Ben Gilbert

You may know me from @Joystiq, @Engadget, or @BusinessInsider. Or maybe you know me from The New York Growers Cup / ALL CAPS!

[email protected]

[Ben Gilbert @RealBenGilbert]

Five months ago I started ALL CAPS. This morning, we had our first major project featured in the New York Times. https://t.co/4hIq7u6hkc

[Ben Gilbert @RealBenGilbert]

A great lesson in the importance of being a good person instead of accepting the genuine insanity of unchecked capitalism.

[🔪 American McGee 🖤 @americanmcgee]

This is essentially how I left EA. When we finished development on the first Alice game, I went traveling. While on vacation in India I got the news that EA had laid off my creative partner, RJ Berg. And that they'd pulled the console development contract from Alice developer, Rogue Entertainment (which killed the studio).

I was asked to come back so that I could begin my next phase of existence at EA - being put into some sort of VP training program. Onward and upward!

It was "We're firing all your buddies and promoting you."

So I quit. Left San Francisco entirely. Just said, "I'm done."

Many (MANY) of my friends at EA at that time called me to tell me I was "insane" "crazy" and demand I explain wtf I was doing. For a lot of them, explaining that I felt moving up the ladder on the backs of my fired friends was unacceptable, just made no sense. "That's how the game works." "Stick around and you'll be rewarded."

Well, the reward is that I am sitting here 25 years later not feeling like a jerk for taking the wrong path.

[Ben Gilbert @RealBenGilbert]

I've been incredibly impressed by how fucking stupid nearly every response is to A WOMAN WITH NO RIGHT HAND being cited for USING A PHONE WITH HER RIGHT HAND.

[Ben Gilbert @RealBenGilbert]

While we're here, let's talk about how insane and backwards it is that the woman who was pulled over has her full name in this headline but the officer in the wrong isn't named. Just "the officer." Okay!

[CBS News @CBSNews]

Kathleen Thomas was issued a citation in February after a Palm Beach County Sheriff's deputy pulled her over for allegedly using a phone with her right hand. But Thomas doesn't have a right hand. This week, the officer requested that the citation be dismissed.

Here's bodycam footage of the traffic stop.

[Ben Gilbert @RealBenGilbert]

@JohnMaloneHS I'm talking about the CBS headline, not the video. Good luck out there.

[Ben Gilbert @RealBenGilbert]

The stunning realization that I quit my career and started a company to be independent and rely on myself.

[Ben Gilbert @RealBenGilbert]

This woman is amazingly polite with a man who is clearly in the wrong but absolutely refuses to admit fault. Can't imagine a more emblematic representation of dealing with the police.

[CBS News @CBSNews]

Kathleen Thomas was issued a citation in February after a Palm Beach County Sheriff's deputy pulled her over for allegedly using a phone with her right hand. But Thomas doesn't have a right hand. This week, the officer requested that the citation be dismissed.

Here's bodycam footage of the traffic stop.

[Ben Gilbert @RealBenGilbert]

Toad Venom is cool but have you tried OG?

[Ben Gilbert @RealBenGilbert]

@alienlabsTED Maybe the only sensible piece of legalization legislation in New York gives New Yorkers the right to smoke weed anywhere outdoors where you can smoke tobacco. They def shouldn't bother policing this, but how incredibly weird that it's illegal in the first place.

[Ben Gilbert @RealBenGilbert]

Hitting a Verge paywall on a press release rewrite blog post about a Star Fox remake with a wildly misleading headline about a "new Star Fox." You genuinely can't make this shit up.

[Ben Gilbert @RealBenGilbert]

Presumably there's a long German word or something.

[Ben Gilbert @RealBenGilbert]

What's the term for people whose entire personality was shaped by the coronavirus pandemic, and now they spend all their time nervously watching for the next pandemic/getting upset that other people aren't constantly nervous?

[Ben Gilbert @RealBenGilbert]

@jfberke I only single it out because a crash out implies real emotions are attached to it and it's not just a literal performance. I suppose you can play act a crash out!

Either way, fuck these losers.

[Ben Gilbert @RealBenGilbert]

I was in the Stumptown in the West Village this morning waiting in line when I overheard three young women sitting around laptops trying to figure out how to embed a Substack and it made me so deeply sad that words cannot express.

[Ben Gilbert @RealBenGilbert]

@srg444 Cool so only medically licensed (read: large, usually publicly traded) companies will actually benefit from this, in terms of 280E?

[Ben Gilbert @RealBenGilbert]

I will be getting PR emails from video game industry PR firms for the rest of my life, huh?

[Ben Gilbert @RealBenGilbert]

Missed 4/20 by two days ya dummies

[Axios @axios]

SCOOP: The Trump administration is expected to reclassify marijuana as soon as today https://t.co/i83PW0B0pz

[Ben Gilbert @RealBenGilbert]

Absolutely wild that anyone chooses to be a PR person for a living.

[Ben Gilbert @RealBenGilbert]

@jfberke I bet a million dollars their coworker is white.

[Ben Gilbert @RealBenGilbert]

@NYGov Pause