Content Warning: This post contains racial and homophobic slurs and ableist language.
Several of CSGO’s caster types are some of the most egregious bottom-feeders of the entire industry. Another caster, Richard Lewis, has a rap sheet that includes (just off the top of my head):
There are zero standards for maintaining a professional position in CSGO’s tournament scene. It’s an embarrassment.
" Fans also documented retweets related to a celebration of Joe Arpaio, a former Arizona sheriff who proudly boasted of cracking down on illegal immigration by forcing “inmates to wear pink underwear and housed them in canvas tents under the hot Arizona sun,”"
Why did you go with the pink underwear thing and not the fact that he was found in criminal contempt of court for refusing to stop his racist policing practices?
I think it’s fair to say that someone who can be quoted saying something like,
“I have to go there, whatever. You know how I do that shit.”
is globally a shithead.
It’s lines like
Blockquote“Thorin is not an ESL employee and works as a commentator on a freelance contract for specific esports events,” said a spokesperson. “Therefore he does not represent ESL in any way.”
That make me actually mad. He’s on an ESL stage talking into ESL mics. He’s being paid by ESL. I assume at this point he’s (in)famous enough that he was probably asked to be there, rather than him asking them (Pure assumption based on what I know about other esports). To say he doesn’t represent ESL borders on gaslighting at that point.
that’s not what gaslighting is, thanks
At this point I assume every Youtuber or Streamer is a secret racist. By next week I wouldn’t be surprised if Defunctland is saying awful things about the Jews.
(Real talk: If Defunctland ever goes bad my heart will shatter into a million pieces.)
Specificity of language and how it is used on the forums is of high importance, particularly when talking about contentious topics. Gaslighting originated with talking about abuse, particularly with a gendered component and relates to the process of an abuser consistently undermining a victim’s sense of reality and confidence in their own perceptions, to better keep them controlled. We would like if that terminology was not watered down to imply things like intentional misinformation, willful lying or other less than savory attempts to save face or delude people, which has happened in recent years. The two are not the same and it would be good if we kept this terminology for abuse scenarios, as victims need language to describe their experiences specifically.
We wanted to make this clarification for how we expect these kinds of terms to be used but this thread should return to talking about the topic on hand.
Just listened to the article read and discussion. It’s disappointing to see that people, intentionally or not, can’t distinguish between a situation like James Gunn and Patrick, to the situation with Thorin and other recent controversies within Twitch and E-sports.
I can understand why someone would look at a personality’s old harmful internet activity and decide it’s enough for them, but digging those up without the context of personal growth over time is disingenuous and a common undermining tactic.
As Patrick mentioned on the recording, he’s been open about his more brazen younger self and understands that how he acted was wrong and harmful, as opposed to the personalities that has come into light more and more since 2014 who are doubling down on toxic behaviour and language to an equally toxic fanbase.
Either way I appreciate that it was discussed instead of buried, and I hope as E-sports continues to move towards a broader and by proxy a more diverse audience that the toxic culture around it evolves and changes as well.
It was sad to hear that people tried to look for a bad things that Patrick did in the past just as a gotcha. I hope that Patrick can move on from that endeavor. I am also wondering how different of a situation this is to what happened to James Gunn.
In hindsight, this kind of bad faith attempt to undermine the foundational principles of Waypoint was likely to happen at some point. I’ve seen some photos of college Patrick from old Giant Bomb threads back in the day and heard him talk about those years. I was immature at 19 as well. Hope Patrick can come back to twitter soon.
I was surprised that he went on xenophobic rant about poles cause I don’t think it’s that common in gaming communities (may be wrong though) but then I looked up and the dude is british so that explains that.
eSports as a whole just has a background malaise of toxicity, valve in particular seem to just not care who they platform. if they wanted it to be so thorins career could be over tomorrow.
Some other people with a similar past to thorin valve seem to like:
2GD, up until he embarrassed valve was a regular on Dota 2 TI streams (multi million dollar tournament hosted by valve). He has a history of harassment of women and minorities, dating back many years. He was popular in the starcraft 2 independent tournament circuit for his casting where he made transphobic remarks about Scarlett, a trans sstarcraft 2 players
GrandGrant, a dota 2 caster (at this years TI no less!) has a long and storied history of being gross. Notably got banned from twitch for directing harassment campaigns towards women streamers.
Tobi Wan, probably one of valves favourite casters seeing as he invited back to valve organised tournaments (and often casts finals) is another one with a long history of being gross and pervy towards women, as well as using the N word on stream (to no harm to his career of course)
eSports is basically controlled by the companies making the games and at best they just don’t care, or at worst (and most truthfully in my opinion) is that they actively approve of the behavior of their casting stars.
I think patrick did a good thing with this article. Realistically player feedback would never be coherent or organised enough to lead a campaign to increase standards in the industry, the best way forwards is as many people in mainstream games press making noise
Sadly at this point I’m trying to prepare myself for literally anyone milkshake-ducking.
Given how long Polish immigration has occurred here, I thought we’d finally shed that stereotype…
… by moving on to being racist towards the er next group of immigrants, or muslims, etc etc
Eh, seeing as we are one of the largest groups of immigrants and polish is the most common foreign language in UK I don’t see it stopping anytime soon- it’s always easy to find people who absolutely hate any large group of immigrants.
I’m not “glad” that articles like these can be made, but it’s good that they are.
I used to watch pro Dota but the shittyness of the casters became too much as time goes on. I don’t know that it got as bad as Thorin, but for the most part the dota caster culture was a sexist, racist, and homophobic one. If that’s not what you want, too bad. “That’s just how it is.”
An article like this raises the idea that no, actually it’s not ok. Especially if you do the leg work and look back at the trends and tendencies over the years. It’s not just “not ok” it’s pretty messed up.
