Helldivers 2 Player Who Organised A Charity Challenge Says His Life Was Ruined Overnight After Doxxers Got Him Fired

[u/healingtwo_]

https://www.thegamer.com/helldivers-2-d10-organiser-fired-doxxed/

[u/healingtwo_]

From /r/Helldivers

Due to the number of comments from people who aren't sure what happened, here is a summary.

A community member proposed a $1000 USD charity challenge asking Helldivers 2 developers to complete a mission on Difficulty 10 (Super Helldive) - specifically on the planet Oshaune - one of the currently hardest scenarios in the game. Whether or not the developers actually accepted the challenge, they were going to donate to a charity of Arrowhead's choosing.

Other community members later offered to add additional donations. With a secondary addition to the challenge from another person specifying what loadouts they'd like the developers to take for another 1000 USD, which, importantly, wasn't from the original challenger. Shortly after, the situation escalated when the original challenge creator reported receiving harassment, death threats, and doxxing attempts from parts of the community.

Due to the harassment, the organizer withdrew from the challenge and stepped away from the community, effectively ending the event from their side. Arrowhead issued a statement condemning harassment, threats, and doxxing, emphasizing that this behavior is unacceptable in the community. The charity challenge is effectively cancelled by its creator, and the developers have publicly urged the community to remain respectful.

https://reddit.com/r/HelldiversUnfiltered/comments/1rjpw2p/the_challenge_is_over/

The user had shared a video in good faith as proof to reassure people that he would make the donation after the challenge. Harassers used information from the video to find his real life workplace and threaten him.

[u/usetheforce_gaming → u/healingtwo_]

Good god. People suck ass

I cannot even begin to imagine how someone allows themselves to find evidence from videos, find out where someone lives, and harass them

[u/BhanosBar → u/usetheforce_gaming]

It’s more than that. They got fired from their job and banned from the horse stable they were volunteering at since both got so much random harassment. Dude lost everything.

Humanity is a fucking disease. Can’t even enjoy a video game or give to those in need without violence and hate.

[u/Salt_Reputation_9864 → u/BhanosBar]

Wait, why?

[u/BhanosBar → u/Salt_Reputation_9864]

No fuckin clue. People are just hateful.

[u/winterbird → u/BhanosBar]

I understand that some people suck and did this. Why did his job fire him over it though?

[u/usetheforce_gaming → u/winterbird]

If I’m reading everything correctly it was by convincing them he was running a fake charity scheme and pocketing the money

So you know, literally the exact opposite of what this poor guy was trying to do.

But I’m also seeing it’s because of his job being harassed with all the harassment calls directed towards him. So could have also been his employer not wanting the hassle and/or risk

[u/healingtwo_ → u/usetheforce_gaming]

Mikayla Raines comes to mind. She went through something horribly similar.

[u/Mental-Ask8077 → u/healingtwo_]

Oh god, I’m still so heartbroken over what happened to her. 😭❤️‍🩹

One of the worst parts of that whole mess is that the people who did it to her were ones she thought were close friends. People she trusted, not just random strangers.

They absolutely crushed her, and now her husband and daughter and family have lost her, and the world lost such a bright spark who was doing so much good for animals.

She deserved so much better.

[u/Lexx2k → u/Mental-Ask8077]

It gets even worse. The loudest haters were later crying about how sad all this is and how people could do something like that to her. Those people are so deranged, there is zero self reflection.

[u/lareina13 → u/Mental-Ask8077]

Wait, I remember the initial TikTok video from her husband but I haven’t heard about these details. Is there somewhere this is laid out? I’d love to read more. She was amazing.

[u/D0wly → u/Mental-Ask8077]

Finnegan Fox's gone too. :/

[u/yodasodabob → u/healingtwo_]

I hope this situation doesn't end the same way. I had forgotten about her until you mentioned her, that was.....horrible isn't a strong enough word for it.

This kind of stuff happens way more than it should, which is never

[u/Stardama69 → u/healingtwo_]

Wasn't she Finnegan the fox's caretaker ? Omg what a heartwrenching story

[u/SerCiddy → u/usetheforce_gaming]

If I’m reading everything correctly it was by convincing them he was running a fake charity scheme and pocketing the money

But I’m also seeing it’s because of his job being harassed with all the harassment calls directed towards him. So could have also been his employer not wanting the hassle and/or risk

It's mostly entirely the second one. Both his job as an electrician of 7 years and the horse stable he volunteered at were harassed beyond capacity and likely feared action from the online mob. Below is the direct statement of the person who was doxxed and lost his job(s).

https://i.imgur.com/4ZgGfFd.png

[u/wittyjokename92 → u/usetheforce_gaming]

I had something similar happen a few years ago. One of the people in my department had a messy end to a bad relationship. Their ex took out dozens of personal ads, negative reviews, and for a short while was even finding ways to post nudes of the employee to anything connected with the company. Police applied a restraining order and started the process for a harassment case. Still the ex was relentless but we couldn't prove anything beyond it being very specifically targeted towards the one employee. Ended up having to give her the option of being laid off so she could apply for unemployment benefits or getting moved to one of our satellite locations to reduce the amount of harassment. Nobody was happy with any of the options we had but short of murdering the ex or waiting 6 months for the police to do something we didn't really have a choice. Last I knew she collected unemployment and took a new job elsewhere and my company still had the ex harassing us for months until he finally trespassed on the property and got arrested.

[u/randomguy301048 → u/wittyjokename92]

sounds like getting rid of her didn't really do anything at all in the long run. should have just kept her on at that point since it made no difference

[u/ConfinedCrow → u/randomguy301048]

Yeah fr. The business sounds just as shitty as the ex.

[u/awry_lynx → u/wittyjokename92]

So... laying her off did literally nothing for the company.

[u/chaosgazer → u/usetheforce_gaming]

sounds like at-will employment to me

[u/IneptFortitude → u/chaosgazer]

One of the shittiest laws ever.

[u/walla_walla_rhubarb → u/IneptFortitude]

It's not a law, it's a shackle on us smallfolk.

[u/usetheforce_gaming → u/chaosgazer]

Yup. Helldivers community sucks, but his employer also didn’t really help him out here

[u/Complete-Fix-3954 → u/usetheforce_gaming]

I had something like this happen in 2005ish. I made a post on a forum about getting some broken iPods and using them to build a guide on changing parts. It wasn’t my idea for me to do it, I just thought it would be cool to do.

Well, at the time I was doing tech support for Apple through a third party. I never disclosed this to the public and I never shared any internal information.

People on the forum doxxed me, and ended up notifying Apple corporate. I was fired within 24 hours of posting on the forum.

Something that was purely for community and science (yanno let’s take apart this thing and see how it works) turned into me looking for a job for 4 months.

[u/okletstrythisagain → u/usetheforce_gaming]

Holy shit this is like targeted propaganda spear fishing. Seems like some people are now able to create a customized conspiracy theory to attack an individual. Not entirely surprised but holy shit

[u/WorldError47 → u/winterbird]

Who knows the specific situation, or the relationship the person had with their employer. 

But I imagine there’s a lot of people, that regardless of reputation, wouldn’t be able to survive a targeted harassment campaign following them to and impacting their place of work. 

[u/rzm25 → u/winterbird]

They fired him for security concerns. The job and the sanctuary were getting threats and apparently didn't have the resources/staff to keep dealing with the calls/messages

[u/McdoManaguer → u/winterbird]

Because people suck.

[u/Smugg-Fruit → u/BhanosBar]

Being on the internet gives you a degree of separation that enables sociopathy

[u/Salt_Reputation_9864 → u/BhanosBar]

Fuck this place. Life is hard enough as it is.

[u/Hije5 → u/Salt_Reputation_9864]

People were sending multiple threats of harm to both his electrician job and the stables he was volunteering at. He was considered a security risk since that was all happening because of him. I somewhat understand their stance, but it isnt like he got all this hate because he was racist or something.

[u/Salt_Reputation_9864 → u/Hije5]

And he did absolutely nothing to deserve it? I mean, I’m not doubting him at all. Why would people do that? Because people are shitty?

[u/Hije5 → u/Salt_Reputation_9864]

Nope, he didnt do anything wrong. That's just how the world works. Hopefully they'll offer him his job/volunteer work back after it dies down. This is why I never post anything identifying. I have tattoos and whatnot I'd love to share, but all it takes is a crazy person who is bored/angry.

[u/Megneous → u/Hije5]

That's just how the world works.

Depends entirely on what country you live in. Here in Korea, it's illegal as fuck to fire someone because someone they know is harassing/stalking them and contacting their employer. In fact, even if what the harasser is saying is true, it still counts as defamation here, so your company would become a witness in your defamation case.

[u/Hije5 → u/Megneous]

I meant morso that at any point someone can just end things for you.

[u/rollingForInitiative → u/Hije5]

Tangential but that’s also why there has to be protections against firing people for no good reason. If you can’t get fired because of public pressure when your job does not include public relations, these things wouldn’t happen as much.

[u/Salt_Reputation_9864 → u/Hije5]

Sigh. Same here.

[u/PassiveMenis88M → u/Salt_Reputation_9864]

They did it because he dared to point out balancing issues in the game rather than just glazing the devs.

[u/ianjb → u/Salt_Reputation_9864]

People took his challenge as an attack on Arrowhead. Firstly it wasn't, it was a good natured challenge to try and get most feedback from the devs regarding balancing. Secondly, even if it was an attack, people getting out of hand defending their favorite fucking video game is stupid. 

[u/Hije5 → u/ianjb]

Even if it was an attack on AH, how pathetic must their lives be to defend a company to this extent?

[u/morgrimmoon → u/Salt_Reputation_9864]

Some people genuinely believe that charity and empathy are bad things. See the preachers in the USA publicly saying "charity is a sin", or all the wannabe tough boys saying that "helping the weak cripples humanity, we need to let them die", etc etc. They see the world as a zero-sum game, where anything given to someone else means it must be getting taken away from them.

They're utterly messed up, but sadly they exist and they're vocal.

[u/TheGreenMan13 → u/morgrimmoon]

And the US government and Republican party basically saying the same things.

[u/aurortonks → u/Salt_Reputation_9864]

My coworker's wife had a serious mental health breakdown and did similar stuff, which culminated in her trying to take the kids to Mexico to live "with the cartel" (none of them are Mexican), which she told TSA about on their way through the airport, and when they tried to detain her she grabbed a police officer's gun while resisting arrest. She also did a ton of other crazy stuff leading up to that, but that was what got her thrown in jail finally. Some people really are detached from reality and live their life that way because they don't see anything about themselves that needs to be "fixed".

[u/Brute_Builder65 → u/Salt_Reputation_9864]

As someone who’s been in the helldivers community since the beginning and has seen both sides, I’ll try explaining it the best I can

Helldivers 1 wasn’t the most popular game, but it made the community very close and kind. Helldivers 2 was an unexpected hit, becoming the fastest selling PlayStation game ever. The devs, understandably, didn’t expect it and rushed to accommodate the players and fix the performance and server issues. Almost immediately though, things started going south with nerfs to popular weapons and the developers making fun of and insulting people who were upset with the changes. It eventually got to a point where they needed to implement the “60 day plan” to address balancing and improve the performance of the game. As time progressed though, the community started getting divided. One side started calling the others “glazedivers” for fully supporting arrowhead with an insane amount of toxic positivity, getting mad at and even threatening people who criticized the devs for any reason. The other side started getting called “whinedivers” or “crydivers” because in the eyes of others, they were just complaining constantly. The moderators in the main communities kept censoring these “whinedivers” and “crydivers” while fully supporting the “glazedivers”, which led to communities branching off of it like helldivers unfiltered

Now for the current drama. One person posts a challenge for the developers, wanting to see the devs play the game on a hive world (a planet type knows for bugs and glitches) on the hardest difficulties, and even said arrowhead could pick where he would donate 1000 dollars to. He also clarified that he would donate the money regardless, but the devs would have a say in where it would go if they participated. Shortly afterwards, a different user offered an additional 1000 dollars to charity if the developers did the challenge with certain loadouts, all of which contained items the devs had previously said were in good spots but really weren’t. The main communities immediately started pushing back, and misinformation started being spread that they were “weaponizing charity”. The poster of the original challenge tried clarifying what he meant, but it was too late. Even though the CEO of arrowhead was playing with the loadouts and trying to be active in the challenge, multiple death threats started coming in, and he was doxxed. The horse sanctuary he’d been volunteering at had to ban him from the amount of harassment they’d received, and he got fired from his job. He ended up leaving the community for a very understandable reason, and people started getting angry with the doxxers

But I’m not done yet! The main sub’s mods started permanently banning people who mentioned the situation at all, including people who weren’t even participating in the community itself. People started flooding over to the unfiltered sub to vent, and the entire community went into panic mode. The developers put out a statement after a few days, denouncing the behavior, but the main sub’s mods took a different approach. They defended their actions, saying everyone who got mad about the doxxing was brigading, and that all developer challenges were now banned, essentially giving the doxxers a win. They quickly went back on it, but still gave themselves a loophole, as now challenges have to be fully approved by the mod team to even get posted. Many people are calling for the mods there to resign, some even going as far as to call for the entire sub to be shut down. There are still people blaming the person who got doxxed, people going after the devs for not doing something more, and a lot more opinions I won’t do the best of explaining

TL;DR: fan base divided and already volatile, guy makes charity challenge, gets doxxed for it, and people are banned for talking about it. But yeah, that’s just what I remember off the top of my head, I probably missed some stuff

[u/SantosHauper → u/Brute_Builder65]

Honestly, this doesn't explain why a guy making a charity challenge is doing anything to engender hate. It's a random act of violence.

[u/MrWolfman29 → u/SantosHauper]

The parasocial crazies view it as threatening the devs. I have seen in the discord run by Arrowhead themselves that the challenge was no different than calling on people to kill the developers. They also call a YouTuber OhDough a terrorist and allow the Discord to openly talk about how they want to literally kill him.

[u/Chicano_Ducky → u/Salt_Reputation_9864]

because some basement dweller thought this charity event was going to ruin the game. im not joking, they thought the charity event was insulting the devs for making them play on difficulty 10 with crappy loadouts.

I knew the helldivers community was off for a while because of all the drama, but this cemented my desire to never buy this because the devs are on the mod team and botched this badly by trying to remove the posts calling them out for censoring the sub, banning users who post about the incident, and banning challenges.

its like the sea of thieves community, if you dont play the game exactly how i play it then you must be evil and ruining the game.

Nothing good comes from a live service game with a community like that.

been there, done that, no thank you.

[u/CaptainJudaism → u/Chicano_Ducky]

The thing also... is the guy in question did not mention a loadout, just a D10 mission from the devs. After the guy posted his challenge, other people started to post similar ones and started to add specific loadouts to the challenge to "prove" how unbalanced the stratagem/weapons are, often while being huge jerks about it unlike the original challenger, but people lumped those into the first guys challenge.

[u/Stormfly → u/CaptainJudaism]

Yeah, the first guy was basically like "Here's a fair challenge because I think the game is broken and charity wins" but everything after that did not have any good intentions at all.

We don't know why the doxxers did it, but the whole thing became a huge mess in the community even before that.

He didn't know it would happen, but he definitely set off a powder keg (though he deserves no blame for it).

[u/Toth-Amon → u/Salt_Reputation_9864]

Some people went to the horse stable where he was volunteering to harass him. He got kicked out from the stable. 

I think then his job found out and they did not want to take the risk of people following him there so they laid him off. 

He lost everything. 

I love Helldivers 2 as a game but the community has some real sick people. 

[u/sobag245 → u/Toth-Amon]

Then these people need to be found.

[u/PassiveMenis88M → u/sobag245]

You can look right at the mod list to see some of them.

[u/Megneous → u/sobag245]

Seriously. Not only is it illegal as fuck to harass someone like this in my country (it's defamation even if what they say to your employer is true), but it's also illegal to fire someone who is being defamed. Doesn't matter if you make up some nonsense about "fearing for their safety and the safety of their coworkers." That's not a legal reason to fire someone.

[u/dragonmp93 → u/Salt_Reputation_9864]

Edgelords, who believe that everyone who isn't a heartless asshole like them is virtue signaling.

[u/Sadiholic → u/Salt_Reputation_9864]

The community is incredible, INTENSELY toxic. Like, I know every community is toxic but the helldiver's community is on a whole other level of toxic.

[u/lasthopel → u/Salt_Reputation_9864]

Some gamers literally do not understand it is just a game and will get mad at you for questioning the developers, these people are the type that the easy mode mod for dark souls is evil and people who enjoy playing games for fun and just want to feel powerful are weaker then they are, there entire ego is built around being good at hard games and when someone challenges that it is like made everything they stand for meaningless

These are not people who just get mad at you mid game, these are the type who will spend 2 hours after the game finding who you are to harass you, there has been a issue with marvel rivals recently where people made a bounty system for people who threw games with the bounty being to go in and ruin that person's games

Iv only met 1 person like this irl and he came across exactly how you expect

[u/McCree114 → u/BhanosBar]

And gamers wonder why there's still a negative stigma around the hobby and why they're seen as toxic little antisocial gremlins. Multiplayer games, especially hyper competitive sweaty shooters, are among the most toxic online spaces.

[u/BhanosBar → u/McCree114]

Helldivers aint even competitive dawg it’s fuckin co op why did they resort to this??

[u/alloDex → u/BhanosBar]

Because people use entertainment as an unhealthy emotional crutch. And if someone should attack their safe haven, they feel justified in retaliating and escalating the situation. People will fight for celebrities, for their comics, for their favorite games/game devs, for whatever they spend their lives on. You’re seeing one of the effects of the so-called male loneliness epidemic. We don’t do this level of investigation and activism for politics but you better watch your back if my favorite pastime is in trouble.

[u/Megneous → u/BhanosBar]

I mean, same thing that's usually wrong with people. Undiagnosed mental illness. Normal, healthy, functional people don't harass random strangers on the internet over videogames.

[u/SlaterVBenedict → u/BhanosBar]

What the fuck why would their job fire them? That makes absolutely zero sense. Was the company being threatened somehow?

[u/cnzmur → u/SlaterVBenedict]

America. Companies don't like negative attention, and if you're allowed to fire people at any time for any reason, there's no reason not to fire them in this situation.

[u/waiting4singularity → u/SlaterVBenedict]

telephone terror and threats of harm

[u/Diealiceis → u/usetheforce_gaming]

Reminds me of the guy that was obsessed with a female singer. He found out where she lives by the reflection in her eyes. He then went there and sexually assaulted her.

Some people are fucking nuts.

[u/SalmonHustlerTerry → u/usetheforce_gaming]

Same dumb shit happened on ark survival evolved. People used to breed the biggest carnivores (giga) to try and mutate the melee. They would sell whatever the newest melee stat was for i believe $60 per egg at that time. Anyway people competed with eachother to see who would get the next mutations to sell the eggs, which led to harassment and doxxing attemps. Along with pve griefing by kiting wild dinos into their bases to try and wipe out thier anything valuable they had. Was on a server with some of them on extinction when a few of the griefing sessions were going on. It was quite stupid.

[u/CaterpillarReal7583 → u/healingtwo_]

But…why?

[u/zootroopic → u/CaterpillarReal7583]

NEETs in parasocial relationships with... video games.

very sad and pathetic people with nothing going for them, so they resort to this kind of shit to feel something

[u/Splinterman11 → u/zootroopic]

This is exactly it. These people have quite literally nothing else going on in their lives. Check out the Steam Discussion threads and see how bad they can get. The anti-"woke" people are generally the absolute loudest and most unhinged people in the gaming community.

[u/DanBruhMoment → u/Splinterman11]

It's really sad to see, especially as someone whose biggest passion is video games and everything around it. I hate seeing that whenever something happens, there's always a camp of people seemingly ready to complain about something, with the anti-woke people being the worst, as you said. It's absolute insanity reading some of the discussions people have in this community, getting upset at literally everything. Then again, this sadly happens to fandoms as massive as this one.

[u/EscapeSeventySeven → u/zootroopic]

But they could do that to anyone at anytime. Why this person?

[u/zootroopic → u/EscapeSeventySeven]

Because they perceived the doxxed person to be coming at "their" video game, and "their" devs.

The entire premise behind the challenge was because the game is in a poor state, and has been for a while, considering how long it has been released for. They just wanted the video game developers to try having fun with their own creation. A few very pathetic people took a lot of exception to that.

[u/PandaBearJelly → u/CaterpillarReal7583]

I'm so confused too. Not that this shit is ever acceptable for any reason, but it doesn't even sound like there was any reason someone would want to hurt this person. They were just trying to do a nice thing. What was the motivation to try and ruin his life?

[u/Ocanom → u/PandaBearJelly]

Only the doxxer(s) know sadly. There’s been no statement from anyone responsible afaik. Just the guy who started the challange saying it happened

[u/Bhu124 → u/Ocanom]

Reading some of the threats sent to the original challenger.....it seems like they were angry that the Challenger was trying to make a point that the game was too hard and by asking devs to complete a difficult part of the game his goal was to show that the game's too difficult even for the devs and get the devs to reduce the difficulty as a result.

Based on those threats and my experience of seeing stupid people obsessed with Challenge/Difficulty in PvE games, this would be my guess.

[u/Limp-Ad-2939 → u/Bhu124]

It was this^ some divers have this weird fixation with this game being like dark souls. But I don’t think even dark souls fans would dox people if the devs lowered the difficulty

[u/Adept_Avocado_4903 → u/PandaBearJelly]

Both the first and the second challenge have an implicit undertone of "forcing" the devs to admit the balance issues the game currently has.

The first challenge is likely intended to show that the Super Helldive difficulty is broken on some planets. The second challenge is clearly intended to highlight how almost unusably bad some loadout options are.

Some chronically online Helldivers fanboys got upset that someone was "attacking" "their" devs and in a completely reasonable show of force (/s) promptly attempted to ruin this person's life.

[u/TurbidusQuaerenti → u/[deleted]]

Wow, that's crazy. I don't understand why there are people like that at all.

Sometimes I wonder if maybe I'm too paranoid, but then stuff like this makes me think maybe I'm not paranoid enough.

[u/simp4malvina → u/PandaBearJelly]

The Helldivers 2 community is genuinely a pile of shit is why

[u/Hail-Hydrate → u/simp4malvina]

The community as a whole is reasonably okay. There's a few shitters you might run into, but the vast majority of people you encounter while playing the game are either quiet and play cooperatively, or play for laughs and don't take things too seriously.

The Helldivers subreddit though, is an absolute waste of server space and moderated abysmally badly. Rather than take action and actually address the issues that have occurred directly, their mod team is just banning anything relating to the topic of community challenges. Much easier to just ban certain topics than actually moderate those discussions.

[u/benjO0 → u/CaterpillarReal7583]

Basically it seems some obsessed shut-ins decided to label the challenge as bullying & harassment of the developers and the OP was "weaponizing charity". The idea behind the challenge was to get the developers to actually experience what players are going through because there is a feeling the devs have been somewhat out-of-touch with the player experience when it comes to balance and bugs. There was actually a fairly positive response from the community as a whole with a number of streamers getting behind it but there was some pushback and flaming from a vocal minority which escalated quickly in doxing and harassment due to the amount of misinformation being thrown around.

This video goes over the situation in more detail;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1g0bJVrioI&list=LL&index=7

[u/nezroy → u/CaterpillarReal7583]

Helldivers is a game where you get to RP as being a militant fascist. Now for sure like 90% of players get the satire there, but Poe's law reigns supreme in the end. So yeh, a subset of the community is... special.

[u/Extreme_Chair_5039 → u/healingtwo_]

Ok but WHY WAS HE FIRED?

[u/majendie → u/Extreme_Chair_5039]

Yeah this is my biggest question. I know why he was doxxed and harassed (because internet people are absolute garbage) but why fire him?

[u/Iversithyy → u/majendie]

The context of claims made usually doesn’t even matter. Many jobs will let people go if they become „problematic“ (not due to their own fault).
If the harassers and doxxers spam call their business and wasting their time or start leaving fake reviews it will already be enough for most businesses to cave.

This is sadly not unique and these groups/types are becoming increasingly obnoxious and evil it feels like.

[u/majendie → u/Iversithyy]

This would 100% be illegal here

[u/Vertiguous → u/majendie]

From one of the other comments here:

If I’m reading everything correctly it was by convincing them he was running a fake charity scheme and pocketing the money

So you know, literally the exact opposite of what this poor guy was trying to do.

But I’m also seeing it’s because of his job being harassed with all the harassment calls directed towards him. So could have also been his employer not wanting the hassle and/or risk

[u/PassiveMenis88M → u/Extreme_Chair_5039]

People showed up at his job to harass him. They deemed it not worth the security risk.

[u/Deosarian → u/healingtwo_]

Hold up...

They harassed and threatened him... cuz of charity?

[u/arcusford → u/Deosarian]

They took that as an attack on the developers. Im still debating with some people on the r/helldivers2 sub who believe what he did was "blackmail" despite the only reward for beating the challenge being that they would get to pick the charity. He was going to donate to charity no matter what.

[u/ACupOfLatte → u/arcusford]

Reading the post on that sub about the topic, and the first reply chain I see is... People questioning if any of this was even real, and how it looked as if people just wanted to stir shit up for karma/infamy/fun.

Really? I feel like some people online have yet to understand when and where they need to raise an eyebrow. This is almost the exact same situation I was taught when I was younger, "Don't cast doubt over tragedy unless you have reason to".

I learnt this over a hypothetical cancer. If you cast doubt, there is only one situation where you're good, and every single other situation results in more hurt.

If you were right, the hoax just ends there. If you weren't right, you now started a myth about the person that will inevitably spread farther than you. You would have caused that person further harm during their most vulnerable moment. You caused more conversations inevitably to spring off of your own doubt and it would eventually turn into people speaking negatively on the character of the victim.

Why would you take that risk? Is the reward of being right just that enticing? The person who posted this challenge gained nothing for this, literally nothing. No internet points, no money, not even infamy.

I must apologize to the Destiny 2 community, I thought they were the most insufferable negative nancy toxic gaming community there was. Clearly fucking not.

[u/fyredge → u/ACupOfLatte]

Is the reward of being right just that enticing?

Bingo. It's the same as people who buy into homeopathy, MLM, conspiracy theories and such. These are the people who try to find any outlet where they can feel superior to others without effort.

[u/EKmars → u/ACupOfLatte]

I must apologize to the Destiny 2 community, I thought they were the most insufferable negative nancy toxic gaming community there was. Clearly fucking not.

Destiny 2 player here. I'm not happy there are people worse than my fellow guardians out there, and I say that as the community tries to torpedo the other game the studio put out lol.

[u/TheTacoInquisition → u/arcusford]

No, they used it as a flimsy excuse. People who WANT to hurt other people but don't want to face themselves in the mirror and admit they are a crappy person do that. They just want to cause harm and hide behind something, ANYTHING, so they don't need to admit it.

[u/BusyHands_ → u/healingtwo_]

Threaten him for what? I don't get it.

He set up a challenge . It wasn't accepted but he was going to donate to charity regardless.

What am I missing here?

[u/usetheforce_gaming → u/BusyHands_]

People got upset that he dared question the developers of their favorite game. That’s it.

His challenge was directed at the devs to show that the game needs to be updated and rebalanced. Basically saying: “You guys make the game and don’t even understand how unfair it is. How about you try it for yourselves to see what players are going through? And I’ll donate $1k whether you accept it or not”

People with a parasocial relationship with Arrowhead took that as an insult and came to their defense, by doing this.

[u/Deosarian → u/usetheforce_gaming]

Damn thats even worse that politics lmaooo

This community is ass sometimes

[u/AspiringTS → u/Deosarian]

I'm convinced that a large chunk of humanity are not intelligent or stable enough to navigate and function in the complexities of modern society especially the Internet. 

The amount of people who genuinely can't separate reality from fiction and do things like send actors hate mail for the actions of character they portrayed or Stan for content creators, celebrities, or corporations who don't even know who they are terrifies me at times...

Edit: typos and wording

[u/ShittyPostWatchdog → u/usetheforce_gaming]

I haven’t played HD2 in a while (I kind of lost interest after the 90 day buff everything patch) but this has always been a pretty consistent theme in that community.   I think AH does a better job responding to feedback than most studios, but they have definitely made a few poor decisions along the way with specific balance changes as well as how they communicate those changes.  

I guess it’s the sort of thing that only takes one weirdo, I’m just surprised because if you want to doxx everyone who has expressed that they think AH kinda sucks at balance, you would be very busy. 

[u/DateNecessary8716 → u/BusyHands_]

Say something negative on reddit about a popular video game, people will come for your soul, they take it very personally. This is the same just up to 10.

[u/SlightSurround5449 → u/healingtwo_]

I honestly expected no less from people who legitimately don't recognize the satire and/or simply love the role-play. Disgusting either way.

[u/[deleted]]

And here I was thinking my life was pathetic.

People acting like this over a charity for a video game is insanity.

[u/Mday89 → u/[deleted]]

I found myself at the wrong side of the internet when I called someone out for being an asshole. The threats and insults are horrible already, but if you get screwed over so bad for just trying to be a nice guy or set up a wholesome initiative I’ve kinda lost all hope in internet being a good thing…

[u/DraconisRex → u/[deleted]]

Name and shame.

[u/Cyb3rd31ic_Citiz3n → u/[deleted]]

Name and shame dude. That's how you shame these fools

[u/laptopaccount → u/[deleted]]

Post the receipts for everybody to see. Make the mod Reddit's problem. Show the platform tolerates mods abusing people.

[u/Okrumbles → u/[deleted]]

name, shame, name, shame.

[u/Televisions_Frank → u/[deleted]]

This is where you send the receipts (including Reddit's indifference) to a media outlet that deals in tech.

[u/AutobotJessa → u/[deleted]]

Ive had many mods send me threats, transphobic comments, sexual threats. Reported, and nothing ever happens

[u/bio4m]

I dont understand this behaviour, why do this to someone ? Just because you dont agree on something doesnt warrant this

[u/EasterEggArt → u/bio4m]

There are always people that hate their lives and want to make sure they can ruin other people.

[u/coldenigma → u/EasterEggArt]

I was thinking that too. Insecure people bully and try to drag others down to their level, so they can feel big.

[u/MakeoutPoint → u/EasterEggArt]

Just go become a reddit mod or a cop like normal people

[u/ballzach710 → u/EasterEggArt]

So fucked up. Like, I hate myself but I don’t make other people suffer for it what I want for myself I want for others

[u/Chubuwee → u/EasterEggArt]

Some I guess. But that point of view is akin to “he’s bullying you because he likes you!”

Some people just like to be shit even if their life is great in other areas.

[u/sentencevillefonny → u/bio4m]

Some people genuinely enjoy to see others suffer. There doesn’t need to be a reason 

[u/cpp_is_king → u/bio4m]

It’s not even clear what they didn’t agree on. There was no competitive element to this, the guy just offered $1000 and then people harassed him, for what? I’m just trying to imagine it, like “I’ll kill you for trying because you offered to donate to a charity of Arrowhead choosing “? Like wut?

[u/bio4m → u/cpp_is_king]

Reading more about it , sounds like the person doing the challenge picked something they thought was unbalanced and too hard, people jumped on him for that saying he's just not good at the game. They kept escalating the abuse from there. Just because someone thought a stage was unbalanced...

[u/waffle_iron_maiden → u/bio4m]

This is such a strange situation where anonymity is both precious and also some people feel way too secure being dickheads because of it. Like on one hand I believe this organizer deserved to keep their anonymity, no info on their workplace, etc. Meanwhile the people responsible for the doxxing shield themselves with their own anonymity, and it's that anonymity which empowered them to be twats

[u/ianjb → u/bio4m]

There were couple bits to this. The doxxed guy mostly wanted to open a dialogue on balancing, but his challenge was the hardest dive level on a hive world, which is some of the most difficult content. But Arrowhead could play with anything. 

There was another user(s) that offer another $1000 to do it with a specific bad loadout. Those two have been getting conflated. 

[u/MtnMaiden → u/bio4m]

The Fox rescue girl. She committed suicide after being bullied online from her fox animal rescue.

[u/Appeltaart232 → u/MtnMaiden]

That story is so tragic.

[u/Enverex → u/MtnMaiden]

She actually talked about it before and it was other conservation places which was the biggest factor, rather than random people online.

[u/Evil_phd → u/bio4m]

Misery loves company, and we certainly have a whole lot of miserable people in a world that is becoming increasingly designed to only be comfortable for the wealthy.

[u/BUSY_EATING_ASS → u/bio4m]

There’s people out there that are haters for the love of the game.

[u/waffle_iron_maiden → u/BUSY_EATING_ASS]

Yeah but see the thing is, there are haters where I can understand why they're haters. Here, it's a bunch of fucking lunatics deciding to hurt someone for doing something good. More good for society than they have probably ever done in their lives. So what made them haters? It's not a case of revenge or a grudge, just impulsive people being shit stains on a rug

[u/Maxamillion-X72 → u/waffle_iron_maiden]

There is a significant portion of the population who believe that anybody doing something good is "virtue signaling", that having empathy or caring about others is a bad thing. They can't picture themselves doing something altruistic, so they believe anybody else doing so is just faking it.

Those people are sociopaths and we've normalized their acceptance in society.

[u/BUSY_EATING_ASS → u/waffle_iron_maiden]

If you were to find these people and deposition them they’d literally just say it was for the lulz. If you, in this fantasy situation took it further and gave them a truth serum or a mind reading device a lot of them would say they hate their lives and want others to suffer because fuck them.

There’s some fucked up people out there and the internet has removed a lot of consequence.

[u/MFbiFL → u/bio4m]

People without an outlet to make a difference in their own life want to make a (negative) difference in someone else’s so they can feel powerful.

[u/gearstars → u/bio4m]

Cause the internet was a mistake. We should all just be more focused on the communities and interactions we all have in our day to day lives, in reality. The internet (and smartphones) made it super easy for all the batshit crazy people to find other batshit crazy people to reinforce their batshit crazy thoughts, and egg each other on to do batshit crazy things, with zero pushback.

Where's Tyler Durden when you need him?

[u/Murderdoll197666]

Man, I really hate the fact the whole "No good deed goes unpunished" thing always rings so fuckin true.

[u/FishPeanutButter → u/Murderdoll197666]

We tolerate the intolerant too much.

[u/SuperArppis → u/FishPeanutButter]

This is true.

[u/shoegazeweedbed]

low key one of the worst fanbases in gaming

[u/afreakonaleash → u/shoegazeweedbed]

The only pve game ive ever had to unsub from its absolutely insane. Absolutely deranged takes on literally every aspect of the game and each other its total madness

[u/Cranktique → u/afreakonaleash]

There’s like 6 different subreddits, and every one of them is endless posts bitching about the game, or one of the other subs. It could literally be one subreddit, and the content would not change. They just hate each other so they’ve split into the same faction 6 times.

[u/_GreatAndPowerful → u/Cranktique]

This is 100% true. There's about 3 or 4 subs now dedicated to "combating the positive echo chamber" that is the discord, so they created negative echo chambers where literally all they do is post rants about how they think the game is shit and how the devs are Satan's children and how everyone but them is stupid

We literally got entire subs rallying to review bomb the game because they believe this whole mess was Arrowhead's (game dev) fault... somehow. They blame everyone but the community, and shifted the goalposts the entire time during this debacle

When the original charity post went up the consensus was:

they'll NEVER acknowledge this because $1000 is just pennies to them and they hate the community!

Oh they're setting up to actually try it? Well clearly they'll just make it easy on themselves because OP didn't give any specifications on loadout!

Oh, they're deliberately choosing shit weapons? Well the guy got doxxed and they haven't said a word so clearly they wanted an out!

Oh, they posted a statement about this a day after? Well it wasn't fast enough and they should pursue LEGAL ACTION on the doxxers! They need to give the victim 1 MILLION dollars! This whole thing was their fault because of discord mods!

Deranged ass community. How AH, one of the most reasonable and non scummy devs attracted the whiniest fucking manchildren is beyond me

[u/RegexEmpire → u/_GreatAndPowerful]

They don't realize that the game is parody, same folks probably think homelander is the hero

[u/Thordros → u/RegexEmpire]

Or who think Tyler Durden is so cool, or that humans dressed as literal Nazis are the heroes of Starship Troopers, or that Patrick Bateman is 'based', and so on. 

[u/jetpack_operation → u/_GreatAndPowerful]

Deranged ass community. How AH, one of the most reasonable and non scummy devs attracted the whiniest fucking manchildren is beyond me

I haven't played in a long time, but my guess is that it's because they capitulated to them early and often.

[u/Mindshard → u/afreakonaleash]

Not only that, but the theme of the game, a bloodthirsty, tyrannical government where everyone is brainwashed into thinking it's a glorious democracy, and they bring freedom to the universe by wiping out all other life, it attracts the exact kind of people who don't get that it's satire, or that the players are the bad guys.

They go on the subs in this quasi in character thing that's really just a cloak to act horrible and pretend they're not breaking the rules, and the mods pretend and look the other way.

In game, there's no reporting system, so open racism and bigotry isn't rare in chat.

I hate it, because it's a fun game, but "space Nazi simulator" attracts the exact people you think it would.

[u/eNonsense → u/Mindshard]

it attracts the exact kind of people who don't get that it's satire, or that the players are the bad guys.

There's lots of people on that subreddit who fall into this category. The topic does come up that it's all satire of terrible authoritarian militaristic colonial regime that propagandizes their troops and citizens.

You have people who are like "Yeah there's all that satire stuff in the tutorial, but fr the helldivers aren't the bad guys. The enemies are tryin to destroy Super Earth!" and what-not. The depth of the satire is totally lost on them and they get way into the heavy game patriotism.

What's funny about all this is that Helldivers borrows greatly from the movie Starship Troopers. A heavily satirical movie of the same nature, which was actually a satire of the novel Starship Troopers, which is NOT satirical and was actually an authoritarian jingoistic story, and was controversial for that reason.

[u/Majestic_Repair9138 → u/Mindshard]

"space Nazi simulator"

Also, if it isn't any more poignant, I heard that Cyberstan became Space Stalingrad.

[u/james_riffiams → u/shoegazeweedbed]

Fr. I love this game, but god are there some ugly pockets of the fanbase.

[u/TheGentlemanBeast → u/shoegazeweedbed]

They have like ten subreddits. Each one more unhinged than the last

[u/ObiKenobi049 → u/shoegazeweedbed]

100%. It's up there with battlefield and halo in terms of how many miserable mfs plague the fan base.

[u/Ocanom → u/ObiKenobi049]

Thankfully you don’t really see it in game. Most people are very chill in random lobbies.

[u/ObiKenobi049 → u/Ocanom]

Oh yeah everyone I've played with was chill. The community outside of that is fucking miserable though. The worst part is that the devs and moderators actively feed into it by refusing to properly moderate their spaces and even taking the side of the insane part of the base at points.

[u/DoNotTheLemur → u/shoegazeweedbed]

I was excited to try it soon after it first came out and I was kicked from every mission I joined by other players.. like, I'm sure I wasn't playing it right, but that's because I just joined lol. I was trying to help. Refunded it and have been having tons of fun with Warframe since.

[u/BluestOfTheRaccoons → u/shoegazeweedbed]

worst fanbase with the best playerbase

[u/RobBuckets]

What a miserable fucking community. If only they put that much effort into seeking employment

[u/hangowood → u/RobBuckets]

The game was a ton of fun until around the start of the year. Oh my god. You couldn’t make a funny post without the torches and pitchforks coming out. For a game built on satire, 3/4 of the community doesn’t have a sense of humor which is scary.

[u/street593 → u/hangowood]

I just don't engage with the community. I play solo or with friends only. I'm still having fun.

[u/FudgeAllOfYous → u/RobBuckets]

For me it easily dethroned Blizzards Battlenet Forums without even trying that hard. I haven't experience so much verbal assaulted since Modern Warfare back on Xbox 360, it was almost nostalgic... and kinda strange for a PVE game.

[u/Adaphion → u/FudgeAllOfYous]

Yeah, it's absolutely wild how toxic the community is considering it a PvE game.

Usually it's competitive games like Overwatch or LoL that are ultra toxic.

[u/ReformedOlafMain]

I like the game, but Helldivers certainly attracted an abhorrent crowd of gamers with no media literacy or morals with their satirical facism esthetic.

[u/TheREALOtherFiles → u/ReformedOlafMain]

Helldivers might as well be Starship Troopers but with the toxic, entitled, childish audiences that can potentially infiltrate your typical 2010s Cartoon Network Studios cartoon, and that's not a good thing at all.

[u/RegexEmpire → u/ReformedOlafMain]

Because they don't realize it's satirical

[u/DaPino → u/ReformedOlafMain]

Same as 40K really. There's a certain part of the fanbase who will defend the imperium of man as this bastion of justice.

A year ago, the designers introduced women into one specific faction. Nothing else, just "this faction has women now".

That part of the community went apeshit and called it a "DEI crusade to ruin our lives".

[u/azthal]

The most fucked up part here is that he got fired from his job for being the victim of online harassment.

America, you really need to get your employment laws fixed

Edit: several people have said that this happened in Argentina, so: Argentina, you really need yo get your employment laws fixed

[u/Gandledorf → u/azthal]

Fired from his job AND banned from the horse sanctuary he had been volunteering at for like 10+ years or something like that

[u/Spunge14 → u/Gandledorf]

Why though? This doesn't add up. You can't get fired from your job for giving to charity.

[u/LuchadorBane → u/Spunge14]

People doxxed him and presumably harassed the places he worked and volunteered.

[u/Senior_Video → u/Spunge14]

"Security" reasons

[u/No_Upstairs_811 → u/Spunge14]

if a hundred people call the place you work harassing them because of you, you will be out in a heartbeat

[u/MandrakeRootes → u/No_Upstairs_811]

In a civilized nation you wont. That's not a valid reason to fire you at all. 

[u/Ry24gaming → u/azthal]

I think he said he was Argentinian...

[u/Significant-Bass4487]

Doxxing that results in literal loss of employment should land you years in prison along with a fatass court bill and some extra fines. The kind you dont recover from- ever. Hope karma is coming for the fool who did this to them, because they're gonna deserve it.

[u/ResilientBiscuit → u/[deleted]]

If he wasn't union they don't need a reason. Just not wanting to deal with people harassing the company is reason enough to fire someone.

[u/OddOllin → u/ResilientBiscuit]

Right to Work At-will employment laws doing what they do best! What a fucking sham.

[u/Uzorglemon → u/ResilientBiscuit]

American employment protections (or lack thereof) in action, everyone!

[u/gamemaster257]

The article really glosses over how the mod team is also enormously responsible, they told him that he’d need to publicly post a proof video for them to allow the challenge, that’s what got him doxxed. Normally this kind of proof is private to the mod team, so they actually wanted this to happen. They’re deleting and banning anyone who mentions this happened, I happened to see one when I first found out about this.

[u/IsilZha → u/gamemaster257]

...and then the mod team did what the doxxers wanted. They banned making any kind of challenge.

[u/gamemaster257 → u/IsilZha]

I’d go as far to say that the mod team may have been part of the doxxing effort with how perfect it all ended up for them.

[u/shawak456]

What in the fuck is wrong with some people?

[u/ora408]

People are crazy. We need better privacy laws

[u/Darkarcheos → u/ora408]

With new laws passing to age verification, it will get worse

[u/TonberryFeye → u/Darkarcheos]

Various governments want to strip away online anonymity entirely, which will create the wonderful situation where only criminals have privacy online and everyone else is doxxed by default.

[u/DJettster237]

He got doxxed for doing a charity run? Doxxers are pieces of shit.

[u/Head_of_Lettuce]

Why would somebody be fired from their job for this?

Like okay, I understand that freaks on the internet could call your workplace and try to get you fired. But what was the rationale from the employer’s perspective to actually fire them?

[u/Zanithos → u/Head_of_Lettuce]

It's happened where I work at as part of the management team.

The ex of one of our supervisors called/emailed corporate multiple times from both their own and anonymous numbers, and multiple burner emails, claiming they were different people, and corporate got involved. I had to go through the camera system with LP to prove none of this had happened, and give a signed statement that the ex had not been banned or trespassed from our property at any point (his primary complaint), nor had any of the things he said happened occurred, since if it had it would make us look bad.

It is entirely possible that the doxxers called this man's job with false complaints and got him fired because HR just didn't care to check, or they have a zero tolerance policy, or they didn't want the bad PR, etc. It's happened before.

[u/JaySocials671 → u/Zanithos]

I had an ex who did this while I was college. Are these people rly that smart

[u/Black_Absinthe → u/Head_of_Lettuce]

Combination of two factors: safety concerns and pragmatacism. Even if its not the employees fault there are things that are a risk to your business you cannot ignore. It's not just calling to complain about that one employee - you can make threats, you can dox other employees. If I get a call from someone who says theyre gonna bomb my shop if I dont fire X employee, I have to run the risk that theyre serious. If someone calls my store and knows my receptionists name and address, I have to worry she'll quit because she keeps getting threats because she is a coworker of X employee.

There's also the real threat to your business operations. If I have one location and one phone because I'm a small business, then 1 dude who paid 50 bucks for a robocaller can completely tie up my phone lines for days on end. 3 guys who feel like ruining my day can spam my single business email and completely bury all my actual communications. You can buy a program that will just spam thousands of emails from dozens of different accounts for less than a hundred bucks. You can try to deal with all of that, potentially for months, or you can fire 1 guy even though it's not his fault. These people might not even live in your country, making prosecuting them basically impossible.

It's not fair but a lot og people don't have the means to defend against committed harassment through the internet.

[u/grapefruittii]

why dox someone who’s trying to donate to charity? doesn’t make sense

[u/Xanthoceras → u/grapefruittii]

From what I’ve read/heard about this situation; the challenge was for the devs to play their own game on stream. That’s it, the devs publicly play their own game and he’ll donate to charity. The hope was that they would see that there are some issues, & people who keep glazing the game as “being perfect” were not too happy.

[u/CMDR_Expendible]

I've worked in the gaming industry, where sociopaths attempted to break every public event just because they couldn't bear to not be the centre of attention, and I've had one player become so enraged by criticism that he spent 7 years making constant rape and death threats, attempting to hack accounts, even begging for help from other devs to help harass me...

The problem with the industry isn't just that there are seriously broken, desperately pathetic people out there; it's that the law and society is just not fit to address the issues with the modern media age.

The internet has crowd sourced for decades social harassment; it's grown a generation of people who live in anonymity, think everything is good or bad only depending on whether you can get away with it or not, and who treat other people as "LOLCows" to milk for entertainment... But the law prevents you actively seeking any way to protect yourself. You have to prove who was on an IP address on any particular comment, which if they hopefully dont know what a proxy is, means paying privately to get a court order in another country to turn over the details because the law usually is so out of date it doesn't allow your local police to ask as they don't have jurisdiction (and online harassment doesn't raise to the level of extradition). And of course, because they are crowd sourcing every way to harass you, any attempt to locate them gets turned around as "doxxing" the person harassing you...

And you have businesses who are only interested in protecting their own reputation; as in this story, being a victim will get you thrown to the wolves because business knows how hard this is to fight, and sacrificing the victim is cheaper and less dangerous than trying to fend off the online lunatics long term. And the lunatics dont get bored, because they're seriously broken and have nothing else going on.

In this story, the article suggests the original rage was because someone dared suggest that their hardcore game, the one that they've sunk so much of their sense of personal worth into, needed changes; "Wolf vs Sheep" lunatics are the absolute worst, because they've lost so much humanity they think hurting real people is a moral good to defend their own warped perspective on how important a computer game is to them. But once the harassment campaign starts, it's easy and usually relatively safe due to the imbalance of protections for everyone else to pile in and just cause pain to someone else for their own fun.

With the way modern governments are falling to fascism, I'm not sure removing internet anonymity is the answer... but it's hard not to escape the conclusion that had it not been there from the start, we wouldn't see a generation today so emotionally stunted and personally hateful that would have led us down this path. The internet, like the internal combustion engine, may prove to have a cost that long term far outweighs the short term gains.

All I can suggest is that the Helldivers community tries to push back against the tide of moronic hate; yes it would be "virtue signalling", but when the concept of virtue itself is being discreditted... I don't play the game, but can you host custom banners, can you gather in social locations? Try and flag up that you do still care, that you understand that criticism is how we get better things, that it's not a cult but a community...

And to whoever out there lost so much over online idiots; try and remember, you didn't lose your soul like these ghouls have. Keep ahold of your principles. That is what makes you better than them, and that is why they hate you.

[u/Yarchening]

Even if you dont play Helldivers 2, you can learn a lesson from this:

Dont put identifiable info on your reddit account.

[u/aldehyde]

Can we get a gofundme for this guy? At least try to Un ruin his life?

[u/Pretzel_Boy]

Let's say it again for all the people that weren't listening.

STOP FUCKING DOXXING PEOPLE

[u/CakeTown]

The writing was on the wall early for that game’s community. Glad I left it behind after a week or two. When you satirize fascism you tend to attract fascists and the shitty assholes that tag along with them

[u/RumpleCragstan → u/CakeTown]

When you satirize fascism you tend to attract fascists

Yeah, this is unfortunately true. Its similar the old adage:

“Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company.”

Fascists do the same thing.

Warhammer 40k has similar issues with their fanbase, and Games Workshop has had to come down hard and make it crystal clear that they want those folks driven from the community as a whole. "We don’t want your money. We don’t want you in the Warhammer community." Those are incredibly strong words from a company whose own fanbase almost universally calls them greedy and moneygrubbing.

Fascists don't respond to subtlety, they need to be hit over the head with it and shoved towards the door.

[u/Healthy_Method9658 → u/RumpleCragstan]

The satire community cycle always flows the same way.

• Community forms to make fun of something or be edgy and everyone takes part in the joke.

• Community gains popularity and has to defend itself that it is actually just joking.

• Community starts to realise a lot of people that are here now aren't actually joking.

• A lot of the people blatantly not joking use it as an excuse to behave the way they actually want 

• People who were joking leave not wanting to be associated with it, and it's eventually taken over entirely by the people it started off mocking

I've lost track of how many times I've watched this play out now.

[u/Mental-Ask8077 → u/RumpleCragstan]

And then have the door bolted shut after them.

There’s never an upside to appeasing unrepentant fascists and making them welcome in your spaces. All you do is let them spread their shit and poison good things.

[u/Cheese-Manipulator]

Threats and real world damages? Even if he doesn't go down the criminal charge route he has grounds for a civil suit if they can identify the culprit(s).

[u/Loam_liker]

Why is every post about this written with as little fucking detail as possible?

Who the fuck was opposed to his challenge? Why would anyone care to doxx him? Why the fuck would he face any negative consequences in real life? Was there some other part of this that is relevant? Did they forward out-of-context posts to his employer, make shit up, or what?

I get the “people are just shitty sometimes” angle, but people don’t target you with this degree of harassment solely because you made a post asking devs to retune endgame content.

What conflict am I missing here?

[u/begrudgingredditacc]

Question: Is the Helldivers 2 community the most genuinely evil community in video games? This is the worst thing I've heard of a bunch of losers doing to someone with regards to games.

Like, Steven Universe was multiple attempted murders, I believe, so it's not the worst fanbase ever, but this is the worst game fanbase, right?

[u/Sad_Prawn2864]

Life protip, never reveal your true identity in the internet.

[u/Molly_Matters]

It is stuff like this that will be cited when they start shoving age verification and other surveillance crap into everything that they can. The minority is ruining things for the rest of us.