company now..." UPDATE (7/12/18): That user eventually clarified that their remark was satirical, identifying themself as an angry Reddit user who felt powerless and "surrounded by individuals who are so thoughtless and shitty I was hoping I'd appeal to some sort of sense of decency by writing the most vile shit I could think of... I took it down because I realized that nobody was going to disagree with me."
ArenaNet also fired Peter Fries, a writer who'd worked for them for 12 years, apparently for defending Price in a series of now-deleted tweets. (For example, "Here's a bit of insight that I legitimately hope [Deroir] reflects on: she never asked for his feedback.")
"The message is very clear, especially to women at the company," Jessica Price tells the Verge. "If Reddit wants you fired, we'll fire you. The quality of your work doesn't matter."
Someone who is unable to take valid criticism, immediately making a fuss about on it on social media, generalizing members of both genders, isn't good a look for a company.
That term was invented by Neo-Nazism-feminists. Their way is the only way, and it doesn't include men at all, as men are evil in everything they do.. Its very sickening.
let me make it crystal clear:
you responded to simple criticism with sexist remarks.
that shit don't fly.
She got fired for being a sexist jerk. Her co-worker got fired for joining into the sexist attack. The person that responded to her, Deroir, said nothing sexist, demeaning, belittling, or insulting to her. SHE is the one who took things too. She could have simply ignored the comments if she did not want to interact with him. Reddit did not do the damage, she and her co-worker did this to themselves.
Man/Woman/Other-splaining. A sexist word no matter what the prefix is.
That's 50% of the population right there. If I have to walk on eggshells because you might make it a gender issue, who is the one using gender as a weapon?
Not denying sexism exists, it does. It also exists in these hardcore gaming feminists, who are shooting themselves in the foot with really rather terrible arguments and soundbites.
My understanding is, the guy who messaged her, was very tame in his reply, it was a direct reply to her tweet and I believe he works or worked with them or he was some kind of official partner.
He also was quite tame in his response and gender had nothing to do with it. Furthermore, his behaviour the remainder of the night, was very much polite and lite, he really wanted nothing to do with an internet lynching and was just disapointed by her reply.
Her reply was a quote tweet (ie: a shaming) to make them look bad and went on to a gender whine.
I've become very sick of this gender politics / identity politics bullshit, she was foolish to defer to the "I'm a woman so he's not allow to question me" however that being said, firing her seems a bit excessive.
I'm not sure why this belongs on bloody slashdot though, more political stuff eh?
So, a person - presumably a customer - posts his opinion on a subject.
A developer, with a huge following immediately publicly shames him, and retweets, using their large public following to embarrass the person who deigned to weigh in on a subject that apparently only developers know about.
The publisher then sacks the employee for bringing the company into disrepute.
Sacking seems a little heavy handed here, but I don't think the employee was in the right.
Is she? Did she formally issue a position on something on the clock? Did she waste time at work? Did she fail at her job? Yeah she came across as an arse, but in her own time.
She is the victim here in terms of her firing. Just not in terms of people being pissy at here. Don't conflate the two. Employers should not have power over our personal lives.
First, let's get the obvious out of the way: women also try to explain and argue things they have no clue about.
Well, but the man/woman scenario indeed in many many cultures creates an implied assumption of competence differential baked into interactions that goes all the way from slightly annoying to thunderously ridiculous. Of course, there is also a difference in perception since for the perpetrators this is more of a one-off experience whereas for the victim it is a constant barrage of condescension.
Providing a consistently nice response here is a challenge that mostly women are expected to be up to gracefully, delivering a response that acknowledges the individual's intellectual capacity, the same individual that denies this acknowledgment to the expert.
Nobody wants to be blandly hit with the label "mansplaner" in response fo blandly hitting the expert with what amounts to the label "doll", a woman incapable of competent independent thought.
Yes, Price was not exactly acting gracefully here but she was responding on her private blog, and despite of what social injustice warriors want to insinuate, that's not at all akin to using Nazi ideology on your private blog, something which indeed can (and likely should, depending on the circumstances) get you fired.
Game programmer writes lengthy post about why their way of doing things is right.
Gamer says, "Hell no, this is how it looks from the PLAYER's perspective."
Gender doesn't enter into that discussion, and you do see it almost DAILY on any game's main forum or Reddit. How many times have you seen gamers going, "If I was in charge of this project, this is how I would do it."? Hell, doesn't even have to be about games, can be about anything. Armchair psychologists, backseat drivers etc. It's been going on forever.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Providing a consistently nice response here is a challenge that mostly women are expected to be up to gracefully, delivering a response that acknowledges the individual's intellectual capacity, the same individual that denies this acknowledgment to the expert.
Oh please. She wrote fiction. She's not a rocket scientist. Furthermore, anybody is allowed their two-bit opinions to your public posts. If you don't like it, don't post publicly. The only person being sexist was Price.
Yes, Price was not exactly acting gracefully here but she was responding on her private blog
No, she lambasted the guy on Twitter and then took it to her blog. She was "verified" on Twitter because she worked for the company, which she listed in her profile. She was talking about her work for the company on Twitter. And then she had a meltdown because a fan of the game respectfully responded to her with a differing opinion.
She deserved to be fired. This is what happens when you hire social "justice" idiots.
Um. If you're discussing what you do at work with a customer of your employer, it doesn't matter whether you called the twitter feed a "personal account" - you're speaking for the company. How you behave reflects on your employer, and your employer is justified in telling you not to do that, or, in a particularly egregious case, firing you over it.
Never underestimate the stupidity inherent in all human beings.
I disagree partly. Third-wave feminism is cancer and sexist.
However, I will uphold my opinion that first-wave feminism was long overdue.
Assuming that's all true - then you roll your eyes and brush the question aside, answer it with some friendly sarcasm, or even with (gasp) a professional response. Not by losing your shit and going on a sexist rant from out of nowhere.
Fixed.
Uh huh. And if you're willing to throw your customers and community under the bus because one of your employees is a snowflake - let me know when you go public so I can buy some put options.
Her vindictive, spiteful and mendacious behavior driven apparently by maliciousness fits exactly the stereotype of the irrational woman controlled by emotion instead of reason. It is this stereotype which has for centuries held women back, by giving men an excuse to deny women power and respect. Those of us who have fought to bring women out of the shadow of the myth of female emotion and irrationally are being betrayed by happenings such as those outlined.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The social "justice" idiots that are for Political Correctness were never about civility. They reserved the right to be as uncivil as they wanted, while constraining their opposition with the most stringent edicts.
So if I say "you're cluelessly explaining", versus "you're cluelessly explaining in a MAN way", does the second add any information besides the implication that men are bad? If "mansplaining" is a pejorative term, this situation becomes simple: in the US, if someone is a bigot in public and gets caught, their company typically fires them.
I don't think you've quite gotten the definition of "mansplaining", it's men making simple, condescending explanations to women on the assumption that women are either ignorant or less intelligent. Basically she's accusing him of being a bigot and that he'd not talk like that to her if she was a man. However the world is full of armchair quarterbacks who offer advice or opinions on things they know very little about, often dismissing or belittling experts with many years of experience. Like for example every time dust on the Mars rovers' solar panels comes up somebody goes "Duh, should have put windshield wipers on them." like they got the answer. And if you go into a parenting forum as a male you'll see plenty "womansplaining" too.
Now sexism, racism, ageism, discrimination of sexual or gender identity and various other forms of bigotry are real but you need to have some sort of smoking gun or pattern of behavior to go on. If you're just jumping to the conclusion that everything negative anyone says is because of your sex, skin color and so on throwing out accusations in every direction you're a SJW nutter. And for the longest time you couldn't touch them because that'd only invoke an even bigger accusation of bigotry. I'm sure this woman is now going around saying she got fired for being a woman and standing up for women's rights and the male leader and the male gaming community aka the patriarchy got her fired.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"These are our private social media accounts"
Do Milennials really believe that? They aren't YOUR accounts and they aren't private. They aren't your "space". They are owned by Twitter and their corporate partners. Get off Twitter.
I'm saying if you're going to be a Nazi, don't be surprised when people fight you. You want to pretend like GamerGate wasn't about silencing women developers and keeping women out of gaming but whine about how those mean women said mean things about you like it fell out of the sky from nowhere.
So stop being a disingenuous butthurt snowflake.
You think all black people are nazis, or just me?
By now it's obvious to all but the most ideologically cemented that gamergate wasn't about silencing women devs.
This article is a good example - the woman in question launched an unprovoked sexist attack on a male, but it's the men who are snowflakes?
Just because you are a self-loathing male don't go around hurling insults at the non-self-loathers.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
That's simple. Don't put your employer in your profile and never refer directly to that employer when talking about things at work which bother you. When you list your employer, you're associating yourself with that employer. When you put that you're in an elevated position with that employer, expect to be held accountable. It's the height of ignorance and entitled behavior to think the two are not interrelated
Sig not found.
The fact is in the Age of Internet Shaming there is no such thing as "off-the-clock"
It's very easy to have multiple Twitter accounts (or indeed on pretty much any social media platform), where someone has no idea who you you work for in some of them and only knows as much as you care to reveal.
It would be plenty easy to set up some anon account that argued about game design, where you just let on you worked in the industry.
But then that would not provide the same level of cache about who you work for, winning arguments by the appealing to authority method...
You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want to be off the clock, remove ties to where you work from where you post.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
She wrote her thoughts. Someone replied saying what she said is interesting, but on one particular point he disagreed about the relative importance. She went off on her "mansplaining" sexism rant, because they ONLY reason anyone could ever disagree with her on anything would be if they were a sexist pig. Totally impossible for people to have different viewpoints. Disagree with her on just one of her several comments and you're automatically a pig.
The dev who got fired said it's because she's been doing it a few years that nobody should disagree with her about what makes the most fun game design ("telling my how to do my job").
I've been doing my job, and actively studying to learn to do it better, for twenty years. I make sure all my code gets peer review, because I'm still not perfect. People can have ideas different from mine, and they might be good ideas. I actively encourage new people to peer review my work, reminding them "you don't have to be more experienced than me, or better than me, to see where I might have made a mistake or where I could do something better". I actively seek opinions from other people and never once have I attributed their opinions to their genitalia.
You have to go to eighteen levels of straw manning, word twisting mischaracterization to describe Deroir's comments as anything other than polite and constructive.
That shit doesn't fly? I say it did, and hit the fan right in the middle.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.