A Link to the Past
Banned
You know what else is clearly stated? That Nintendo's policy is that moonlighting is acceptable.
Alison Rapp Fired By Nintendo Discussion Thread -- Read Ground Rules in OP
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You know what else is clearly stated? That Nintendo's policy is that moonlighting is acceptable.
Does it matter? Whatever it was she did it under an alias for a reason and we should respect that.
Don't? Detective stuff isn't ok.
entremet
Member
Careful. There's a warning the OP against this stuff.
NormalFish
Banned
Second thread isn't terribly surprising. This sort of thing brings out a lot of ugliness from many sides.
I hadn't seen that clarification. Makes sense. My knee jerk reaction of thinking NoA handled this poorly stands, as far as I'm concerned. Hopefully she'll be able to find other work that she enjoys, and perhaps more poignantly, hopefully the FBI and whoever else find the tools and legality needed to stop these harassment campaigns from impacting good people so awfully.
Whole thing has me in a bad mood.
I hadn't seen that clarification. Makes sense. My knee jerk reaction of thinking NoA handled this poorly stands, as far as I'm concerned. Hopefully she'll be able to find other work that she enjoys, and perhaps more poignantly, hopefully the FBI and whoever else find the tools and legality needed to stop these harassment campaigns from impacting good people so awfully.
Whole thing has me in a bad mood.
I have no idea what she shared. I assumed it was already well known by people since people are outraged. We don't even know full details?
On the point about freedom of speech and opinions on the internet for Nintendo, that goes for all their employees man or woman. However, I will say Rapp has discussed a lot of things on her Twitter without much issues in recent years, so I feel Nintendo has turned a blind eye for a lot of things she talks about and does online.
I do agree with you on worker rights, companies remaining silent, major media white-washing, slut-shaming, "both sides," and lack of any and all reporting on things happening to the people of the industry.
Gotdatmoney
Member
I don't care what it is, I'm just saying that given both parties statements its not something where "no one" will give a fuck. I don't really give a fuck what it is but the assumption has to be that it was an image thing given how corporate culture generally treats moonlighting. I'm expanding, if it was on me I wouldn't fire over this.
More or less everything that needed to be said, right here.
Perfectly succinct.
Except the harassment will continue for her. And her friends and family.
It is not over. Why do people keep thinking it just goes away when we stop talking about it?
She mentioned that she tweeted about rape culture, and Nintendo told her to stop, because it might "become a big story." Instead of changing topics, she fought against it.
Terrible situation and I don't know the full details of what her second job was. She seems like a nice person and press people seem to love her. I think it's safe that she finds another job and I hope she does.
Crazy to think that the GG shit is still around. Not a great day for the industry, that's for sure.
Crazy to think that the GG shit is still around. Not a great day for the industry, that's for sure.
She said in her tweets she was using an alias for it/doing it anonymously
.
Unless the nature of the job in question conflicts with their interests/image, which it apparently did.
You don't have to go on full conspiracy here. It's easy to be passively ignorant of what employees are doing and in many cases that's probably for the best but if someone is constantly waving things your face you can't claim ignorance of it anymore. Nintendo didn't go digging, GG did and spammed them with it.
That's against digging. I don't want digging. I just don't know what the known details even were. I don't go on twitter. Is the OP everything?
it's not that she couldn't have a second job, it was apparently the nature of that job that clashed with Nintendo
chrominance
Member
I think the only things I really have left to say are:
1) I hope Rapp finds a home elsewhere, and I hope she's happy with where she lands. If that happens to be outside the industry, so be it, but she sounds like she's not done with the industry if she can help it. I want for there to be a place for people like her in the video games.
2) We need to fight the bullshit harassment that targets people like Rapp, and we need to convince companies to fight more vigorously for their employees and to show us the industry can rise above the base, simple-minded, and destructive tendencies of its most immature fans. Regardless of the final outcome here, Nintendo is not without blame, and though the worst-case scenario has thankfully not come to pass, there is still some complicity here if what Rapp says about Nintendo's attitude towards discussing rape culture and not allowing her to stream games is true.
1) I hope Rapp finds a home elsewhere, and I hope she's happy with where she lands. If that happens to be outside the industry, so be it, but she sounds like she's not done with the industry if she can help it. I want for there to be a place for people like her in the video games.
2) We need to fight the bullshit harassment that targets people like Rapp, and we need to convince companies to fight more vigorously for their employees and to show us the industry can rise above the base, simple-minded, and destructive tendencies of its most immature fans. Regardless of the final outcome here, Nintendo is not without blame, and though the worst-case scenario has thankfully not come to pass, there is still some complicity here if what Rapp says about Nintendo's attitude towards discussing rape culture and not allowing her to stream games is true.
balladofwindfishes
Member
There isn't believing one or the other, as the stories don't conflict.
KuwabaraTheMan
Banned
I suspect Nintendo wanted out from the ongoing harassment, and this second job was a convenient excuse.
If they had found out about it without the whole GG hate campaign, I'd guess there would have been a few private conversations and a notice that they felt like this job was not the image they wanted, and that she needed to end it.
Yup. OP has all the relevant information.
You could say this about any action a company takes to justify it. It's meaningless companies not only operate under law, but they have ethical and moral responsibilities as well.
There's a lot to discuss, including the treatment of women in the industry.
It really shouldn't be.
That's not what I would consider something I wouldn't want my mother or boss to see.
I'd say there's another line of discussion, which is arguably more important than either but related to the first one and talked a lot about on GAF elsewhere already, and that's the fact that this is further proof that GamerGate continues to be a malignant group with real, tangible effects on the game industry, that's representative of the toxicity and misogyny throughout the entirety of the industry. The more time goes on the more it's easier to try and ignore the awfulness of GamerGate, especially as they may appear to become more and more of an irrelevant fringe group, but the truth is that they haven't died down, they've just settled down and basically become a permanent fixture within the rest of the toxic gaming and chan cultures.
That's always been the problem with criticism in the games space; there's always this contingent of people who say "But we just want to enjoy games without thinking about the content" or whatever. Many people are content to pretend that if they don't see it, it doesn't exist. Or they don't care.
Why couldnt she moonlight the tweets about rape culture just like she did the 2nd job that got her fired?
I would be mad at Nintendo if this was purely due to GG attacks but it seems they had a reason even if the other activities she did were making her employer weary (although you could say without GGs attacks she would still be employed).
As a big company its easy to get into trouble, Nintendo has to cover face specially in this day and age of easily outraged people. Although unfair I understand Nintendo's approach, it wasnt her job to bring to light controversial topics when she represented Nintendo.
I would be mad at Nintendo if this was purely due to GG attacks but it seems they had a reason even if the other activities she did were making her employer weary (although you could say without GGs attacks she would still be employed).
As a big company its easy to get into trouble, Nintendo has to cover face specially in this day and age of easily outraged people. Although unfair I understand Nintendo's approach, it wasnt her job to bring to light controversial topics when she represented Nintendo.
Quadraphonic
Member
Not just the nature, but the fact she was holding a Nintendo product in one of the shoots meant that a conflict of interest was definitely there and could send mixed messages.
A Link to the Past
Banned
I'm basically repeating myself now but fuck, I'm really upset because this is entirely just a feel-bad thread. A good person lost a job, a company more or less caved to a harassment group, and that harassment group is going to use this to embolden them into trying harder to get more people fired.
Man, the whole thing is just real unfortunate. Nintendo does not look good in any of this. Say what you want about whatever Rapp was doing and what she actually got fired for, but the ineptitude of Nintendo management at several levels is pretty disconcerting.
I get it, they're a kid-friendly company. Some things make a small amount of sense, like being nervous about her having tattoos and piercings while also being a spokesperson. It's dumb, but I get it. Other things, like how they handled the GG nonsense and them not ever looking at her tweets or seeing her thesis on linkedin just reeks of incompetence.
I get it, they're a kid-friendly company. Some things make a small amount of sense, like being nervous about her having tattoos and piercings while also being a spokesperson. It's dumb, but I get it. Other things, like how they handled the GG nonsense and them not ever looking at her tweets or seeing her thesis on linkedin just reeks of incompetence.
Nintendo never said what job it was so just stop there.
This is very true =/
This industry really brings me down at times like this. When I first heard the news of her termination I was genuinely sad and angry.
I'm pretty sure it's been clarified that the photoshoot(s) were not the second job. The second job was being worked anonymously while she had no issue posting about the shoots on her twitter.
She was fired for having a second job that conflicted with Nintendo's corporate culture, not for having a second job in general.
OrbitalBeard
Member
Terrible situation all around. I hope Alison is able to find a new job that she loves.
NormalFish
Banned
This really is the take-away here, for me. I'm pissed at Nintendo, but not so much for firing Rapp as for giving in to a damned hate group, implicitly rewarding their efforts. Hard to take this industry seriously about any sort of social progress when shit like this happens.
A. Her tweets were well known, and she acknowledges that she and Nintendo had discussed them as far back as the first months of her job. I don't think Nintendo can really claim ignorance of anything other than maybe this second job, which I guess she kept under a pseudonym.
B. She also pretty much acknowledges that Nintendo did go digging through her tweets while she was on vacation in response to the complaints they were getting from GG.
C. Ultimately, whether or not GG or Nintendo were first to discover the second job (and it seems that GG was the ones who uncovered that particular bit) it's pretty clear they wanted her gone and just didn't want to deal with it, and so they took the firable offense they had and used it. They could have offered her the opportunity to quit the second job and face some internal discipline or something, but they opted to terminate, and given the current environment, it's hard to disentangle that decision from GG. It's a bad look for Nintendo no matter how you come at it. Plus we know they had already taken internal action against her, changing her position and title, purely in response to the harassment and tweets, so there's clearly evidence there that they were already in the process of trying to sideline her to handle the GG stuff. The firing was just the escalation of that.
Dangansona
Member
I agree with all your points except for the women aren't allowed freedom of speech post. When you work for a company, it is pretty common that you have to watch what you say on Social Media because they believe you represent the company through your words. This is why Adam Orth, a dude, was also fired over statements on Twitter.
Ummm ok? It ends for you when you want it to end.
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
There lies the main problem: Nintendo started taking GG info into consideration.
Quadraphonic
Member
Oh, damn. Missed that part.
cartographer
Member
It was sarcastic and not an attack on your post, and I should have made that more clear. Failure on my part.
It was meant as a sarcastic point about how people ignore what she said and ignore what Nintendo have said and instead go on wild speculation. Your post did not do that. It dealt with the facts we know.
stump sock
Member
probably not, WA is an at-will employment state. it's weird that they made ANY comment about the reason
Eolz
Member
She can try, but again, the problem was the nature of the job.
Nintendo would win this.
pretty sure the photoshoots (publicized by her on her twitter account) weren't the second job, otherwise it'd defeat the purpose of it being done anonymously
LudicrousSpeed
Member
Well, we need to be honest about that, and that's that Gamergate didn't "become" a permanent fixture of the scene, they've been one all along. They got a name in 2014, but they started well in advance of that. They didn't just suddenly emerge from the ooze, they've been here all along, and the major difference is that people are actually paying more attention to the harassment they so love to engage in.
Gotdatmoney
Member
Moonlightiing is generally allowed as long as it presents no conflict of interest with your primary employer. And generally unless its something very irrelevant to your main job (you work in a tech office weekdays and a farm on weekends) you are expected to disclose what it is to your employer. She isn't gonna win a lawsuit over this.
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