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Game Company Receives Complaints About Bad Example Set By '%FEMALENAME' (kotaku.com)
ArenaNet narrative designer Jessica Price was fired last week after she accused a Twitter user of "mansplaining", and adding later "Don't expect me to pretend to like you here." (Her employer characterized this as "attacks on the community.")
So what happened in the week that followed? An anonymous reader writes: A Reddit user indicated he'd been speaking satirically when he posted that "We can probably fire anyone on the GW2 dev team as long we make a big enough stink," and expressed surprise later that no one had disagreed with him. But another female developer told Kotaku she saw a real call to action on 4chan, and that it was followed by angry letters to the game studio she freelances for calling for her firing too, complaining their games had declined since she was hired (along with another woman). The letters also complained her Twitter account set "a bad example for the letter-writer's children, who supposedly play this game." The company's CEO received "a three-digit number's" worth of angry letters -- though "Fifty or so of them glitched out with a lot of variables exposed, including %FEMALENAME."
"A deeper look at the names and emails associated with the letters went to Facebook bot profiles and people whose profiles indicated associations with Gamergate or 4chan," reports Kotaku -- and Brianna Wu made a similar charge on Twitter last week, citing research by a team of volunteers. "The overwhelming majority of people harassing Jessica Price today on Twitter are bots and sock puppets. These are throwaway accounts that are used as toys. Almost no one claiming to be upset is an established, normal Twitter user." The Verge reports that Wu monitored Jessica Price's account, and found harassment "as bad as she's ever seen," blocking at least 600 different accounts.
Another female narrative designer at Arkane Studios says her employer was messaged with a complaint that she'd "verbally abused" a Twitter user -- and discovered a (since-deleted) online petition calling for her firing. And an angry message was also sent to Opaque Space (collaborating with NASA on VR games and training), complaining the company should take responsibility for the "man hating ideals...spread through social media accounts" by their game design lead. "I know MANY people like me, especially women, who have frequent experience with people calling for their employers to fire them for speaking up, speaking out," she posted on Twitter.
The latest furor began with an accusation of mansplaining which a YouTube streamer defended as "my obvious attempt at creating dialogue and discussion", calling it "disheartening" that Jessica Price didn't "correct me in my false assumptions."
So what happened in the week that followed? An anonymous reader writes: A Reddit user indicated he'd been speaking satirically when he posted that "We can probably fire anyone on the GW2 dev team as long we make a big enough stink," and expressed surprise later that no one had disagreed with him. But another female developer told Kotaku she saw a real call to action on 4chan, and that it was followed by angry letters to the game studio she freelances for calling for her firing too, complaining their games had declined since she was hired (along with another woman). The letters also complained her Twitter account set "a bad example for the letter-writer's children, who supposedly play this game." The company's CEO received "a three-digit number's" worth of angry letters -- though "Fifty or so of them glitched out with a lot of variables exposed, including %FEMALENAME."
"A deeper look at the names and emails associated with the letters went to Facebook bot profiles and people whose profiles indicated associations with Gamergate or 4chan," reports Kotaku -- and Brianna Wu made a similar charge on Twitter last week, citing research by a team of volunteers. "The overwhelming majority of people harassing Jessica Price today on Twitter are bots and sock puppets. These are throwaway accounts that are used as toys. Almost no one claiming to be upset is an established, normal Twitter user." The Verge reports that Wu monitored Jessica Price's account, and found harassment "as bad as she's ever seen," blocking at least 600 different accounts.
Another female narrative designer at Arkane Studios says her employer was messaged with a complaint that she'd "verbally abused" a Twitter user -- and discovered a (since-deleted) online petition calling for her firing. And an angry message was also sent to Opaque Space (collaborating with NASA on VR games and training), complaining the company should take responsibility for the "man hating ideals...spread through social media accounts" by their game design lead. "I know MANY people like me, especially women, who have frequent experience with people calling for their employers to fire them for speaking up, speaking out," she posted on Twitter.
The latest furor began with an accusation of mansplaining which a YouTube streamer defended as "my obvious attempt at creating dialogue and discussion", calling it "disheartening" that Jessica Price didn't "correct me in my false assumptions."
I know MANY people like me, especially women, who have frequent experience with people calling for their employers to fire them for speaking up, speaking out
Yeah, #metoo
Is anyone really surprised that identity politics only lead to more and broader generalized hatred?
The dude was perfectly polite in his question. She just went off on him because she obviously knows better as SHE is the dev and he's just a player, that she's doesn't have to explain why he's so wrong that warrants her going off on him and basically called him sexist for bringing her gender into the mix(which he NEVER did, she assumed it herself, it was NEVER a gender issue yet she keeps on repeating it was.)
This whole thing is ridiculous and all stemmed from that one awful dev, the same one who said she was glad Totalbiscuit was dead (you may not like him, but ffs, that's not something you say about someone that died of cancer and wasn't a criminal).
It was never a mansplaining or a gender issue, the gender of the dev was never bought into this other than by herself to "justify" her actions.
She deserved to be fired, this is no way to conduct yourself. A dev online is like a clerk in a store, you represent your company regardless of whether or not you put a disclaimer saying "the views expressed here are your own and bla bla bla".
Don't like it? Don't respond, simple as that. No one forced her to reply to him in such a manner.
I regularly see %FEMALENAME in spam Subject and From lines. Obviously a better lure than %MALENAME. So it's possibly an edit of a spam template.
Anything that is merely being said, and not experienced by my own senses, is not real life. All it does, is make you feel bad, about something that is so far out of your control, that you literally cannot even tell if it is real.
Then I noticed, how much of it actually completely does not exist in my world.
All those "wars"...
raging feminist vs neckbears or whatever
americans vs russians
refugees vs nazis
christians vs muslims
you name it.
They were just not happening in *real life*.
This is why the US military forced German civilians to bury bodies in concentration camps after WW2. So that they could experience it with their own senses. It seems that, prior to that, they were all big fans of your philosophy.
Just because you have a vagina doesn't mean you can be a jerk without retribution.
Worse, he gave *positive* encouraging feedback. Exactly the type companies want. I say, "He" but the name doesn't indicate male or female. Perhaps she ranted at a women for all I know. Either way it was bad. Then she double down on it publicly on Reddit, and it became a much much worse, a big problem for the company, to the extent they couldn't ignore it.
And she got fired, the CEO explained to her personally why, and she took that even badly, suggesting he sacked her personally to gloat. When I read it, that he thought highly enough to sack her personally, and explain why.
Serious personality issues.
As to the rest of this shit:
"But another female developer told Kotaku she saw a real call to action on 4chan, and that it was followed by angry letters to the game studio she freelances for calling for her firing too, complaining their games had declined since she was hired (along with another woman)."
A targetted letter aimed at a particular woman, yet supposidly a generic template with %FEMALENAME in the template as if its a generic letter sent about all women to every studio?
And %FEMALENAME, not just %NAME?? The word 'FEMALE" in there to back up the agenda claim. That doesn't ring true, and a google search does nothing to back it.
So I think this is just bullshit.
Jessica Price could be *Jeffry* Price for all it matters, he would still need to be sacked for that behavior.
"Was only speaking Satirically" = "It's just a joke, lighten up". The classic capper to a round of bullying, trying to delegitimize the grievances of the bullied.
Could this thing be re-written so that it makes a bit more sense? Its like several disjointed story lines melded into an incoherent whole.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
No, the answer is 0): STOP USING TWITTER
How dumb is it to get in text based public flamefests limited to short sentences? The only thing profiting are companies like Twitter who call it "engagement", which drives up ad revenue. Just stop using Twitter for anything. If you really have to use it, use it for entertainment. So called "social media" is not a place for serious discussion - especially not Twitter! The fact that our President uses it is outrageous enough. Just stop using it. Nothing good comes out of it, unless you are a Twitter shareholder.
The topic of discussion and the depth and quality of the subsequent commentary gives me great hope for the future. My hope is that arthropods are back at the top of the food chain again. And the way this discussion and ecological changes are going, they have a good chance. I for one hail our new lobster overlords.
Just the washing instructions on life's rich tapestry
There are two distinct parts to this story. One is that Jessica Price verbally abused and denigrated a fan, for which she was fired (and a male colleague who doubled down on that went along for the ride, which no one seems to talk about). The second part of the story is the mob reaction and ugly, sexist bullshit that was triggered in reaction to her own behavior, and unfortunately spilled over onto other targets as well. There are a lot of idiots who glom onto events like these and use them to launch personal attacks against people. Women do seem especially likely targets for them, but make no mistake - anyone can be a target.
We have to keep in mind that it was Ms Price who was the instigator of this series of events through her own actions. Or rather, her over-reaction to a fan's innocent response to her piece. She somehow took that response and interpreted it in the worst possible way, and lashed out at him in public, multiple times. Did she deserve the overwhelming hate and bile that was spewed her way? No, of course not, but let's be clear: she absolutely fired the first shots in that nasty little exchange. She was not fired for "speaking out" on women's issues. She was fired for treating a fan like garbage in public.
Are women exempt from the rules other professional game developers are expected to follow? Had I lambasted a game's fan with which I was professionally associated and called him a "rando asshat" in a public forum, I'd absolutely expect to be fired. I don't believe for a minute that ArenaNet simply caved to mob pressure. And the notion that game development studios are going to suddenly start listening to and acting on random hate-mail complaints because ArenaNet fired Price for inappropriate comments feels beyond absurd to me. In fact, in the examples given, the studios took clear stands to protect their female devs from harassment, but concerns were expressed about "other studios", of course.
Let's certainly work to foster more civility between developers and fans as we can, and that includes standing up for women when they're harassed simply for being women in a public role. But this story has a bit more nuance to it than that, and I don't think it's helpful to pretend that nuance doesn't really exist and focus only on half the story.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
It was equally well documented back in the day that many actions pinned on GamerGate were suspicious or even outright faked, and that didn't stop the press from taking them at face value. Best example being the Felicia Day doxing, where an address was posted by an account with a misspelled name of a notable Youtuber, which was never confirmed to even be hers, but it was spread all over the news within 24 hours that GamerGaters had doxxed her.
These reporters are like a feminist Fox Mulder, they want to believe the misogyny is out there so badly, all you need is some cheap smoke and mirrors to lead them down whatever rabbit hole you want. Is it any surprise there are trolls eager to pull their strings for laughs? You can call them part of GamerGate too if that makes you feel better, but that doesn't change the fact that the press are being useful idiots and gullable fools.
I have been following this since it started. I have yet to see any evidence whatsoever of the '%FEMALENAME' letters that are being referenced in blogs, social media, etc. Until I see a pastebin, photocopy, or something published by an actual company who received it, I'm filing that under "shit-that-never-happened".
The facts in this that we KNOW to be true are as follows. 1: Price received some feedback she didn't like. 2: She got offended over nothing and reacted badly. 3: She and a colleague were fired.
In the real world, a business' bread-and-butter are its customers. (This is doubly true for entertainment related businesses) Treat them badly, and your business suffers. Treat them badly a lot and do it publicly, it suffers seriously. GW2 was hemorrhaging players already and Ms. Price's writing was likely playing a part. I uninstalled it about 6 months ago myself after playing for years.
Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
It's great that you've managed to reduce massive numbers of humanity into broad caricatures which you can hate unreservedly. Such attitudes never turn out badly.
'Jessica Price was fired last week after she accused a Twitter user of "mansplaining"' No she wasn't forced for "mansplaining": ref:
'After a long AMA on the Guild Wars 2 Reddit, Jessica Price; a writer for ArenaNet, went on to Twitter to post a 25-part essay on how she comes up with stories, and what is relevant as far as stories in todays MMO's. (Very rough synopsis, quite a good read.)
After posting the essay, many community members chimed in to thank Price on sharing her views, and how insightful the read was, with one very popular community member; who has his own NPC inside of Guild Wars 2, commenting on the essay hoping to be able to start a civil and polite conversation with, one of his favorite writers. (He denotes this in his Twitch stream before the Twitter debacle)
The attempt however at starting a polite and civil conversation with the ArenaNet Writer, ended in Price slandering and defaming the community member as a sexist who is trying to mans-plain the job to her, even after the community member apologized for trying to start a civil conversation. (Community member posted a total of 2 Replys to Price, the first being the initial polite conversation starter, the second the apology for attempting communication.)
The next day on July 5th (This all occurred on July 4th), ArenaNet's CEO Mike O' Brian released a statement on a Guild Wars 2 Reddit post stating that Jessica Price and another ArenaNet member have been fired for harassment of an community member, when no such harassment was necessary.'
That's a very long post about Price, but she lost her job and bares no responsibly for the mob that used her firing to instigate an attack on other random women.
"Bears", and while she's not responsible for the mob's actions, certainly her actions (and not her being) turn out to have been the trigger for a mob of idiots to go on harassing other women. While I don't condone any of this, it's fairly clear why it happened: Someone threw oil on what turns out to have been a smoldering fire. And now it burns. Whoops.
It's a bit like dropping a smoldering cigarette butt in a dry forest. Many times it'll just go out. Sometimes, even if you stamp it out then walk away, might still cause the entire forest to burn down. If you know the forest is dry, even lighting up a ciggie there is criminally irresponsible. (Hard to grasp concept for some. How about you?)
The real problem here is not one person who was punished for some rude tweets,
For some identity politics-flavoured toxic tweets. It was well beyond mere rudeness. Which explains (but doesn't justify, thanks) the counter-trolling. But I see you mostly post to make your spin stick. Again, "oh, it's AmiMoJo again. Oh well."
it's we have a mob attacking people because of their gender.
That's actually not quite correct. The mob is trolling to see if they can get people fired, which happens to be aimed at females because the trigger happens to be female. If she'd been male then the barrage of bot-complaints would've been against male game designers. I know it's not on your agenda to admit this, but I'll point it out to you anyway.
It's important to publicize it and develop countermeasures so that there are not more victims.
Knowing what's going on ought to be enough. If your employer would fire you without first talking through the complaints then you're better off not working for that employer. In an internet age employers cannot afford to let their valuable human capital up and vanish because some random troll sent a truckload of automated complaints over, well, nothing. If they succumb, the company eventually succumbs.
It would also be great if we could understand the people behind this and their motivations. Some people want to write it off as general trolling, like it's some innate property of the internet that just happens spontaneously, but there is a years old pattern of attacks on women specifically with deeply misogynistic motivations.
Go hang out on 4chan and report your findings, there's a good little researcher.
To be clear: 4chan has "a years old pattern of attacks" against just about anyone, everyone, regardless of any single thing. They'll hate you just so they have an excuse to hate you, until their attention span runs out and then they'll hate something else for a while.
Again, not on your agenda to admit it, but 4chan's history is pretty clear to just about everyone else here.
I'm assuming you're in your 40s. Maybe 50s or 60s. The reason why there was no gender was it was 99% white guys. The reason for that is, well, there weren't a lot of minorities in technology because especially 20-30 years ago (especially if you're old enough to remember BBS) minorities were in even worse shape than they were today and they didn't have a lot of access to tech, especially the expensive tech from the 90s (anyone remember building a 486 DX100 in 1995 for $400+ and being amazed at how "cheap" it was?). As for women, well, the places I hung out weren't exactly friendly to them. Lots of "Locker room" talk; which to be blunt was mostly thinly veiled misogyny from nerds (which I'm embarrassed to say my younger self took part in).
/.) are full of bitter old coots like me and, well, we're just not as much fun to be around.
Tech got cheap. Really cheap. Like, I can get a laptop online for about $100. $250 if I want a nice new one. $50 if I'll settle for a desktop. Also, the internet became a global communication tool and software was written to get non-nerds online. Finally, the old nerd caves (like
On the plus side you've got a _lot_ more folks online. A lot of those folks are helpful and good folks. I've been able to do tons of projects thanks to them.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
These people are "the left" as much as the kkk is "the right".
Nobody likes these people and all her friends who also get harassment are fellow internet warriors.