the culture of social justice activism needs to move from callout/cancelling people to actual accountability work and avenues towards healing and redemption. we’ve long since hit a point of diminishing returns with putting people on blast publicly.
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i don’t wanna be a pessimist, but i just don’t see that happening; it’s a lot of fucking work.
like, as someone who ran a “safer space” for a number of years and dealt with this kind of thing multiple times per year, it is just…so much. this anarcho zine called “What About the Rapists?” details a lot of experiences and how different groups attempted to deal with the task of having to be: a collective, the cops, social workers, counselors, mediators, etc. all at the same time. because that’s basically what is required to do all of this properly. and even then, you’re talking like, years of work.
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like i was part of this whole shitty yelling at people on twitter to hold them accountable in 2010 and it didnt fucking work then
like heres a story: two women developers who were dating were hanging out at gdc, and raph koster approached them to talk design, as a peer, as designers at GDC like to do with eachother. instead of talking they literally ran away together. one of them wrote a long screed online about how much raph sucks for being a man and old guard or whatever, and a bunch of idiots (me included) got sucked into it, dunking on him. people dunking on him went so far as to say HES PROBABLY DONE HORRIBLE THINGS and like speculating on that
years later, in 2014 i was doing a talk at indiecade and i saw raph. i had seperated myself from the cult of sex abuse and hatred and remembered reading some of raphs shit on design and ALSO THAT HE KNEW WHAT GEMSTONE WAS
i figured he might not recognize me, but midway through our conversation he DROPS HIS BAG ON THE GROUND and hugs me. he was like 'OH MY GOD! YOUR EX GAVE ME A HORRIBLE COMPLEX AND I COULDNT MAKE ANY GAMES FOR SIX MONTHS IM SO GLAD QUEERS IN GAMES DONT ACTUALLY HATE ME"
i apologized and he said i didnt need to because talking to me was so pleasant, we have sworn to do a drum circle together someday, and he always says hi and tells me excitedly about new projects when he sees me
that interaction made me realize what a destructive thing i was part of and how that destruction has rippled out through games discourse since. how that destruction has rippled out through queer dating scenes since.
theres so much UNLEARNING everyone has to do around all of this, how to nuture and heal, how to communicate, how to actually work together and protect eachother. these are weapons no ones naturally equipped with because these behaviors arent in the interest of financial success
there are so many people plucking up the marginalized and harming them with no consequence. there are so many people taking advantage of those harmed for their own personal gain
SO MUCH in society needs an overhaul before we get things right
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abuse is a cycle. many abusers are also abuse victims. the more avenues we can provide for both abusers and their victims to escape that cycle the better.
it is very sad that this incident had to end this way. but if you are an abuser, you are responsible for the consequences of the harm you have done, whether or not they are fair or proportionate. I don’t think anything should have happened differently in terms of alec being called out and confronted with his past misdeeds. people get angry, and rightfully so in situations like this. what I hope can improve in the future is that people like him will not feel isolated and hopeless in terms of what they can do once it’s time to be held accountable.
it shouldn’t have to come down to these small individual communities to do all the work. there ought to be publicly accessible resources for this kind of thing. it is a crime that the thought of that is made to seem like a luxury.
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abuse is a normal part of our culture and its why everyone is so quick to tell people they dont have it that bad
i dont think you’re being reductive in this situation toups but so many people use that ‘ahhh abusers were also abused its a pattern! i figured out the solution!’ no. we can just start at the base that EVERYONE HAS BEEN ABUSED and the world is FULL OF ABUSERS because of this. its not a ‘cycle’ its a tried and true TRADITION.
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no you’re absolutely right
saying it’s a tradition really resonates. I think about hazing rituals a lot. I feel like it’s an extreme variant of a pattern that exists in all avenues of society.
I suffered this way, so why shouldn’t you?
actually, because I suffered this way, and internalized it, it’s good that I can make you suffer the same way.
on some level this is what we are all taught from very early on.
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America in 2019 knows only two ways of responding to well-substantiated sexual assault allegations: this, or putting the guy on the Supreme Court.
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forgive me if this is a hot take but there had to be a better way to handle this situation than “make a twitter post your billion followers will turn into a Serious Cancellation Attempt” especially because it seemed like whisper networks were working here, she forgave him and he was in therapy and shit to try and not be an awful person. obviously I have 0 love for abusers and people need to be held accountable but the process isnt rooted in fucking Twitter. posting isn’t actually accountability work, its just poisoned internet shit that inevitably snowballs like this because there is no avenue for healing or redemption by design. callout posts and cancel culture have just evolved into this fucked-up group hyper-cruelty and im so tired of it because nothing will ever change, i felt that way when i told people about my rapist and everybody believed her over me because it was a fucking popularity contest and I got canceled instead for being a “liar.” its such a fucking racket. something has to change, people have to be willing to do some work, otherwise we are going to be doing this forever
also this whole thing overshadowed the person who got everybody talking about this and everyone else who spoke up so you know that’s cool I guess!!
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This one’s going to be open world with RPG elements instead of the roguelite with distinct sectors format of the original. I think the narrative elements were the weakest part of Everspace, so I hope they don’t lean too heavily on that for the sequel.
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Not enough copper fades.
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Definitely true!
I did take quite a shine to it eventually. I’d be playing it more right now if WoW Classic hadn’t started eating my life. But the dialogue and plot is so perfunctory and terrible that I wish it went away. On the other hand, I got the relic that makes the people stop chasing you, which removes the time pressure, and I like the game a lot more this way even though I can tell it’s not really tuned for it and it makes each run take too long. I would love to see that playstyle expanded into a full open world Elitelike thing.
Had no idea there was a relic for that!
@toups you get a shout out in this one.
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oh wow
the part where he is talking about someone posting the ad for the toyota echo sweepstakes on facebook… that someone was me lol. I can’t believe he went to such lengths to find it.
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Demo is LIVE up-to 4th September.
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Played this at PAX, it’s legit
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This is extremely good.
The phone version just gave me an ad for another game by this same non profit that was narrated by Richard Dawkins and now I’m not sure I want to give them money. 
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