No, she confirmed it. I just think it is spineless as fuck.
Alison Rapp Fired By Nintendo Discussion Thread -- Read Ground Rules in OP
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No, she confirmed it. I just think it is spineless as fuck.
Yeah that's pretty much the dictionary definition for it right there.
Nintendo has always been spineless. They did fuck all to support Alison and other employees who got harassed like this. Their family friendly branding is also hypocritical when you look at some of their past ads and current games starring females like Bayonetts or Zero Suit Samus, etc. It's a shitshow. Nintendo is very inconsistent.
A Link to the Past
Banned
Perhaps. You know what's worse? Allowing GamerGate to have less shit put on them. If we applied your idea wholesale, GamerGate would entirely win because a big part of its goal was to pretend to be a good organization of people. So where do we draw the line? Do we not acknowledge all of the women that were forced out of the industry by GamerGate, for instance?
Exactly. For instance, is Anita's phone number public information just because she was doxxed?
casinoman921
Member
I understand why Nintendo wouldn't want her to tweet about rape culture, or get tattoos and piercings, but I don't get why she couldn't stream games. We're they afraid she swear too much or something?
There's not really any key info missing, we have Alison's story and we have Nintendo's statement. They line up and the only blank is the 2nd job, which may be of a sensitive/private nature and not something the whole world needs to know about. With the info we have though there's no reason to think Nintendo did not have good reason to let her go.
They didn't lie given that both parties are telling the same story.
I agree with this. Unless there's a clear message that a potential decrease in sales is the result of this whole situation surrounding Rapp's firing they're only going to see it as a generic decrease in sales.
I would say emailing them every time someone decides not to buy their products for this reason would be mandatory. Without the reasoning, it's a lost sale that they can explain or justify any way they can conceive of, meaning the net result could be absolutely nothing.
A Link to the Past
Banned
The best-case scenario for Nintendo is that they fired her for a legitimate reason and literally did nothing to actually come down on GamerGate. "We disavow harassment" is about the same thing as having said nothing at all. In fact, it makes me think even less of them because it's so obviously just a no-effort attempt to be free from the controversial situation. In firing her for this, what Nintendo communicates is that the person who found out about her second job is right to have dug up this information, and that GG is right to have done what they did. It's irresponsible as a corporation to have so little regard for the safety of your employees, because fuck, do you think GG is going to stop with Nintendo? Rapp came under fire because of shit that she didn't even agree with, like the boob slider situation. Nintendo can only be rid of GG by cowtowing to their demands and changing their localization policies, and until they decide to surrender to GG or decide to tell them to fuck off, GG WILL take this to mean that they can get another Nintendo employee fired.
Their statement seems to be basically true. The ugly part is that their statement is only true because the GG et al harassment did some ugly "digging", as they call it, and turned up something that Nintendo probably wouldn't have been aware of otherwise.
So like. 1) No doubt GG et al did a mean, ugly thing. 2) Nintendo probably did an acceptable thing. BUT in context with 1), 2) is kind of disingenuous, since it encourages more of 1).
No, but the situation is a bit confusing. Apparently having two jobs is actually allowed under company policy, so it's the supposedly the nature of the job that got her fired once they found out about it. Makes it hard to know what to think, but Alison's tweets don't make Nintendo look good at all.
Laughing Banana
Weeping Pickle
Well, as I read through pages of this thread and the previous locked one, Nintendo rep also said that basically this has nothing to do with her involvement with GamerGate, and merely due to her second job being in conflict with Nintendo's policy or value or whatever.
So essentially, the accepted truth so far is that by saying that, since it seems we are in agreement that Nintendo was "buckling" to the GamerGate, Nintendo basically lied, correct?
SneakersSO
Member
I've seen people who work in public capacity get in trouble for moonlighting, even under surnames, regardless of gender. There was a famous case of a NYPD cop who was doing pretty dark comedy in the NYC comedy club circuit around '05/'06 that got fired when someone recognized, taped him, and informed the NYPD. He didn't even say anything controversial - just the act of moonlighting as a comedian got him fired.
I've seen other people in other walks of life be fired for moonlighting in their various fields, even within the games industry. It isn't industry or gender specific. She just so happened to be a victim of it, and an internet lynch mob who had an axe against her used it accordingly.
I don't know either, although I am more sympathetic to her. What people are saying is that Nintendo handled this whole debacle badly, whether the firing was justified or not, because of the way they failed to protect her from the harassment and the way this firing is perceived as.
TheBaldEmperor
Member
I agree with what you're getting at. I'm guessing the reason for using a different name for the second job and her remaining silent about what that job entailed is because it sits way outside of something that Nintendo would be comfortable with an employee doing.
Quadraphonic
Member
She was already on the radar:
I'm sure people considered her a liability for a long while. And choosing to be anonymous about the second job pretty much means it does conflict with something at some level.
Yeah making it known why you arent buying it would help.
A Link to the Past
Banned
If that had any bearing on their decision to fire her, they would have noted it.
And will lead to dozens of other people being harassed.
Right she definitely didn't do any of those things. But she worked at Nintendo, a very very conservative company... In PR no less. And by so publicly pushing her agenda, she opened herself up to something like this happening.
Look, the way she was treated is horrible. I don't support it and I don't contribute to it. I'm just commenting from the sideline.
The only reason Nintendo knew about anything is because GG was digging. And digging some more. Eventually something stuck that Nintendo could use as a loophole.
So technically Nintendo are not lying. But the only reason they have the info to fire her is because of GG.
AcademicSaucer
Member
Because the people that were constantly buying Nintendo products, know about GG and what happened with Ms rapp and are willing to boycott Nintendo about it are a drop in the ocean, only their most niche games would feel it and even then.
As I said, don't buy from them if you don't feel comfortable doing so, but I think there are more effective ways to make a difference, the US has strong government institutions after all .
cartographer
Member
I don't want to speak for too many people, but her firing is just one element of a much larger situation. Nintendo has been silent on this until today and that rightfully upsets some.
Had Nintendo handled this differently from the beginning you would likely have a significantly smaller number of people upset about this.
Instead they were silent.
GamerGate harassed Alison Rapp for agreeing with them in regards to being against the censorship of sexualized minors. It entirely undermines their claim to be about "ethics in video games" when they start an organized harassment campaign against someone who was against the very localization occurrences that were their given reason for harassing her.
Implications: obvious.
GamerGate is a misogynistic hate group with no central goal besides inflicting harm on anyone who does not match up with their in-group schema. Any goal they claim to have will be undermined and sacrificed just to hurt more women.
No she did not. She was also not fired because of her thesis.
prag16
Banned
Careful with this line of reasoning. I know in this particular situation, it's pretty clear who at least one villain is (many are assuming Nintendo is a second villain; the jury is out on that one and we may never know for sure). But in a more general sense, I hope you're not saying we should pretend problems don't exist just because the ones shedding light on them are deplorable assholes, or the result of a dishonest act?
Not necessarily. They may very well have been trying to keep things civil. Hence, "second job, period" instead of "second job plus a history of behavior some of us didn't like for example..."
Laughing Banana
Weeping Pickle
meltingparappa
Member
The fact that she once, years ago, wrote about something innocuous that DID become a "big story" is utterly depressing how salient it turned out to be.
CuckFupertino
Banned
The argument that she did something "justifiably" worth firing gets thrown out the window the minute you step back and see that there was an orchestrated campaign to get her fired by an Internet mob. Nintendo doesn't get any "reasonable doubt" about their decision because none of us can say with certainty the decision wasn't influenced by the mob.
As others have said it's important to remember that Alison Rapp is the victim in this situation. She gets the benefit of the doubt long before Nintendo does.
Trying to approach this "objectively" so you can determine whether her firing was "justified" is shit. The mob harassment happened and there's no way to speculate about how this would have played out without their involvement.
Thesis is nothing. Just more shit spread by GG. Nintendo themselves never commented or cared about it.
Not exactly. She wasn't fired for being bombarded / harassed / threatened. She was fired because they (where "they" is "GG or someone who only got involved in this at all because of GG's scrutiny of her") found something about her second job that Nintendo wouldn't have tolerated, whoever the information came from.
So Nintendo didn't buckle to GamerGate misrepresenting her thesis or Wayne Foundation jumping in on the pedophilia stuff or whatever. But they did act on information that presumably came from or because of GamerGate. So GamerGate gets to chalk this up as a "win" even though the main volume of their bullshit didn't lead to this decision.
Quadraphonic
Member
I don't think so. The statement they gave is literally as much info as they deemed necessary to move on. They didn't need to mention how they found out about it, just that it existed. Simply by her being a controversial person fighting for things she believes in means that she might have extra scrutiny at some level.
CuckFupertino
Banned
The ends don't justify the means.
You keep coming back to ignoring GG as a hate group, something I have never suggested, do not condone and seemingly comes from your perception of my position.
You can acknowledge Gamergate's responsibility for the terrible consequences of their actions. I am not saying we don't rake them over the coals for this bullshit at every available moment.
What I am saying is this: Let THEM call it a win, nothing we can do to stop them. That does not mean you or any of us should entertain considering it as such. Words, even simple ones, have the power to embolden others to an unworthy cause or to create a sense of defeat when strength is needed. That is all.
RomanticHeroX
Member
It seems like she was fired on a clause that exists to make it easy to fire someone for basically anything. Nintendo isn't lying in saying they let her go for moonlighting, since both parties say that's ostensibly what happened. But it's also not hard to go from there and think that's an extremely convenient excuse to cave into harassment and let somebody go out of fear of an online hate group.
Be honest, if anyone did any kind of digging into you and alerted your boss to the info, could you see yourself being fired
Oh I was not planning to boycott them but I noticed that was being brought up in the old thread. I agree tho there are other better ways to show your concern about it.
razoftblend
Member
Freedom of opinion and being outspoken is fine by me, but from the looks of it, she was a figure person representing Nintendo's image. That is a thin line to walk on, and perhaps she was better suited to work at a media outlet rather than for product company. Her being removed, and seemenly not fired, from public could be taken as a warning. Nintendo investigating her after the fact is just a normal reaction regardless of whether someone told them about it or not.
element
Member
Streaming is really strange, especially for larger companies and their employees. Some have clauses about playing competitions games publicly. There are always something about negative comments on anything as it is could be damaging business to business.
Given what she has publicly said about prior 'issues' before the GG stuff event started, I'm sure there were plenty of discussions and since she was terminated it is very probable that she was placed on a performance plan with clear ways to stay employed. In the end, Nintendo had enough and ended her employment.
A Link to the Past
Banned
I think what really stands out, and really makes Nintendo look like the villain of this situation so much more than others, is that I don't think GG has ever succeeded at getting someone fired.
Because right now, the focus needs to be less on GamerGate and more on companies like Nintendo. Because ultimately, regardless of what people in GG do, Nintendo is the villain in this situation. GG has no power in an industry where the most powerful people universally decry them.
Because right now, the focus needs to be less on GamerGate and more on companies like Nintendo. Because ultimately, regardless of what people in GG do, Nintendo is the villain in this situation. GG has no power in an industry where the most powerful people universally decry them.
I am sure that, formally speaking, Nintendo is telling the truth. The question to me is whether the second job was a simply a pretense for getting rid of her. To know that, we'd need to know a lot more, including information about Rapp that we are not entitled to and that she is under no obligation to share. Maybe that second job was truly fucked up and Nintendo had no choice, or maybe it was totally inconsequential. None of my business.
But the bigger issue for me and many others is that Nintendo let her get abused and harassed solely based on her status as their employee. A company has an obligation to protect its employees, and in my view, that extends to this type of situation.
Which I think is ridiculous. Nintendo is under no obligation to publically defend their employees against any and all attacks, and they can't look between the fingers when it comes to repeated violations of company policy just because they gained some of that info from a scumbag group.
They obviously had some issues with Alison long before GG ever got involved. Seems like she had several warnings. Hardly as if Nintendo fired a perfect employee because of outside pressure.
So it was really this second job despite Nintendo allowing second jobs? Or just a fake reason because of the negative attention she brought from the GG harassers
prag16
Banned
So because they can't prove a negative, we have to assume nefarious intent on their part? That's not really how burden of proof works.
Who said otherwise? This isn't comparable to a court of law where evidence was acquired illegally or something.
Funny, saw this just as I was typing the above. It's not an equivalent situation. I'll probably stop now. Never really intended to come in here to play devil's advocate.
In court there's evidence that doesn't count because of the means used to acquire it.
fvng
Member
this makes me so happy. I was legitimately disgusted by her apologist nonsense of kiddy porn shit. I dont care that it's a normal thing in Japan. Doesn't make it right. the fact that Nintendo is a Japanese company is irrelevant to me. She should have known better literally being in PR
This "clause" is basically irrelevant. Washington State is At Will Employment. Nintendo don't need a cause to fire anybody. They can just do it. The only thing that would prevent them from being able to so is if they were firing for discrimination on the basis of one of a small number of protected classes. Whether or not she was fired for breach of contract may have some bearing on other things -- like her ability to collect unemployment insurance, possibly -- but she didn't actually have to breach a contract in order to get fired.
Which in a vacuum and removed from this particular situation would be pretty normal and understandable.
Except in this case the investigation was being done by GG who was targeting her and feeding Nintendo the information. They had to dig, her being fired was nothing about what she was doing as she was not representing Nintendo or even herself.
A Link to the Past
Banned
That's a really good point too - we can talk about how worried Nintendo was about getting involved in the GamerGate thing, but they cowardly watched their employees getting harassed and didn't come to their defense.
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