Up until the recent debacle with Niche Gamer's Tyler Valle and Jonathan White attacking their audience (including yours truly) over the USA v.s. LGBT flag mods for Insomniac's Spider-Man, I was an avid reader of the website since 2015. This was shortly after GamerGate helped me leave feminism and open my eyes to the left-wing, ideological invasion of hobbyist communities, especially gaming and anime. I frequently posted comments both on Niche Gamer and One Angry Gamer (I wrote two articles for OAG, but I can't find their archives anymore), expressing my discontent with the censorship and appeasements made by companies under the belief that sales would improve and leftist mobs would leave them alone (they didn't). I declare here and now that I'm no longer following Niche Gamer nor Brandon Orselli; I've simply had enough of the nonsense that has been allowed to fester for the past seven years.
Brew a cup and strap in, boys and girls. I have almost one-hundred screenshots of my DMs with Brandon that I wish to share with you all. Six years' worth of back-and-forth chats about comment moderation, potentially hiring me as a writer for Niche Gamer, and sitting on critically important and relevant stories that neither Niche Gamer nor Nicchiban reported on.
BACKGROUND
Niche Gamer was embroiled in numerous controversies with its audience - the Smug ban, Michael 'you never had sex' Jordan, 'Sophia' Narwitz, the Gematsu plagiarism and now 'FlagGate' - leading some of the die-hards over the years to leave the website for freer ventures. Yet despite all the controversies, I stuck around, even if I didn't comment anymore. I agreed with the readers' complaints over the heavy-handed moderation, and at the time Brandon was sympathetic to these concerns as well as his own. Advertisers and AdSense punished Niche Gamer for its stance on free speech until eventually he relented and started deleting comments. He and his other employees constantly denied responsibility for the deletions and bans, deflecting to the third-party websites Disqus and Insticator as the culprits. I'm sure we all have our doubts about that.
HOW I GOT INVOLVED AND WHY
My first communication with Brandon began when Gal*Gun: Double Peace was removed from store shelves in EB Games Australia, which I personally investigated at the time to find out why. When I found EB Games' CEO on LinkedIn, that was when I asked Brandon to dig deeper if he could. Sometime after that was the then recent round of hiring new staff for NG, and I submitted my resumé hoping to get a job. I was of course unsuccessful.
This is also where we began talking about the forum moderation problem that exploded. In hindsight, I was a lot easier on him than the average NG user for two reasons: I wanted to stay on his good side in hopes of receiving a job offer, and because I wanted NG to be successful from a culture war perspective. I offered suggestions to Brandon about how to make moderation as fair as possible while still acknowledging that such ideas were stupid and unfair - but in the end it didn't matter, as the forums were shut down some time after Smug was banned. This wasn't my proudest moment as someone who believes in free speech, but I was trying to see things from Brandon's perspective at the time.
The next interaction was in regards to Tekken 7's looming release. There were articles at the time suggesting Katsuhiro Harada had censored his game by not including the kangaroo character Roger due to complaints from animal rights organizations.
Communication with Brandon was sporadic because at this point he was usually on the ball when it came to breaking stories, so I didn't need to DM him often. I continued to express interest in working for NG even though I was studying full-time at university (I've since graduated). There was also an incident with OAG and KungFuMan that raised an eyebrow, because Brandon at the time was buddy-buddy with the latter for whatever reason while he was going through 'Sophia' Narwitz's hostile takeover and his plagiarism scandal.
THE STORIES PILED UP
2020 was a bad year for me. One of my cats passed away in January, and right around when Covid restrictions were implemented we saw Australia begin its moral crusade against Japanese media such as No Game No Life. I sent him the stories yet I kept getting no response until the Kiryu Coco/Taiwan controversy. Then OAG's master list for Black Lives Matter came out, events unravelled as they did, and I told Brandon about it. Pay particular attention to the stories I shared about Australia banning light novels and video games, because this will be important later. I ask about sending stories to Ryan Pearson which I recall went nowhere on my part.
I kept sending stories to Brandon over time and he clearly paid attention, as he mentioned how he 'really should hire' me. He ultimately never went through with this because my resumé was simply not good enough and I had no samples of my journalism he was happy with.
REMEMBER ETHICS IN GAMING JOURNALISM?
There was an article for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night written by Brandon that I noticed had no disclosure of his status as a Kickstarter backer. He only added it after I brought it up with him. He didn't seem to care all that much about disclosure anymore, as literally today he wrote another article for Bloodstained without disclosing his financial backing.
SOME STORIES REPORTED ON, OTHERS WEREN'T
I shared more stories with Brandon, but what you'll notice is there are so many censorship stories I brought up with him, only for most of them to never get an article. It was around this time that Necro XIII was writing for NG, whom I've had a spat with over his comment about 'Billies' and how they don't play games and only get mad about 'censorship'. It was at this point I believe a change in NG's priorities began, moving away from covering censorship and over to boring stories about Pokémon GO raids. If you find any NG articles talking about what I sent him, there's a very high chance it was because of me.
We've just about reached the end of my interactions with Brandon. So many stories left unreported for no particularly good reason.
By the way, did you know To Love Ru Darkness was banned in Australia? If not, you might've known if Brandon bothered to report on Nicchiban about it, instead of garbage news articles about seasonal anime that no-one watches.
WHERE WE ARE TODAY
At the beginning of this post, I mentioned that I stopped reading Niche Gamer after the Spider-Man flag stories surfaced - but my reasons are a bit more specific. Jonathan White, one of the men involved in this story, sent me an aggressive tweet trying to provoke me into responding to him, believing my Twitter account being private was because I was scared of my opinions being scrutinized by his galaxy-sized brain. In reality, my account is private because the Australian government passed a law allowing the federal police to hack social media accounts without a warrant. Mitigating risks to my personal safety is arguably more important than getting into an Internet bitch-fight with a needle-dick journalist.
But how would he know who I am if my account is private? It's because I quote-retweeted this tweet of him dog-whistling and attacking the evil Angry Billies, and then Brandon tattled on me to him. I don't know of any other way he could've found me. This was the final straw for Brandon, as he unfollowed me after I called him out on this.
But sure, I confess to advocating for Jonathan and Tyler's termination from Niche Gamer - and I won't apologize for doing so. They're subversive snakes who antagonize and deride the true audience for Niche Gamer: anti-censorship, anti-woke, pro-gatekeeping and pro-free speech. It's not because I'm a 'right-wing SJW' - in fact, to this day I still don't call myself right-wing - it's because any business with a brain knows that you shouldn't keep people on your payroll if they hate everything you stand for. The reason Brandon tweeted this out is not just because the comments section became a warzone, but because I kept reminding him that his writers are 100% in the wrong and are ruining NG. At one point I tagged him asking if this was what he wanted NG to be when he first launched it - clearly, this is his answer. He even posted a now deleted Twitter poll on the official NG account asking followers what they want from Niche Gamer: memes, video game reviews, censorship/tech and a fourth option that I'm blanking on right now. I wish I archived it. To no-one's surprise, memes and video games won the poll - because Brandon has long since abandoned the audience that grew his website in favour of Elon Musk reply guys and Twitter engagements.
That's ultimately why I made this post. I'm sick of Brandon's cowardice. He kicked out Narwitz for trying to subvert his business, yet Tyler and Jon stick around because he has no-one else who'll work for him. He complained to me six years ago about being taken advantage of, and from the evidence I shared you can tell nothing has changed on that front. I'm sure he's loving the fact that his flame-bait articles finally reached over 400 comments for the first time in literal years, but he needs to face the music. His negligence killed the comments section and led to where we are now. He will never get that goodwill back - not from his true fans, and certainly not from me.
Brew a cup and strap in, boys and girls. I have almost one-hundred screenshots of my DMs with Brandon that I wish to share with you all. Six years' worth of back-and-forth chats about comment moderation, potentially hiring me as a writer for Niche Gamer, and sitting on critically important and relevant stories that neither Niche Gamer nor Nicchiban reported on.
BACKGROUND
Niche Gamer was embroiled in numerous controversies with its audience - the Smug ban, Michael 'you never had sex' Jordan, 'Sophia' Narwitz, the Gematsu plagiarism and now 'FlagGate' - leading some of the die-hards over the years to leave the website for freer ventures. Yet despite all the controversies, I stuck around, even if I didn't comment anymore. I agreed with the readers' complaints over the heavy-handed moderation, and at the time Brandon was sympathetic to these concerns as well as his own. Advertisers and AdSense punished Niche Gamer for its stance on free speech until eventually he relented and started deleting comments. He and his other employees constantly denied responsibility for the deletions and bans, deflecting to the third-party websites Disqus and Insticator as the culprits. I'm sure we all have our doubts about that.
HOW I GOT INVOLVED AND WHY
My first communication with Brandon began when Gal*Gun: Double Peace was removed from store shelves in EB Games Australia, which I personally investigated at the time to find out why. When I found EB Games' CEO on LinkedIn, that was when I asked Brandon to dig deeper if he could. Sometime after that was the then recent round of hiring new staff for NG, and I submitted my resumé hoping to get a job. I was of course unsuccessful.
This is also where we began talking about the forum moderation problem that exploded. In hindsight, I was a lot easier on him than the average NG user for two reasons: I wanted to stay on his good side in hopes of receiving a job offer, and because I wanted NG to be successful from a culture war perspective. I offered suggestions to Brandon about how to make moderation as fair as possible while still acknowledging that such ideas were stupid and unfair - but in the end it didn't matter, as the forums were shut down some time after Smug was banned. This wasn't my proudest moment as someone who believes in free speech, but I was trying to see things from Brandon's perspective at the time.
The next interaction was in regards to Tekken 7's looming release. There were articles at the time suggesting Katsuhiro Harada had censored his game by not including the kangaroo character Roger due to complaints from animal rights organizations.
Communication with Brandon was sporadic because at this point he was usually on the ball when it came to breaking stories, so I didn't need to DM him often. I continued to express interest in working for NG even though I was studying full-time at university (I've since graduated). There was also an incident with OAG and KungFuMan that raised an eyebrow, because Brandon at the time was buddy-buddy with the latter for whatever reason while he was going through 'Sophia' Narwitz's hostile takeover and his plagiarism scandal.
THE STORIES PILED UP
2020 was a bad year for me. One of my cats passed away in January, and right around when Covid restrictions were implemented we saw Australia begin its moral crusade against Japanese media such as No Game No Life. I sent him the stories yet I kept getting no response until the Kiryu Coco/Taiwan controversy. Then OAG's master list for Black Lives Matter came out, events unravelled as they did, and I told Brandon about it. Pay particular attention to the stories I shared about Australia banning light novels and video games, because this will be important later. I ask about sending stories to Ryan Pearson which I recall went nowhere on my part.
I kept sending stories to Brandon over time and he clearly paid attention, as he mentioned how he 'really should hire' me. He ultimately never went through with this because my resumé was simply not good enough and I had no samples of my journalism he was happy with.
REMEMBER ETHICS IN GAMING JOURNALISM?
There was an article for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night written by Brandon that I noticed had no disclosure of his status as a Kickstarter backer. He only added it after I brought it up with him. He didn't seem to care all that much about disclosure anymore, as literally today he wrote another article for Bloodstained without disclosing his financial backing.
SOME STORIES REPORTED ON, OTHERS WEREN'T
I shared more stories with Brandon, but what you'll notice is there are so many censorship stories I brought up with him, only for most of them to never get an article. It was around this time that Necro XIII was writing for NG, whom I've had a spat with over his comment about 'Billies' and how they don't play games and only get mad about 'censorship'. It was at this point I believe a change in NG's priorities began, moving away from covering censorship and over to boring stories about Pokémon GO raids. If you find any NG articles talking about what I sent him, there's a very high chance it was because of me.
We've just about reached the end of my interactions with Brandon. So many stories left unreported for no particularly good reason.
By the way, did you know To Love Ru Darkness was banned in Australia? If not, you might've known if Brandon bothered to report on Nicchiban about it, instead of garbage news articles about seasonal anime that no-one watches.
WHERE WE ARE TODAY
At the beginning of this post, I mentioned that I stopped reading Niche Gamer after the Spider-Man flag stories surfaced - but my reasons are a bit more specific. Jonathan White, one of the men involved in this story, sent me an aggressive tweet trying to provoke me into responding to him, believing my Twitter account being private was because I was scared of my opinions being scrutinized by his galaxy-sized brain. In reality, my account is private because the Australian government passed a law allowing the federal police to hack social media accounts without a warrant. Mitigating risks to my personal safety is arguably more important than getting into an Internet bitch-fight with a needle-dick journalist.
But how would he know who I am if my account is private? It's because I quote-retweeted this tweet of him dog-whistling and attacking the evil Angry Billies, and then Brandon tattled on me to him. I don't know of any other way he could've found me. This was the final straw for Brandon, as he unfollowed me after I called him out on this.
But sure, I confess to advocating for Jonathan and Tyler's termination from Niche Gamer - and I won't apologize for doing so. They're subversive snakes who antagonize and deride the true audience for Niche Gamer: anti-censorship, anti-woke, pro-gatekeeping and pro-free speech. It's not because I'm a 'right-wing SJW' - in fact, to this day I still don't call myself right-wing - it's because any business with a brain knows that you shouldn't keep people on your payroll if they hate everything you stand for. The reason Brandon tweeted this out is not just because the comments section became a warzone, but because I kept reminding him that his writers are 100% in the wrong and are ruining NG. At one point I tagged him asking if this was what he wanted NG to be when he first launched it - clearly, this is his answer. He even posted a now deleted Twitter poll on the official NG account asking followers what they want from Niche Gamer: memes, video game reviews, censorship/tech and a fourth option that I'm blanking on right now. I wish I archived it. To no-one's surprise, memes and video games won the poll - because Brandon has long since abandoned the audience that grew his website in favour of Elon Musk reply guys and Twitter engagements.
That's ultimately why I made this post. I'm sick of Brandon's cowardice. He kicked out Narwitz for trying to subvert his business, yet Tyler and Jon stick around because he has no-one else who'll work for him. He complained to me six years ago about being taken advantage of, and from the evidence I shared you can tell nothing has changed on that front. I'm sure he's loving the fact that his flame-bait articles finally reached over 400 comments for the first time in literal years, but he needs to face the music. His negligence killed the comments section and led to where we are now. He will never get that goodwill back - not from his true fans, and certainly not from me.