It's been a while since I've posted on GAF, mainly due to life circumstances and such.
The last thing I posted about was.. what, one of Anita Sarkessian's videos? Man it feels like such a long time ago.
The wonderful thing about free speech is that it's a great tool for identifying people you'd rather not associate with.
JonTron used his free speech to give everybody his opinion on who should enter the American gene pool, and whether Mexicans are trying to take over California, one taco truck at a time, to reclaim the Atzlan, because that's rational.
People who heard it used their free speech to say he's woefully ignorant, a racist, and a possible eugenicist.
The makers of the game he was involved in used their free speech and freedom of association to NOT associate with JonTron.
Freedom at work!
But really, this was a long time coming to anybody paying attention at Playtonic. Anybody who followed Grant Kirkhope's Twitter knows he's left-leaning. Anti-Trump (had some choice words for him), Anti-Brexit, Pro-free immigration (no shit, considering video games are a global product and Rare in the good ol' days greatly benefitted from being able to hire from anywhere in Europe) I'd imagine most of Playtonic are left-leaning, as artists tend to be. But you really don't have to be some extreme liberal to reject JonTron's view of ethnic superiority.
What's really going to eat at Jon in the future, should he be introspective of his own role in this, isn't going to be the criticism he's getting from here or liberals in Twitter or the Mainstream Media boogeyman that's ruining his career. It's not going to be all of his old friends distancing themselves from him. If these are his deepest held beliefs, it's only natural for people to disagree to grow apart. What's going to eat at him is that his childhood heroes, the developers at Rare/Playtonic, Tim Schafer, Nintendo, etc. that made his favorite games, people he got to rub shoulders with and discuss game ideas with, maybe even the possibility to work with them on a game itself, will, most likely, permanently close their doors to him. He had a shot and he blew it. Oh sure he'll still have his subscribers and his twitter following, and he'll have to spend the rest of his time in the limelight convincing himself that it's better than what he's lost. That the grapes he has are definitely sweeter than the ones he threw into the fire.
GAF and the media are blamed for this simply because they don't want to accept that Playtonic did it on their own, because they disagree that immigrants dilute gene pools, that blacks are inherently criminal, and were horrified at those comments enough to distance themselves from him before letting a game aimed somewhere around the child-teen area get released. It must be those SJWs, right? And the Frankfurt School teaming up with the Illuminati! They poisoned his heroes against him, using free speech no less!
His time in the game industry isn't completely over, I'm sure. He might get some VA work for one of the developers more friendly to his politics and his views on ethnic purity. But it will be just that. Political. A dev using him to gain access to his fans. And that's not going to be the same as working on a spiritual sequel to one of his favorite games from his childhood, is it? And considering one of Grant Kirkhope's latest tweets is laughing at somebody mocking the idea of Jon's newer fans "boycotting" the game, it's gotta feel pretty empty what he traded a future with his heroes for.
Strangely enough, I dont think hes beyond all hope. Even George Wallace repented for his decades of racism. But whats going to make that outcome take longer, if at all, is his demeanor during that stream. This wasnt him being angry at some dude cutting him off in traffic and letting an epithet slip out. That can be all of us, and its easy to let learned inhibitions slide in anger. No, Jon delivered his comment with clear eyes and calm voice, with the timbre and pace of studied repetition. That will take some hard thought or some extreme life event to undo, and I dont think Boogie, who styles himself the Troubled Youtube Star whisperer, can undo it with platitudes.