OP
OP
this topic is explicitly about labour rights. it's at the heart of this whole controversy
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The controversial ArenaNet firings of Guild Wars 2 writers (READ OP)
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This is where you lose a lot of people, because the freedom to insult your employer's customers/business partners is not considered a labor right by many
If that was what this thread was about we wouldn't have needed several threads about the subject. Don't be disingenuous.
Labor rights do not grant one individual or any individual the right to act unprofessionally and put at risk the livelihoods of the others who work at any given company.
Stop and think about this. If one rogue employee causes massive issues for a company and it's bottom line, then that directly impacts the people who work at said company who are striving their damnedest to get by day to day just to feed, clothe and shelter not only themselves, but their families and loved ones as well.
If someone in my company had acted like Price had, an act which I can promise you would have put customer relations with our clients at risk, you can better believe they would have severed her in a heartbeat from her employment as well in order to protect the hardworking souls who don't go lashing out at others because of a perceived slight.
Life is always more complicated than folks try to make it. The world is full of shades of grey but far too often people don't look past their own scope of what a situation is.
Here's my take:
Deroir did nothing I feel like you have to remove his entire history/personality and project a different one on to him to even make it out. Like he never even said his way is better he was just arguing against the notion that Mmorpgs can't create individual character feel
Jessica was rude in her response and borderline harassing him by holding him up as a symbol
sexism for her followers.
ArenaNet should have either forced her to apologize, not let her talk publicly about GW2 or warn her that if she does this again she may be fired. I feel like firing without warning is awful. And if GG influcened them at all then they are spineless cowards.
GG is a hate group
Deroir did nothing I feel like you have to remove his entire history/personality and project a different one on to him to even make it out. Like he never even said his way is better he was just arguing against the notion that Mmorpgs can't create individual character feel
Jessica was rude in her response and borderline harassing him by holding him up as a symbol
sexism for her followers.
ArenaNet should have either forced her to apologize, not let her talk publicly about GW2 or warn her that if she does this again she may be fired. I feel like firing without warning is awful. And if GG influcened them at all then they are spineless cowards.
GG is a hate group
After the 2016 election I got kind of drunk and just went OFF on this smug leftist dude on Twitter who was like, "It sucks Trump won, but I'm glad Hillary lost." This was like early December, and I let him have it. Lots of profanity and everything. The guy figured out who I worked for by cross-referencing my bio with a LinkedIn search, and retweeted my post ripping on him, tagging my employer's twitter account in the retweet.
Honestly, that felt like a low blow. I've never mixed online and IRL shit. My employer's twitter feed was something that rarely ever got updated, and our social media person was also a friend of mine, so nothing came of it. But anyway, 90% of the time, people should have some leeway to just be themselves on Twitter, snarky and vaguely insulting or no.
Honestly, that felt like a low blow. I've never mixed online and IRL shit. My employer's twitter feed was something that rarely ever got updated, and our social media person was also a friend of mine, so nothing came of it. But anyway, 90% of the time, people should have some leeway to just be themselves on Twitter, snarky and vaguely insulting or no.
The right to go through a disciplinary process instead of being summarily terminated with or without cause for an offense as minor as calling someone an asshat on Twitter is absolutely considered a normal thing outside the capitalist hellhole that is the United States.
A large part of this is about the firing, I'll stick up for him there. The rest is split between opinion on whether Jessica was in the wrong or the streamer was or both/none.
Also remember Era seems to have had a few topics on this shut down early and this has now become a catch all for everyone.
To me it's the sort of 'if it quacks like a duck' things. I do agree that her subtweeting him was a bad move, but that sort of "Interesting article! But have you ever considered..." is sort of a classic mansplaining playbook.
I feel like people get hyperfixated on like the most sensationalist forms of bigotry; death threats and doxxing and outright intimidation/assault. But in many ways its the small things, day in and day out, that undermine women's sense of identities. I'm not saying people need to be on their tippy toes all the time when dealing with women, but I understand why she would lash out at him like that.
If you want to live by the mantra of "if it quacks like a duck", that's fine, you might be right 9 times out of 10. You probably will. Those with lived experience can often call out and assume things of others drawing off that experience.
But when you're not right you might need the humility to admit a mistake and backtrack, even if you draw on the 9 times out of 10 you were right as some sort of evidence for why you lashed out.
Most employers will be looking for such humility if an employee makes a mistake in public, especially if it involves attacking a customer without justification. The inability or reluctance to say sorry and/or quickly backtrack will be a death sentence for many employees even if their employer is a little less quick to discipline.
That is the opposite of "classic mansplaining"; it's classic trying to have a polite conversation really. There is nothing inherently condescending about that statement, which is the crux of the defintiion of mansplaining.
Classic mansplaining would be to throw in some sort of gender based belittling like calling her "honey" or something.
I understand some people's claim that it's inherently condescending for an amateur to question a professional, but there's nothing wrong with that word choice he used and it is 100% not out of some condescending sexist playbook.
The moderation in this thread has been the diametric opposite of what Cerium and team promised back in fall 2017.
There and thus lies your problem along with reality check. This is in the United States of America, where there is no real labor rights, or what there are, are extremely weak. Again speaking as someone that works directly in labor rights in the Americas.
It appears to be an executive decision to can her and the coworker. It's quite obvious that they were feeling pressure and just fired them. Not even a supervisory meeting to discuss their 2011 policies with her?
Yeah, she could use a bit more tact but she would ultimately be employed now if she was a man. The mob only cares cause she's a woman.
ANet fucked up. Caved to a hate mob. Her transgression is nothing at this point.
Even aside from the lack of labor rights, the idea that what happened was no big deal or was worthy of no more than a warning shows a pretty big disconnect in what acceptable professional behavior is.
If a man did the same thing and got fired I wouldn't blink. The point is that similar behavior would get an employee disciplined at any respectable business. Maybe not a firing but that depends on the employee's perceived value to the company. It sounds like Price is a pretty good writer so yeah, it does seem suspect especially with O'Brien refusing to comment further, but the existence of gamergate does not invalidate common sense in a professional environment.
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this really comes down to misaligned notions of "online spaces" and the growing social more of a person's twitter as "their" space to cultivate conflicting with people who do not hold that social more
for instance, there is a difference between an argument held in a public space and an argument held in someone's house, and this disagreement on what twitter constitutes comes from the unevenly coalescing ideas of online spaces
to me it is fascinating watching online cultural norms of communities being influenced by the structure of the websites they inhabit - i read an interesting article on this once, but i can't seem to find it
i don't recall mentioning the dynamics of forums like resetera at all, but then again if you view twitter more as a totally open public forum and not as a loosely connected series of spaces along a gradient from public to private you could make the connection?
personally, my view is that twitter the platform is designed a fully open public space, but the users are developing their own notions of private spaces and there are conflicts brewing as people come to disagreements over these developing notions
there is a vast difference between arguing online about video games between fans and interacting directly with developers, who are themselves people - and this misunderstanding came because Price and Fries incorrectly viewed that they had a "private" life online when they were off the clock and did not reply back as A Representative of ArenaNet but as Themselves
I believe in context of the twitter thread that it could be interpreted as condescension. In short she talks about how the genre makes it pretty much impossible to do certain things with dialogue. He says she is wrong that the genre doesn't prevent this. The problem is the writing (she was like the lead writer or something for this thing called living world) design. And that they should have done branching dialogues. Her entire thread was a pretty deep and extensive look at how player chracters in MMORPGs can't be defined through dialogue as it may conflict with their imagination of who their character is. I frankly can easily see how she could take this tweet as condescending and insulting. Did she overreact? I think probably so.
Worthy of being fired? I'd say no. I think the situation escalated because individuals who do not like her wanted to see her fired. Deroir may not be the GGer/sexist/asshole or whatever some might think he is, but people jumped onto the situation with the intention of getting her fired because they don't like her opinion or her attitude towards social issues. This imo was very evident on social media the days following the firing and on the reddit where people were reveling in the fact that they pressured arenanet into firing and bragging about how they could do it to others.
She had. She has been a very... uhm... I dunno how to word it. Let's just say that many people have a problem with many of her older tweets.
It was not until she said something directly connected to her work that ANet did anything.
So she was free to be herself and speak out like she did, as long as it did not involve work.
I was specifically addressing the idea that the wording he chose was somehow specifically condescending. He's clearly trying to do the oppposite; you don't compliment someone and then frame your argument as a question when you are being condescending. I'm a consultant and that's exactly the kind of thing we are taught in terms of talking to clients; compliment and then gently suggest something.
Like you said there may be other aspects that could be considered condescending, and as I said as well just the fact he's questioning her in general could be, but the wording itself is the opposite of that. Anyone saying otherwise, IMO, has no clue what condescending language is.
But he wouldn't. She wasn't fired by her direct or even second superiorers. She got canned by corporate. You don't get that treatment unless people spam your owners with messages. A man wouldn't get this reaction because GamerGate folk target women. Her firing is because she's a woman.
You say "respectable" as an easy cop out, so that point is moot considering plenty of men get by with some pretty bad work ethic daily.
You're thinking like businesses exist in a vacuun. ANet failed to keep up with the times and actually understand the existence of GamerGate people. They let them influence their decision. You can't keep saying she can't act unprofessional because regardless of hate mobs the company won't like that. It makes no sense in this climate of women actively being targeted by said mob and their actions are influential as noted by this event.
This whole event would not occur if GamerGate didn't exist. Her transgression would have been ignored or at best a warning from her manager.
Do you also believe that without gamergate, she wouldn't have been disciplined at all?
You're seriously saying that ArenaNet fired her because GamerGaters spammed them with complaints instead of their stated reason, which is also backed up by publicly available evidence, of attacking members of the community?
Also, what's your take on the dude that guy fired along with her? How does he fit into your GamerGate-caving sexist narrative you're trying to paint about ArenaNet?
Also, what's your take on the dude that guy fired along with her? How does he fit into your GamerGate-caving sexist narrative you're trying to paint about ArenaNet?
She wouldn't.
Like, that's pretty obvious considering ANet' silence and that her direct managers were on vacation so corporate canned her and the other employee.
To deny this wasn't fueled and pushed by a hate movement isn't a good move.
"Corporate"
Arena Net is not a huge company. Just because she has people in between her and executives does not mean they are not familiar with her or in a place to dismiss her if something like this happens.
I mean
They probably would have handled it when they got back.
And if you want to start making insinuations you might want to look back over the last few pages.
Why would they? The majority of complaints were obviously the hate mob.
To say ArenaNet would have done the same when they only did what they did because of a targeted attack against Price is weird. GamerGate does this because they know they wouldn't get results without doing so. They know they can poke, prod, and spam employees anonymously because it works. Public image matters to these peoplr, and they haven't realized that a lot of their vocal public hates women.
Ok, so you feel Price didn't do anything wrong.
It seems like there are a couple main lines of argument:
-Price did nothing wrong, ArenaNet caved to gamergate
-Price overreacted but she and Fries didn't deserve to be fired, ArenaNet caved to gamergate
-Price overreacted but she and Fries didn't deserve to be fired, O'Brien needs to give up some honest info <this is where I am
It's not realistic to insult your employer's customers/partners and expect absolutely nothing to happen. Even without gamergate it would have gotten to her manager eventually.
the secret is that it doesn't matter whether or not deroir was condescending, or whether or not price was justified in getting upset, or whether or not either of them misread the situation, or whether or not either of them misread the developing social mores surrounding twitter.
all that really matters is that the community was upset because of Price's comments, and so she was axed. the community was also upset with Fries for sticking up for her, so he was axed too.
it is a view purely from the bottom line, a view where it does matter whether or not anyone was justified - it would have happened regardless of whether or not it was "deserved". but questions of whether or not the firing was "deserved" govern the amount of backlash against ArenaNet and against those who whipped up the frenzy that ArenaNet responded to.
the lesson for developers is exactly as stated - unfortunately, they have to be wary in their interactions with customers because the harassment mobs can and will aim to get them fired. you are never off the clock no matter how much you may be reassured that management loves your "righteous talk of truth to power". the company has no real motivation to shield you from harassment unless you suffering from it may come back to impact them in a negative way, and while in some cases you may be able to trust the good will of others in the company, often times the bottom line comes first.
abstracting away the surrounding context to this does appeal to people's propensity for the just world fallacy and the tendency to see bad outcomes as "deserved" to maintain that fallacy, and so thus this incident is plucked from the surrounding context of how the video gaming community treats not just developers, but everyone involved
even though the context wouldn't influence the result, it is still erased because it would influence how people feel about the result.
personally, i think recognizing this context is useful from the perspective of recognizing that these harassment mobs clearly exist, clearly take publicly visible actions, clearly state their motives, and are clearly having an impact. that also has nothing to do over whether or not anything specific about this situation, but about the state of the community and industry.
all that really matters is that the community was upset because of Price's comments, and so she was axed. the community was also upset with Fries for sticking up for her, so he was axed too.
it is a view purely from the bottom line, a view where it does matter whether or not anyone was justified - it would have happened regardless of whether or not it was "deserved". but questions of whether or not the firing was "deserved" govern the amount of backlash against ArenaNet and against those who whipped up the frenzy that ArenaNet responded to.
the lesson for developers is exactly as stated - unfortunately, they have to be wary in their interactions with customers because the harassment mobs can and will aim to get them fired. you are never off the clock no matter how much you may be reassured that management loves your "righteous talk of truth to power". the company has no real motivation to shield you from harassment unless you suffering from it may come back to impact them in a negative way, and while in some cases you may be able to trust the good will of others in the company, often times the bottom line comes first.
abstracting away the surrounding context to this does appeal to people's propensity for the just world fallacy and the tendency to see bad outcomes as "deserved" to maintain that fallacy, and so thus this incident is plucked from the surrounding context of how the video gaming community treats not just developers, but everyone involved
even though the context wouldn't influence the result, it is still erased because it would influence how people feel about the result.
personally, i think recognizing this context is useful from the perspective of recognizing that these harassment mobs clearly exist, clearly take publicly visible actions, clearly state their motives, and are clearly having an impact. that also has nothing to do over whether or not anything specific about this situation, but about the state of the community and industry.
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You're too binary. There's nuance to this.
You are playing right into their scheme. Instead of centering the conversation around the campaign of harassment around her, you're focused on her transgression. You're just seeing trees, man.
Yeah, she could have been less rude, but there's no point in arguing that when the bulk of her issue is a hate campaign convincing ANet.
but didn't a man get fired too? or did corporate just fire a random guy to try and cover up her getting fired?
You'd have a point if the streamer was part of gamergate but aside from some baseless accusations from some of the more zealous posters in here, no one's been able to show that.
Anyway, I have nothing else really to say. Hope Price and Fries land on their feet and people stop harassing her, Fries, and the streamer.
You keep going on and on with this, relentlessly. Do you have a single shred of evidence that caving to a mob was the direct impetus for the firing? Anything not totally circumstantial, or based almost entirely on speculation?
The fact that they've been targeting others as per the Verge article?
So, an outspoken women slips up and GamerGate decided to not do anything? They just sat back? I find that really hard to believe considering their goal is to remove women from games.
speaking of that article, let's all pour one out for %FEMALENAME ;___;7
I don't buy this. A man did get sacked, for starters.
I also don't see how keeping up with the times is exclusively ANET's fault. I do think there's validity to the claims that they've not revised their social media policy in years but why weren't Price and Fries keeping up with the times as well? Were they not aware that shit they say on twitter can impact them and their work? Are they not aware of the large amount of people that lost their jobs in any number of fields just for posting stupid shit on twitter? Like...is this really some kind of new, uncharted territory for people??
If anything ANET seems to actually have an understanding of how dangerous social media is. They are a business that makes their profit out of a playerbase. One of their employees was caught openly berating a customer and you could make the case she did so in front of potentially every single customer they have (this being a public twitter account that any GW2 player can read). This is not a retail employee quetly telling a single customer to fuck off, this is a company rep attacking a customer with a megaphone in front of a massive crowd. From a business perspective I don't see any other course of action than firing them.
You want to say nasty shit on twitter (which Price most certainly has)? Go for it, but don't fucking bring your employer into it and then expect for there not to be consequences. It's not sexism, its common sense!
And trying to somehow spin this as an attack on women is misguided at best.
This really isn't complicated. If you work for a corporate or government entity, you need to watch what you say on social media. Just because you aren't at work when you say it doesn't mean it won't have repercussions or reflect poorly on the company you represent. It's not rocket science. Companies don't want to deal with the drama that arises from stupid shit that people say on Twitter or Facebook.
Be professional and use common sense. If you want to say something that's clearly controversial, use an alias. If you refuse to be anonymous, that's fine but don't be surprised when it bites you in the ass.
Be professional and use common sense. If you want to say something that's clearly controversial, use an alias. If you refuse to be anonymous, that's fine but don't be surprised when it bites you in the ass.
How would that be any better though? Anyone who wanted to find out his twitter handle would just google what he said and it would link directly to his twitter handle.
No. Just no. The fact that she had no previous warning for something arguably worse, shows they had no foresight or policy and were simply reacting to a mob.
Firing Peter Fries is just arena net poor attempt at appeasing an angry mob.
GamerGaters going after her vs her being fired as a result of GameGaters going after her are two different things
There's no point in discussing her transgression. Y'all are playing right into a good scenario for them: target a woman who was rude online, get her fired, watch as everyone argues over her professionalism and not them. We should be at a point where we can see through the smoke and mirrors and accept what this really was.
Do we know for a fact that she didn't have warnings in the past?
I think your assertions are kind of insane. Pretty much saying that a woman who has suffered harassment or is the target of GamerGate must become immune from all repercussions regardless of the action, because to do otherwise is to cave into the mob that had it out for her.
This is madness.
You talk about people seeing the trees, but you're just seeing a forest fire everywhere you look.
This ignores the scenario that Anet looked at those tweets themselves and simply considered them out of line.
Never said immune. You assume that. Don't assume.
Just pointing out their strategy. I think we should all at least be on the same page about this.
I think you're posts are starting to look like that parody poster QueenPriscilla who got banned earlier in the thread.