Eric Lang, one of the most famous board game designers on the planet, has been suspended from Twitter after what he says was a targeted campaign by a “scumbag serial harasser”.
Lang, designer of stuff like Blood Rage and the Star Wars and Game of Thrones card games, has worked with everyone from Fantasy Flight to CMON. If you ask most board game fans to name the most popular and prominent designers in the business, Lang’s name will usually be pretty near the top of the list.
Like many of us in these trying, shitty times, Lang has been using his Facebook and Twitter presence to speak up about social issues, including one of the most prominent names distancing themselves early from the board gaming industry group’s refusal to support Black Lives Matter.
Recently, Lang says he has become the target of “thousands” of basement-dwelling reactionary shitheads, which he believes are fans of “a scumbag serial harasser (to whom I refuse to give free publicity).”
Here’s Lang’s full account of what’s happened, from a statement released on his Facebook page earlier today:
A couple of weeks ago, my Twitter account was locked (“restricted” is the term) shortly after I blocked thousands of followers of a scumbag serial harasser (to whom I refuse to give free publicity).
I used a chain blocker app (the same one that several people I know have used without issue), because there were a lot of followers to block, and I made a tactical error: I tweeted about the blocking action in advance to give my followers time to unfollow if they didn’t want to be blocked.
I appealed the restriction several times over the course of the last two weeks, getting zero response from Twitter. And two days ago was suddenly suspended without notice.
Question One: Why did I chain block the harasser’s followers?
The account in question is notorious for harassing and dogpiling left-leaning public figures on Twitter – particularly women and POC (people of colour). They know how to exploit weaknesses in social media, and can claim plausible deniability if confronted – but in several well documented cases, when that account targets a personality, that personality is dogpiled by endless trolls quoting south park and other edgelord trash.
Recently, the scumbag targeted John Boyega (the black stormtrooper from Star Wars and loud activist), and the dogpiling was a tragic sight to behold. I noticed then that I had started collecting some of scumbag’s followers, and immediately recognised the pattern. I decided quickly, mostly for the sake of denying these arseholes access to my friends and followers, that I would simply chain block the entire account.
Question Two: Why was my account locked?
Your guess is as good as mine. Twitter has given me zero communication about the reasons for blocking. I know exactly what the public does, no more. Furthermore, I found out about my subsequent suspension from a friend who tried to view my account.
Of course I have opinions about why, and I’ve seen enough abusive reporting in the past to recognise the pattern. Can it be proven? Nope. Does it matter? I don’t think so. This is not about trolls, really. It’s not about scumbag serial harassers, it’s about an easily exploitable system that encourages abusive behaviour by omission of vigilant oversight.
Twitter, as is common in these situations, has said nothing about the suspension.
Hey Twitter: give Eric back his Twitter account.
Comments
22 responses to “Board Game Designer Eric Lang Suspended From Twitter”
Twitter’s such a shitpile now, people just need to leave it and use other platforms honestly.
There’s literally no replacement for Twitter that isn’t also a steaming shitpile, unfortunately.
Twitter is terrible, but it’s the best of a bad bunch.
More or less agree. Every platform popping up seems to have agendas in place more or less.
Actually twitter is the worst of the worst bunch.
I just heard about one called Parlour? Seems a lot of people are using that and it doesn’t curtail speech or limit reach like twitter does?
No it curtails speech worse that Twitter.
It’s pretty much the same as gab minus the moronic ceo who spends his time on Twitter ranting about how porn ruins everything
Eh.. i use twitter for one thing and one thing only… check the schedule of a certain virtual person who does ermmm “adult” chats =P
now? twitter has always been a shitpile of sexism and racism. but in its favour, at least it is useful because we only need look and see if someone has a blue tick next to their name to know that they are not worth listening to.
Twitter was good before the Tumblr Exodus
Private company?
I feel his pain, but seriously, with the amount of botting and automated activity going on it’s really no surprise that running any mass algorithmic process is going to run the risk of having your account flagged.
You know that it was ed lang that refused to name the person not the author of the article. You harp on about fact checking but didnt do 1 click to fact check.
Your comment here reeks of someone who likes to gaslight and I don’t even need to fact check to know you are one of those people that hide a harm attitude behind a plea to civility.
Eric directly referenced him on Twitter.
Also you missed this line in the article
“to whom I refuse to give free publicity”
That was written by Luke. Not the deluded Eric.
Do try to keep up
What were you saying about gaslighting?
a) You don’t know how quotation marks work, get someone to walk you through it s l o w l y
b) He’s right, you’re a gaslighter and like most conservative apologists love to civility police as a way of hiding your bastardry
c) Don’t blurp out the ‘BUT IMA LABOR VOTER’ again as if that somehow obscures your constant frothing defence of the nastiest of hard right toxicity, Labor has been conservative for decades now
d) Do try to keep up
The best bit about this is that you cannot admit you screwed up so you always come back squawking about other elements in your reply to distract from the really bad part.
So you’re not going to back down on the fact you don’t know how to read sentences properly, and how that set you off on a self-owning tanty.
But – you also desperately need to prove people wrong to try and maintain the really poor illusion that you’re a ‘good’ person and not a hateball who spends all his time ranting about the ‘extreme left’ on Twitter.
So now you’ve got the awesome quandary – do you reply to me and admit you failed basic comprehension in your hurry to be a jerk, do your usual thing of simply not admitting you screwed up and rant at how awful it is people call you on being awful, or some terrible mishmash of the two that somehow keeps your cognitive dissonance in check while having the appeal of finding a toxic poo in a public train station lavatory.
I think the answer is pretty obvious, but if you’re lucky you can go get some of the alt right dudes to come hold your hand and dogpile so you can carry on pretending you’re not a horrible person and that you didn’t fail basic reading comprehension 😉
Think you might be projecting a little worrito. Perhaps see a doctor for your paranoid delusions lol.
It’s like you don’t even understand how words work.
You are insane, i love watching you REEEEEEEEEE.
It might have something to do with the Block Chain App he was using or how he blocked people that pinged activity on his account as suspicious. Either way it must be very frustrating not
Jeremy, from the TheQuartering, has released a video reply to this very article. Jeremy also makes it very clear in his videos to NOT contact the people he takes about and even renounces it when people have.
I’m not sure why Eric thinks it was Jeremy, or his subscribers, that caused or instigated this ban, but I do agree with the premise of the article, that Eric’s account should NOT have been, and should be un-banned.
Mate you are on a site that doesn’t bother to actually research youtuber news or opinion channels. literally as Kotakus direct competition it is in their interests to disparage them.
Jeremy is himself an oddity of youtube. he admits his past mistakes. he also does have a history of retraction of things when new info comes to light. in fact out of most youtubers he’s actually far more fair about things. now being human and with a bias he’s not perfect but, yeah definitely tells his viewers not to go off and do things.
unfortunately tell people to do brigade and they will. tell them not to and they do it anyway. it’s a lose, lose to cover any of these issues because regardless of the content creators wishes fans will jump to defend their honour in rather poor ways.
Wow, someone sure riled up the neckbeard patrol!
THIS IS SLANDER MY LAWYERS ARE ON THE CASE
and other things that did not happen but get the incel clicks.
I mean seriously, that channel is nothing but shitty little dudes screeching about the womens stealing their entertainments.
You can literally smell the mountain dew and BO from every comment.