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JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

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Kinda, but the thing is that he's still at a place where he needs notoriety in order to maintain his career, since his success is built entirely on the platform of his public persona. Obviously fame is helpful in any kind of creative career, but Leigh Alexander for instance can thrive with Offworld or other writing gigs without people necessarily looking at her byline or recognizing her name, and that's why it'd be erroneous to assume, I think, that when he takes potshots at her on Twitter it's just a pointless tussle that both of these people should be above.

 

He gets something out of doing that, and she does not. When she's done tweeting at him she gets back to his career, but for him this is his career.

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Except most of what he does are game reviews and podcasts, and he had tons of subscribers before he ever picked this fight. It's entirely likely that he benefits from these arguments in terms of pandering to a fan base, but a) I don't think that's why he gets into them and B) it seems unsupportable to say that he relies on confrontations like this for his career.

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TB is successful because there's absolutely enough shitlords who find him entertaining and that's a more state of affairs of gaming vs. any singular thing about TB. 

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Derek Smart once again demonstrating he has skin as thin as the design doc for Battlecruiser 3000AD.

 

https://storify.com/QHStone/derek-smart-invents-feud-with-randi-harper

 

Like, jesus christ, it just keeps on going.

 

It's mind boggling to me that anyone could see this kind of sustained outburst as anything but harassment. He's ranting for hours and hours, devoting dozens of tweets to a woman whose crime is... blocking him, and then saying not to contact women who have gone out of their to make themselves unavailable to you? What?

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Depends on how you define relying on it I guess. In the recent Let's Play discussion we talked about how personality drives success there, and the impression I get for TB (also from people on here who talked about his early days) is that this kind of petulant smartassery is very much his #brand, so even when it's not technically required to put together the kind of content he produces, making a public performance of the attitude his fanbase likes about him is probably part of the recipe rather than an unrelated thing.

 

It may not be entirely fair to list him alongside people who nobody in games knew or remembered before they signed on with this garbage, but it seems weird that just because he's doing okay on his own nobody ever considers that he may have pragmatic reasons for casting his lot with these people. It may not be as direct as shilliing for a Kickstarter, early access game, or a book, but the guy very much has a vested interest in participating in a campaign that calls into question the believability of traditional games media, his rivals in concept if not in scope.

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It's mind boggling to me that anyone could see this kind of sustained outburst as anything but harassment. He's ranting for hours and hours, devoting dozens of tweets to a woman whose crime is... blocking him, and then saying not to contact women who have gone out of their to make themselves unavailable to you? What?

 

It looked to me like what he was mad about was her saying "and during this phone call, he was flirty as fuck. comments abt getting married." He said he hadn't been, and seemed to take it as a willful attack on his character. The hours of tweets are definitely a crazy asshole rant, and you might say they were inciting others to harass, but given that he was blocked at the time, how do you see them as harassment? It seems to me that by definition, you can't verbally harass someone who can't hear you.

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Well, not "who can't hear you", but rather "who is blocking you". I believe Harper has somebody who reads the twitter feeds of people who are doing this kind of thing, in order to flag escalations. Keep escalating, and you can still get people's attention - and inciting harassment is obviously one way to do that, because it means they both see the content from as-yet-unblocked anime eggs, and have to get periodic updates on what you are saying in order to anticipate harassment from elsewhere.

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*sigh*

 

Trending now on Twitter is a Breitbart article slandering Polygon. I think it's old but clearly something happened to make this happen and I am so fucking tired of this cultural-xenophic shit from Gamergate.

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It looked to me like what he was mad about was her saying "and during this phone call, he was flirty as fuck. comments abt getting married." He said he hadn't been, and seemed to take it as a willful attack on his character. The hours of tweets are definitely a crazy asshole rant, and you might say they were inciting others to harass, but given that he was blocked at the time, how do you see them as harassment? It seems to me that by definition, you can't verbally harass someone who can't hear you.

This is like saying it's not stalking if you just pay a PI to follow someone around because, after all, it's not you who's following them everywhere.

He went out of his way to circumvent a block -- a clear "do not talk to me" notice -- so that he could threaten her, and when she said something along the lines of "do not talk to women who have you blocked" he blew the fuck up and kept talking through his outrage over being called out (and not even by name I think???) for his harassment. His temper tantrum is as much about him being portrayed the wrong way as GamerGate is about ethics in games journalism. It's a clear effort to bully and intimidate. It's harassment.

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This is like saying it's not stalking if you just pay a PI to follow someone around because, after all, it's not you who's following them everywhere.

 

I was focusing on the difference between harassment and inciting (you're not a murderer if you hire a hitman), if you see no distinction between those then I get calling it harassment.

 

and when she said something along the lines of "do not talk to women who have you blocked" he blew the fuck up and kept talking through his outrage over being called out (and not even by name I think???) 

 

The attached photo had his Twitter handle, and the immediately preceding connected tweet had his name.

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I was focusing on the difference between harassment and inciting (you're not a murderer if you hire a hitman), if you see no distinction between those then I get calling it harassment.

Contract killing is a form of murder, both legally and morally, so I'm not sure that this is a distinction worth making...?

And oh well, she used his name, doesn't make anything dude bro did any better

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Contract killing is a form of murder, both legally and morally, so I'm not sure that this is a distinction worth making...?

My point was that the hitman is a murderer, you as the person who hired them are not (which is (hopefully) obviously not to say that hiring hitmen is okay). 

 

 

And oh well, she used his name, doesn't make anything dude bro did any better

 

Sure doesn't, I wasn't defending him, just correcting the information you brought up.

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My point was that the hitman is a murderer, you as the person who hired them are not (which is (hopefully) obviously not to say that hiring hitmen is okay).

 

I'm struggling to see how this is a useful distinction.

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Can't check right now but didn't he get some other sort of contact for her after she'd blocked him and send her a message? Like her Google number or something?

That's what Mangela was referring to as circumnavigating the block, I think, and is what clearly counts as direct harrassment even if the incitement is not.

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Can't check right now but didn't he get some other sort of contact for her after she'd blocked him and send her a message? Like her Google number or something?

 

Yep!

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  1. Exploits gamers in a total Early Access disaster and gets quite censorship happy when people tell him that it is, in fact, a disaster.
  2. Continuously tries to damage the reputation of Cloud Imperium Games, because they obviously succeed where he fails.
  3. Poses as "neutral" for gamergate at SPJ Airplay in order to attack his logical enemies, the video game press.
  4. Calls to harassing action his new twitter gamergate friends from the ranks of extreme right wing journalism and utter MRA delusion.
  5. Feels wronged to the point of legal action because someone has enough of his verbal turds and blocks him on twitter.
  6. Circumvents that block for a threatening message including not particularly skillful insinuations of alcoholism and promiscuity.

I didn't really know who "Derek Smart" is when this year started, but man he kept himself in asshole news these last two months! 

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Feels wronged to the point of legal action because someone has enough of his verbal turds and blocks him on twitter.

In before Ninety Three:

He claimed to be consulting his army of lawyers because she said he'd been creepy on the phone and mentioned marriage.

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I'm struggling to see how this is a useful distinction.

 

Mangela said it was mind boggling that anyone could see the hours of twitter ranting as anything other than harassment, so I attempted to explain how one could (and how I did).

Like I said above, if you see inciting to be the same as doing, then I get calling it harassment.

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"Derek Smart threatens to sue" should be a meme.

 

It kind of was a decade ago. Given the extremely skeevy marketing for BC3000AD back in the 90's, I can't say I'm too surprised that Smart's throwing up the bat signal to MRAs now.

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THAT'S MY LINK!! :)

 

(disclaimer: I've, in a sense, 'worked with' the author of that 2004 article as a voluntary Telltale forum moderator when he was in Telltale's PR in 2012. I've a very high opinion of the guy)

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Mangela said it was mind boggling that anyone could see the hours of twitter ranting as anything other than harassment, so I attempted to explain how one could (and how I did).

Like I said above, if you see inciting to be the same as doing, then I get calling it harassment.

Organizing a mob to try to convince an organization to cut ties with a person and committing personal legal resources to the task (in the form of, at minimum, consulting on possible legal action and asking retained counsel to draft copy for a notice to said organization) is harassment.

I do not understand the distinction you're trying to make that someone acting through others absolves them of acting themselves.

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It kind of was a decade ago. Given the extremely skeevy marketing for BC3000AD back in the 90's, I can't say I'm too surprised that Smart's throwing up the bat signal to MRAs now.

 

Skeevy as it was, it worked on my younger mind, I still remember that game and kinda want to try it just to know how bad it is.

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