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Jun. 22nd, 2012 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseI'm torn. I'm torn because this company has helped employ a freelance artist friend. I'm torn because I like to encourage people to support small companies in beloved hobbies.
And because now I can't. And now I want to tell all my friends and family not to. A company that behaves like this in response to complaints isn't worth supporting. A person who will call a minor misquote arguing in bad faith yet who denies that his company calling attention to her can be even a partial cause for a sudden influx of hate mail, fails to tell those people to knock it off once attention is drawn to them, and whose only solution to "You don't like this product" is "Buy the rest of the lot from us" ... is calling the kettle black on bad faith. (Though I have to say, trying to rules lawyer away the specific points and ignore the picture they paint is Such a gamer response ...)
How not to handle a PR crisis
I note that this is the same woman who already has to deal with a sexual harassment case here in town against a game store she used to work for. Not because she's attention seeking or because she makes things up or exaggerates their severity (common accusations when a person's name appears for a cause more than once). But because 90% of us see something offensive to us and decide quietly to avoid it, or complain to a friend, not an authority, or even blink and dismiss it as "that couldn't have just happened. nobody's really that bad." (there are reasons for this, as the number of rape threats she got attests. This kind of consequence is Not rare and Not accidental, especially when the company draws attention to her.) And because she speaks up instead.
And because now I can't. And now I want to tell all my friends and family not to. A company that behaves like this in response to complaints isn't worth supporting. A person who will call a minor misquote arguing in bad faith yet who denies that his company calling attention to her can be even a partial cause for a sudden influx of hate mail, fails to tell those people to knock it off once attention is drawn to them, and whose only solution to "You don't like this product" is "Buy the rest of the lot from us" ... is calling the kettle black on bad faith. (Though I have to say, trying to rules lawyer away the specific points and ignore the picture they paint is Such a gamer response ...)
How not to handle a PR crisis
I note that this is the same woman who already has to deal with a sexual harassment case here in town against a game store she used to work for. Not because she's attention seeking or because she makes things up or exaggerates their severity (common accusations when a person's name appears for a cause more than once). But because 90% of us see something offensive to us and decide quietly to avoid it, or complain to a friend, not an authority, or even blink and dismiss it as "that couldn't have just happened. nobody's really that bad." (there are reasons for this, as the number of rape threats she got attests. This kind of consequence is Not rare and Not accidental, especially when the company draws attention to her.) And because she speaks up instead.
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no subject
Date: 2012-06-22 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-31 03:23 am (UTC)Having said that I don't like Mongoose or Matt Sprange very much and Nymphology is one of the many reasons for this (I haven't been following them any more recently than that because, well, I have better things to do than keep an eye on a gaming company whose products and head honcho I dislike). And, the author of Quid Quid is in good company in having a public dispute with Matt Sprange that involves being semi-wilfully misunderstood by him (the name J. Michael Straczynski jumps to mind).
no subject
Date: 2012-08-31 05:29 am (UTC)This isn't a small thing to fail to do, even belatedly.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-31 03:29 pm (UTC)