Alison Rapp Fired By Nintendo Discussion Thread -- Read Ground Rules in OP

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Alright - forgive my ignorance as I'm catching up on this story, but did she, or did she not make pro-pedophile comments? I'm having a hard time finding the truth on this.

Edit:



Well, I can see Nintendo being none too happy about them.

Also, I didn't realize they were on twitter, I thought it was some sort of interview. Okay.

Except, she argues for that exactly in her thesis. I've read all 19 pages of it. She argues that we should decriminalize the possession of child pornography, even here in the US, as the Supreme Court cites that the possession/consumption of CP is no more destructive than consuming violent media, and since violent television is not banned in the US, why should CP.

Here is a quote from her thesis:

"I side with that camp that argues not only for less strict legislation against the simple possession of child pornography (the creation and dissemination of child pornography depicting real children is a whole other matter entirely), but also for an abatement of the pressure put on Japan for its "lax" and rarely enforced laws."
To be fair I find her views on child pornography weird. I understand that she thinks it's a mental issue and that persecution drives the pedophiles underground which is making the situation worse. But possession of child pornography leads to a demand and as we all know if there is a demand for something there's a decent chance someone will try and feed that demand.
 
Yup, it was me in the other thread. I delved into them here in these two posts -->

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=199682784&postcount=1572
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=199684070&postcount=1667



For an international relations thesis as a university student she wrote about how, in her opinion, it is wrong for Americans to impose laws governing the age of consent on Japan. She also argued that mental rehabilitation is a better way to treat pedophiles than punishment. She argued that the people making child porn are a bigger problem than the disturbed people who consume them.

There's some other stuff in there too. It's a long paper.

Obviously I don't agree with everything she said. But saying she's "pro-pedophilia" is pretty disingenous.

Thanks - so they were definitely taken out of context, but I'm guessing Nintendo doesn't care about that as the mainstream media wouldn't either and it would turn into a horrible PR nightmare for them. Yikes.

How many careers has Twitter directly or indirectly destroyed?

Edit:

Except, she argues for that exactly in her thesis. I've read all 19 pages of it. She argues that we should decriminalize the possession of child pornography, even here in the US, as the Supreme Court cites that the possession/consumption of CP is no more destructive than consuming violent media, and since violent television is not banned in the US, why should CP.

Here is a quote from her thesis:

"I side with the camp that argues not only for less strict legislation against the simple possession of child pornography (the creation and dissemination of child pornography depicting real children is a whole other matter entirely), but also for an abatement of the pressure put on Japan for its "lax" and rarely enforced laws."



Yes, they're real.


WELP. That's gross.
 
She is most certainly not, but you can't say that her comments aren't problematic.

Even if they are problematic, that deflects things away from the greater issue of GG harassing people in the industry and how this sets a precedent for them ousting someone from their job solely because they dislike her - even though they AGREE on some key issues.

This isn't JUST about Alison Rapp. This is about Nintendo upholding a dangerous status quo with overarching industry-wide implications.
 
It's horrifying to me that arguing for changing the age of consent is somehow equivalent to being a pedophile now. We are through the looking glass.

When we're talking about that change being as low as 13, then yes, it does become a problematic viewpoint to many who take issue with pedophilia. Again, its not that she IS a pedophile, but rather, that her viewpoints are defending & supporting aspects of pedophilia culture that so many take issue with.
 
Even if they are problematic, that deflects things away from the greater issue of GG harassing people in the industry and how this sets a precedent for them ousting someone from their job solely because they dislike her - even though they AGREE on some key issues.

This isn't about Alison Rapp. This is about Nintendo upholding a dangerous status quo with overarching industry-wide implications.

When did it switch to that? I only left for about an hour.
 
Smoke is actually the classic example of a metonym, in which a signifier is taken to indicate a signified with which it is only conventionally associated. The statement "Where there is smoke, there is fire" is a logical fallacy, since smoke can occur without fire and fire can occur without smoke. The phrase itself demonstrates human tendency to simplify and conventionalize complicated relationships into rules of thumb and gut responses. This is the very premise of GG's attack on Ms. Rapp. By fanning up smoke around her, it was not difficult to make a large number of people assume that there was in fact a fire. They are an anti-intellectual movement that thrives on defeating well-reasoned, nuanced, and informed arguments through sensationalization and oversimplification.

It seems to me the exact same thing is happening in this thread. A lot of people in here are uninformed about her problematic comments, and refuse to see the relation between them and her firing.

It's a shame. I thought GAF was pretty balanced when it came to discussion.
 
When did it switch to that? I only left for about an hour.

It always was. She herself pointed out in her tweets that focusing solely on individual actors is not what she wants to have happen, and that she is simply just part of an overall trend.

The takeaway from this event isn't "oh, Alison Rapp deserved to get fired". The takeaway is that Nintendo have enabled harassers to boot out people they don't like from their jobs. Between the two, which is a much more scary prospect for the industry as a whole?
 
Now you're being completely disingenuous. Where at all in Lime's post did you get enough to warrant this level of hyperbolic bullshit?
this whole threadthis whole thread is filled with hyperbolic nonsense.

Nintendo can't protect you from online harassment. they cant. they have said many times before harassment is wrong. they even said it again yesterday.

The victim of said harassment herself said Nintendo isnt to blame! there are obviously confidential things that went on to where she felt good enough about Nintendo to not come out and trash them, yet evetyone seems to keep trying to make it into Nintendo is the problem.

mind you who knows what they have done for her or are doing for her, but as usual the internet cyber mob gets going it doesn't stop.

and i dont think they have "cultural power". they are a fucking video game company, theire power extends about as far as NOA.

and this entire issue of online harassment goes well beyond videogames, its an issue with social media itself and online personas.

we saw it with MS and live, how thats a cesspool of shitty racist, homophobic kids, we saw it to a lesser extent in Home on PS.

no corporation is going to protect you from social media bullies, just like no company will protect you from real life bullying which does not happen on their property.

so instead of complaining about a video game company, boycotting a videogame company, boycott facebook or Twitter, the companied enabling these groups, which have tons of money being made from these groups and behavior.

but no, none will do that because that would have and actual effect on their own lives.
 
Blaming gamergate on developers really isn't fair. Yes it's been a male dominated industry and it has generally failed to attract or represent women (though Nintendo has generally been better than most at least at avoiding blatant sexualisation), but there's really nothing to excuse the disgusting behaviors and attitudes of GGers. It's an ugly side of internet culture much more than it has anything to do with games. I guess developers could be blamed for not moderating their online communities, but there are limits to how much they can do there, and again that's something where Nintendo does more than others, and they've never had much on an online presence anyway.

The behavior of the major gaming companies, and Nintendo in particular, over the last 30 years is the root of this problem, because they took an interest that had traditionally been marketed to young and old and men and women and began to turn it into an interest targeted only at young boys.

Tracy Lien's piece at Polygon, No Girls Allowed does a really good job of documenting this.

The entitlement at the root of GG is that the video game industry spent decades telling young boys that this was solely their domain. Now, society is in a more egalitarian place and that sort of behavior is unacceptable, which causes shitfits from people who aligned their identity to the industry's marketing.
 
Not 'pro-pedophile' per se, but pro child porn. It's a complex issue, but nobody that supports child porn in any form looks good.

I believe she wrote that she wants the creators and producers of child pornography to be more focused on and punished harshly, while believe the consumers of it should be rehabilitated instead of throwing them in a cell for years. That's not exactly pro-child porn.
 
Even if they are problematic, that deflects things away from the greater issue of GG harassing people in the industry and how this sets a precedent for them ousting someone from their job solely because they dislike her - even though they AGREE on some key issues.

This isn't about Alison Rapp. This is about Nintendo upholding a dangerous status quo with overarching industry-wide implications.

What should Nintendo have done here?
 
How many careers has Twitter directly or indirectly destroyed?

Tons. Ask a divorce lawyer or judge how many times Twitter or Facebook has come up in those proceedings as well. People these days think they can just publish shit on the internet with impunity, and everyone would be wise to tread lightly saying things that end up existing on the internet forever.
 
Cant believe people are still trotting out this garbage. Your doing exactly what gg wants you to do.
If you take GG out of the equation you would still have to agree that her publicised view on child pornography and paedophilia is divisive at best.

However she is entitled to an opinion and whilst I really do not agree with that opinion I'm impressed that she has stuck by her guns given how controversial her views are.

Hopefully she finds new work and gets freedom to express herself in the way she wants to.
 
Question. Are these posts by her real or not? I keep seeing people link them.
ExPSS72.png

They're real and they're spectacular.
 
I believe she wrote that she wants the creators and producers of child pornography to be more focused on and punished harshly, while believe the consumers of it should be rehabilitated instead of throwing them in a cell for years. That's not exactly pro-child porn.

How does lowering the age of consent help young women and hurt men seeking to pursue underaged women?
 
I believe she wrote that she wants the creators and producers of child pornography to be more focused on and punished harshly, while believe the consumers of it should be rehabilitated instead of throwing them in a cell for years. That's not exactly pro-child porn.

What matters from Nintendo's point of view is that it can be very easily spun as 'pro-child porn'
 
It's horrifying to me that arguing for changing the age of consent is somehow equivalent to being a pedophile now. We are through the looking glass.

I don't know why people cannot differentiate at all. She is for laxer laws regarding possession of (certain kinds of?) child pornography and lowering the age of consent in the USA (where it is extremely high). People are translating this to being pro-pedophilia (What does this even mean?) and seemingly even to being pedophile, where there is no indicator for that at all.
 
Even if they are problematic, that deflects things away from the greater issue of GG harassing people in the industry and how this sets a precedent for them ousting someone from their job solely because they dislike her - even though they AGREE on some key issues.

This isn't about Alison Rapp. This is about Nintendo upholding a dangerous status quo with overarching industry-wide implications.

Put yourself in Nintendo's shoes. What is the greater issue? GamerGate, which 99% of the people on the planet have never even heard of, or the potential to be linked to some at-best suspect positions on child pornography.

This doesn't set a precedent for anything. Unless you have an employment contract, you can be fired simply because they do not like you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment

I don't know where people get these ideas about how employment law works in the United States.
 
I believe she wrote that she wants the creators and producers of child pornography to be more focused on and punished harshly, while believe the consumers of it should be rehabilitated instead of throwing them in a cell for years. That's not exactly pro-child porn.

No, that isn't what she wrote. Thats a way to interpret it, but you should read her actual thesis for yourself to get a clear picture on how she feels on the topic. I've already quoted an excerpt on here from her thesis.
 
Is this okay on this board? Seriously?

Is it all right to just completely slander this woman with lies?

What the hell is going on?

How this thread hasn't gotten locked by now I have no idea. This kind of prying into the lives of professionals is almost completely unique to how shitty games and the game industry is.
 
What should Nintendo have done here?

I feel like Vincent Grayson really got to the core of the issue. The failure of the game industry as a whole to actually do something about it.

If Nintendo, and every other major developer/publisher had come out more than a fucking year ago and said something to denounce/call out the harassment coming out of GG, it absolutely would have accomplished something.

The biggest thing continuing to fuel these people is their belief that they matter, and that what they do and who they choose to focus on accomplishes things for them. The industry could have and should have come out 100% against GG on day fucking one, and had they, the movement wouldn't exist in any meaningful capacity today.

All they needed to do was make a statement of some sort regarding the harassment of their employees and how it is not accepted, and that the game community as a whole should reject it.

Put yourself in Nintendo's shoes. What is the greater issue? GamerGate, which 99% of the people on the planet have never even heard of, or the potential to be linked to some at-best suspect positions on child pornography.

This doesn't set a precedent for anything. Unless you have an employment contract, you can be fired simply because they do not like you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment

I don't know where people get these ideas about how employment law works in the United States.

Why not do this? Why not just make a statement about the harassment being wrong and give Alison Rapp a final warning of some sort?

It DOES set a precedent. This is a terrifying notion to any woman who wants to be involved in the game industry. Think beyond just Nintendo for a second.

Maybe Gamergate is meaningless outside the game community. But Nintendo IS A GAME COMPANY. In some respects they are indirectly responsible for helping sow the seeds of GG. There was a whole video a while back talking about how their marketing of video games as "boys' toys" were factors that led to games becoming such a boys' club. When Gamergate begins to actually affect the employment status of employees in the industry, then we absolutely have a problem on our hands.
 
How this thread hasn't gotten locked by now I have no idea. This kind of prying into the lives of professionals is almost completely unique to how shitty games and the game industry is.

They examine public twitter posts, they did not steal a harddrive or had hidden cameras in the home.
 
All of this just goes to show why it's a mistake to use Twitter personally if you're a professional. Seriously, so many careers have ended over Twitter it's rediculous. You have nothing to gain and everything to lose. One tweet sent in sour taste or light can end you. It happened to Adam Orth, Phil Fish, and countless other professionals in the gaming and entertainment industry. Sports, journalism, politics, everything. Twitter is just waiting for you to fuck up and statistics shows it's already on its way out.
 
Any ideas as to what the other job was?

Moonlighting always sounds like something seedy to me.

Moonlighting just means 2nd job outside of her primary vocation, really. And no one knows what the other job was. The fact that GG, a group that loves digging into peoples lives and throwing stuff in their face, hasn't produced any 'evidence' of this other job, leads me to believe that however Nintendo caught wind of it may have less to do with GG than many of us assume. Or that Nintendo is making it up.
 
They examine public twitter posts, they did not steal a harddrive or had hidden cameras in the home.

The level of bizarre obsession necessary for people to dig through years of someone's Twitter feed and other private information is not normal, and the fact that it happens so regularly to women in the tech and game industry should give everyone some serious pause.
 
No, that isn't what she wrote. Thats a way to interpret it, but you should read her actual thesis for yourself to get a clear picture on how she feels on the topic. I've already quoted an excerpt on here from her thesis.
Honest question:

Do you expect Nintendo to read her thesis or care about the nuance of the argument it if it leads to bad publicity?

Personally, I just don't expect them too but I worked in a corporate environment for a long time.
 
Put yourself in Nintendo's shoes. What is the greater issue? GamerGate, which 99% of the people on the planet have never even heard of, or the potential to be linked to some at-best suspect positions on child pornography.

This doesn't set a precedent for anything. Unless you have an employment contract, you can be fired simply because they do not like you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment

I don't know where people get these ideas about how employment law works in the United States.

This. This is exactly what I've been saying. People are complaining that Ninny didn't help or protect Alison during the GG harassment. And what exactly was Ninny supposed to do? They weren't doing the harassing. The way harassment policies at a company protect anyone is if it's happening inside of said company. Anything that happens outside the company isn't their concern or responsibility.

While no one knows what her actual second job is/was, we saw the images. Let's be real for a moment. How many times have we seen teachers and other individuals posting images similar to hers, only to find out later that they were figured. For all we know Ninny has a policy against that. She also stated that she didn't like when Ninny told her to "lay off" the comments, too which she stated she fought.

.....

If I was asked to stop doing "X" while employed at my company because it violated policy, well I stop.

Honestly there's to much blame and finger pointing going on with this. I wonder how Chris Pranger feels about this all.
 
I think:
  1. Nintendo should have put out a statement denouncing harassment.
  2. A statement would have done nothing, but it should have been made.
  3. If she broke thier contract, she was right to be fired.
 
The level of bizarre obsession necessary for people to dig through years of someone's Twitter feed and other private information is not normal, and the fact that it happens so regularly to women in the tech and game industry should give everyone some serious pause.
Yep. Alison herself said this.

Nobody else in the gaming industry is subject to this level of obsessive scrutiny except women.
 
I believe she wrote that she wants the creators and producers of child pornography to be more focused on and punished harshly, while believe the consumers of it should be rehabilitated instead of throwing them in a cell for years. That's not exactly pro-child porn.

But just giving a pass for consumers will just creates more demand, it's really an idiotic idea to treat them like drug addict's, it's obviously a far greater crime with deserves a far greater punishment for all involved.
 
Again this thread has been taken from being about Nintendo's firing a woman after refusing to protect her and them legitimizing a hate group to spreading gg lies about her.
 
How this thread hasn't gotten locked by now I have no idea. This kind of prying into the lives of professionals is almost completely unique to how shitty games and the game industry is.

Wha...? Do you live in a cave? This is celeb gossip, paparazzi culture. Nothing new. Just the other week we had the trial of Hulk Hogan for that sex tape. Have you forgotten?
 
The level of bizarre obsession necessary for people to dig through years of someone's Twitter feed and other private information is not normal, and the fact that it happens so regularly to women in the tech and game industry should give everyone some serious pause.

Every time there is a semblance of drama in politics, entertainment industries and many smaller circles, people just rush to social media accounts to find something to use as a 'gotcha' moment.
It's downright shitty, but nowhere near unique to the game industry and women.
Everyone is a target.
It's paparazzi culture, only now there is little need for a middleman.
 
Again this thread has been taken from being about Nintendo's firing a woman after refusing to protect her and them legitimizing a hate group to spreading gg lies about her.
There's nothing wrong with firing her if she violates company guidelines, but a statement- even if ineffectual would have been appreciable.
 
I think:
  1. Nintendo should have put out a statement denouncing harassment.
  2. A statement would have done nothing, but it should have been made.
  3. If she broke thier contract, she was right to be fired.

A major company denouncing harassment would set a precedent for other companies to follow.
 
The behavior of the major gaming companies, and Nintendo in particular, over the last 30 years is the root of this problem, because they took an interest that had traditionally been marketed to young and old and men and women and began to turn it into an interest targeted only at young boys.

Tracy Lien's piece at Polygon, No Girls Allowed does a really good job of documenting this.

The entitlement at the root of GG is that the video game industry spent decades telling young boys that this was solely their domain. Now, society is in a more egalitarian place and that sort of behavior is unacceptable, which causes shitfits from people who aligned their identity to the industry's marketing.

You absolutely can't fault Nintendo in particular for a "less welcoming "environment for women.
They have entire dedictated series to get women into their systems (Animal Crossing, their new Style boutique series among many, many other series that are targeting males and females equally).

Anything else would be disingenious.
 
Moonlighting just means 2nd job outside of her primary vocation, really. And no one knows what the other job was. The fact that GG, a group that loves digging into peoples lives and throwing stuff in their face, hasn't produced any 'evidence' of this other job, leads me to believe that however Nintendo caught wind of it may have less to do with GG than many of us assume. Or that Nintendo is making it up.

Nintendo making it up would be grounds for a lawsuit, and Rapp has already admitted she had a second job. Whether or not Nintendo used the second job violation as a convenient excuse to fire here amidst the GG shit can't be proven but it's easy to see why one would come to that conclusion.
 
Honest question:

Do you expect Nintendo to read her thesis or care about the nuance of the argument it if it leads to bad publicity?

Personally, I just don't expect them too but I worked in a corporate environment for a long time.

No, I do not. I think Nintendo acts like the vast majority of corporations and only looks into an employee's stances/behavior outside of the workplace when it is brought to their attention, usually in an accusatory manner.

In this case, Allison actually had her thesis up on her own LinkedIn page for years and no one took notice of it, certainly not within Nintendo. And you're right, they won't give a rats ass what the nuance of the argument or whatever it may be if it could produce a headline like "Nintendo employs child pornography defender".
 
Kind of a surreal feeling to continually read a staunchly unapologetic GG bulletpoint, and then notice a correlation to junior memberships.

I see you did not read her thesis before you went hatin' on her, kthx
Her thesis does argue in support of letting people possess child pornography. She basically argues that child pornography should be treated the same way we treat violent media (and violent video games).

Its not really the main thrust of the whole thing which makes the entire thesis kinda confusing. i.e. She's really arguing about whether or not other countries should try and pressure Japan to change its laws, but its intertwined with a lot of "is viewing child pornography morally wrong" questions. Every time it starts to generally approach the later though, she veers away before she really answering back to this hypothetical "regardless of if its right or wrong, does the US have the right to exert pressure on Japan over it".

I wouldn't say its a well written thing, or even well argued. Its an undergrad thesis. I'd be surprised if it was.
 
In Nintendo's defense, there wasn't much of a choice for them once the Wayne Foundation decided they wanted a piece of the pie. There was a gun very much placed on Nintendo's head in this whole situation. This has probably been said a few times now, but it'd basically be a very bad day for Nintendo if some asshat at FOX News got their "Headline of the Century" out of the Allison Rapp accusations. It would all but guarantee the NX to be Nintendo's Dreamcast if its marketing-cycle got drowned out by FOX/CNN/MSNBC pushing a story accusing Nintendo of being tied to pedophilia. GG knew this. This was the entire crux of the plan, and a win/win for them if or if not Rapp got fired. Unfortunately at the end of the day, Nintendo had to choose the lesser of two evils in the scenario they were placed in. It's bad enough that they already have one major boycott going on over the accusations that they use conflict minerals, this would be the death of them in the hardware market if the right people in the right places caught wind.

Honestly, even seeing those tweets, I think at worst it should have just been a slap on the wrist and an order to be silent on those topics for the remainder of her career as a representative of the company. However though on the charges of her moonlighting in a manner counter to the company's image I also once again cannot blame Nintendo. Contractual violations are contractual violations, even if an asshole brought them to light. Turning a blind eye to Rapp because of the circumstances they were revealed in would set a bad precedent within the company.

Lastly - Anyone else think Nintendo is probably going to shut down Treehouse as a public facing entity after everything that's happened recently?

In the past six months, they've had two high-profile firings (The previous one being Chris Pranger - Was an ass and reaped what he sowed, as well as multiple NDA breaches) and the resignation of Erik Peterson. Then there was #TorrentialDownpour - All of which have been PR shitstorms for Nintendo. I highly expect that Nintendo of Japan is going to be seriously clamping down on NoAmerica's image over the next few months as they get the NX in gear.
 
It seems to me the exact same thing is happening in this thread. A lot of people in here are uninformed about her problematic comments, and refuse to see the relation between them and her firing.

It's a shame. I thought GAF was pretty balanced when it came to discussion.

That is a very good point. Even looking at Rapp's clarification tweets seem to indicate several factors contributing to her difficulties with her employer even before this harassment began. But at the same time, NOA did not fire her in a vacuum. Her employment at Nintendo had become a political issue and they had to know that their response to it would be read in that context. I don't think it is unfair to question or criticize NOA's actions solely from this context. If you have to wait to be socially active for a situation where all of the facts are unambiguously present, you would never act.
 
So here is the way I see the timeline of events.

Ali Rapp wrote a thesis in uni on relaxation of possession of child porn with a focus on prosecution of those making the porn.

Nintendo hire her

Gamergate start targeting her as an outspoken strong female in the industry

She defends her views expressed in the thesis.

GG convince the Wayne Foundation (unsure if Batman related) to lobby Nintendo to have her sacked.

A few months later she's sacked for an unrelated offense (moonlighting anonymously)

The whole thing is very convenient for Nintendo and I don't believe they handled the situation well at all. They hired her full in the knowledge of the content of her thesis (one would assume) even if they didn't when she started tweeting someone will have become aware.

Really as soon as she started being harassed I would have hoped Nintendo would make a public stance.

People need to be fighting more against GG, this spineless, insipid response we see time and time again is frankly adding fuel to the fire and it's time the major corporations woke up and started taking a proper stance against these reprobates.
 
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