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This blog’s first retracted post

Steven TrustrumCommentary 9 Comments

Normally I stand by anything I say online, which is why I never post under an alias. This post previously detailed the antics of someone who was trying to troll me in a professional capacity. The blog post put that conversation online with the purpose of having this person’s potential employers see it. Well, it had a different effect: the lesson landed even closer to home than intended.

After this person pleaded with me to take down the post, I’m going to play nice and retract it. As I said, I would normally not do this–my philosophy is to let people lay in the grave they dig for themselves–but this person can thank my wife for convincing me to remove it.

This is conditional on me never hearing from this person again, or somehow learning he repeated the behaviour illustrated in the original post. If either condition is not met, the post goes back up.

Steven Trustrum has been writing in the RPG industry since the end of the '90s and publishing via Misfit Studios since 2003. Aside from writing and publishing role-playing game content, he ... dabbles ... in content and social media marketing.

Comments 9

  1. Fantastic piece Steve. I was going to ask whether the work would get my name out as I start my writing career; however, I think you’ve proven how well SEO works already.

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  2. He said inappropriate things, but you offered an inappropriate wage. People should be more politely discouraging employers from these wages, and other writers from taking them.

    You also published private correspondence without the consent of both parties, which is highly unethical behaviour.

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      “Inappropriate wage” is contextual, Malcolm. As a writer you know that. “Inappropriate” for YOU is not necessarily the same for someone looking to do it part-time, say as a student, which is who our job mainly targets because of the lack of skill required. If you don’t like it, you have the ability not to apply for the work. That’s what I’ve done — oh, I don’t know how many times — as a freelancer.

      As for publishing private correspondence: I’m all about privacy in a typical conversation, but if someone sends me unsolicited emails where they start flinging nonsense at me that escalates to homophobia? Well, guess what: I’ve no problem taking it public. Feel free to feel differently. It’s one of the reasons why Canada has one party consent laws for this sort of thing.

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      My attempt to keep my professional hat on ends when someone sends me unsolicited email that goes beyond “your pay sucks” to having hate speech in it. I found the whole thing absolutely ridiculous, and have no problem whatsoever with applying egg to my own face if it ends up illustrating this sort of behaviour isn’t cool, even if I was laughing at the absurdity of the whole thing while it was happening.

      And guess what?

      If this person’s emails are to be taken at face value, it worked.

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