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Who cares? Employees get wacked all the time. Like thousands at a time.

First, it's routine to check prospective employee's social media history particularly if they are going to work in the Marketing/PR departments.

Second, if Nintentdo wanted to fire her for having made tweets in 2012, why would they say it was for having a second job? Or is that just a lie?

Third, there wasn't a problem until late 2015, when a Gamergate style harassment campaign was started, so clearly it wasn't that big a deal.

I never paied much attention to that stuff, what do you mean by "gamergate-style"

 Frazzled wrote:
Who cares? Employees get wacked all the time. Like thousands at a time.

Well the "potential paedophile working at Nintendo" angle is quite juicy

 Frazzled wrote:
Who cares? Employees get wacked all the time. Like thousands at a time.

Because a bunch of people made a stink to make it happen.

So imagine you've had a whole bunch of incidents in.... I dunno... the professional...sport fishing circuit, where you've had a whole bunch of drama involving Mexican contestants. Many on one side of the issue have been accused of racism, bullying and just generally being little gaks in the whole thing. Maybe you agree with that assessment maybe you don't but the contingent of people who believe bullying & racism is playing a role is large, loud and their accusations are at least somewhat plausible when given the benefit of the doubt.

Now the same sort of drama starts up with another Mexican fisherman. The same usual stuff happens on both sides, and again the folks acting against him are accused of racism and bullying. Then his opponents able to dig out a bunch of photos and essays he'd written endorsing ideas about genocide and use of chemical weapons and just general "Hitler was right" sort of stuff.

You can imagine one side of the controversy would use that as general evidence of "hey we're not bullies or racists", "we're just drumming out people who actually suck". While the other side would still maintain "Yes you're bullies and racists, and you were still being racist bullies when you went looking for dirt on this guy. That he happened to be a nazi-loving maniac who writes essays on why war crimes are OK doesn't really change that." Regardless the Fisherman gets banned from the circuit, for behaviour unbecoming a sportsman.

No matter which side of the controversy you stand on generally or with regards to his specific case (outside the Hitler thing), the banning is still just going to add more fuel to the drama fire.

 Chongara wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Who cares? Employees get wacked all the time. Like thousands at a time.

Because a bunch of people made a stink to make it happen.

So imagine you've had a whole bunch of incidents in.... I dunno... the professional...sport fishing circuit, where you've had a whole bunch of drama involving Mexican contestants. Many on one side of the issue have been accused of racism, bullying and just generally being little gaks in the whole thing. Maybe you agree with that assessment maybe you don't but the contingent of people who believe bullying & racism is playing a role is large, loud and their accusations are at least somewhat plausible when given the benefit of the doubt.

Now the same sort of drama starts up with another Mexican fisherman. The same usual stuff happens on both sides, and again the folks acting against him are accused of racism and bullying. Then his opponents able to dig out a bunch of photos an essays he'd written endorsing ideas about genocide and use of chemical weapons and just general "Hitler was right" sort of stuff.

You can imagine one of the controversy would use that as general example of hey we're not bullies or racists, we're just drumming out people who actually suck. While the other side would still maintain yes you're bullies and racists, and you were still being racist bullies when you went looking for dirt on this guy. That he happened to be a nazi-loving maniac who writes essays on why war crimes are OK doesn't really change it. Regardless the Fisherman gets banned from the circuit, for behaviour unbecoming a sportsman.

No matter which side of the contrvoreis you stand on generally or with regards to his specific case (outside the Hitler thing), the banning is still just going to add more fuel to the drama fire.

Why? I am not trying to be critical but why is this news and why the effort. Apparently she was a PR person, and a bad one, so she got wacked.
Frazzled confused.
On the positive I learned Nintendo is still in business. That was a surprise.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
I never paied much attention to that stuff, what do you mean by "gamergate-style"

Chongar has explained it very well in his latest post.

 Frazzled wrote:


Why? I am not trying to be critical but why is this news and why the effort. Apparently she was a PR person, and a bad one, so she got wacked.
Frazzled confused.
On the positive I learned Nintendo is still in business. That was a surprise.

Because the story fits within the context of larger narrative in the games industry. There are ongoing issues that people feel really passionate about that involve the kind of tactics and behaviour involved in this story (sans the exact specifics about the kid...stuff.). This is meaningful to people who care about that sort of thing.

Sure it's meaningless to a lot of people (including you apparently), and I'm honestly pretty tepid on the whole gaming culture wars thing myself. However since this is a forum dedicated to nerd stuff and nerds generally care about video games you're going to have a lot of people that care about all this video game culture war stuff here.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
How do you know it was her work as a model? Nintendo haven't said anything about it.

It seems to be the most likely, considering she was posting topless photos of herself (taken from the back) on her Twitter, advertising that her "new set" was out.

Huh, that makes sesnse. I mostly just saw more gak being thrown than 500 monkeys on caffine and prune juice.

Double ninjed...

Because the story fits within the context of larger narrative in the games industry. There are ongoing issues that people feel really passionate about that involve the kind of tactics and behaviour involved in this story (sans the exact specifics about the kid...stuff.). This is meaningful to people who care about that sort of thing.

Tactics and behavior? Am I opening a can of worms by asking for more info?

Sure it's meaningless to a lot of people (including you apparently), and I'm honestly pretty tepid on the whole gaming culture wars thing myself. However since this is a forum dedicated to nerd stuff and nerds generally care about video games you're going to have a lot of people that care about all this video game culture war stuff here.

I am not trying to be critical. I am just trying to understand why said person is important, in this case to the video game industry. I could understand if this were a developer or something, but from a business perspective, she's a non-entity except for marketing. Based on statements in the OP, she would have been terminated immediately in most private businesses.
So...er why was she still there?

People get fired all the time...who really should give a flying feth.
I have zero feths to give this person.

Seriously....why does someones employment mean anything to anyone other than that person...

 Frazzled wrote:

Because the story fits within the context of larger narrative in the games industry. There are ongoing issues that people feel really passionate about that involve the kind of tactics and behaviour involved in this story (sans the exact specifics about the kid...stuff.). This is meaningful to people who care about that sort of thing.

Tactics and behavior? Am I opening a can of worms by asking for more info?

Sure it's meaningless to a lot of people (including you apparently), and I'm honestly pretty tepid on the whole gaming culture wars thing myself. However since this is a forum dedicated to nerd stuff and nerds generally care about video games you're going to have a lot of people that care about all this video game culture war stuff here.

I am not trying to be critical. I am just trying to understand why said person is important, in this case to the video game industry. I could understand if this were a developer or something, but from a business perspective, she's a non-entity except for marketing. Based on statements in the OP, she would have been terminated immediately in most private businesses.
So...er why was she still there?

So there are people who have said things about video games.
Some of those people are women.
Some other people have objected to things that have been said by those women.
In response those people have said and done things.
There are two camps that view the things that have been said and done differently.
In the view of the first camp the things they have said and done are reasonable criticism,calls for accountability that are holding the industry/journalism/whatever to honest critique. These have been conducted as respectfully has possible with no wide patterns of misconduct.
In the view of the second camp, that first camp are frequently bullies and harassers. They believe the first camp is largely motived by bigotry, fear of change and/or an unwillingness to accept the industry's issues.
There people whose views that fit somewhere in between the two camps.
Some accuse the second camp of wanting strip the fun out of games, force everything to be "PC" and label the second group as just generally thin-skinned "SJWs" or any number of other things
Some accuse the first camp of being lonely misogynist neck beards, plugging their fingers in the ears and refusing to entertain any criticism and insisting on hyperbolic depictions of their opponents trying to destroy fun.


In this case a similar narrative has played out. However in this case the woman involved was posting that weird kiddo stuff and other things not fitting nintendo's image. The first camp will now say this is only evidence they're not acting inappropriately. The second camp will claim that regardless of how you judge the material they found on her, the means by which they uncovered it was still part of typical pattern of harassment.


This isn't really about her and her job specifically, it's about this larger culture war going on.

Wow, ok. gotcha. Thanks for the additional information.

Industry gossip is weird and pointless at the best of times. Video game industry gossip just adds a heaping dose of crazy to all of that for some reason.

The idea that a load of people would know who the PR rep at Nintendo is, let alone actually have an opinion about that lady is incredibly weird. I mean, everyone gets that right?

 Chongara wrote:

In the view of the first camp the things they have said and done are reasonable criticism,calls for accountability that are holding the industry/journalism/whatever to honest critique. These have been conducted as respectfully has possible with no wide patterns of misconduct.
In the view of the second camp, that first camp are frequently bullies and harassers. They believe the first camp is largely motived by bigotry, fear of change and/or an unwillingness to accept the industry's issues.

I would say that there are 3 camps.
Camp 1 is the same as you have described, camp 2 are the bafflingly large segment of the Internet's populace who are unashamedly mysogynistic and really do set out to harass any prominent female figures (especially if there is a suggestion of wrong doing). Camp 3 react to camp 2 and in the process equate camp 1's concerns to camp 2's trolling and elements of camp 3 can troll just as hard and as nastily as camp 2.

The Zoe Quinn thing started out as genuine and legitimate concerns with ethics in games journalism (although the way the whole thing came out was quite distastful) and then the 'misogynists' and 'feminists' decided to see who could cover the other group in gak the fastest and we ended up with 'Gamers gate' and nothing was really addressed (although IIRC the Kotatu code of ethics was changed reference personal relationships).

The only reason that Alison Rapp is being talked about here is that she is a woman, to be honest I have never heard of her before this thread and I frequent a few gaming websites.

Basically this whole issue demonstrates just how immature the culture of the internet actually is.

 sebster wrote:
Industry gossip is weird and pointless at the best of times. Video game industry gossip just adds a heaping dose of crazy to all of that for some reason.

The idea that a load of people would know who the PR rep at Nintendo is, let alone actually have an opinion about that lady is incredibly weird. I mean, everyone gets that right?

Not as weird as you might think.


Hardcore gamers, especially fanbois/fangirls of certain development studios and distributors, generally keep up with the who, what, where , how, and whys in the industry.


They're not exactly secrets that you have to be a creeper, and go digging for James Bond-style, to get the scoop. There is a lot of interaction between game companies and gamers.

 sebster wrote:
Industry gossip is weird and pointless at the best of times. Video game industry gossip just adds a heaping dose of crazy to all of that for some reason.

The idea that a load of people would know who the PR rep at Nintendo is, let alone actually have an opinion about that lady is incredibly weird. I mean, everyone gets that right?

The thing is that people who are not well known are often targets of shaming. So you can have a person that only has a handful of followers and some other person comes across what they said and retweets it or whatever. Then a celebrity sees it and retweets it and news of what the person said is spread far and wide. Maybe a blogger gets a hold of it and writes an article about it And then all of sudden that person is overwhelmed with a huge wave of angry responses.

So you can have a case where a young girl with learning disabilities who only had a handful of followers is being dogged piled by the media, celebrities and fans for posting a pic from a satirical review of movie.
link

Really? A PR persons is not even a published thing. You can't find it in their financial statements or website typically. Thats what I am not getting.

 Frazzled wrote:
Really? A PR persons is not even a published thing. You can't find it in their financial statements or website typically. Thats what I am not getting.

Most developers and companies have official forums and Twitter accounts, where employees and developers interact with fans regarding their games. And these peoples' names and positions do turn up in gaming and game related articles.

 Frazzled wrote:
Really? A PR persons is not even a published thing. You can't find it in their financial statements or website typically. Thats what I am not getting.

You can find out a lot about person online if you know where to look.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

The only reason that Alison Rapp is being talked about here is that she is a woman

Objectively wrong statement. Imagine a male PR manager saying that he appreciates how rape is presented in Japanese mangas and that the West should open itself for this portrayal as well. You're saying that anything similar to this would not cause such a stir. I beg to differ. A lot.

 Sigvatr wrote:
You're saying that anything similar to this would not cause such a stir.

To the extent that it is being talked about on a wargaming forum? I very much doubt it.

 oldravenman3025 wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Really? A PR persons is not even a published thing. You can't find it in their financial statements or website typically. Thats what I am not getting.

Most developers and companies have official forums and Twitter accounts, where employees and developers interact with fans regarding their games. And these peoples' names and positions do turn up in gaming and game related articles.

Ok, thats helpful. My clients don't have these, which appears brilliantly smart given the case.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
You're saying that anything similar to this would not cause such a stir.

To the extent that it is being talked about on a wargaming forum? I very much doubt it.

Yeah, if it'd have been a man there'd be a police inquiry on him already.

Vidya games is the serious business.

It amazes me that someone who openly supported depictions of pedophilia and tried to justify it hung on to a job anywhere with a public presence for any amount of time.

 jmurph wrote:
Vidya games is the serious business.

It amazes me that someone who openly supported depictions of pedophilia and tried to justify it hung on to a job anywhere with a public presence for any amount of time.

What also amazes me is how many people try and defend her.

My understanding is she wasn't even a PR person, she just did localization - right? A bizarre story all around. Anyway, I don't really believe the reason why Nintendo fired her but I also accept that there is no way we'll ever really know the truth.

 thenoobbomb wrote:

Yeah, if it'd have been a man there'd be a police inquiry on him already.

This is exactly the type of hyperbole that muddies the waters.

People trying to make it a gender thing are wrong. That cuts both ways.

(That said, I don't think it's arguable that "gaming culture" doesn't have a problem with mysoginistic behaviour)