By Nelson Schneider - 03/26/23 at 03:22 PM CT
It seems like everything terrible that could happen did happen in 2020. In addition to the pandemic and race riots, there was a major uptick in the usage of the hashtag #MeToo to, allegedly, give women a voice they didn’t have to speak out against those who had sexually assaulted them. Unsurprisingly, accusations came crawling out of the woodwork, flying gratuitously across the warped, surrealist landscape of Twitter.
Of course, even though we really just want to be left alone to enjoy our nerdy hobbies, gamers – specifically Role-Playing gamers – were dragged into the #MeToo debacle due to the accusations of sexual misconduct leveled at Chris Avellone, a long-time writer in both the cRPG and tabletop RPG spaces, giving him a legendary curriculum vitae featuring some of the biggest titles and IPs in gaming (plus a few blunders, but nobody’s perfect).
In 2021, Avellone was forced to respond to the increased pressure and Cancellation attempts placed on him by the public at large, and filed suit against the two women who had accused him of being some flavor of unclearly-defined rapist. He filed a libel suit against his two accusers, effectively forcing them to make their #MeToo accusations hold up in an actual court instead of the brain-dead Court of Public Opinion.
We have late-breaking news that Avellone has been completely vindicated in the case, with the two women agreeing to drop all charges and pay a ‘seven-digit settlement’ to the writer. I cannot stress enough how heartening this news is, as it shows that, no matter how broken it may appear at times, the system and the law remain functional.
#MeToo simply got too carried away in a joyous orgy of vendetta and patriarchy-smashing. As should be obvious to anyone with a functioning brain, there are numerous levels of sexual misconduct. I’m not going to comment on exactly what Avellone was accused of doing, but in far too many cases, #MeToo has been used to conflate unsolicited complements, accidental touching in crowded areas, and flirting with full-blown, penis-in-vagina rape. This is quite literally the story of “The Girl Who Cried Rape,” as adapted from an ancient fairy tale by Aesop. If someone continually reports a crime when there is no crime, it won’t be long before nobody is willing to believe the reports, which completely undermines the entire purpose of #MeToo from the outset.
The hashtag was created to provide women who really were experiencing sexual misconduct from their bosses and other superiors with some way to fight back. Yet in misusing and abusing this tool, the Feminists have done nothing but sabotage themselves. In subverting their own hashtag, Avellone’s accusers will ultimately reap what they have sown, and I can’t help but believe that they deserve to be crushed by their settlement payout and drowned in the court costs brought on by their false accusations.
