Phil Fish and the Internet’s war against creatives
penny-arcade.com
penny-arcade.com
Combine that with Fish regularly telling people to go suck a dick, kill themselves, and all sorts of disgusting garbage littering his twitter feed, and you have a character who is extremely easy to vilify and incite others to harass. Of course, more people harassing him means that he replies with even more caustic comments, making him even easier to vilify and dislike. I've seen firsthand people trying to start hate machines on boards like 4chan's video game board where they make collages of all the disgusting things phil fish says in order to get more people to harass him.
Anyone who has ever dealt with bullying in their life can tell you that the absolute worst thing you can do is react to it. If every ugly comment someone made went into a black box and was ignored, it's very unlikely that they would continue to post.
First, my bias: I'm a huge fan of FEZ, the game.
Aren't you victim blaming? He deserves all the abuse he gets because he's abusive? It's okay that he could be having a nervous breakdown because he brought it on himself?
I don't know what Fish's background is. What if he comes from an abusive household and triggers on bullying and lashes out? Now is it okay that he gets attacked a lot?
There's a difference between simply being an asshole and being an Internet troll in my mind. Most of the things I've seen him saying is in response to some pretty inflammatory stuff.
I agree, you're right, his responses are terrible and he seems pretty rude.
We (as geeks, video game culture people, internet culture people, humans, whatever) should be able to get past these childish escalating aggression tantrums. This isn't the bronze age.
It doesn't mean anyone is condoning violent responses to provocation, just stating the role that the instigator played a role in the incident. Phil Fish repeatedly threw beer in the face of others and got a lot of vitriole in response.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMPIcV6zsPw
You can argue that no one ever deserves to be harassed online, but I think you'd have to be utterly oblivious to continually act that way in public and not expect to be hated.
If that's what it takes "to be hated", the question to me becomes "by whom?" And why are they not hating the panel for those belly laughs, too?
Surely you agree there's a difference between "being disliked" and "being on the receiving end of a torrent of abuse"?
I don't think anyone will say that Fish is a saint; he's certainly no Notch, or Gaben, or Tim Schafer. And I worry that a large portion of the hate that is directed at him is /because/ he's not someone who can take things in stride.
I think what a lot of people who get accused of "victim blaming" are insinuating is that, if Fish could have taken criticism more in stride -- or, you know, been respectful of other people when they ask him legitimate questions -- when they were more innocuous and less extreme, then it might not have gotten this far. It's like he threw gasoline on a small fire and is bewildered at why his house is now burning down around him.
Does he deserve it? Not at all; /nobody/ does. But perhaps we shouldn't all be so surprised at it when you try putting out a fire with gasoline.
I'm not sure that's anywhere in the same league as what's being discussed here though. His comments in the video were harsh and opinionated and the questioner was disappointed with the answer, but as the same time he was being asked for an opinion and gave a fair one.
That isn't necessarily what he does in his own twitter feed though and it's certainly not like the personal abuse described in the original article.
I totally agree about the need for honest criticism. If Jonathan Blow had started the reply, and Phil Fish had followed up with his apt comparison involving the Zelda games, they wouldn't have come across negatively to me at all. Seriously though, how can you not see how rude (and even mildly racist) his opening remarks are, especially when given to someone who is not fluent in the English language (and is thus likely to take what he says even more seriously)?
"They suck. I'm sorry, but you guys need to get with the times and make better interfaces and like update your technology... we're totally kicking your ass... back then you guys were the king of the world, but your time has passed."
What the fuck? How can people on here get bent out of shape over the mildest use of unnecessarily gendered language, but let something like that pass?
To the sibling comment from PavlovCat's, obviously I can't get into their heads, but the impression I got was that the people on the panel were laughing at Phil's complete lack of tact. Listen again and hear Edmund exclaiming "oh wow" just before he bursts into laughter.
I'm not saying he's not rude. Rude is fine, abusive is not. In some cases there's a fine line between rude and abusive, but not here.
The guy looked heartbroken, it's true. He was clearly a fan of the genre while Fish is not, but it wasn't personal.
As for racist? I don't think that any sensible person watching that video should come to the conclusion that Fish hates Japanese people as a race.
Being arrogant is fine too, BTW. No law against being arrogant, or of using hyperbole. Again, this is not anything like the kind of abuse being talked about.
Fish isn't exactly a saint, and I'd venture to say he's quite a jerk (I'm not a fan of the shit he said about Japanese games.[1]) But the number of times Fish has dished it out is vastly outweighed by the number of times he's taken it.
[0]: http://steamcommunity.com/app/224760/discussions/search/?aut...
[1]: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-03-07-fez-creator-phi...
With that I agree.. I once stood up for someone who was being mobbed, and we both made that mistake. Combined with things I found out afterwards I know "we were right", and if we had not reacted hurt and frustrated, that would have won out. Instead we kinda broke our backs trying to break a block of ice instead of letting the sun melt it.
But that's also kinda "woulda shoulda". Yeah, if everybody except rapists knew kung fu, there would be no rape. If you respond to insults with something witty that puts the egg cleanly on the face of the person who attacked you, you won't be bullied. And that's a worthy goal, I'm not being sarcastic, I just don't think it's fair to leave it at that. Because it's also a worthy goal for people to be able to exist before they became some kind of super person, and if someone acts stupid towards bullies for the right reason (not sure if that's the case here, but IF), then we should give them that advice while supporting them.
Why is reacting angrily to bullshit even so easy to "vilify and dislike"? Not that I necessarily want to defend all he said, especially since I'm just aware of rather random snippets with zero context. But I noticed that during the mobbing apocalypse I mentioned above: Most people don't really understand (a whole lot of) the context, or give a crap about the fact that if it's 20 on 1, the 20 started it, and that the single person can't be expected to be as calm as the 20 individuals. Some don't even understand the content of the statement(s), but nearly all of them react to the fact that one party is frustrated and hurt, and said some word or other, while the other is grinning and so light they swim on milk... so they instinctively side with the supposed "winner" (especially if that's the bigger group, or even the group vs. an individual), without really caring what the content of the dispute is. That's seriously fucked up IMHO, and a dysfunction so major, that compared to it having a bad temper or a potty mouth is EZ PZ to fix.
If every ugly comment someone made went into a black box and was ignored,
Then that would also apply to the "disgusting garbage" that littered his Twitter feed, so that sounds like a double standard and blaming the victim, no? I guess you don't mean it that way, because you are right: anger is a sign of weakness, and bullies thrive on perceived weakness. But I don't think bullies, or the people who watch such stuff idly, should be accepted as a fact of life. Not that I want to accuse you of implying that, but I know it can be read that way, and that if people can turn something into Someone Else's Problem they love to do that.
I think it's good on PA for calling it out, just like it was good on Bill Hicks when he had his "Freebird!" flip out, as ugly as that was.
Fez was one of the best games I've ever played. It's a masterpiece. But Phil Fish allows himself to be trolled and does a great job of feeding them.
Only a fool expects the world to change in order to suit him. If you can't take the heat get out of the kitchen, or at least refrain from sticking your dick in the deep fryer.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -George Bernard Shaw
Fixed that for you.
Don't you feel any responsibility for the behavior of your users?
http://dashes.com/anil/2011/07/if-your-websites-full-of-assh...
GameFAQs had their LUE exodus, 4Chan can have their /b/ exodus. In the case of GameFAQs, the rest of the site was able to focus more on gaming and it was better as a result. On the other hand, if 4Chan wants to be home to that element of the internet, they are welcome to do so. But I think at this point, it is fair to judge 4Chan on their acceptance of /b/, much like how I judge Reddit on their handling of clopclop and jailbait.
Nonetheless, companies built on top of community discussions have to face the facts, people will come, they will be assholes. Its a problem that any discussion-based company has to solve.
I understand protecting "Freedom of Speech", but lines have to be drawn at some point.
On 4chan, there's 5-10 boards that are implicit "cancer filter" boards. These boards are used to curate the community and prevent undesirable users from leaking into higher quality boards. The cancer filter boards serve as the public face of 4chan; /b/, /v/, /mlp/, and a handful of other boards are used to divert the attention of the unwashed masses to prevent contamination of higher quality boards. Desirable users will start their 4chan experience on one of these cancer boards, come to the conclusion that they're low quality, and move on to a different, usually non-cancer filter board.
Because of this filtering process, the demographics on each board vary wildly. Recently someone ran a statistical survey on several boards (n=~100/board) and found that the average age of users on cancer-filter boards was around 17-19, with the age increasing as you got to other boards. IIRC the average age on the niche hobbyist boards was between 23 and 25.
What this means is that if you were to just remove /b/ tomorrow, all those angry violent users are just going to leak into the other boards, and turn them into another /b/. Now instead of one "problem" board, you have a dozen.
The tldr here is that while most forum websites have a unified demographic across sub-forums, 4chan does not. Nuking the board won't get rid of problematic users, it will just displace them to another board.
And yet, we look at other communities such as StackOverflow or Gaia Online, and while there are some issues... none of them are quite as bad as how the worst of 4Chan or the worst of Reddit can get.
You only say that because 4chan makes you feel uncomfortable, and because of it, you feel that the website should change to make you feel better.
Not going to happen, but at least you're free to visit websites where you can block anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, right?
I get it, total freedom of speech leads to /b/, jailbait, and creepshots. Total freedom of speech allows people to get together and perform dox operations. And you're cool with that? Frankly, I'm not.
I'm not cool with online witch-hunts. Reddit is perfectly happy to criticize Carmen Ortiz for "wrongfully" prosecuting Aaron Swartz... but they are perfectly fine with Sunil Tripathi (probably) committing suicide over the online witchhunt taken place over his name during the Boston Bombing event. Or maybe the legions and legions of hateful and hurtful memes... such as "An Hero" that fester on those boards.
Some speech is harmful, and we should work together in removing harmful speech. I fully understand that this runs counter to 4chan (especially /b/) and Reddit culture... but enough is enough. At some point, someone needs to take responsibility for the development of the website's culture. If it isn't the webmaster who is _funding_ the operation, then who?
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Part of the solution is suffocating the community by ensuring no one new can access the site. Killing a site as big as LUE was (or as big as /b/ is today) isn't going to happen overnight. It has to happen slower with a deliberate plan.
I think the world would be much better off if we encouraged everyone of all ages to develop creative hobbies, instead of spending all their leisure time passively consuming the work of others. Then they would all gain a better perspective on the whole creative process and feel more accomplished all around - and happier for it!
Do you believe people on Twitter do not have the resources available to attempt creative works?
Furthermore, do you believe that, without being creative, it is not possible for a person to refrain from telling a game designer to kill himself?
I believe that individuals making death threats or rape threats on the internet are generally making individual choices with full knowledge of the repercussions. I do not believe they have any reasonable excuse justifying their actions. The responsibility for understanding and identifying how deeply they can damage another human is solely theirs.
They do, but they're overwhelmed by the vast amount of empty content ready for consumption. It's so damn easy to chill out clicking this and that, and fall in a rut where that's all you do in the leisure time you spend at your desk. We should try to find a way to actively encourage people to pick up a creative hobby (or more than one!) as a form of therapy, even.
"Furthermore, do you believe that, without being creative, it is not possible for a person to refrain from telling a game designer to kill himself?"
I think outbursts like that come from immature, intellectually under-developed people who would grow immensely from pursuing a creative hobby.
There are already people who are choosing to pick up creative hobbies. Those people make games. People that make games get crucified by gamers who do not like their decisions. Those gamers make death threats.
The people who make death threats can easily enough make something creative. Certainly there is no larger barrier for them when compared to someone like Phil Fish. I do not think we need to make it easier to expect better behavior from someone who is making a death threat.
We need to prioritize the people who made the extra effort to actually get up and make something over the people who chose to directly threaten the lives of the creator.
Fine. What are you going to do about it?
Imprison them? Highly counterproductive. Complain about them on the internet? They live for that. Sit back and do nothing?
Grandparent proposed a positive course of action that they believe will effect change. Asking whose fault or responsibility the problem is is missing the point; what we should focus on is how to solve it.
OP believes society does not do enough to cause people to be creative. That kind of problem has one kind of solution. Perhaps the very grant that Phil Fish used to initially fund his development of Fez would qualify.
I believe people that make death threats are solely responsible for their actions. They need to be held accountable. There are tons of ways to hold them accountable.
One such internet community built solely around internet gaming is Lethalfrag's Twitch.tv channel. You can see for yourself the quality of commentary on his show. He has spoken at length about his methods for maintaining a solid community. He does not do it by providing people with a creative outlet.
But I shouldn't have to point out an example of a successful internet community to assert what the problem is. I think it is in the ways in which we hold people accountable for their actions. Maybe you do not believe that is the problem.
In any case, I cannot imagine you believe the problem is that we do not make it easy enough for people who make death threats to be creative. That's an awful lot of grace we give a person before expecting them to change their behavior.
You believe that "the ways in which we hold people accountable for their actions" is a contributing causal factor? Fine. But identifying a causal factor is pointless unless you have a plan for dealing with it.
OP was proposing a practical intervention. Is it the best possible practical intervention? I don't know, but your counterproposal should be another practical intervention, not just a theory about one of the causes of the problem.
If you believe someone has the same goals as you, but is attempting to solve the 'incorrect' problem, is it pointless to point out the discrepancy?
I don't think so at all.
It's not just a society of consumers, it's a society of ... well, children really, although that might be too insulting. "Dependents" might be better. A society of people who are increasingly urbanized, increasingly educated, increasingly always online. And some of that is good but it has come along with and enabled a culture of dependence. People expect that society at large and the state specifically is going to be there to help them out. Help them get their car back on the road, defend them from the bad guys, keep a roof over their heads, keep their bellies full, and so on. This is the "brave new world" route. A population that's blissed out and utterly incapable of self-reliance.
Add to that a somewhat related phenomenon which I'll just call "fuck the rich". The idea being that those who are wealthy/famous/successful somehow "have more" than their "fair share" and therefore are less deserving of social niceties and are a valid target for abuse. The justification being that "they're rich" (or famous or whatever) and "can take it" or "deserve it". It's surprising how quickly this view has become lodges in the zeitgeist. Here's a revealing little test: if you could press a magic button which would randomly pick someone who made more than $200k/yr in the US and, via a robot or magic or whatever, punch them HARD in the face but at the same time pick someone randomly in the US who made less than $15k/yr and give them $1k in cash would you press the button? How many times? How many people would press the button? How much? Would they feel bad about it?
Add to that the general vitriol that stews in some parts of the internet due to anonymity and a variety of other factors and you get the conditions that this story talks about. It's pretty disgusting, and it's probably not going to just magically go away just by hoping it does. So what are we going to do about it?
Be kind and empathic to those around you, and call out those around you who are not. Try to use technology to further liberate people's minds from the drudgery of everyday life and give them that time back, for them to invest in actively bettering themselves. Long term, institute a living wage such that everyone is freed from the worries of everyday survival and develops a kinder, less stressed mindset. A lot of the hostility we see on and off line would go away.
"Instagram is even more depressing than Facebook. Here’s why." http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/07/...
For instance, do you really think the police, SNAP, and federal assistance for hurricane victims incline people to flame others on the Internet? Folks who need food stamps are probably among the least likely to spend "all their time on the Internet," and more likely to be working two jobs. I'm not sure the presence of cops, SNAP, or FEMA matter to folks who don't need any of those things in a concrete fashion.
More importantly, though, it's a fallacy to assume that this sentiment is new merely because it's newly-ish observed. I do think there's an economic component, given how shitty the economy is compared to previous generations' experience; people are unhappy, but I suspect some of that stems from the idea that they're on their own, whereas "everyone else" (or perhaps the rich) is getting a handout. Actually, I'm not even sure folks like millennials believe that in aggregate, but I don't know for sure.
That said, anonymity combined with increased connectivity is novel, and I think it's an enabling factor. I think our social mores and our tools haven't caught up. People can say whatever comes to mind with little or no consequences, and the onus is on the recipient to filter that. There's a many-to-one relationship there and it's hard to manage.
A technological, "dumb" answer would be applying sentiment analysis to emails, tweets, et al. Incorporate as signals stuff like: whether it's a first-time sender; whether the Twitter account has followers; and so on. It's possible these would be band-aids for a real social problem. Or perhaps they would at least lower the percentage in harassing people online.
Socially, it might help if escalated harassment (i.e. persistent, involving death threats, etc) were treated as legal matters. As it is now I suspect it's too hard for victims to do much, and that it can be difficult to get the police to pay attention to it. I don't really have a concrete proposal; I just have a intuition that reporting harassment or stalking to the police is unlikely to be productive as it stands now, and I think the law is unfortunately a really blunt instrument, so this would be hard to get right. (It wouldn't have to be perfect, since no solution which will scale to hundreds of millions of people could possibly be.)
Internet mob justice is probably the answer that will happen from time to time, when people decide to deliberately out trolls. I am not a big fan of Internet mob justice, but sometimes it seems like it's that or no justice at all.
Citation needed, because the correlation goes in the opposite direction - to me it looks like as more people take up creative endeavours, the hate they face grows ever faster.
With those caveats out of the way; when I did have to deal with abusive feedback, I focused on two things:
1) I could easily separate my real life person from the "Fuzzy" persona I cultivated on the internet.
2) If our little game had prompted someone to get so worked up that they were going to rape and kill my kittens because we were making changes to a weapon, then we'd done something right.
I'd been a hardcore, vocal gamer before I had to deal with hardcore vocal gamers. I wasn't abusive, but I had felt that passion from both sides. I didn't like, tolerate or condone people who were abusive, but I tried to understand where the passion was coming from.
When the threats start talking about in person interactions (looking for your address, etc), I think the situation gets even more serious.
As a side note, I played and loved Dystopia. It's a fantastic mod, and really fun to play. Well done, there!
As an aside, my best buddy, lead Dys programmer and co-project manager Teddy is now hacking around with Oculus Rift things:
I have tremendous respect for Phil Fish, but I would never want to work with him. His kind of passion, devotion, and energy would probably chew me up and spit me out so fast I wouldn't know what hit me. And, yeah, he gives as good as he gets in the Land of the Trolls.
But, man, he made a helluva game. Right now I'm selfishly hoping that the need to create overwhelms the desire to heal and we'll see another few games out of him before too long.
This sort of abuse isn't limited to creative people. It's endemic. Make a stand on something, anything, and you run the risk of having people say they're going to rape you, your family, and your dog. It's really quite horrible. Luckily for Criado-Perez Manchester police arrested a 21-year old man on "about 50 abusive tweets an hour for about 12 hours." Lucky for her, but unfortunately there's an entire sea of horrible people out there to sling the shit.
It's profoundly disturbing that so many people have such a lack of perspective that they can seriously threaten violence against someone and their family just because that person did their job and tweaked some game mechanics.
Sure, most of the abusive people are probably kids, but that's no excuse. What kind of kid is old enough to be allowed unsupervised access to the Internet and yet so out of control that they can think this kind of behaviour is acceptable?
Some of the things described in this piece are surely criminal, but somehow I get the feeling that sending the cops round would just be a badge of honour to people who've gone that far off the rails already. I'm not sure how you fix this without change on a society-wide scale, and I'm not sure how you could even start to effect that change if you're in the the kind of position described in the article.
Yes, Phil Fish is part of the problem by existing. He's solved this by leaving the industry entirely. That's a helpful way of looking at it, isn't it?
Phil Fish constantly posted caustic, abusive remarks to everyone on his twitter feed. His public persona was one of a complete and utter asshole. Nothing excuses that behavior. While the internet's response to it is contemptible, I have absolutely no sympathy for Fish. He dished it out constantly, the fact that people replied in kind is expected.
On the other hand, I have a ton of sympathy for the Treyarch dev. He didn't deserve or invite any of the remarks aimed at him, and he didn't do anything to get that level of response.
Notice how there are many indie developers are out there who aren't being harassed. Thats because the idea that Phil Fish was harassed randomly is simply a way to gloss over the real issue. You spend all your time, like warriors, decrying about how bad his supposed "abusers" are, like there is some type of epidemic problem of people who are spending their time attacking poor Phil Fish for no reason. Yet, what set him off weren't the abusers, it was his critics. Again and again, he responded to his critics like a child. Shifting the focus on the "abusers" is ignoring the real problem. This is what western developers have become. It is sickening to see people defending the indefensible.
Either way, responding to hate with more hate doesn't mean it's OK to continue the death threats.
Not defending Phil Fish. Just the "kill yourself" incident seems to have been blown out of proportion.
Meme graphic: http://memegenerator.co/instance/37859418
For instance, if I say "nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" I'm not ACTUALLY saying we should nuke anything. I'm actually quite against the use of nuclear weapons.
And honestly, the phrase "nuke it from orbit" is a rather exaggerated phrase. Unless the speaker is Barrack Obama or Vladamir Putin, it's a pretty good assumption that they are incapable of performing such an act.
However, "look at my life and go kill yourself" is much less exaggerated. Bender gets a pass when he says it because it's used in a comedic context. In real life, there is just about no point where that is a socially acceptable thing to say, except, perhaps, in a Futurama quote competition.
I believe Fish actually used the full quote too "compare your life to mine and then kill yourself" [1] .
Also, have you seen the abusive rant that Fish was responding to? It was this GameTrailers panel clip, 1min 50 [2]. I was appalled, it was a character assassination.
Beer called Fish a "fucking hipster," a "tosspot," a "wanker", a "fucking arsehole" and was dismissive of his game [2]. For some reason it's fucking hipster that gets my goat the most as that is just a pathetically lazy insult to throw at someone creative.
[1] http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/27/4563738/fez-ii-abruptly-ca...
[2] http://www.gametrailers.com/full-episodes/roj70m/invisible-w...
Someone older than 10 and younger than 18?
Unfortunately the medium itself is such that someone who is an abusive idiot is a gazillion times more likely to go out of their way to contact you or post something than someone who actually has something meaningful to say. The same goes for online forums and mailing lists. There's just a natural bias towards people posting extremely negative/inflammatory/abusive things. There's also a natural bias towards the people who have the least to contribute being the most likely to hop in with a comment, because they're the ones most likely to have strong kneejerk responses that they just have to share with the world right away.
To make matters worse, there's some sort of signal:noise entropy dynamic. Anyone who was into Usenet in the 90's or has followed the same online community over the course of many years has probably seen this. Online forums tend to get worse over time, and never ever ever get better, aside from attempts to impose moderation which always meet with strong resistance. It seems like one lousy comment (or commenter) breeds two more, which drive away the good commenters (meaning, people who actually try and don't just post knee-jerk responses to things). This is how things like YouTube happen.
I do.
"Do unto others, as you would have them do to you" is sage advice that's often forgotten.
Perhaps the same is true of a social setting. In order to argue and campaign for more civility, you will necessarily be defending people most likely to fail to earn that civility.
When you do make something that garners some attention you need to realize that a lot of people will be jealous. Their only valid rebuttal would be to make something that is better than your thing.
People don't say these things to your face because on top of being jealous, they are also cowards. The fear that drives their life is the reason why they never make anything in the first place.
If you make things that are a bit more intelligent and refined you won't attract the kind of idiots who are gonna post a bunch of mindless crap on Internet message boards... but then you might have to deal with a very intelligent and refined review from a noted critic. But no worries, as Frank Zappa summed up brilliantly:
"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."
Just make stuff. Haters gonna hate.
I am, like you, infuriated that a public / marginally public figure would use social media to communicate a personal message. These marginally public figures should only be allowed to talk about their creative output in a public space.
/s
Edit: I guess the general point my unnecessary sarcasm was trying to make was this: Creative people are people first and foremost. They have the same drives and desires for using social media, AND they need to use it as a marketing tool. I think one of the major problems is it's super easy to dehumanize people when you're interacting with them over the internet. They aren't just content creation machines.
Apologies for the unnecessary sarcasm.
To some extent, yes. Death in the family and informing people about an upcoming marriages are things that I frequently see people post on social media. Really any very important event in someone's life often gets posted on social media.
I'm just saying, it's easy to think of people on the internet as abstract things, and not realize that you're saying: "Hey, actual person shut about about that major event in your life, no one cares, get back to work".
Let me ask you this: if your friend posted a message about a death in their family on twitter would your response be "Why can't you STFU, get off twitter, and get back to work"?
Right. You mean it then becomes easier to be a major sarcastic dick to someone who voiced an opinion quite contrary to yours?
It was a knee-jerk comment, and it was indeed a pretty dick thing to say.
(I write a small amount of fiction. I don't go out of my way to conceal my identity, but I do have distinct handles and to a certain extent personae for professional-programmer-me, writer-me, family-me etc. It would feel strange to use a single twitter account)
That being said, I don't understand the anger when people do post personal stuff. If a twitter account posts things that aren't interesting to you, just don't follow them. I fundamentally don't understand why someone would get upset, or send in abuse, because someone posts some information from their personal life on their twitter account.
I never could understand twitter/facebook appeal other than to pop cheap snippets or stalk your old friends, but I don't judge people based on what they do in their leisure time.
I find a lot of people who are dismissive, arrogant, condescending, and insulting often can't take that same behavior directed back at them. Fish seems to fit that mold.
I certainly wouldn't equate Phil Fish's situation to that of David Vonderhaar. Vonderhaar got harassed for merely doing his job. Fish got harassed because he crafted a persona of jerkiness.
Maybe because although I am a caustic person, I never go around telling people to kill themselves, or suck my dick, or other "wonderful" things that some people like to do.
Also my games usually don't feature violence.
Maybe the problem is that, having never been in the situation, I don't really understand how it feels. It really makes me wonder how I'd hold up in the situation.
How's that? That's pretty difficult for me to write, but about sums it up what these people have to deal with several times a day. I do not blame Phil Fish for lashing out, if people weren't on him like flies in the first place he probably be less agitated.
There might be a bit of desensitization involved, think 4chan culture.
Still, a stranger or the internet, or simply a stranger, does not mean anything to me if I don't know him beforehand.
I also would like to clarify that I do not doubt that this kind of abuse it is hard to deal with or anything. Just saying that it is pretty hard for me to relate, and that's probably the reason why not everyone is immediately siding with Phil Fish and other abuse victims.
And, even if you can thicken your skin to the point where the horrible insults don't wear you down, how do you feel about physical threats? Against your loved ones? This stuff is more terrible than you can expect a reasonable person to just shrug off.
It's not like Phil fish never asked for it.
What's happening to him is shitty, true. He also has done shitty things to people in the past. One does not justify the other. However, my only point is only that the indie community (talking about devs/designers/artists) as a whole would rather have him gone.