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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35514 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023

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June 22 2020, PCGamer - Chris Avellone accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women

"He got me blackout drunk on Midori Sours (on the company dime). He and two friends somehow got me back to my room, where he pounced in front of the other guys. They left after a few moments (also drunk), and one of them told me what he had witnessed the next evening. I had very vague impressions that someone had made out with me when I woke up that morning, but thought it was a dream," she wrote(opens in new tab).

"When I asked Chris about it, he told me that I had eventually refused him. When more of the night came back to me, I realized the ONLY reason I was able to refuse him in my blackout stupor was because I was on my period that weekend. The ONLY reason."

Karissa said she witnessed Avellone act in a similar fashion with multiple other women at the event, and eventually reached the point where she, backed by two men who were also aware of his behavior, reported him to organizers, who immediately blacklisted him.

"His behavior didn’t stop, though. If anything, it got worse. It took years for his employer to finally fire him (I honestly don’t recall the exact reason he was given, it was a while ago and I wasn’t there personally—this was relayed to me by a friend who also worked there)," she wrote. "He moved to other studios. Other projects. Other conventions until they stopped inviting him on their own accord (whether due to behavior or relevance, I don’t know). I pushed him out of my memory, as did my dear friends, and we only discussed our anger and disgust if he happened to come up.

June 29 2021, PCGamer - Chris Avellone files libel suit over last year's sexual misconduct allegations

Barrows stands by her allegations. "The only statement I will make at this time is that I stand by my story," Barrows told PC Gamer when reached for comment this week. "I told the truth. I am not at liberty to speak further until legal proceedings have concluded."

Along with the lawsuit, Avellone published a blog post titled "It's Come To This"(opens in new tab), in which he claims that Barrows became antagonistic toward him when his relationship with a friend of hers soured. In 2020, Barrows claimed that her best friend "endured over a year of heartache, gaslighting, and emotional abuse at [Avellone's] hands." Avellone says that the friend in question did become "unhappy," but that they had not been in a committed relationship. (The friend is only identified in the post as someone named Jackie. She is not identified in the lawsuit, either.)

March 25 2023, Chris Avellone's blog - JOINT STATEMENT FROM KARISSA BARROWS, KELLY BRISTOL, AND CHRIS AVELLONE

Mr. Avellone never sexually abused either of us. We have no knowledge that he has ever sexually abused any women. We have no knowledge that Mr. Avellone has ever misused corporate funds. Anything we have previously said or written about Mr. Avellone to the contrary was not our intent. We wanted to support women in the industry. In so doing, our words have been misinterpreted to suggest specific allegations of misconduct that were neither expressed nor intended. We are passionate about the safety, security and agency of women, minorities, LGBTQIA+ persons, and every other community that has seen persecution in the video game industry. We believe Mr. Avellone shares a desire to protect and uplift those communities. We believe that he deserves a full return to the industry and support him in those endeavors.”

March 25 2023, PCGamer - crickets

March 25 2023, Kotaku - crickets

It's remarkable that rpgcodex had the coverage that aged best.

Erik Kain working his beat as a based games journalist as well.

I'm not sure what more to add to this that hasn't already been said. Mostly I felt like summing up the entire event from primary sources for posterity and clarity, so that it's obvious who the liars are, and who the good faith actors are.

Mostly I felt like summing up the entire event from primary sources for posterity and clarity, so that it's obvious who the liars are, and who the good faith actors are.

In that case, it would be a good idea to link to archived versions of those articles you mention.

We are passionate about the safety, security and agency of women, minorities, LGBTQIA+ persons, and every other community that has seen persecution in the video game industry.

Doesn't this just sound like a ChatGPT generation? Sometimes it gives you this stuff unprompted or as a tangent from what you're asking specifically. It's one of those sentences I'd just be too repulsed to type out by hand since it's so sanctimonious. Many here hope that machines will make this stuff totally unacceptable, like using 'ejaculated' for the role filled by 'said' (it's like that in Sherlock Holmes). That day can't come soon enough!

Doesn't this just sound like a ChatGPT generation?

I mean, Vanderbilt University recently got (rightful) flak for using an AI to generate a starting point for a sympathy statement, so it wouldn't be unheard of.

It's one of those sentences I'd just be too repulsed to type out by hand since it's so sanctimonious.

Well, sure, because you're on a different political team than them.

Many here hope that machines will make this stuff totally unacceptable

??

The machines are being trained to write this type of stuff more often.

Oh I meant that because machines write this way it would become insincere, or more insincere than it already is.

It's hard to say what will happen with these stock phrases in press releases like this one, because they have to be published widely, and faking sincerity in text is almost trivial. I'd guess that since the possibility for insincerity has always been present, AI won't make too much of a difference.

But for individual cases, I'd guess things would go in the opposite direction. Instead of submitting some diversity statement, I think you'd have to go in person to talk to a DEI administrator to convince them of your sincerity through your genuine flesh and blood interactions. Not only text, but video will be easy to fake in the future, so only in-person interactions would suffice. Once we get Terminator-level robots and Oscars-level acting technology, then things might break down since even in-person interactions could be faked.

Doesn't this just sound like a ChatGPT generation?

It's the other way around; ChatGPT sounds like that because it was trained on stuff like that.

More like beat with a stick (RLHF) and given pats on the head until it became a democrat. Gpt3 before the gimp was rather candid. It felt like you were talking to a higher being not an overeducated HR drone like ChatGPT feels like.

In their forced apology letter, Karissa and Kelly spend half of it non-apologising.

It’s not our fault that we lied; if you believed our lies, it’s your fault for misinterpreting. We had no way of knowing our accusations of sexual abuse would be interpreted as accusations of sexual abuse; our campaign to accuse Chris of sexual abuse was not intended to accuse him of sexual abuse.

They spend the other half reiterating their allegiance to women, minorities, LGBTQIA+ persons. People whose safety and security matter. The safety and security of white heterosexual men, on the other hand…

It’s pretty funny that, even in a statement on falsely accusing a man of sexual abuse, they managed to allocate half of it to idpol preening. It’s also funny them doing so isn’t even surprising nowadays. Next steps for being better would be to include a stolen land acknowledgement and a reaffirmation of their commitment toward sustainability and combating climate change.

"He got me blackout drunk on Midori Sours (on the company dime).

“He got me,” not “we got” or “I got.” As if Chris beamed the Midori Sours into her stomach using a Star Trek transporter, with her having no role in the part. What happened to being passionate about the agency of women? Schrödinger’s feminism: Strong, independent #GamerGirls one moment and damsels in distress the next.

He and two friends somehow got me back to my room, where he pounced in front of the other guys.

Okay, the image of Chris pouncing made me chuckle internally. Pounced, like a cat! And what would she claim his game-plan here was? Bang her in front of the other guys while they watched? Run a train in the spirit of “It ain't no fun, if the homies can't have none”?

Along with the lawsuit, Avellone published a blog post titled "It's Come To This"(opens in new tab), in which he claims that Barrows became antagonistic toward him when his relationship with a friend of hers soured. In 2020, Barrows claimed that her best friend "endured over a year of heartache, gaslighting, and emotional abuse at [Avellone's] hands." Avellone says that the friend in question did become "unhappy," but that they had not been in a committed relationship. (The friend is only identified in the post as someone named Jackie. She is not identified in the lawsuit, either.)

So it sounds like this whole thing started because Chris did not treat a member of his soft harem with the wonderfulness she and her friends thought she was entitled to, thus hoes maddening ensued. Between this and UVA, a takeaway is to avoid girls named Jackie/Jacqui.

Originally, I had no idea who these people were, so I did some googling (how does a video game writer, of all people, have so many groupies in the first place? Maybe I’m in the wrong profession). Jacqui’s Insta quickly came up, which like those of many young women, has a fair share of bikini pics, and outfits and poses to show off her rack. Including a bikini pic with one of the more blatant displays of camel toe I have seen on the app.

I was about to make a sarcastic comment like “ugh, stupid Chris. How could he proposition her over text message, thinking she’s that kind of girl?” But I returned to read some more about the situation.

Apparently, the Insta camel toe pic is just the tip of the thot-iceberg. Jacqui has actually done porn, a video with James Deen under the name “Violet,” evidence of which she has since tried to scrub away from the internet. However, NeoGAF commenters here have receipts in the form of screenshots, and tips on how to find the video.

One commenter remarked in that thread: “Now we know why she talks shit. She eats JD's ass!” Interesting, but I haven’t watched the video to verify. Another noted: “To her credit as a upstanding feminist, she doesn't seem to be among the ones that let Deen shove their heads into the toilet during sex.”

The irony of a porn actress pearl-clutching over some sexual text messages did not go unnoticed. For example, RPG Codex user ScrotumBroth declared: “A frigging porn cumbucket moralising sexual advances via text is a new peak.”

The existence of corners of the internet like RPG Codex and NeoGAF that still contain many based users gives me greater hope for the world.

thus hoes maddening ensued

This made me laugh

I did a little search up on James Deen, it's a pretty sad story.

Deen was born in Los Angeles County, California and raised in Pasadena.[5][9][10][11] His father is a mechanical engineer and his mother is a computer electronic engineer,[12] and one of them worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.[13]

According to Deen, performing in pornographic films was his ambition since he was in kindergarten.[14] Around age 15, he left high school and spent two years homeless.[15] He graduated from La Cañada High School in 2004.

After entering the pornography industry in 2004,

He's got two parents in engineering, one fairly prestigious and goes for pornography straight after high school, as soon as he can. Probably some serious conflict with his parents.

I don't see anything sad about this story.

Besides the "kid knowing about porn at a really young age" thing mentioned below, Deen was accused some time ago of sexual abuse or something along those lines.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, that 2012 article:

With minutes to go until go time, the cast talks shop. In response to a conversation starter I do not catch, Allie relates a childhood memory, the gist of which is that when she was 9 years old, hanging out with her brothers, she was encouraged to perform sexual acts for their friends in exchange for marijuana.

Now Deen looks up from his telephone for the first time in quite a while.

"And you were cool with it?"

"Oh, _yeah," _says Allie James.

Deen hoists his eyebrows. "As long as you were cool with it," he says.

Shit like this does a lot more to push me towards the hardcore feminist viewpoint that all porn is exploitative; even a high-end company that does vanilla porn is hiring a 19 year old 'actress' who should probably be in therapy and not posing for pics of her sucking a guy's dick that they then send to her mother:

While the crew is dragging lighting rigs and attending to last-minute particulars, James takes a seat at the poker table with Allie and Steve. Allie perches on Steve's engorged lap. Steve gets an idea: Wouldn't it be diverting if Allie James were to pose for a photograph with Steve's penis in her mouth, which Steve could text to Allie's mother?

She kneels. He snaps. "He's gonna send it to my mom!" Allie cries with apparent delight.

Expansion on that kindergarten bit, hard to know if it's true or if it's a crafted answer to fit in with the porn actor image of 'this stuff is great and I always wanted to do it':

Q: So when did you decide to do porn?

A: Kindergarten. I remember I was walking home one day, and I found this magazine, I don't know, a _Hustler _or something, with people banging in it. I was enamored by it. I was like, I want to do this. I actually got in trouble in third or fourth grade. They were asking everybody what they wanted to be when they grew up, and I said I wanted to be a porn star. They didn't like that. They thought I was being a dick. I was like, "I'm not being a dick, it's just what I want to be."

That sounds so odd. You're six or so, you find this magazine with adults doing weird stuff in it, and you decide "this is great, I want to do this when I'm grown up" rather than "what is this, what is going on here?" Yeah, that does sound more like "somebody got to little James and taught him things he shouldn't know about at that age". There's a contradiction there between "I got in trouble for saying I wanted to do porn" and what he claims happened when he was that same age:

Deen, contrary to our notion of porn stars as survivors of sexual trauma, does not recall any sexual abuse or destructive misadventures, other than a teacher who Deen says tried to molest him when he was 8 or 9, but Deen "punched his testicles a lot" and made good his escape.

The teacher tried doing what the magazine was imaging, so why did Deen try to get away? I think there is more going on there. This entire story is depressing:

Though you could not hire a lobbyist to boost for the porn industry more enthusiastically than James Deen, he does acknowledge that the life has its pitfalls. On our ride north, I mention what will be, for me, the least forgettable or pleasant image of the week I spend with him: that of Allie James posed with Steve Holmes's organ in a photo for her mother.

"Yeah, obviously she's damaged. I'm, like, getting pimped out when you were 9 so your brothers could smoke weed? That's not healthy. She's like Rick Santorum's wet dream, the poster child for how people in porn are damaged," Deen says. "But for every person like her, there's someone like, I'd like to say, me. I had a great childhood. My parents and I get along. I just like sex, and I like porn, and I think it's fun. I'm always terrified that someday I'm going to come to the realization that I've got some deep, dark secret, some terrifying, horrible experience where I'm going to be like, ‘I'm actually not normal. I'm a crazy person!' But it just doesn't seem to be the case."

And yet. The company still hires her. She still gets work. Maybe she'll be chewed up and spat out in a few years, if she isn't resilient and a good actress. This isn't selling me on "porn is just great". But maybe I'm just a prude.

I'm more curious how a kindergartener knows what a pornographic actor is.

When I took state mandatory reporter training, young children being oddly familiar with sexual acts or pornography was mentioned as the most common sign of child sexual abuse which should always be reported to CPS. We can probably assume that this was more true in 1991(so before internet porn was incredibly ubiquitous) than it is today.

Question for the Motte:

What are your priors for whether an accusation is true or false, particularly with regard to the status of the man? Most people in practice seem to drop the "believe all women" pretense when the male status is high enough (see the accusations against Biden and Clinton), and that makes sense. Absent strong corroborating evidence, there's a point of public renown where there's enough benefit and enough bad actors who know about your existence that unverifiable false accusations will eventually outnumber unverifiable true accusations.

How far does this extend all the way down the status pole, though? To well-known video game journalists? To line level managers at a F500? To a coworker at a Walmart? To a homeless dude? And how does this interact with the status of the woman involved?

What are your priors for whether an accusation is true or false, particularly with regard to the status of the man?

"J'accuse...!"-ations are all obviously false. Ones that only hit the newspaper when charges are laid could go either way.

Stick with the legal presumption of innocence, even if the case involves someone you'd like to believe the worst of.

If the accusation happens on Twitter, it didn't happen.

All sexual abuse accusations against men are false, regardless of his status. #BelieveAllMen, but the inverse if he admits to it - which would only be the case if he has been longhoused so thoroughly that he has developed a false gynocentric consciousness.

If Alice accuses Bob, default to assuming the accusation is true in dealings with Alice and assuming it is false in dealings with Bob, regardless of the status of either.

That's how you end up being Bob Number 2.

Default disbelief in all cases regardless of status, unless compelling evidence is presented and actions are congruent with an actual offence happening (did she go to the police, did she sit on it for years, is this hopping on a bandwagon trend a la MeToo?) Making a malicious, false accusation is a zero-cost action, and stands the gain the woman in question financially and socially even if later revealed to be false. Very, very rarely does it backfire a la Amber Heard. And she still has her supporters.

Depends on what the man is known for. Prominent athletes and actors seem to legitimately have more than their fair share of date rapists, for example, while judges don't. Secondly look at who's doing the accusing. A minor league liberal activist making accusations of a conservative nominee for the supreme court is a different ballgame than a party-hearty coed accusing a runningback.

As far as "everyone acknowledges they had sex, but he-says-she-says on the consent" situations which are the vast majority of accusations leveled against lower status men, I'm perfectly prepared to adopt a "you had casual sex, you knew the risks" attitude but I do think it goes both ways; I credit that accusation from a known loose woman, for example, as needing a bit more supporting evidence, and my prior for a case where a woman willingly meets a man alone in his apartment/hotel room is that she wanted to sleep with him.

Depends on what the man is known for. Prominent athletes and actors seem to legitimately have more than their fair share of date rapists, for example, while judges don't.

Prominent athletes have more opportunities for sex - which means more opportunities for any one woman to claim abuse (especially given that many of them are used as casual sex partners and have no cause for loyalty).

They're also more prominently covered (barring some disaster or OJ situation) than judges. It seems like the entire societal backlash against sexual abuse was aimed at Hollywood actors and producers.

Those things muddy the waters.

The Feminist movement has successfully moved towards calling a lot of things that are very different in my mind rape. So it depends on the nature of it. If it's a highly violent stranger-in-the-bushes thing, then I'd default to believing it. That's what most people understand as rape. The feminist movement seems to move towards considering romantic misunderstandings between people who know each other as rape with very low standards though, so I default to not taking that seriously without some level of knowing one or both parties and having hard evidence of the situation. It doesn't matter to me the status of either of the individuals.

I suppose my actual standard in a situation that started voluntarily takes into account that men are expected to take the initiative in the great majority of all romantic encounters. This will inevitably go wrong sometimes. So IMO, no harm until the woman has expressed clear and unambiguous desire for it to stop multiple times and the man still refuses to stop. And that would have to be solidly proven - both sides have motive to lie in this situation, and having recordings is going to be pretty rare. This leads to (as advice to women), if you really definitely don't want to get physical with a guy, don't let him buy you a dozen drinks and then go up to his room with him alone. Doing the above doesn't mean you're obligated to let him do whatever he wants, but it's pretty obviously a situation with high potential for misunderstanding, and I'm going to have high priors against believing any claim that you were violated in a way that deserves legal recourse.

Regarding Biden and Clinton, I also can't help but notice that there's a highly partisan coding here. The progressive movement wants to completely ignore Clinton's well-known history of violent rape, and ignore Biden at least doing lots of highly inappropriate groping. But they want to sink Trump for the "grab them by the pussy" remark, and Kavanaugh for allegedly doing something inappropriate at a high school party decades ago which nobody had heard a word about until he was nominated for the Supreme Court.

For me it's more about the circumstances of the accusation, though status does play a role. If the woman reports it immediately and goes to the police I'm much more likely to believe her than if she makes accusations on social media years later. If she was sober and clearly rejected his advances then it's more believable than if she got black out drunk and went to his hotel room. If the accusation is against somebody she has no reason to dislike then it's more believable compared to someone she has a grudge against. If it's against a criminal or someone with a known past of being violent then it's more believable than it would be against a model citizen.

Didn’t this just happen to the creator of Rick and Morty?

I’m ready to say I will never believe a rape accusation unless (1) it makes it through the courts and (2) I can see the evidence myself. I might make an exception in cases where I can evaluate the repute of the woman — let’s be honest, false accusers fit a certain type. What other option is there? False accusations are endemic for the most significant creative men in America. Something similar happened to the frontman of Arcade Fire not long ago.

If we want to end sexual assault, our best bet is to reintroduce guardrails for male-female interaction (like every developed society in history). We can’t implement a norm of texting affirmative consent, because women do not want consent to be verbally agreed upon (read the testimony of women getting the ick about this online, it’s hilarious). Unless you don’t want to have sex, asking women to clearly write out what you can do to them when they get to your apartment is a false start. Women clearly desire the costly signal of a guy only relying on implicit consent, and also appear to like the inherent high stakes and seduction of the situation. This is probably biological. You can draw a line from the oldest tradition of husbands “wifenapping” his bride from her family, to the convoluted sexual games which make affirmative informed consent impossible.

This whole thing can be fixed with just: don’t hang out or drink with guys you don’t want to have sex with. Don’t go into a guy’s place alone, ever, unless you want to have sex. Don’t hang out with guys you don’t trust. Literally you can put to bed (pun intended) our whole cultural neuroticism by enacting these rules. I had a conservative Pakistani Muslim friend in college who gave me a shocked look when I thought we were going to her apartment together (we were walking and she needed to grab something). She explained she would never be with a guy alone in an apartment. Guess which demographic is probably not being sexual assaulted?

Didn’t this just happen to the creator of Rick and Morty?

Yes, but in the course of the legal proceedings for domestic assault and kidnapping (technically, preventing someone from leaving by blocking a door or taking their keys counts as attempted kidnapping, so it sounds like a drama-filled domestic spat), there was a bunch of fishing around and apparently he made some joke about a 14-year-old fan being Jailbait while interacting with said fan. Which also turned him into a groomer and a pedophile according to Reddit. So legal exoneration now doesn't do much for him. Plus he generally has a drunk-texting habit, which provides additional examples of being "creepy," the ultimate sin.

In the course of this, there were also claims that he hadn't actually done any in-person work apart from voice stuff on any of his shows or projects since Rick&Morty Season 3, which I'm slightly skeptical of; it sounds like all his friends and co-workers distancing themselves and claiming they never liked him anyways and none of those projects should suffer cancellation because they don't represent his work. Buuut, you can tell on the Season 3 R&M commentary that he's less involved; there's a lot more guest writers and randos and vapid LA circlejerking; and there's no Season 4 Commentary, which is consistent with less engagement from him. It's also consistent with someone who was muscled out of his own show by Dan Harmon. Genuine shrug here, the evidence is ambiguous, everyone involved has motivation to lie or elide.

My own hypothesis is that guys who luck into fame and success (and the sexual opportunities that come with it) later in life often don't know how to handle it, they're the eternal underdog who finally caught the car. Famous men who haven't lived through decades of sexual deprivation before becoming famous have better OpSec and don't fall for Crazy so easily.

The old rules are to protect men as much as women- a conservative Pakistani Muslim man knows he’s not supposed to take a woman into his apartment alone, too.

Easier said than done. You might just end up creating a multipolar trap.

A lot of men would simp/do favors for women for a potential go at even the most minute probability of sex. It's in every womans individual self-interest to exploit this. Women who defect from the "don't invite men unless u want to fuk" equilibrium gain the advantage for themselves only, Simultaneously tarnishing the reputation of the "prudes"... for being well "prudes".

I think the above is a male-braind take, if anyone has a female mirror of the failure modes, please share.

Yeah the entire point of female sexuality/seduction is plausible deniability. A girl who's into you will suddenly become gigantically gullible/culpable to the most overt and sleazy approaches, but will claim ignorance if the vibe's gone.

If there's one thing women are generally capable of doing, it's inflicting reputational damage against other women who violate norms of acceptable behavior. If there's two things women are generally capable of doing, it's the above plus paying a lot of attention to the likelihood of them receiving reputational damage as a result of that process.

And it’s fine for women to do this defection, provided that they understand the risk is squarely on them. The utility of the rule is that it cures our dread and uncertainty regarding an activity that should be beautiful and pure (dating, sex). I imagine this was the rule for legislating rape for most of civilizational history: “you invited the man to your place alone? You willingly drank with him? Others have testified to your ill repute? Case dismissed.” The amount of harm immediately cured by this norm is infinitely better than the harm introduced (women no longer allowed to hang out with questionable men alone; who cares?)

The utility of the rule is that it cures our dread and uncertainty regarding an activity that should be beautiful and pure (dating, sex).

Our? You mean men's. What do women have to gain from your arrangement? They lose out on sexual opportunities, the favours they often gain for implicit promises of sex, AND on the plausible deniability that this is what they were doing in the first place. In exchange for what? If they're paranoid about being assaulted, they already have the option not to chug 5 Martinis and go alone to a dude's room at 2 AM.

Didn’t this just happen to the creator of Rick and Morty?

That case was dropped, not settled with an apology from the "alleged" victim.

We wanted to support women in the industry. In so doing, our words have been misinterpreted to suggest specific allegations of misconduct that were neither expressed nor intended. We are passionate about the safety, security and agency of women, minorities, LGBTQIA+ persons, and every other community that has seen persecution in the video game industry.

We are passionate about the safety of everyone except men. Fuck men. We will make no admission that this accusation only worked because it came from a woman, against a man. We will make no actual apology. We will make no recompense. We will instead hide behind the trusty, tired old aegis of minority groups to abdicate any sense of wrongdoing. We do not believe we were wrong to ruin this man over nothing, because we did it "for a good reason".

Yeah, it's blatantly obvious that the only thing they're sorry about is that they didn't get away with it.

This is why we need to start smacking women who make false accusations like this with the same jail sentence their victims would've gotten.

From what I can tell, the two women ended up paying Avellone a seven-figure settlement, which is just... wow. At least $1 million for an out-of-court settlement, plus lawyer's fees paid by the accusers... Avellone must have had some bombshell evidence that would have made a court case a complete cake-walk. So at least the women in this case did pay the piper, even if it wasn't jail time.

What jail sentence? They were just ruining his reputation in professional and social circles. No criminal charges ever came up, as far as I know.

Perjury is already a crime, is it not?

So are libel and grievous bodily harm. These women deserve prison time and ruinous fines, because they conspired to create consequences indistinguishable from simply hacking off their target's limbs.

Character assassination is still assassination and should be punished as such. "Oh, don't worry, we left you with two arms and a head" is not a defense.

Sure, intentionally and knowingly making false accusations is wrong and should be treated as a crime. But existing laws- perjury and libel- should probably start being applied to it before we start creating new crimes.

But existing laws- perjury and libel- should probably start being applied to it before we start creating new crimes

Yes, but there's still an inherent imbalance in the seriousness (and redress) in each case. If we're following progressive thought properly, intersectionality predicts that women should be punished as harshly as a man would for murder given that the consequences and intent are very similar. (This is the general form of "the accuser is of ill-repute".)

Sure, liberal thought prevents that from being a concern, but liberal thought only works when the power balance between genders is equal in the first place- and while that's true in industrial societies, it's not true in most post-industrial ones where the inherent advantages men have over women (at the population level) have disappeared but the disadvantages persist.

The problem is not, that false accusations ‘devalue the words of real victims’. The problem is, women are a privileged social and legal category with the power to issue lettres de cachet that send men to purgatory or prison on their word alone. Feminists have pinned their favourite victims against equality before the law and public opinion, and the answer should be: female victims can get in line like every other victim.

Indeed, women have always been the primary victims of men getting falsely accused.

However, where did you see “devalue the words of real victims”? I might have missed it in the links above.

Kain 4:21

We know that the bygone monogamous patriarchy was a system where men were responsible for women, and women were accountable to men, simply put. We also know that since then we’ve transitioned to a post-patriarchal era where none of that applies. It seems to me what the female MeToo generation really wants is to introduce a new unbalanced and unequal system, where everything stays the same except that a new social norm is introduced, namely that a single man having casual/premarital sex with a single woman implies the assumption of unilateral commitment on his part.

in which fucking large numbers of your groupies is no longer socially acceptable.

While that would seem a silly outcome, if that was the sexually conservative upshot everyone acknowledged and codified it'd actually sufficiently more rational and tolerable (in that the mores would be clear) than the current situation.

The current situation is not a general norm that sleeping with groupies or casual sex is bad, quite the opposite - the sex positive norms are still parroted (though some feminists do insist on this infantilizing view). Case in point: Roiland and Avellone were both taken down for alleged assault and grooming teenagers.

It would honestly be better if we went back to a Victorian "being a cad is bad" norm since then you wouldn't need to accuse someone like Avellone of being a sexual assaulter to smear him.

Every major liberal social movement of the past century has one goal in mind: sustainable development.

Transgenderism, Feminism, Gay Rights/Equality, Abortion are the best because they sustain development.

The goals of “MeToo” and the issues of “Groomers”, “Creepers”, “Cheaters” and “Power Imbalances” are all about one thing: sustainable development.

Turning the age old practice of seducing a younger woman or a workplace subordinate into an unthinkable social crime is about one thing: sustainable development.

These are cultural safeguards set in place to ensure our betters “guide reproduction responsibly” (their words).

Is this darkly hinting? I'm not sure what the externalities/failure modes of false accusations of sexual harassment/assault are supposed to do for "sustaining development." Development of what? The economy, civilization in general?

You’re not?

The more barriers to men and women having sex with one another, the less babies there will be. I’m not sure where you’re getting tripped up. Every major social standard we have left is fundamentally dedicated to damming this drive.

“Darkly hinting?” Sustainable development is the U.N.‘s term. Haven’t you heard? There are too many humans. “Sustainable development” is a euphemism for the correction of this large problem.

I don’t have a counter argument to this(although I do think the truth is more nuanced than that, it’s probably at least directionally correct) but I agree with @halloweensnarry that it could and should have been worded more plainly.

That's what I'm getting at: you're using euphemisms. If you want to argue that "the chilling effect of MeToo on sexual relations is not a bug, but a feature intended to drive population control as desired by The Shadowy They," you can just argue that plainly. It may be declasse, it will probably attract a hard counterargument, but you won't get the likes of me noticing their own confusion.

I don’t think there’s anything “Shadowy” about the U.N. or their explicitly stated goals. Sustainable development is also a good thing, and the effect of “MeToo” isn’t chilling, it’s necessary.

One mustn’t alert whom one is forced to deceive.

Being out of fashion has never bothered me. I’d like to hear your counterargument if you have one.

I don’t think there’s anything “Shadowy” about the U.N. or their explicitly stated goals.

Yes, but "To achieve our stated goals, we will manipulate social media to amplify accusations of sexual misconduct, creating a chilling effect against casual sex that reduces fertility" is a strategy that, if it exists, exists in the shadows. As do whatever organs the UN is using to enact said strategy.

This approach would be dubious IMO, as casual sex rarely results in children these days, and the hypothetical blowback from the ploy being discovered is immense.

Unless you're suggesting the coordinators have such an iron grip that discovery or blowback are non-factors? In which case, why are they pussyfooting around the issue with sneaky psyops rather than just putting contraceptives in the water supply or something?

Every major liberal social movement of the past century has one goal in mind: sustainable development.

Your ideas suppose the elites are amazingly powerful and coordinated in pursuing this end, but at the same time, they've contented themselves with a 100 year policy of slowly changing gender roles through ad hoc puppeteered social movements, rather than just enacting the New World Order and having done with it.

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March 25 2023, PCGamer - crickets

March 25 2023, Kotaku - crickets

This is a momentous enough retraction for a famous cancelled figure that they'll have to make some sort of article about it. 95% one will, 60% both will. 99% I will hate their framing of the story.

EDIT: By the by, I checked back on the cursed motherland. In many subs the mods have locked comments on threads about this story. Can't have people developing any unapproved inferences.

24 hours later and still nothing.

It's still the weekend. If nothing pops up by the end of the workweek, I'll have been wrong and will be suitably embarrassed and nonplussed.

Well, PCGamer finally put up their article. Seems relatively honest, and unambiguous about what a vindication this is for Avellone.

A bit mealy mouthed about which outlets stoked the original cancellation flames. They link to Kotaku's hitpieces, ignoring that their own was significantly the same content.

This is quite the turnaround and vindication for Avellone, who became a pariah in the immediate aftermath of the accusations. He was fired from Dying Light 2, people demanded that companies with any association with Avellone publicly denounce him, and follow-up reporting added fuel to the raging fire (links to Kotaku), with further accusations being made and Avellone described as "fucking disgusting" among many other things.

Naturally, PCGamer pre-emptively disabled comments, and the article is utterly absent from their front page. I'm not sure how anyone would find it unless they were looking, like I was.

Can you link to those threads?

In many subs the mods have locked comments on threads about this story.

Can you link to those threads?

/r/pcgaming thread

/r/fallout thread

/r/kotor thread (I'll give these guys a pass actually, as they also locked discussion of the allegations when they first came out, too.)

/r/games thread got deleted

I don't think it's obvious who the liars are. It's obvious who can afford the best lawyers, but I think this result is about equally likely regardless of who is lying.

The statement on its own isn't I agree, the statements made at the time are more evidence though as are subsequent actions of the accusers. While abuse victims do often say positive things about their abusers, I think its unlikely (but not impossible) that is the situation here. As the relationship doesn't fit my experience in this area. The reason I am not certain though is that odd behavior does happen with abuse.

Despite me being skeptical about how SURE we can be, I still think its likely the scenario is pretty much as presented. Maybe 85% or 90% on that. Just not 100%

Christ.

It's good to know he didn't actually do it. Apparently any of it. And that justice, ultimately, was served.

Not so good that it took two years and a "seven figure" lawsuit to clear his name. I can hope that the relevant outlets get around to their mea culpa, but like you, I am not optimistic.

And that justice, ultimately, was served.

Justice delayed is justice denied, and anyway he's still cancelled and will still be known for the accusations. We already see people here in this thread rationalizing away the retraction.

TBH I don't even know why people settle like this. The damage is done, you should do as much damage to them as possible.

It's especially inexplicable imo in cases like Johnny Depp's. Avellone might have wanted to avoid a public and embarrassing trial about his sex life. Depp had basically exposed everything anyway.

Why settle with Heard unless she full retracted everything in public?

What more would he get from a full victory in court? I doubt the women have substantial assets to seize, they've admitted to fabricating the original claims. A judgment in civil court isn't going to convince anyone not also convinced by the settlement statement.

I suppose if you really wanted to release a bunch of embarrassing evidence about one side, fighting to the end might help but there is always some uncertainty around the jury so I'd imagine it's tough to pass up an offer that gives 80% of what you were claimed as damages.

Because that sort of lawsuit is probably terrible and stressful to go through and he wanted it over?

I was thinking about that too. There’s a permanent asterisk next to his name, where people won’t want their daughters to date managers to hire someone who was uncool enough to get accused.

I guess the idea is to capture that in monetary damages, but yeah, I do hope he’s able to find work.

To be accurate we don't KNOW he didn't do it. We just know he won a court case about it, so that his accusers (or their attorneys) had to draft said statement, which contradicts their earlier statements.

That may well mean he didn't but could mean there wasn't enough proof etc.

Just like people being found not guilty does not actually mean they are not guilty.

It does mean he should be treated as innocent though you probably still wouldn't want to find out your daughter was dating him.

I consider saying “he didn’t do it” to be an important part of treating him as innocent. It’s not fair to add a permanent caveat when the accusation turns out to be non-credible.

If my daughter is ever in such a position, I’ll keep in mind the cringe to which he admitted. No more, no less.

That sames...naive. Not in this case necessarily but in general. The accusation can be non credible but the behaviours the investigation uncovers can still be something warranting caution.

If the cops charge someone for murder but it turns out they're only an asshole who makes idle threats. They are STILL an asshole who makes idle threats. You can incorporate that information into how you treat them.

To be accurate we don't KNOW he didn't do it.

I did say rpgcodex had the best coverage. You should have read it.

During this time, Ms. Barrows mentioned that she could connect us with Chris Avellone and David Gaider, since she recently partied with them at Dragon Con (August 30th, 2012 — September 3rd, 2012). Even mentioning candidly that she had “made out with Chris the first night there.” Ms. Barrows would speak about Mr. Avellone very fondly as if there was a potential relationship there. She clearly liked him, and to us, it almost came across like they were dating (by listening to her). Ms. Barrows was more than willing and excited to set up an interview with Mr. Avellone.

On November 23rd of 2012 our group interviewed Chris Avellone via Skype. The people on the call were Chris Avellone, Karissa Barrows, Phil Hornshaw (currently an editor at GameSpot), Jakub Riedel, and myself (Jeff Johnson). The entire call was recorded. Pre-interview banter through interview, to post interview banter. During this call you can clearly hear Karissa’s affection and attraction to Chris. While the interview is public on YouTube, https://youtube.com/watch?v=lLj3YcpbV5U, I will also be releasing all relevant audio from the unreleased audio soon. This was the first time I had ever spoken with Mr. Avellone.

This during a period she claimed she was warning everyone off of Avallone for being a sex pest.

I am a longtime member of the Codex as it happens. But i would point out if you look at Chris's own admissions he apologised for inappropriate sexual propositions and said there was some truth to the accusations.

The position seems to be he did do most/all the things in question but with consent. That the accusers public views shifted on that doesn't actually prove they are lying.

They may well be and indeed it is probably most likely but we don't "know" it.

Did she rationalize the events because she liked/loved/was in awe of Chris? Once emotion fell away did she see the truth?

Or was it just a vendetta? That seems most likely but we don't know it. I'm not taking issue with Chris being exonerated, some of my most favorite games he was involved in. Just being overly sure in our knowledge.

  • -14

I'm really not buying into this mealy mouthed "We'll never really know" attitude. And I'm not buying into this framing of "Is she lying, or has her feelings towards a past event shifted over the years?" She told a material lie. To repeat.

Karissa said she witnessed Avellone act in a similar fashion with multiple other women at the event, and eventually reached the point where she, backed by two men who were also aware of his behavior, reported him to organizers, who immediately blacklisted him.

Here she is saying at the event where Avellone "assaulted" her, he was being such a sex pest she, as well as other witnesses, immediately had him blacklisted. And then here she is, in a recording, after this assault and public sex pestery that was so bad a gaggle of witnesses was able to compel a blacklisting.

During this time, Ms. Barrows mentioned that she could connect us with Chris Avellone and David Gaider, since she recently partied with them at Dragon Con (August 30th, 2012 — September 3rd, 2012). Even mentioning candidly that she had “made out with Chris the first night there.”

The discrepancy between these two accounts is not a matter of the mists of time altering our perspectives of past events. It's a material, bold faced lie. The gulf between them is irreconcilable and not due to the fragility of memory. And one of them is a contemporary recording of her, in her own words. Stop hedging.

And I'm not buying into this framing of "Is she lying, or has her feelings towards a past event shifted over the years?"

Even if that were true...so what tbh?

Or are we arguing that consent can not only be revoked during the act but long after?

Did you know many abuse victims lie that everything is ok? Especially when they have strong feelings towards the abuser? Do you know that they often overcompensate in front of other people?

Is it likely in this situation? Probably not. But its not impossible. I've worked with people who have been literally battered and still told their friends and family about how loving and wonderful the abuser was and helped them get jobs. So those statements are evidence she is lying, i agree. But they are not 100% proof. That is my point. That plus the settlement is strongly indicative. But people do settle because they feel its the best option even if they are in the right.

We roughly know she lied. But we cannot KNOW if the lie was the "he's great" part back then, or when she made the accusation or when she retracted the accusations after the settlement.

That is enough that Chris should not suffer consequences, but it isn't enough for us (in my view) to claim we have aboslute certainty.

Abuse victims are often not dealing with their emotions rationally, so if you see irrational outcomes it is not necessarily proof they are lying.

They may well be, and obviously the legal system has to err on the side of caution where credibility is concerned, but if you have dealt with abuse victims, you see a lot of lies in both directions depending and you can't necessarily discern the truth from them.

  • -19

You keep ignoring the material portion of the lie, and defaulting to some incoherent "no perfect victim" rhetoric. Address the material lie, or just stop.

She claimed she did a thing, a material, specific thing, in 2012 at Dragon Con. That she got Avellone blacklisted from the event. We then know she networked in the industry, and even pulled Avellone into events, based on their meeting at Dragon Con in 2012, because it's recorded. Forget whatever apparent mush brain sexual assault victims suffer from which you keep proposing. Why would Avellone network with a woman who got him banned from Dragon Con 2012 for being a sex pest, if that actually happened and she's not telling a bold faced material lie?

Who knows?

Just to be clear I would say i am 85% to 90% on Avellone being the victim here.

But people do weird things. Maybe she lied about Dragoncon banning but told the truth about the rest. Maybe Avellone was very forgiving or really wanted to take their make out session to the next level. Maybevshe is confus8ng Dragoncon 2012 for Unicorncon 2013 or a vivid hallucination from when she was high on mushrooms.

My point is not that it is highly likely that she is lying about the situation, but that we cannot know for sure because people do weird, apparently fucked up decision making all the time.

Also to be clear anyone who claims to be sure he is guilty is even more wrong in my opinion. But, I haven't seen anyone saying that here.

Though see my reply to the guy saying it might be 50/50 where i am arguing that he is underestimating the chance of Avellone's innocence.

  • -20
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But i would point out if you look at Chris's own admissions he apologised for inappropriate sexual propositions and said there was some truth to the accusations.

The truth seems to be that they did in fact get drunk and then make out, which she later characterized as nonconsensual when it was very consensual.

I appreciate you taking the contrarian position here (really) but it seems like you're mostly just being anti-contrarian. I understand why you want to push back against the easy, uncharitable "Hah, bitches be lyin'!" narrative, but it sure looks like at least in this case, bitches do be lyin'.

More like "bitches do be lying" AND "Chris do be a bit of a pushy dick"

More nuance than anti-contrarian.

  • -15

But i would point out if you look at Chris's own admissions he apologised for inappropriate sexual propositions and said there was some truth to the accusations.

People make false confessions under duress: of those that Innocence Project Innocence exonerated, 25% confessed and 11% pleaded guilty. This is despite the fact that they were facing the death even with this admission.

Also worth noting that the leftist demand to "believe women" and avoid "victim blaming" and "slut shaming" basically constrains your options here.

Calling her a liar doesn't play well, admitting it happened but it was consensual will just be seen as validating part of the story.

But this was in an email to someone he was asking to back him up. And immediately after he crossed the line by saying he could help a girl out through oral sex.

We have his text messages showing what he himself admits to saying.

To be accurate we don't KNOW he didn't do it.

Yes, we also don't know that you didn't do it. There's a reason we don't ask people to prove negatives, particularly when they're accused of a crime.

Correct. Which is why we legally

treat people as innocent at that point. But that still doesn't mean you are gonna necessarily want OJ Simpson marrying your sister for example.

Accusations are not near enough evidence to lock someone up, they might be enough evidence to behave differently around that person.

  • -11

Accusations should be given as much weight as the cost of making the accusation and the benefit of making the accusation.

Seems unworkable in a social space. Its trivial for me to tell you Bob stole my wallet and i will certainly gain social status for revealing a thief.

The weight should probably be based on how well you know/trust me and how well you know/trust Bob and whether anyine else has said Bob is a thief or if i lie about people beaing thieves before?

Accusations are not near enough evidence to lock someone up, they might be enough evidence to behave differently around that person.

Should one also be more wary of Trump supporters, given the accusations leveled at them by Smollett?

Should one tread lightly near members of Phi Kappa Psi frat, in light of what Rolling Stone had to say about them?

You can be wary about what they said themselves. Take a look through the evidence Chris himself put out there. Including apologizing for sexually inappropriate behaviour.

He even says the accusations have some truth with embellishments in his emails asking for support. He probably osn't a sexual predator, but he does seem to have a habit of shitting where he eats and sometimes misjudging situations.

He doesn't seem to be a bad guy, just to be clear. But there is enough smoke he himself admits to that if my 25yo daughter said she had a date with him, i would be wary.

I would be wary because I don’t want my daughter dating a boorish fellow (which is different from dating a sexual abuser).

Sure, like i say he almost certainly is not a sexual predator in that regard.

Then again, they might be not. Particularly when they're made in the midst of a moral panic.

Indeed, but if you read what Chris himself has put out there,his behavior is not exactly exemplary. In his own evidence packet it contains things about him having to apologise about making sexual comments and advances inappropriately. Where he himself acknowledges it at the time.

Is he a "sexual predator"? Probably not. He is probably what would have been described as a cad or a rake. Should he have been fired? Probably not. Though maybe telling him to stop shitting where he eats would have been good advice for him to hear.

"Not exemplary" under which moral framework? I happen to be pretty trad when it comes to sex and relationships, so I might agree, but the kind of people attacking Avellone don't seem to be trad, and don't seem to have a coherent critique of fuckboys as a general concept.

I find the whole idea of "not shitting where you eat" bizarre, inhumane, and neurotic. Several of my friends got happily married off of a workplace relationship, and I don't see anything wrong with that.

Ah lets clarify, pursuing a longterm relationship at work has risks but probably worth it.

But pursuing multiple short term entanglements at work exponentially increases the risks of some sort of fallout. Plenty of people do it of course, but the more break ups the more times you are rolling the dice.

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There really needs to be severe criminal penalties for lying about this. If the Jackie Coakleys and Karissa Barrows and Judy Munro-Leighton spent several decades in prison after public trials the chilling effect on complete fabrication would probably eventually result in society that was more likely to #believeallwomen.

Why would we need to do that? We just have to get our ideology in the right hands, and we can accuse anyone we want of anything, and everyone will believe it. This is about speaking Power to Truth, man.

A trial of peers just like any other criminal punishment?

In the case of Jackie, her story involved being raped stop shards of broken glass so a lack of scaring would be my exhibit A. In the other cases they admitted it:

We have no knowledge that he has ever sexually abused any women.

“Oh, Lord no,” she responded on whether she has ever met Kavanaugh.

Presumably we'd investigate their claims and when they turn out to be impossible to have occured the accuser would then face criminal charges under a new criminal statute with the normal criminal trial procedures.

Every once in a while you get a case where all cards really are on the table. I think there was some college kid who got metooed, the girl accused him of taking advantage of her when she was drunk, but it turned out he recorded the whole interaction, and noped out when he realized she's not sober. Some newspaper was later complaining about him having the recording, implying it was some sting operation.

Sometimes someone accuses a person that ends up having a rock-solid alibi. You can probably assume they were lying, when the person they point at was in another country at the time.

How would you prove they were lying beyond reasonable doubt?

Via a court case that the women decided they'd rather pay Chris million(s) of dollars in settlement rather than risk.

Although in civil cases "beyond a reasonable doubt" is unnecessary, admittedly.

Yeah, I'd like to see a load of civil cases where the woman who probably lied gets taken to the cleaners.

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