fuck happened?”
When a bunch of sexist, racist trolls flame your company on a grandiose scale, the head of HR has permission to stop the PC talk behind closed doors.
Joe, former college varsity baseball captain and now publicity director, looked at us pleadingly. “I’ve never dealt with anything like this before. I used to do social media communications here before I got this job. This is way beyond posting cute memes and aspirational quotes from famous dead people online. It’s a real shit-ton of crazy fucking shit and, honestly, I’m way out of my league here.”
Everyone looked at Ian, the only executive left to speak. “Well, don’t look at me. Yeah, people hate me, sure, but I’m a white dude with serious gaming street cred. They’re trying to bring her down, not me.” He pointed straight at my face, making it clear he was referring to me.
The briefcase guy said, “Ian, these trolls are trying to bring this whole place down, not just Melody. And you are the leader of this company. As your outside counsel, from my perspective you have two options.” He pulled down the knot on his tie to loosen the choke hold. “You can replace Melody with a new producer, but if you picked someone from within this company, the person would likely be male, and you’d see major backlash for that. Or you can keep Melody on the project and stay the course.”
What? That was like saying, You have two choices. You can do the wrong thing, or the logical, right thing. What the fuck kind of options were these?
“Both options have their risks.” He smiled at me reassuringly. “Honestly, I’ve heard from a few people that she’s doing a good job, so pulling her now could be detrimental to the business.”
Sue asked, “Do we know who leaked the game info?”
Ian barked, “Sue, it’s much more important to deal with this online backlash first. We’re in triage mode here.”
We heard a knock at the door, and another stodgy corporate guy carrying an old-school briefcase waltzed in. Great, now we had two briefcase guys. “I’m Brian Wallace, a crisis PR consultant. I’ve been called in by the board to assist with your communications.” He shook hands with all the executives.
Crisis-prevention Brian said to me, “Melody, I recommend that you refrain from engaging with any of the comments, accusations, and threats against your company, and at you. To minimize personal harm and unnecessary stress, please also deactivate your personal social media accounts. One wrong move or one misconstrued social post and this could lead to a bigger PR nightmare. Or they might try to hack you. As they say in this business, don’t feed the trolls.” He repeated, “This bears repeating. Do NOT feed the trolls, no matter what. I’ll work with Ian and Joe on issuing a formal company statement that the game will not be canceled. But you all need to decide soon whether we remove Melody or not.”
Ian didn’t even hesitate. “Let’s replace her with someone like Asher. That wouldn’t be a problem.”
My heart pounded so hard it hurt to breathe. Replace me with Asher, just like that? Was HE the mole? He knew everything about the game launch. He also had motive. That cocky, backstabbing motherfucker.
And where was Asher? I looked over at his desk and saw a half-eaten muffin. He was probably holed up in a conference room, leaking more game info.
Sue chimed in. “Actually, if you remove Melody it would look really, really bad for our company. No woman would dare apply here and we’d be seen as sexist. The long-term repercussions of this within the industry would be unsurmountable. For months now we’ve strived to add diversity to our studio community. This would set us back tremendously.”
Joe grimaced and paced the room. “PR-wise, I agree, it would be a bad move. Social media is sixty percent women, and women form virtual communities. As soon as word got out about this, you’d be looking at an angry mob of estrogen maniacs who rally for nationwide boycotts of our games and organize large-scale protests outside of our office. It would be a huge nightmare.” He threw his hands open wide. “And this might turn superpolitical real fast, with equal opportunity, fair wages, and all that other women stuff.”
His dismissive comments couldn’t go unchallenged. I couldn’t help myself. Executive Joe needed to be called out. “Estrogen maniacs? Women stuff? A mature use of words, Joe.”
I scanned Ian’s and Joe’s faces, trying to detect any