I think at this stage, the balance of harm has been more than offset, Elestan.
I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt that you came here and posted in a moment of anger.
Your first name being mentioned in front of what? 4 people on a semi-private room for less than a minute in a conversation in which you stated you’d be perfectly fine if everyone at Stardock lost their jobs due to a preliminary injunction if Paul and Fred were in the legal right (this was in the context of whether the parties could actually be more aggressive than they are currently) and AFTER I had already apologized to you does not justify you running over here to demonize me.
Because you know what, Elestan, other people get angry too.
But what was said prior jutifies you revealing private information you got from a legal discovery? No. It. Does. Not.
The fact you attempt to rationalize your actions after “apologizing”, explains perfectly, how you couldn’t understand why P&F didn’t want to work with you.
That is not an accurate representation of what I actually said, which was:
In fact, I feel quite strongly for your employees, and hope that they all have fruitful and fulfilling careers. However, that doesn’t change my definition of right and wrong with regard to a legal matter.
Saying “I apologize for upsetting you” is not an apology.
And just to be clear, I am not “demonizing” you. I believe that I have been pretty accurately stating the simple facts of what happened, with direct quotes of what you said. If your own words and actions are portraying you in a light you feel is unfavorable, then I suggest that you take some time to reflect on them.
I finally realize what has been bugging me since the start of all this last year. I deal with adult babies all day so it wasn’t quite that. It was the ethics of even hinting the information he had about you.
Let me be perfectly clear not just with you but the others reading this: I don’t subscribe to your right to pure anonymity. I never have. Others here are well aware of my position on this. You try to harm someone in the real world, your expectation for anonymity is forfeit.
I apologized to you because it made you upset. Not because I thought I had made some sort of ethical lapse in referring to you by your, you know, first name. It was only because it upset you that I was sorry because that was not my intent.
I didn’t say he did. I already commented on how his first name came up in an earlier post. It wasn’t intended to intimidate or punish. My apology was because it upset him. Not because I thought there was an ethical lapse. I felt bad because it upset him.
My most recent response was to those that think their anonymity is somehow sacrosanct. It’s not. If you start trying to mess with someone’s real life, your anonymity is forfeit as far as I’m concerned. There’s enough people who know me who know that this is not a new position. As in, going all the way back to Usenet. But this part isn’t tied to Elestan but at those who think I should somehow feel bad for using his first name in a vacuum. I don’t.
I believe that if someone is participating in a discussion under a handle, and someone else suddenly and unexpectedly drops their real name into the conversation, most people would view that as an implied threat: “Keep this up, and I’m going to publicly unmask your real identity”. That is how I interpreted your action, and your subsequent suggestion that you might do exactly that, along with revealing my employer, only reinforces that impression.
You may not consider that unethical, but I do, especially when the name was obtained for a specific legal purpose, such as (I presume) looking to see if Paul and Fred were telling me what to say, thereby making me a “surrogate”. As you’ve no doubt discovered, they were not. And dragging me into the case with a subpoena would be pointless, as I’ve never met nor spoken to them, so you already possess every word I’ve ever exchanged with them. There’s nothing I could testify to that you don’t already know.
I think you’re both overreacting but agree it’s a dick move to use your first name. It’s your first name, and if that were enough to “dox” you, you can already be doxxed anyway. In terms of the lawsuit, I have no idea what not playing nice with you means because I don’t know any of the context.
To be perfectly blunt, I do question why you’re bringing your drama here, though, beyond trying to tar and feather. It’s a reaction I understand if you feel you’re wronged, but still.
And yet, Brad is still surprised why people associate his political views with everything he does, even when he mixes them into his business in these ways.
This is horrible as a threat, and it is clearly a threat, and even worse if followed through with.
@tomchick this is a complicated situation where the conversation is across multiple sites, but the two people are here discussing it so this community is involved in the conversation at some level. That said, I think that this is not something that this community should allow to continue.
Just to be clear, I’m not requesting any sort of action by this community. Brad’s words and actions can speak for themselves, and if he says or does something improper on another site, that’s not QT3’s responsibility to deal with.
So, I’m fully on board with classifying Brad’s behavior and threats as extremely shitty, but you can go fuck right off with your own disingenuous bullshit, Elestan. You dragged it into this forum specifically because it was his “home community”, as you put it. You don’t get to do that and follow it up with a “oh gosh, I sure didn’t want anything to happen in regards to this stuff I brought here!”.
If I’m in your position, I might very well do the same thing. But own it.
My intent was to expose his threats to sunlight and solicit opinions on them, but not to get him banned. When someone started calling for an admin, I felt I should speak up to head off a potential overreaction.
Oh fuck you, Elestan. You know exactly why you brought your pissy little drama here.
And for the rest of you, as someone who writes under their real name and is, on a daily basis, dealing with those consequences, as seen with other drama I had to deal with (oh no, the Firefly actor that we hired is “problematic”) I really have limited patience for people who throw rocks from behind pseudonyms.
