Alec Holowka, one of the creators of Night in the Woods, has committed suicide after accusations of past abuse were made against him last week
This was posted on Twitter by Alec's sister. She's protected her account now (probably because of how disgusting the replies to it were), but I've re-typed the statement here:
Alec Holowka, my brother and best friend, passed away this morning.
Those who know me will know that I believe survivors and I have always done everything I can to support survivors, those suffering from mental illnesses, and those with chronic illnesses. Alec was a victim of abuse and he also spent a lifetime battling mood and personality disorders. I will not pretend that he was not also responsible for causing harm, but deep down he was a person who wanted only to offer people care and kindness. It took him a while to figure out how.
Over the last few years, with therapy and medication, Alec became a new person—the same person he'd always been but without any of the darkness. He was calm and happy, positive and loving. Obviously, change is a slow process and it wasn't perfect, but he was working towards rehabilitation and a better life.
In the last few days, he was supported by many Manitoba crisis services, and I want to thank everyone there for their support. I want to thank Adam Saltsman for staying up late talking with us and reminding Alec that there was a future.
My family has and always will be the most important thing to me. Please give us time to heal. We tried our best to support Alec, but in the end he felt he had lost too much.
I currently do not see a place for myself in games or on Twitter. I will not be looking at the responses to this post. I appreciate everyone who has reached out to me over the last few days. For anyone who is in a time of darkness, I encourage you to reach out for support. There are always people who will be there for you.
As backstory, he was accused of abuse (and sexual abuse) last week by Zoe Quinn with several others corroborating past abusive behavior (a bit more detail in this article). As a result, the other Night in the Woods creators cut ties with him. I'm going to re-post their statements below inside a collapsed block since they're fairly long, but you can expand it if you want to read them:
Statements from Scott Benson
From Scott Benson's personal account:
Allegations of past abuse have come to light this week regarding Alec Holowka, who we have worked with in the past. We take such allegations seriously, and applaud those speaking out about their experiences with abuse in the industry and elsewhere.
As a result, we won't be working with Alec in the future. What this means for Night in the Woods going forward is something we will have to work out. These things take time, longer than a couple days at least.
Night in the Woods is a very personal game for Bethany and I. Our parts of the game - the writing, world, characters, art, etc - are pulled from our own lives, sometimes very directly.
We know it has connected with thousands of people in a very deep manner. And whatever your reaction is, that's valid. Know that we are just as heartbroken right now. We'll have more info in the future about how we're moving forward. Thanks.
On a more personal note, this has all been devastating. And people will ask for details that we as collaborators on a project simply do not have. They’ll want essays and interviews as if we have some secret info. But we don’t. We’re just very sad right now.
And on the Night in the Woods account
This week, allegations of past abuse have come to light regarding Alec Holowka, who was coder, composer, and co-designer on Night In The Woods. We take such allegations seriously as a team. As a result and after some agonizing consideration, we are cutting ties with Alec.
We are cancelling a current project and postponing the Limited Run physical release. The iOS port is being handled by an outside company and supervised by Finji and will remain in development.
We’ve received a lot of emails and messages in the past few days, often very hurt and angry. That’s also how we feel. This has been very, very tough.
I should say that I’m Scott. Hello. I run this account. I was the artist, lead animator, co-designer, co-writer, and the guy who wrote almost all of that dialogue in the game. Bethany’s here too, she was co-writer and researcher.
Much of Night In The Woods is pulled pretty directly from our lives. Bethany is from a tiny valley in central PA. I’ve lived out here in Western PA for about 20 years. The characters are us, and people we’ve known. The places are ones we know.
Thousands of people have connected with Night In The Woods in a very personal way. We can’t tell you how to feel about any of this. Whatever you’re feeling is valid. Your experience with art is yours. What it means to you is yours, regardless of anything else.
Going forward, Night In The Woods will be handled by Bethany and I. We’re not sure what that all means yet. This stuff takes time.
Thanks for your support over the years. We’re sorry to even have to say any of this. That’s all I can say at the moment. Thank you for your patience.
(Edit: since Zoe Quinn has deleted her Twitter account now, I'm going to re-type her statement as well)
Zoe Quinn's statement
I want to say upfront that I'm not saying this for anyone but me and the other people that I know have been hurt by him, and might in the future be hurt. I read Nathalie Lawhead's post about her rapist being an industry legend who took advantage of her and poisoned her career and it shook me to my core. Her waning health, her fear, the way she described all of it feeling like drowning... and my heart broke for her. Beyond that, I felt *ashamed*. So many of the little details, down to the timing, had been things I've gone through too, just a few months into my time as an indie game developer. And it's haunted me ever since. It's why I don't go to GDC anymore. I'm drowning too.
A few months into making games, I was sexually assaulted. My visa status was threatened if I told anyone, and he went out of his way to tell the community that I'd been falsely accusing him of rape when I hadn't said anything to anyone (but a third party who saw it happen firsthand confronted him about it the next day). This story isn't about him - after years of therapy and working on himself, he reached out and apologized for everything, and I've forgiven him. But that's the background to this story.
One month after the assault, I wanted to leave Toronto. I was scared, I couldn't sleep, and I almost killed myself over it. I had a suicide note and everything ready to go but I just didn't want to do that to my roommate.
Enter Alec Holowka. Yeah, the one from Aquaria and Night in the Woods. He was one person who I felt like, in my newly chosen field, had my back.
He talked about how great and cheap Winnipeg was and we flirted and talked on skype for hours. He knew I was in an incredibly vulnerable place and he asked me to come visit him in Winnipeg to see if I'd want to start an indie house there with the 3 friends I'd been talking about the idea with, and to see if the thing between us was as cool as it seemed at a distance. Two weeks. I'd buy the plane ticket there, he'd buy my plane ticket back. He knew i couldn't afford it otherwise so that was the deal.
I wouldn't get home for a month, and only then it was because my roommate used his miles to get me out of his apartment that he had physically confined me to.
While I was in Winnipeg he slowly isolated me from everyone else in my life while absolutely degrading me whenever we were alone. He convinced me to talk the 3 friends out of getting a shared place with me there. He convinced me to let him program my game instead of the friend I had been working with, despite many protests. He screamed at me for over an hour once because of the tone in my voice when I said hello. He wouldn't let me leave the apartment without him and refused to give me the code to get in.
About the sexual assault, he blamed me. He said he was jealous of me, to be wanted like that. He'd bring it up during sex, where he'd regularly be mean and violent. He told me he loved me, in a way no one else would, because he could see that I was terrible and he loved me anyway. And I bought it, because that's how you feel when you're recovering from being sexually assaulted.
I spent a lot of that month hiding from him in the bathroom. His moods would shift and he'd throw things and hurt himself seemingly at random and blame me. He'd jam his fingers inside me and walk me around the house by them when I told him it hurt.
I was scared to leave. I was scared to tell anyone. He'd act normal when other people were around and lay into me as soon as we were alone, then apologize and say how much he needed and loved me. I got even more scared when the two weeks had passed and he kept putting off the agreed plane ticket home. I spent a lot of that time hiding in the bathroom from him. My roommate started to get scared and asked me if I needed help getting out. I said yes, and Alec barely looked at me as I left.
When I got home, I sent a cordial and friendly break up email. He lashed out and banned me from an indie games community he ran, banned himself, then went to other industry legends asking them to help him kill himself because I was such a bitch. He made sure to blacklist me at important industry events. He tried to ruin the career I'd barely started. To a degree it worked.
The night GG started I vaguebooked about it without specifying which ex and two other women in games immediately messaged me to ask if it was Alec. He'd done similar things to them. They knew he'd been fixated on me and were also too afraid to speak up about an industry legend.
It's been the better part of a decade and I'm still afraid of him. Too afraid to speak out, especially because I've gone through so much publicly, like people will just roll their eyes and ignore me as if there's some karmic limit on how much bad shit can happen to someone before people stop listening. I'm afraid that people will care more about their love of Night in the Woods than they will about the safety and truths of women and non-binary people in games.
I'm still afraid of him. I'm afraid of telling anyone about him. I'm afraid of how many indies have seen this behavior and given him a pass. I'm afraid of being in the same room as him because I'm afraid he'll hurt me again. I'm afraid of all the developers who watched this happen, and watched him scream abuse at another woman out front of Moscone during GDC.
But being silent for years has been worse than the fear. I skipped the last 2 GDCs because I couldn't risk being around him or seeing everyone clap for him on stage. Especially not people who know.
I don't wish any ill will on anyone. I know Alec is likely not well and I will always believe in rehabilitation over punishment. I don't want anything bad to come of this to his collaborators who may not know any of this. But I've watched enough of the big names in the indie community know about him - so much so that the reaction to his first meltdown about me was "oh well that's Alec what can you do" - and I've seen enough to know nothings going to happen about this particular broken stair unless someone says something. But we're all scared. I'm scared. A big childish part of me has been hoping people would somehow start caring or figure it out on their own.
But feeling like a coward in the face of Nathalie's strength, feeling like I have to hide from my own life because it's not safe and I can't tell anyone *why* I'm hiding, of knowing I wasn't the first or last, of drowning, that's too much for me to keep carrying with me. I just want the other boot to drop so I can breathe again. I don't want another new dev to get hurt and hear the same "oh that's just how he is" after the fact that I did. I want to breathe again.
Such a sad story for everyone involved. I guess this is the problem with this kind of thing - how are you and I supposed to determine what’s the truth in a case like this? Someone makes an accusation (as far as I can tell one named person made the accusation claiming several anonymous people had similar experiences), but there is no actual trial. The accused gets tried and convicted in the court of public opinion immediately and then... Commits suicide.
You and I don’t really have any way of telling what really transpired. The statement from Holowka’s sister acknowledges a dark side but doesn’t go into any details. The other supporting statements are basically ‘a person who knew the accused believes the account even though they didn’t personally witness the events’ and ‘anonymous people who allegedly knew the accused were also abused.’
I feel like I have no right to actually make a judgment on what was actually happened. And I don’t want to seem like I don’t think that victims of abuse should be able to speak out about it. But on the other hand, this climate where a public accusation has the same social (if not legal) effects as a conviction at court seems... Not ideal.
So. I don’t have a conclusion, I just want to say this whole thing feels bad for everyone involved.
Yeah, and social media has certainly increased the speed of it recently as well as how much of it happens in public view, but overall I don't know if much about the process and effects has changed in a lot of cases. Previously, the accusations often would have gone through the press (which, you'd hope, would verify them as much as possible), but would often still end up with companies cutting ties with the accused in a very public way without a real court process or anything similar being involved.
In this case, some of the corroborators were other well-known indie developers such as Matt Thorson, who made Celeste and Towerfall. Some of their statements were quite vague, but I believe that corroborations like that probably would have been enough for press to trust a story like this as well if they had contacted those past collaborators during fact-checking.
I shouldn't speculate much, but from his sister saying, "he felt he had lost too much," I suspect what really drove Alec to despair was that he had been completely cut off from some of his biggest achievements with Night of the Woods, removed from a future project associated with it, and that his reputation would be ruined forever. It wasn't the publicness of the accusation that caused that to happen.
I think in general, we also put a little too much reverence on the legal process. Despite it being rigorous, we still know very well that mistakes are made quite often, in both directions. People are convicted falsely, and others are exonerated for crimes they obviously committed. There are also tons of awful acts that people can commit that could never be proven to the legal process's standards, or that aren't even legally considered crimes despite being morally wrong. As an easy example, I think it's valuable for the public to know if someone is a virulent racist, even if (at least in the USA) that's not considered a crime.
I don't know, I don't have a conclusion either. It's a horrible situation all around, but these kind of accusations are always going to be messy and awful no matter how it happens.
You can’t really separate the two when one directly led to the other.
Also, the corroborating statement you mention amounts to, as far as I can tell, ‘I knew the accused and I believe the accuser, but I am unwilling to offer any concrete details that corroborate the accuser’s narrative.’ I know courts aren’t perfect but that wouldn’t fly in a court. And I also recognize that just because something happened doesn’t necessarily mean you can produce evidence that would stand up in court after the fact... But neither does that fact mean that nonexistent evidence proves wrongdoing. Rather, it just leaves everything... Unclear.
IMO, if I'd been falsely accused of something, I would stick it out to clear my name, even if it cost me my livelihood in the short-term. I'd be up-front, public, and actively call for an investigation into my behavior, apologizing for any pain I may have caused people.
It's why I think Al Franken absolutely committed offenses against those women. He didn't stick it out for an actual investigation. He resigned before one could take place.
At the end of the day, I live my life up front and out in the open. If someone were to falsely accused me of something I didn't do, I would trust that the people I know and who know me would demand the same investigation. No matter what, both I and they would want the truth to shine though.
Ok, but that’s you. You can’t use your hypothetical reaction to a hypothetical scenario to judge a person innocent or guilty of an actual accusation.
I'm not. Nor am I claiming that I did so in this case. This case is far different from the Al Franken case, or the Weinstein case, or the Epstein case. The point though is that it's one more data point to put into the constellation of accusations, and should not be disregarded.
I don’t think ‘I believe I would have reacted differently in a hypothetical scenario which I have not experienced’ is a valid data point. It’s entirely hypothetical, and even if it were not, people react in different ways to the same circumstances.
That's fair. But I have seen people react to real and false claims against them in the public light, and more often than not, the false claims are followed by what is essentially "I'm sorry for the pain and want to get to the bottom of this" while the true claims are followed by either silence, bombastic outrage, or denials.
Kavanaugh lied through his teeth about common slang terms, broke into tears and claimed his accuser was simply a Clinton puppet, for example.
In the opposite manner, the person who was trying to accuse public figures of sexual assault (I'm blanking on his name, he was a right-wingers who claimed he had been in contact with an accuser) was almost immediately debunked and laughed at, while the accuser rightfully asked for an investigation.
The fact is that very few people would put themselves into a situation where they were open to receiving many death threats for absolutely nothing.
How do you know what is a real and false claim to judge the reaction to those claims?
I have only my senses. If those are lying to me, then I have the senses of others. If those are lying to everyone, then there is functionally no difference, and the point is moot.
?
Your senses don't lie to you, but last I checked you don't have truthsense. You have sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch.
What you're actually using is interpretation, and that is far more fallible. Failing to acknowledge that fallibility is dangerous.
Truthsense comes from the ability of others to repeat, compare, and validate my senses. Truth is nothing but a consensus.
No, truth is what happened. You don't know what happened, and to make out as if you do based on reading a twitter feed and making assumptions is just weird.
My apologies, I got confused and thought this was a discussion about naturalism and positivism that I was having in another thread. But in a very real sense, it also kind of applies here.
I know what is real and false because of the eventual outcomes of their respective trials. Weinstein? Guilty. Epstein? Guilty. Kavanaugh? Guilty, if not of the rape he was accused of, then absolutely of lying through his teeth to cover it up and prevent the truth from coming to light.
Sounds like you're basing your truth on the outcome of a trial. Why not just let trials sort out these cases then?
I'm basing my truth on the body of public evidence.
You're making assumptions that said body of public evidence is correct, when a cursory observation of history says it often isn't.
This is why I don't engage in social media drama. We only get to see a tiny part of the story which is not enough to make a proper judgement. Really the original story should have never been posted around until the courts had made their judgement.
Did your comment get marked as noise? It appeared collapsed to me by default despite my never having seen it before, yet it doesn't come off as deserving a noise label to me.
I'll volunteer that I was one of the people that Noise-labeled it. The most charitable way I could interpret someone talking about "until the courts had made their judgement" was that they were commenting about a situation they were completely ignorant about. The accusations include situations that happened almost 10 years ago in private, in a different country. There's no court case coming out of this, so they were talking about something completely irrelevant, and not contributing anything of value to the discussion.
Scott Benson's Kickstarter update that I posted below does a good job of explaining why those kind of expectations don't make much sense in reality.
This makes sense, yeah. I do think the rest of the comment in question did provide some value though; if started, I think a good discussion could be had about where, when and what judgement is appropriate when stories like those come up.
...that said, other comments are doing much better jobs of spurring that discussion, so I'm not really sure.
I'll volunteer that I was the one who gave it an exemplary tag. Your response is good, but the noise tag was unneeded.
I missed this statement at the time, but before Alec's death was announced, Scott Benson had made a large backers-only update on the Night in the Woods Kickstarter with a lot more information about the whole situation and some good insight about the nature of accusations and abuse like this. It's long, but I highly recommended reading it:
Thanks, that's a really great writeup too. I can't imagine how difficult this whole situation has been for Scott (not even just the last week, but going on for years), and it's incredibly admirable that he's been willing to go through the additional pain and risk of doing so much writing about it to try to make it more understandable for people on the outside.
I don’t know if I can articulate my thoughts correctly, but I’m going to try my best.
I think people have a hard time finding perspective. From the outside, situations like gamergate seem so odd. But when you’re attached to and invested in some drama - I guess specifically Zoe Quinn’s allegation - you can sometimes feel like it is your duty as an individual to seek some kind of truth. And the more you invest your time into reading about and participating in the discussion, the more real it feels.
But imagine a scenario in which you couldn’t immediately reach a thousand people who are all saying, “You’re right! Zoe Quinn is a fucking liar!” or “Exactly! Alec Holowka is a rapist!”. That echo chamber and that “us vs. them” mentality is toxic. By disengaging from participating in those, your role in the situation becomes passive instead of active. That changes things, because for most people, you were never actively involved. What if some event from your past was made public? Is there any scenario in which thousands of screaming voices could help the situation?
I don’t think so. There’s no good to be had here. Not for Ms. Quinn, certainly not for Mr. Holowka, and not for anyone else invested in this situation either.
Is there a solution? I honestly don’t know. Sexual harassment is a traumatic experience. It’s complicated and it’s not the same for everyone. It’s easy to say, “Make it easier for people to come forward”, but it’s also very difficult to come forward, and a lot of times coming forward results in no result at all.
I don’t have a solution. But I think there is a question that people aren’t asking often enough: Why do I have to take a stance on this? Is it okay to say, “I don’t know.”?
I think a lot of people believe saying "I don't know" is a stance.
Maybe, but I believe a lot of those comments are really saying "We can't know, so let's not even entertain the notion". And that's something that sounds like "I don't know", but is really "I don't believe you".
As I see it, there are a couple of easy cases:
You don't have to pass judgement on everything you read about on the Internet. This is important because it's impossible to keep up with everything, or learn enough about specific cases to make an informed decision.
When interacting with people it's polite to assume they are sincere. You can still privately withhold judgement.
After that comes the hard cases where you actually are involved, or feel like you should step in, and you do have to make a decision based on sketchy data. But the easy cases are often enough when discussing distant events.
This, exactly. That's why you can say "I don't know" while still believing victims.
I'm not sure what you mean? It seems like reserving judgement isn't believing?
Judgement and its reservation is regarding the accused. Believing is regarding the accuser. Both can exist simultaneously.
Ah, got it. My bad. 🙃
Of course it’s okay. But nobody retweets “okay” and there’s the problem.
The more I’m thinking about this, the more an absolute stance like “social media itself is the problem” becomes reasonable. Basically just contacting - even indirectly - millions of people over night is a very powerful force. No doubt a force that can be used for good, but we probably need some standards and a way to enforce them. I also think that, if social media companies don’t figure this out for themselves, government regulation will jump in. It’s urgent and inevitable.
Social media has always been a problem. People need a community, they need a place where they belong. This is then often centered around people who are beacons in that community, so people rally around them. Before social media this wasn't such a big problem, because communities were local and you usually had a good mix of opinions everywhere. With social media echo chambers have become more common across all spectrums of internet communities, and therefore more radicalized because people constantly agree with each other.
I think it was the late Totalbiscuit who once said that you had to watch yourself like a hawk with your public statements, because he had a couple million followers, and if you said something negative, there was a good chance you sent your own rabid followers on someone without actually wanting to do so.
I don't think the companies behind these platforms are going to do much fixing, because this kind of drama is exactly what drives engagement. How big do you think was the surge in activity after Lawhead released her blog post? How big was the second spike after Quinn made her tweet and Holowka was subsequently cut off from Night In The Woods? How many articles were written about this? Everyone participating is picking sides, those watching can't look away because it's raging dumpster fire, and everyone feels like they need to have an opinion.
@markh said it pretty well that he wasn't sure if it was even okay to say "I don't know." We've gotten to a point that we question if it's okay to say "I don't know." and that's pretty bad.
It looks like Zoe just deleted her Twitter account. I'm guessing due to some of the aforementioned disgusting responses to this news.
That's probably for the best, really. I re-typed Zoe Quinn's accusation into the bottom of the topic, since it's no longer accessible.
Both other Night in the Woods creators seem to have deleted their personal accounts as well - Scott Benson (@bombsfall) and Bethany Hockenberry (@cleodee).
Alec Holowka's sister has also protected her account, so the original tweet isn't accessible any more either.
Probably for the best. Knowing the internet and how these things go, it will bring out all the angry people, the trolls, the instigators, the people who believe that attacking others only tangentially related to this is justified... etc
It's a horrible situation all around. I believe the victims and their accusations, but I also don't think that the accused's family deserves to be bullied or pestered by internet trolls while they are grieving. And I certainly don't think that victims deserve to be harassed or yelled at by trolls who will insist that they somehow caused this.
Christ. What drives people to oust these kinds of things on a public forum like this? Fucking ProJared came out the other day after months of silence and swiftly and respectfully cut down all the dissent laid bare before him. But it was far too late. He lost friends, business ventures, and years off his fuckin' life from this extended virtual lynching. I know this subject matter is very tumultuous, as it's very much one's word against another's, but do people really have to take to Twitter? So many people will so easily and readily take up arms if it means they can virtue signal or be seen as the "good guy" regardless of the validity of any claims made. Such an easy and consequence-free method of completely fucking up somebody's life or career. I'd bet money on Alec having seen all of this he-said-she-said witch-hunting throughout this past year and being completely overwhelmed and dismayed at the utter shitstorm that would follow. It disgusts me how quickly people online will turn on one another if it means they can remain in favor of the amorphous, unflinching internet hivemind.
At the same time, do you not thing that's somewhat ridiculous from the other side? If someone rapes, or otherwise sexually harasses you, and then someone tells you
"Hey, keep it on the down low, okay? You might damage the reputation of your rapist"
Victims should have the right, and the safety, to speak out against abuse they had.
Of course, not all allegations are true, but we don't have a magic ball to tell us whose is lying and who isn't. And if you can prove they are lying, there are slander laws.
There's got to be another way. The spectrum doesn't have to be "completely fucking over one side" or "completely ignoring the other side". I'm not trying to place blame on victims, but when false accusations are made, they can be extremely destructive. There has to be a better medium for this than Twitter.
I certainly don't think Twitter is an optimal place to discuss anything, but what is "another way"? This is a complicated issue deeply rooted in human behavior. I really doubt there's any clear cut magical solutions.
Mainly I took issue with
Justice, warning, and a general right to tell your story? As we've seen with Epstein, sometimes you can be actually be convicted of statutory rape then serve 18 months of jail with permission to commute to an office during the week.
The public outcry, and increased public support, also played a big part in why Weinstein faced the book.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons why someone would want to post publically about their experiences.
I understand what you mean. I really do. With the Epstein case, though, it was literally just money keeping him safe. I wouldn't put him on the level of people who can be held accountable on Twitter. The world knew he was a criminal but nothing could be done because shit's fucked.
I guess what I wish would be implemented, then, is real consequence for demonstrably false claims. I know ProJared is actually looking into a lawsuit for defamation, among other things. It sucks that these are essentially online hit & runs that can uproot someone's livelihood with so little as one poorly backed up claim
Like, for example, getting so many threatening and disgusting tweets that you deactivate your social media accounts and essentially go offline?
The fact is that the rate of false accusations is so low as to be insignificant. Focusing on the handful that are false and demanding something be done about it really only hurts the victims.
That's a pretty extreme position to take. It's a fact that people are unjustly sentenced all the time, would that mean you would abolish the entire justice system?
There's a lot I'd do differently if I were omnipotent but that's an unrealistic fantasy from which to form opinions about the real world.
Fine. Rather than try to supplement a solution, I just want to express my sympathy for the few unfortunate victims who are suffering from people who abuse such serious issues as this to garner attention or to feed hatred. It's disheartening to watch it unfold and to see the destruction it wreaks, and further places strain on actual victims
In an ideal world, there would be. But often times, there really isn't. Often because reporting these things officially / through proper channels goes NOWHERE, or there is blackmail involved.
This is why people advocate for better protection for victims, and people believing these accusations without needing 4 people to say "yeah, he did this to me, too" as a minimum/baseline. Then, when someone makes a report, we won't just ignore them, or tell them they imagined it.
My issue then, I suppose, is the unshakable ire of Twitter, and other open forums at large. If too many false accusations are put through, it may damage the reputation of an otherwise helpful tool for those who need it. It's unfortunate to see people's lives being thrown away and having people quoting numbers or statistics to seemingly belittle or devalue a loss.
Absolutely. And ultimately that's what these platforms are risking with their policy of policing everything and policing nothing.
I like that Tildes has taken the UI / UX approach to this problem. You cannot police everyone, but you can design a system that doesn't outright encourage brigading, groupthink, and mobs of angry people.
I'm kinda doubtful of Quinn's accusation, personally, but...
...if someone is a rapist, they should have their 'side' completely fucked over. The ideal is jail, the minimum is never being able to make minimum wage again off of selling things.
Desperation? Anger? Rage? Frustration? Hearing other people say "yeah, it happened to me too, but I don't want to cause a scene"?
Thinking "this person has been doing this for some time to many people and will probably do so again with absolutely no consequences"?
If you had a chance to stop a serial sexual assaulter, would you not make it public?
I'm not disregarding the utility of the method for those who genuinely need it. It's just shitty standing by and watching these lynch mobs erupt so readily and easily out of the woodworks and adhering themselves to a position without doing any kind of research. It's worrying in that it might give other people who want to start shit like this an easy pass to defamation/libel/what-have-you. Further abuse of a method like this seems like it would reach a point where nobody would believe anything that anybody says, and there would still be no justice at all. rendering it useless for those who truly do need it. It is a very multi-faceted issue, and I won't act like I have a solution for it (and sorry if I initially came off that way), but it's just unsettling how much Twitter seems like an angry mob gnashing their teeth and biding their time until they get to be mad at the next big bad.
How do you tell the difference between those who genuinely need it and those who do not?
The option to respond with a libel/defamation always exists, and if someone feels wrongly accused, that is a perfectly valid response.
Twitter, and the general public, will always be an angry mob. But we as a society are getting better and better about finding public figures who are trustworthy and are able to independently analyze the situation.
This is a sad situation. I really enjoy this song from Alex. I'd listen to it a lot when I was down.
I checked 4chan and it is currently being branded as GG 2. Not sure if that will actually stick around though.
Ugh. :(