Freyja Erlings (Goons on Trial pt 4)

 Part one here - Part two here - Part three here

If you want more in this series don't forget to vote by leaving a comment up there in Part One.

"A REAL SAD EXAMPLE"

Freyja Erlings (aka Freyja Katra aka Freyja Catra aka Freyja Erlingsdottir aka other names back in the day) is the most aggressive harasser and conspiracy theorist in the online tabletop world period. She spreads antisemitic propaganda, she's racist as fuck, and--unusually for a goon--she's so shitty that major industry figures have actually shouted her out specifically. They remember her name.

There’s probably no better example of the double-standard at play in goon thinking that Freyja gets to be part of their club despite all the harm she's done to the community. 

• Monte Cook called her a “real sad example of humanity”.
• Bleeding Cool called her statements about other gamers “slanderous” and “libellous”.
• Ryan Dancey, former president of D&D, sent a cease-and-desist letter threatening to sue her (which worked—she backed off) for trademark infringement.
• On top of all that, Freyja singlehandedly started the Mike Mearls conspiracy theory literally only because after years of trolling Mike Mearls blocked her on Twitter:

Freyja needs me, a blogger, being in a position to "order" the creative head of D&D around to explain why someone would block her on Twitter?

Given all she's done, why would anyone, anywhere in any position, with any politics, with anything resembling a functioning value system, much less the head of the game she's constantly trashing not block Freyja on Twitter?

I don’t know, but there are a lot of people (unless they’re Nora Reed’s bots) who not only don’t block her but actually like and retweet her.

RACISM

All those bullet-pointed things happened long before Freyja transitioned or expressed any desire to do so publicly (so you can't say Monte, Ryan, Bleeding Cool, etc are just being transphobic) and they also happened before Freyja went full-tilt and explicitly racist:

In addition to apparently being the patient-zero antisemite who invented the conspiracy theory that I have a trust fund*, Freyja has been complaining about flaws in D&D up-to-and-including crimes the game has supposedly committed against humanity itself for over a decade. Unlike the majority of the civilized world, she can’t bring herself to just not play it. 

It's one thing to come across a niche cultural product that you feel, rightly or wrongly, powerfully conflicts with your values, talk about it and move on. It's quite another to do that and then hang around in the niche for ten years afterward.

Freyja, an Icelandic woman as white as you'd expect, is basically the center of another hobby within the niche hobby dedicated to inventing conspiracy theories that D&D is bad for people of color, despite:

...many D&D players of color giving thoughtful interviews and writing eloquent essays about how D&D might interact with race which contradict every word of what Freyja says,

...Freyja having been online during the same time the original creators of D&D posted on forums in the zeroes, and therefore in a position to have engaged the creators in a conversation about this,

...Freyja sharing the online space with massive numbers of D&D players of color who she therefore could have engaged in a serious conversation about this,

...Freyja herself steadily harassing women of color in the hobby for years, very much including Michelle Ford (aka Connie) of D&D With Pornstars,

...Freyja never having had a real-life conversation with any player of color about D&D,

...and Freyja never having even played a real-life game with anyone who wasn’t white, so far as I am aware.

There’s a name for white people who propose elaborate ideas about what is and isn’t good for other people without meaningfully asking said people what they might have to say about it: racists.

This is all, of course, in addition to promoting the big conspiracy theory about me--a conspiracy theory which assumes that when a white woman disagrees with multiple women of color about basic facts then the women of color must be lying. Morever, this is a conspiracy theory which I successfully sued Freyja's RPG writing partner Ettin / Paul Matijevic over.

This didn't stop Freyja. The case proves she's wrong, the case proves there are real consequences to being wrong, and yet she just can't stop herself.

POSSIBLE DIAGNOSIS

Many years ago Freyja was spewing some racist shit and I pointed out it was racist and, lord knows why, Freyja agreed to have a private conversation with me about the messages she was putting out in the game-o-sphere.

So we're going back and forth for a while (brusquely, but talking) and I asked an obvious and very basic question that literally any white person who might think of themselves as a social justice advocate should have considered long before ever opening their mouths:

What position do you, a white wannabe activist, take when the exact same piece of media is held up as being important, good, progressive and helpful by a large group of marginalized people and the exact same piece of media is simultaneously held up as being pernicious, evil, and retrograde by another large group from the same marginalized identity? For the same reasons?

Needless to say, Freyja dodged the question.

But the way Freyja dodged it was super weird: she wrote in ALL CAPS that I needed to google intersectionality theory and not bother her with such questions. I pointed out googling doesn't give me her answer to the question I asked. She said the same thing again and then she asked what my other questions were.

If this were on Twitter, that performance might not seem so bizarre, but remember: this was a private conversation that she agreed to have. There was nobody watching, there was no gallery of goons to impress with the force of her rage.

Why would someone voluntarily get into a conversation just to say something that the only person who can hear them could not possibly receive as persuasive?

It was like that scene in Kundun where Mao takes the Dalai Lama aside to quickly explain that Buddhism isn't a real thing. And seems sincerely to think: that'll just about do it. 

Even as an atheist, you just walk away going "Chairman are you ok?"

When the psychologist helping with this project looked over this (and everything else we've collected about Freyja so far) they said...

Nowadays, when patients, members of the general public, or even some students call someone else a "narcissist" it's just a fancier way of saying "crazy"--it's a catch-all for claiming that the other person did something they disapprove of. In cases like this I might ask a student: is there any kind of negative thing this "narcissist" would not do? Are there behaviors the label can't explain? When a non-mental-health professional uses the word that answer is usually "No" so it's a fairly unhelpful and dismissive way to use the label. Everyone has some kind of motive, even a narcissist, and empathy requires being able to describe motives and be curious about motives even it you can't agree with them.

In Freyja's case, though, there are signs that might indicate genuine Narcissistic Personality Disorder, even if we ignore the several DSM criteria for NPD that could be implied by statements Freyja might make just to try to sell her work online.

Specifically, narcissists often behave as if they've authentically forgot the person they're talking to has their own needs, point-of-view, or motives that differ from their own. They can be impatient with explaining themselves because they're not fully convinced of the others' need for explanation is based in anything real. In contrast to someone with anxiety, your insistence on interacting rather than just listening to her talking wouldn't necessarily even make her upset, it might not even occur to her that it meant anything. Narcissists are typically not curious about why anyone might differ from them. An important thing to remember is the narcissist is not only imposing their will on others, they often don't seem to remember that others they interact with even have a will. 

Some kinds of mental health problems make it hard for a patient to recognize rules or norms, but a key trait of a narcissist is acknowledging--and possibly even approving of--rules but somehow not realizing the rules apply to them. Criterion 5 in the DSM is "an unreasonable expectation of favorable treatment".

NPD would account for many of Freyja's specific quirks including the expectation (if it's sincere) that Mike Mearls would treat her differently than other trolls after all her public bad behavior, Freyja engaging in activist behavior while failing to seek guidance from the communities she's trying to represent, her apparently sincere assumption of automatic compliance, Freyja's continuing to engage in a behavior long after a close business partner was successfully sued for identical behavior, her inability to take questions as read, as well as her other reactions in that private conversation.

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*Though I am not sure if she's responsible for the additional antisemitic lie that my dad's a lawyer--which detail is extra weird because both of these tend to be spread by people who also claim my legal briefs were not prepared by, like, lawyers. But then internet conspiracy theorists are not exactly known for logical consistency and the game community isn't exactly known for asking for it.

Nora Reed (Goons on Trial pt 3)

 Part one here - Part two here

Day three of explaining about the goons. If you want the more detailed version--go to that link and vote.

For the last three years, the atmosphere over here has been a lot like a bad '70s outlaw country song: Risk, gambles, waiting for The Judge, going down to the courthouse, goddamn this town, known pornographers, long trips in cars (to avoid the plague), strangers in masks buying you shots because they see the look in your eye, tarot card readings from strippers who are also witnesses, heartfelt letters from dead friends' parents, testifying. This is mostly what I do now.

There is a lot of the physical world. Reality. It is a constant reminder of how much of the physical world is not visible anywhere in the goon's universe.

We come now to Nora Reed.

I am unaware of ever having interacted directly with Nora Reed. I don't know what Nora Reed thinks I did to deserve Nora Reed, I don't know which of Nora Reed's standard-issue hard-left political positions Nora Reed fantasizes I would disagree with (none I can find), I don't know what Nora Reed has to do with games, I don't know who the man Nora Reed imagines when they imagines me or what, in Nora's mind, that Zak cares about or what his motives could be.

I do know what Nora Reed thinks of Nora Reed as Nora does tend to tweet about it a lot. I also know:

• Nora began smearing me in the 20teens, parroting the same shit all the other goons say.
• Nora also harasses: Joe Biden, fashion designer and Project Runway judge Isaac Mizrahi, the twitter support staff, author/journalist Sarah Kendzior, Steven Colbert, game designer Luke Crane, several mayors and public officials, and dozens of other seemingly random targets.
• Nora builds twitter bots that also harass people by calling them names. Nobody can explain why.
• Nora has been thrown off twitter for harassment multiple times.
• Nora brands themself as an anti-harassment activist.
• I cannot find any conversation where Nora begins by disagreeing with a fellow human being that doesn't end with Nora attacking them.
• Nora admits to being a troll.
• Nothing ever seems to happen offline to Nora.
• Nora has over 10,000 followers anyway and some of them are reading this.

Like with the other goons, I got the therapist to take a look at Nora's tweets and try to figure out why Nora is doing all this. 

The shrink, based on Nora's online communications, said:

Nora says they have anxiety and depression and the meds they say they're taking support that (although it is a strange mix) but there are also strong indications of something like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Compulsions and anxiety are often related, you're doing something in order to reduce anxiety--often around specific obsessive worries.

In the DSM OCD is marked by...

"Recurrent and persistent thoughts, urges or images that are experienced, at some time during the disturbance, as intrusive, unwanted, and that in most individuals cause marked anxiety or distress."

Nora describes that kind of thinking in tweets. The DSM then describes compulsions themselves this way:

"The behaviors or mental acts are aimed at preventing or reducing distress or preventing some dreaded event or situation. However, these behaviors or mental acts either are not connected in a realistic way with what they are designed to neutralize or prevent or are clearly excessive."

Repeatedly writing "eat shit" to targets who will just see you as one more troll and block you or creating bots which you admit don't do anything useful as a way of expressing anger at those targets could fit the bill of a compulsion.

Ironically, a high degree of social anxiety can lead to this kind of depersonalized aggression against strangers. The anxious person can only want to have conversations with people they've already decided are "Ok" so they can't talk to someone they want to attack and learn they might have been wrong.

This could be what's happening: Nora's constant online aggression looks like it could be a loop which starts when Nora feels anxiety about something, then Nora lashes out at a target they feel is associated with it to try to feel better, the target often doesn't realize that Nora's speech act isn't really communication and responds by communicating back. But in this scenario, they're really just interacting with a symptom. Nora started the "conversation" to vent and never intended to voice a constructive criticism the target can address, and this response from the target makes Nora more anxious (anxious people don't like confrontation) and aggressive and the cycle starts again.

Although Nora refers to having a therapist, the fact that they haven't taken any steps to stop or mitigate the harm they've done suggests that Nora hasn't framed this online behavior to the therapist as something to work on and the therapist likely doesn't even know about it.

As for why they'd believe or pretend to believe the things they say about you in particular, it may be that the loop is part of a distraction from thinking too hard about it or they may just be one more person with cluster personality disorders like with the examples you showed me earlier.  Or they're just gullible.

So that's Nora. Next time I think: Freyja Erlings.

Nickoten and Erika Muse (Goons on Trial Pt 2)

Part One Here

Today we'll start with a pair of Something Awful goons that have somehow ended up in the same community they started their online careers helping to harass: Erika Muse and Nickoten.

This is the simple version of what I found out about them over the last three years, if you want more details: vote here.

Doctors Not Lawyers

Since February 2019, I will take any opportunity to talk to any lawyer, especially in person--former judge, current DA, public defender, divorce lawyer, patent lawyer, someone on the side of a bus, whatever. I buy them lunch and ask them questions.

Lawyers--to a one--have never seen anything quite like gamers online. They are confused by this behavior. They are mystified in a near-literal sense: as if they are in the presence of a phenomenon not explicable to mortal reason, to ideas not native to the sublunary plane. Why would anyone do these things? 

To put it bluntly, lawyers are used to a world where people:

• do bad things
• and then pretend they didn't

Not one where they:

• do bad things
• then brag about it on the internet to an audience of thousands while also bragging about how much damage the bad thing caused the victim and how many other bad things they did, too, to the same victim, and also how they had no genuine reason for doing it

This happens in movies, a lawyer will tell you, not real life. 

In Australia, I had to explain Ettin to the lawyers over and over. They would be about to file the paperwork, get it wrong, I would have to correct them, then they'd have to re-edit it, and there would be another mistake. 

What they didn't get was how little work they needed to do--how little they had to argue or conjecture--the dude had left a paper trail of admitting he did it a mile wide.

"Wait, are you saying...?"

"Yes."

"I mean this is a conclusion you've drawn? He didn't say that..."

"No, check it, here's the tweet"

"Holy motherc(inappropriate and highly Australian language)!"

Goons exhaust the understanding of lawyers, to grasp this shit, you need doctors.

"I don't agree with me but you have to"

Here is one that's really hard to explain:

All of this harassment started because of my opposition to a pair of conservative positions that the majority of people harassing us no longer hold or defend.

The first position I opposed was:

Sexy things in RPGs are either the result of-, or the cause of-, men being bad.

Almost nobody now publicly holds this position because a lot of LGBTQ activists got sick of pretending they don't fuck or don't want to look hot a few years ago. We'll talk more about why later maybe but it's not important today.

The second position I opposed was:

The only reason to play or be interested in an old edition of Dungeons and Dragons was nostalgia or because you have serious personality flaws (racism, sexism, homophobia etc).

Almost nobody now publicly holds this position because a bunch of loud, creative aggressive and aggressively diverse Old School fans and creators repeatedly finally got recognized for existing.

At some point the indie gamers developed enough sense of shame to grasp that it was embarrassing to try to tell Scrap Princess or Fiona Geist that homebrewed old-school D&D games were inherently transphobic or to try to tell Zedeck Siew or Ramanan Sivanjaran that playing D&D was inherently colonialist.

Erika Muse aka Icequeenerika aka Arivia

• As of about a decade ago the denizens of Something Awful's RPG forum--also known as goons--still embraced both of the above positions.
• The goons aggressively harassed OSR creators in the name of these positions.
• I asked them to stop--they claimed it was abuse to ask them to stop.
• One of these goons was someone named Erika Muse aka Icequeenerika on twitter aka Arivia on Something Awful.
• Erika definitely no longer holds at least the second position since she spends a tremendous amount of time on the OSR discord talking about all the things she knows about playing and enjoying OSR games and interacting with the diverse OSR community there.
• Erika has never acknowledged that this means that her goon friends were, objectively, lying for years and harassing creators for no reason.

Here are some interactions with Erika from the early years of the harassment campaign:

I asked her why she'd believe I abused anyone online despite there being no proof, she said she believed anyone who is "less privileged" in any dispute.

There are lots of obvious flaws in this system. For example, my ex- Michelle, a major witness in the current cases who says the claims against me are bullshit, is a black woman, and so less privileged than Erika's Something Awful friends. So that's a checkmate.

And some more recent reality problems from Erika:

And one last example which is like wow...

So let's review what we just saw:

• Erika has a bunch of friends who spent all their time lying about a game scene and she knows they were lying because she hangs out in that scene all the time.
• Despite knowing they lied about that she still believes other claims they made about alleged online abuse, sans proof. (Again: she admits to not having proof.)
• Her faith is based on the principle that you have to believe the least privileged person in any argument, which principle she then ignores when it proves her friends are lying.
• She also admits to being illogical.
• She fabricates imaginary scenarios out of thin air, against easily-acquirable hard proof:
• 1 Claims that I'm forcing women out of games literally "as much as I can" despite hours of videotape proving I ran an all-female game group.
• 2 Claims I'm banned from a random website I'm obviously not banned from.
• 3 Imagines a bizarre violent necrophiliac scenario exists out of nowhere in one of my games. A published game that people can check.

And there's way more than this. Erika's not well.

A therapist took a look at Erika's recorded online behavior, here is what that therapist said, verbatim:

Erika's interactions are concerning—there are behaviors here consistent with Cluster A personality disorder symptoms in the DSM*, including (and these are direct quotes):

-suspects, without sufficient basis, that others are exploiting, harming, or deceiving her;

-reads hidden demeaning or threatening meanings into benign remarks or events;

-quick to react angrily or to counterattack;

and

 -suspiciousness or paranoid ideation.

If she doesn't actually believe the things she's saying that's also concerning and suggests Cluster B traits, like Antisocial PD**.

Nickoten

• Nickoten's story is very much like Erika's: hung out on Something Awful while the goons were claiming OSR games weren't fun for anyone but nostalgic bigots yet hangs out now on the OSR discord among living proof that none of that was ever true.
• Nickoten was a teenager back while Erika was harassing victims in 2014 and all his knowledge of that stuff seems to be second-hand.
• Nickoten says he's a lawyer.
• Like Erika, Nickoten just makes shit up:

Obviously nowhere in my court documents does it say I think anyone wrote their smear posts about me out of jealousy about awards or anything else--especially not a guy like former D&D head Mike Mearls who has won more game awards than I ever will. Again, the papers are real easy to check.

So this means, either:

• Nickoten is lying about being a lawyer and that's why he can't read a legal document.
• Nickoten is not lying about being a lawyer but can't read a simple legal document (the kind laymen clients are expected to read and check for mistakes all the time).
• Nickoten is not lying about being a lawyer but just consciously made this up out of nowhere.

Again, Nickoten is not well and not responsible, and admits it:

This is the therapist again, talking about Nickoten's online activity, verbatim:

Again these are also concerning, and we are in the realm of Cluster B traits and Antisocial PD--its characterized by consistent disregard for the rights of others and an apparent willingness to engage in untruthful, deceitful and manipulative actions. 

Community Responsibility

Despite all of this, no one in control of the OSR discord has done anything about the goons' harassment--neither the founder Chris McDowall, his ousted-after-abuse-revelations successor Aura, nor the current owner of the OSR discord, Vayra, have asked Erika and Nickoten to stop posting or at least to stop posting bizare accusations.

Now you might be thinking that this OSR discord place sounds like a glorified 4chan if they're letting goons post there so it's no surprise that they haven't done anything but, no, actually, the OSR discord purports to be a friendly, hugboxy space that is concerned for its users' mental health--it has a mutual aid channel, the rules reference personal boundaries and cultural differences, and, at least during the founder, Chris McDowall's reign, the community wrote out explicit principles about being "a kind place" and about mutual respect and taking care of people.

This is why it's extra disturbing to see this. Nickoten and Erika (and other users on the site who emulate them) need help. But instead of moderators or their friends on the site talking to them and trying to get them off the site and into therapy--or at least to access some kind of other mental health resource--until they can address their problems, the other people just amplify their claims.

I don't have any illusions that the people on the site care enough about them to do that, but it would at least be nice if they admitted they don't, so that people that do know goons might start to realize they themselves have to step in, because the online communities won't.

Obviously neither of these two trust me, but with any luck they might trust someone who read this.

Nickoten and Erika are goons that the community can directly and relatively easily do something to help (though they probably won't), next time we'll look at some tougher nuts to crack.

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*Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders--the standard handbook shrink's use to diagnose patients.

**PD=Personality Disorder

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Goons on Trial (Part 1)

There is a poll at the end of this entry, please comment if you're interested.

Three Years of Lawsuits

Three years in. One thing I do is depositions, they work like this:

Wake up before dawn, shave, put on the jacket and button-down shirt and shorts, like a day at an office, fold out one of those changing screens to block out a covid-era apartment full of unwashed dishes, turn on Zoom, work the camera so only the screen is in the frame behind you, and wait.

My lawyer pops up on the screen. Theoretically, someone in their position could ask “Are you ok? Do you have any questions?” but there aren’t ever any. All of this is easy, there are never any surprises.

The various opposition lawyers—no matter who they are or who hired them—sweat a lot—as if not used to talking to strangers. Some, despite being very well-paid, use those digital backgrounds, like a wall of law books, overlapping their bald heads when they move too fast. Some come in at angles, as if turning on their camera for the first time.

I try hard not to be hard on them: their clients have given them nothing to work with. The evidence and witnesses prove I’m telling the truth, so they have to work another angle. They are desperate to find me lying about anything. 

Most of what happens in these legal cases does not go like in the movies, but these parts always do:

“How many people read that blog entry?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s not what you said in March! You said there were metrics and you gave a figure, Mr Smith!”

(You can see them leaning in here, riding hard.)

“Yeah that was spring, this is like winter, I haven’t looked at it since. You could just look at what I said then?”

They pause.

I’ve seen these kind of lawyers’ notes, they are lists of groups of questions. You can see, in the zoom window, the lawyer re-orienting, making a shoulder movement to cross out what’s become a cul-de-sac of questions, scanning down for some questions not made irrelevant by this totally normal answer.

They have nothing. They need to have something. So, often surprisingly early, they get in to The Goon Questions.

Something Awful Slash Tee Gee

If you already know all about Something Awful /tg is and its shitty impact on tabletop games you can skip to the last section. If not: 

“Goon” is what people who hang out on a very old website called Something Awful call themselves. It pre-dates-, spawned-, and is almost-indistinguishable from-, 4chan. It was founded by a now-dead disgraced abuser and troll named Lowtax who you can google, and “Goon” means someone who was so excited to be a troll and spend time with other trolls that they paid him an annual membership fee. 

In the porn world, it’s also slang meaning “endless masturbation”.

The goon forums are topically arranged, there’s one for each thing goons are interested in, so:

• video games 
• presumably some other shit idk I never looked, 
• and, of course, tabletop RPGs.

Since for the last two decades there have been dozens, maybe hundreds, of other places to talk about tabletop RPGs, the only reason to go there is to say trolly things that would get you tossed off any other forum. Or to hang out with other trolls.

The wildest thing about goons is they all act the same, even when not on the site, even when on private blogs or twitter, under their real names:

• Cartoon and video game avatars
• Most-online-possible vocabulary, verbal tics, topics of conversation
• Obsessively comment on whatever’s topical on twitter that day
• Almost never, even when not on the site—on twitter or on a discord--talk about anything that happened to them that wasn’t on a computer
• …except on rare occasions, and then only to frame it as a great injustice, like they went to 7-Eleven to buy Cheetos and it was a great injustice
• All this is so consistent it’s weird

The tabletop-specific troll forum was called /tg, short for “traditional games”. Since tabletop games (especially when it started) were not mostly a thing to be done online, they all developed creepily similar takes:

• They played D&D and it was a great injustice
• The solution was 4th Edition D&D because 4e was not the earlier editions that had made them cry
• Anyone who played a different edition was a “grog”—meaning they were secretly a member of the GOP no matter what they did
• So like if it turned out Bernie Sanders played old-school D&D then Bernie Sanders is a “grog” and a secret member of the Republican party
• If you look at the /tg threads from 2009 to around 2015 this is, again, so consistent it’s weird

Why did they troll so hard for 4e rather than, like the rest of the RPG industry, troll indiscriminately? My guess is just that it was the edition-wars era and that whoever ended up being so online they got to be the moderators of /tg just kicked out everyone who didn’t troll 4e-ward.

Here’s a reformed goon. I think everyone in the screencapped conversation reads this blog so if you have any questions you can ask them in the comments:

I first found out about the goons around then because it was one of a thousand sites making fun of my ex for being a girl in porn yet not being like them while doing it. Specifically: they were attacking her for having extension cords on her wish list and playing old D&D instead of new D&D. I rolled my eyes at the existence of what appeared to be another nest of frat bros and moved on, I didn't interact with anyone from there until years later.

Once the 5th edition of D&D had been out for a while and been popular and the Old School gamers had started winning awards and fans for their stuff, the goons softened on the "only 4e is good" line. They went on to mostly championing other indie RPGs. But:

• None of the people who had spent all that time harassing anyone for playing anything besides their favorite edition of D&D admitted they were wrong
• None of the people who changed their tune apologized to their victims
• None of them did anything to help their victims
• None of the people who had positions of influence (moderators, game designers who hired people) where they did that ever suffered any consequences
• Even with their new and more catholic taste, they were all still assholes and acted the same

The Goon Questions

Earlier I said the wildest thing about goons is they all act the same. The wildest things about goons in the tabletop hobby specifically are:

• Despite how much impact they've had, nobody talks about goons (in many cases, explicitly because they're afraid of being harassed).
• When someone reveals they are a goon, the reaction from everyone else in games isn't Oh wow, you're a troll and just admitted it? We can't trust anything you say please stop posting your weird accusations until you get therapy and work to undo the harm you did.

This consistently blows my mind and has for over a decade--they're a textbook example of "abusers you shouldn't let into your community". If someone can explain it in the comments, please do leave one.

Some examples:

• Goons get positions of influence: goons worked on the Lancer RPG, goons moderated RPGnet, Evil Hat Productions actually actively went to Something Awful to recruit goons on the site, Chris McDowall, an OSR blogger and someone who, therefore, was a de facto victim of various goons for years--let them on the OSR discord once they decided they liked OSR games, goon Dan Olson, aka "Folding Ideas" has a popular YouTube channel and people actually watch it.
• Goon conspiracy theories are repeated on RPG twitter even by people way too snobby or "professional" to be goons, including basically everyone who participated in the harassment campaign against me
• ...and their lawyers

Now, the goons themselves are trolls who make shit up--that's their whole deal. I sued the main troll from Something Awful /tg --Paul Matijevic aka "Ettin"--and he folded almost immediately. And it wasn't as if he couldn't afford to defend himself since he proved he could quickly run a fundraiser for legal bills.

This was the dude who had been more aggressively accusing me of "abuse" and screencapping me than anyone else online. He could have defended himself successfully by proving any kind of abuse and when his bluff got called he gave up almost as soon as he hired a lawyer. At this point anyone who had ever accused me of abuse--at least online--should logically have to go "Well Ettin had recorded Zak harder than anyone, since he was lying about all of it, there isn't anything else" but, as noted up at the top, the other peoples' lawyers don't have anything else to go on.

This means, apparently:

• There are people who keep paying lawyers hundreds of dollars hourly to then tell their junior partners, paralegals, and research assistants to go on twitter and discord and search "Zak S""Bad".
• These folks turn up goon conspiracy theories from either goons or in the mouths of useful idiots who can be relied upon to repeat goon shit uncritically.
• They then contact the people who post them, who either don't respond, admit they have no idea where they heard them, or trace them back to goons like Freyja Erlings, Kai Tave, and Nora Reed.
• The goons themselves, when contacted, either don't respond or admit they have no evidence to back these up.
• The lawyers go "Well fuck!" and figure they'll somehow catch me out by asking about them anyway, which leads to exchanges like...

"Is it true, Mr Smith, that you got names of people who complained about you from one Mike Mearls, head of Dungeons and Dragons, and proceeded to harass those people online?"

"No."

At which point I remind them they're welcome to all my communications with Mike Mearls because of the legal thing called "discovery" which I did months ago and was explained in My Cousin Vinnie plus they have my permission to contact my phone provider to verify we had no phone conversations at the time and they can ask Mike--who doesn't like me at all because I sued him--and he can verify we didn't meet ever until years later.

And then they pause and sweat and cross a bunch of stuff out and go "So you've been banned from theRPGsite, is that true?"

And I go "No, but a goon said that and I posted on theRPGsite immediately after"

And they go "What's a 'goon'?"

And it goes on and on for hours: a goon said I was a Nazi so I have to remind them I'm Jewish and got put in the paddy wagon for being at a Black Lives Matter protest, a new goon says because I'm Jewish my family's rich so the lawyers spend hours chasing down documents proving nope I make exactly as much as most other painters lucky enough to show in Chelsea, a goon says I'm actually a parrot named Eugene so... etc.

This is all done under oath and using their client's billable hours, also eating massively into the court-ordered limited amount of time they have to question me.

Basically, the point being: for every dollar a goon has thrown at my harassers, they've cost them hundreds or thousands of dollars by mistakenly creating the impression that what they said was reality-based, thus basically trolling their side's own lawyers.

So, Over To You

In the next entry I am going to go into some detail about goons and what I learned about them during the legal process, et cetera.

However, one thing I noted earlier is it's weird that nobody in tabletop talks about Something Awful. Maybe that's changed now that the rest of the internet has started to realize the place was an abusive shitbox because the founder killed himself, I don't know. So I don't know how much any of you care.

If you don't care, don't comment, and I'll just post the short version when I get around to it.

If you do care and want to hear more about what I know about specific goons and the specific trouble they caused, including Freyja Erlings, Ettin's best pal, Kai Tave, the one-goon edition war, Nora Reed, the goon who built harassment robots, Nickoten, the goon who goons all over the OSR, Erika Muse, the goon who straight-up admitted she is full of shit and many more, then leave a comment saying "Give us the details" or something like that.

If I get 100 comments saying people want all the details, then I'll put up the long version.

No anonymous comments allowed, use a persistent identity.