@PPH_sKin The gears we kill kublai fans one?? Then yeh lol. I’ve followed them for a lil while and been meaning to check them out and that shirt did it for me lol
The problem was never just the drunk sound engineer and the fact that that’s still the only part of this story that gets acknowledged because it’s the easiest to reframe fault for you guys is exactly why people are still talking about it. You guys keep framing this like it was some unfortunate situation with one employee that you “handled the best you could”. Bffr. The sound engineer was ONE situation. It was not the only situation. The issue was how the people who reported the behavior were treated, being brushed off when concerns were raised, and blame being shifted onto the people being affected by it. Threats, intimidation, being told to stay quiet, being portrayed as liars afterward and watching the story change every few months depending on who you were talking to. The issue was also the creative exploitation that people spoke up about. You had a trans creative continually be deadnamed and misgendered after being corrected several times. People know the shit you guys have said and done behind closed doors. There were legal threats, ongoing intimidation, and people being warned to stop speaking about their experiences or “it would be very bad for them”. The issue was watching people try to speak up and then being met with hostility, damage control and attempts to discredit them instead of ACTUAL accountability. And let’s stop pretending nobody knew what was fucking happening. You knew people were uncomfortable, you knew people were reporting issues. Hell I did from day 2. You knew people were being berated (including by your own band members!). You knew people were crying and talking about leaving. You knew people were saying they felt unsafe.
The whole “we didn’t know” or “we were just trying our best” angle is fucking ridiculous. At a certain point if multiple people are coming to you saying they’re being mistreated and your response is to minimize it, question it, defend the person doing it, ask people to stay quiet, or threaten the people speaking up, that’s not protecting the people being harmed. That’s protecting the problem and that fucking bothers me. Because now it’s being framed like nobody could have possibly known better. These things are not hard to fucking recognize when they’re happening right in front of you and you guys choose to address it when it’s convenient (aka now that fans are asking you guys to be removed from the tour). It’s clearly a performative PR move.
You wanna talk about safety? Let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about the fact that people who came forward were treated like the problem instead of behavior being corrected and addressed. The original purpose of speaking out was never to destroy anyone’s career. It was to warn other women and LGBTQ+ creatives/crew to approach with caution based on our experiences because it’s clear you guys don’t know how to safely foster an environment for them. These parasocial fucking fans can say whatever they want but they truly have no idea what actually happens outside of the way you guys portray yourselves. There were actual consequences to all of this. I was pushed to the point of nearly taking my own life, some of us nearly ended our careers because of the way we were treated and the way it was handled afterward and STILL continues to be handled. This isn’t some internet drama that got blown out of proportion, we were genuinely harmed by it. It severely pisses me off that it’s gotten reduced to “there was a difficult guy and we learned from it” when it’s still ongoing and he’s out of the picture. The damage wasn’t caused by him. It was caused by the people who watched it happen, dismissed it, protected reputations and then suddenly acted fucking shocked when people eventually started talking about it. The people who lived through it remember it JUST fine. You’re not victims.