bitterpants

These are great!

Request sent as Cmdr Zoopster. Thanks!

Godspeed, Scoops. Godspeed.

Thanks to everyone involved. I was genuinely cheered up by the streams and the donations.

Dan needs to go on Chopped. That would be amazing.

@rorie: Thanks Rorie!

@LunarJetman:

I think there are really three problems involved here.

First -- women are absolutely deluged with abuse online (and this is above and beyond the general disaster that is online discussion), and the first thing that happens when mention it is they get accused of lying about it. For things to get better, that needs to stop.

Second -- and related -- these cases are completely impossible toprove. Even if you show up with a screencap, someone will say it's faked. Or that it's a sockpuppet. Or that the person just doesn't "represent" the community. It is an unbelievable request.

Third -- it doesn't matter. "Someone who is a Giant Bomb member is abusive online" is essentially a statistical certainty, so challenging it serves no point except some kind of group-affiliation defense.

It's important sometimes to just listen to people and not challenge. This is hard online, and it's particularly hard I think for gamers, given how competitive we tend to be. Nevertheless, it's important, and you learn a lot. I say this as a recovering devil's advocate type (and someone who fails at that goal frequently).

It's kind of shocking to me that people are actually surprised that members of this community can be abusive.

I remember what people were like when Leigh Alexander was on that E3 bombcast, I remember being disgusted at the chat (that they had to shut down!) when Zoe was on the E3 stream earlier this year, or just how people right now are asking @spacekatgal provide proof instead of just listening and saying (or thinking) "that's horrible."

So, not that at matters or helps, but: I'm sorry @spacekatgal that people in this community I am part of harassed you. I hope it all stops for you soon and you can continue to make games.