Comment by zalzane | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zalzane | Hacker News Reader

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I think this is a good article, but it was a mistake to start out by citing Fish's situation. Fish is absolutely not an innocent player in this scenario. He would fill his twitter feed with rage-filled comments in reply to people who would criticize his game. By giving trolls exactly what they wanted (a reaction), more of them jumped on the bandwagon to harass him.

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.

I gotta disagree with your last sentence: the absolute worst thing you can do about bullying is say that the victim deserved it.

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?

I think we can safely say that Phil Fish is absolutely part of the problem without it degenerating into mere victim blaming. Of course he doesn't deserve the abuse that he gets, neither do his abuse victims.

I'd be more inclined to agree with you, that Fish is simply another troll, if I'd seen any evidence of him responding to a perfectly reasonable review of FEZ with more "choke-on-my-dick" trollia.

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 don't think he's just another troll, whatever that means. I just think his responses have been pretty reprehensible. We can all do better.

Sorry to stick words in your mouth.

I agree, you're right, his responses are terrible and he seems pretty rude.

They're not abuse victims because they opted into it by going out of their way to harass the guy in the first place. Is that hard to understand? It shouldn't be.

You don't "opt in" to having someone tell you to kill yourself, that is not how civilization is supposed to work.

If you attack someone and they fight back you're not a "victim". Yes, they might have been wrong to strike back out at you, but you're not a "victim".

I see what you're saying. I guess I'm not that hung up on the definition of the word "victim". My point is that those kinds of interactions are just horrible and that nobody deserves to be on the receiving end of such abuse.

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.

Fish responding to trolls in no way excuses the trolls harassing him. That's textbook victim blaming, and it's disgusting for it to come up here.

I don't think it's textbook victim blaming at all. If a guy goes around tossing beers in peoples' faces in bars and occasionally catches a beat down, I don't think it would be victim blaming to state that, 'Hey, maybe if he didn't throw beer in peoples' faces he wouldn't catch beat downs'.

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.

Ok, here's Phil responding to a polite and honest question (in person, and not over the safety of the internet!):

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.

He says "Japanese games suck", and he's grinning, while the rest of the panel cracks up. Then Jonathan Blow explains why they do, and at the end, Fish says something about Zelda. At no point does he attack anyone personally, not even a whiff of it. Then the panel including moderator end up agreeing on Japanese games being "joyless husks".

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?

Yes, Fish has said some shitty things. Back when that happened, I was one of the people who argued against him and said he was a huge dick. But that doesn't mean he deserves a flurry of abusive and hateful speech; it means people should tell him to shut up and learn some manners.

Surely you agree there's a difference between "being disliked" and "being on the receiving end of a torrent of abuse"?

I think, in many ways, Fish's situation is a combination of the "perfect storm" of abrasive personality put into a situation where trolls can take advantage of that personality.

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.

It's very important to be allowed to say publicly that things suck. I would argue that more people should do it.

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.

>It's very important to be allowed to say publicly that things suck. I would argue that more people should do it... 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.

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.

> 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)?

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.

First, rude is not fine. Further, his comment had nothing of value in it at all. I found it completely racist and arrogant.

His criticism of modern JRPG design vs older JRPGs is a perfectly valid opinion, he makes some good points. Whether you agree or not is another matter.

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.

It doesn't excuse their behavior, nor does their behavior excuse his.

I agree with your comment, but from the text it appears that anyone sending criticism was met with rage as an answer. That's not trolling.

That's really not true. Almost all of his caustic responses were to people sending him shit. His post on the Steam forums was in response to trolls trashing his game. Just take a look at his forum posts.[0] Most are completely normal, while one or two are replying to jerks.

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...

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.

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.

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