TotalBiscuit / John Bain's cancer has worsened ; retiring as a Game Critic, expresses future plans

Weltall Zero · May 1, 2018

deepFlaw said:
Though while reading posts here, I also think, to some degree, "now is not the time" in the context of his health means there will never be a time,

Well, there has been plenty of time before. I myself have been critical of his viewpoints in the past. But to do it now, frankly, seems mean, heartless and vindictive.

When you learn someone you disagree with is dying, I think the best think you could do is to use that occassion to remember we're all human, we really have more in common than what differentiates us (we just obsessively focus on the latter), and something like cancer can put some other things in perspective. It feels like an easy, golden opportunity to exercise some emphathy, tolerance and forgiveness, because if not now, then when?

I just read this today and made me think quite a bit; it seems particularly relevant for this conversation:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/
When was the last time you exercised actual tolerance towards anyone in your outgroup (as defined there)?

deepFlaw · May 1, 2018

Weltall Zero said:
Well, there has been plenty of time before. I myself have been critical of his viewpoints in the past. But to do it now, frankly, seems mean, heartless and vindictive.

When you learn someone you disagree with is dying, I think the best think you could do is to use that occassion to remember we're all human, we really have more in common than what differentiates us (we just obsessively focus on the latter), and something like cancer can put some other things in perspective. It feels like an easy, golden opportunity to exercise some emphathy, tolerance and forgiveness, because if not now, then when?

I just read this today and made me think quite a bit; it seems particularly relevant for this conversation:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/
When was the last time you exercised actual tolerance towards anyone in your outgroup (as defined there)?

Having now read all of this, I have a few thoughts.

1. I think there are things that would be heartless and vindictive if said to his face that are not that when discussed separately. Or, maybe not heartless and vindictive, but at the very least cruel despite their honesty. I do not think discussing someone here, or on Twitter, or somewhere else is quite the same thing. No post here is engaging with the man himself, it's a discussion about him, and though I do not think his past needs to be dragged into this it also shouldn't be intentionally ignored. Which is the other concern I have with "now is not the time" (without the idea of place) because even articles written about him consistently ignore this part of his history, even when they have ample room to work with to do it as a historical note of something he's overcome; I do not think there has ever been a time and now may never be a time when his history is portrayed accurately on a wider level.

The rest I'll tag because it's somewhat off topic and I don't want to lengthen the page.

2. I think this theory, while interesting, does not really apply here to the degree you're proposing? The issues at hand are not just ones of being a member of another group but an authority within it, who had hundreds of thousands of people behind them, and acted with that force against nobodies. I'm failing to understand the point being made through this connection, because at least personally my feelings are not made based on a vague understanding of an association or a bias based on that, they're on actual events I saw play out myself.

3. I feel weird about defining GGers as such an arbitrary "outgroup" when they are what they are. If we're talking politics... well, see point 5, but even I certainly don't think the average Republican actually believes in the full intentions of the party line or will act harmfully towards those they disagree with. In comparison I do think the average GGer will act harmfully towards they disagree with due to their shared beliefs (whether the beliefs are out of fear or a desire for apathy or whatever that individual person uses to justify things), even if that harm is just Twitter harassment. Is that not fair to say? (As a personal note regarding criticism in this context though, for whatever it's worth, I also have been critical of people who used their documentation of or treatment by GG to propel themselves into spaces/positions they were not equipped to be in, often at the expense of other marginalized people, etc.)

4. As a note, I also worry it's one of those theories that is to some degree a trap, where anything I say is playing into it and confirming my failure. I'm trying to engage with it the best I can here, but I'm worried I will fall into that in questioning it; forgive me for some paranoia here otherwise.

5. Beyond this I'm unsure what you mean by tolerance, even with the definition giving there. If we are talking about political parties - the Red and Blue described there (though this leaves no real place for me as I'd say I'm left of Democrats) - I'm admittedly a little wary of people who are openly/proudly Republican, sure, particularly given how the US is currently and certain very popular beliefs within the party. That doesn't mean I assume the worst intentions, though unfortunately the people in my actual social circle (friends of friends) that I have interacted with the most actually do not mean well, so that hurts that aspect of discussing this. If putting up with them despite that is tolerance... I'm tolerant, more than I feel I should probably be in that instance?

Weltall Zero · May 1, 2018

It's far too late (4 AM) here and I'm going to bed, but I wanted to say the article is absolutely not a trap. It made me reflect about myself, because I do that. I'm frankly intolerant of a lot of views in my outgroup, and I believe many of them are truly best not tolerated (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia), but at the same time, the argument that tolerating someone you have nothing against is not "tolerance" makes too much sense for confort.

deepFlaw · May 1, 2018

Weltall Zero said:
It's far too late (4 AM) here and I'm going to bed, but I wanted to say the article is absolutely not a trap. It made me reflect about myself, because I do that. I'm frankly intolerant of a lot of views in my outgroup, and I believe many of them are truly best not tolerated (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia), but at the same time, the argument that tolerating someone you have nothing against is not "tolerance" makes too much sense for confort.

Sorry, to be clear- I didn't mean an intentional trap on your part as much as something that's hard to disagree with because it can be argued that disagreeing is part of it, if that makes sense? And even then maybe I'm overthinking it.

I definitely think you're approaching this with good intentions and appreciate you sharing that piece.

MotionBlue · May 2, 2018

The posters using this news to platform are fucking disgusting.

TastyBurger666 · May 2, 2018

deepFlaw said:
I don't want to be rude, but... Please understand that you're telling someone to have empathy and sympathy, while simultaneously accusing them of saying something because they want recognition on social media instead of being empathetic yourself and accepting that they actually believe it.

You can disagree with their feelings (and my own, surely) without accusing them of being disingenuous about it.

It's fine, you're not being rude, just expressing an opinion. Having watched cancer reduce a relative to a wretched husk, I know I wouldn't want that wished on anyone. I happened to chance on the CoOptional last night for a few minutes and hearing him speak, I could already hear the end is probably closer than he's admitting.

What John needs right now is comfort, not vitriol or crappy 'opinions'. It's truly unfortunate some commenters can't get over themselves for this.

Lupic · May 2, 2018

Wonderment said:
Please stop the "early RIP" posts. Subsequent posts of that nature in this thread will be actioned.

It's disgusting that people are actually doing this.
Genna has posted an updatefor those who haven't seen it. Might be worth adding to the OP.

Javier23 · May 2, 2018

Metalsnakezero said:
I want to be upfront and say I'm a bit conflicted with TB. He done great work bring up problems with devs, publishers, and consumer rights. However, he promoted hate on journalist for the wrong reasons, made the whole bad cuphead gameplay worse, and doesn't dig deeper into games from story and context (Ignores the problems with Far cry 5's story and poor representation of race and women). Still cancer sucks and it sucks that he unable to get the right treatment to take control of it. I wish him luck.

deepFlaw said:
I'd ask you to please consider that for some people it is not fair to expect them to see TB as fair and reasonable. I don't agree with all of what Metalsnakezero brought up, but in general given the involvement with GG I think people need to understand that there are folks who really were hurt (or scared by the possibility of being hurt) by his actions or saw people going through that. He totally may have changed himself and his audience since then, but it's not fair to expect people to see it as a "mistake".

Still I can agree that dredging up specifics is messy, whether they're from years ago or things from the past year. But I just want to say this is not as simple as whether someone was genuinely bad or genuinely good. People are complicated and can do hurtful things intentionally even if they go on to be much better than their worst days.

I don't want to be rude, but... Please understand that you're telling someone to have empathy and sympathy, while simultaneously accusing them of saying something because they want recognition on social media instead of being empathetic yourself and accepting that they actually believe it.

You can disagree with their feelings (and my own, surely) without accusing them of being disingenuous about it.

Jesuschrist, would you two just shut the fuck up?

A man dying... But hey, he made Cuphead look bad. Are you two for fucking real?

Deleted member 14649 · May 2, 2018

There are some utter ghouls posting in this thread. You should be ashamed of yourselves and perhaps considering some kind of therapy.

Real Hero · May 2, 2018

I cant believe some of the people in this thread. Fucking horrible

Theswweet · May 2, 2018

With the way people talk you wouldn't know TB distanced himself from GG once he realized it wasn't actually about ethics in video games. Did he say some horrid things? Yeah, but it's not like he's still a hardcore GG'er. It's certainly not justified to try and police the situation where he's literally dying...

Deleted member 888 · May 2, 2018

"Yes, apparently there are things that are too dangerous for even the terminal," he continued. "We're going to keep looking for other trials but I'm currently coming to terms with the fact that I don't have long left and right now at any rate, there is literally nothing I can do about it other than try to manage the pain as best as possible and stay as hydrated […] to ease the pressure on the liver."

In 2015, he revealed there was no cure for his cancer after spots appeared on his liver. At the time, he acknowledged having a life expectancy of up to three years.

http://www.newsweek.com/totalbiscui...uber-gaming-critic-failing-health-says-906740

This would be 3 years later so unfortunately, it looks like time might be catching up for him.

Some moral grandstanding on the internet going on in here. Sure sure, some of you peeps are Gods gift to the earth and you deserve a big badge to pin to your chest that says "I'm perfect and 100% righteous 24/7". In the meantime, others will offer some condolences to a real-time commentary from someone probably on the cusp of dying at a young age from cancer. Dude's far from perfect from what I know of him, but moral grandstanding in a topic such as this just makes you the dick in this instance.

It's okay not to post sometimes, and this is one of those times where at the current time some comments are best kept in your head.

Asmodai48 · May 2, 2018

Damn i missed his port reports

Windrunner · May 2, 2018

This is really touching, dignified and beautiful:

Does that mean I'm done with Youtube and Twitch? Nope, blokes gotta make a living. I have a family to consider and there's no such thing as "too much" when it comes to what I leave them when I go out kicking and screaming. I want to spend the rest of my time with the two things I love the most, my family and my work. I'm transitioning my Youtube and Twitch work over to gameplay with my wife. There's a bunch of co-op stuff I never really got around to playing and I have the perfect gameplay partner right beside me. When I'm having a good idea, I'll be doing gameplay streams and Youtube videos with Genna. If you want to know what to expect from that, well we've done it before, just not recently, there's some rather popular videos of it over on Her channel

This is something that will make me happy, spending time with my family but also getting job satisfaction. That's something all too easily overlooked by some, I'm a very work-driven person and one of hardest things of the past couple of years has been dealing with not being able to reliable do my work. It's brought on depression, uncertainty, anger, you name it. I hate it.

deepFlaw · May 2, 2018

Javier23 said:
Jesuschrist, would you two just shut the fuck up?

A man dying... But hey, he made Cuphead look bad. Are you two for fucking real?

"I don't agree with all of what Metalsnakezero brought up" in my post would include that point, so don't put words in my mouth.

Though I believe the incident they're talking about was the harassment of a journalist over their video of the game (where they played the game badly in a preview but said the game was good) in a misguided effort to defend the game, not the game itself looking bad? I don't remember how/if TB was involved with that, but regardless you're putting words in Metalsnakezero's mouth as well.

Theswweet said:
With the way people talk you wouldn't know TB distanced himself from GG once he realized it wasn't actually about ethics in video games. Did he say some horrid things? Yeah, but it's not like he's still a hardcore GG'er. It's certainly not justified to try and police the situation where he's literally dying...

He didn't, to be clear, because he stuck with them for at least a year or so. And similarly, to be clear, it's less that he said horrid things himself and more how he did that and cultivated that part of his audience while having direct access to hundreds of thousands of people, which meant he was spreading that to many people who then acted on it, even if he was talking about people who were basically nobodies, etc. etc. I don't like getting into even this amount of specifics, I just want you to know it's not just "he said bad things so he's permanently a bad person" or something like that; people got harassed and hurt and others had to be afraid of what might happen if his attention turned their way. That's where my feelings come from, not just that he said bad words.

I 100% don't doubt he distanced himself from it since (though if we're being honest, I can think of something relevant that happened as recently as August?), but that doesn't mean people's feelings will immediately change and so need to be worked through. (I also feel that it doesn't necessarily mean he helped his audience grow to be better either, which would mean more to me but also reasonably isn't something I expect him to be able to easily do given its size.)

Weltall Zero · May 2, 2018

deepFlaw said:
Sorry, to be clear- I didn't mean an intentional trap on your part as much as something that's hard to disagree with because it can be argued that disagreeing is part of it, if that makes sense?

Mmmm... not really? It would make sense if this was an article posted by someone in your outgroup, but it's really not, so...

With regard to TotalBiscuit and GG, I genuinely believe he was "wrong" rather than "evil"; one of those people duped by GG's purported intentions about "journalism integrity" that unfortunately stubbornly doubled down on it even as it became clear it was anything but. Unfortunately the narrative is seductive: "you only hear bad things about GG because, see, the games journalism institution is protecting itself from it!". Conversely, any bad actions carried out by self-proclaimed GGers can't be held against the movement because "it's just a hashtag, you can't make it accountable by the actions of people using it". Both of these are textbook failures to update one's priors with new evidence, as discussed here:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jiBFC7DcCrZjGmZnJ/conservation-of-expected-evidence
Again, at most this makes him wrong and biased, not evil. Lumping him (and many, many others like him) with the actually evil shitlords that actively send death threats to women with the stated intention of making them commit suicide is doing him (and truth) a huge disservice, even outside the context of his current situation. Within it, it makes one seem unreasonably vindictive and unforgiving.

deepFlaw said:
And even then maybe I'm overthinking it.

I definitely think you're approaching this with good intentions and appreciate you sharing that piece.

Thanks! I don't claim to have all the answers or that that article does, but it certainly made me think and challenge my perceptions. I believe anything that makes us question our beliefs, especially about ourselves, is very healthy and we should do it as often as we can.

Unlinked112233 · May 2, 2018

This is a young, 33 year old husband and father wanting to spend whatever time he has left enjoying his family. I wish him all the best with that without reservations.

What he is going through is incredibly sad but he is still here right now and I hope he is able to create a lot more great memories for him and everyone that loves him.

Kyougar · May 2, 2018

I am ashamed of some of the responses here. The man is dying, leaving behind a wife and a son. One of his best friends became a mom while he lay in a hospital bed, trying to get the pain under control.

sph3re · May 2, 2018

JustinJ004 said:
This is a young, 33 year old husband and father wanting to spend whatever time he has left enjoying his family. I wish him all the best with that without reservations.

HE'S 33?! Holy shit, that's even more tragic than I thought.

Dude is a damn fighter, props to him for still working to the bitter end.

Metalsnakezero · May 2, 2018

I didn't mean to drag TB, as I said he done great work, it just I can't ignore the stuff he said and promoted that were crappy.

At this point I hope he make use of what time he has to either help others, set up something for his network to keep on going, or just enjoy his personal time.

Harkins1721 · May 2, 2018

LycanXIII said:
And he apologized before he was even diagnosed.

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1s1s8n9

Don't know how he doesnt remember saying these awful things to other users however. Just pointing out it was a shitty thing to do.

Of course I wish him the best. Same exact thing is going down with my grandfather.

Dominic Decoco · May 2, 2018

Can't believe people lack self-awareness to this level. "Hey let me tell you why TB sucks so I feel better, oh btw get better soon TB"

Wrong thread to shout down from your throne.

Van Bur3n · May 2, 2018

Keep on keeping on, TB. However you can, as best you can.

orangeb1ood503 · May 2, 2018

As someone who has suffered the loss of a loved one like this, where you were given a timeline but they lived longer, I hope his family and friends get every extra second they can together. My grandfather lasted 3 years past the timeline they gave him. I am so thank for for the extra time we got with him.

Heisenberg726 · May 2, 2018

Some ResetEra posters should be ashamed.

Attacking a dying man for his past viewpoints. Disgusting.

I don't give a damn what he's said. I love him and his content and always will.

Deleted member 16908 · May 10, 2018

Harkins1721 said:
Don't know how he doesnt remember saying these awful things to other users however. Just pointing out it was a shitty thing to do.

Of course I wish him the best. Same exact thing is going down with my grandfather.

Back then he was receiving thousands of tweets a day, and he replied to a lot of them. When you're replying to such a large number of people it's easy to forget that you've said specific things.

Avis · May 10, 2018

Damn, saw the recent post. Damn.

Loved the co-optional podcast, was one of my favorites as a teen growing up. Not going to be the same without him.

Man... this really sucks. Fuck. Fuck cancer.

marianitten · May 16, 2018

Last surgedy didn't go well it seems.. really.. really sad news

https://twitter.com/Totalbiscuit/status/996580689842753536

Reven Wolf · May 16, 2018

marianitten said:
Last surgedy didn't go well it seems.. really.. really sad news

https://twitter.com/Totalbiscuit/status/996580689842753536

Well that sucks... Keep strong TB.

Alimnassor · May 16, 2018

That is pretty bad.

TheMan · May 16, 2018

Well, here's hoping he passes painlessly, with a belly full of wine and a girl's mouth around his cock.

Smash Kirby · May 16, 2018

TheMan said:
Well, here's hoping he passes painlessly, with a belly full of wine and a girl's mouth around his cock.

The Orville Redenbacher way.

Bansai · May 16, 2018

shit... this is really depressing

Maffis · May 16, 2018

Damn this is so tough to read. He's a champ for even holding on this long. My mother had cancer and she lived 3 years longer than what the doctor estimated, and my family were so grateful for the extra time. Keep staying strong, Biscuit. For your family's sake now.

KoolAid · May 16, 2018

TheMan said:
Well, here's hoping he passes painlessly, with a belly full of wine and a girl's mouth around his cock.

What the absolute fuck

KLoWn · May 16, 2018

KoolAid said:
What the absolute fuck

It's a Game of Thrones quotes.

snausages · May 16, 2018

KoolAid said:
What the absolute fuck

I think it's some Game of Thrones reference or something?

I hope the best for his current quality of life, wherever he is at now.

digitalrelic · May 16, 2018

KoolAid said:
What the absolute fuck

snausages · May 16, 2018

What was the surgery? It was for pain management, but went poorly? That's really sad

Xelan · May 16, 2018

snausages said:
What was the surgery? It was for pain management, but went poorly? That's really sad

From his tweets they believed most of his pain was due to fluid build up putting pressure on his spine and other areas, the surgery was to place basically a drain valve into his body to release these fluids to decrease pressure and in turn decrease his pain, but that last tweet seems to say that the procedure did not do what they had hoped.

IXI FalcoN · May 16, 2018

Every time this thread shows up on the first page I expect the worst and dread clicking on it.

A real shame the surgery didn't go well. He's been through enough already.

diablos991 · May 16, 2018

Sucks to hear the surgery didn't go well.
The way he describes the pressure he is feeling in his organs makes me cringe. Hope they can find some way of reducing his pain.

Nokterian · May 16, 2018

Corven said:
From his tweets they believed most of his pain was due to fluid build up putting pressure on his spine and other areas, the surgery was to place basically a drain valve into his body to release these fluids to decrease pressure and in turn decrease his pain, but that last tweet seems to say that the procedure did not do what they had hoped.

Fucking hell..the pain that is causing him..fuck cancer all around nobody deserves it be it young,new born or older.

Indy in the Fridge · May 16, 2018

Smash Kirby said:
The Orville Redenbacher way.

Nav · May 16, 2018

Good luck TB!

TheMan · May 17, 2018

KoolAid said:
What the absolute fuck

pardon?

Calibro · May 24, 2018

SuikerBrood · May 24, 2018

Jesus...

RIP

TheDkmariolink · May 24, 2018

Calibro said:

Fuck...

HockeyBird · May 24, 2018

Dang. Everytime this thread was bumped I was expecting it. RIP Totalbiscuit. Thanks for all the dozens of hours of reviews.

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