MovieBob leaving The Escapist

AzrealMaximillion

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Mythandrevelry said:
Agreed with you pretty much 100%. Movie Bob did kinda help with the poisoning this community in recent years. Extra Credits went kinda the same direction after they left the Escapist and wound up insulting their audience for disagreeing with them on a their definition of what makes a game. They made an entire video pretty much shaming their audience for daring to criticism them.

No one likes being preached to and no one likes being insulted for having a different view point or liking something low brow.
 

Morifen

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Is this website Twitter? I have never have and will most likely never use twitter, so why is content on this site being removed because of something happening on twitter? Next thing you are gonna tell me is they are removing Yahtzee because someone saw him drinking Coca Cola. What does twitter have to do with movie reviews? And what is gamergate? I don't remember seeing anything about it on his movie reviews, which are the only thing I watch of his on this site.
 

faefrost

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Silvanus said:
Strazdas said:
While that is true for the subhuman quote, he often rants about "gamers" as a whole on twitter.
Could I get a quote?

Whenever this has been said, it's always turned out to be some instance of him saying something else, related to a specific subset of people or something, and people have just filled in the rest themselves.
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The problem really isn't context. It was the gross un professionalism of it all. "No boss you are taking what I said out of context. I did'nt say ALL of our customers are subhuman terrorist rapists. I only said SOME of our customers are subhuman terrorist rapists. Those ones up in arms? I didn't mean them. They're reading it wrong." Try running that past your employer and see what his or her opinion is. You are allowed to have an opinion. You are not penalized for having such. But voicing it through a megaphone damages your work product and your employers business, regardless of context or validity. The professional knows enough to shut up and just stay off Twitter.
 

Generic_Dave

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Jul 15, 2009
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Guess it's just Yahtzee and ZP left. Good work Escapist, run your site into the ground listening to people who don't visit it anyway.

Livin' the dream.

<------------- My post-count is trying to tell me something...
 

Silvanus

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faefrost said:
The problem really isn't context. It was the gross un professionalism of it all. "No boss you are taking what I said out of context. I did'nt say ALL of our customers are subhuman terrorist rapists. I only said SOME of our customers are subhuman terrorist rapists. Those ones up in arms? I didn't mean them. They're reading it wrong." Try running that past your employer and see what his or her opinion is. You are allowed to have an opinion. You are not penalized for having such. But voicing it through a megaphone damages your work product and your employers business, regardless of context or validity. The professional knows enough to shut up and just stay off Twitter.
I think I've clarified enough times that I'm not in the business of defending what he did say. I'm just tired of seeing it twisted into something it's not: an attack on us all, on gamers, a personal insult to everybody here. No, that just feeds a certain narrative.
 

Morifen

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So I just looked up Twitter. 230 million users. Over 7 billion people in the world. Why does anyone give a shit about what anyone says on some little site like that? It like getting fired for a conversation you are having with your friends at a bar. Has nothing to do with work, people should be entitled to say whatever they want outside of their job.
 

faefrost

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Silvanus said:
faefrost said:
The problem really isn't context. It was the gross un professionalism of it all. "No boss you are taking what I said out of context. I did'nt say ALL of our customers are subhuman terrorist rapists. I only said SOME of our customers are subhuman terrorist rapists. Those ones up in arms? I didn't mean them. They're reading it wrong." Try running that past your employer and see what his or her opinion is. You are allowed to have an opinion. You are not penalized for having such. But voicing it through a megaphone damages your work product and your employers business, regardless of context or validity. The professional knows enough to shut up and just stay off Twitter.
I think I've clarified enough times that I'm not in the business of defending what he did say. I'm just tired of seeing it twisted into something it's not: an attack on us all, on gamers, a personal insult to everybody here. No, that just feeds a certain narrative.
And we keep telling you it does not matter who he specifically was or was not directing his comments to, The twitter bombs were in every definition "unprofessional". and reflected poorly on both himself and his employer. The specific nuances of them do not matter.
 

Raesvelg

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DRDP said:
Can someone explain why MovieBob is terrible? In list form preferably.
Well, at a time when pretty much the rest of the Escapist's content creators and staff were being very hands-off with the whole Gamergate mess, MovieBob, while not generally bringing it here, jumped in with both feet on Twitter, and said a lot of really vile and inflammatory things.

Which might not have gotten noticed nearly as quickly if it weren't for the fact that at the time, his Tweets were showing up on the Escapist's front page Twitter tracker thingie.

That and he can't shut up about how much he hates Amazing Spider-Man or how much of a failure the 2nd film was. Disappointing to Sony? Quite possibly. I mean, it only made $709 million at the box office on its $200 million budget. But a failure? Not so much.
 

Silvanus

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faefrost said:
And we keep telling you it does not matter who he specifically was or was not directing his comments to, The twitter bombs were in every definition "unprofessional". and reflected poorly on both himself and his employer. The specific nuances of them do not matter.
They matter to me, hence why I disputed them. I'm not going to ignore wilful inaccuracy when it suits people (and particularly when it suites a certain narrative).
 

The Bucket

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Morifen said:
So I just looked up Twitter. 230 million users. Over 7 billion people in the world. Why does anyone give a shit about what anyone says on some little site like that? It like getting fired for a conversation you are having with your friends at a bar. Has nothing to do with work, people should be entitled to say whatever they want outside of their job.
It doesnt look like he was fired for that, in my opinion at least. But his account was tied to his videos and content, it was linked on everything he put out (Not to mention it was straight up called the Moviebob). And sorry you haven't run into this before, but you totally can be straight up fired for how you conduct yourself on social media from most companies, its why so many of them are instituting guidelines about it as part of their contracts and giving training on it. That's the modern world
 

TaboriHK

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faeshadow said:
TaboriHK said:
faeshadow said:
TaboriHK said:
faeshadow said:
There is a huge difference between disagreeing with your audience, and saying that most of your audience are rapists.
As I said, I don't care what anyone says on twitter. It's twitter. Also, I don't believe you for one second.
Disbelieve all you like. Go look at his comments after the airing of that L&O SVU episode.
Yeah, I don't see anything that says "most of my audience is rapists."
Were you really expecting those exact words? That's a bit dishonest. You should know better.

His audience on The Escapist were largely gamers. Go see what he says about gamers.
This is what's known on the internet as "backpedaling."
 

Morifen

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The Bucket said:
Morifen said:
So I just looked up Twitter. 230 million users. Over 7 billion people in the world. Why does anyone give a shit about what anyone says on some little site like that? It like getting fired for a conversation you are having with your friends at a bar. Has nothing to do with work, people should be entitled to say whatever they want outside of their job.
It doesnt look like he was fired for that, in my opinion at least. But his account was tied to his videos and content, it was linked on everything he put out (Not to mention it was straight up called the Moviebob). And sorry you haven't run into this before, but you totally can be straight up fired for how you conduct yourself on social media from most companies, its why so many of them are instituting guidelines about it as part of their contracts and giving training on it. That's the modern world
The modern world needs to change then, at least in the US. We are supposed to be a country of people sharing their ideas from all kinds of backgrounds, one of the reasons we have freedom of speech. It is going to be pretty hard to maintain a culture that is supposed to value opinions from different backgrounds when expressing those opinions can get you fired from your job. This reminds me of the McCarthy witchhunt of communists, but with a rotating wheel of who it is targeting, dependent on the whims of whoever happens to be executives of a company at that point in time.
 

Pete Oddly

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A good portion of this thread seems to be devoted to Bob and his Twitter presence, and whether or not he insults his audience (or the degree to which he insults his audience). People also seem to be keen on disseminating Bob's words out of context to suit their own ideas of who they perceive him to be.

The way I see it is this:

Bob holds strong opinions about issues of prejudice, and the actions people take (and the things they say) based on their prejudices, specifically when it comes to matters of race, gender, and sexual orientation. Bob holds these prejudiced people in contempt, and as such pulls no punches when calling them out on their shit.

Keeping this in mind, we then have to look at certain members of the geek community (mostly gamers, but we'll use the term geeks because this doesn't strictly apply to gamers alone), specifically geeks who may not hold any conscious prejudices, but for some reason either subconsciously relate to said prejudice, or act defensively out of the perceived notion that they are being lumped in with those who do consciously hold these prejudices.

When Bob speaks out, using the snark he is known (and, in my case, loved) for, the aforementioned geeks are prodded into a reactionary stance, and, if they are actual fans of his, feel hurt and betrayed. However; Bob isn't the one these geeks need to analyse. Rather, they are better served looking inward, figuring out why, since Bob's targets are chiefly bigots and idiots, they identify with these targets enough to feel insulted.

Continuing to keep this all in mind, we turn to Bob's Twitter tirades, specifically in regards to...a certain movement. Disregarding the ridiculous quagmire as to the origins of this claptrap crusade and what its actual goals are, there exists the fact that it has negatively affected a lot of people. Specifically, in this case, people Bob is close to personally and professionally. Which, in turn, provides Bob with the incentive to take a stand firmly on one side of the issue.

So, the scene is set:

Bob is in a position where he feels personally affronted by the actions of some terrible people, as said actions have negatively affected people he is close to. Bob is opinionated, emotional, and (in his own words) immature, so he uses the platforms available to him to strike out against these people. Twitter being instantaneous, some of these strikes are heated and inflammatory, and as Twitter only allows so many characters per message, these strikes are also easily taken out of context or retrofitted to suit other contexts as needed. In his anger and frustration, he disregards the members of...that movement...who are sane and rational and want nothing to do with the shitbirds who drag the whole thing down with their bigotry and harassment.

In the other corner, we have folks who already have a bone to pick with Bob due to what they perceive to be a stance against them (as outlined above), so they rally against him in defense of themselves and the medium they hold dear. As they believe they are standing against a betrayer of geekdom, their words also become heated and inflammatory.

And so, Twitter becomes a battleground, where Bob is baited and berated and, in turn, says some outlandish things of his own. Everyone rattles cages and bellows war cries, and when the dust settles everyone goes home unhappy, with Bob on one side turning his nose up at people, and those same people on the other side thinking Bob has turned against geeks and deserves to be derided for his misdeeds.

In the end, I support Bob, regardless of some of the more immature things he's said. He is on the right side of things, even if in his righteous fury he is blind to those few rational minds who got caught up in the swirling shitstorm. It is because Bob stands for what I believe is right that I am able to forgive his missteps, even if he is unapologetic.

Also, as a footnote, I realize other people have problems with Bob which have nothing at all to do with anything I mentioned above. As such, I must say that, if you are one of those people, none of the above statements apply to you, so please don't get your skivvies in a twist because of it.
 

Ashley Blalock

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I didn't always agree with Movie Bob, sometimes I even strongly disagreed like when he said we should cut Michael Bay some slack, but I enjoyed Movie Bob's take on movies and pop culture.

Really hope the Escapist starts getting in some talent because it seems like there is less and content all the time.
 

Gutsripper

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I wondered why there was no 'Big Picture' or 'Escape to the Movies' this week.
Took a peek at the forums and my fears are confirmed...
Sad to see him go to though I admit his last couple of entries were not his best stuff and kinda preachy.

But damn... my list to come here is getting short:
Jimquesition
Big Picture
Escape to the movies
Uncivil War

Zero punctuation
No Right Answer
 

vagabondwillsmile

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Morifen said:
The Bucket said:
Morifen said:
So I just looked up Twitter. 230 million users. Over 7 billion people in the world. Why does anyone give a shit about what anyone says on some little site like that? It like getting fired for a conversation you are having with your friends at a bar. Has nothing to do with work, people should be entitled to say whatever they want outside of their job.
It doesnt look like he was fired for that, in my opinion at least. But his account was tied to his videos and content, it was linked on everything he put out (Not to mention it was straight up called the Moviebob). And sorry you haven't run into this before, but you totally can be straight up fired for how you conduct yourself on social media from most companies, its why so many of them are instituting guidelines about it as part of their contracts and giving training on it. That's the modern world
The modern world needs to change then, at least in the US. We are supposed to be a country of people sharing their ideas from all kinds of backgrounds, one of the reasons we have freedom of speech. It is going to be pretty hard to maintain a culture that is supposed to value opinions from different backgrounds when expressing those opinions can get you fired from your job. This reminds me of the McCarthy witchhunt of communists, but with a rotating wheel of who it is targeting, dependent on the whims of whoever happens to be executives of a company at that point in time.
First, we don't speak into a vacuum. Different situations will place different demands on speech. All of our rights, speech included, are balanced against all the rights of those we can affect in the excercise of those rights. Speech and expression, though sacred in the U.S., are not immune to context or consequence.

More to the point - consider. You are a server. What happens if you hurl explatives at the patrons to your restaurant? You are a teacher. What happens if you knowingly make a sexual remark at a someone who is under age on social media? You are the owner of a professional team. What happens if you insult an entire community of your own fans and fans of the sport in general, thus violating your league's contractual code of conduct? Lots of industries, enterprises, and individual businesses have codes of conduct to ensure they are represented professionally. Ever heard of a soldier being dishonerably discharged or even court martialed for conduct unbecoming? This can include speech.

MB's twitter account was none the less closely associated to the material he was contracted to produce for The Escapist. He, as a face of the media outlet, had a responsibility of professionalism - whether explicit in contract or implied by the nature of his service - to uphold. And in fact, as has been already mentioned, if what we are told by MB and The Escapist is to be believed, his social media communications had nothing to do with his contract being released. So that's kind of a moot point. But it very well COULD have been the impetus.

If this was some mailroom staffer in a megacorp like GE or something ranting about lightbulbs - probably no one in the offices would care much (though he/she still may be held to code of conduct contracts on condition of employment so they COULD care). MB, though, was a huge part of this site contributing a significant portion of the site's content; and he was mixing it together with his social media presence in a possibly unflattering way for the people paying him.

A lot of us that frequent this site, and engage in these discussions are in places in our lives where we have codes of conduct in our professions, or NDA's, or communications tied to contracts. It protects employers, it protects clients, it protcts the material of our professions, and in many ways it protects us in the context of our work. And we as mature, savvy individuals know what we are getting into when we seek such employment and sign our contracts. Some people handle these constraints with responsibility and maturity. Others do not. If those constraints are unexeptable to us we are free to go and seek employment without such constraints. And mature is the last word I'd use to describe MB as of the last year or so (Twitter completely aside).

McCarthy, nothing.
 

madwarper

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Morifen said:
The modern world needs to change then, at least in the US. We are supposed to be a country of people sharing their ideas from all kinds of backgrounds, one of the reasons we have freedom of speech. It is going to be pretty hard to maintain a culture that is supposed to value opinions from different backgrounds when expressing those opinions can get you fired from your job. This reminds me of the McCarthy witchhunt of communists, but with a rotating wheel of who it is targeting, dependent on the whims of whoever happens to be executives of a company at that point in time.
Ummm... Yeah.
Do you actually know what the concept of "freedom of speech" even means? Or, more specifically, have you ever read the First Amendment?

Because, what happened to MovieBob was NOT censorship. I could expound on this topic for pages on end, but you want to know what would be a better teaching aide? Why don't you just listen to the words of MovieBob, himself.
 

Morifen

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You are the first person to mention censorship, dunno where you got that idea. I am saying you should not be held accountable at your profession for what you do in your personal life, which includes real life social interactions or social media. I don't care if Moviebob sacrifices babies or does drugs or is a republican, I only want to watch his movie reviews on fridays. What he does in his free time is his own problem. If like some people are saying he was appearing in public as his Moviebob Escapist persona and not just himself, then that is a different matter as he is explicitly representing the company then. Like I said, I've never used twitter and I doubt I ever will.