An apology.

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Monday, October 22, 2012

I'm sorry to the staff of GamesBeat and the followers of the GamesBeat Twitter account for inadvertently causing an awful message from a bigoted individual to appear on the site's official Twitter.

I did intend to retweet the hate-filled post (you can see it here for full context), but I do not agree with what he said. I was trying to display his message to the followers of my personal Twitter so that I could shame him. 

Let me explain exactly what happened. 

During the end of the SF Giants game, I saw this sarcastic tweet:

That led me to the @BestFansStLouis Twitter account which only retweets the worst updates from St. Louis-area baseball fans. It's a collection of terrible people that made me sick. 

Within the first 10 posts, I found the message that I retweeted. I was shocked and disgusted by it. I couldn't believe someone could be so mean-spirited over a baseball game. I wanted the people I converse with on Twitter to see it so they could all tell me how terrible they think he is and to help me cope with the fact that people like him exist.

Only my Tweetdeck, which is hooked into the JeffGrubb and GamesBeat twitter accounts, sent the RT to GamesBeat

I didn't even notice.

I immediately followed it up with this Tweet:

That update did end up on my Jeff Grubb account.

It was my last Tweet before bed. I checked my email one last time before falling asleep and saw that one of my colleagues at GamesBeat was asking who RT'd the terrible message. 

I immediately told everyone that it was me. Shoe called me, and I explained to him what happened. And now I'm here writing this to help set the record straight


That must've looked terrible. I don't blame anyone for thinking the worst when they saw it.

There is no room for that type of intolerance, and without the proper context, a retweet from the official GamesBeat Twitter account must have looked like an endorsement. It absolutely wasn't.

It was intended as a condemnation. I was just mad at some pathetic ass in Missouri.

I'm sorry for the exposing you all to that. I'm sorry for the confusion.

In retrospect, I can see that my followup Tweet is petty and stupid, and I'm sorry for that as well.

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to post them in the comments or to tweet me.

Thanks to everyone who's been so understanding. 

 
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Comments (6)
Avi2
October 22, 2012

What a world we live in... For the record, I wouldn't immediately scale the walls, pitchfork in hand, over 140 characters or less. I believe that no one should (I can't stress that enough). At the very least, I can take a joke, however bad the taste of it may be. Frankly, I'm more upset at the post-event that spawned a dozen tweet vomitted all over my screen. Ergo, anyone truly upset to the point of turmoil is really the only one to blame and we've seen that before, even with people of this community (Hey, Ryan). That said, of course there's nothing wrong with a preemptive apology, it's welcome even. People that did get upset and just want an explanation still deserve one. I don't think anyone here has a set plan to rile up crowds needlessly.

Just...calm down people, please. This one was luckily nipped in the bud, but we've seen how this could potentially turn out and that's on our end. So, please, cool the knee-jerk reactions, at least when coming from otherwise reputable people. Everyone slips from time.

Thanks for the post.

Sexy_beast
October 23, 2012

Hey, Puke. <3

Shoe_headshot_-_square
October 23, 2012

Thanks, Daav. :)

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October 23, 2012

Thanks for your measured response. I appreciate that.

Purple_night_lightning_storm
October 22, 2012

Mistakes happen. I didn't even see the tweet before Shoe's first explination. My only problem, which is in no way your fault, is now I know these people exist and the world is a little sadder. You've stood up for it. Anyone who takes permanent umbrage needs to take a chill pill as much as the posters featured on that account.

Shoe_headshot_-_square
October 23, 2012

Very sad stuff. I could only glance at that other Twitter page for 30 seconds and had to close it. It was really disgusting.

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