Disjunction is a game about oblivity.
A handful of gigs ago I got fired for doxing a co-worker. I know, wake you up when things get surprising. The surprising part is the co-worker is one of my favorite people in the world now, and she asked me to set the record straight. So here ya go:
The thesis is:
1. It was a bad situation, but I made myself the bad guy. She cool.
Here is how I managed to do that. This was back at one of those gaming companies that liked to think of itself as "edgy." Used curse words in marketing, hired people with tattoos, that kind of thing. I was running a recruitment opp focused on merging music and tech to create a "hardcore aesthetic" to funnel sales toward graphic cards or memory cards, or... I dunno, it was some kind of card. It's all the same to me.
Anyway, I was shitting the bed by going too hard in the paint. They wanted to use hardcore music, fashion, and influencers. Bet, that's what I do, so I took the absurd budget they gave me and shook every protoculture bush I could find. And what crawled out was a group of the most feral, tactless, loud, obnoxious, and brilliant, assholes to ever plug into a terminal.
The brass didn't know what to do with them. Or with me. It was months of bad press after bad press, burned marketing material, videos, and images that no company in good conscience would feel comfortable adding their watermark to. Looking back, dare I say... I might, possibly... have been doing too much.
But I had blood in my mouth and couldn't be talked down off my hill. They wanted hood shit, they wanted cyberpunk, this is your Huckleberry, fire me if you gotta fire me, but I won't take my foot off the gas. No joke, I would stomp around the office daring them to fire me, thinking, "strike me down, I will become a more powerful clout chaser than you can possibly imagine."
But in what has become a theme in my career the brass, for legal and political reasons, refused to fire me, and instead hired a person above me, a "handler," if you will. I was livid and during the first team meeting, after her intro and outline were complete. I went ten toes in.
I shat on her background, using the info I doxed previously to show she had rich parents, grew up in a nice neighborhood, went to an ivy league school, and lived basically rent-free in a bunch of condos and brownstones she never had to pay for. So how could she know shit about "Urban?" How could any of them, I posited.
I honestly believed at the moment that they would all just accept that I was the only one in the room that had actually survived the Californa street funhouse and to trust the course because experience, actual experience, matters. We all know how that went, and she got up, grabbed her trapper keeper, and walked out of the room. I found her in the smoking area later, sat down, and lit a menthol. There we sat wordlessly for a good ten minutes.
She broke the ice by asking, "Why didn't you tell them I used to be a guy?" I responded, "Same reason you didn't." She responded, "Wanna hear something hilarious? I took the job to work with you." We talked a bit more, then I got up, walked back in, was led to the boss's office, and fired on the spot. So it goes.
We both have continued to survive the video game life crucible in our own ways, at times stepping in to help each other and others in need as we can, or to discuss pop culture in the context of life. Like I said, she cool, and I'm the bad guy. If I could do it all over again, I woulda just trusted her off the rip. Maybe you should too.
Anyway, anyone surprised at the Stadia studio shutdowns ain't been paying attention. And wtd for black history month? I dunno, just give anonymously to Jerry's estate. Or stop killing black people. Both is fine. Love is wise, hatred is foolish. rip tb rip tc rip tall-T. Get out there and do great things, we believe in you. Also Jobs.
