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Taking sides?

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4 years ago
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what's eyebleach?

4 years ago
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TLDR: This subreddit is for happy stuff ONLY!

Not the most reassuring name, I know. It's "the eyebleach" you need after shit of the internet - cute animals. Maybe other cute stuff too, I'm unsure.

4 years ago
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I needed that. Thank you!

4 years ago
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Jeremy Soule seems to be in trouble too. A huge dissapointment If it´s true. Skyrim OST is my favorite.
Zoë Quinn doesn´t have the best reputation tho. I might be wrong.

4 years ago
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even the boy who cryed wolf was right once. sadly what shes reporting is a common thing even outside gaming.

4 years ago
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View attached image.
4 years ago
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4 years ago
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It's like she's slept with half of the videogame industry.

4 years ago
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and how she regrets it so "IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT" I knew a girl like that

4 years ago
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Abused. Her. Yeah, right. Hahahaha.

4 years ago
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0 credibility

4 years ago
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I didn't know who she was but I came to the conclusion that her biggest achievement in life is using the pronoun "they"

4 years ago
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unable to decide on their gender, she uses a plural pronoun :)

4 years ago
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4 years ago
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I understand its use, thanks, i don't need to be schooled ;)

4 years ago
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just saying it's not a plural pronoun. ;)

4 years ago
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apparently you do lol

4 years ago
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Simpler, you have no gender.

Well, you are it then, simple as that. BYE!

4 years ago
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But then "A Child Called It" XD

4 years ago
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LOL!

4 years ago
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Made that article confusing as hell to read. It seemed like there were multiple people involved, but nope.

4 years ago
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Tell me about it.
If transgender etc. people do not want the usual he/she pronouns because they feel like being put in a box, okay, cool, I can agree. It is a free world. Many parts of it, at least. For the moment.
But can we then invent something instead of using fucking plural?

4 years ago
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For me( and usually online) if you don't know or whatever, use "he", I think it's the name for other languages too, almost no one complains if you use "he" and it's a mistake but definitely no one uses "she" when unknown. It's probably more "politically correct"? to use they but man it can be confusing.

I feel like all this transgender talk is overemphasizing on gender, people talk about equality all the time which would mean it doesn't fricking matter what gender, I don't care if someone was an alien tbh as long as they're nice decent living beings! They can be an "IT" for all I care.

4 years ago
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I was taught growing up (USA, a long time ago) that the generic pronoun for people and animals was "he", and for personified inanimate objects was "she". ("look at my new boat, isn't she a beauty?")

That being said, the singular form of "they/them/their" is perfectly normal and has been around for centuries, but its use when talking about a specific, known person is certainly a newer phenomenon.

4 years ago
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I feel like all this transgender talk is overemphasizing on gender, people talk about equality all the time which would mean it doesn't fricking matter what gender, I don't care if someone was an alien tbh as long as they're nice decent living beings! They can be an "IT" for all I care.

I agree I mean people can do whatever they want if it makes them happy and I really don't have any problem with it but sometimes I feel like if the goal is to not be boxed in then why make more categories. Although I'm not in that situation so maybe I just don't understand it...

4 years ago
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4 years ago
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Well to be fair I'm not advocating total and utter chaos, I'm talking about one specific instance where freedom should be the rule as it's a very private and personal choice.

4 years ago
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I have read about gender-neutral pronouns like "Xe/Xir/Xim/Ze/Zir" or something like that. I've never seen any of those words used "in real life", though.

4 years ago
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it's not plural, it's a singular pronoun that has the same letter in the same order (it appeared only a few decades after plural they).
if that triggers you, then stop using "you" and go back to "thou/ye"

4 years ago
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Using "thou" doesn't get anyone confused though. Using "they" which is most commonly used for plural definitely can.

4 years ago
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+1

As Hobbes said (regarding a different language trend), "Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding." :(

4 years ago
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Absolutely! I had to read a couple of paragraphs twice before I got it. Not used to seeing "they" used in the singular when the person is known.

4 years ago
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https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/singular-nonbinary-they
We will note that they has been in consistent use as a singular pronoun since the late 1300s

While using it as gender-neutral pronoun is fresh, you had ~700 years to catch up with grammar and they having a singular meaning too, the confusion is not the article's problem :P

4 years ago
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Nice try being pedantic, but you failed.

From the same article which you did not apparently read in detail: "This is a different use than the traditional singular they, which is used to refer to a person whose gender isn’t known or isn’t important in the context."

Since Zoe's gender is known, one would reasonably expect a "she" to be used.

4 years ago
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A bit different point is that if you know about singular they, then why would you expect constant talking about multiple, unnamed, unreferred people and then comment about how confused you are, and instead go just with the Occam's Razor approach that "oh, maybe it's about Zoe, just the writer is a bit weird". I was also confused a bit if there was any reason to use that ( I genuinely wasn't sure if Zoe is trans or just... idk, asked for this, or writer was high) but as singular they exists, it's simpler to jump to the logical conclusion that it still refers to Zoe, than stay being confused about multiple people that is contextually a nonsense.
Either you didn't know about singular they, or should have stopped bashing your head in the wall about "why plural" and apply your knowledge of it and just go with "weird" and read the article without problem. I assumed the first one because of your other comments you seemed pretty witty - easier to forget about a concept that rigidly ignoring it and claiming that it's hard to understand.
(Also, Zoe's gender isn't important in the context, so technically the writer can get away with it even based on that definition, but that is their problem)

4 years ago
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I just wanted to say that just a few hours later I realized I way overreacted everything in my gumpy morning. All I wanted to say that while the article started out confusing, it was consistant enough to get only into the "weird, why though?" category later. My original comment was intended as a funny jab, then the grump started with my longer one. So, sorry for be being a bit of a piss, and thanks for not even replying because this way I realised it pretty fast how pointless this was to begin with.

4 years ago
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I appreciate that and respect that you went out of your way to admit that. Thank you, and no worries.

4 years ago
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So far, Zoe Quinn has claimed she ripped an eyesocket out of a client when she was stripping and also claimed she killed a man that was abusing her. Not mentioning all the times she has been caught lying.

Not saying she is lying now, but instead of going to social media, I hope somebody goes to the police. The number of people that been accused and later legally cleared of any wrong doing is too high (Morgan Freeman, Mignolia, Kevin Spacey). The are also some accussers that used social media instead of going to the police directly(Lena Dunham) that later had to admit they were lying.

I am afraid this kind of accusations in social media are only going to make people mistrust when there are real cases of rape

4 years ago
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Unfortunately it affects everyone involved, not just the personå who keeps stirring up controversy.

4 years ago
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The reason why they do it on social media instead of going to police: it would be missleading the police if they report it there which could actually mean jail time if they just lying, but in these cases noone believe to the male, this is why is it a common weapon for some, as the accusation is a "breaking news", if a name of the victim cleared, well, noone care about it.

God bless equality.

Actual rapist should be executed tho, just like killers, but i would prefer draconian laws, not the "5 star hotel to criminals" modern age anarchism.

4 years ago
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I can count at least 10 people dead by #metoo mob, social media jury and judge

4 years ago
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Quinn had been sexually assaulted by a game developer and that their visa status would be threatened if they went public with the accusation.

Can someone explain why getting sexually assaulted would make the government revoke your visa?

I know Alec is likely not well and I will always believe in rehabilitation over punishment

These types of quotes are the reason I find it hard to believe an accusation like that. It's the classic psychological tactic of finding out who's guilty. Ask the suspects what the punishment should be if the culprit was caught. Most people would be pretty standard with their responses while the guilty person's way more likely to recommend a smaller punishment. Considering her former controversies, she's never been the one to hold punches, so why is she all of a sudden so calm and forgiving even before talking to anyone. If you didn't want to punish them, then why the fuck would you literally go public to the entire world, the press, with the accusations? It's fine if you do, but these things just don't match at all.

industry legend

I mean, Holowka's no legend. He's just a dude who made indie games. He's no Phil Fish or John Romero or Todd Howard. This excessive bootlicking is such a red flag. You claim a person abused you and then you proceed to say "Wait, but I don't want them to be punished" and "Yeah, he's a total legend. Great talent!", "Also, I'm scared shitless", "but regardless, been keeping this a secret throughout my entire career". Like, where's the consistency?

Holowka allegedly lashed out and blacklisted Quinn at major industry events in reaction to the split.

How does a small time indie dev manage to blacklist a person from major industry events single-handedly?

I don’t want anything bad to come of this to his collaborators who may not know any of this.

It's a total oxymoron at this point. She can't be so ignorant and flat out stupid that she'd think "Ah yes, if I publicize an independent developer's abuse, then nothing will come of it.". It's fine to publicize these things, but this sounds as disingenuous as it can get.

Overall, who knows still? These things are hard to definitively prove and it's hard to definitively disprove as well. Quinn's a pretty vindictive person and it wouldn't be new if this was anything but the full truth. But just because a person's previously been a malicious actor, doesn't mean they don't deserve to be heard. Personally, to me, it's really suspicious to hear these contradictory statements, so instead of thinking that it's possible, I instead think that it's not very likely thanks. These are always situations where no matter the outcome, there is no winner. Either there was a case of abuse, which is terrible or there's a case of a false accusation, which reduces the credibility of other accusations in the public eye. The cat's out of the bag now and all we can do is watch where it runs off to.

4 years ago
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Can someone explain why getting sexually assaulted would make the government revoke your visa?

If you got a work permit visa, your employer drops you and if your reputation gets tarnished so badly that nobody else might hire you, the visa is quite obviously at risk.

4 years ago
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Ah okay, so like an indirect effect. Fair enough.

Though, at that point I'd ask, why would an employer fire you for getting sexually assaulted? I'm not even talking about going to a tabloid for it or publishing it on Twitter, I mean overall. You are assaulted, you go to the police and then why would the employer just fire you? Like "We don't want no assault victims here, get out!" or something. Maybe it's some weird NA thing, but this stuff just doesn't happen in Europe. Pretty sure it's literally against EU legislation to just fire someone for being the victim of an irrelevant crime to the company (basically if you falling victim doesn't cause massive damage to the company, like a security officer falling victim to a scam on the company dime or something).

It's a weird world.

4 years ago
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Well, in this case, we are talking about the videogame industry. It is known it is a majorly male industry, where women sometimes have it really bad. A lot of times, more so in the indie ambient, relationships and contacts mean a lot to be hired or keep certain jobs or gigs. Alec Holowka became a big figure (Night in the woods had a huge success), big enough for people to believe him or discredit any type of accusation made against him. So it is not a surprise to me that if somebody was a victim of abuse, and they even had trouble with their papers being at risk, was afraid of coming forward with statements like "this important person did this to me", knowing they were a figure of authority or power in the ambient you work in, and have good relationships between your co-workers or even your boss.

If she did the right thing by talking about it on social media instead of pursuing legal action or not, well, I can say I really don't know what I would do. Also, I believe inconsistency is also normal in victims of this kind of stuff. Developing a certain kind of love/hate/attachment with their abuser is also a normal thing; Alec Holowka is somebody she once loved. Abuse is a really complex topic, how it works, what it does to the minds of both victim and abuser.

4 years ago
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Alec Holowka became a big figure (Night in the woods had a huge success), big enough for people to believe him or discredit any type of accusation made against him.

In indie circles, I totally believe that. But in the mainstream... big enough to have enough of a cult of personality to literally just sway public opinion? Not the opinion of his circle, the actual public opinion? Enough to blacklist her from mainstream gaming events? I'm personally not in those circles, so maybe that's truly the case, if so it's just fucked up beyond belief. Even more fucked up is the fact that then what you're saying is basically that the majority of the indie game community are just a load of brainless sheeple who ignore all abuse allegations. If so, that's a lot of morons who support that stuff.
The reason I'm skeptical of that is just that even major people like Weinstein got taken down. Kevin Spacey, a man with a bigger fanbase and an even bigger influence (literally the highest point of his career) had a lot of skeptics since even he couldn't sway public opinion.

So it is not a surprise to me that if somebody was a victim of abuse, and they even had trouble with their papers being at risk, was afraid of coming forward with statements like "this important person did this to me", knowing they were a figure of authority or power in the ambient you work in, and have good relationships between your co-workers or even your boss.

Which is the point I ask... what co-workers do you think she has? What boss? What dependency does she have all of a sudden? She's an independent entrepreneur who earns her wage on Patreon.

I do understand however that a culture like that can totally fuck someone over if that's the way it is. But I'm honestly still confused how the indie scene can just have such social retards that all lack independent thought. (One might say indie thoughts ;D )

It's a fucked situation all around.

4 years ago
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I mean, it'd be no surprise to me if all of this is true. You say mainstream gaming? Well, it also happened in Riot Games recently, CEOs and everything involved. That was a huge mess, the company is shady about the topic and clearly allied with the abuser(s). There's plenty of articles about it (with high level of detail about not only the cases of abuse, but the whole 'bro culture' within the company, which allowed such misconduct and crimes to happen), I believe they still haven't solved it to this day.

It happens everywhere, really, but the videogame industry is a specially hard place for women to be sometimes... which is not so much the case of the actresses, I may point out. Weinstein and Spacey are widely known worldwide, they appear on the TV, on the news. Scandals are widely covered in ambients like Hollywood, which leads to (alledged) victims being heard much more. That doesn't happen in the videogame industry, things like this can be sweeped under the rug much more easily I think.

In regards to Zoë Quinn, I meant bosses and co-workers relating it to the also recent accusation made against Jeremy Soule, who shared work space with her victim, Nathalie Lawhead. I believe Zoë came forward about this whole thing because Nathalie inspired her with her accusation. But even being Zoë an independant entreperneur as you say, a figure like Alec Holowka, with a common circle of people and contacts within the industry, he could have easily taken away work oportunities from her by talking badly about her, spreading rumours and turning people against her. The power of influencing people's thoughts is something that should not be overlooked, imo.

But in the end, this cases are really hard to prove in court anyway, even being them true (which I believe is the main reason for so man victims to come forward by social media and not pursuing legal action), so we may never know.

4 years ago
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Though, at that point I'd ask, why would an employer fire you for getting sexually assaulted?

Wouldn't be such a stretch from this :|
https://www.thelily.com/she-reported-her-sexual-assault-her-high-school-suspended-her-for-sexual-impropriety/

4 years ago
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Yikes. This is just extremism. How the shit does America have that happen? It's always America too. No school in some other western country would do this. How are they so backwards sometimes?

4 years ago
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we are corrupt as fuck ;)

4 years ago
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if the assaulter is friends with the employer or is the employer they will fire you. this is more common than people know and not just sexual harassment. some jobs will take workers visas and tell them if they report safety violations or anything for that matter they will be deported on the spot.

4 years ago
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I mean, Holowka's no legend. He's just a dude who made indie games. He's no Phil Fish or John Romero or Todd Howard.

Phil Fish is a legend? Maybe a legendary boob but he only made the one game that wasn't that significant in the grand scheme of things.

4 years ago
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Maybe a legendary boob but he only made the one game that wasn't that significant in the grand scheme of things.

Phil Fish was an infamous asshole who created a game that was huge for the entire indie community. Do you know that he made Fez? Like... what are we missing here? Is Notch just an irrelevant, reclusive rich guy now?

You're contradicting yourself with that sentence. "Legendary boob", yes. Made a game that played a huge role at starting the Indie Revolution and was a total asshat. But also "he only made the one game that wasn't that significant in the grand scheme of things.", yet here we are talking about indie games which maybe even wouldn't have achieved any success without him.

No need to discount someone's achievements if they're a bad person. But I guess that's the whole "Death of the artist" stuff. :D

Sure, I could've specified that he "was" a legend, but I thought it's obvious. The man basically doesn't exist right now since he disappeared.

4 years ago
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Fez came and went. Minecraft is a cultural landmark that still continues to affect the industry. So I call that a false equivalence. Methinks temporary fame/infamy does not impart legendary status. That status is also something that can be revoked because it's not really about past achievements, but the likelihood of the success of future prospects. If there's news that Notch or Edmund McMillen are working on something, that demands attention. If Fish is working on something, does anyone really care any more?

4 years ago
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If Fish is working on something, does anyone really care any more?

Look, you're going against the grain of reality here. I get it, you didn't get influenced by Fez. But the game was literally the most popular indie game at its time. The only indie game that got real mainstream attention at that time. That showed that there were small creations that were worth talking about.

It's hard to discuss these things when you only take the current state of indie gaming into mind and forget what helped create this state to begin with. The Binding of Isaac wasn't an instant success, like Fez was. It was a huge milestone however and just like Fez, it created massive buzz around it. Those two are great comparisons even.

But this will lead to nowhere. You don't care for Fez, so no one else did. You want to ignore when Fez came out and what the gaming landscape looked like then. Feel free to do that. What's even the point.

4 years ago
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To be honest, I also had to google there who the heck is even Phil Fish…

4 years ago
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Because it's 2019. Fez came out in 2013. Because it's the indie scene. Most people are only known if you look them up. He hasn't said anything publicly for over half a decade.

You probably don't remember Will Wright either. Most people don't. Does that mean that the world's most successful franchise doesn't exist? That he's not a legend in his circle? You can say that. But you'd be pretty unfair to him as well. He's been very influential. He was a bigger public figure then. Yet now that he isn't... he's no longer the person that influenced the gaming landscape?

I get it, Phil Fish is a... small fish (yikes, shit joke) in the indie pond overall. But 2013 was a different time for indies. If you remember anything of that time, you remember that indies weren't even a noticeable market back then. That suddenly Minecraft gained massive popularity, Fez came out, Spelunky gained mainstream attention, Luftrausers started getting released, Devolver gained more steam. Rogue Legacy came out.

With game development, we never truly know of the talent behind it. One man projects might be lucky to bring fame to the singular developer. But games themselves have the influence and those games wouldn't exist without those developers.

4 years ago
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I remember Wright because he made several very popular and successful games, including one of the largest current franchises, Sims. However, the emphasis is on many. Fish, according to his wiki article, made Fez and some puzzle PS4 game, and that is it.
Also, yes, sometimes I have to remind myself who Notch is as well, especially since Apple turned that word into one of the worst design concepts that hit the mobile electronics world.

4 years ago
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just taking her name on google i found this
sheesh

4 years ago
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Why is she using my Russian "ё" letter in her name? It's a cultural appropriation, hope you got good lawyers, Zoe.

4 years ago
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Golly gee, Batman! An umlaut's just a Russian "jo/yo" now! :O

4 years ago
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It's not the Russian letter "yo" (or the German e-umlaut either which, I am informed, doesn't exist); it's a regular English e with a diaeresis. That's a punctuation mark to indicate that the letter is pronounced separately and not part of a multi-letter vowel sound. In English this mark is often considered optional and usually avoided except where its omission would make something likely to be misread (for example, the names Choë and especially Zoë would risk being read in a way that rhymes with the word "toe" without the mark).

4 years ago*
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German's don't have an e umlaut.

4 years ago
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I stand corrected

4 years ago
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Guys, you're boring.

4 years ago
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Heh, I guess I am

4 years ago
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It's Zoe. 100% chance of being fake.
Next.

4 years ago
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Is there any evidence except some articles written based on her tweets? I mean for real

4 years ago
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That's today's journalism made by professional journalists, as they call themselves.
Isn't it beautiful?

4 years ago
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Well thats how journalism in my country orks pretty much so I'm used to it but we may look for soem facts before we start throwing rocks on this mans head right?

4 years ago
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Absolutely, and I bet it's how it works in every country, nowadays, and even in mainstream newspapers and magazines.
It has become harder and harder to find a reputable source because every single one, sooner or later, falls to the temptation of taking shortcuts just to have a great looking headline.
Unfortunately, most people tend to not follow a case to see how it ends, and just push "Like" and forget, so when it ends being proven wrong, it's already too late because most of the people who were all scandalized about it already moved on to the next "scandal".
Also, it is often used an evidence of truth the fact that an accusation is either retweeted (on Twitter), shared (on Facebook) or published by self-proclaimed journalists (like in this case).

There's people here that claims this case as being a problem of the gaming industry, just because it happened in the gaming industry, but it's obviously not. It's just another case of the dangers of social networks and all the idiots which supports them being used in this way (like the aforementioned "journalists", which spread anything that's said there like it was a scientific discovery) , which today took the place of the witch hunting of the old ages. Centuries of progress really didn't make any difference for some people, ignorance and stupidity is as dangerous as ever.

4 years ago
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My attitude towards this is the same as any other instance of potential abuse I did not witness :

Believe the victim, support them, and safeguard against future incidents.
HOWEVER
That does not mean it is open season / happy hour upon stomping the accused.

After all, abusers quickly learned to weaponise such accusations and are adept at using victimhood narratives to turn people with good intentions into a fighting force. Good people can easily bad things when they become too confident in the idea that their emotions are the only compass required to find righteousness. It is possible to support a potential victim and cast aside personal doubts, without simultaneously disregarding that we are only onlookers of the aftermath.

Zoe has a very patchy relationship with lies of omission, and using the vulnerable and needy for free labor, but even then, 'bad' people can still be targets and victims. On the scale of shitty things a person can be or do, abuse or molestation is right down there near bedrock level. Even if she is an unreliable narrator, the costs of discarding her words if she is telling even a partial truth are far more grave than accepting them if she is omitting details. So my golden rule stands : Support those who say they have been abused, suspending disbelief and safeguarding where possible, but remaining mindful of the personal disconnect and refusing to lash out towards the accused.

In these situation there is really no winning. No knowing criminal is in the habit of documenting their activity for easy proof of guilt, and even in the information age, unless a person manages to discreetly record themselves in very long stretches, gathered slivers of proof are rarely conclusive due to the nature of context and the effect of careful editing. It's like the ultimate locked-room murder mystery where we, the outside observer, see two dead bodies in a quantum state, and we have to determine which one is really the murderer, and which one is really the victim. Even if you try to establish a pattern in personality, attitude and history, that only effects liklihood and doesn't denote a definitive answer. Hell, even character witnesses are easily gameable by those with ill intent. Being accused of being a predator carries with it a similar burden, again that 'proof' cannot reasonably be used to mitigate unless you are extremely lucky and the accuser/abuser made the mistake of being too specific. Guessing at guilt when it is likely that one party is wounded by this event is just crass, so instead, we should obide the golden rule and suspend disbelief in both directions, and simply safeguard.

In the end, I think the one thing that stands out to me the most is how Zoe seemed inspired to 'speak up' due to having read about Nathalie Lawhead's accusation towards Jeremy Soule (in which NL alleges JS used his position of authority to remove consent from the equation, but then also got her on the payment and property front too). Not even from a "take some of that spotlight for myself" aspect, but more that Zoe herself has been noted to deny due payment and take other peoples work for her own profit as per my previous links, which just makes this feel to be in very bad taste to have springboarded off of.

I have strong doubts towards Zoe, but those are merely my opinions, so will treat her with the same weird quantum suspension of disbelief as I would any potential survivor. I feel it's better to be thought of as naive a hundred times than to scoff even once at a genuine victim. Sadly, pro/anti Zoe groups are happily rallying for the excuse to smear her or Alec respectively. It'd be great if we (social media 'we') could just stay sober for once, given how bitter the subject matter is.

4 years ago*
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Urgh.
https://twitter.com/NightInTheWoods/status/1166778779756314625?s=20

This is why it's hard for me to detach from the (unreliable metric of) patterned dishonesty from the accuser.

4 years ago
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Jesus... a pertepual liar and deceiver can just get any guys life ruined, I see. Greeeeeeat.

Also it's very sad to see hundreds, if not thousands of people instantly crucify someone over accusations, even with the most unreliable accuser EVER.
How many lives is someone like Zoe allowed to ruin before we take away her instant-ruin life privileges?

4 years ago*
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whatever happened to "innocent until proven"?

4 years ago
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The media's desire for a scoop is more important than justice.

4 years ago
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I think that's only in the movies.

4 years ago
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Morgan Freeman was accused of abuse. It was definitely proven in actually record time everything was a lie.

He still lost multiple contracts, like the one he had for VISA, and it wasn't renewed even after it was discovered he was innocent.

4 years ago
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Oh, what happened to their accuser?

4 years ago
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I thought at least she had been fired... But, no... Apparently, absolutely nothing.

4 years ago
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"wtf" is an understatement here. :/

4 years ago
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And now he's dead... making it even harder to be detached.
And that over what's likely false accusations. Not even a life ruined, a life ended.

4 years ago
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Nathalie Lawhead's accusation towards Jeremy Soule are also very sketchy. If you take the time to read everything she wrote, all the emails, all the "proof" she had, it shows like she is a very unrealiable worker with a bad working ethics. The whole "rape" sounds like a throaway, without context or proof. It doesn't sound they were in any relation.

Again, it sounds unfair. Maybe she is saying the truth. Hell, maybe even Zoe Quinn is telling the truth this time, unlike the time she claimed she had ripped an eyeball of a client. But what she should do, IF they are telling the truth, is going to the police. Period. Both accused are going to have their lives ruined, without any possibility of fighting back.

4 years ago
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Oh look, anti-gamergaters are eating each other.

4 years ago
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Weird phrasing, given Zoe was the focus of GG before others who bought into the gaming journalism rhetoric joined in. Of course she's going to be anti-gamergate. :P

You can't just pretend GG's origin was anything but collective anger at someone else's relationship collapse. She's an unreliable narrator, but you can't deny she got was harrassed to an absurd level. Anything about actual ethics was just filler material around the fringes, and when second wave gamergaters joined in (who may have actually only wanted to focus on gaming journalism), they projected their own intentions over the whole umbrella, who were distinctly less interested in lucid discussion.

4 years ago
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It all started because of her sleeping with a guy who could write good reviews for her. There's not much else, except for the things they themselves decided to label on gamers.
Also, when people like her start calling everything harassment, when some of it is only meant as criticism, there's no reason to deal with such person and just ignore, cause it's basically a flat-earther.

4 years ago*
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She slept with another guy. Whether or not she was still with the other dude is down to a he-said she-said. Neithers word really has authority on the matter. A volatile end to unhealthy relationships usually see such accusations being levelled, but it hardly means they hold merit. Did the reviewer have a positive bias? Probably. But that doesn't validate the harassment.

And yeah, Zoe is an unreliable narrator and appears to be some degree of a chronic liar / drama starter, but there was a shit-ton of harassment taking place in publicly observable spaces, so we can't just pretend it didn't happen. Yeah there was valid criticism mixed in with it, but when a single group affiliation is the source of such a proportional amount of the hostility you can't really disregard it.

I guess what I should have replied from the start was "There is so much you can criticise her for, calling her 'anti-gamergater' is so weird and weak it actually framed her in a positive light". ;P

4 years ago
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I dunno, I think GG story from both sides makes it pretty obvious, who's in the wrong. Or maybe I'm missing something... I very well could be... At least where I'm from, people like these are never trusted.

4 years ago*
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Welp, I guess we've got nothing left to discuss with that impasse then.

4 years ago
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I've never seen anything that convinced me they'd done something? I'm open to being proven wrong, but I actually read the original Kotaku article that started the firestorm before any of Gamergate happened, and I was surprised when I found out that was the article people were mad about because it so clearly wasn't about Quinn.

Grayson never reviewed Depression Quest, nor did anyone else at Kotaku. The only article he wrote mentioning them was a breakdown of a commercialized gaming jam gone wrong which included information about the devs who were part of the event, including Quinn.

It seems like there might be other accusations going around now, but the original story that Quinn had slept with someone at Kotaku for coverage doesn't have merit.

4 years ago
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I thought what happens (at night) in the woods stays in the woods?

4 years ago
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4 years ago
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Alex Holowka just killed himself
https://twitter.com/derangedpoetess/status/1167855630385909760
Interesting turn of events, to say the least.

4 years ago
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4 years ago
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If Zoe Quinn is lying, she deserves to face criminal charges. I want to give her the benefit of the doubt, but she's not got the best reputation for being completely truthful.

The correct way to deal with this kinda thing is to go to the police, not post some public blog naming someone. There should be laws against that imho in the interest of "innocent until proven guilty." We, as the public, can't know who is telling the truth. All it does is end up in a tirade of abuse toward one or both sides. And sadly, this is the result.

4 years ago*
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+1 Completely agree with you. This is devastating either way.

If he is innocent he couldn't cope with the pressure of wrongful accusations and people saying horrible things about him, especially if he was already not in the best state of mind, depressed and having suicidal thoughts.

And worst of all if he is innocent, people are going to automatically assume he is guilty and that he was driven away by guilt eating him up.

It was a Damned if I do, damned if I don't kinda situation either way.

RIP Alec Holowka

4 years ago*
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If you read Zoe's post, She mentioned pretty early on that he admitted to being abusive and apologised after years of therapy. What shocks me about the situation is why it wasn't enough, considering how long ago this was, and how she even mentions forgiving him. Clearly, she didn't if she was compelled to name him publicly in this climate

4 years ago
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Oh wow... I hadn't read the post, just some of the article. So, it wasn't sexual abuse, it was more or less emotional abuse that possibly got physical too. After reading her direct posts, I do believe her. I also agree with you. If he apologised and was clearly making an effort to change, why on Earth would she post this tirade claiming to be terrified of him. It makes absolutely no sense to me.

I guess she has emotional issues of her own. I just hope that things don't escalate for her now that he's taken his own life. You know how cruel the internet can be. She's bound to feel guilty enough now.

4 years ago
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I think to some extent we've all been abusive, maybe even especially to the people we have the closest ties to. That said. she really should've known better since she was a victim of the internet mob herself. I dunno.. That amplified public reaction can probably drive anyone to desperation. Also, and this was how many years ago? She appears to be just as petty as her ex who wrote the blog entry that started gamergate

4 years ago
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She purposefully invoked mob-justice on someone who was trying to better himself and had already apologized to her for something which happened years earlier. Her behavior is at best irresponsible, and at worst cruel and sadistic. I feel no sympathy for her.

4 years ago
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Oh, I feel no sympathy for her either, given all the facts. But I kinda feel that she has some mental issues of her own. No one deserves a tirade of online abuse, even her.

4 years ago
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Wasn't that only Zoe's post, and not confirmed by Alec?

Zoe also claimed that other people had been coming out about Alec's apparent abuse, but when I took a brisk scroll through the many comments, I saw no such thing. Either they were buried under the massive numbers of furious support posts, or they only used private messages, or they simply never happened.

As far as I know, Alec himself never confirmed or denied anything, making no remark on the accusations or anything she said. When dealing with an unreliable narrator, even if she is the one who came forwards (and therefore the one we should definitely safeguard), you have to be cautious. Abusers tend to be skilled manipulators, whether that means they are good at using silence, separation and covering their tracks, or whether they are good at playing the victim, turning people against each other, or gaslighting. When we speak of "believe the victim", that means to discard opinion, give support, and be alert to stop further abuse. While that means scrutiny should be shown to the accused, it does not mean the accused is not the potential victim. We believe the person who came forward insomuch that we support them regardless of our opinion, but we should not abandon all scrutiny to the point that we treat them as a spokesperson for the accused too.

If Alec made any statements, I'd like to see them, as I have been looking.

Sorry if any of this comes off as aggressive, I'm just exhausted from having delved into the matter and watched the hatred from both sides. I try to sound neutral/flat, not douchey. ;P

4 years ago
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I think Alec's sister's statement pretty much confirmed it, also, people like matt thorson, alec's ex chrissy (@cchubs), pretty much made statements that they were not surprised (chrissy even implied she survived some form of abuse during their three year relationship but also denied any sexual abuse). Like Alec's sister said, her brother was getting better, and the other ex was also publicly interacting with him on twitter, so I guess they were on relatively good terms (at least before she publicly stated that she was not surprised by some of the allegations). I don't think there was much evidence of sexual abuse, even Zoe's account were mostly emotional abuse-related, Also didn't see anything sexual abuse related leveled against alec, but I guess the mob on both sides didn't really care to read much into it

4 years ago
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"Not being surprised" falls into the category of projection or character witness stuff, and is different from confirmation.

As I said in another post, character witness stuff is unreliable. After all, Zoe's characterisation itself is that of a very unreliable narrator given her history with Crash Override and strange lies of omission.

Habitual liars are capable of telling the truth, criminals still have personal morality, obnoxious people can still be victims, and those with good reputations can still perform awful things behind closed doors. Just as Zoe isn't a devil incarnate, the most accurate criticism of her would be that she has a knack for getting into bad relationships (or relationships that become volatile and end badly). The worst we can confirm and say of Alec is that he has been a victim of abuse in his past, had been through therapy to bring himself out of the worst of it, and his ex says she wasn't surprised he could have gone to a dark place. It confirms nothing but the idea their relationship could have soured in spectacular ways, and leaves the whole situation in a massive questionmark to us uninvolved.

Sorry if it feels like I'm really leaning on you here, but the guy commit suicide, an ultmate expression of despair (which is more in line with therapy for depression / sorrow / etc than therapy for aggression, if we're projecting guesses). Please be careful not to contribute to the construction of an 'evil totem' of the recently dead without first having something more reasonable to go from. :P

4 years ago
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The guy was abusive, but to an extent where he's legally responsible for a criminal act is questionable, even going by zoe's own accounts, so I don't believe it's negative or condemning (because hey, even the best of humanity behaves like entitled shitty people sometimes). By all accounts people are agreeing he did something shitty, but no one close to him I've seen are arguing that he is guilty of anything criminal. Exhibiting extremely shitty behavior during a relationship is not criminal. It's how people are interpreting Zoe's post that is causing the most damage (along with some of her insinuations, even if she claimed that she doesn't want retribution, but for Alec to "heal")

4 years ago
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The guy was abusive

Again, citation needed. Zoe does not qualify as a reliable source for this. Her coming forward only qualifies as someone who should be believed insomuch that she should be supported / safeguarded, because we have no metric for discerning truth, and 'opinion' should not be a factor in that. People who come forwards and say "I was abused" are to be given all due support not because their abuse is a fact, but because denying support to those who were abused is a fucking awful thing, so we should offer it without reservation. But that is also why we should not fall into the trap of automatically assuming the accused is guilty.

It is important to stop signal boosting the 'he was abusive', 'he admitted he did a thing', 'his sister / his ex said he did' as if it is fact, until you can actually reasonably confirm it, not just project via guessing or creative interpretation of very broad wording. As I said in the previous reply, through the same kind of interpretation on the sisters tweets, we could equally claim that Alecs past abuser was Zoe.

You can project a pattern, yes, but that does not make it truth. Even the people back from the original gamergate idiocy were able to project a pattern upon Zoe. While you are not being openly toxic like the other Alec hunters were, do you understand that your current behaviuor is still the kind of thing that contributed to the pressures of what likely motivated his suicide?

4 years ago*
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No, that wasn't Alec. Quinn mention being raped (I think?) by someone else before they were invited to stay with Alec. That was the person they'd already forgiven, which is why the previous abuser's name isn't mentioned. I can see how the wording would be confusing, though.

4 years ago
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Then it's confusing how Zoe could've still felt like she had to hide her abuse for so long even after all the support / hatred she got from the fallout of her relationship with eron. It certainly didn't look like she shied away from being part of the industry. I get that people cope differently, but from an ethical standpoint, I think people can still legitimately question or critique of how she handled this recent situation

4 years ago
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Her accusations were from a while back, so I'm not clear on how the canadian statute of limitations on assault would have prevented her from actually having any legal recourse. She also clearly stated that after years of therapy, Alec apologised to her (this was before she outed him). I don't know how I feel about this. It feels even worse than what Eron has done to her because the dude apologised. I don't know about anyone else, but I think to a certain extent, we all have been abusive to someone, maybe even people we are in a relationship with. It probably blindsided him, and even after therapy, owning up to his fuckups and a personal apology, when it went public, it must've felt that his career was essentially over. Then you have the people who will use this to diminish people speaking up against assault. It's really bad news all over

4 years ago
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Do you have a link to the apology? I have gone looking but my google fu is too weak to cut through the endless copy-paste grade 'news' articles, and the only reference I have found to anything Alec related is in the death announcement of his family, which only stated he had been a victim of abuse, and had been in therapy for it.

And yeah, the biased / politically motivated people are just going to continue to cannibalise this from all sides.
The people who openly hated on Zoe and the people who openly hated on Alec, neither of them seem remotely aware of how they mirror each other in their "good intentions", when in reality the majority seem to only want to springboard off suffering for their own petty catharsis.

4 years ago
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I dunno but the ex has already made her twitter private, she had a statement up. There wasn't a public apology, as this thing was from a long time ago. I do believe Alec personally apologised and even Zoe said publicly she didn't want people to mob Alec (like Eron publicly said to not mob Zoe too) but I don't really know how much she meant by it. If you read Zoe's account, some of the more insidious actions she described was subject to her interpretation., The guy was douchey for sure. Maybe even a typical angry young man at that point, but not criminal and didn't really strike me as predatory. I guess to Zoe it was more of an anecdote to prove that men in power can be predatory. Personally, I'm not sure even her account fits well with that narrative

4 years ago
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Nothing was 'for sure'.

Her projection of events was certainly that of a douchey person, but that doesn't mean the actual person she is speaking about was 'for sure' douchey. You may believe Alec personally apologised, but again, the be all and end all of everything we have on the matter is from Zoe herself. I will believe her insomuch as I will set my opinion aside to offer support, given I am just another onlooker, but I will not accept her assertions or narrative given her past of misportraying people over far less. "Believing the victim" exists in a strange quantum state, where without the unreliable metric of 'proof', any of the parties can be the full-on victim, or the truth of the matter can be far more mundane, or entirely mutual.

4 years ago
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100% agree. She knew damn well that such an accusation can destroy a persons life, so she better have been telling the truth or she deserves to be behind bars.

4 years ago
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I feel my sentiments are worth repeating, after that news :

"Believing the victim" is an important thing we should all do. However that does not mean "declare open season on the accused". Actual abusers quickly learn how to use not only silence and reasonable doubt, but also the intentions of others (be it political or moral). Physical or sexual are not the only form that abuse takes.

The reason we should default to 'believing victims' is because unless we are very close to the situation ourselves, our opinions have no worthwhile weight to them. Even with critical analysis, character witness and such, we can only project guesswork. Even 'bad' people can be victims, even 'good' people are capable of hiding evil acts, and most importantly, who the actual victim is may not be immediately apparent (for example, the case of Luna, which is a long video link but a worthwhile example of social media and reporting vectors in abuse).

'Believe the victim' means only that we should support and safeguard those who come forwards, and perhaps advise caution to those who may be in a vulnerable situation with the accused. The cost of erring wholly on the side of your own opinion and being wrong can be catastrophic to those who are involved.

4 years ago
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I believe Zoe, but that is irrelevant. Dude tried to make ammends, even personally apologised after getting therapy/ He probably did not expect this. I think outing him publicly was as bad as how Eron made his feelings about his and Zoe's relationship public. I find it difficult to excuse Zoe's behavior here

4 years ago*
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No, we shouldn't believe anyone until there is evidence. You don't attack the victim or the accused, because we never know who is telling the truth until evidence is presented.

4 years ago
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Evidence is not a realistic metric in most abuse cases, in either direction.
Criminals, particularly those in sustained, patterned activity, are not in the habit of logging their misdeeds, especially where they are aware of what they're doing. Even victims who have access to recording devices find it hard to generate conclusive evidence unless they manage to record at great length or get extremely lucky with a specific occurence, and doing so puts them at risk if they are discovered in the attempt. On both sides, any evidence that surfaces will be utterly discarded by the raging social media lunatics unless it is beyond infallible. Video and audio recordings can be edited or carefully omitted to frame context, so can just as easily be used as ammunition by abusers, silence pleas, or just muddy matters.

Even character witnesses and personal history is an unreliable metric, as 'bad' people can still be victims (or simply innocent of any individual accusing), and 'good' people can still snap, or use their reputation to assist in protecting against scrutiny. For instance, a violent drunk may have zero bearing on accusations of molestation, or may in fact be strongly morally opposed to violence towards family (only brawling with strangers), and an otherwise saintly individual may secretly be a hideous abuser to a dependant family member behind closed doors.

The worst you can say of Zoe Quinn is that she has a pattern of bad relationships, and that she is an unreliable narrator to personal drama. That does not make her immune to being a victim, in the same way that someone who has a proven history of being abused can still be the an abuser themselves.

The phrase "Believe the victim" means to discard personal opinion and bias, and safeguard the person who came forwards. Whatever your outsiders opinion is, if you are wrong, the effect can be catastrophic. It is VERY easy to safeguard someone without also declaring open season on the accused. Stay impartial. Take precautions. Offer support. That is what "believe the victim" is supposed to mean.

Conflating 'believe the victim' with 'attack the accused' is a hideous fallacy that IMO everyone should seek to dismantle. The alternative to that, is discarding the idea of safeguarding those who come forwards 'just in case' people get angry at the accused, which is just as bad as attacking people without proof.

4 years ago
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Well that took a darker turn.

4 years ago
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If she lied (and she is a compulsive liar, which obviously does not prove she lied this time however), she'll have to live with the burden that she killed Alex Holowka indirectly, and should face adequate charges. The problem is that it's as impossible to prove that she lied as it is impossible to prove that she didn't.

4 years ago
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I think it's already been established and confirmed that some form of abuse did happen, it just isn't clear to what extent since we can't ask Alec. The bigger issue is he did own up to it, personally apologised to the person he abused, and was getting help. Having your past mistakes aired out in public must've been too much for him, especially since maybe he thought Zoe and him were good after that apology

4 years ago
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well according to some in today's day and age you are supposed to apologize again and again and again for all the wrong you have ever done because your guilt is never paid up and nothing you ever do will be enough redemption in their eyes. they want to see you suffer forever for the mistakes you made.

4 years ago
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According to most, unfortunately. :/

4 years ago
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You keep repeating that it's "established and confirmed" but I've only seen you cite Zoe herself claiming that Alec apologized, as well as one other person saying that she "wasn't surprised" by the allegations.

If Zoe was lying (or even exaggerating) about the abuse, she likewise can lie about supposed confirmations and apologies.

Meanwhile, someone retroactively looking back at a past relationship and seeing "signs" of this is not definitive either. It is quite common for people to suddenly look at others differently and reinterpret innocent comments or actions based on new frames.

4 years ago
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Did you read his sister's statement? Or Zoe's? Even reading Zoe's statement, he was being a shitty boyfriend at best, not a rapist like most people on the internet claim. Most of what Zoe describes as "abuse" she pretty much is guilty of as well if we read Eron's accounts. But again, is it criminal? I don't think so. People also have to remember everything Zoe mentions happened was ages ago. Everything essentially happened way before gamergate so I really don't know why she waited this long. My guess is she was just looking for a well timed anecdote and just wanted someone who was previously shitty to her thrown under the bus

4 years ago*
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Do you mean the statement where his sister announced his suicide?
Because I saw nothing there reliably suggesting anything substantially negative about him.

I have to ask, am I missing something here? Have there been other tweets? It's hard to dig things up while the various news carrion-feeders are swarming over his dead body.

4 years ago
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There were before people started locking their accounts

4 years ago
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Which is unfortunate, because now the accounts are locked, we can confirm nothing.
Which locked account did you see the decisive tweets at, and what did they (actually, not inferrably) say?

Given you only just now said this instead of when initially challenged, I have severe doubts.

4 years ago
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you can try to see snapshots of @cchubs on twitter where she made a similar lengthy statement about "escaping abuse" (implying emotional abuse, but she also denied sexual abuse) . I believe it was a couple days ago. Zoe retweeted this statement even. I actually said this before, and also matt thorson's accounts. I don't really care if you believe me or not, this is not about debunking anything, rather reminding people how human we all are. There's no absolute right to be found in this situation dude

4 years ago
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I went to look but @cchubs has sadly also been locked now too, so I can only continue to operate on the idea that you're an unreliable narrator for now (based on the things you've asserted previously). Though as per the other comment chain, we're pretty much at a total impasse now so, yeah. Unless there's anything else to add, I guess this is me out.

4 years ago
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Fine with me dude, hopefully it's been archived on wayback after a few days (her statements were there for a couple of days so hopefully it was indexed at the time).

4 years ago
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Oh cool, good idea. Thanks.

4 years ago
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Aight, wayback machine caught the good stuff, here we go :
https://web.archive.org/web/20190830215814/https:/twitter.com/cchubs/status/1167502806271582211

Again, I don't find this conclusive to what you were saying regarding actual abuse, though it does suggest he fits the bill of a volatile individual (aka : dont date that guy, it'll end badly, aka : the awful "dont stick your dick in crazy" line, etc).

Her shock at Zoe coming forwards can equally be attributed to "that's much worse than anything I went through or experienced with him". All she confirms is that he was volatile; something that Zoe is openly noted to be (see also : the relationship that sparked the bullshit GG movement, the photographer incident, etc). She says that some of what was said does not surprise her, but that some of it really does. Given Zoe's coming forwards details 'bad boyfriend' material but also sexual abuse and preventing her from leaving, it suggests she had a similar rollercoaster in relationship to him, but never met anything approaching actual genuine abuse. As in actual abuse, not the 'casual cruelty' version you mentioned, aka being a bad boyfriend / poisonous relationship. Actual abuse, as in being predatory, sexually abusive, controlling to the point of imprisonment, consciously working to break the person, etc.

So again, it's a far cry from confirming anything but the 'character witness' stuff I warned about. The rest of her tone can be easily attributed to that adopted by every other person who read Zoe's coming forwards and then began stating it as fact... just as you have done. It lends false credence, and that has been my sole objection : confirmation.

I know this is beating a dead horse at this point, and I've already said if you have nothing new to add I'll drop out too, considering this an insurmountable impasse, but I felt it important to disassemble your assertions because they're severely damaging and feed into the attitudes that were used to pressure him to where he got to, y'know? It's hard to stomach that over someone's dead body. Plus, if they were true, it would be just as important to disseminate them to protect Zoe from the backlash that is about to amp up even further.

So we are exactly where we started, with nothing. :/
I don't expect you to look into the link, because you're understanably burnt out about now (yeah I know, I babble, it's because I hate being misunderstood, my bad), but if you do and anything critical wasn't captured by the wayback that I am missing, lemme know. Or uh, don't, if you're sick of reading my posts ;P

4 years ago
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Yes, I've read the statements, and I've yet to see anything that supports your assertion that abuse was "established and confirmed". The most confirming statement comes from Zoe, who has a history of lying and presented the accusation in question in the first place.

That is the point, not what level of abuse we're talking about, but that you're using circular reasoning (Zoe's statement confirms Zoe's statement as truth) to justify going around telling people in this thread (and presumably elsewhere) that this man who just killed himself was an abuser. You have not even done the guy the courtesy of pointing out what you have said here, that his "abuse" was on the level of being a shitty boyfriend (again assuming Zoe is not lying or exaggerating). No, you just repeat, "He's a confirmed abuser."

People like you are what pushed this guy to kill himself today.

4 years ago
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He is guilty of abuse as I am guilty of abuse, really. Again, nothing criminal. Like you are guilty of abuse too in your response, even. I just don't want to sugarcoat it dude. People are so used to casual cruelty sometimes and this dude apologises for it, gets into therapy, and I don't think he deserves the hate. But yea, I can admit to being shitty to people too. Even exes, I've apologised for it and tried to validate the hurt people felt. I hope it means something to people (they say it did) and I sure as hell hope 5 years from now no one pulls the same shit on me

4 years ago*
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and this dude apologises for it, gets into therapy

You're doing it again. You're misrepresenting what was said about him being in therapy. The sisters statement said that he was in therapy due to being a victim of abuse in his past, not that he was in therapy because he abused people / Zoe. Context frames everything, and you have become incredibly entrenched within your opinion but without equivalent confirmation. This is what we're getting at.

And if the only abuse you are saying he is guilty of is 'casual cruelty' on the level of being a 'bad boyfriend', even if we again overlook the lack of confirmation for this, your repeated use of 'abuse' in this context is not just desensitising what 'abuse' actually means in this overarching event, but it's conflating actual abuse with merely a bad relationship / common negative exchanges.

4 years ago
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Look, I can personally verify this dude was in therapy and not just for abuse that was done to him. This dude was even in group. How I know, I'm not prepared to say

4 years ago
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Then I'm sorry but your personal verification has no value if it has zero attempted validation. Had you played a neutral part or been a fresh speaker, there may have been some credence but you have been shown to make faulty assertions (or rather, assertions with no reasonable backing beyond speculation) in your other posts, so it can't really be used to convince. :/

As per the other comment chains we've been having, unless there's anything else, I feel we're at a total impasse so will be dropping out, so we're not just repeating ourselves back and forth.

4 years ago
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Until I see someone other than Zoe herself say Alec apologised and was getting help (for 'what he did') then this is not a reliable morsel of info. Alec was in therapy for a time, but we only have confirmation (re:his sister) that it was due to having been a victim of abuse in the past. No other framing context was there, just lots of hanging questions and projections from us outsiders.

It is equally possible that his abuser from the past could have been Zoe, and her accusation was an extension of this. Some abuse is not even one-way, but a mutual self-destructive collapse between multiple people. Even if we assume he did in fact apologise to her, and it was related to abuse, and not mundane relationship matters or otherwise, it may be an equivalent to "I am sorry for what I did, and I also forgive you for what you did to me".

By reading too much into the tiniest vaguest pieces of information we have, we can only expect to miss the mark but a substantial margin. Until we can confirm something for real, and not just take the word of someone involved (who could have just as easily been the aggressor), then nothing has been reasonably established.

4 years ago
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The sister also made the statement "I will not pretend that he was not also responsible for causing harm", which is pretty much all that she needed to make. The dude is not under trial, he most likely wouldn't have been if he were alive. Other than him being a shitty boyfriend to Zoe, no statement from anyone ever established anything he did that was criminal anyways.The public's overreaction pretty much caused everyone he worked with to distance themselves from the situation, that's pretty all there is really

4 years ago
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That general statement could have easily been made as an allusion to some other aspect of his past. Or hell, even "I am not saying Zoe is lying, I don't know what happened there".

When a close family member is accused of something severe, in one hand you will believe your family because you're close and love them, so naturally believe in their good character. But in the other, if you have any awareness of how abuse works, or if you knew the relationship was volatile, or if you are lucid enough to see beyond familial loyalty, you may recognise that it's possible anyone can do wrong.

"I stand by my brother" can easily be seen as "She is a liar", and while grieving, with the angry mobs firing back and forth? I'm sorry but this again is not conclusive, and only feeds the character patterns I've been talking about.

4 years ago
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At this point, we are not going to get anything conclusive, and maybe we don't need to play detective. This was a tragedy all around

4 years ago
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I'm sorry, that's a false compromise I cannot agree to.

I do agree that we probably cannot find anything conclusive now, but this is why you are attracting so much scrutiny in the thread. Your words are phrased conclusively without enough to support them as such, whereas the corpse left by the event is a fact. It's a bad combo of 'dont speak ill of the dead', the potential of an abuser somewhere in the mix, and projections without enough to sustain them.

I suppose we're at an impasse, so once we tidy up the other loose ends on the comment chains, I guess we have nothing much else to discuss. I just find your approach to be in very bad taste, and without merit..

4 years ago
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Dude, if you want to seek the definitive truth for this, feel free. That's totally your call. If you have access to people close to Alec or if you move in the circles he's moved in in Manitoba or elsewhere, feel free to ask around. I'm not asking you to get to a conclusion either, just dig for it until you're satisfied I guess

4 years ago
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I think a lot of people missed the line where it mentioned that he used to hook his fingers into Quinn and walk them around the house using them as a lead when they said it hurt. I think that crosses the line easily from verbal abuse to sexual abuse.

4 years ago
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Oh no, we all read those. But when Zoe is a big muscular heavy woman and Alec is a scrawny little nerd it's rather hard to believe.
And that it's written bh Zoe Quinn, a known liar and abuse-fabricator and abuser herself. That didn't help either.
Or as someone pointed out he held her hostage but she could just walk out to the airport when she got money. That didn't add up either.

4 years ago
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People like her don't care about other people, this "burden" will be nothing.
And probably will never face the consequences because it's a woman, they get less penalties in general.

4 years ago
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You'd probably like r/PussyPass. Not that I disagree with you

4 years ago
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This reddit looks funny.

View attached image.
4 years ago
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"she'll have to live with the burden that she killed Alex Holowka indirectly" Anyone that lies about stuff like this is probably a sociopath and honestly, it probably wouldn't bother them much, or at least they'd be able to shrug it off after a month or so.
I'd argue, she'd feel bad if the accused situation is true because she is human, she'd feel bad about calling him out on his wrong doings, and indirectly ending his life.

On the actual topic, haven't kept up with the story. I just remember her name because it literally started Gamergate. I also remember seeing her picture a few months ago and saw she got in good shape.

4 years ago
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Zoe Quinn actually drove someone to suicide with her bullshit.

There is a line one does not cross.For her kind,though,there are no lines.

4 years ago
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This modern-day witch hunt mob-justice bullshit has to stop.

4 years ago*
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How do I upvote a comment?

4 years ago
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one way or another, now she has guilt of her own to live with. hope it was worth the PR.

4 years ago
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...

4 years ago
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She just deleted her twitter account, it's scary how easily an accusation alone (as opposed to a conviction) can destroy a man's life, shame on his colleagues for ending professional ties without a shred of evidence he was guilty, the presumption of innocence doesn't seem to apply to rape/sexual assault cases.

4 years ago
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He was guilty of abuse. He even apologised for it. Whether he was guilty of anything illegal is another question. And it was so long ago anyways that the statute of limitations might not have lapsed (as far as we know, there was no sexual assault involved). He did own up to being a shitty person, was in therapy, and like the sister said, was making real progress. I can't imagine why Zoe decided to go public with this, just as I disagreed with Eron airing her grievances to Zoe out in public when gamergate was in full swing. You don't fix or address shitty behavior by being shitty yourself

4 years ago
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He was guilty of abuse.

He even apologised for it.

Citation heavily needed. According to your other posts where we went over this, you have no reasonable source, and are echoing projected guesswork as fact.

I'm going to permalink to the other comment chains so I won't just be spamming you again with a block of text, and you can reply there or continue here :
Comment chain 1
Comment chain 2
Comment chain 3

4 years ago*
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You just live for a "gotcha" moment, do you? I don't mind dude, I'm not deleting anything here

4 years ago
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...what?
There's nothing 'gotcha' about this.
You were making the assertions in reply to several different people, so I replied to them as some of them had different variations on what you were asserting. I linked those other comment chains in an attempt to try direct us into one area so we weren't essentially having a hundred discussions that said the same thing (while also condensing some of the various things brought up in one chain but not another).

I don't expect you to delete anything, and I would really prefer you didn't.
Or... was that what you meant? That you thought I was accusing you of being about to delete something to hide what you said? I'm a bit confused at how you read my reply, TBH.

4 years ago
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I do appreciate you explaining some things, and not siding completely with Zoe, but you can't 100% claim he was guilty of abuse when we only have Zoe's story to go by. You can't know anything for sure. There are always 2 sides of a coin. We didn't hear Alec's story, and most likely never will. Maybe they had a toxic relationship and were both abusing each other for all we know (see Johnny Depp and Amber Heard for example)

Remember the projared conandrum recently too? His ex wife was accusing him of cheating and emotional abuse? Guess how that turned out? She was lying and ommiting pretty much everything. She wasn't emotionally abused, they had an open relationships and she forced him into the relationship with that chick in first place, he just continued it behind her back after she didn't want him to see her anymore lol
All three parties were lying but projared got screwed over for soliciting minors and sending p0rn.

I didn't get to read Zoe's statements before she deleted her twitter, because they were long af and I just got in this, but we can't make a definitive conclusion that there was abuse based on her tweet alone.
As for Alec's sister, you seem to be taking it out of contents. All I read that she said was smth among the lines that it was Alec's wish for people to leave Zoe alone, and that he wishes her all the best despite whatever might have happened..... (even after she posted this statement)
Unfortunately I don't have link to that either, as Alec's sister Twitter is private now too.

4 years ago
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https://www.reddit.com/r/NightInTheWoods/comments/cxqjp8/end_of_summer_backer_update/ -- detailed statement by Alec's co-developers.

Other people who either confirmed Zoe said something at the time or had some sort of testimonial about alec on twitter

Patricia Hernandez (Journalist/Editor)
Christine Love (Game Developer)
Kevin Snow (Game Developer)
Albertine Watson (Game Developer)

anyone interested, please try to see if the tweets still exist or are archived

4 years ago
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I prefer a court of law myself.

4 years ago
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Can we just acknowledge that it will never happen, and that regardless if there were any abuse leading to criminal charges, there was actual abuse? Alec wasn't a saint, neither is the accuser. You can recognize someone's fault without condemning them you know

4 years ago
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No one should be accused and then publically exposed of anything until due process. This is why so many teachers have their careers destroyed by kids falsely accusing them of sexual abuse. Same with rape accusations ..... He was trialled in public by social media end of.

4 years ago
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And I'm not disputing that. I don't believe zoe should've outed him at all .I don't think the internet mob is productive on both sides

4 years ago
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This is a really sad turn of events. I hope his family can find peace.

4 years ago
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Outrage culture claims another life.

4 years ago
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The twitter mob has just killed another person... it's so sad.

4 years ago
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not just the twitter mob. all interweb forums where people spent time arguing and hypothesizing and throwing opinions around like facts when they really have no business worrying about went on in others lives... scroll up.

4 years ago
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