Anonymous asked: "[...] shit like Penny-Arcade and Reddit" I don't have much experience of reddit, but everything I've ever read from Gabe or Tycho has been 100% against sexism and sexual harrassment. Could you explain what "shit" you're referring to here?

Should really change the title of this blog to “Trigger Warning” at this point, but seriously, trigger warning for rape.



This is a question I am getting a lot.

Here are JUST TWO examples of the way the two guys who run Penny-Arcade (something that can pretty safely described at this point as a “video game related entertainment empire”) have been intensely shitty about issues pertaining to women.

1. Dickwolves.

I seriously cannot get into all the details of this AGAIN, but it is meticulously documented here - The Pratfall of Penny Arcade

The Cliff’s Notes are they made a rape joke, people spoke out about it, they reacted like infants and then their fans proceeded to terrorize, threaten and be horrible to the women who spoke out. Their fans threatened to rape people, accused rape survivors of lying about having been raped, and the two men running the site said nothing in order to continue to profit from their fan’s outrage. When one of them, Mike, did speak up it was to antagonize the people pleading with him to listen. Read the link for the full details.

2. Rampant, Unapologetic Transphobia From A Co-Founder

And JUST TODAY that same guy, Mike, got on his Twitter and started saying some ignorant, transphobic things. I don’t know if anyone has written about this yet or summed it up, but that link is coming, I promise you. [Update: The Border House has a write-up here via q0rt) This is a week or two after he had already said a lot of these things, and people very politely and firmly explained to him what he was doing wrong.

I don’t know Mike or Jerry (his partner and the site’s co-creator), but judging on their behavior here, it’s clear they don’t give a FUCK about people who aren’t them. They display an intense lack of empathy while claiming to foster a community of inclusiveness for geeks. But what they typically seem to mean by geeks is straight cis dudes.

So, yeah. They’re awful. I love PAX - their convention - because all my friends come to Boston and I get to see them. Last year I went on a borrowed badge so that I could avoid giving money to these guys, but I feel pretty guilty about even being a warm body under their rented roof now. Don’t give these guys any of your money or clicks - I know you like StipSearch or whatever - but they’re doing a lot of harm in the gaming community, a community which is desperate for more diversity.

- Casey Malone, Internet Jerk-Off/Blogger/God I Wish This Tumblr Had More Jokes