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GoneWithTheTornado posted:It’s not the lawyering up by itself that’s eyebrow raising, it’s the very public use of the threat of legal action to intimidate and silence his accuser. If he’s innocent it’s very unlikely he would of made such a showy proclamation on Twitter. yeah
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Sep 6, 2019 16:14
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dogstile posted:Even if you're not guilty you should still get a lawyer. I'm not defending any other part of what he's been accused of but i refuse to see lawyering up as an admission of guilt. You’re not wrong, but the way that he’s doing it looks absolutely terrible.
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Sep 6, 2019 20:24
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This looks ominous.
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Sep 10, 2019 16:39
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Sinteres posted:This looks ominous. Lmao at chaining yourself to this particular mast
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Sep 10, 2019 16:43
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Sinteres posted:This looks ominous. Monica Lewinsky's Ted talk uses similar terminology. Call out culture allows people to engage in morally superior dogpiling without necessary reflection.
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Sep 10, 2019 16:45
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Hav posted:Monica Lewinsky's Ted talk uses similar terminology. Call out culture allows people to engage in morally superior dogpiling without necessary reflection. I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the idea that we've mostly only heard one side of this so far, but going all in on hostile defensiveness without even a hint of apology for anyone who was hurt by actions there may be differing opinions on isn't going to win back any wavering supporters. Address your own poo poo before you decide to become a cultural critic. I don't know if what he did is enough to justify hounding him out of the industry or not, but a bunch of people he knew seem to think he behaved badly, and he hasn't owned up to any wrong doing at all so far, just lashing out with threats of retaliation as he's been accused of doing in the past. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Sep 10, 2019 |
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Sep 10, 2019 16:47
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Hav posted:Monica Lewinsky's Ted talk uses similar terminology. Call out culture allows people to engage in morally superior dogpiling without necessary reflection. Yeah, call out culture has problems, but that has nothing to do with the fact that this dude is a sexual predator.
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Sep 11, 2019 04:23
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It's also important to consider power differentials, considering how Lewinsky was an unpaid intern trashed on by media conglomerates and government officials, whereas AK was in an established position at his workplace and preyed on subordinates. Since more than a few people who raised torches and pitchforks during the Lewinsky scandal were also outed for sex scandals, the point is salient -- but I kinda doubt that any people raising the alarm about AK are using their power to get sex. Unless everyone is getting oral every time they post in this thread.
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Sep 11, 2019 05:03
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Roctavian posted:It's also important to consider power differentials, considering how Lewinsky was an unpaid intern trashed on by media conglomerates and government officials, whereas AK was in an established position at his workplace and preyed on subordinates. Since more than a few people who raised torches and pitchforks during the Lewinsky scandal were also outed for sex scandals, the point is salient -- but I kinda doubt that any people raising the alarm about AK are using their power to get sex. Unless everyone is getting oral every time they post in this thread. You don't?
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Sep 11, 2019 06:44
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Feels like they're going to try to appeal to alt-right folks and centrists but I don't think it'll go over well. Alt-right types just post "reset the clock" memes and laugh when previously feminist men are accused of this behavior. They'll win over some centrists but there's no getting around the fact several women directly affected by his behavior staked their careers in the industry on publicly calling him out (and then over a dozen more with less direct experience supported those accounts). There's not really any way to just dismiss all of that in a way that appeals to people who just don't believe women. I haven't seen a single person in the industry support his accounts publicly. Even if you chalk that up to not wanting the consequences of speaking, nearly everyone who has ever worked with him has publicly condemned him when they could have just chosen to stay silent.
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Sep 15, 2019 00:16
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Has anyone posted 'A reckoning is not to be postponed indefinitely'?
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Sep 15, 2019 00:36
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Regallion posted:You don't? saliba is very, very busy
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Sep 15, 2019 00:40
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Bieeanshee posted:Has anyone posted 'A reckoning is not to be postponed indefinitely'? 
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Sep 16, 2019 12:56
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Lottie and AK have both posted formal statements / explanations on recent events. Lottie: http://weatherfactory.biz/blood-sport-call-out-culture-from-the-other-side/ AK: http://weatherfactory.biz/what-actually-happened/ Still reading / processing, personally. I think Lottie has a good point about the collateral damage the call-out has caused, but I also think her arguments about whisper networks and "what's the goal of call outs" miss the mark as well.
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Sep 16, 2019 13:08
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The Bramble posted:Lottie and AK have both posted formal statements / explanations on recent events. Her point about whisper networks being pretty worthless if nobody bothered to warn her about the guy when she joined the company, started dating him, moved in with him or started a company with him was pretty reasonable though (assuming she's not lying about nobody warning her). Plus if this part from Alexis's statement is true, it definitely undermines the case against him/moves it more into 'he was a bad boyfriend' rather than 'he was a predator who abused his position' territory, and makes Olivia look pretty bad for not mentioning it: "But the circumstances were very different than Olivia has publicly suggested. We started a relationship over a year before we worked together. She suggested that I hire her. She explicitly requested that the relationship be kept secret. All of these facts are provable." Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Sep 16, 2019 |
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Sep 16, 2019 14:23
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Yeah that no one warned Lottie (and I've no reason to presume she's lying about that) is pretty disturbing and weights the "gossip" side of the scale over the "clandestine warnings" on that count. I meant more her arguing against whisper networks in theory as unreliable and too dangerous. Like, they aren't ideal but they serve a purpose and there's a good reason they exist. Obviously this isn't a court of law and there's no rules of evidence or even expectation that the "other side" is going to respond, but if his claim that he can prove he dated Olivia before she was his employee and hired her on her suggestion (and I have to assume he's ready to drop those emails if challenged on it by her) is pretty big. That was really the only substantive, discretely provable claim against him. That still leaves the more vague accusations of predatory behavior and making women feel unsafe or abused. And what do we do with those? Mean rumors, or a very believable example of a clueless and entitled man acting in a way he feels is normal but is clearly problematic and predatory to anyone outside his bubble? It's a mess. It sucks people who had nothing to do with any of this found themselves in a position where they were forced to unexpectedly resign.
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Sep 16, 2019 14:47
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No one is arguing that whisper networks are the right response to harassment; it’s that they’re often the only response because allegations of harassment are met with reprisals. Yes, whisper networks are bad, come across as gossip, and often miss people who need to know what’s going on; but as along as allegations are met with “I SHALL REPORT YOU TO THE POLICE AND YOU WILL HEAR FROM ALL OF MY LAWYERS”, as per AK’s reaction, whisper networks are all you’re going to get. There’s a lot else in Lottie’s response that leaves me cold: the insistence that “believe women” must mean believing all women all the time, and if you don’t believe a woman who defends an abuser you must be a hypocrite for not “believing all women,” which is the “all lives matter” of #metoo; admitting that the justice system is flawed and biased towards abusers but then insisting that it’s the only “fair” way to deal with things; including the people who said “I find these allegations unsettling and am removing myself from the issue” as “victims” of the allegations because it’s the accuser’s fault that AK’s reputation was sullied; etc.
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Sep 16, 2019 15:09
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skeleton warrior posted:No one is arguing that whisper networks are the right response to harassment; it’s that they’re often the only response because allegations of harassment are met with reprisals. Yes, whisper networks are bad, come across as gossip, and often miss people who need to know what’s going on; but as along as allegations are met with “I SHALL REPORT YOU TO THE POLICE AND YOU WILL HEAR FROM ALL OF MY LAWYERS”, as per AK’s reaction, whisper networks are all you’re going to get. I agree that there are bad parts about Lottie's response, but it's not hard to see why she feels let down by all these other women right now. Either the allegations were blown out of proportion and severely disrupted both her personal and professional life for no good reason, or she personally wasn't warned about an abuser who was in a position of power over her at a company with people who knew about the abuse and then wasn't warned about an abuser she decided to make a life and found a company with.
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Sep 16, 2019 15:19
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skeleton warrior posted:There’s a lot else in Lottie’s response that leaves me cold: the insistence that “believe women” must mean believing all women all the time, and if you don’t believe a woman who defends an abuser you must be a hypocrite for not “believing all women,” which is the “all lives matter” of #metoo; admitting that the justice system is flawed and biased towards abusers but then insisting that it’s the only “fair” way to deal with things; including the people who said “I find these allegations unsettling and am removing myself from the issue” as “victims” of the allegations because it’s the accuser’s fault that AK’s reputation was sullied; etc. Seeing how there's only two of them, they are eminently identifiable. Maybe their reasons are 100% the way Lottie frames them - that these employees basically trusted Alexis, but the PR stink on the situation was so bad that they couldn't afford to be associated with it at this stage of their careers, and so they were obliged to bow out. Maybe that's just what they told Lottie and Alexis as they awkwardly signed off on the last bit of paperwork before shuffling out the door. Without word from them, we don't know. And that's precisely it - to my knowledge, we haven't had word from them. They have chosen to stay silent on the topic, to not touch it, to not publicly frame themselves as collateral damage victims, to not declare one way or the other whether they believe Alexis or his accusers. So far as I can determine, in public at least, they've tried to just keep as far away from the situation as they can. Now, one of their ex-employers - someone whose good word in a reference they may well be reliant on to get their next job - has gone public and added them to a list of collateral damage. And that doesn't feel right to me. It was wholly possible for Lottie to make the points she intended to make in her essay, to the extent that she conveyed them, without bringing those two employees into it at all. I just can't help but think that by doing this, Lottie's dragged those employees back into the situation, and in a really compromising way. Previously, if one of those employees chose to speak out in public about their reasons for leaving Failbetter, or to privately disclose them under conditions of confidence (like, say, at a job interview), they had a blank slate. Now they have Lottie's account, and anything they say about it will be weighed against it, considered in the light of whether it agrees or disagrees with what Lottie says. It doesn't seem like a fair position to put them in.
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Sep 16, 2019 15:21
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Sinteres posted:I agree that there are bad parts about Lottie's response, but it's not hard to see why she feels let down by all these other women right now. Either the allegations were blown out of proportion and severely disrupted both her personal and professional life for no good reason, or she personally wasn't warned about an abuser who was in a position of power over her at a company with people who knew about the abuse and then wasn't warned about an abuser she decided to make a life and found a company with. For one thing, whisper networks are by their nature inherently going to have holes in them. Nobody documents who has been told what, because if you did then it wouldn't really be a whisper network, and the upshot of that is that people fall through the cracks. Like skeleton warrior said, they aren't actually a good or optimal way of warning people about missing stairs - but they can be the only way to warn people in many circumstances. For another, bringing someone into a whisper network is inherently an act of trust, and the closer someone is to someone you're trying to warn people about, the more risky that act of trust is going to look. Are they friendly, are they spending a lot of time together, are they dating, are they engaged, have they set up a business together? Each one of those things individually and cumulatively is going to make people think "Will they take this warning in the spirit it's intended, or will they tell the person I'm warning about that we had this conversation?" And yeah, there's a certain irony in the fact that this means that the women potentially closest to someone are the last to get added to the whisper network, if they ever are. But that overlooks the number of women who might have gotten closer but didn't, because the whisper network warned them off.
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Sep 16, 2019 15:30
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Warthur posted:I can see how people can end up with that line of thinking, but I think it's based on a misunderstanding of how whisper networks work. I wasn't saying we should cancel whisper networks, just that it's not hard to see why she feels personally let down by this one since it either exaggerated allegations against her partner or failed to warn her before she tied her whole life to him. Yeah, it makes sense that people might have been afraid to warn her off once they were together, or even afraid of passing on info to anyone inside the company since it would could with greater than usual risk, but as an attractive new hire she's probably the first one who should have been warned before she started dating him if possible, so I don't blame her for feeling let down. Of course if Alexis is guilty he's a piece of poo poo for exploiting that feeling to turn her into his attack dog, but we'll have to see if Olivia or anyone else has anything to say about his more specific defense. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Sep 16, 2019 |
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Sep 16, 2019 15:43
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Not mentioning that you were sleeping with a dude before he hired you is a pretty huge omission, considering the claim. E: Also whatever happened to "don't poo poo where you eat". Don't gently caress your co-workers, people. Jesus.
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Sep 16, 2019 17:06
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dogstile posted:E: Also whatever happened to "don't poo poo where you eat". Don't gently caress your co-workers, people. Jesus. I married one of mine. So it can work out. I feel so bad for all the women involved in this shitshow.
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Sep 16, 2019 18:34
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Looking forward to seeing Kennedy resurface in a year to announce Book of Hours being renamed Trigger Warning, now with a number of new themes.
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Sep 16, 2019 20:23
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Three mods quit the Weather Factory Discord in quick succession.
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Sep 16, 2019 23:56
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Anticheese posted:Three mods quit the Weather Factory Discord in quick succession. Having slept on it I've noticed one thing about Alexis' article: he doubles down on the claim that he quickly transferred Olivia Wood to a different line manager once they broke up, which is an assertion of fact flatly contradicted by Failbetter's statements on the matter - they say that according to their documentation, he was still her line manager until he left the company. It's wholly possible, of course, that both parties are being truthful and they were just sloppy about updating the paperwork. But it seems odd to simultaneously recognise the importance of transferring Wood but then completely space on documenting that the transfer happened at the time that it happened; if anything, you'd think you would make drat sure it was all documented, because that sort of rear end-covering is the precise point of the exercise.
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Sep 17, 2019 10:42
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Warthur posted:Are there further details on this? Have they explained why? This is what the first guy said, and the other two just sort of quoted him. quote:@Acquaintance I'm leaving this server. Not because of anything in particular to do with Weather Factory, but due to how toxic and unpleasant it has become to be a part of this server. @Pickle, the Glowydoki has been chosen as a mod in my place. Hard to follow that channel enough to say what's really up. They've quarantined this topic to its own channel, and after browsing it, there's a good mix of believers and deniers, and mostly just off-topic talk. Meg Jayanth, who really broke this story, just posted "wow" on Twitter while quoting Lottie and said she'd be off social media for a while. I imagine we'll get more reactions and think pieces from gaming news outlets over the coming days.
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Sep 17, 2019 11:46
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Oldstench posted:I married one of mine. So it can work out. It's fine if it's a big firm and you work in different areas. It's absolutely a terrible idea if you report to each other
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Sep 17, 2019 12:52
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Their discord plays super heavily on the general theme of a clandestine community, and as a result you had this frankly bizarre, schizophrenic split between arch/dry obtuse language about "the situation," and blundering gamers dropping insane rants about SJWs. All their ranks and tags are themed steering the lore, they have umpteen terribly named channels that people use interchangeably, honestly that server is an incestuous mess. Modding that environment is probably even worse than the usual janitor poo poo. On top of it, niche indie communities tend to have extremely emotionally enmeshed fanbases. During the brief stint where I was following the chat, you had tagged users posting about their own assaults or experiences, clearly triggered in an extremely unironic way by the current events.
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Sep 17, 2019 15:33
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:It's fine if it's a big firm and you work in different areas. It's absolutely a terrible idea if you report to each other I don't think you can call that a coworker really. Personally I would feel pretty weird about it because of all the stress and whatnot that goes on in companies. Then again if the spark is there.
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Sep 17, 2019 15:44
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Yeah i know of companies that do it properly, you just put in the right paperwork, etc. A company of sub 20 people isn't going to be doing things properly. They never do, i've worked for plenty.
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Sep 17, 2019 17:10
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The current Failbetter CEO has posted on Medium about this (thanks to Star Guarded who posted it in the #MeToo in videogames thread). https://medium.com/@wastebooks/alexis-kennedy-71044efc0ecf It's tough reading, as are all these things, but is an excellent example of why the suggested methods of dealing with these things privately would never, ever have worked (the author tried to raise Alexis' behaviour through private channels in Failbetter and got an "enhanced 1-on-1" from Alexis for his trouble). It also provides receipts which more or less definitively show that Alexis was outright bullshitting when he claimed he stopped being Lottie's line manager once they started their relationship - unless we're willing to go so tinfoil hat as to imagine that Failbetter would fake up internal records to that effect.
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Sep 23, 2019 18:48
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Yeah...the slight benefit of the doubt introduced by AK's statement has evaporated quite quickly.
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Sep 23, 2019 19:53
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An 'enhanced one on one' in which Kennedy has a go at the author for damaging his mental health by highlighting that dating your employee should be reported. what a fuckstick
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Sep 23, 2019 22:10
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Aethernet posted:An 'enhanced one on one' in which Kennedy has a go at the author for damaging his mental health by highlighting that dating your employee should be reported. He and (especially) Lottie both pulled the mental health card in response to the allegations too. As someone with anxiety issues, I'm sure this whole process has been extremely harmful to his mental health, but you can't just say "I'm depressed" and expect the consequences of your actions to just evaporate. If everything in his response had been true there was certainly a case for reevaluating things, but when he seems to be provably a liar, going back to interviews before the callout happened (ie not just because he's in a panic state), it makes his defense extremely suspect. Maybe it'll still blow over in a few months when he goes to kickstarter and finds out customers don't really care as long as he gives them an interesting game (we've all bought products from people who've done far worse), but doubling down instead of showing even a hint of contrition is going to make it a lot harder for anyone in the gaming community who does have concerns to welcome him back. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Sep 24, 2019 |
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Sep 24, 2019 01:01
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Sinteres posted:but you can't just say "I'm depressed" and expect the consequences of your actions to just evaporate Just to further this point, a significant part of psychotherapy for depression involves invalidating that faulty reasoning. Good therapists are very sharp to pick on "martyr justifications", which are very much behaviors that aggravate depression as they act as means to defend and reinforce certain psychological mechanisms that are characteristic of depression. "How could I be a bad person if [thing]?" is a sort of ego defense, and usually leads to a certain stripe of depressive patients to abandon therapy because they can't abide such behavioral patterns to be attacked, as those are fundamental to to the present well-being of their identity. Anecdotally, they tend to be artists - particularly when more successful to the point of obtaining some notoriety and means above their station with their profession - as unfortunately our society tends to reinforce that those people should some sort of grandeur about them, which is further validated for them because of success. Which is why, imho, Kennedy very much fits the bill because the way he dealt about his ideas about gameplay design are almost comically perfect in how representative they are of such behaviors. I recall reading a bunch of jokes about how he was certainly going to get "Gameplay People" to help along in Weather Factory while mentioning how well was the game received by the press and quote audience reactions. This is classic. "Sure, I understand your concern... but see I am actually right because look at this reaction, I can't be wrong, surely." Or, to drive it home, "well, I am not saying that those women are wrong, but I am not a bad guy, I can't be, I am a good writer of some renown, people like me, that means something. I am appreciated; bad people aren't. And only bad people abuse women. So, I am not."
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Sep 24, 2019 04:28
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Now, consider the type of person attracted to that type of person. edit: this post refers to Lottie stanning for her abuser fiancé/business partner, not Olivia Wood. Vlex fucked around with this message at 08:56 on Sep 24, 2019 |
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Sep 24, 2019 07:27
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Vlex posted:Now, consider the type of person attracted to that type of person. cool post dude
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Sep 24, 2019 08:26
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Sinteres posted:He and (especially) Lottie both pulled the mental health card in response to the allegations too. As someone with anxiety issues, I'm sure this whole process has been extremely harmful to his mental health, but you can't just say "I'm depressed" and expect the consequences of your actions to just evaporate. If everything in his response had been true there was certainly a case for reevaluating things, but when he seems to be provably a liar, going back to interviews before the callout happened (ie not just because he's in a panic state), it makes his defense extremely suspect. quote:“Producers are great partners and terrifying partners, because it’s very hard to bullshit them,” Kennedy laughs. “It’s hard to bullshit producers at the best of times, but it’s almost impossible to bullshit one who knows all your secrets.”
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Sep 24, 2019 08:32
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BBJoey posted:cool post dude There are layers of hosed up here.
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Sep 24, 2019 08:40
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