Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Fish

As of right now, I’m stepping away from doing the Rush B Podcast or working on Rush B Media. It’s hard to say, but for the past few months I’ve just been unhappy. It could be burn out or it could be other things, but I just no longer find the same joy in CS that I did when I started this insane adventure. This podcast and this twitter started out as something I did in my free-time, but slowly grew into something that I just constantly found myself doing - which is fine if I enjoyed it, but lately I just haven’t. It’s felt like more of a burden and something I’m obligated to do rather than something that excites me. I thought making the website Rush B Media would have been able to ignite the spark again inside of me, but as hard as I tried, it just didn’t. It felt like even more work and more responsibility that I never even imagined I would get from this all. I thought about just stopping a number of times, but always felt obligated from the friends I had made or the people that listened to the podcast to just keep going. So I did.



Then the tweet from Richard Lewis and the subsequent episode were made. And then I received a number of death threats against me and my family. And then someone from my family received a death threat. Then I had people trying to get into my Twitter account, my email, and other social media accounts.



This was a low.



But I kept going and ignoring the noise because I thought I needed to prove that it didn’t affect me at all (It did) and so I started to try harder and harder. But trying harder and harder meant doing all the wrong things - pushing the envelope in jokes, picking dumb fights, and generally acting like an idiot. That was wrong. The best explanation I can give was that I was tilted from it all and I couldn’t get back on solid ground. Doesn’t excuse anything, but it is an explanation. I’ve felt physically and emotionally ill from continuing to do this entire venture when deep down I no longer had the same kind of enjoyment that I did when I first started, so as of now, I’m just stopping it all. I will not be going to any events, I will not be doing the podcast, and I will not be involved in Rush B Media from here on out. I’m just hitting a giant pause button and stopping it all.



Regarding the recent allegations against me and others, I didn’t respond for a number of reasons. First, I wanted to ignore it all and just move forward. It was untruths and drama that I wanted absolutely no part in and broadcast on the highest of scales that started from a few people who simply had something against me. Second, by recognizing it I would amplify the noise and make it seem like it was credible. I didn’t want to do that. I just wanted to do my own thing. Third, I didn’t want others who were part of this to get involved. Just didn’t seem necessary.

But now, I’m going to address everything and show you my side of what happened and be as clear as I can be, because this will be the only time I will talk about it at all. In Richard’s episode and his several tweets, he made a number of claims that simply were not true or were embellished.



Let's address a few things that came up in the episode. Let’s address the concept of “Journalistic Integrity”, which seemed to be a common theme and argument as to why I was not a trustworthy person or journalist at all. At no single time can I find any egregious form of misconduct on behalf of my work or on Rush B Media that is in violation of the code of any common practice of journalistic ethics. At all. I have not willfully lied to any individual, I have not knowingly spread false information, and to the best of my ability I have always made sure to report what I know to be the truth at the time I report it. My reports published through either the works published on Medium, works published in collaboration with Flickshot, and the works published on Rush B Media, were all accurate and using information that I collected legitimately. I have never stolen a leak from any individual and published it under my own name, which is an accusation that I find to be reprehensible. Whenever I am told confidential information, I ask if it is reportable or not. If the person telling me the information says it is okay to report, then I seek for confirmation from as many additional sources as possible. The people who supply me with my information are either current professionals within the scene, former professionals, personalities, other journalists, or friends of people involved. I have not published a report that I was not confident in and knew that if I published something inaccurate, my reputation would be challenged. That is what I did and I am proud of the works that I did report. If the community did not want to believe certain reports I made, that is completely valid. Nobody has to believe the reports that I say - it is (sorry, was) my job to continuously report accurate information until I established a level of trust within the community.



I want to talk about the issue of using an HLTV photo in an article. Yes, it is true that an HLTV photo was used in one article for approximately two hours. We had published a report and the user who was responsible for doing so was told not to use any photos from HLTV. Once we realized that a photo from HLTV had been used, it was immediately replaced. It was an honest mistake and we put measures in place to ensure that it would not happen again. As far as I am aware, HLTV knows the situation and also knows that it was not an egregious disregard of HLTV copyright. If HLTV would like to seek compensation for the usage of the photo without their permission for the two hours it was published, they are more than welcome to contact me and I will abide by whatever they want.



Now, let’s talk about the allegations of racism. We had one user who occasionally used racial slurs which I disagreed with constantly and let the person know so in private. This individual never wrote for RBM, never published anything in RBM, and never even edited an article for RBM. Basically, he was just a person hanging around in there that I was close with. He hasn't been part of RBM for a long time. I've always been against racial slurs and you can check my history in any podcast episode if you want to. I dislike it and I wish people would stop saying them all together. Now, why did I still have this individual in the discord server with us if he was saying such foul language? Because in my naïve mind, I believed that I could possibly change their manner so long as I could keep talking with him. I guess that didn't work and I have no one to blame for myself.



For the ideas or concepts that I want to push anyone else out of the scene? I really don't even know where to begin. I don't. No reasonable person could possibly assume that. It's insane. I have no idea how that idea even began to form in someone's mind. Me not liking an individual does not mean that I want to see them removed from a scene. I never went out of my way to create baseless character attacks on someone.



Finally, on the topic of stealing leaks and of my accusations of plagiarism against other publications. This originally started when a user, Jacob Doraty, aka AssPancakes, aka GodPancakes, and for some time, aka Mr_Ham98 was freelancing for Rush B Media. This was the individual who told me repeatedly that Skadoodle was considering retiring and he was told this from an ex-Manager in the CSGO scene who was close to the player. I will not say more than that, however I do have the name that he told me. He gave me permission to post the story so long as I got additional confirmation - which I did. I asked Jacob several times if I could do this and he told me several times that I could. I did not steal the leak. He gave it to me. He was okay with me publishing it. I do not see an issue here.



Later, I asked various writers to write up stories on various leaks that I got during the day so that when I received additional confirmation, we could go ahead and publish them. Jacob contributed to writing what would become the Golden and Brollan to Tempo Storm story that was published for RealSport101. Jacob was working for both RealSport and Rush B Media at the same time and at the time he was told this information. Later, he left because he was disgruntled with another writer and he returned to RealSport full time. A week later, RealSport published the Golden and Brollan story. I talked with both Jacob and Ezekiel Carsella - aka @jamaican116 and jamaican on discord) about this and my concerns that the story was using information and language that was solely intended for Rush B Media. I brought up that this was, in my understanding, plagiarism. I still am not sure if this constitutes plagiarism or not, however, the fact is that Jacob took information and parts of the article that he did not write and gave it to a competing publication.



In conversations with Jacob, he fully admitted to taking the article and providing it to RealSport101. My reaction and my words were not even tempered and I regret them, however I hope you understand my reaction to the entire situation. Having said many times that I also harbored no ill feelings towards either individual, they both took advantage of Richard Lewis’ comments and sent him selective portions of our conversations to paint me in a poor light. I have included in an imgur album attached to this twitlonger various screenshots which further support my side.



That is the story. That is my side. The screenshots and context and information that was shown against me was taken out of context from a situation where I was understandably upset. I have never intentionally tried to ruin someone’s career within CS from a report or through twitter (although the dogpiling about Journalistic Ethics from some other journalists without ever contacting me to know both sides was nice). At this point, this matters very little and doesn’t do a whole lot to show my side of the story. My recent actions may have pushed the envelope and I regret those that I’ve hurt.



To the friends I’ve made, you know how to contact me.



To the people that still send me death threats, congrats. You’ve won. Now you can go back to doing it to the CS pro that you hate during the current week.



https://imgur.com/a/Y36DFi4

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