games @hexbear.net Salmarez [he/him, comrade/them] @hexbear.net 2 yr. ago

Is Stephanie Sterling a boss?

First of all, I am posting while drunk. Second, I remember some people at Hexbear saying that Sterling screwed their assistants by not paying them. So, could I get some more details, please, before I remove Sterling from my life?!

13 comments

They paid their editor shite wages, asked him to do more work than he was hired for, made him their chauffer, unloaded a lot of personal grievancs on them like he was a therapist even after he said it made him uncomfortable, and eventually move to a more expensive city with hardly much of a raise. Steph's friend Conrad then slandered Justin by saying they embezzled money. Justin had borrowed, without asking to be fair, a grand for emergency medical stuff which they couldn't afford with the money they were making working for Steph. Steph then claimed Justin was emotionally abusive, but the abuse seems to be them just getting mad they couldn't afford to live while Steph was blowing money on arcade cabinets and other tat.

All of this is extremely ironic considering the abuses of the gaming industry Steph calls out, a lot of their behavior has mirrored any scummy CEO in my opinion.

It hurts personally for me, Steph was the last person I had any kind of parasocial relationship with. There were times in my life where I thought "I want to just kill myself but then I'll miss Mondays show..." But after seeing all that and the way Steph and their friends handled it by firing Justin and throwing him under the bus made me stop watching their YouTube and podcasts. I even threw out all the merch I bought from them. Though I already stopped listening to the main podcast because they kept insisting on invoking Tencent as this yellow scare Chinese menace.
- That's pretty fucking awful, way worse than the discord drama or whatever hbomberguy was involved in :yikes:
  
  I have to say, one of the things I like RLM for is that unlike most other online personalities who've been around a long time there's basically no stink cloud of messy drama, breakups or asshole behaviour wafting around them. It also helps that they maintain a pretty hard separation between their online personas and their personal lives.
  
  I've been watching RLM for years and was always kind of dreading a reactionary right-wing turn from their content but I'm glad that hasn't happened.
  
  Steph also has a habit of getting into relationships with people that already have kids and complaining about the kids because they don't want to be a parent. Like, why date someone with kids then? That hits home, honestly.
- Damn...I see your point. We should, as leftist nerds, hold them accountable.
  
  I think for me it's just made me learn to only have problematic favs, that way I can't form a parasocial relationship or get worked up when they do something I disagree with. Like, what am I gonna get mad if someone tells me Nick Mullen said a slur or had an opinion I disagree with?
every youtuber with employees is a small business owner
- Unless they operate it like a co-op. Which is definitely possible to do.
  
  This is how Means TV operates.
  
  true, though the argument could be made that the ""talent" (the one in front of the camera) would still have the majority of the power
  editors can be swapped out without most people noticing, but if Steph Sterling was suddenly replaced people would spot that
I don't even feel disappointment when people I watch online turn out to not live up to the values they espouse anymore, I just feel numb. Are we all just hypocrites who haven't been tested yet?

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