firebobm173 said:
Lately there seems to be a huge backlash against some of the escapist staff, and Moviebob seems to be the one bearing the brunt of it. There was even a thread [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.859921-Poll-Should-MovieBob-be-Fired-An-Open-Letter-to-the-Escapist] calling for him to be outright fired. Grey Carter of Critical Miss fame wasn't [https://twitter.com/GreyTheTick/status/508239619427557376] impressed [https://twitter.com/GreyTheTick/status/508242063473639424], and evidently neither were the moderators since that post was locked almost immediately. While Moviebob has actually calmed down quite a bit since then, Grey seems to have picked up the metaphorical sword and has been vocally against the gamergate movement on twitter [https://twitter.com/GreyTheTick], although he hasn't been quite as vehement about it as MovieBob was. People have even been trying to get Greg Tito fired by writing to his superiors at Defy Media. As for the forums in general you can find something of a "greatest hits" here [https://twitter.com/Escapist_TXT].
Even Jim Sterling hasn't been safe, and he was actually trying to stay neutral about this whole thing. The week before last, he made a video [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/9676-Everythings-Awful-But-Its-Not-That-Bad] where he just tried to get people to calm by saying that things weren't as bad as they seemed at that we're all stil gamers (although in light of the events since then I feel it's safe to say that things really are that bad). By the time of next week's Jimquisition [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/9695-Quit-Using-The-Term-Social-Justice-Warriors] he had been harassed by gamergate advocates to the point where he made the entire video about how stupid the anti-SJW movement is. He's even talked about how even though he wanted to be neutral in this, was effectively [http://i.imgur.com/lQrls16.png] forced [https://twitter.com/JimSterling/status/504974988944748544] to take a side, and found that he was in good company [https://twitter.com/JimSterling/status/504976633652985857].
While all of these people have been painted with the same tar brush, Moviebob seems to have become the mascot for the Social Justice Warrior conspiracy here on the escapist forums. As one last thing, I'd like to post what I believe to be moviebob's commentary on issues relevent to this.
Moviebob on #Gamergate [http://moviebob.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-long-post-about-gamergate.html](posted just before Zoe's 4chan IRC's were posted in twitter)
Moviebob on #GamerGate and how other media's journalists reacted [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/moviesandtv/columns/moviebob/12173-Comparing-Film-Journalism-and-Games-Journalism]
Moviebob on bullying in gaming culture [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJi0C3fhVtc](posted just before this whole Zoe Quinn and Gamergate thing exploded)
Moviebob on [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/5950-Tropes-vs-MovieBob]tropes vs women [http://www.screwattack.com/shows/partners/game-overthinker/game-overthinker-overbytes-tropes-vs-women](posted a while ago, obviously)
MovieBob talks about sexism in nerd culture [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/5436-Not-Okay](another old one)
Moviebob on conflicts between gamers and feminists [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/4719-Gender-Games]
Moviebob on problems in game culture [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/4969-Words-for-Nerds](for the most part only the last point is relevant here)
For what it's worth I agree with him on these issues, but want to give him a fair shake here on the forums and would like to here what other people think of what he's said.
Meh, I called this years ago. I've put up several posts making it clear that they should exercise some editorial control on the Escapist employees. By which I do not mean exactly censoring them, but they should require they run their material devoid of political or social criticism and attacks even against, or perhaps especially against, the right wing or those who don't agree with a socially liberal point of view.
Bob has gone so far in the past to do things like claim that people who liked the original "Expendables" were "the worst kind of people" in his own way, not to mention various leftist rants about race, gender, etc... presented as facts and attributed to movies and the like in order to make a social statement. As a general rule it's become sort of predictable that in being critical Bob will oftentimes say a movie isn't very good, but then lavish praise on a woman or minority (by American standards) as an exception to the cast when really they seemed to be just as bad as anyone else if your going to be critical of the movie because well... he's Moviebob. He's done so much stuff at this point that I can't exactly cherry pick exact examples... but in his case he's kind of sowing what he reaped. He's been at it longer than most Escapist employees and that's probably why he's at the forefront of the current wave of backlash. To be honest, despite disagreeing with a lot of his politics I think Bob is a fountain of knowledge on the subjects of geek culture, he very much deserves a platform for that, however his politics have been out of control for a long time. When I've raised the question and gotten responses, The Escapist pretty much said "no we're not going to reign in Bob" (publically) and I'm not surprised others have being saying the same thing, albeit less directly than I have. Now we're seeing the eventual backlash, since really you can only offensively present people who disagree with your politics as some repugnant minority equivalent to a mess on the bottom of your shoe, when they are really quite numerous, before there is going to be some backlash. Media control and trying to create a reality through denial only goes so far.
The "Critical Miss" team is another couple of guys that I've commented on needing to be reigned in, largely because of the whole "White Guy Defense Force" thing... which sort of demonstrated the whole problem here. They put up what was basically an attack piece, people got upset, and then The Escapist mods ran around swinging their banhammers turning that strip's comments section into a legendary bloodbath. Then of course they did the same thing again at which point I suggested The Escapist exercise some editorial control (don't censor what they release, but don't buy strips that exist specifically to piss off tons of people) and of course I was told that wasn't going to happen.... and chances are that contributed to some of these problems as well. After all when your being so one sided, and engaged in political and social censorship eventually it's going to come back at you. You ban that many people under those kinds of circumstances and then host a repeat performance people tend to notice.
Of course please understand that along with these comments, I have also mentioned that my preferred method of dealing with such things is simply to allow free speech on all sides. Basically, if someone like Bob wants to go around making pro-gay comments or Critical Miss wants to troll a bunch of people, they should have to reap what they sow and deal with the comments, basically no bans at all. The same applies to the "Religion and Politics" forum in a general sense. I however do not believe that anyone running a site will ever be willing to cede control and allow users full reign to
say what they want unless such becomes required by the government (and of course there is the question of maintaining order, keeping spam bots down, etc...), hence why I generally push for balance. Basically if your not going to let people strike back at the commentators for dropping their political bombs, then you shouldn't let the commentators drop them to begin with. Equal time, complete freedom of speech (my idea), or forced neutrality on political and social issues, those are the fair and functional options on the table. Basically if you don't want say strong anti-gay
comments on the site, don't allow anyone to make pro-gay comments either, and certainly don't let someone like say Jim Sterling do what he did when this was an issue over "Mass Effect 3" making options for a gay Shepherd.
Like it or not The Escapist has become fairly well known in the arena of geek culture, and as a result it's political slant is being called. A few years ago it wasn't as big a deal that someone like Bob was using his segments to be a "Social Justice Warrior" as much as talk about the subjects at hand (oftentimes by inserting a political agenda or opinion into what he thought of various material). Of course really it's just one front among many, given that the problem is one which exists all across the spectrum of geek culture.
To be honest I'll also say that I think part of the backlash is also because of how geek media has responded to various things like race-changing various super heroes and comic characters. For example you won't find many people with a platform saying that "Black Heimdall" was a stupid PC stunt (albeit one that worked). Or engaged in say an honest analysis of "Ultimate Spider-Man" which as some comics fans have jokingly pointed out is the best selling comic that almost nobody actually likes or reads. Milo Morales being in the same basic club as Sam Alexander and other hated comic change ups that still sell fairly well (basically people buy the books similarly to the old spectator boom, in hopes they will be worth something later). To put things into perspective if you say show up on a lot of forums and say "Heimdall isn't black, so he shouldn't have been black in the movies" you get attacked as some kind of racist, and won't find many people with a platform daring to agree with you. I've been in a few discussions on that subject here. Of course then again part of my entire opinion on the subject has always been that it's stupid to race-change characters when there are plenty of "minority" characters out there nowadays that could be promoted and given attention, much like they did with say "Guardians Of The Galaxy". I mean why do we need to make "The Human Torch" or "Captain America" black, when you have characters like say "Night Thrasher" and numerous others out there just waiting for a decent vehicle. Why does the world need "Black Captain America" when it has "The Black Panther"? (a comparison between the two, and even a few brawls is a classic comics match up). It's a publicity stunt, but one that the media that should be saying "you know, this kind of thing is getting stupid" rather than encouraging. The irony in a point like this is that I think it's actually counter-productive to the socially liberal agenda since it's making being a minority into a gimmick for someone else, rather than something a character just is right from their conception. Personally I think Mcfarlane should make another attempt at a "Spawn" movie in the current environment and show them how it's done.