This has a topic now:
https://kiwifarms.net/threads/christopher-king-pingpongcall-cheetondorito.34677/
First up, I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post this, but I want to get things cataloged as they are happening. Will update this post as I find out more. Mods please move this as-needed.
This issue is still ongoing and it is not clear what exactly is happening - it could be one guy being a liar and a thief, or it could be the other guy being a complete fucking sperg.
I found out about this when I was looking over Metokur's twitter profile for anything interesting. About four hours ago this post by
@Merryweatherey (webcomic author and apparently a member of this community, as the forum informed me) was retweeted by Metokur:
It linked to this video (which has been archived):
The video details the story of
@Merryweatherey and how, after being at the center of some drama (samurai buyer) a few months ago, has been seemingly extorted for money by a journo (Christopher King) that has written for The Escapist in the past. I don't know a ton about the players in either of this, just what I've seen unfolding so far.
Chris King supposedly has cancer and has been asking for (and allegedly extorting) money to help with treatments. Metokur even mentioned a sum of $36,000 being raised through crowdfunding to help this person. Gofundme pictured here:
All of this seemed kind of weird but then this medical record surfaced and I'll just let you guys take a look at it:
As you'll see, and as many on twitter have already deduced, the fourth entry down seems a bit fishy. Almost looks like it was shopped into place. Not only that, but the word "aggressive" is spelled wrong, as is the name of the alleged cancer, "Hodgkin". Furthermore, the lowercase "g" that appears twice in this entry is of a different font than any other entry on the list. Plus, the entry is misaligned.
There is a person with the handle of "@ 90sSandcastle" that is claiming to be a friend of Chris King (the man accused of extortion) and they are defending him. This person is also the one that posted the medical record, claiming it was sent to him by Chris. As well, this person is saying that the accuser (merryweather) is not to be trusted. And along with that came the expected avalanche of shitslinging.
Updates from Chris King's twitter:
Apparently Chris was accepting money in order to... protect people from online harassment? It also looks like they're appealing to more popular handles in order to build support, as seen here:
Truth be told, the guy might actually have cancer. Though the discrepancies in the documentation are very strange. And the $100/month payments to prevent trolls? Fucking weird.
I'm updating this as I find stuff. More keeps coming out as the day goes on. And maybe some of you guys can find out more about what is going on. I'll be keeping an eye on it. We'll see if anything comes of this.
------------------------------------- 25-9-2017
Alright, there are a pair of updates, one minor and one possibly larger.
First up, and this is hearsay through Metokur's twitter, when asked for his discharge papers Chris King allegedly stated that he doesn't have them because he was dishonorably discharged. Twitter thread here:
And secondly, the aforementioned and pictured Gofundme campaign has been deleted (update: it was removed by gofundme because they couldn't trace where the money was going) under 24 hours after this story started to break:
The campaign can still be seen as a cached version.
Beyond that there's not much else to report.
------------------------------------- Night of the second day.
I've found a list of a lot of his articles, mostly written for The Escapist:
https://christopherking.contently.com/ (this one didn't want to archive properly, hence the direct link)
Additionally, here is an archived article from The Mirror discussing his (now closed) crowdfunding campaign:
http://archive.is/JOtzD
There also appears to be an interview with Merryweather about this incident:
http://archive.is/Z51nl
Here are some excerpts:
I contacted a person that this so-called journalist claimed to work closely with, asking if he really has cancer. The person replied “I don’t know.” I don’t understand how you can respond to a question like “Does your close friend and work partner really have cancer,” with an “I don’t know.”
After a lengthy discussion a consensus was reached that he would take down the harassment subreddit [created by Chris and friends for the purpose of tracking Merryweather] and I would pay him money every month in return for them not harassing me. I was exhausted and an idiot, so I agreed. It was humiliating. But after a while they started up sending emails again anyway, privately saying that I had destroyed the mans career for daring to ask questions about the authenticity of his cancer claims.
This person has been after me for over 6 months at this point, ever since the Samurai Buyer incident concluded. I assume it’s because he thinks I make a lot of money by being a featured author on LINE and writing so many comics on Tapas.
And then the article gets into other stuff. They even invoke Chris-Chan, so it's got a little something for everyone.
------------------------------------- More intrigue!
It would seem that after the article went up, after an interview (to be posted here soon), and with the prospect of more investigation by other journos, Chris King has seemingly deleted his entire twitter account:
Though there is someone saying that he's renamed his account and is now here: @otakostudios - note that this is a handle very similar to @otakostudio (no S at the end), who is Chris King's friend that posted the medical documents. (shown above)
Otherwise, King is acting really odd, retweeting stuff from his old account and just kind of pretending none of this is happening.
It also appears that the gofundme campaign was closed down by gofundme themselves, after being unable to track how or where the money was being spent. The campaign was not taken down by Chris King and presumably will be put back up once King can send them evidence to assure gofundme that the donations are being spent on their stated purpose. There is also word that this email is floating out there somewhere, if I can find it I'll post it here.
There is an interview about this situation being uploaded to YouTube currently. Once it is out of processing I'll post it here for our viewing pleasure. In the meantime, here's a small tidbit from the video's author:
This issue is still pretty murky and could go in a whole plethora of directions.
------------------------------------- 26-9-2017 - Dawn of the Third Day
Looks like Chris was fired from a previous job at GameRaven for being unable to show proof of his cancer diagnosis.
The interview with Chris King and others is up and archived.
Some excerpts...
2:25 - Sean Halliday [coworker at GameRaven]: One day I was getting ready to play football and a message pops up. It was Chris King. Demanding that... well, not demanding but requesting that I kinda vouch for him. And what happened was that a lot of people were saying that he was faking the cancer. Obviously that he was suffering [??], that the Gofundme was fraudulent. He got really panicky and he was asking us to sort of vouch for him. At that point I was like "I don't know him."
2:55 - Sean Halliday: I work closely with the editor of the site who kind of decided he [Chris King] was on there and whatnot. And I said to him, you know "we can't really risk this, there's no proof." We've never seen proof he was ill. He was constantly on Discord. He sounded healthy. He's posted a few pictures around that time, he's always been a heavyset person, which is the reason why I don't believe he's ever been in the military. He doesn't look like he's ever been fit for military service.
[after this they cut to a recording of Chris King discussing his military career]
3:27 - Chris King: I didn't want to be there but it's the right thing to do. [...] But I was dishonorably discharged. Nobody told me how bad it really was. Nobody told me we had to kill women or children. And I couldn't do it. And I never knew it smelled so bad when someone died. [deep breath] I killed 12 people: six men, four women, two children.
4:04 - Sean Halliday: It was thick, his hair was thick. He's got really thick eyebrows and for the treatment that he was claiming to go through, you wouldn't have that. You'd be in a really bad state. My dad's best friend passed away from the disease he's claiming to suffer from. So that was another reason I why I took interest in this because it was like... this guy, nothing matches. As time went by we decided to kick him the website, delete all his content and this has happened to him on numerous different websites.
5:54 - Sean Halliday: He always came off like he wanted to be part of the conversation and he was willing to lie to be part of it. So he'd say these things that don't make any sense. And when you'd kind of respond to it [...] he'd become very aggressive. And apparently that was a trait he'd been displaying before I joined the website.
12:37 - Sean Halliday: This guy [Chris] isn't a nice dude.
13:24 - Sean Halliday: If you notice through his updates he's very dramatic. He'll say he's got no house, for one part he was living in a car but you're still constantly on Steam and at one point he was playing Final Fantasy XIV online and I don't know how good his car's wifi is but that's pretty difficult. And again when he's apparently claimed that he's ill or in hospital, even today he claimed he was in hospital. I can go to his Steam account, he's been playing games today. He was always online on Steam regardless of what he claimed on his twitter account.
14:16 - Sean Halliday: Every single tweet is the same style with Chris, every single one. So Terry [Chris' wife] is tweeting saying "Chris is ill", you know, she's asking famous people to retweet him. She's giving these updates. Then out of the blue this guy called Matt just appears. And he's tweeting as Matt. He's never mentioned a Matt and this guy appeared out of nowhere. [...] Who the fuck is this Matt? He just came out of nowhere. He's never mentioned it, there's no proof. [...] When you google [Matt's email] you get a pinterest in Chris King's name, you get a steam profile updates. Chris King has used the name three or four times across steam. Matt does not exist. That is Chris' email, another one of Chris' emails.
Chris King: I haven't used that email in years. It's not like its tied to anything important.
21:36 - Steve Sawyer [coworker at GameRaven]: [shortly after meeting Chris] One of the first things Chris did was go "here's my gofundme, could you please check it out and spread the word."
23:22 - Steve Sawyer: Very soon after he [Chris] launched his gofundme, there was a person on imgur who strongly suspected that something didn't quite line up. And they went onto imgur and threw a post up that's like "who really is Chris King?" And for a minute it caused a minor controversy. I think Chris being a little bit more savvy in the ways of social media [...] was able to shout that person down and they ended up deleting their twitter account and their imgur account.
[This controversy is partially why Chris was let go from GameRaven in February 2016, in addition to aforementioned issues at the office]
25:19 - Steve Sawyer: Before he ever knew Merry as a person [...] he had already kind of created enough curiosity around his antics to where one person was like "not here dude."
30:23 - Steve Sawyer: He [Sawyer's business partner] starts digging and he's able to find some stuff [...] where he was like "I found this bitcoin forum" and it's his [Chris'] name PingPongCall and it looks like he's trying to trade access to a bunch of different accounts. [...] But what it was was very clear. It was essentially: if I receive $250 I will give you the login information for these following things [...] his GameRaven stuff was in there.
This has a topic now:
https://kiwifarms.net/threads/christopher-king-pingpongcall-cheetondorito.34677/
