NeoGAF & #metoo

[Ming Ming Hatsune]

NeoGAF, one of the last few remaining gaming forums that isn't owned by corporates with daily 1000+ active users could be on its last legs.

To bring you guys up to speed...

#metoo has started across the world, being shame to celebrities like Harvey Weinstein. Women are no longer keeping their mouth shuts, we are coming out and giving out stories on who sexually harassed us.

Even an (ex) employee from Naughty Dog was accused about sexually assaulted a woman. Trump is hated across the world for one of these reasons, and we shouldn't be hypocrites saying what Trump did was wrong, but you do it yourself.

And in the past 24 hours, NeoGAF is in trouble. A video gaming forum full of liberals. A community that defends women and human rights. Just discovered EviLore the owner of NeoGAF has been accused of sexual assaulting a woman again. Yep, this isn't the first time he did this. I'll go back to that later.

But here is what kicked things off. A woman posted her story on Facebook saying she got sexually harassed by EviLore. The community were shocked. And that's when everything dirty about 2 NeoGAF staff begun to unravel.

The community went in to chaos. Constant new threads wanting EviLore to resign and ban requests. At first, these threads were getting locked up faster than you can say #metoo. But then later on, many active NeoGAF staff had resigned. Now there's barely anyone to moderate the forums and off-topic forum became poison.

"But but...anyone can make these stories up!!!!" So what about Trump? We have no solid proof of those! What about Harvey? We have no proof of those! 

You know why we think this is all true with EviLore? Because he did it before back in 2012 and admitted it. He also helped cover up an ex-mod Amir0x who had been arrested for child porn.

"Hold up, I never knew about these? How come I've never heard of this before?" Any person until today in GAF brought up these past events got banned or get their thread deleted. EviLore did his very best to cover up these events so barely anyone would know. I didn't even know myself and I'm a member for 4 years!

So what's happening now? The site has a 503 error as probably someone is DDoS'ing or EviLore just turned the site off for now. But when it's back online, you'll notice everywhere that the community are in shock. Some even requested to get banned. (Which is funny because the mods that can ban them had left.)

EviLore can't cover this one now. With things going on like Trump, no one is going to zip their mouths.

EviLore must resign and transfer everything he owns with NeoGAF otherwise the site is dead.

What do you guys think?

[Teoskaven]

It's no secret that i've never liked NeoGAF that much, even before it turned face after Gamergate. So, good riddance if you ask me; the site was useful recently only for leak sources, but otherwise it had become such a toxic hole with entitled pricks who effectively manipulated major things in and out of the Internet in nasty ways all the while claiming to doing this for the freedom of speech and respect of others.
And it collapsed onto itself, how poethic. Hopefully this will be start of a purge to make true liberalism more wise and free of SJWs.

[Dreadknux]

Just caught up with this overnight, the events unfolding over there has been crazy. I had no idea about the previous incidents in 2012 and the child porn stuff, just goes to show how well that was all covered up. :/

It’s a shame because, ironically, I always thought it had a pretty decent community that had collectively had good, progressive values - how ironic that those values were diametrically opposed to that of the site owner.

This whole #metoo stuff, following the Weinstein allegations, is blowing up absolutely everywhere - movie industry, game industry, press, and now even video game forums. It’s eye-opening, and as a bloke who by default never really sees this going on as often as is being described it’s really humbling, too. I can only hope that this encourages more people to talk about this as it seems like this is a conversation that has been suppressed for far too long and needs to be had.

SJWs

*eyes roll out the back of my head* yawwwwn

[Polkadi~☆]

Blessed be that this is happening. What EviLore has done is nothing short of unacceptable, and he did it TWICE. Now he's suffering the consequences, as everything falls before him.

But god DAMN, NeoGAF is just dying. Painfully. I mean, I don't like the site that much, but this is brutal by my standards.

Another one bites the dust :\

[Ming Ming Hatsune]

Nah, it's dead. Unless EviLore gives everything he has from that site to someone else, it's dead. No member would want to help EviLore with moderating the forum (and if there are who want to, then they are okay with EviLore doing sexual harassment). Forums need moderation otherwise it can quickly become a dumpster fire. Imagine SSMB without any kind of moderation for example.

He got away with it once (he should count himself very lucky) but not this time.

[Gabz Girl]

So THAT’S why I haven’t been able to get onto NeoGaf since last night!

I’m a lurker there, so I always check on Gaming Discussion and Off Topic. I did see some locked topics about EviLore in the Off Topic but shrugged them off. Now I find out about all this though and I’m like...Goddamn, EviLore is an evil, hypocritical bastard. What a shame. I guess this does mean the forum will die, because who can replace EviLore? Who would even want to support his ass??

Argh, so gutted right now.

[Ming Ming Hatsune]

30 minutes ago, Gabz Girl said:

So THAT’S why I haven’t been able to get onto NeoGaf since last night!

I’m a lurker there, so I always check on Gaming Discussion and Off Topic. I did see some locked topics about EviLore in the Off Topic but shrugged them off. Now I find out about all this though and I’m like...Goddamn, EviLore is an evil, hypocritical bastard. What a shame. I guess this does mean the forum will die, because who can replace EviLore? Who would even want to support his ass??

Argh, so gutted right now.

I'm glad I created this thread then.

These things shouldn't go unnoticed. Everyone who knows NeoGAF should know this and spread the word about this man.

If anyone of you have been sexually harassed, please let your community know. They'll support you and expose him/her. Say no more to sexual harassment.

[Patticus]

4 hours ago, Ming Ming Hatsune said:

But then later on, many active NeoGAF staff had resigned. Now there's barely anyone to moderate the forums and off-topic forum became poison.

The official line from ModBot is that they only "resigned" because their personal details were leaked. Whether the ex-mods themselves would say different, I don't know, but for now they're all keeping quiet.

Such a fucked up situation; thread locks and the ban hammer being meted out in such a liberal manner to stifle all discussions on the subject, like the place is some kind of totalitarian dictatorship. I know people have been banned from there for the most petty of reasons in the past, but this time it was like someone loaded a machinegun with ban bullets and just stared firing indiscriminately into the forum. It's been handled almost as badly as the time that ex-GAF mod was outed as a pedophile. Disgusting.

[Ming Ming Hatsune]

39 minutes ago, Patticus said:

The official line from ModBot is that they only "resigned" because their personal details were leaked. Whether the ex-mods themselves would say different, I don't know, but for now they're all keeping quiet.

ModBot was lying. Probably trying to twist what went on.

[Patticus]

7 minutes ago, Ming Ming Hatsune said:

ModBot was lying. Probably trying to twist what went on.

Well damn, I don't know how to feel about that, but I guess it's a good thing if they really did step down in protest, rather than because they were complicit or generally creeps themselves. That said, the continued silence and shutting down of the site is speaking volumes right now.

[Pawn]

Well this is a shame. I've been coming back to NeoGAF more and more recently because of its generally more progressive stance on issues, so for it to disappear for this particular reason is incredibly disappointing. What a scumbag.

3 hours ago, Teospooker said:

Hopefully this will be start of a purge to make true liberalism more wise and free of SJWs.

It was nice to visit a forum where this kind of response was a rarity.

[Mad Convoy]

I heard about this and my first thought was "Holy shit, what an asshole."

Send the best to the victims. Its very, very upsetting, saddening, and disturbing that they were touched without their permission, creeped on, etc. Here's hoping that it all finally coming to light will help alleviate the emotional pain and provide at least a little bit of closure to all the awful things EviLore did to them. 

Was never really a fan of NeoGaf, but for somebody who is, it must be absolutely heartbreaking to learn that somebody who they respect and love is actually an exploitive monster. Never meet your heroes, I suppose.

I hope somebody who isn't a monster can make a gaming forum that can replace NeoGaf, as it seems right now its not long for this world. I'd try to myself but I don't know how to run a whole website and my social anxiety would probably get in the way.  

[Kevin]

Just caught up on all the news and holy shit, what a mess! Even though I was mainly a lurker there, I'm hoping that Evilore won't be getting away with his sexual harassment this time, especially if he did it before and admitted to it. This is one of the biggest gaming forums on the internet and it's going to a huge fall if it closes up for good.

With that being said, I'm glad to see the issue of sexual harassment coming to light. It's a very serious issue that needs to be given more awareness.

[Ming Ming Hatsune]

I just discovered that 2 days ago before this blew up, a NeoGAF member posted something about his sister which is identical to the Facebook post. (Thank you Google!)

Obviously no member had time to follow up on that thread as it was locked/deleted.

[Mr Loopone]

Absolutely disgusting that it happened and also caused a popular website to self destruct in the process. Sexual harassment or worse is awful for a person to go through and can affect someones life, sometimes really bad. There could have been a chance that EvilLore was innocent. You know benefit of the doubt and the person could have lied for attention but yeah, the evidence and even admitting to it says it all. Cover ups and corruption throughout the years and getting away with it too. What make it disturbing was that there was a cult of EvilLore praise around the place over the years so either they didn't know about his exploitations or even worse knew and supported him.

While I'm not one for the GAF (did use to lurk there until a couple of years ago and that was mainly gaming discount threads and PAL charts) and just had a gut feeling that something was not right about the place, it does however affect people who do use the site. There have been communities whether they are games, movies, TV shows, anime and enjoying what they like. It is one of the few places that talks about really obscure Japanese made games that may only got an English translation in Asia (usually on the Vita or the PS4) or a low print run so that's going to be badly affected. It spawned a bunch of memes such as Antonio Bandreas, Mark Cerny and Knack that were used for a couple of years. Other websites use there for sources regarding leaks and information so there'll be less gaming news, well at least one that doesn't come from the mouth of a publisher so companies like Ubisoft are going to be happy about this. One of the biggest gaming forums that could disappear and one day forgotten all over someone who was touching that shouldn't have been touched.

Whether NeoGAF would continue after this I don't know but can imagine quite a lot of people would stop going or be weary of going there knowing what went off.

[Graystripe2000]

Leaving this here.

 

[Balding Spider]

This really blows. I was a lurker and really liked that there was a really progressive game and topic board out there, with a strong community. Neogaf for sometime now has been a great source of entertainment, and news for me. But after reading everything that went down with Evilore burn it all. Burn it to the ground.

Can't believe this shit is still happening. This "Great" progressive champion for the modern times turns out to be a massive turd. It's going to be an ongoing joke from gamergaters, just watch.

[Chili Dawg]

Neogaf could have some interesting threads here and there, even if discussions often went to shit very quickly, but it was a good time killer to read through here and there, pick up some good memes and gifs. And I know for a lot of people its their internet home like SSMB basically is for me, so I feel for 'em I really do.

It's also so disturbing and ironic that Neogaf, probably the most progressive leaning gaming discussion forum, had to go down because it was being run by a sexual harasser. Just... Jesus, these creeps are fuckin' everywhere. I always knew women had to deal with a lot of shit that I did not, and that bothers me, but between this and #MeToo  I'm just finding myself more and more blown away by the scope of this problem, and just how fucking vile some people truly are... I hope everyone continues to shed light on this problem, we have to ensure that the time of creeps being able to get away with this shit comes to an end. 

[Mad Convoy]

And that's the thing about NeoGAF ending. Am I happy that a sexual predator is outed and is going to face severe long term consequences for his licentious activities? Yes. But I'm not happy that its gotten so beyond repair that it forces the end of NeoGAF for everybody, including who knows how many innocent users and mainstays who had no idea. Had he just admitted it when Colin was outed as a pædophile, the remaining mods and admins could at least elect a successor in his place. But now he's taken the whole site down with him.

I'm also not cheering this as a victory for Colin. Colin is still a pædophile and child molester. The fact that there are Gamergaters and alt-righters are willing to put one sexually immoral asshole who happens to share opinions with them on a pedestal which pushing down another who does not share opinions with them says a lot about how much they really care about the victims of sexual abuse. I never thought my opinion of the alt-right movement could get much worse, but as I see it, they've plunged right through rock bottom and entered the Earth's mantle. That's how little I think of them now.

[Balding Spider]

Anyone know how Sami and Dusk Golem are holding up? I just  thought of them amidst this debacle.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

22 minutes ago, Night on Balding Mountain said:

Anyone know how Sami and Dusk Golem are holding up? I just  thought of them amidst this debacle.

I think I know the former,  but I'm a bit unfamiliar with whom the latter is. 

[Balding Spider]

Just now, Jovahexeon Cala Maria said:

I think I know the former,  but I'm a bit unfamiliar with whom the latter is. 

Oh he has an account here. Though I think he changed it. I think he had an Francis York avatar.

[Gabz Girl]

I’ve noticed a lot of GAFers have moved to the Waypoint forums. I wonder if Sami is there now? I kinda want him to come back here lol.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

3 minutes ago, Night on Balding Mountain said:

Oh he has an account here. Though I think he changed it. I think he had an Francis York avatar.

 Oh,  might he be the creator of the Ace Attorney thread?

[Marcello]

Man, what a piece of shit Evilore is.

4 minutes ago, Gabz Girl said:

I’ve noticed a lot of GAFers have moved to the Waypoint forums. I wonder if Sami is there now? I kinda want him to come back here lol.

Some are going to a forum called Slaent, too.

Seems alright at least.