Posted 05 June 2008 - 08:04 PM
I haven't read the majority of this thread, but I'm somehow drawn like a magnet to such things regarding my former employer.
I want to clear a couple things up, just in regards to what Yahtzee said, what many people have said, and all the banter thats been slung around about Buckley, who is not a friend of mine, he is a former employer and nothing more. My name is Andrew, I wrote game and film reviews for him circa 2003, and came up with the CADMedia concept at the same time. Between then and 2005 I did various things around the community.
When I first worked with Tim he was a much different person, in my experience, than he is portrayed as, and acts as today. He was very relaxed, he didn't take himself too seriously, he did have a strong business sense, which is why he makes a living selling a mediocre product. So here's what I know.
Yahtzee's criticisms are spot on. Somewhere along the line Tim fell into this place where his success and his ego became indistinguishable. He's pissed off a lot of people in the "webcomic scene" with his prima-donna attitude. He thinks he's fit to stand next to Penny Arcade, but he isn't. The problem is, I honestly believe had he taken a different route, he could have been. His fans, and by fans I mean slavering fans, not average readers, have insulated him to the point where he can't accept criticism as valid, simply because he's been in the ego-polishing chamber for so long.
Now about his past. The "pedophile" incident people are referring to, and I probably know some of you, was mostly overreaction on both sides of the "conflict". As it played out, a forum member decided he'd had enough of the forums, and wanted to go out with a big bang, so he posted that Tim sent lewd photographs of himself to a female forum member, who was at the time, underage. The mods of the forum wouldn't touch it, because they thought it was something Tim should deal with himself.
Instead of dealing with it like he should have, and just quietly deleted the guy, he went nuts over it. One person turned quickly into hundreds of people, even accounts of people who weren't there or didn't post. Ultimately he closed down his forums with the charming message "Taking out the garbage", and when they returned, the entire subforum that the post originated in (Rantings of Madmen) was gone. At this point, myself still an active admin on CAD's now-defunct IRC network, I had to take a side, or I thought I had to, and so I used my own personal site to set up a temporary home for all the displaced people from CAD. Ultimately, the IRC network as a whole broke away from CAD as a result of the fanatical overreaction on Tim's part.
I don't believe for a second he's a pedophile. I do believe he did some dumb things, thought with his dick instead of his brain in the early days, but none of these people were children. Jackie was and is a full-grown adult, Amber was 17 when allegedly she received the lewd pictures. Most of the people who he banned were asking for it, many people weren't particularly mature about it. I disagreed with the way he handled it, and honestly I wanted to spear him a bit for how he'd let my side-project decay after I sorted through hundreds of applicants for news and editorial writers, for what was at the time an audacious and ambitious project.
He's not a bad person, he's a stagnant person, and one who is quick to anger, and erratic in mood at times. He's also more than smart enough to run his own business, which is successful. He's a good artist, and could be a far better writer than he is. I never did know him all that well but I knew him better than most, and I certainly know the most about the more personal allegations against him.
Long story short, Yahtzee is right, there's nothing wrong with reading CAD, Tim isn't the villain he's made out to be all the time, but he and his comic are flawed. Don't believe everything you hear, especially if it comes from Encyclopedia Dramatica, funny though it may be.