Obituaries

[François]

The Korean War, apparently.



Trump's going to take credit for it as sure as the sun's gonna set tonight, but it's such good news I ain't even mad.

[Cait]

It's been 18 years since Kim Dae-jung won the Nobel Peace Prize for going through these exact same motions with Kim Jong-il.

[Thad]

Margot Kidder.

[Mongrel]

I guess this one was coming for a while.

[Blossom]

Surely I'm not gonna get pushback about the Gamergate shotcaller who conducted hundreds of harassment campaigns when I say rip in shit here, right?

[Newbie]

Yeah, I used to find value in his videos but I was privileged in my ignorance of just how involved he was keeping that garbage fire going; I unsubscribed from everything he produced after Lyrai rightly called me out on it. As somebody on MetaFilter said, "May he find as much peace as he granted his targets. For someone who loved "Get cancer" as a thing to throw at his targets, there's some bitter cosmic irony that it would catch up with him."

(In other news of the day relevant to this page of content, the Korean War was overheard making sarcastic comments about the premature nature of reports of its demise.)

[Grath]

Surely I'm not gonna get pushback about the Gamergate shotcaller who conducted hundreds of harassment campaigns when I say rip in shit here, right?

RIP in shit.

[Friday]

I even hated* him before I knew about the gamergate shit because he was a massive arrogant egomaniac shitbag.


*hated as in "I find you irritating and facile, and intellectually worthless, but bear you no actual ill will beyond i wish you would shut the fuck up with your big brain bullshit"

** but then after gamergate i bore him plenty of ill will

[mharr]

I'm just gonna go ahead and start assuming things about anyone who chooses to present as the Star Trek evil parallel universe version of themselves. That look is the balding horn-rimmed glasses prison superintendent of the early 21st.

[Mongrel]

It's sort of funny that I wound up being the one to post the news.

It feels strange when something major like this happens to a gaming commentator, because that world is just so foreign to me. I never watch any gaming podcasts at all - I don't think I'll ever be able to relate to that life because watching instead of playing drives me bananas - and the idea of people making a living just casually yakking about playing or reviewing games or other "nerd stuff" seems like another world to me. Someone like that actually having a huge fanbase just feels super weird.

Even if you held held of a $10,000 Steam voucher out as bait, I still wouldn't be able to name any big name gaming commentators, outside of maybe some niche Tanks-related guys (who don't really count as "Big"), some MTG people, Jimquisition, and a bunch of guys who've made the semi-mainstream news for being shitbirds, GGers, etc.,so, like PewDiePie, etc. [EDIT: Oh and Game Grumps] It's not like I watch lengthy sports commentary either, nor political stuff, so it's not like there's some other area where I spend a lot of time watching chyrons or other talking heads.

Biscuit was famous enough that I knew his name and I figure it's news either way as he was famous and died young. I feel like I'm also supposed to have an opinion of him personally, but even though I play vidja games, this is all outside my sphere.

Though if it's as you guys say and he actually told people to get cancer, wow, hah, this is perfect.

I mean, I know Buge watches a lot of MTG streams, but do any of the rest of you spend a lot of time watching nerd podcasts or Youtubes? What's the appeal exactly? I don't want to ask, for fear of the answer, but is this just me being *wheeze* old and out of step?

[François]

I mostly watch D&D streams these days, the likes of Dice, Camera, Action and The C Team, but I do have a few video-game-related youtubers and twitch streamers I occasionally follow, any of which I would drop immediately if they turned out to be some flavor of shithead.

Well, I say "watch", but it's really more of a "listen to while cooking or cleaning or washing dishes" kinda deal, I don't have enough time in a day to sit and do nothing while vegging out in front of a video (doubly so with my current project). I guess the appeal is mostly either to get a different take on games I've liked in the past, or to see what's the deal with a game I'm curious about but that I've never played and never will. And the folk I follow tend to not be idiots and to also have a sense of humor that jives with mine. So, uh, probably the same reasons people go through my LPs!

[Blossom]

Told lots of people to get cancer, rallied thousands of followers to tell people to get cancer, harass people on every axis of marginalization to commit suicide, dumped Intel stock and told people to do the same when they announced a round of hiring focused on women, outspoken transphobe, basically every measure by which someone could be shit he was shit. Hope it hurt.

I don't seek out a lot of game commentary media. I like some stuff that's game performance media - your Monster Factories and such - but that's really more about following individual creators than about platforms.

[mharr]

I'm impressed with how thoroughly the fellow managed to clean up his internet history. All that exists on google is people's reactions to his past, which at a glance makes him look like an innocent targeted by activists. The network no longer routes around censorship, and its history is being written by the winners.

[Mongrel]

Yeah, I mean, I had vague memories of *something* attached to his name, but I didn't even know if *something* was really bad. But none of the death announcements mention any of that stuff at all. It was a minor surprise to see the reactions in here.

So I guess my opinion would be "I didn't know this guy except that he's famous for game commentary stuff... and apparently also being an enormous asshole. Certainly it sucks to die young, but looks like cancer does in fact care if you live in a glass house."

[Mongrel]

Also WRT game chatter guys, at first I wanted to say I felt like some guy in the 30's complaining about the appearance of colour commentating on sports games, but it turns out having a separate colour commentator (or analyst, for our Europeans) was really just a late outgrowth of the play-by-play guys being entertaining or informative. So the analogy doesn't really hold up.

[Mongrel]

By the way, do you guys have any links summarizing this Biscuit nastiness? As Mharr pointed out his record has been surprisingly well-sanitized online, so I have run into some friends who are giving me shit for even suggesting he wasn't a great guy.

EDIT: On second thought, never mind. Better to just let it drop and I trust you guys enough that I don't need any links myself.

[Thad]

roblimo. I'm going to quote the link in full:

Linux Journal has learned fellow journalist and long-time voice of the Linux community Robin "Roblimo" Miller has passed away. Miller was perhaps best known by the community for his roll as Editor in Chief of Open Source Technology Group, the company that owned Slashdot, SourceForge.net, freshmeat, Linux.com, NewsForge, and ThinkGeek from 2000 to 2008. He went on to write and do video interviews for FOSS Force, penned articles for several publications, and authored three books, The Online Rules of Successful Companies, Point & Click Linux!, and Point & Click OpenOffice.org, all published by Prentice Hall.

As Marcel Gagne so perfectly summarized, "Robin was one of those people who could make you laugh while teaching you a thing or two."

Roblimo, you will be missed.

[Lyrai]

Damn, I wanted to post it. I even had the perfect line.

"John 'I hope you get cancer and die' Bain gets cancer, dies."

[zaratustra]

well totalbiscuit

that certainly is something

so

do you think gamergaters will stop wishing other people get cancer

or do you think they'll double down in his memory

[Grath]

By the way, do you guys have any links summarizing this Biscuit nastiness? As Mharr pointed out his record has been surprisingly well-sanitized online, so I have run into some friends who are giving me shit for even suggesting he wasn't a great guy.

EDIT: On second thought, never mind. Better to just let it drop and I trust you guys enough that I don't need any links myself.

Too late, found some links.

I hadn't even realized how core he was to GG being a thing until I did some research just now, but it turns out that he was the biggest reason it went "viral".

and also this