Greedy Goblin

Monday, August 10, 2015

To be edgy and act like us

Note to self: read Goon propaganda very carefully to catch their mistakes. I made the monumental [pun intended] error of ignoring the post Sion wrote after it came to light that indeed Goons vandalised the monument. I just found it more than a year later when I was searching for "CCP Falcon" on their propaganda site for obvious reasons.

You surely seen that in this article Sion openly claims that "CCP Falcon, despite knowing full well that the vandalism was committed by a pair of Goonswarm members, apologized to Goonswarm for people wrongly accusing us." It's important to add that in the linked official dev post CCP Falcon wrote that they [CCP as a company] contact media outlets to "correct their mistakes" where the media blamed Goons (correctly). So Sion (obviously using NDA-d information) claims that CCP Games lied to media to protect Goons.

But that's not the article today. That document contains something much more damning. A copy-paste of the letter what one of the criminals sent to CCP Falcon (which is surely NDA, but Sion could get it from the criminal too). In his letter he confesses the crime and then add:
It had nothing do in game drama, we've just been bad influence and was trying to be edgy and act like us, and I helped because Xenuria just about ruined Fanfest for me last year.
This was the motivation of the criminals, by the own words of the "mastermind", if we can use that word on someone who orchestrates drunken vandalism in broad daylight. Again: his motivation was "to be edgy and act like us". "us" meaning "Goons". They didn't simply did it as Goons, they did it because they were Goons and wanted to be true to the "Goon spirit". To earn Full Patch, so to speak. So it was indeed an escalation of the bee-sticker, just as everyone assumed before CCP Falcon clearly, explicitly and as an official speaker of the company stated that it wasn't.

There are two more things to add. At first Sion didn't bother to inform the criminal or the readers that "it's not something like us". He doesn't seem to be offended by this. He later writes that the permanent bans were reversed by CCP Falcon (which is clearly CSM information) so the criminals are back in the game, therefore - unless kicked or left - in Goonswarm. Neither Sion nor any other Goon source said that they were kicked for their crime, so it's not a long shot that they were not and they are in Goonswarm in this minute. After all, why would you kick someone who just "act like us"? They probably returned as a gangster returns from prison for a crime committed to "protect the honor of the gang": as heroes.

Even worse, Sion claims:
CCP Falcon realized that implicating an entire alliance would have serious consequences for an alliance full of innocent people. He went out of his way to ensure that no one knew who was responsible and fought internally to make sure that it stayed that way. There would be no naming and shaming. There would be no guilt by association. He is the reason why those stacks of articles don’t all say “Goonswarm vandalizes monument”.
We've already known that. But this have a very different light now as CCP Falcon known that the motivation was to "act like us". Not disclosing racial or ethnic group of a criminal (refusing to disclose =/= direct lying) is understandable as it draws hostile attention to a group of people who had no connection with the criminal and has no way to change their common trait even if they wanted to. However hiding the group membership of the criminal when he acts in the name of the group is nonsense. It's like cops saying "the vandal attacking the power plant was not the member of the Green Front" while knowing that he was a member and having a written confession that his attack was motivated by the radical ideas of the Green Front.

By the written confession of the criminal, the EVE monument was defaced to "act like Goons". The term "goon" means "a personal bodyguard or a thug or ruffian employed by a person(s) as a personal enforcer. A goon typically intimidates, assaults, or batters people who oppose their employer", so they were pretty spot-on how to "act like a Goon". The vandals probably were not convicted felons, just guys who got drunk and under the "bad influence": Goonswarm. It seems to be a repeating problem in Fanfest. I'd also add that the criminal felt the need to explain why he picked Xenuria for the name to scratch out. He didn't need to explain why he picked me for the twitter account: it was obvious for every Goon.

Goonswarm isn't a racial or ethnic group you born into. It's a club you join because of their reputation and you can leave if you no longer want this association. The actions of the members rightfully reflect back to the club and other members. If they don't like this reflection, they are in full power to do something about it: remove the deviant member or leave the club. Erotica 1 was kicked from Goonswarm exactly because they did not want to associate with his antics and no one (not even me) called Goons responsible for the Bonus Room scandal.

I'd like to repeat that I do not claim that CCP Falcon did as written here, Sion does, I'm just copy-pasting him. I wouldn't believe Sion that the rain is wet, I think he made the whole story up to create the narrative "CCP Falcon is protecting us, don't dare to mess with us". However, I believe that to clear the taint thrown at them by Sion, CCP now must be what they failed to be at the vandalism: "vindictive, public, and vicious."


PS: too many people say "conspiracy theory" while I have no theory at all, I'm just copy-pasting Sion here. But if the readers want conspiracy theory, here it is: I believe the post that aired the story on the same Goon site was written and published for one reason, to allow Sion to "set the record straight". "Goons vandalized the monument" was leaked by Goons, as part of a Goon plan, because they realized that the backslash half year after the incident wouldn't be so bad as the gain from painting Falcon as their inside man to intimidate enemies and reinforce friendlies.

34 comments:

Jim L said...

Do you realize that Goonswarm officially condemned the actions of the individuals who vandalized the monument and make it clear they were not acting as representatives of the Goonswarm?

This information has been pointed out to you before so that means you are willfully ignoring it. Willful ignorance is not going to help you fix your credibility problem.

Gevlon said...

Can you or can you not link a source stating that the vandals were kicked from Goonswarm? Otherwise the condemning statement is just an empty PR trick.

Anonymous said...

"I'd like to repeat that I do not claim that CCP Falcon did as written here, Sion does, I'm just copy-pasting him. I wouldn't believe Sion that the rain is wet, I think he made the whole story up"
How would he make up CCP falcon posting on a forum?

"too many people say "conspiracy theory" while I have no theory at all, I'm just copy-pasting Sion here."
You do though. Think about it. We all know that what CCP Falcon posted is plain to see, he got people to retract articles claiming it was goonswarm. The tinfoil part of it only comes from you claiming it was goonswarm the group that was responsible, which it wasn't. Neither Falcon nor Sion did anything wrong, yet you're claiming that if they did what is in that article they did.

Gevlon said...

It's common decency to assume that CCP Falcon acted in good faith when he wrote that dev post and got people to retract articles.

Contrary to that, Sion claims that "CCP Falcon, despite knowing full well that the vandalism was committed by a pair of Goonswarm members, apologized to Goonswarm for people wrongly accusing us"

So according to Sion, CCP Falcon didn't make a honest mistake, but lied into the face of the media, the customers, you, me, everyone just to protect criminals. That's a serious claim. Actually it's libel.

Dangphat said...

Gevlon again CCP Falcon has not lied he has just told a specific truth. The vandals have many identities: gender, nationality, race, political persuasion, sexuality, hair colour etc, you do not complain that they have not been mentioned. All CCP Falcon has done is declare that they were acting as individuals rather than for the group which is defensible. If I shoot someone because I feel my country needs me to do it even though the country does not wish me to do it then I am acting as an individual.

Gevlon said...

@Dangphat: not mentioning hair color is one thing. Mentioning that they were blonde when they were not is lying.

Also, have you even read this article, they did it because of being Goons, so it was hardly irrelevant.

About killing individually: look up the Chareston massacre: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/20/charleston-shooting-confederate-flag-south-carolina Do you think that him having a confederate flag was an irrelevant detail and if cops claim "he had no relation to white supremacists", it would be viewed as "specific truth"?

Anonymous said...

If you belong to a club then you agree to abide by the rules of that club. You identify with its culture and norms. Should you depart from these, you can usually expect to be expelled.

If you commit an act which outrages people within and outside the club, and is in addition a criminal act, and you are not expelled, it might be thought that your actions were at the very least tolerated, if not actually endorsed.

I'm not a 'Grrr Goons' sort of person, but I hit upon the following thread from the 'Something Awful' forums, and hoped it was not indicative of the general culture within Goonswarm.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3735468

It might be thought that driving while texting was deemed by at least some members of Goonswarm to be naughty but acceptable behaviour, despite its being illegal (Google tells me that Washington was the first state to pass a texting ban in 2007).

If the management of that organisation wishes to distance itself from the behaviour of some of its members, what better course than expulsion?

Babar said...

Maybe I'm reading something wrong, but where exactly it the inconsistency? Isn't Sion just saying that Falcon went out of his way to ensure that the whole alliance was not blamed for something some of its members did? Where is Sion or Falcon lying exactly?

Gevlon said...

@Babar: being obtuse won't help. His "noble" motivation doesn't change the purposeful statement of the false facts "not Goons did it".

He could try to distance Goonswarm as a whole from the criminals, give media space to Goon leaders to condemn the attack and publicly expel the members from Goonswarm. That's protecting the group.

Also, have you even read the post today? Goons as a group weren't innocent, they created the toxic culture that motivated these guys to commit a crime.

TC said...

Just got to highlight here, nowhere can I find reference confirming or denying these people were kicked or otherwise punished by goonswarm. Punishments other than kicking exist, and unless you have proof one way or the other, drawing a conclusion seems premature.
Given Sion is praising CCP for protecting people from public reprisal, it doesn't seem a stretch that he would do the same for the vandals, kicked or not.

Babar said...

So there really isn't any more too it? I guess you could criticize some of the wording, but as far as I can see, nobody has actually lied?

You keep calling them criminals, which I guess is accurate, but the "crime" is so minor, this is almost a non-issue. And if you want to get all legal about it, there is no judge in the world that would somehow pin this on Goonswarm as a whole even if the "criminal" says that's what inspired him.

I'm sure this could have been handled differently by both Falcon and Sion, but it honestly just seems like you're desperatly trying to make something out of nothing (Siongate? Really?). This is a non-issue to pretty much everyone except you. There were a couple of articles in some media outlets as it happened, but nobody cares about it anymore.

What do you actually hope will happen by doing this?

Anonymous said...

Gevlon I feel your pain.
As now and a year ago. I thought "Goons are Goons!". Prove? Look what they do ingame since their existence. look what the SA Forum idiots have done and count it as "bad influence". It's exactly like your hellsangels example! Or any other doctrine influence.

But never underestimate the media and its tools for brainwashing. We have a decade+ of "individuals who do islamic terror" narrative in the western world. Where facts and interpretation go to the side for tolerance and political correctness. So I'm not surprised to see the same spin here.

Gevlon said...

@Babar: so you just hope that it will go away and disappear?
You should see my visit count graph!

Your question will be answered tomorrow.
Also, even if you can somehow weasel out of lying, there isn't a line in that Sion article that isn't a NDA violation.

TC said...

Fact check again: do you know the text of the NDA Sion signed? If not how do you know it was a violation? Everything he posted could easily have been gained as a director in the corporation these people were a part of. Even if that wasn't the case, do you know he didn't speak to CCP before posting this article? Even a quick "I'm gonna post an article on the monument vandalism, is there anything I should avoid saying?" has him covered.

Gevlon said...

@TC: while he could get lot of information from the criminals themselves, the parts I'm happily linking are completely CCP internals. How else could he know that it was CCP Falcon who covered it up and not other devs? Also, he'd be laughed off the table if he'd ask "is there anything I should avoid saying". Any half-decent NDA is worded that he should avoid saying anything he learned on the job, except what is explicitly cleared.

However there is a possible way he could not violate NDA, and that's exactly the conspiration theory of the PS: they posted the first article, in which unnamed banned players call out Falcon for incompetence and being overly vindicative. Falcon gets mad at the accusations. Then Sion appears and offers "protection" from the article THE SAME GOON SITE POSTED. Sion gives his draft to Falcon for NDA chack. He is happy about the friendly tone, not noticing that the factual claims are damning. Possibly Sion could smuggle "Falcon is the nicest, most reliable fighter of the Daesh" into that 3500 words monstrosity without anyone noticing. He personally signs the OK form, giving a new meaning to "sign his own death sentence".

Anonymous said...

"So according to Sion, CCP Falcon didn't make a honest mistake, but lied into the face of the media, the customers, you, me, everyone just to protect criminals. That's a serious claim. Actually it's libel."
No, that's not what he's saying at all. He's saying that CCP Falcon understood the distinction between a group and an individual, and while it would have been easier to just ignore it and let the group take the fall, he pushed forward the truth that it was the action of individuals.

Anonymous said...

"Do you think that him having a confederate flag was an irrelevant detail and if cops claim "he had no relation to white supremacists", it would be viewed as "specific truth"?"
It's not irrelevant, but it's dumb to look at that as the reason he did it and wrong to push blame onto every confederate flag, like apple did when they started banning civil war games and anything related to dukes of hazzard.

Gevlon said...

Yes, this was his motivation, but it doesn't matter for the act itself: posting knowingly wrong information and ask media to correct articles, knowing fully that they were already correct.

Anonymous said...

"Any half-decent NDA is worded that he should avoid saying anything he learned on the job, except what is explicitly cleared."
So are you saying that you know for a fact that he didn't write the article, show it to CCP and say "Is this OK"?

Arrendis said...

Gotta hand it to you, dude, you're goin' full Gevlon on this one.

As for referencing Charleston - y'do realize you're citing exactly one of the examples I used two nights ago against your claim, right?

As in: was the culture a contributing factor? 'Theo' in Sion's piece flat out says it was. But that culture shouldn't leave the game. EVER. Fucking people's shit up in EVE? Welcome to EVE, it's pretty much what the game's built around. Fucking people's shit up in the real world? Welcome to 'this is a goddamned crime, you're supposed to be adults'.

As others have mentioned, Sion's not gonna go talking about internal disciplinary action (especially toward someone, again as indicated in the article) who doesn't really play EVE) any more than Falcon is, any more than your boss would at work.

And now you're coming up with this retarded conspiracy theory that Fawn wrote up the first article... what? So Falcon could poke at you on reddit a year later?

The saddest part about all this is that the beginning of your reaction to all of this is a post about how 'this is why a-socials are needed, we don't do knee-jerk reactions'... in the midst of this massive knee-jerk reaction. Falcon took a poke at your blog, and your reaction wasn't just to immediately go looking for dirt on Falcon (by your own admission), it was to then take the non-story you could find, and post it up on your blog to rally support.

Congratulations, Gevlon, he hit you in the pride, and you reacted socially.

Jarhead said...

from what i read of the incident (and that isnt much) the vandals was a group of 3 goons and a 4th guy who was their friend but not a player.

i might be wrong but the way i read it it was supposed to be;

"It had nothing do in game drama, we've just been bad influence (on the 4th guy) and (he) was trying to be edgy and act like us (the three players), and I(one of the three) helped because Xenuria just about ruined Fanfest for me last year."

Babar said...

What wrong information did he knowingly ask the media to correct?

And I don't care if this goes away or not. I'm not affiliated with Goonswarm or the CFC. And like I said in the other post, I honestly think the more you try to make a thing out of this, the more everyone else will distance themselves from it. The smartest thing you can do is probably to just try to plant a seed, and hope someone else goes with it. Anything associated with you is very unlikely to spread in the way you want, considering your reputation on all the Eve news sites and reddit etc. And you'll probably think I'm saying this to make you forget this, and just press on even harder.

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: how on Earth could I know what Sion and CCP communicated? I wrote in a comment how could he trick CCP into OK his article despite it's damning to them.

@Arrendis: that's exactly happened. The culture left the game, the second time on Fanfest. So it's hard to contain within the game. This is a very good reason to openly state that "Goons vandalized the monument" to remind everyone within this (and similar) cultures the danger of leaving the game with it.

What is worse? If the whole Goonswarm gets a bad press or if this happens again and next Fanfest someone gets hurt? I mean the distance between "scratch out Xenuria" and "scare Xenuria a bit" isn't that far. And when people are drunk, maybe Xenuria is drunk too, "scaring" him can end up pretty bad.

About Charleston: do you really claim that cops should have hidden the white supremacist motive of the attack to protect the innocent white supremacists? (If you just believe in it but don't perform hate actions, you are innocent).

I meant Fawn's article and Sion's a day or two later, not the reddit now. There was absolutely no reason to publish that article other than "troll" a response from Sion. There were no logs, no rumor, no Reddit, no nothing. If Fawn wouldn't write it, no one would ever know that Goons did the vandalism. Check out my blog, I didn't claim that Goons were the vandals before the Fawn article, you can bet that if there was a tiny sign to show that way, I'd cling to it. Before Fawn, even I was completely sure that Goons are innocent on this one.

The Fawn article itself is needless shit. It's just nameless banned guy claiming innocence #35842. It says clearly that even the SA forum laughed the guy off. Then came Fawn and for some reason found it necessary to give this punk front page. Totally valid. I'm pretty sure (warning: baseless conspiration theory) that Sion composed his piece for "meta-gaming", and asked a junior writer to write a troll that he can respond to. This way he could even tell CCP: look, the story is out already, I'm just setting it straight, give me NDA lift!

Indeed Falcon hit something, but not my pride. It will come tomorrow.

@Jarhead: the non-player guy was a Goon too. Goons are an out-of-game community, Goonwaffe is Goons playing EVE.

@Babar: that "Goons vandalized the monument" of course. The truth is that Goons did it, in every sense of the word: the actors were Goons and acted to fullfill the "Goon idea". They could even shout "Mittani Akbar" while scratching, it wouldn't be more Goon-ie.

Babar said...

If "Goons vandalized the monument" is the literal quote that you object to, then I can only assume that there's either some language barrier here, or you're being willfully insincere. In this context, that sentence means the same as "The organization Goonswarm organized/condoned vandalizing the monument".

Someone being a part of a group, and trying to fulfill its idea, does not mean the group condones it. To take your Charleston example: Nobody is denying that the perpetrator was a white supremacist, at least not that I've seen. So let's instead say he was a member of a white supremacist group, that does not condone violence. Let's also say that he claimed he did the shooting to fulfill the white supremacist idea. Does this mean that the group is responsible, or that a single confused individual is?

Anonymous said...

"I wrote in a comment how could he trick CCP into OK his article despite it's damning to them."
It's not damning to them, it makes me think how good a company they are for not making rash decisions which would have had a profound impact on players who had nothing to do with the crime.

Rob said...

Gevlon, with what Babar is saying, you are walking dangerously close to the ideas that wrongfully promote the ideas that "all muslims are terrorists". Individual members of a group do not define that group, no matter why they say they did it.

Anonymous said...

"@Babar: being obtuse won't help. His "noble" motivation doesn't change the purposeful statement of the false facts "not Goons did it"."

This is where I think you misinterpret. What Falcon meant to say wasn't "not Goons did it.", but rather "not THE Goons did it.".

Gevlon said...

@Babar: yes. They preach an idea that is "clear and present danger" to incite violence. This is exactly why the confederate flag is removed from public places: to decrease the spreading of white supremacist ideas. This is why politicians repay the campaign support of peaceful white supremacists. This is why it's illegal to deny the Holocaust in most European countries. This is why the USA kill jihadist preachers who never had any blood on their hands. To stop an idea that leads to nothing but violence.

Inside a video game of course one can be a terrorist, a pirate, a bloodthirsty tyrant, so in the game the Goon idea is content. But any emergence out of the game must be eradicated before it spawn a crime. By neglecting it - despite being a repeating problem - CCP shown poor judgement and may pay a high price for it if some drunken idiot feels more edgy next Fanfest.

@Anonymous: saving a small group at the expense of the whole community isn't make a company good.

@Rob: all islamists (who claim that other people should be muslims) are terrorists

Gevlon said...

@Anon: maybe that's what he meant. But I definitely understood it that way. And everyone else did. Maybe everyone is an idiot. Maybe Falcon wrongfully communicated.

Also, THE Goons did it, as the perpetrating individuals were motivated by THE Goon idea.

Arrendis said...

They preach an idea that is "clear and present danger" to incite violence. This is exactly why the confederate flag is removed from public places: to decrease the spreading of white supremacist ideas. This is why politicians repay the campaign support of peaceful white supremacists. This is why it's illegal to deny the Holocaust in most European countries. This is why the USA kill jihadist preachers who never had any blood on their hands. To stop an idea that leads to nothing but violence.

No.

That is not an 'clear and present danger'. Hate speech is hate speech, but it does not quite rise to the level of active incitement. In fact, it's very careful not to. Here in the US, the First Amendment's limitations concerning public safety have been settled law since the First World War. And the dangers of attempting to make those limits tighter was illustrated in the Sacco & Vanzetti case.

Furthermore, that's not why the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia has been removed. It wasn't removed to decrease the spreading of white supremacist bullshit. Taking down a flag isn't going to do anything but get Stormfront and the Klan and other groups stirred up. It was taken down because symbols of oppression that offend a significant portion of the populace shouldn't be displayed over institutions of the government those symbols stood as treason against.

Fuck, man, if you wanna make the case that the battle flag is a symbol of racism and hate, I'll be right there with you. It's so bad the neo-nazis in Europe use it because they can't use the swastika. But don't for a moment ascribe benevolent motives to politicians. They saw public outcry and realized 'crap, I'm gonna lose my job', so they ditched the baggage.

As for why the US kills jihadist preachers? That's because a)they do exhort people to go commit real violence against real people. Also, it's a far more fundamental, far more 'EVE' reason: it's because we can. It's because we've got the toys, we've got the arrogance, and we've got the blatantly pissy-pants fearmongering inside the institutions of power that make it acceptable to those in power that we murder, rather than apprehend. Which is bullshit.

And no, not all people who claim that others should all be muslim are terrorists. Some are well-intentioned people who truly believe in non-violent conversion.

Now, if you want to argue that CCP shouldn't have dropped the criminal complaint, despite being paid to repair the damage? I won't necessarily object. That's a matter of opinion where reasonable people can disagree. But the rest of the nonsense you're peddling? Dude.

Gevlon said...

@Arrendis: the First Amendment limits the country, not businesses. Try to shout "white power!" in your workplace and you'll get fired. Do it in a restaurant and you are escorted out. Companies do not want to associate with that shit ideas. Even if they are completely amoral - like the politicians - they do it, since most people refuse such ideas and refuse companies that are associated.

According to Sion, CCP shown very poor judgement when they choose to protect one "shit idea" not just by silence, but by active lying, despite this idea repeatedly lead to scandal. They did it to protect this idea from the RIGHTFUL scorn of the community for what they've done.

I don't wish, but I fear that in the next Fanfest or the later some Goon will pull some "stunt" that end much worse than a scandalous alliance panel or a vandalized monument.

Arrendis said...

Gevlon:

You can't be fired for your political views, including racism. You'll be fired for being disruptive. Same w/the restaurant.

You can take Sion as saying that, or you can take Sion as saying that Falcon protected the interests of 10,000 paying customers who hadn't committed any offense. I know which way CCP sees it.

As for how Goons see it... pretty much every Goon I know thinks it was a pretty shitty thing to do, and that people do really shitty things when they're drunk and in someone else's country.

Distracted said...

"Also, THE Goons did it, as the perpetrating individuals were motivated by THE Goon idea."

No. Two idiots did it, one of which had a personal vendetta against Xenuria because Xenuria dared to try and be his friend the previous year. Said personal vendetta (which is retarded fyi) was the motivational idea, not SA culture.

Anonymous said...

@arrendis

You can be fired at will for any reason in most US states. Constitutional rights limit what the Government can or can't do, not what private citizens can or can't do.