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HOAX: Female Pro Overwatch Player Ellie Quits After Harassment and Threats (Updated: Read OP)

What a crazy story... Allison Rapp tier with the Shyamalan twist at the end.
These seem to happen way too frequently these days. I think maybe part of the problem is game journalists (primarily, but not limited to them) jumping on the "women harassed in gaming" bandwagon before anyone actually has any facts. We should treat these things as developing stories while they happen. That way, when we know the actual reason why people get fired, we'll be all like, sheesh, I'm glad I held my opinion until there was something substantial so that now I don't look like a fucking moron like Polygon and Kotaku.
 

BRZBlue

Member
There were so many flags that something was fishy, but "media" sites like Kotaku decided to run with the sexism narrative without doing any due diligence and it shows. Heck, most of the OWL team discords and league players knew something was up. The top 500 community is very close knit, and usually everyone knows everyone and who their alts are, so when someone suddenly appears at almost OWL level DPS ranking out of the blue, it raises a few eyebrows among pros. It wouldn't surprise me if several pros had an idea what was going on, as we're starting to learn more and more people were in on this, or atleast had peripheral knowledge.

Then there were the strange streams, and her callouts were always obscenely late, as though there was a game of telephone going on behind the scenes. Then there were seemingly different control settings depending on the stream. In the stream where the person who voiced Ellie actually played, she showed skills akin to a silver player, and had a very high sensitivity. In streams where it was alleged someone else was playing, their sensitivity was considerably lower (like most pro players) and their performance was considerably better. These are the sort of things that don't get explained away easily.

Also, the "this wouldn't happened it it was a guy" reaction shows a real lack of any research as well. This is a regular occurrence in CSGO, and I believe on several occasions people didn't accept that the person playing wasn't real or cheating until they literally played matches with officials hanging over their shoulder.
 

Redneckerz

Those long posts don't cover that red neck boy
It’s still gaming, but the game has changed. Now, the game is who can virtue signal the hardest and get those clicks. Meanwhile, the rest of us adults just look on and shake our heads at these kids like our parents used to do to us when we played video games. Do you reckon the journos have a leaderboard in their secret discords? Who’s winning? I think that Game Informer dude is trying to get top spot at the moment. Has some stiff competition from Gestapo Bombe.
The fact i have never heard of Gestapo Bombe or WayTakuGon should be telling.

I'm not even sure what videogame systems you have Red.

Make a new hotness topic for us all to talk about games in.
A PS1, A PSP, a GameBoy Pocket, a NDS, an Xbox 360, and a Dendy.
 
In order to snap up a new female player, were the vetting rules relaxed?
Would the defence force for harassment have appeared so quickly if the player name was Steve (white knighting)?

Personally the vetting issue is my biggest question. I don’t understand how anyone thought it would work out never being able to confirm the identity.

The “if it was Steve” debate to me is a political discussion, and I also think it’s not as cut and dry as either side thinks. Reasonable people should not be okay with harassment, period. Other than that, I think there’s a politics sub-forum here for good reason and I’ll leave the rest of my thoughts regarding these kind of discussions there. Politics tend to sneak into these gaming threads too often as it is, especially with the drive-by shit-posts.
 
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Nobody gave a shit about this person at first, but they were immediately offered a spot on a sponsored team after pretending to be a girl. People who were rightfully critical or skeptical of the player were unfairly smeared as misogynists by so-called journalists who were too busy pushing a narrative to do any actual journalism.
 
Nobody gave a shit about this person at first, but they were immediately offered a spot on a sponsored team after pretending to be a girl. People who were rightfully critical or skeptical of the player were unfairly smeared as misogynists by so-called journalists who were too busy pushing a narrative to do any actual journalism.

You’re absolutely right, this is absolutely part of the story.

The other part is real harassment occurrence as well.
 

CrustyBritches

Gold Member
What's the old saying?

G.I.R.L. on the internet = Guy In Real Life.
---
This has the "boy who cried wolf" effect. The people who were taken aback by this "tragic story" have now been conditioned to ignore or disbelieve real occurrences in the future.

People have seen that the "gaming press" only exists to instigate furor over situations that are not even real. In a way, we're fortunate that Punisher did this because this form of staged deception could easily be used by these pigs to push their political agendas.

This whole thing is similar to the case of the Duke Lacrosse team being accused of rape. In the end, it was entirely made up, but it didn't stop the mainstream media from dragging these guys through the mud and ruining their lives. Even the Duke faculty signed a letter essentially condemning the "evil white male rape devils" without a fair trial. In fact, this "rape victim" was just a harlot who had sex with multiple males that night, but none of the semen matched any of the lacrosse players.
---

This is the tactic of the socialist, or liberal progressive: To be completely amoral in nature, accuse the moral masses of immorality, and steal their shit while they defend themselves against accusations that are disingenuous in the first place. /rant
 

DunDunDunpachi

Patient MembeR
You’re absolutely right, this is absolutely part of the story.

The other part is real harassment occurrence as well.
Can it be "real" harassment when it wasn't a "real" person?

I mean, how far do we stretch reality for the sake of gotcha-bait?

The heart of this story is that a player lied about who they were (yet another "experiment" when it gets found out...). The story isn't about insults and callouts that could very loosely be considered "harassment". The story is that a fake pro player snuck its way into a tournament, some players didn't buy it, and "journalists" immediately rushed to the defense of the "girl" without doing their jobs and checking the facts.
 

Shai-Tan

Banned
It's amusing how people use an event like this to "vindicate" their previously held position. Yeah, that's why there's a frothing group of boys wringing their hands over whether or not a player is a real girl or really good. On gamergate forums it's about how journalists are bad and jump to conclusions - yet their forum is full of people doing the same every day with a never-ending stream of outrage click bait.
 

Dr. Claus

Vincit qui se vincit
It's amusing how people use an event like this to "vindicate" their previously held position. Yeah, that's why there's a frothing group of boys wringing their hands over whether or not a player is a real girl or really good. On gamergate forums it's about how journalists are bad and jump to conclusions - yet their forum is full of people doing the same every day with a never-ending stream of outrage click bait.

You mean what you are doing right now? You do see how hypocritical your post is, right?
 
You would think by now, the game media has learned to take the time to verify a story rather than falling into the Listen and Believe™ trap. And yet, here we are...
 

ZehDon

Member
max-smart-confused.gif
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
You would think by now, the game media has learned to take the time to verify a story rather than falling into the Listen and Believe™ trap. And yet, here we are...

They don't care. They are ideologues pushing their religious like agenda driving revenue through their divisive click generating capital on the backs of outrage culture.

Both sides are being played by them.
 

gela94

Member
What I just realized from all this stuff is that I'm too old for this shit . ..like seriously what is going on in the heads of all these people??? Is it money, fame, attention???? Now you could also ask, why do guys need to pretend to be woman, where are the real esport woman and the answer is that most woman are not interested in this useless competitive online gaming bullshit and the rest are probably not good enough to get into pro gaming.
 

Enygger_Tzu

Banned
Gaming "journalism" working against gamers?

Well, it is happening ever since 2014, thank God the enemies of gamers are totally inept and useless, and they get exposing themselves at every opportunity.

But if they had any useful cell in their bodies, they would not stick to clickbait articles in their continuously irrelevant gaming "press" websites.
 

Blood Borne

Member
I’m not even surprised by this revelation. When there’s smoke, there’s usually fire. Agenda-driven media were quick to push their agenda, no due diligence.
 

Blood Borne

Member
I hope also this serves as a lesson for everyone(especially leftists) to give people the benefit of doubt and not automatically believe someone has ill motives. Try to engage in debate, arguments and reasoning rather than being lazy and going for character assassination.

Name calling doesn’t help, it’s counterproductive because it causes more division and hostility by creating a false impression that there are lots of sexists in the community which in turn will dissuade female gamers from participating.

Male gamers have gone through extraordinary lengths to prove their identity, like flying from one country to another. This isn’t unique to female gamers.
 

TeamGhobad

Banned
so cheating and lying is now called a social experiment LOL

seriously fuck off nobody cares about Overwatch anyways or "esports"
 

Shaqazooloo

Member
Interesting... what exactly did they accomplish with this though? Make gaming journalism look like a bigger joke than it already was?
 
H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
What a surprise to see RockPaperShotgun double down on the toxic males angle (https://web.archive.org/web/2019010...e-things-more-difficult-for-women-in-esports/ - archive link doesn't give them any clicks). No mention at all of how the gaming press jumped on an issue that matched their biases without checking facts or course.

The comments section is.. well it's RPS comments. You've got a couple of people trying to make a point about how men get abuse and harassment too (I can vouch for that - I've had internet weirdos ring my employer to get me fired due to online disagreements) but of course mentioning that men also suffer is whataboutism in the eyes of much of the commentariat there.

The interesting thing is that the people trying to point out the problems with the article are, for the most part, doing so in a logical and reasonable way, while the other side seems full of appeals to emotion, reducing anyone who disagrees to incels, etc. There is toxicity in gaming, but it's not solely from the side the gaming media likes to present as the source.

EDIT: Forgot to add - the writer has form for this kind of thing and has been known to go off on people in the comments and on the forums. To this day I still don't know how she got the job, nor what separates her ramblings from standard forum posts. I mean most of the time it's just her opinions, no actual investigation, research, etc, which could easily be found in a forum post without needing to be elevated to the main page. All very odd, I can only assume she's blowing Walker.
 
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H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Is this sarcasm? Because it is what every games media site has done for the last 5 to 10 years.

It was. RPS is basically as bad as Waypoint, Kotaku, etc. It wasn't always that way *sigh*.

The RPS home page currently:
- CES: reheated press release for NVIDIA
- have you played (basically a bunch of "here's an old game" with a couple of paragraphs about it they have queued up to release one a day)
- CES: reheated press release for NVIDIA
- Fortnite event of some kind returning
- Game about 'body archaeology' - same people who made 'red strings club' so make of that what you will
- CES: reheated press release for AMD
- reheated anthem press release about a video
- games done quickly press release
- reheated press release about life is strange 2
- Oh goodie, a platform game about grief
- overwatch ellie thing - oh look, toxic males - first comment "gamers are bad"
- Freebie games thing
- What are we all playing (laaaazy)
- Humble Bundle monthly advert
- Trouble at Eugen Systems (actual news *gasp*)
- Pinball game - a trailer
- Erik Wolpaw going to valva
- Overland isn't as good as Into The Breach
- Catherine confirmed for PC release - of course had to mention tone-deaf writing of a transgender character
- Game comms now fall under US accessibility laws - a good thing
- Far Cry 5 ignores mondana's history of fascism - because of course it fucking does, this is RPS
- Slay The Spire gets mod support
- Flare Path - actual good useful content
- Hearthstone people making marvel game - press release reheated of course
- have you played (see above)
- Japan bans key re-sales (cribbed from gamasutra)
- blazing chrome hyped as contra successor
- Eternal Castle hype
- IGF finalists
- Below review

So.. as you can see, little of value. In 30 posts we have 3 which in some way try to incite the usual sjw bollocks, a bunch of press releases and a tiny amount of actual useful content.
 

PSFan

Member
What's the old saying?

G.I.R.L. on the internet = Guy In Real Life.
---
This has the "boy who cried wolf" effect. The people who were taken aback by this "tragic story" have now been conditioned to ignore or disbelieve real occurrences in the future.

People have seen that the "gaming press" only exists to instigate furor over situations that are not even real. In a way, we're fortunate that Punisher did this because this form of staged deception could easily be used by these pigs to push their political agendas.

This whole thing is similar to the case of the Duke Lacrosse team being accused of rape. In the end, it was entirely made up, but it didn't stop the mainstream media from dragging these guys through the mud and ruining their lives. Even the Duke faculty signed a letter essentially condemning the "evil white male rape devils" without a fair trial. In fact, this "rape victim" was just a harlot who had sex with multiple males that night, but none of the semen matched any of the lacrosse players.
---

This is the tactic of the socialist, or liberal progressive: To be completely amoral in nature, accuse the moral masses of immorality, and steal their shit while they defend themselves against accusations that are disingenuous in the first place. /rant

Yep, that's the first thing that came to my mind when I read what happened with this. Seems like it's always been that way, lol. Never be quick to trust someone on the internet. It's far too easy to create a false but believable persona.
 
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