I don't what the experience of other people were at a young age but I experienced a lot of horrific stuff as a kid and it really left me with a bizarre perspective on life.  I can easily see why other people who had any sort of similar upbringing could be a toxic adult.

 But if my specific case I ended up stunting my life working in thankless public service when I clearly had the work ethic and ability to make a much better living in other fields.  I have destroyed my own potential but I haven't really been a toxic person to other people.

But I still have this understanding of how a shitty childhood can teach someone that being an asshole to others is not only OK but literally the only way to survive.

 My own brother for example was a piece of human garbage once became a teen and got nothing but rewarded for it.  He is older than me and still getting money from my parents to live on the East coast.  Meanwhile I was homeless in my early twenties and my parents didn't care.

 So I just don't know.  I don't want to encourage toxic people but I fully understand how a person can easily become someone like that and be rewarded for it.  These people weren't coddled.  They were abused until they figured out how to be the abuser.

 At the same time I am not one of these toxic people.  I don't want to defend their actions.  I don't know if there is really anything I can do that I am not already doing.

James Gunn Fired

I wonder if there are many people in here who will support the Gunn firing.

I knew of Gunn before he became famous.  The guy was with all those Troma people who always tried to outdo each other with shocking, Anti-PC faux bon mots.  I believe in one of the introductions to a Lloyd Kaufman's book James Gunn went into great detail about how he self pleasured on Kaufman's desk.  So consider that social environment.  It doesn't carry over very well into the DIsney brand in 2018.

Literally ALL the Troma people were constantly saying the most vile shit possible to try to outdo themselves.

If you honestly think that 90s edgelords like Gunn are actual abusers then I fucking don't know what to tell you.

I am getting old because all these idiots just don't understand that actual provocateurs would ACTUALLY say awful things.

Why would he say this?  It's not even a joke?

Yeah back then (Jesus I am getting old) that was the point.

All the Troma people said those things BECAUSE they were vile and disturbing.

Not because they were child abusers/murderers.

It's really strange seeing the younger generation from both political extremes totally smug and justified in their beliefs that someone should get fired because of words with no context that are almost a decade old.

The dream of the Anti-PC 90s is well and truly dead.

Dungeons and Dragons. Lack of a promo figure picture! What the heck.

Very upset at the lack of pictures of the new D&D minis. I wish there were some ANYWHERE. But all I could find were on a Spanish language site.

Spoony Commentary To Boldly Flee

Well that certainly answered all my questions.

I call BS on Channel Awesome for allowing everyone to think that Spoony leaving was only because of his twitter rage / failed twitter joke.

In absolutely none of their official statements on this issue did they once even hint that it might have to do with financial issues or the fact that there are real issues with their website.  They are making some really bad decisions over there.  I mean come on.  Opening a "studio" in some warehouse in Chicago?  The reason some internet denizens like Mega64 can do that is because they have a loyal fanbase of people who lap up the same stuff year after year after year.  Do you think you can get rid of the only valuable internet commodity that you produce in house and somehow be able to afford to create something new and untested?  Maybe Doug Walker can do his Melvin character again.  That was certainly a successful experiment that proved that he can do something new.

http://spoonyexperiment.com/2012/09/15/to-boldly-flee-part-1-spoony-commentary/

The Spoony Situation. (Spoony Leaving Channel Awesome)

Wow I am really rising from the Grave to make this blog.

If you don't really know anything about internet reviewers or anything about this situation then you can skip this.

This comment by Doug Walker really shows that he has learned to use traditional media methods for smoothing over a situation like this.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xs6q2u_doug-walker-on-spoony-connecticon-2012_people 

 Well it's all a bit odd. Only 2 things really could have happened in my opinion.  

1. There were more complaints from behind the scenes from people who were not comfortable with Spoony giving them creepy comments.  It doesn't seem possible that the few public comments on twitter and such could have possibly caused a fiasco like this.

I know from listening to the Pathfinder game that he was running that he seems to think it's OK to make BDSM jokes to females and sees nothing wrong with it (He made a BDSM comment to Iron Liz and then defended it when chat people were confused as to why he would say something like that).  In some circles on the internet it's fine to make comments like that is not the case for other places.

If this is the case then sadly Spoony has some real issues he needs to deal with before he can take full advantage of his comedic talents.  

2. What we saw on the internet was what happened.   In this case what happened would only make sense if someone who was in a position of power at Channel Awesome felt very strongly that Spoony's actions completely outweighed his contributions to the site.   (Which really makes no sense to me considering the "worst" statement that he made was a somewhat tame BDSM joke on twitter, especially one where the person it was aimed at didn't make a public complaint about it)

In addition bunch of fans stirred up by Lupa and Lord Kat's comments may have generated so many email complaints against Spoony that Doug Walker and the rest of the people in charge of the site had no idea how to deal with it.  This would make logical sense in how Spoony responded.   He made a joke, apologized for it and had no idea what the hell else he could do to deal with the issue.  But the complaints kept on coming into Channel awesome fueled by internet drama.

If this is the case then the people at Channel awesome really need to take another look at how they deal with situations like this.  Losing a talent like Spoony is a very serious issue and sets a precedent that anyone can leave the site if there are enough complaints. This is the same way that broadcast television got ruined through letter writing campaigns by religious special interest groups.  There is so much jealousy and hatred on the internet that just about anyone with a slight bit of a pull in any number of online communities can generate a ton of complaints about anyone.  Why would any business, especially one that deal with comedy, take complaints from practically anonymous people seriously?

I like Spoony's videos and would I like to think that choice number 1 wasn't what happened, but since everyone has been so political about the issue I have no proof of what actually went down.

Doug Walker's response in particular makes no sense at all unless Spoony was saying much worse things in private then what I saw on his twitter.  A reviewer who made his internet fame by making sarcastic snarky remarks can't tell off color jokes or make comments that could be considered "mean"?  This is holding up internet reviewers to a standard that US politicians can't even maintain.

Lupa backtracked a bit and said that Spoony wasn't a bully and Spoony told everyone that she wasn't the reason why he left the site. Perhaps her original article would have been better had she focused on someone who actually made multiple public rape jokes. (Like many of the contributors on Channel Awesome) Obviously her blog post didn't accomplish whatever her original intent was. (Unless her intent was to stir up enough drama to get Spoony to leave the site in which case it seems to have worked)

Unfortunately I don't think anyone will ever know what the hell actually happened.  The idea that a candid conversation between the Channel Awesome guys and Spoony somehow resulted in him leaving the site just doesn't make any sense to me.

There was money to be made and more importantly comedy to be made.

It's a very grim future for comedy if either political correctness or mental illness can destroy so much potential.

*Edit* Also a bunch of people made fake accounts and stuff  during this debacle so honestly it really smacks of certain online places making a concentrated effort to stir up trouble.  Jesus if Spoony was asked to leave channel 101 over an obvious internet smear campaign like this then I have no hope for the internet.

Tim Rogers

http://kotaku.com/5605784/im-a-game-designer

An article by Tim Rogers is amazing to read.

Most people have the little part of our brain that says: "Yes I may have actually come up with this general concept but I never actual did anything with it... and wait a ton of other people probably thought of that very same idea too. So I probably shouldn't try to say that I came up with the idea."

Tim apparently doesn't think in that manner.

Suddenly there is this glorious diarrhea of words and loosely connected concepts about how he is a video game designer and he "designed" Farmville in 1996.

A person might make the immediate decision that Tim is so completely full of BS that he MUST write it all down or it will leak out his eye sockets and destroy his custom glasses.

But I don't. Because he actually DOES something with concepts in his brain. He writes them down and gets them to a wide audience.

Tim Rogers may not be an actual game designer by any definition other than the loosest one possible, but he is something...

A writer whose work is entertaining to read.

And that is something.

Mouse and Keyboard are better than an Xbox contoller.

NO DUH.

http://kotaku.com/5593259/rumor-microsoft-killed-plans-for-pc-vs-xbox-360-online-play

We knew this back when the Dreamcast keyboard players destroyed people using regular controllers.

Durr.