Since the "anti-LGBT" thing is happening again, I guess we're going to highlight it and discuss it. Quick recap, in a conversation discussing whether or not our Pansexual Rabbit would get a redesign, I mentioned that the topic had been a trend on TikTok, leading to us doing a large re-stock, only to see the trend die down. My initial phrasing wasn't great, so I immediately made clear in the same chat that I was referring to a trend on TikTok - though anyone actually in the chat at that time would have known that automatically from context.
This chat was posted without context to /plushies under the rage-bait title "Plushie Dreadfuls owner calls Pansexuality a phase" - and has since then fueled a non-stop hate storm against me, my team, and our fans.
You'd think that after some years, the repeated explanations and apologies would have resulted in a reduction of interest in the topic. You'd think wrong.
Not only do these people continue to re-hash the situation while removing all context, they add to it new insults like the idea that we "funded the electrocution of kids." I wish I was joking about that.
My team surfaces these situations to me from time to time. This morning, I went ahead and sent another letter to the mods of /plushies in response to the latest thread. And we'll highlight it to our corporate/ad contacts at Reddit while dropping a copy into our legal files. Wash, rinse, repeat.
But my ultimate question is... why?
Why would these people look at the actions/deeds of the company, my own personal track record, the positives being done by the representation and discussion created around the products... and decide, "yeah, this is something we need to destroy!"
All this while the #1 Rule of this subreddit is "Remember the Human" ??? Nowhere in any of this is the human being remembered. Certainly not the people who buy our plushies to help them with the mental or physical health issues with which they struggle. Imagine dropping into /plushies to share a bit of joy and being met with all this. And certainly not me nor the members of my team who have to deal with this and the backlash created by it on the daily basis.
Our CS team report frequent "KYS" messages being sent via the support channel. Our social media team have to deal with that and worse.
And all of this is supposedly coming from a group of people who are calling ME anti-LGBTQ? So... these are the defenders of the LGBTQ community? And /plushies care about "the human" in all this?
Is that what we're supposed to take away from all this?
Would love to hear thoughts from people on why these communities behave in this fashion. Even better, thoughts on how to address this and end the cycle of hate.
Hi Ronaldo! Several players brought this post to our attention along with evidence of repeated stream sniping.
After conducting an investigation into the matter, we have concluded that you repeatedly violated our policy against stream sniping in your Rank 1 climb. Our policy can be found here: (https://t.co/E6uLR56p9F).
As a result, we are doing the following:
- Your account is banned for two weeks.
- You will not receive Ranked rewards for the season that just ended.
- We are reverting your LP from the season that just ended to Master 0.
While many of your results are legitimate, your abuse of stream sniping for advantage taints your climb, and we will not allow it to stand.
We encourage you to play honorably in the future.
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