Took this photo on my last day at the office as a Giant Bomb employee.

I don’t think I’ve told this story publicly, but when I decided to move on, I was lucky enough to negotiate staying through the recording of GOTY—it was my favorite part about working at Giant Bomb. A total mess.

The plan was to announce my departure at the very end of the last podcast, so it didn’t overshadow all the hard work everyone was putting into everything else. As a result, I hadn’t told many people I was leaving or what was happening next. But I had, of course, told family.

At one Christmas celebration, before the news was out, my sister-in-law’s boyfriend was present. He was actually a fan, which was a little awkward but he was always nice. Small world! At that gathering, I mentioned I was leaving and going to Kotaku. I didn’t think anything of it.

When the news broke, obviously it generated attention, including a reddit thread. I was reading through the reactions, and noticed one post on reddit was drawing a lot of notice, because it explained what I was doing next.

That dipshit actually went on reddit and posted something that basically went “oh yeah! I was at a Christmas thing with Patrick, he told me he’s going to Kotaku.”

I privately messaged him, he took it down, and that was that. In retrospect, pretty funny. At the time, what a dipshit.