Home Gaming Gaming journalist destroys his career with one sexist tweet

Gaming journalist destroys his career with one sexist tweet

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Ryan Perez

Sexism in gaming just won’t stay out of the news at the moment and we have already posted up two differing opinions on the issue with Noelle having her say here and me putting my counter point across here.

But now Ryan Perez from Destructoid.com (and aspiring PR specialist) has taken the discussion to an entirely new level, a subterranean level but a level none the less. Late on Friday night Ryan had been having a few drinks and decided he was going to try out this new fangled twitter idea and posted the following three tweets in a row

Does Felicia Day matter at all? I mean does she actually contribute anything useful to this industry, besides retaining a geek persona? (source)

@feliciaday, I keep seeing everywhere. Question: Do you matter at all? Do you even provide anything useful to gaming, besides "personality?" (source)

@feliciaday, could you be considered nothing more than a glorified booth babe? You don’t seem to add anything creative to the medium. (source)

Now not only are the three tweets incredibly stupid but they are also horribly misguided as Felicia Day has given a lot to the industry and yes gaming isn’t medicine or philanthropy so anything she has done can be belittled but at the same time these tweets are from someone who was recently hired by a leading gaming website.

As you can imagine the Internet reacted in the only way it knows how, by organising a lynch mob, and while Ryan slept soundly in his bed safe in the knowledge that he had an awesome job and a great future little did he know things were already starting to come crashing down.

Up he gets on the 1st of July and starts the day of with a random videogame tweet, then follows it up with

I should have been smarter and just made a comment against God or the Catholic Church…

Then he accidently thinks David Jaffe is on his side and thanks him for defending him only to be told he wasn’t actually defending his ignorance but rather pointing out the irrationality of the Internet swooping in to save the poor female. But that entire discussion is for another day.

And so we fast forward through his twitter stream, he starts to understand the gravity of the situation he is in. Apologises, but really poorly and lies in his apology.

@feliciaday Two: Even more stupid, I’m new to Twitter as of this month, and genuinely thought @ messages went to those individuals only. (source)

Yeah his excuse was that he thought he was just insulting her directly but if you take a second to scroll up you will his first insult wasn’t targeted at her directly so the above is a flat out lie.

Then he starts defending himself and blaming the mob for how he is being perceived, then he starts trying to point out that others agree with him and yet they aren’t being lynched.

It’s like a slow drawn out tragic story really.

To wrap it up for where we are now, Destructoid has fired him (or he’s resigned), no gaming publication of any value is going to hire someone who made a mistake like this and then compounded it by attempting to attack his way out of it via twitter and right now the only benefit of this scenario for Ryan is that his twitter follower count has gone from 50 to over 2200 which is just a depressing reflection of the world we live in.

In short, if you are planning a career of any sort then simply don’t say stupid things on Twitter and if you do make a mistake, apologise and then shut up. But really, it looks like the guy is a complete tool so this was going to happen to him at some point.

However there are 2 parts of this story where I actually agree with Ryan. The first is that Felicia didn’t need an Internet mob to defend her, she’s quite capable all by herself and secondly I don’t think Ryan is sexist. I think he believed his own hype and thought he was untouchable.

Last Updated: July 2, 2012

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