/r/KotakuInAction

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Hello again. I'm Xavier, a writer for /r/SubredditOfTheDay. You might know me a bit by now, perhaps through my odd writing style or my skill for writing pages of nothing at all. Today I'm going to be writing a feature that's different than the rest. It's going to be quite long, and it's going to be from the heart. This isn't going to contain many jokes, it's not going to be funny, and it's not going to make people happy. What it's going to do is give you a good understanding of what I feel and why I feel it. It's going to talk about the subreddit in question, /r/KotakuInAction, and why I feel it deserves to be featured. It's going to be raw, roughly written (outside of this introduction it was done in one sitting), and hopefully it will provide everything you need to know. Let's begin.

I was a moderator for reddit's /r/Games, a subreddit focusing around serious discussion of games and gaming news. I wasn't the only moderator, nor was I the most active, but to as many regulars of that community as I've talked to I was one of the best. What made me better than my colleagues? My priority was on the people using the subreddit. My philosophy was that we're all just a bunch of people using a website and nothing more. If someone needed my help, I helped. If someone had a question, I answered it. I afforded everyone as much decency and respect as I would afford anyone else, online or in person. Everyone was my equal, and they were respected and shown the same kindness I'd show any of my friends. To the other moderators there, this was a bit silly. To them it was never about people, it was about the industry. Conventions, interviews, access, whatever. They relished what minor power being a moderator of some internet forum had given them and did not think highly to being equal to those they moderated. They justified it with insults to these people, saying even that the users were idiots for not knowing every detail of every piece of reddit. It made me sick. I had become the PR manager of the subreddit out of necessity. Nobody else could do the job because their idea of diplomacy was an insult and a shadowban. Not that it mattered, as many in the industry I spoke to came to me before the position ever got brought up in the first place. I'm happy the other mods didn't get put in that position, as these industry folks were the very people those mods insulted. Those people didn't deserve to be ridiculed by my colleagues any more than anyone else.

When this #GamerGate stuff started there was a lot of talk about it in our back room. I've made the specifics of it clear elsewhere if you're interested. We were all caught between a rock and a hard place, but some of us had different ideas of getting out of that position. Mine was that we treat it like any other news story: allow discussion and links, but ban direct harassment and doxing. That was always the policy. Others wanted complete censorship. Obviously, that's what they went with. I've always been a proponent for free speech and an opponent of censorship. If the reason that the articles and discussion were banned was out of legitimate concern for the community I would've been okay with that. I wasn't okay with censoring information out of personal bias, vendetta, and outright fabrications. I will never be okay with that. However, I wasn't in a position to fight it. GamerGate was a very small thing back then, and I thought it would blow over in a week. The moderators of /r/Gaming put wind in its sails by nuking and censoring a thread dedicated to a quite neutral opinion on the topic, and further banning users involved in pro-GamerGate comments (as well as the submitter, to my understanding). After that is where things get a bit murky.

I was alerted to a leak one day while dealing with this. A moderator of /r/Games had talked to somebody and revealed information about censorship, administrator involvement, stuff like that. It was several pages. Immediately after its posting I was accused of being the leak. During and after reading through it I posted various inaccuracies that shot some holes in that theory; language not matching my nationality, time being incorrect, several facts being wrong, and a noticeable lack of information from private sources being chief among them. It didn't sway the person who first accused me. He was adamant, insistent even, that I was the only one it could be. His evidence? I was strongly anti-censorship, and I liked to swear. In an informal setting I do indeed swear quite a bit as a result of my upbringing, and I am indeed anti-censorship, but even to the others this was shaky reasoning. I started investigating and came up with a lot of leads. For instance: information from our IRC room was correct, but not from our modmail, leading me to believe it was someone who could access one but not the other. My original guess was an IRC global operator who could spy on channels without us knowing, but that went nowhere because they promised it wasn't any of them after the accuser asked their friend on the staff. My second guess was a former moderator who had access to our IRC room (and idled often in there) but not to our modmail. This moderator left the mod team after very vocal opinions on the subjects of social justice, equality, and related topics became too much for him. He could not argue for these ideas with our users and remain a moderator, so he resigned. I respect him for that. I respected him for a lot of things. I suspected this moderator of doing so because outside of the snoonet operators and outside of the accuser himself, nobody else came close to possibly doing it. I shared these thoughts with another moderator, and he thought the same. Still, it was only some hours later before the accuser successfully banned me from the subreddit, IRC, and back room, and started a fight.

At first I was distraught. I made a statement expressing disbelief, and it took me a whole day before it really sunk in. Even the other moderators couldn't believe it. Still, there it was. I was even more shocked to see the character assassination and direct attacks against me. Reddit employees were calling me out publicly. This is to be expected, of course. The correct thing to do is to lie down and take it. To think that your position as a moderator on reddit would mean enough that you wouldn't dare go up against those accusations. If you do nothing you can be a mod somewhere else, get back to the table, and everything is fine. If you stand up for yourself, though? They will come at you with everything they've got. They thought they knew me when I was a moderator there. I didn't like to make waves if I could avoid it and I didn't like causing anyone trouble. I was nice to everyone, including them, and they thought I was helpless. When the question of defending myself came up, they seemed almost bewildered that I would do so. A brave man defends himself from those that do wrong, and a brave man is exactly what Mr. and Mrs. Mendel raised. When I defended myself from them, something weird happened. I'm quite a large man, and once long ago something strange happened. I hugged a friend (in a completely innocent way, being asexual and all), and she seemed a bit scared. I was physically much, much bigger than her and it intimidated her. I wasn't at all aware of it because I take it for granted, but it made me rethink how I handle myself. The same thing happened when I defended myself. I did it too well, and it came off as a major attack against them. My strategy was simple: tell the truth. You'd be surprised how much a liar fears the truth. They'll do anything and everything to stop it from coming to light.

And they did do anything and everything, for a while at least. Harassment, lies, threats, isolation, they did all and more and it didn't work. I made it clear: every time they attacked me I would defend myself from it. They tell a lie, I tell the truth. It's amazing what sort of a shield that is. Eventually they come to fear you and the things you might say. I got tired of the back and forth and threatened once for myself: Attack again and I'll release everything I know. You see, I'm meticulous and slightly forgetful. I take notes, record things, and track information in order to keep it all in my head. I do it for everything: TV shows, movie series, the works. Of course I did this with reddit as well. I never intended for it to be used for anything more than reminding myself of what mod said what or what account belongs to who, but it became a powerful tool. The attacks stopped. Nobody wants something like that getting out. A group that fears a drop of truth cowers under the fear of a flood. It kept me safe for a while. Of course, that only bothered the ones that were involved in reddit. The ones that weren't so involved were a different story.

Last year I worked in education teaching programming to college students as an adjunct. The pay was bad but I loved teaching. I loved giving people the knowledge they needed to get into an industry that I care so much for and was a part of for so long. However, someone changed that. A former friend found out about the things I was doing online: advocating against censorship, against nepotism and corruption, and fighting for transparency. They decided that to shut me up they should take my job. They contacted my employer and wove a tale that was sure to get my fired. According to him I was a Nazi, using my position to spread hate to students. It was only narrowly that I managed to keep my job, but with such a record there was no way I could've stayed. Even if I stayed I was already gone. I haven't spoken to that friend much since, only through the occasional email he sends me asking me to reconsider my positions and advocate for the opposite side. I always decline, and he always tells me I'm no man at all.

A year ago I was a person who loved video games. I was a gamer who loved talking about games so much that I moderated a forum dedicated to it. I had core values of compassion, kindness, respect, and honesty. I believe I was happy. I can't say for certain. It's hard to remember what the light felt like when you live your life huddled in the darkness. This all, this GamerGate stuff, it means very little to me. I support ethics in journalism and I'm against harassment and sexism. I support women and minorities in STEM (and taught and worked beside many), and I hate the idea of "old boys clubs". Do I support LGBT rights? People tend to forget that asexuals are a part of that "LGBT+" umbrella. Supporting their rights is supporting my own, so of course. Even before I accepted the idea of asexuality I supported LGBT people in a time when it was wildly unpopular to do so. I believe in everyone, and I believe that given the chance anyone can be incredible. The idea that because I support GamerGate I must not support these things is unfounded and wrong. It also misses a basic fact: I didn't choose to support GamerGate, I was forced to. GamerGate's supporters helped me when their opponents attacked me. They listened to me when their opponents harassed me. They supported my ideas of transparency and honesty when their opponents were covering up and lying. I did not make the decision to support GamerGate. Its opposition pushed me into them and I accepted their kindness. I would've supported the other side if GamerGate had been the bad one, but that wasn't the case. It still isn't.

So what is GamerGate to me? What is KotakuInAction, GamerGate's reddit hub? It's the people that assured me that I wasn't as evil and worthless as others were calling me. It's the idea that I am not a monster simply for pissing off a few angry forum moderators. It's the belief that what I do is not a waste, and that people do care. Most of all, GamerGate is the confirmation that my dreams of ethical behavior are right. That amid a crowd of hundreds who call me wrong, there are thousands more who support me. We forget sometimes about the silent majority, and for a long time I forget they existed. They're here now, and they helped me a great deal. They saw the people wishing I would stop talking and said "No! Speak your mind!" They saw the people wishing me dead and said "No! They're wrong about you!" They saw the people hating me, and lying about me, and scheming to take me down, and they said "No. Come with us and we'll see that justice is served." I needed to hear those words, and they said them.

For a Subreddit of the Day post this is a bit unorthodox. I could have done an article filled with citations to different articles and links to different fact sheets but I didn't. That isn't what I'm about. I wanted to tell you why I believe that this subreddit deserves to be featured here. Why the attempts to block it from being featured are unjust. I wanted to tell you why I am willing to take the increased harassment for talking about this. I am willing to do it because I believe in it. A person's beliefs are not determined by whoever yells at them the loudest. My beliefs represent my upbringing. From a rotting vacant in Pittsburgh to a cheap house in Tampa, my beliefs have been impacted by everything I've experienced. I've experienced courage, and loss, and duty, and addiction. I've experienced pain I wouldn't wish on anyone, and I've experienced joy I hope all people get to experience. I've been a stock boy, a burger flipper, a writer, and a programmer. I've seen things I try to forget and I've been places I hope I'll always remember. Through all my thirty years of life I have kept one thing in mind: I am a product of Earth and nothing more. I am no better than anyone else I meet. Whether it was a farmer in Azerbaijan or a CEO in Washington, we're all equal. I'll be cold in the ground before I let anyone tell me I'm worthless.

Someone told me recently that I'm unlikable as a human being. They were wrong. Deep down I believe we're all great, and we all have the ability to be wonderful people. Some lose their way now and again, and that's fine so long as they can find it. I take a lot of flak for saying this, more so than I could ever understand given the subject, but I'll say it again: You're awesome, all of you, and I'm glad to help you in any way I can.

Thank you for listening to all of this. Not only was finally writing this all down helpful for informing those who were (as of a few minutes ago) uninformed, it also got it out of my head and onto a page. It's been therapeutic. Several days ago I was hovering over the submit button for suicidewatch, thinking to myself, "oh Xavier, how far must you sink to ask people for help?" Today? Today I'm in a better place. I hope you're all good, and happy too.

Thank you again for reading. Now, finally, it's time to hear from the mods of /r/KotakuInAction. In particular I'm going to be talking to one mod who has been nothing but kind to me, so let's give him a warm welcome.

1. First off, tell me a bit about yourself.

/u/TheHat2 I'm the goddamn Hatman. I play video games and talk about things on the Internet. As far as my Reddit self, I've been a mod of /r/TumblrInAction for about a year, and of /r/KotakuInAction since the beginning.

2. In your own words, what is r/KotakuInAction and what does it hope to accomplish?

/u/TheHat2 KiA is a place to primarily discuss GamerGate, but it's also for talking about general issues in the gaming industry. For example, publishers screwing over developers, review embargoes, what constitutes as a "video game," etc.

3. For those new to GamerGate: What exactly is it? How would you summarize it?

/u/TheHat2 GamerGate is a consumer revolt (or movement, depending on how you see it) over unethical practices in games journalism. It deals with issues of nepotism, collusion between competing publications, spinning the news for certain people/topics, among others. It's the culmination of years of gamers distrusting the press, finally coming to a boiling point. Gamers are finally banding together to say that enough is enough, and demanding reform.

4. Why do you think GamerGate's supporters and detractors believe what they believe? Why all the hostility?

/u/TheHat2 I believe GamerGate's supporters are in this because we want to see this change come about. We're invested in video games, and we don't want to be lied to or misled by the gaming press, nor do we want to see them abuse their status to benefit or damage people or games. As for GamerGate's detractors, I think it's a combination of seeing the worst of the Internet that's been associated with GamerGate, and a belief that we're largely overreacting to these issues. Most of it would probably go to the former, though, as a common talking point among GamerGate's opponents is the issue of harassment and sexism that has been attributed to GamerGate supporters, most notably by major media outlets. I think a lot of the hostilities come from a failure to really communicate with one another. Both sides are looking for ways to discredit major figures on either end of the spectrum, and being able to have a productive conversation about these issues has become impossible. Attempts have been made before, but were seen as "fraternizing with the enemy," which further keeps a solution from being reached. As a result, hostilities remain, and a resolution seems far from attainable, which is unfortunate.

5. Thanks a ton. Is there anything else you would like to say?

/u/TheHat2 The people on KiA truly believe that GamerGate is a cause worth fighting for. We feel we've been misrepresented by the media, and haven't been able to be taken seriously as a result. I'd implore people to have a conversation about the issues GamerGate has raised, so the gaming industry can be improved. We want this controversy to end just as much as everyone else does.

There you have it. Hat has been a helpful person to me for the past year. He's kept me in the loop, given me a place to talk about what's been going on, and he's introduced me to an audience that is dying to hear about it. Imagine that, people actually wanting to hear me talk. Hilarious. Be sure to check out /r/KotakuInAction if you're interested in it, and leave questions and replies in the comments section below.

This has been your soldier of fortune, Xavier Mendel, signing off.

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As an aside, today is also my 31st birthday. Feel free to send milkshakes. Party at my house, and you're all invited. Yes, there will be a ball pit.