Because sometimes, enough is enough.
So.
Lot of people asking what happened. Here’s my side.
And no, for the love of Christ, this is not an April Fools joke. I can appreciate the timing, but that ringing in my ears from being jettisoned out the airlock before my head explodes is real.
To Lono’s credit (I can’t believe I said that), he did not start any shit; this time, I did. I came back from PAX and had a problem with the fact that our slapped together (poorly slapped together by me) meet up only netted one forum member, while the SFX-360 “Gamers Gone Wild” party had over 1000 people show up with tables full of drawing prizes, different luminaries from a variety of gaming publishers, developers and sister media. I was disgusted that a smaller site could make such a pull, while three of our four (I guess not “our” any more) podcasts are sitting in the top 25 gaming podcast downloads per week. I had a lot of harsh words to say about how leadership was absent and how I was playing the site’s shadow governor. Some of the staff echoed my sentiment.
Where things got out of control was Lono’s over-the-top reaction to the situation. Instead of calmly discussing why we had no PAX East presence or promising more top level leadership presence to address concerns, he immediately started with the “You got a problem then GTFO” route, which is his trademark. Staff jumped up, things got out of control, and Doc came in to tell me that I had publicly questioned leadership for the last time.
To Doc’s credit, he was right. On multiple occasions, I would rally on about how Doc would be gone from the site for weeks upon weeks. If you weren’t aware, Doc is a busy muldoon, with a dozen or so kids and at least three jobs, so his absence was understandable…but frustrating. I was given the ability to more or less shadow govern the site in his absence, but the leaving Lono to crush everyone’s souls and forcing me to clean up after him. How many writers did I have to pull off to the side and stroke their ego after Lono tore their article apart or made them feel like shit (answer: just about all of them)?
Doc is a saint for having put up with me punching him in the face for so long. I mean, nothing like pissing off a charity worker on a bi-weekly basis…I just saw the potential for the site and wanted to help lead the charge into greatness.
A perfect example of this: I had a cousin who used to always complain that she used to have crazy roommates and couldn’t manage to stay with one for more than six months. Eventually, everyone looked at each other and internally asked themselves: “Where’s the common denominator here? Maybe YOU’RE the crazy roommate?”
Ask yourself: if you didn’t know me at all and only knew Lono from his history of being a sociopath (and that’s really the only word you can use to describe someone who seems to live their life like they are trying to max out their Mass Effect 2 “Renegade” rating), who would you believe? The “Nice Lono” who tells you that things weren’t working out, or the neutral guy?
The thing that sent me over the edge into rage was Lono offering to write me a letter of recommendation if I were to leave in a “dignified manner”, of course, worded in the most dickish way possible. Almost as insulting as bringing the Respawn Radio name back to Sarcastic Gamer in the first place, that’s what absolutely cemented my resolve to burn my bridges and start fresh, and be loud about doing so. I’d put up with his cruelty and dickishness long enough. Oh, and I’ll let the 300+ articles, videos, podcasts, sidebar ads, daily staff emails, all done over the course of a single year speak for me.
I want to thank all the staff who have been supportive of my “move”, including the administrator who was unlocking the “Shanghai Six is fired?” post in the forums. That was good for a laugh. Nothing like a little internal sabotage to show which way the wind is blowing.
Big mad props to my fans out there. I apparently had a whole fuckton (and yeah, I can swear here, how nice) of silent supporters who came out of the woodwork over the last 24 hours.
And boy, it’s been a busy 24 hours. I sat on the couch from 3PM to bedtime, doing nothing but fielding emails, dick dancing with Lono on Twitter, chatting with staffers, registering this place and the like. This is going to be a long, uphill fight, but you have to start somewhere. I have to move as quickly as I can; the internet is a fickle bitch of a woman, and by week’s end, people will start forgetting about me.
The crazy thing is that the drama isn’t even over. No, not by a long shot. There’s another person who is remaining anonymous who is critical to this entire situation. Seeing as they have not outed themselves, I’m not going to do the disservice of going into that mess until they bring it to light.
But I get the feeling that THAT mess is coming to a critical mass sooner than later.
If anyone has any experience with website admin or can point to a site that offers their services CHEAPLY, I’d appreciate it. Any advice for starting fresh?
Keep your eyes here. I’m going to try and make a magic trick and try to pull a successful website out of my ass.
Other sites you might also enjoy:
Loading tweets...
