Resetera just had a thread where someone that suddenly lost their job contemplated suicide because they didn't think they were worth anything beyond it. So many chimed in to say "I've been there. I know how this feels."
This guy lost everything too. Unlike Zoe Quinn, I've never heard this dude's name and his only claim to fame is in the indie scene for a couple games that are either niche or shitty depending on who you talk to. And his colleagues, some of the only people who are in a position to judge both his work and his character, damned him when pressed for comment. All in public, a performance for strangers.
I'm not going to weigh in on whether metoo is "worth this price" or whatever the fuck. That is an ongoing conversation that we're going to keep happening in this social climate. But I do think that we are miles past the feigned surprise, the "I can't believe it", the "how could it come to this". We know how this happens and we know why it's going to happen again. Because losing your friends, the destruction of your career, the embarassment on the national stage, each of these things on their own would be viewed as valid enough reason were it one of their own. But he's not one of their own. They read his first and last name in a fuckin Polygon article or wherever, and suddenly he stops seeming so vulnerable, suddenly he's a PUBLIC FIGURE, all big and bad and with all the protection of the establishment behind him.
I get the feeling that the particular dissonance they suffer from is that they are so used to the structural injustice, so used to the worst of men hanging on like cockroaches that they assume that all of them can weather the same punishment. What they want is the ongoing drama, the headline in six months, "Doug Tenaple, Ed Boon, Alex Holowka all team up to form indie studio AXIS OF EVIL LTD" so they can grrr and rage and seethe that another one gave them the slip and theyve never bought their games but they double wont now! And it fails to acknowledge that the most vulnerable among us simply can't weather those burdens the way they so badly want them to. That getting cancelled, simultaneously cutting off financial and emotional support systems from these people (or at least making it a very bad idea to engage with them) causes real harm.
