GranDGranT Gone

[_jdance]

The only person I would talk to in this picture is Forrest.

We'd go to Denny's and harass the waitress together

[winkieduck]

oh snapz it's me

[yns]

More pictures of nyte.. thanks.. can anyone link the wrestling video again...

[big_ass]

Pflax

Keeping quiet. A shameful thing to do.

I wanted to get something off my chest about this awful shit that's been going on, but also maybe to explain why so many rumours about people being 'creepy' persisted without anybody calling those people out publicly. Warning, this is going to be very long because there's a lot to cover.

Firstly, I knew about the Tobi and Botjira stuff about four years ago.

I deleted skype because it sucks, so I don't have the logs of my chat with my source, and I think this conversation was around 2016. I was contacted by this mutual friend who sent me screenshots of logs of chats between Tobi and Botjira and between Botjira and my friend where she explained what happened, and I was disgusted.

Tobi is a guy I worked with often, assaulting someone and seemingly getting away with it. I had always felt Tobi was, as other people have said, an awkward guy. That's not an excuse. People need to stop using it as one. I know lots of socially awkward people who are awesome. It's not a character flaw to be socially awkward. It is a MASSIVE character flaw to see other people as objects that you can abuse at will.

Other than being awkward, Tobi also had a lot of history - that example of him being a racist in all-chat in Dota (the quote is: have you ever heard the expression, as lame as an n-words baby. and no, I hadn't heard that one) was one of the first things I ever saw about him and I was surprised he was still a big deal.

I had heard countless rumours about Tobi and cosplayers and him being a 'creepy womaniser' - I even used that line in that dumb parody I did of the Joindota new year's message which remains one of the most laughable things I've ever seen (another Tobi classic I suspect) but anyway - I thought maybe people grow and all the rest of it. Maybe he did some dumb shit in the past but maybe he's changed. Same shit we all think about people that, at their core, make shitty decisions consistently. It's nice to think the best of people, but come on. I was being too hopeful. People change but people also remain the same.

Back to the allegations of abuse - I went to Tobi's boss at the time, Jacob aka Maelk. Maelk is a long time friend of mine on the scene and I think very highly of him. He spoke to Tobi. That's all I knew and I felt that's all I could do because Botjira at that time didn't want to speak out. She was afraid and just wanted to make sure he was told this was not ok, but she didn't want the public shit show that we've all seen surrounding anyone daring to name names. That's what I was told and she was reluctant to come forward even when other people were speaking out. I don't blame her at all because some of you need to take a good look at what kind of people you are. Some of these comments have been so appalling I can't believe it.

Also this was Tobi, so it's not like she's accusing some nobody. He was the biggest caster in Dota at the time. Whatever she said was going to be buried under a sea of hatred that I have been absolutely disgusted by in the last week, but also totally expected. I understood why she didn't want to face that, and I felt I'd done as much as I could given how she didn't want to name anybody.

I was so proud when she finally named him. She was so brave to do it. I loved Cap instantly getting behind that story, and Meruna speaking out about her abuse, and Synd dropping Tobi like a fucking stone. It was great to see the truth finally coming out. It was a weight off my chest. I felt that finally the secret I'd had to keep was no longer a secret and she had the courage to name him herself. Fucking awesome.

I feel very different about what I also didn't do. I had felt more or less happy that I observed Botjira's wish to keep this out of the public eye. I understood why, and as much as I wished she'd gone public at the time I also felt it wasn't possible for me to come forward against her wishes.

But I didn't make any changes personally. I continued working with Tobi.

Fast forward a year or more, maybe two. I was at a Summit and Tobi was there too. On the cab ride back to the airport Tobi asks me "what was all that stuff you told Maelk about me?" and I told him exactly what I'd been told, and that if I sit on that information without doing anything I'm as culpable as Tobi is. That I had to tell someone or it makes me complicit. He said he had no recollection of his time with Botjira that way at all. He said it felt like it had come out of the blue. He listed all the good work he did trying to help out in schools and in esports in general. I can't remember my reply because in all honesty it was a very awkward situation and I have no idea what the cab driver made of it. I just wanted to stop talking to Tobi and get on with my life.

That's a very selfish thing to think. It makes me ashamed.

Botjira wasn't able to get on with her life without feeling terrible and suicidal. Being attacked by another person is terrifying and leaves a lot of scars, and emotional scars run extremely deep.

I felt bad that Tobi was still working and still a big star on the Dota scene and here was me keeping this secret that was essentially benefiting him. I even helped Tobi with his dumb gameshow in support of that godawful Tobicoin shit which was the sort of dumb crap I came to expect from Tobi. Honestly I just saw the other people going like Slacks who is the love of my life, and thought it was a decent wage, it was at York Uni and I have friends there, and it paid well and didn't really have to think too hard. Blah blah fucking blah. Lots of justification. I still knew it was Tobi's thing and I went anyway.

That's a terrible thing to do. To know that someone is an abuser, to suspect they have done it more than once, and to still enable them. To not only say nothing, but to work for them. To take their money and keep my mouth shut.

My part in this is pretty clear. I remained silent and I'm sure others have too. It's great that people are naming names and shaming people now but it is honestly too little too late. There were suspicions about Tobi from a long time ago. A lot of the women on the scene knew, and they warned each other. Think about that for second - that had to warn each other, because they knew that the men on the scene essentially weren't going to do shit. We were getting paid, we were doing our jobs, and a lot of the time it was alongside people who in any other walk of life we would ostracise. But we were thinking of our own careers. I took the easier road of just carrying on as if nothing was happening.

Why is it so hard to speak out? I regret it more than ever. It's shameful. It's one of the reasons I haven't spoken out much publicly during this whole final reckoning. I have my own shame that I have tried to bury and I would urge anyone out there to please do things differently. If we want our scene to continue in any way we have to be better, braver, and less selfish. Don't keep these people's secrets for them.

Maelk

I don't recall the conversations verbatim, but I assure you there's been nothing sinister in bringing up Pyrion's name and that I am prone to think that I asked to be able to do so in order to circumstantiate the allegations and put more weight behind them in confronting him and hopefully get an honest answer and truthful recollection of what had transpired. Ultimately, it was all denied and when trying to pursue the matter further through the victim (I have never known the name) and all I had to go on was her word and a screenshot of a text message of them agreeing to meet in his hotel room, it was incredibly difficult to pursue further. I took it to our company's CEO at the time, as I no longer felt confident in what to do or how to further see it through, and ultimately left the company shortly thereafter (albeit unrelated to this incident).

I have a hard time identifying what the right course of action would have been here. On one hand, in hindsight, we obviously did not end up with a desirable solution to the problem at hand. But at the time, it is an incredibly difficult position to be in, needing to pass judgment on little to nothing to go on, from a perfect stranger from whom all communication (which was little to none to begin with) went through a 3rd party. I genuinely feel my colleague and I tried to pursue the matter best possible, and in my stern conversation with Toby, I recall urging him to be very mindful of how he acts around other people (specifically women), how he portrays himself, who he spends his time with and how. For at least a short period of time, I also felt like he took it to heart. Ruining someone's life on the merit of that little evidence to go on, and this being the first and only "reported" incident, is to this day not something I find to be within my domain of authority to do, and I can honestly say, that was I put in the same situation, knowing the same things I did then, I likely would have done the same again.

Fast forward, I eventually left Dota mostly behind and the few events I partook in, I never associated with Toby. He and I unfollowed each other (the online equivalent of disassociating) very shortly after my departure, and I had countless people tell me about how he would talk trash about me to most people, citing "womanizer", "mistreating my girlfriend" and "drug addict" as some of the things mentioned.

I have always kept to a select few people (whether as a player, with my team, or when I was talent around a distinct few people that I trusted to be good people), and so distancing myself from him (knowing he preferred the same) was never an issue and I never heard anything since.

Pyrion remains one of the best people I have had the pleasure of meeting through Dota, and while the situation is a terrible one, I would like to think he chose to confide in myself and my colleague, in order to see this through best possible, trusting that we would take it serious - to which I will always insist we did.

There are a lot of good people who's been unwillingly implicated in this, and over the course of the past week, I keep thinking of the quote: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing". Pyrion tried, and I know a lot of other people in our industry did too, in regards to these horrible acts, and I regret not personally being able to do more.

Honestly feels like another one of those cases (like grant) where the accusation isn't so clear-cut but the person has just been so consistently abhorrent in other ways that people are happy to believe it

[big_ass]

I dont even understand the Tobi accusations. Maybe someone can fill me in

As far as I can tell it amounts to "He made it seem like he wanted a relationship but really was just using me for sex." That's not very nice but what's with all the "I needed years of therapy?" For a person to be cancelled with this much vitriol you would think there is more to the story

[AYAYA]

Pyrionflax what an utter joke. Maelk has the benefit of not knowing but Pyrion on the other hand has no such defense. For him to say anything about having a better scene or some bs just shows he doesn't really thing hes that guilty.

I am reminded of a quote from Every Man Dies Alone:

“My happiness doesn’t cost anyone else a thing.” “But it does! You’re stealing it! You’re robbing mothers of their sons, wives of their husbands, girlfriends of their boyfriends, as long as you tolerate thousands being shot every day and don’t lift a finger to stop the killing. You know all that perfectly well, and it strikes me that you’re almost worse than real dyed-in-the-wool Nazis. They’re too stupid to know what crimes they’re committing. But you do, and you don’t do anything against it! Aren’t you worse than the Nazis? Of course you are!”

That goes for every coward who knowingly let things slide.

[pLuhhmm]

Haha remember LCS summer finals in Detroit? Classic.

[girlpool]

i flagged this without knowing why exactly

[pLuhhmm]

Imagine having a legion of soyboys defend you after regretting having sex.

First zyori, now singsing. Haha.

Hopefully all this brain dead stuff is Putin at work and mother Russia expands its territories.

[Intel]

Seems like there’s a lot of stuff that’s still private , but

1. botjira accused Tobi of pinning her down in a hotel and not letting her up

2. synds gf Meruna (interesting dynamic) accused tobi of sexual deviancy after she told him no, including him touching her when she was asleep (after she told him no) as well as larger issues of being emotionally abusive

That’s what I gather

[big_ass]

They should display a # of flags on a post in addition to the number of "hearts"

[REFPSI]

FIRE.

[REFPSI]

when tobi just tryna give you the WANDINGO.

[big_ass]

ODPixel re:Tobi

There is so much more beyond the things that are seen publicly. I have been shared the messages in question, and to those who trust my judgement, I can tell you there is absolutely no place for someone like Tobi in our scene, and that those who have also seen them will agree.

Nahaz:

I am taking a day or two away from social media because I had become very angry and did not want to say anything I regret. I am still checking DMs and have asked several people to alert me to major developments. However there is one thing I believe it is it imperative that I say immediately.

I have seen screen shots of conversations between Meruna and Toby Dawson (@TobiWanDota). Meruna does not want them made public in part because they describe extremely intimate and personal details of what went on. These conversations are extremely damning.

Based on these statements and other details shared publicly, I believe that Meruna deserves our unconditional sympathy and our support. I believe that what happened between her and Toby is utterly wrong and worthy of condemnation. Based upon what I have seen I do not plan to associate with Toby in the future.

Basically what I was saying. People are dropping him because they have info we don't have. Probably that info will come out eventually

[insom]

Is this from that Charlie Chaplin movie? It sounds familiar

[insom]

Wait what the fuck did singsing do? I can't keep track of this shit

[insom]

I refuse to go on /r/dota2 and read every thread because the comments cause me physical and mental anguish

[pLuhhmm]

Not sure why they think it's okay to air this publicly then when supposed evidence appears they don't also release it?

Supposed to just trust these people? The ones that blindly take every accusers side?

So insane.

https://twitter.com/henrygcsgo/status/1276543374305230854?s=21

https://twitter.com/saffie_91/status/1276544489436450816?s=21

BTW

[anon31000304]

seems there is a positive correlation between spending all of your youth playing videogames and sexual assaulting someone eventually

[anon31000304]

And being a rape apologist