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Nick Robinson (Polygon) answers to sexual harassment allegations, leaves Polygon

E

ElBoxyBrown

Banned
Chip N Chance said:
Theres allot of people on the internet claiming he had a position of power, but i myself follow games rather closely and have never heard of him. Maybe im just getting out of touch, because im sure theres a ton of youtubers with millions of subscribers who i have never even heard and will probably never engage with.

I really wish i had a much stronger stance on the situation, but its just a bunch of people on twitter eluding to something that may have happened in the past. Hell one of them was deleted. Even Waypoint, as progressive and open as they think that they are doing a podcast talking about the situation, all they ever said was the same eluding to statements like "ive heard some things" or "i know some stuff". Its weak.

I just hope this guy gets fired so we dont have to talk about him or make other people in the industry feel uncomfortable around him during events or around the office.
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You can believe the women that are coming out and calling Nick out.
 
L

L Thammy

Member
Chip N Chance said:
Which ones? Is there some lawsuit against him that a group of people are leading?
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If it helps you:

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Also these:

DGfYwY5UIAAfG4Z.jpg

DGfYwY_UIAAvb5y.jpg

lvN1tOr.gif
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B

BTA

Member
Chip N Chance said:
Theres allot of people on the internet claiming he had a position of power, but i myself follow games rather closely and have never heard of him. Maybe im just getting out of touch, because im sure theres a ton of youtubers with millions of subscribers who i have never even heard and will probably never engage with.

I really wish i had a much stronger stance on the situation, but its just a bunch of people on twitter eluding to something that may have happened in the past. Hell one of them was deleted. Even Waypoint, as progressive and open as they think that they are doing a podcast talking about the situation, all they ever said was the same eluding to statements like "ive heard some things" or "i know some stuff". Its weak.

I just hope this guy gets fired so we dont have to talk about him or make other people in the industry feel uncomfortable around him during events or around the office.
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No offense to you, but this is the kind of post that I wish people would read the OP of the original thread, then read through this thread, and then really consider what they're saying before posting. (EDIT: Thanks to those of you who linked this stuff while I was writing!)

He has power because he works for Polygon. The fact that he became popular as a result (he had ~80k Twitter followers before this came out) definitely applies for the fans he took advantage of, but even without that, he has power over devs and freelancers. To be clear, I'm not saying he used that power as an intentional weapon, but it inherently changes the dynamic around his actions. Nobody wants to be known as the lone person who accused a site's employee of harassment when they need that site to cover their game, or to comission and pay them for their freelance work (and Polygon uses a lot of this) in order to make rent. That's ignoring the public reaction too, of course.

And it's not "weak", but that's been covered enough in this thread, honestly.
 
B

BiggNife

Member
L Thammy said:
Okay, having read through this thread and the tweets linked, I want to try breaking down the apology. Hopefully this will help anyone who - like me - actually bought it on a first glance.



By the third word, we've got some deceptive language here. "Messed up" makes it sound like he made a mistake. This would be nitpicking if not for the fact that that that's clearly how the apology is framed.

Even if we put the severity of what he did aside, Robinson did not make a simple mistake. We know from souIspear's tweets that he was silencing women that he harassed. He knew that what he did was wrong, and that there would be consequences if they became public. Instead of changing his behaviour when he realized that, he instead tried to manipulate others so he could more safely continue his behaviour.

He did not make mistakes. He acted exactly as he intended to.



Here we have him referring to his harassment as flirting. Now, it's entirely possible that he's doing that to avoid legal action. But it's also being used to add to the framework that what he did was an innocent mistake rather than intentional, targeted abuse. See below.



Assuming he was doing the same thing before he became popular as he says, he's was still telling women, unsolicited, to send him nudes. He was still telling them to keep silent.

He briefly admonishes his actions before he was popular by saying that some of the advances were unwanted or handled poorly, but that's not the issue. This wasn't just normal flirting that some people just didn't like. This wasn't just handled poorly, as his actions make it clear it's delibrate. The advances should not have come in this form at all.

Additionally, he's focusing on Twitter, as if the issue is simply that he doesn't know how to handle himself properly through that particular medium. But we're also told that he engages in predatory behaviour in person.

The issues with power he describes are in and of themselves fair, but the issue is that they're meant to distract from the predatory nature of his behaviour and shift the issue to changing context. They might still be there if the apology was genuine, but that's not what they follow, so it serves to provide enough sincerity to make it look like the whole thing is sincere.



Building on the image he's been creating, this is attempting to move the responsibility to the shifting context and make the apology seem genuine.

This might have been appropriate in an apology if his actions were okay in the previous context, but they aren't. This might have been appropriate in an apology if he actually didn't know what he was doing, but his actions have demonstrated that he did.



This is the really grand bit of manipulation. The obvious bad apologies fail because the guilty party is blatantly just saying things to get themselves out of blame, maybe slapping some token "I'm sorry" and "I feel bad" into it because they know they're supposed to. This doesn't look like that. I think this is the part that really fooled me and others.

The thing is, here, he makes it a point to establish that he's actually learned something. He makes it a point to acknowledge that there's a problem with what he did. The issue is that the problem he's acknowledging still isn't the real problem. He's still putting it on the context, not on his intentional predatory behaviour.

So you think he's learned, but he hasn't actually addressed what he should have learned.



For those of us who thought it was a strong apology at first, I think what we expected it to be - at best - was this. Just talking about how bad he feels without actually having any reflection on his problems, never outright stating what he did and why it was wrong.

Robinson's crafty enough to be specific here and to say that he made a mistake. It's specific enough to look genuine, to look like it isn't deflecting. But, again, what he's apologizing for isn't really what he did. That's the deflection.
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Good post. More or less sums up how I feel about it. At first glance it doesn't look like a bad apology but it's so deliberately phrased to avoid fully admitting and apologizing for his behavior. It's the kind of apology that you can tell he edited for 30 hours so it comes off as polished as possible.
 
T

thepenguin55

Member
As more time has passed and I've dug into this more I've come to the realization that his apology is grossly insufficient. He definitely has a lot of growing up to do. Either way, he can totally fuck off.
 
T

TheMrPliskin

Member
Thought this was a weak apology when I read it last night, coming back to it and reading it again after a nights sleep and after reading comments from those that are more in the know it's now pretty clear that even calling it an apology is being generous, it's just him trying to save face under the guise of an apology.
 
C

Chip N Chance

Member
SJurgenson said:
You can get a decent summary from the OP in the first thread on the matter.
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Yeah i was following it at it was kind of developing. What i can gather is that he tried to get nudes from a fan. Or something along those lines. I would just be a little more comfortable if it was a group of people coming forward to the right people to do something about his sexual harassment. Hearing that this guy is just going to go on with out any repercussion other than leaving the video game industry is unhealthy.
 
S

SJurgenson

Banned
AuthenticM said:
Yeah, rereading it, he shouldn't have framed the context as his "flirting".
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Yeah. But that's the thing -- that is the biggest mistake he's continually made, even if you want to be charitable to him -- believing his harassment to be mere flirting.

It's the 21st century, and it appears that many dudes today are so eager to blast past prior generations' conservative attitudes towards sex and relationships that they've thrown out even basic respect towards women as artifacts of a prior era.

Even that's being generous. These dudes today are just petulant narcissists who don't care who they fuck over to get their rocks off, and don't care about the damage to people and society as a whole.
 
J

jaybe00

Neo Member
That's quite the pound of flesh extracted for doing nothing that was illegal. Hope he bounces back on his feet in the near future.
 
S

SJurgenson

Banned
Chip N Chance said:
Yeah i was following it at it was kind of developing. What i can gather is that he tried to get nudes from a fan. Or something along those lines. I would just be a little more comfortable if it was a group of people coming forward to the right people to do something about his sexual harassment. Hearing that this guy is just going to go on with out any repercussion other than leaving the video game industry is unhealthy.
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You would 'feel more comfortable'..? What does it take for you to solidly condemn his actions? Somehow him saying 'show me your tits' to a fan is not bad enough?

And if you're going to claim that you actually do condemn his actions, but that you don't like the way this all went down -- and would prefer 'a group of people coming forward to the right people' -- that is just victim blaming. Somehow there is a 'right' way to alert people to a serial sexual harasser, and a wrong way? We should feel sorry for him because his victims weren't considerate in how they came forward?
 
S

SJurgenson

Banned
jaybe00 said:
That's quite the pound of flesh extracted for doing nothing that was illegal. Hope he bounces back on his feet in the near future.
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Because as we all know, there are no ethics or morals -- only laws. Society can only punish people for doing illegal things, not wrong things.
 
B

BTA

Member
Chip N Chance said:
Yeah i was following it at it was kind of developing. What i can gather is that he tried to get nudes from a fan. Or something along those lines. I would just be a little more comfortable if it was a group of people coming forward to the right people to do something about his sexual harassment. Hearing that this guy is just going to go on with out any repercussion other than leaving the video game industry is unhealthy.
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It's been said before in this thread (by me, even), but: the only things we have logs are of him talking to a couple fans. The only reason all this stuff started being talked about is people in the industry (and their friends), not fans. So there's absolutely a lot of incidents the general public does not know the details of.

I imagine Waypoint Radio today should hopefully clarify if they're still working on an article about him, which could make it much clearer how much this apology is bullshit.

EDIT: Also, what SJurgenson said.
 
K

Kalor

Member
I thought this seemed okay when I read it last night but reading various tweets have made me realise just how much he downplayed what he did. He says that he'll be better in the future but that doesn't even remotely make up for what he did in the past.
 
S

SJurgenson

Banned
jaybe00 said:
I have read the prior one and this one. Still nothing illegal that I can see. Have I missed something?
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OK. Could you tell me why you think 'illegal' is the standard we should care about? I'm actually interested in hearing you out. Do you not believe that people should be socially stigmatized for legal things generally considered 'wrong'?
 
J

jaybe00

Neo Member
Bowlie said:
What about things that are wrong?
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Laws primarily determine the truly wrong activities. Surely what he did is not upstanding, brace or courageous though. Acting like millions of young people aren't being transactionally fast at gauging interest be it with tinder or snapchat nowadays is kind of putting your head under a rock.
 
A

Aaron

Member
SJurgenson said:
Even that's being generous. These dudes today are just petulant narcissists who don't care who they fuck over to get their rocks off, and don't care about the damage to people and society as a whole.
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Today? What are you talking about? This has been the core male attitude towards the opposite sex since the inception. It's the same attitude that treats women as property instead of equals, and while this attitude has gotten better in recent times it's by no means in a great spot. Women are still being abused, kidnapped, and killed by men who think of themselves as master instead of companion.
 
L

L Thammy

Member
jaybe00 said:
Laws primarily determine the truly wrong activities. Surely what he did is not upstanding, brace or courageous though. Acting like millions of young people aren't being transactionally fast at gauging interest be it with tinder or snapchat nowadays is kind of putting your head under a rock.
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So, by your logic, there's nothing truly wrong with me telling you that you're a sack of human shit? There's no law against that.
 
GlamFM

GlamFM

Banned
jaybe00 said:
That's quite the pound of flesh extracted for doing nothing that was illegal. Hope he bounces back on his feet in the near future.
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I hope that´s an uninformed opinion because you did not read the thread.

EDIT: Nope, this is actually your opinion. You´re no friend of mine. Good day.
 
T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
jaybe00 said:
Laws primarily determine the truly wrong activities. Surely what he did is not upstanding, brace or courageous though. Acting like millions of young people aren't being transactionally fast at gauging interest be it with tinder or snapchat nowadays is kind of putting your head under a rock.
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I'M OUT
 
L

LewieP

Member
jaybe00 said:
Laws primarily determine the truly wrong activities. Surely what he did is not upstanding, brace or courageous though. Acting like millions of young people aren't being transactionally fast at gauging interest be it with tinder or snapchat nowadays is kind of putting your head under a rock.
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Being bad at your job isn't against the law, but it will get you fired.
 
S

SJurgenson

Banned
Aaron said:
Today? What are you talking about? This has been the core male attitude towards the opposite sex since the inception. It's the same attitude that treats women as property instead of equals, and while this attitude has gotten better in recent times it's by no means in a great spot. Women are still being abused, kidnapped, and killed by men who think of themselves as master instead of companion.
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It's become more generally acceptable to be shitty towards women, at least among Nick's generation and newer. The difference is that in their quest to smash boundries and blur lines, they've blurred lines between respect and indifference to such an extent -- be it in interpersonal relationships, or 'humor' (see: Pewdiepie + Nazis)

Now even pretending to respect woman as people is seen as passe.

jaybe00 said:
Laws primarily determine the truly wrong activities. Surely what he did is not upstanding, brace or courageous though. Acting like millions of young people aren't being transactionally fast at gauging interest be it with tinder or snapchat nowadays is kind of putting your head under a rock.
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How was something deemed to be 'wrong' before a law was passed? If the US congress and the president pass a bill that through poor drafting accidentally legalizes murder, is that now OK?

Also, 'show me your tits' is not being 'transactionally fast at gauging interest'. That's just harassment. 'Hey are you interested?' is being transactionally fast at gauging interest.
 
J

jaybe00

Neo Member
SJurgenson said:
OK. Could you tell me why you think 'illegal' is the standard we should care about? I'm actually interested in hearing you out. Do you not believe that people should be socially stigmatized for legal things generally considered 'wrong'?
Click to expand...

What he did was unprofessional, maybe he should have been fired, maybe heavily warned, but the piling on regarding what goes on in his private life and the built up offence people are generating seems largely disproportionate. Rightly or wrongly, people get to the point quickly on sexual interest much faster nowadays. There's no mystique. What he did, many people are doing right now. Maybe some of the people getting offended this instant have their tinder and snapchat notifications going off.

As for things that are truly wrong, Such as pedos, assault, hate crime, tax evasion etc, sure stigmatize away.
 
E

ElBoxyBrown

Banned
jaybe00 said:
Laws primarily determine the truly wrong activities. Surely what he did is not upstanding, brace or courageous though. Acting like millions of young people aren't being transactionally fast at gauging interest be it with tinder or snapchat nowadays is kind of putting your head under a rock.
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Everyone see's what your doing. You got nothing to stand on. The women have spoken. He's a predatory creep.
 
L

L Thammy

Member
I'm kind of struggling with the phrase "transactionally fast", here. In the sense that I'm not sure why you'd use that particular phrase to discuss these interactions. Is this like the exchange of pleasantries to nudes is going further than contractually dictated?

jaybe00 said:
Nothing wrong with that. You're ill-informed is all lol.
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Nah. I'm right on the money.
 
B

Bowlie

Banned
jaybe00 said:
Laws primarily determine the truly wrong activities.
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So if what is not illegal is okay, can I keep lying to all my friends? I won't go to jail for that, surely that's fine!

jaybe00 said:
Acting like millions of young people aren't being transactionally fast at gauging interest be it with tinder or snapchat nowadays is kind of putting your head under a rock.
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So if what millions are doing is okay, can I be racist? I mean... there are a lot of people like that in the world!

Also, and this is only one of the many things wrong (but not illegal, pay attention) with your post, but you're comparing a friendly conversation between a celebrity and a fan to two people talking with each other using a dating app. Nevermind the lack of respect towards the other, no matter what kind of conversation it is.
 
T

Trup1aya

Member
Bastables said:
Do you not see a problem with explaining why someone should not admit to a crime. You're advocating that one should subsume their wrong doing in order to rise again, or at lest not be punished.
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I don't think that's what being said.

Anyone which legal representation will be adviced against apologizing for a crime, especially prior to any litigation.

In the case of someone who is apparently a serial harasser, admitting guilt publicly would probably result in him ending up in financial hardship beyond what this current ordeal has already cost him.

No one argues that he should Subsume his wrong doing in order to do it again, but someone can feel guilty, make an effort to improve, and still feel an urge to minimize their own hardship. (I'm not saying that's what is happening here)
 
D

Dantrist

Member
PsihoPerihelion said:
Straight white male feels sorry that the internet discovered he was a dick. News at 11.
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Roches said:
Uh, the whole news at 11 meme is supposed to be for things that are expected.

White men don't give a fuck what others thing usually. They don't have to in American society. Him being genuinely (or if you want to be a cynic, pretending) being sorry for his actions is the opposite of news at 11.
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Just wanna let you know that I am very sorry for being a straight white man.
 
J

jaybe00

Neo Member
ElBoxyBrown said:
Everyone see's what your doing. You got nothing to stand on. The women have spoken. He's a predatory creep.
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Sadly they are probably suggestively messaged every week by a guy be it text, tinder or snap. Just happens this guy has some minor fame, and now it's something to put him on the cross for as an example.
 
K

kAmui-

Member
jaybe00 said:
Sadly they are probably suggestively messaged every week by a guy be it text, tinder or snap. Just happens this guy has some minor fame, and now it's something to put him on the cross for as an example.
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So, Nick is the real victim here is what you're saying?
 
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