The Ravens Nest

It’s A Cult, Plain And Simple

My last post about The Red Room vs. Drive-Thru RPG Dot Com is actually kinda old right now. In fact, the entire incident is about a couple of months old, however, I’ve decided to make this post because some interesting things have come up in discussion on my Twitter feed.

For starters, let’s take The Basic Expert. He’s a YouTuber, Gamer, Writer, Artist, Musician and GMs plenty of games and even does a few actual plays on his channel. He give gaming advice and even has a server on Guilded which is active and thriving. He supports free speech and expression in games and even gets along with some who may disagree with him.

He’s also recently been targeted. Twitter users RPGisDUM and BigBadRPG have taken exception to TBE and have been targeting his Drive-ThruRPG shop in an attempt to have it all taken down, thus cutting off part of TBE’s income stream because, and this is key, TBE’s stance on random reaction rolls was something they vehemently disagreed with. You can read the entire thread here and clearly see that this is not something that is exclusive to one “side” of any political discourse.

Likewise, my own take on The Red Room and Drive-ThruRPG was one that had some unfollow me on Twitter and walk away, which is fine. They ignored many points and the reason why? They decided to take sides. RPGPundit, who calls himself “The Final Boss in Internet Shitlords” decided to launch into a childish verbal tirade at me. When I stood up to him (people on the internet do not scare me) he decided to block me. Now, before I go on to hand you the rest of that story, I will admit that he does make well-written games that, honestly, look like they could be some fun to play. I have purchased some of them in the past but this makes the second time he’s launched into such tirades at me, personally and directly.

Rather than call him names, I’ll simply look at how fragile he was and take his title, claiming the throne as The Ultimate Boss In Internet Shitlords.

The first time he launched into such tirades at me was when he found out that I had pre-ordered D&D Dragonlance: Shadow of The Dragon Queen and he went absolutely insane on myself and a friend, screaming at us to stop giving our money to a company that hated us. His beef with my personal boycott and propagation of the facts on the matter was what caused the second and final. I had finally taken his advice and stopped giving money to Drive-ThruRPG. …just so happens Spectre Press has an exclusivity deal with them.

The problem with Pundit is that he proffers advice as though it’s a direct mandate. He genuinely operates as though you and I need his express permission, approval and/or consent. When he’s not careful for what he wishes and gets it, he honestly acts as though he can dictate how you act on your own morals and principles and, if you don’t, then he launches into childish tirades as though you’ve broken his favorite pipe and now you need to be put into a corner. It’s terrible behavior and, he didn’t learn from the Dragonlance debacle in which Artists and writers for Wizards of The Coast acted in much the same manner when faced with valid and legitimate criticism: Never Attack Your Customers. You Will Lose Them. With that, RPGPundit joins the list of those from whom I won’t buy. Remember, Pundit, Never Give Your Money To Those That Hate You…Right?

Speaking of Wizards of The Coast, let’s list some of their sins recently and they are as follows:

• Ruined Spelljammer

• Journeys Through The Radiant Citadel was an eye-rolling book full of stupid that isn’t selling. They actually gave copies away to some of the social media influencers who went to their offices recently and one even stated he’s not going to keep his copy. Wonder why that could be?

• Have lectured us, the customer, time and time again on morals and ethics while not practicing as they preach.

• Made Dragonlance disappointing.

• BIG ONE: Attempted to take the Open Gaming License and try to make it so restrictive that, well, see for yourself here.

• Wizards of The Coast lied and claimed it was just a draft, despite people coming forward talking about the sweet deals they were being cut

• Kyle Brink’s Apology Tour where he stated on the Three Black Halflings Channel on YouTube that white people can’t leave the hobby fast enough. Plus his complete cop-out answers and even non-answers to several questions.

• Claimed that they were doing away with the half-elf and half-orc races because that was “inherently racist.”

• Most Recently: A YouTuber got some Magic: The Gathering cards by accident when WoTC sent them to him, he revealed them on his channel two weeks before they were supposed to be announced and WoTC sent The Pinkertons after him and they took everything.

For a company who’ve spent the last six months supremely abusing fans as they’ve done, I stopped giving them my money after the release of Dragonlance. Since they’re insistent on terrible behavior, I see no reason to end my boycott. Ever. There are other gaming companies such as Troll Lord Games, Venger Satanis, The Red Room, The Basic Expert, and others that value me as a customer and as a player.

I also encouraged all social media influencers to cut ties with WoTC, lest they also pay for one of that company’s missteps in a very terrible and nightmarish way.

Not one bit of what I do is Cancel Culture. Not one bit. These are personal decisions. My wallet, my traffic, my choice, every time. Now, I’ve let you know how some of these people have acted and here’s where I differentiate between a boycott and what I will forever call The Cancellation Cult.

Where I was put into a position to really think about this was when a question popped up on Twitter regarding whether or not you find out a writer is a jerk, what do you do and how is it different from The Cancellation Cult?

The answer is simple. In each of the the examples I’ve listed above, my personal buying choices were molded by the actions of the company, author, artist, etc. Their actions can be examined by me and reported to you. If the actions are laudable, then I’ll let you know, open up my wallet to the company and we establish that business relationship. If the actions are less than laudable, I can dial back my purchases or stop them altogether and, again, report them to you reading this right now. Now, once I do that, the decision is yours and it’s out of my hands. I don’t focus on it. I can only close my wallet at any given point in time. I can’t close or open yours for you and I won’t ever pretend to do so.

The Cancellation Cult is a cancer on society. They seek things by which to be offended and then grow loud and angry. They pick up the virtual equivalent of pitchforks and torches. They issue threats and become so rabid and venomous that the target has a choice; either conform to demands or be destroyed. Even if they conform to those demands, it doesn’t get any better. Once fallen from grace with these people, there’s no turning back, there’s no path to redemption. You are forever “less than” to them and you’ll find that the rules have a lot of selective enforcement. If you so much as call for reason to be exercised and are even remotely suspected of being merely sympathetic to the offending party, make no mistake, you will join them and the whole thing functions on a series of ever-moving goalposts designed toward only one end: Control by a loud and hysterical mob.

With a boycott, if a company or someone else turns around of their own volition, realizes their mistake and seeks to just get back to making things to sell, okay, fair game. Some, such as Drive-ThruRPG and Wizards of The Coast will never get my money as, for me, the measures they employed were far more egregious and the rule-enforcement far too selective for my personal tastes. To me, they prefer catastrophic failure to show them the error of their ways and I’m happy to provide that. You? Well, you’ll make your own decisions and, whether I have anything at all to say about it is irrelevant. I don’t have to agree with your decision and I don’t have to like it but I can never make it for you. Honestly, I’m okay with that.

It’s the real measure of empowerment in this case. Have you empowered yourself as such that you can make your own decisions, confident that you’re making the right one, willing to admit that perhaps it wasn’t the best course of action if that’s how it pans out?

The alternate is a measure of so little confidence and an unwillingness to make apologies that you need a mob of chickenshit people to join you in order to validate it?

When you’ve answered that, you’ll know the exact difference between those whom opt to boycott something and The Cancellation Cult.

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