When you read something that challenges your beliefs, what do you do? You can enter a debate to reexamine your position. Maybe. If you are a sexist middle-aged person who feels threatened by everyone who disagrees with you, what would you do? Don’t abuse them with swear words. You might end up like this poor guy. Your mom is manhandling you.
Working in the video game industry, Kallie Plagge is used to getting harassed by men at The Gamespot. And she found one. The harasser has a mother.
She received a response the next morning after she received a screenshot of her son’s message. The mom was nice about it, and that’s why Kallie shared it on her account. The way she took care of this situation is being applauded by people.
It all started when Plagge reviewed a popular game called Days Gone. “Most aspects of Days Gone lack purpose,” Plagge wrote. “Its many narrative threads flirt with being meaningful and interesting but never quite commit, with characters whose actions and motivations don’t make sense.” The verdict: 5 out of 10.
Many people disagreed with him. The average player score was 8.4. Plagge said she got more than two dozen personal Facebook messages from disappointed fans of the game. “It was very clear [from] very early on that it had nothing to do with the content of our review,” Plagge told The Daily Beast. “It was very much just that guys wanted to find an excuse to say sexist things to women.”
“I don’t know any women in the industry who haven’t experienced something like this,” she said. “It varies by how outspoken you are on Twitter, for example, but I think we all get demoralizing comments, whether it’s about our appearance or about the things we say.”
Plagge decided not to reveal the identities of the harasser and his mother. She believes that people should be aware of the harassment.
“There needs to be less of a rhetoric about, ‘Don’t feed the trolls,’ because they will come no matter what,” Kallie said. “And my philosophy on it is I’m not going to just lie down and be silent. I don’t want anyone to forget that this is what we have to do to do our jobs.”
Here is what people had to say about the situation.
