re: Tristan's current state of mind ... my best guess is that he has badly misjudged the cause of the ongoing backlash. He doesn't seem to understand why he offended people who share his political views—his original explanation of his position was handled in the most juvenile, ham-handed way possible, and THAT was the main issue for many people who would otherwise be on his side. He keeps harping on this idea that people are offended by the idea that Sonic and politics don’t mix, though! (cont.)
When his friends urge him to chill out and rethink the way he’s posting, I wonder if he’s misinterpreted that as “Tristan, your politics are too controversial and you’re alienating people, you shouldn’t be so passionate about BLM.” Obviously that’s not what you’re trying to tell him. I’m sure you agree that his heart is in the right place and you support his strong stance on such an important issue, but I get the feeling he doesn’t understand that, and I think that’s why he’s become so hostile.
I do believe his heart is in the right place, yeah. He may have originally expressed it in a way that seemed a little heavy-handed, but that’s kind of what blindsided me about closing TSSZ down. Cringy or not, he wasn’t necessarily wrong about what he said, it was more just the way he said it, you know?
And despite the rush to close the site before any of the staff could have any input on the matter, the way he’s acting makes it seem like he’s super salty about the whole thing. That’s why I said this feels so weirdly selfish -- he shut down the site out of his own self-preservation, but he pops up every now and then just to wag a finger at the last few people still following the account, and only to say “SEE? I WASN’T WRONG! YOU IDIOTS!!”
And it’s like, dude, that’s totally not the point, and you’re just making this worse for yourself, and by extension, you’re making it worse for all of your former staff members. This is the least graceful way to put the TSSZ News brand to rest. The only point he’s making is showing us he won’t let go.
And, you know, I get it. TSSZ celebrated a 20 year anniversary not that long ago. Some amount of his brain was dedicated to thinking about this website for more than half of his life on this earth. It won’t be easy to let go of something that defined who you are so completely. It isn’t easy for me to let go, and I only came on board in the second half of the site’s lifespan. It must be agony for him to just go cold turkey like this.
But what he’s doing is worse than ignoble, and it has less to do with his clumsy “Sonic would stand with the rioters and fight the cops!” tweets. Let’s not mince words here, it has more to do with the same old trouble he always finds himself in. The same old trouble I tried to rescue him from more than once over my tenure at TSSZ. For being a news guy, Tristan can be really clumsy with his words and communicating his intentions.
But like you said, and like I’ve always said, always always always in my entire twelve year run at TSSZ, his heart is in the right place. He may get heated easily sometimes, he may fumble his words, but man, when the smoke clears and he’s firing on all cylinders, he’s practically a titan.
I talk about how I tried to rescue him? He rescued me more than a few times, too. TSSZ sometimes found itself in questionable circumstances due to some of the “sensitive information” we published, and Tristan was always the rock that protected me from that stuff. “The Blog Sega Doesn’t Want You To Read”? Tristan protected me from people who were trying to get that taken down. When I datamined Sega All-Stars Racing info that was sitting in plain sight? Tristan bent over backwards to make sure the site wasn’t negatively impacted by Sega’s legal threats.
I learned something valuable, and that’s the fact that the news isn’t supposed to be your friend. It’s the news. It’s there to convey information, to convey the truth, even if the truth hurts. People might shake their heads and be like, “If Sega is threatening you with legal action, maybe you're doing something wrong” -- but when it comes to reporting on the news, honestly, that means we were doing something extremely right. (Okay, sure, maybe in retrospect, messing up somebody’s marketing plan is borderline uncool, but there were other examples that my notoriously poor memory is blanking on).
What I’m saying is that when Tristan was in his wheel house, it showed, and there is no one else in the Sonic community like him. He may have stepped on some toes, but it was kind of our job to do that, sometimes.
The problem is when it comes to moments like this. He’s coming off as weird, and aggressive, and he’s missing the point of what people are trying to say. He’s still stepping on toes, but for the wrong reasons. But he used to be, and he should be, better than this. I know he can be.
I hope he still remembers that.
