Just wanna point out a facet of the Fireside Fiction debacle that, intentional or otherwise, is worth noting as an example. People who fuck up online do this to diffuse the severity of blowback.

This is the tweet that has the most traction calling out. https://twitter.com/redclayscholar/status/1331242578763722752?s=19

In their initial "we fucked up"apology tweet @FiresideFiction QTs a reply to FF's original post.

He has apologised multiple times and tossed up an essay on the magazine's digital issue. Here's the trick though: he didn't QT or engage with @redclayscholar's tweet.

Basically right now the thing I've QT'd is a rare existing copy of the racist narration.

Whether FF meant to do this or not, by not sourcing the most vocal complaints the magazine has future-proofed against people who aren't Extremely Online actually *hearing* how bad it was.

Unless a journalist snagged the original audio or knows about this screen recording of a phone listening to it, the narrative is firmly controlled by the person profusely apologizing.

Which is to say, the more time progresses the higher the chance new folks will just see the apology and think "wow, good for him on owning up to his own racism."

And to be clear I'm using "their" to mean Fireside as a brand and "he" about Defendini. Both are the same person at this point but FF is effectively a separate entity as far as blame-placing.

And is FF gonna interact with Fitzwater to apologize? Probably not. It's safer to say "I need to do better" and other $10 social justice phrases.

Unless someone's taking notes it'd be impossible to find other reports like this even in a few hours. https://twitter.com/AJFitzwater/status/1331339758195249152?s=19

Again, might not be intentional, but it's worth keeping things in mind when somebody gets Main Character status because the inevitable make-good might end up sweeping away the most egregious examples of systemic problems and cherry-pick easy things to say "I'm sowwy" to.