We butted heads after he tried to have me fired, he crossed that line first. I wasn't having his shit once he made it that kind of personal. It was squashed years ago in person at Expo, we haven't interacted since. Water under the bridge as far as I'm concerned, far as I'm aware he's felt the same.

I've never listened to his show, but I know he leaks a lot of press imagery before it comes out. If you work in marketing it's probably not a great idea to pull that kind of stuff when you're not anonymous, it wouldn't surprise me if someone at Stern had enough and talked to his company about professional courtesy. If his work's clients found out one of their employees was a leaker it wouldn't look good. That stuff gets taken pretty seriously when big marketing budgets are on the line. If I were in his shoes I'd have not gone that far out of concern for my job personally.

Rumors are one thing, leaking images with your watermark on them is pretty blatant though. Remember, free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences.

Fair enough, there are a lot of other ways to start handling leaks, internally, I agree. But pinball has a loooonnng history of being a dirty business, and if someone is fucking up their money and putting a watermark on it? You really think they wouldn't do something about it? I could see it.

Put it this way, maybe something happened over those images, maybe not, but he should at least know it's a possibility and be careful with how he leaks things. It could come back to bite him the ass even if it didn't this time.

Anyways, I'm not even sure it was Stern. If what Jack Danger said is true might just be people doxxing pinball people to cause havoc.

The government didn't censor his podcast. He decided being a controversial figure wasn't worth the headaches it brought to his workplace, and (reasonably) didn't want to lose his job over a podcast. Most podcasts aren't exactly paying the rent these days.

If he wasn't leaking other company's press materials and attacking people it's likely his work would have said "that's cute that you have a hobby" and that would have been that. You gotta own up for what you say if you're going to be 'edgy'.

Free Speech

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I just got an email from Chris, and he reminded me that he denied things when we met, so in the interest of fairness I'll tell the whole story. This is from I dunno, at least four years ago, so I'm going off memory here.

This was when Chris's podcast was new, so maybe that helps tie down the time. I never listed to it, he was either banned from Pinside already or doing his antics here, I don't recall, and I wasn't a fan. So I just didn't listen, that simple.

But I had friends who would listen. And he talked about me a lot. I know this because the next day I'd inevitably get a text from one of my friends to tell me about it, even though I told them I didn't care. I was sick of the pointless drama and being the subject of his talks.

Anyways, one day I get a text telling me that Chris said on his show the night before that he would offer Andrew Heighway $10,000 to fire me from Alien and hire someone else. I'm paraphrasing from memory here, but that was the gist.

That was the last straw for me. It crossed the line.

When Chris and I met at Expo he denied he ever said any such thing. And you know what? I have no idea, I didn't hear it myself. And I apologized to him for not verifying it better, because I should have. And I never did after that, because we squashed things and that's all I cared about. I wasn't looking for drama, just some peace.

To this day I have no idea what happened. If you want my honest answer I believe my personal friend who I know over the person who publicly stirred up shit left and right and was a huge troll, and an attention seeker. But I could be wrong, it could be a misunderstanding. Maybe someone else listened to that podcast and can tell me. Or not, whatever.

But there's the full story, and maybe Chris is innocent of this part and something got lost in a game of telephone. I didn't feel like dragging out the whole stupid thing in my earlier post, but maybe I wasn't fair in it either to not include his side, so here it all is for anyone who cares.

I have no ill will towards Chris now. Whatever happened is in the past for me, one way or another. From what I hear he's grown, and maybe he's not that person anymore. I take no personal joy in him stopping his podcast if it made people happy.

Anyone who has played pinball with me can confirm I'm definitely not Zach Sharpe.

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Thanks for confirming he said it, guess that settles that.

As I said, water under the bridge, hasn't been an issue for years. But it's a good reminder, that when you have a platform and use it to go after people some of them aren't going to just smile and take it. I have no idea what he did to piss someone off this time, but from what I'm reading it could be a long list. Take it from me, even chill people have a limit.

I'd be on my way, but I shit you not, my car battery is dead.

He tried to move on to Neo Geo collecting. Guess what happened? Bet you get it one.

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You have to have an account to see posts on that forum, so I won't bother linking it. Do your own detective work if you like. I read a sample of his posts, they're the same old same old same old. Except the Neo Geo forums are a lot nastier than Pinside, so it escalated a lot faster. That Neo Geo community is ... special.

I don't even care what he's lying or not about. The "joke" about getting me fired, who ratted him out, if it even happened, whatever. You want my opinion though? That forum would 100% fuck someone over like that. Either way I'm over it. I've blocked his email and I'm moving on with my life.

Hope y'all find a podcast to make you happy.

I dunno why it says he has only 5 posts, he has 31. And that forum is something else, everyone in the arcade community knows the rep there. I'll give you a sample of the replies he was getting, and you can just guess what the rest of the conversation was like. You gotta give points to doing original drawings though.

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Look, Chris could be lying about all of this, I'm not gonna point fingers (or even care), but the NG forum has a shit rep for a reason. Everything you said is true, he got busted for showing up, not contributing, and trying to get deals. But it's also a toxic place, and you know it's not always contained just inside that forum.

I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything really, the drawing was just too high effort to not pick as the example. Clearly some people on Pinside either have short memories, or weren't around when Chris got banned here. It's the same old story again.

As ReplicaX said, the Neo Geo forum has a low tolerance for people rolling in, not contributing anything, and just trying to buy games. It's not a store, it's a community. Chris reacted badly to them doing their standard gatekeeping to new users who don't want to add anything before they get their wallet out, and that forum is happy to have a good old fashioned pile on. I rarely ever posted there before and I haven't in years because I don't really enjoy the vibe there personally.

Honestly neither side looks great for it.

Personally I think it's incredibly strange that there are apparently so many weird political sides to making podcasts. I did the Coast 2 Coast podcast years ago, and I feel like my memory is Nate told me it had 14k listens. Which is great, very cool, but it's pretty small potatoes stuff. Feels like a bunch of fish in a bowl fighting over who gets to swim inside the plastic castle that day.

Why not just make content you're proud of on one side, and listen to who you want on the other? All this network stuff seems kind of silly to me, but I don't really follow any of it.

That place has its own culture, and it's not welcoming to outsiders. Big surprise, imagine if there were only 158 pins ever made, and the last one was Elvis and nobody has made one since (last Neo Geo game was in 2004). Then imagine Robin was a crackhead and basically moderated everything here the exact opposite of what he does. Pinside would probably be a pretty different place.

I mean, we kinda thought we did, but nobody knew how fucked up it really was. I was still finding out horrible things over a year after it all officially collapsed.

Good advice. I took a year off from Pinside, was helpful for me personally.

It's just a game. They're big wooden boxes with metal balls, it's not worth getting so worked up over that it starts to ruin you life in any way.

I'm hanging around here again now, and it's fun and fine, but I'd walk away again in a heartbeat if it got stressful for any reason. I have zero interest in the drama.

You, the judge, and that entire bus of bingo playing grandmas know what you did.

As with any forum community the direction comes from the moderation. Neo Geo forums have trollish moderation, Rot just cackles over stuff. Arcade-Projects is pretty heavy handed, Darksoft and Mitsu straight up delete things they don't want there. For Pinside Robin tries to keep things friendly and frankly gives more chances than anyone else.

To get banned here permanently you have to just constantly cross the line, over and over. Think on that.

My moderation style at Ars Technica is moderately heavy handed, in that I simply don't tolerate bullshit. I know what happens when you let certain things slide, so I don't. Given the tens of thousands of paid subscribers we have it's a model that appeals to many people, but some chafe at it.

Gotta find your spot. And learn to read the room when you first get there.

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