- Joined
- Jul 10, 2015
You say that like he isn't right.
If only we had evidence of Haiti being a shitshow ever since they overthrew the French.
(Continued from his Mayflower tweet.)
Gotta love how his sugarcoating went from "It's a slow-burn" to "It's a letdown".
Muh misty meaner.
Pics or we'll still make fat jokes. (Like that would really stop us either way.)
If only we had evidence of Haiti being a shitshow ever since they overthrew the French.
(Continued from his Mayflower tweet.)
Gotta love how his sugarcoating went from "It's a slow-burn" to "It's a letdown".
Muh misty meaner.
Pics or we'll still make fat jokes. (Like that would really stop us either way.)
If you write a book about Gamergate, I will buy it day one.Sure thing. This one's for you, @RodgerDodger.
Before I continue, I need to point out that when it comes to the kind of behavior that got a bug up GG's collective asscrack, Jim Sterling and Bob Chipman may as well be patient zero and patient alpha: Both provably had involvement with Feminist Frequency and Anita Sarkeesian long before GG ever happened (with Jim in particular throwing shade for her and declaring her to be a "monster that gamers created," ignoring that she was getting perpetual coverage just by claiming to have been harassed). Both were waist-deep in the clique that caused GG to blow up the way it did, both actively tried to do their part to hamstring the movement, and both wound up losing their job with The Escapist because of it - Bob because he was fired, Jim because he quit. Jim is IRL friends with many people who had major parts in GG opposition, including Zoe Quinn, Leigh Alexander, Ben Kuchera, Patrick Klepek, and more.
All of which brings us to what happened with his quitting the Escapist. When GG was in full swing, lolcow chronicleers of the time noted that Jim Sterling was actually on-board with GG-related discussion happening on The Escapist (he did a Jimquisition he doesn't like to talk about where he said to let the discussion happen, so long as it really was about ethics), before promptly doing an about-face after the clique called in their marks and and condemning it a few days later. At the time The Escapist was one of the few sites not to kowtow to the Game Journo Pros team and mass-censor discussion of Quinn (and subsequently, Gamergate), and they were planning to do an article set where both sides of the GG divide were going to get a chance to say their peace.
....Anyone familiar with Anti-GG at this point knows what that means.
For the unfamiliar, Anti-GG did everything possible to prevent Gamergate from gaining a mainstream presence, to the point of shutting down discussion on numerous platforms and actively going after anyone who had a big enough audience that they could reach others. One of the Pro-GG names they were considering was Slade Villena - AKA Roguestar, who, while a fucking asshole, pretty much called every fucking thing that happened with GG opposition over the next few years. Quinn and friends, eager to shut down a potential way of GG reaching an audience, had Bob and Jim sperg the fuck out, and try to prevent the event on the grounds that Villena was a "serial harasser." While the pair did succeed at getting the article series cancelled, several pieces of the pro-GG side had gone up by the time they did so, and the Internet has not forgotten. Both he and Bob were ultimately told to knock off the horse-shit by corporate since they were rapidly turning the bulk of The Escapist into a shit-show and making the work environment toxic (much as Dan Olson and Kyle Oancitizen did at channel awesome in the same way at the time, by trying to force everyone to take their side of the conflict).
Bob grumbled and promised to back off (he didn't, and would later get fired), but Jim decided he was the king of fuck and wanted to play hardball, and apparently was convinced corporate would cave if he threatened to leave. I'm not sure if he thought that his being a comparatively big fish in a relatively big pond would grant him special status, or if he was just convinced that this was the right thing to do, but what we do know is the hilarious aftermath.
See, while Jim was relatively popular, somewhere like 93% of the Escapist's income is from Yahtzee alone, and Yahtzee himself is pretty much pro-GG in everything but name, having zero respect for SJWs and having gone on record with saying that the correct response is to make fun of them. Yahtzee also constantly takes potshots at Jim's clique buddies. Suffice to say, Jim basically tried to force The Escapist into the choice of mass-censoring the site to appease Jim's journo buddies and Indie Dev friends (many of which visibly tried to pressure Greg Tito in the GJP leaks), so the at-the-time head of The Escapist knew fucking exactly what was going on, and given the choice between siding with their actual customerbase and siding with Jim and friends, they wisely decided to side with their customers.
Jim was not pleased, and promptly attacked The Escapist:
Jim left The Escapist the following day.
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