HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:

Probably better to say believe victims, since a couple of these are from guys.

Endorph posted:

also yeah lol at 'evidence'

'You creeped on me when I was 14.'

"Alright, first off, here is the blueprint of my house -"

how is that convincing evidence and not the craziest loving thing in the world. imagine if someone accused him of being racist and his response was that. everyone would call it out as bugfuck loopy. but since its a sex thing we all have to put on her deerstalkers and go 'hm, yes, very curious watson.'

ThisIsACoolGuy posted:

There's always the chance of petty grudges and wanting to see people fail. Right now in the FGC there's a colossal number of people begging for callout posts in regards to SonicFox just because he's a furry. I'm just kind of waiting at this point for someone to try to drag him because man people are desperate for it.

I genuinely do understand what you mean though- I fully admit part of me is putting myself in Zeros shoes and that's loving with my judgement because I panic a lot when people misunderstand what I'm saying or whatever I'm trying to convey, and I've done the same thing in the past over small poo poo like not finishing a project in time or whatever, where someone cast doubt on me and I scramble to get as much evidence as possible because I don't want to be misunderstood.

I'm really not a fan of ZeRo's. I even mentioned before his post that this seems completely in character for him after seeing a couple videos of his where he bullies and peer pressures his friends into doing stupid things for his content.

Right now I'm on the victims side because more stuff came out, I just wanted a bit more to make a call.

ThisIsACoolGuy posted:

When I'm in a panic it seems like the logical thing to do

Like it's a serious allegation, if it was lodged against me I'd be freaking out no matter how innocent I was in trying to explain my end of things and using whatever I thought was needed even if it's a stupid floor plan.

Endorph posted:

Here's a better question:

Why on God's green earth would someone loving lie about this, about one of the most beloved and popular people in a popular esport, after a year away from the scene? Why is your first instinct to try and figure out 'how he could defend himself' instead of 'what possible motivation could she have to lie?' Go ahead and look at the replies to her tweets. That's what happens. To every single accuser. Ever. Regardless of proof. The Bill Cosby accusers got tons of death threats even after he was proven guilty in a court of law, even after multiple people came out to verify the stories, even after the media industry as a whole basically erased any proof of him ever existing.

Again, I want to make this clear. Regardless of any proof you present, regardless of what happens, regardless of what the accused person does, even if they admit their guilty publicly and immediately and make no attempt to downplay it? That is still what happens. And often much worse. People lose jobs for accusing people. People lose family. People are murdered. People are victimized further.

Do false accusations happen? Obviously, with outside motivation or pressure, either because the possible reward outweighs the risk or because they aren't thinking clearly, or because they have some reason to believe that they will be believed more than usual. Nobody wakes up one day and decides 'im gonna accuse one of the most popular people in my sphere, for kicks.'

Because look at this poo poo. Who would want this? And saying 'you don't think Zero is innocent' is pretty worthless when you're still inherently forcing us to accept a framework in which he is. I refuse to engage in that hypothetical.

ThisIsACoolGuy posted:

When I'm in a panic it seems like the logical thing to do

Like it's a serious allegation, if it was lodged against me I'd be freaking out no matter how innocent I was in trying to explain my end of things and using whatever I thought was needed even if it's a stupid floor plan.

ThisIsACoolGuy posted:

When I'm in a panic it seems like the logical thing to do

Like it's a serious allegation, if it was lodged against me I'd be freaking out no matter how innocent I was in trying to explain my end of things and using whatever I thought was needed even if it's a stupid floor plan.

Wicked Them Beats posted:

First, I believe SonicFox's pronouns are "they/them." It's been mentioned in the thread previously.

Second, the reason we're piling onto you a bit is because your language is VERY close to the same stuff that always gets used to berate and demean victims when they come forward. It's always in the guise of "I'm just asking questions" but the intent is to smear or discredit the victim. Your previous posts aren't too different from what I've seen people post about Tara Reade when trying to defend Joe Biden. It's the same script.

I would ask that you stop being on the victim's side for "right now." Be on the victim's side until you have concrete reason to believe they aren't a victim. Provide the victim the benefit of the doubt and be on their side from the get-go, because what they're doing is dangerous and frightening and they need the support. And if you find you can't be supportive, then honestly the best thing for you to do is to be quiet while things hash out.

Arsenic Lupin posted:

I think part of your problem is immediately going to "what if I were the accused" and not "what if I were the victim". You picked (consciously or not) whose point of view to worry about.

ImpAtom posted:

The thing is that you won't be accused of this. You are significantly more likely to get hit by lightning than to be falsely accused of sexual abuse. It's hard to stress just how absurdly rare false accusations are compared to credible ones.

ThisIsACoolGuy posted:

I was wrong. I just didn't want to have another name onto the pile even if it was someone I didn't personally like. I'm at fault.

ThisIsACoolGuy posted:

I found something weird about how she came out about things considering hwo everyone else was getting dragged to light and I wanted more information, that's basically it.

Endorph posted:

Here's a better question:

Why on God's green earth would someone loving lie about this.

ThisIsACoolGuy posted:

I found something weird about how she came out about things considering hwo everyone else was getting dragged to light and I wanted more information, that's basically it.

Canine Blues Arooo posted:

I'll preface this by asking for an extension of good faith because I feel it's going to be trivial to quote this and be upset about something.

There are motives for people to lie about an accusation and to assume that literally no one would ever levy a false accusation on someone is dangerous, not just to the accused, but also to victims. To assume otherwise is incredibly naive. That motive might be spite, or revenge, or just 'trolling lol it's just a prank'. The consequence is this: If someone makes a false accusation and gets The Internet at large on their side and it later comes out that the accusation was indeed meritless, it's ammo for the alt-right and other deplorable groups to handwave away any other accusation or start to require 'proof standards' in the name of 'justice' or whatever bullshit they will come up with - point being that they will use that moment to justify some really horrendous poo poo and make it harder for victims to come forward.

Furthermore, when you are making a false claim, the emotional rollercoaster doesn't really apply to you - instead of reliving a traumatic experience and having people prod at it, you are just shitposting. The idea that it's a bad experience to deal with this claim when the claim is false to begin with doesn't hold water.

As others mentioned, SonicFox is kind of the 'obvious' target for a false accusation since they tend to be disliked a lot by people that might associate themselves with the same groups that'd weaponize a false claim. I actually expect something to show up about SonicFox before this is all over, but I will definitely wait to here from SonicFox before jumping to conclusions about such a claim.

It is important not just for the accused, but also would-be accusers that some level of scrutiny is applied to claims of abuse, or claims of abuse end up being harder and harder to make with further requirements for proof and we end up in the situation that was described where authorities wouldn't believe a victim if they weren't emotional enough, or were too emotional - A truly terrible situation to be in. Just to be clear, what I mean by scrutiny is that of a very light touch, 'Is this story plausible? What does the accused have to say about it?'. As far as I'm concerned, for nearly every case, the accused are guilty until proven innocent to some degree, but I'll at least hear you out. Starting to require hard evidence is a path to protecting abusers and that is a bad, bad place to go - we don't want to do that.

All that said, definitely believe victims. Definitely curate a space where victims feel they can talk and get some kind of support, but please do not assume that no one has a motive to lie about something either. Doing so is a massive disservice to fixing this in the long run.

Endorph posted:

Do false accusations happen? Obviously, with outside motivation or pressure, either because the possible reward outweighs the risk or because they aren't thinking clearly, or because they have some reason to believe that they will be believed more than usual.

quote:

But a non-consensual vasectomy just isn’t a feasible solution to those concerns.

Canine Blues Arooo posted:

I legitimately don't see why that's completely off the table.

Endorph posted:

cool thanks for lecturing me for 10 billion words about the thing i literally said, in my post

Canine Blues Arooo posted:

The point was to facilitate further discussion on the issue as it's nuanced and challenging to talk about. My bad for trying to have a discussion.

Hub Cat posted:

My "Not involved in grooming and sexual harassment" 2000 word essay has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my essay.

Canine Blues Arooo posted:

not a bot posted:

Gonna post this online, this is surely something that us innocent people do.

Arsenic Lupin posted:

Here is the thing specifically about making sexual charges in or around gaming.

Xander77 posted:

Ok. What is it that innocent people* do when accused of abuse they didn't commit?

(Assuming they exist to begin with)

Xander77 posted:

Ok. What is it that innocent people* do when accused of abuse they didn't commit?

(Assuming they exist to begin with)

graventy posted:

I know what you mean, gaming is a cesspool, but this goes for accusations in *every* field.

Xander77 posted:

Ok. What is it that innocent people* do when accused of abuse they didn't commit?

(Assuming they exist to begin with)

Arsenic Lupin posted:

Absolutely. I'm saying that the problem in gaming is much, much worse because of Gamergate.

HopperUK posted:

It is interesting, and by interesting I mean depressing, to see how many people (not picking on anyone in particular) will fall instantly to 'oh my God, what if *I* were accused of rape?'

HopperUK posted:

It is interesting, and by interesting I mean depressing, to see how many people (not picking on anyone in particular) will fall instantly to 'oh my God, what if *I* were accused of rape?' and then obsess about that, rather than thinking of the victim first. It makes me think about those studies where when the scientists didn't use the word 'rape', a *lot* of male college students would admit to forcing girls to have sex. I can't find the numbers on a quick look but it was worryingly high.

Not as high as the number of women I know who've been victims, though. That's what I think some folk don't see, or perhaps just can't see. Sometimes you'll hear an awful statistic like 'half of all women suffer sexual abuse' or whatever and just based on the women I know well enough to talk about this stuff with, I've *never* heard a number high enough to reflect reality. If you broaden it to sexual harassment I'd say it's almost everyone.

ImpAtom posted:

Well, among other things, false accusations usually fall apart very quickly. Even if you falsely accuse someone you're probably going to gently caress up somewhere pretty obvious because it's a lot harder to smear someone than you'd think. The vast majority of the time this happens it falls apart pretty easily because the person can relatively easily prove where they were or what they were doing.

VostokProgram posted:

Yeah I don't think there's ever been a single accusation against a high profile person that turned out to be false, since MeToo started