And if we go a bit lower and look at people who are not running websites or doing anything creative but are mostly known for their social activism on Twitter, you will also get calls to boycott my game, or calling me anything from “scum” to “fuckwank”.

But all of that pales in comparison to one other story.

See, I am one of those people.

I’m not entirely sure what exactly Jonathan Holmes (Destructoid) has against learning something on the Internet. I mean, it is the leading source of information these days. Anyway, I assume Jonathan meant “things that are not necessarily true”, and that he simply wants an anti-harassment organization to succeed. A noble goal. I think organizations like that are needed. I wish they weren’t, but that’s sadly not the case.

However, an anti-harassment organization co-led by Alex Lifschitz is like an anger management class taught by Lobo. Not only a mistake, but a mistake of potentially severe consequences. And while Lobo is not real, Alex Lifschitz is, even if he does try to co-run an organization the acronym of which is a CON.

What has Alex Lifschitz done?

He attempted to ruin our game — the result of two years of hard work of an eight-person team plus a dozen of cooperators — by tweeting heavy experience-ruining spoilers to tens of thousands of people.

The social reach of the first such tweet was about 40K people, considering it was retweeted by the journalists Arthur Chu and Ian Miles Cheong:

I hope the black bars are understandable, just imagine a movie with a twist or a big surprise and that is more or less it. You know, “Darth Vader is Luke’s father” level of spoilers. If you finished Ethan Carter, you can see the full spoiler-ridden tweet here. For what it’s worth, that is not the only possible explanation of events in the game, but it is the most popular one.

A month later he tweeted the same thing again, this time it reach about 20K people:

Again, here’s the full version if you already played the game or do not care about heavy spoilers.

The social reach of these tweets is one issue, but even if it was zero, the idea that an anti-harassment organization, one full of assurances that they “never retaliate” and “never fight harassment with more harassment”…

…is co-led by someone like Alex Lifschitz is absurd. I mean, I understand he has the necessary trolling experience, but that puts him in a consultant’s role rather than that of a director.

People behind #GamerGate face harassment and abuse just like anyone else involved in social movements, and this is a person with moral qualifications to run an anti-harassment organization?

To be absolutely clear, I never spoke to neither Alex Lifschitz nor Zoe Quinn, let alone attacked them. On the contrary, I once argued in favor of Zoe Quinn when discussing a statement I deeply disagreed with. That was after both of Lifschitz’s tweets, by the way.

And what I just showed, Mister Holmes, is the reason why I am one of those who hope that CON will, indeed, “fail”. Promoting an organization that is supposed to help the victims of online hate but is run by a hypocrite who actively tries to ruin strangers’ livelihood and life, is not something I can get behind.

The disgusting tweet from Lifschitz was surrounded by equally disgusting discussion. Jane Ng, an artist at Campo Santo, makers of Firewatch, did not react well to the game…

…which surprised me, as she happily offers lessons on how to behave on the Internet.

To be clear, Jane Ng has every right to dislike the game. That is not an issue here. But the hypocrisy is appalling, and, more importantly, the fact that she, a game developer herself, did not even blink when her friend posted experience-ruining spoilers about an indie game (or any game, for that matter, although it is worth noting that both Ethan and Firewatch are in the same “narrative-focused indie games” category)… That’s just depressingly disappointing.

But it’s the case of Ian Miles Cheong that is truly enlightening. This is his opinion on the game during that particular conversation:

And this is what his opinion on the game was two days after the premiere, before one of its creators dared to have a different opinion on #GamerGate:

But — I just use this only as an example of what cultural Maoism can do to you. A couple of months ago Ian apologized to gamers…

…and basically left the authoritarian Left. Good for him. I’m happy I can end up even the worst chapter of this post on a positive note (EDIT: also, Ian reached out to me and a bridge was built).