If the story was that Nick Robinson, creator of That Youtube Content About Video Games That You Like, employee of That Progressive Games Media Outlet, was being a dirtbag to women, I would be angry at him and sad about yet-a-fucking-nother story of men mistreating women with the expectation that they will suffer no negative consequences for their behaviour. That is not the story. The story is that Nick Robinson has a well-established reputation for being a dirtbag to women among a group of people that includes more than just the women he has been a dirtbag to, but until recently did not include his audience or, as far as I can tell, the people who work closely with him on a regular basis.
I am of course still angry at Nick and sad about the way that so many men mistreat so many women, and just as friends of Nick have stated on twitter I think it is unacceptable that the online community around video games continues to be so bitterly hostile towards women. To be absolutely clear on that point, I have no issue with any of the people who have personally had to put up with Nick’s bullshit and have not made public accusations against him. I would certainly not volunteer to be the next Zoe Quinn or Anita Sarkeesian, and I would never ask anyone to put themselves in the way of even one tenth of a percent of the treatment that those two received.
I had a very strong emotional reaction to this news, and it’s taken me a couple of days to figure out that it’s not just because I thought Car Boys was really good. It is of course disappointing to learn that a creator you respect is probably a bad person, but it is quite something else to learn that a community of people you respect have known for a while that one of their member is probably a bad person and have seemingly done nothing about it.
The news didn’t even come to light because of Nick being a dirtbag to women! The whole thing blew up after a side-barb was thrown in a twitter argument about a completely separate issue. Someone who was annoyed at Nick about something else entirely decided to stick it to him by posting words to the effect of “Yeah, well, everyone knows you treat women terribly.” Of course, everyone did NOT know this, but the cat was out of the bag, and the immediate reactions to the tweet made it clear very quickly that this was not a baseless accusation.
A lot of people in games media commented about the news on twitter, in ways that one might expect: condemning Nick’s actions, calling for a better attitude towards women in gaming spaces, admonishing the skeptic trolls demanding receipts for abuse. Austin Walker went off on “soft boy” culture, railing against performative vulnerability and “using softness as an alibi”. HBomberguy acknowledged that stories of Nick’s behaviour had been circulating privately for a while, and pointed to a seemingly out-of-proportion reaction to a crass joke Nick had tweeted several months previously as an indication of how many people were aware of his reputation.
It is the response from Nick Robinson’s male peers in the games media space that makes the revelation of his behaviour all the more unpleasant to me. I do not disagree with any of their statements on the matter, nor would I accuse any of them individually of hypocrisy, but as a group I feel like they are absolving themselves of complicity rather than taking responsibility for a serious problem among their colleagues.
They have said that it is wrong to pressure people to make private allegations into public ones, and that it is not their place to “come forward with someone else’s story if they clearly didn’t want it out there”, and they are right on both counts. The issue I have is that women did come forward to these men, and did share their stories about Nick Robinson, and the men who heard those stories engaged in exactly the sort of behaviour that they condemn in “soft boys”: they listened, they frowned, they said things like “God, what an asshole! I’ll never work with him again. Men are such scum”, they let the unsaid assumption that they would never do something like that be implied by their condemnations, they promised to keep the information secret, and they proceeded to do nothing until some side beef on social media stirred the issue to the surface.
People who work in digital media lead very public lives thanks to the bizarre demands of modern social media, and so their personal disputes and dramas are often shared with an audience of tens or hundreds of thousands. In this context, and in the climate of internet vigilantism that has become prevalent since GamerGate, I understand why none of these men wanted to say anything publicly about what they knew about Nick. Perhaps from the outside I am missing some key detail but it seems fairly clear that there are things they could have done, and did not do, that might have prevented a pattern of abusive behaviour that they knew to be ongoing, without risk of becoming the person who ruined [website’s] relationship with [website].
I am assuming that these men did nothing because some of them have said as much, and because of the reaction of shock and anger from Nick’s closest colleagues. At any point during the months that these allegations were circling in private, any one of the Good Video Games Male Feminists who had been a supportive friend and good listener to a woman on the receiving end of Nick’s sleazy messages could have, for example, reached out to Matt Kessler, or Ben Pack, or Griffin McElroy, without airing any private stories or ruining any professional relationships, and told them to talk to their boy.
If you hear that someone on the other side of the world who you’ve never met is a sex pest, you probably shouldn’t try to do anything about it. We have all seen enough internet hate mobs to learn that lesson. If you hear that one of your peers, someone you interact with regularly and share platforms with, someone that you have a professional association with, is a sex pest, you absolutely should try to do something about it. That is the time when just being a good ally and a good listener isn’t enough. If you are part of a peer group you have the power to influence what behaviour is and is not accepted in that peer group. Making general statements about wanting a better place for women in games will not achieve any change if the same people making those statements are content to silently ignore a man who is actively making games a worse place for women.
This is the real challenge for male feminists in the 21st century. It is not enough to just be the change you want to see in the world, it is not enough to be a supportive ally. Men need to work to alter the attitudes of other men in male-dominated spaces. I absolutely believe that in this case there was an opportunity for action somewhere between the extremes of publicly airing private stories and silent condemnation, and I am deeply disappointed that none of the men I respect who are peers of Nick Robinson took such action.
