Now instead of actually refuting what happened, he's removed OT and banned all Political and social threads, then blamed OT for all of this.
It is largely this simple.
I've been mostly done with NeoGAF for months largely because of a lot of what the "games only" crowd are complaining about. However I differ pretty clearly with many of this crew as I relish many of those OT discussions. I've learned a lot here, and as a liberal it's been a stronghold of fresh ideas and perspectives for me.
I disagree that you couldn't share controversial opinions, but the fact that mods were preferential to certain posters is well documented and was troublesome.
That said, that isn't why the site has changed, it's changed because Evilore needs his own safe space now, and he can't get it without silencing the majority of non-gaming discourse. He's trying to have his cake and eat it too, and I'm not going to be one of the ones continuing to feed him. Maybe he can go into affiliate marketing or dropshipping, I know I sure don't give a fuck.
There's mass confusion in here right now over motivations for leaving the site, motivations for why the site has changed, and motivations for why some are staying.
What's clear though is the following:
- This site will take months to have a near tolerable level of moderation, and is and will continue to tolerate thinly veiled bigotry and misogyny by default until it is.
- The site is flooded right now with people who never wanted the site as it has been for years and yet continued to patronize it. Many seem to want something between GameFAQs and Kotaku-In-Action with a slightly more tolerable aesthetic and people with a functioning vocabulary. This site will probably be what they want from here out.
- The site will never again be what it was, and people who liked what it was will want a new place that is close. This is reasonable and may or may not succeed. One thing is for sure, like them or not, the site will have more mods than this place will for months.
Beyond that, people like me were tired of GAF already because it was an echo chamber, but it remained an echo chamber with intentions and motivations largely aligned with my own, and I will not apologize for contributing to something which I felt was mostly a positive voice. I just felt the approach was veering off-course, and I disagreed with the preferential moderation insofar as it reinforced toxicity between people who should be allies. This is a general statement and I'm not specifically calling this out with a type of thread in mind.
With better quality of discussion, it could have been more of the place I felt it was when I first joined, where liberals could learn about their hidden biases and maybe grow into something more progressive, instead of just a series of verbal litmus tests.
So yes, there are many who happily moved on from GAF, but are happy to move to something similar in hopes maybe things can grow in a different way. I will not be heartbroken if it fails, but a lot of people I respect will be there, and I think it deserves a chance.
GAF, in my opinion, no longer does, and to be crystal clear I feel that way not for what it has been recently, but for what it will be from here out.