Chris Avellone about why he “didn’t fight any of this” | Hacker News Reader

Chris Avellone about why he “didn’t fight any of this”

chrisavellone.medium.com

132 pointswoko34 comments

Regardless of your feelings on how you feel the companies treated you at that time, know that it is unacceptable. It’s disgusting that someone with no proof can do so much harm. It may not count for much, but these companies have shown their true colors and I’ll have no part of them. It’s unacceptable that how you’ve been treated. I’ve been making games for over 10 years and I’ve admired you as a writer for almost 20 years. I have seen you in person, but I was too shy to approach you. I take accusations of sexual misconduct very seriously because I have witnessed it myself first hand. I can’t accept anything that this Karisa person says as truth, too much of her story is different in each retelling. I’m sorry you have to deal with this. Know that there are people in the industry that believe you and would still love to work with you someday.

Always fight all accusations with facts, immediately and vigorously. The truth is late and accusations show up on search. He got fired and they issued a press release with his name in it. How many people can survive that? Accusations without rebuttal are true in most people's eyes.

It really seems to be the only way. People who try to be compassionate with false accusations never get rewarded. I've only ever seen people recover from both false and true allegations by outright denial. Not attacking the accusers but vigorously deny the accusations and keep trucking on.

It seems like the hard thing to do and for many like Chris Avellone said "against their nature". Even though many people may say they're for "rehabilitative Justice", you would never know it from their actions.

Once the court of public opinion has slurped up the allegations with no denials it will always be brought up uncritically. Anything even so much as mentions the person, it's right to "isn't that the dude we cancelled 10 years ago on flimsy accusations for X?" in the mentions.

I read the whole article hoping that it was done with the purpose of seeking justice. For now it looks like he has enough proof to go to court. However, he choose not to. While I understand his reasons, by acting this way he just strengthens the position of these strange individuals and paves way for more victims in the future. You can't just ruin someone's life and get away as if nothing happened.

Considering the dangers of things like this happening to guys in our industry, what would you suggest as the safe behavior for a (straight) male around women in professional settings?

Would it be too much to:

1) heavily curtail his communication to only professional, safe topics

2) drink only non-alcoholic drinks; do no drugs of any kind

3) politely refuse (or ignore) any spoken or non-spoken invitation or innuendo

4) avoid any time alone with a member of the opposite sex

Too paranoid or just too little?

If I were in the game industry, I might consider the Pence Rule...

I'd probably just avoid any fandom interactions; the possibility of interactions with unstable people is just unacceptably high.

It was originally the Billy Graham rule https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Graham_rule

As much as it hurts to say it, this seems like the safe way to err on the side of caution.

That seems almost like victim shaming though, like he is "dressing like he wanted it" or it's his fault for leaving his doors unlocked.

IMO if you're not doing anything illegal you shouldn't have to alter your behavior just because other people are terrible.

Well I am more interested in personal safety than scoring justice points. If I was a woman I probably would avoid dressing provocatively in certain neighborhoods/times of day and drinking heavily with strangers, so I guess it's only fair.

These things can also happen outside of professional settings. In the current climate, if you are a male you need to be extremely careful and try to check well if the person you're interacting is emotionally stable. And this needs time, there are no shortcuts. And even if everything goes well, it's very difficult to protect against accusations of sexual assault if someone changes their mind after the fact.

Check out the social media presences of people you interact with daily.

The woman in the article apparently deleted 60K of her tweet history. That right there would be a red flag for me; people that spend that much time on social media sometimes exhibit very misanthropic behavior, in my experience.

>To be clear, the game press don’t need to check the “facts” — all they need to do is report that someone said something or fall back on the word alleged, and it’s a story. And so they did, and the clicks started rolling in.

There are no journalism, we are left with only reporters.

Archive for people who cannot read Medium: https://web.archive.org/web/20210626084045/https://chrisavel...

False accusations for any crime should be punished with the same sentence that would be given to the accused if he was guilty. If you falsely acuse someone of rape, you should get the same jail time that is given to rapists.

What happens if someone rapes me, and I accuse him, but then cannot provide enough evidence? Do I end up in prison?

There would still be the “beyond reasonable doubt” standard applied to false accusations - just like every other crime.

Rapes should be reported to police, as soon as possible, not to Twitter 10 years later. If it cannot be proven that either party is right, no one is sentenced.

I've had a friend take his own life over a false rape accusation so it forever changed the way I see such things. I wish most people didn't have to go through something like that to stop blindly believing every serious accusation without solid proof, be they male, female or anything in between.

Of all the things that usually invoke the hall monitor here on HN, why aren't we doing it with these kinds of posts? These he-said-she-said style of career destroying allegations shouldn't be on the front page of HN.

I'd normally agree. But, while I've never heard of this guy or the other parties involved, it seems only fair that his rebuttal is given the chance to reach the same audience as his accusers.

> Among the advice was (1) never apologize, and (2) use the legal system in the manner in which it is intended. Both of these are contrary to my nature.

Sage advice. Never apologise, whether it's a car crash that's obviously your fault, or an accusation of being rapey.

If it’s an ambiguous situation, your advice makes sense. In a car crash that’s obviously my fault, after/while checking on people and rendering aid, I’m damn sure going to apologize for my error.

This is very nice of you but also very naive.

Why is this flagged?

This. Why? Yeah HN isn't a gamedev community, but still Chris Avellone is certainly one of TOP100 well known people in game development and he deserve to get his position heard.

So I did read the post. I am left wondering : what is their motive?

Age-old case of dick hooks up with friend, ends up hurting feelings, so socially oust dick to stand up for friend and bad original advice.

Lots of unprocessed emotions and clearly different intents going into relationship.

Seems companies deserve no loyalty and professionalism if they can't muster any themselves.

Just a guess though.

Probably because the "cancel culture" people dont like it. Also some other might not like the "he said-she said" posts.

I upvoted it since the text seems to show that some queen-bee type put the guy into some intrigues and then cancelled him.

Very sad to hear that someone can lose a job just based on hearsay - no court involved.

On a side note when I was like 10 I wrote a question to fallout bible and Chris replied - so I heard of the guy long time ago..

I've always seen apology as insincere, especially if it's not admission of guilt. If I did something by mistake, sorry, is fast and cheap. Otherwise, why would someone say sorry for malicious behaviour? Only bad people say they're sorry for ill intents, and it's insincere.

Someone naive caught up in such mess is going to have a hard time, but you need to stand up for your own in this world. Don't assume good intentions, but also look past bad facades.

before people accept this uncritically, in particular if you're not familiar with the saga do your own research and keep in mind the list of accusations against him is far wider than just the people in question in that article, including for example

https://twitter.com/jacquicollins_/status/127450935942738330...

I don’t think anyone just “accepts this uncritically”, it’s that the accusations are a bit too vague to justify the fallout to the man’s livelihood.

What is 'far wider' ? I don't even get the accusation clear from this particular post.

What is the claim?

Out of the loop, can I get some context?

Was the original accusation submitted to HN so we can compare comments?

She just limited the visibility of her tweets, but the main one was here: https://twitter.com/SJBsMama/status/1274175397337411586

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