hawkeyefan
Legend
Acting inconsistent in what way? Changing their stance over time? I don't know if I'd consider that a reasonable metric for inconsistent behavior. Or do you mean why are they acting about Zak, but not about other possible abusers within the industry?
I think your take that everyone knows everything about Zak, and any theoretical abuser, is overstated. For example, I didn't know much about him. I was familiar with some of his work, and I quite liked it. I knew he had a blog, and I had read a couple of posts. But....I'm not on twitter or facebook or most other forms of social media....so my knowledge of Zak was pretty limited. I only learned about his online behavior and all the accusations and the feuds with other industry folks fairly recently.
I would say that this is more likely the default stance of most RPG players. None of the players in my group have any idea who he is, other than that they may know he wrote Vornheim.
For industry folks, plenty of people had issues with Zak. However, mostly it seemed like online arguments and so on. I remember finding out about some of this stuff, and reading forum posts and tweets and so on of people accusing Zak of certain behaviors, and of him accusing others, and everyone defending themselves with "evidence".....and I found it all rather nonsensical. I attributed it to the generally toxic way that people behave online, especially in matters of opinion about topics they are passionate about. I pretty much looked at it as a bunch of people yelling at each other online, and dismissed it all.
I would say that is part of the problem. Veracity of claims can easily be lost in online interactions, especially given the hyperbolic and exaggerated way we tend to deal with each other online. It becomes a signal lost in the noise kind of situation.
So for anyone in the industry who was not aware of what Zak had been accused of, or who was willing to grant him benefit of the doubt, I can kind of understand that. Up to a point. I think the new allegations, combined with everything from the past, should make it very difficult for anyone to side with Zak.
Ultimately, people can and should shift their views as more information is made available to them. If there's someone I work with, who I know well enough to consider them a good person, an accusation of wrongdoing is going to be something I would initially resist. I just think that's human nature. We're going to side with people we know over people we don't, generally speaking. But if more accusations come up, and more evidence of questionable behavior....I have to reevaluate my view.
I feel like you want everyone to have committed to a specific stance on day one, and then never alter that stance, which seems unrealistic and unnecessary. Could WotC have acted quicker? Sure. But I also know that a corporate response takes more time to craft than a tweet from a blogger. It's simply the reality of the situation.
So given the choice of crediting them with responding or blaming them for not responding quicker, I think the former is the more sensible option.
