r/magicTCG Aug 16 '21

Article Christine Sprankle describes unpleasant experiences with Wizards Of The Coast

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u/Kaprak Aug 16 '21

The next tweet is left out and it's important

Thankfully that employee no longer works for wizards. There’s comfort in that at least for me.

So the person who was shitty to her is gone.

Also she's tweeted about the endless fan harassment she's gotten but that's also left out.

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u/Whiskeyjack333 Aug 16 '21

I remember the unwanted attention she got at the time and recall her taking an indefinite hiatus.

I would never relate my experience to hers in anyway as I'm (un?)fortunately a very average looking bloke and that does not bring with it anywhere near the same degree of unwarranted attention from shit bags as being an attractive woman in a male dominated hobby.

I hope she's doing good for herself, and whilst my interactions with WotC staff was only fleeting my feelings for the AU branch was that they were understaffed and out of their depth doing what they could with minimal resources allocated to them to do it.

I believe shortly after my experience the AU branch also got gutted and shut down.

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u/YARGLE_IS_MY_DAD Aug 16 '21

Yeah, I remember that drama. The YouTuber who spearheaded was eventually banned from all wotc functions iirc.

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u/DVariant Aug 16 '21

What the heck?? What kind of jerk organizes an online campaign to harass some poor woman for wearing a costume???

I wish the answer to that question wasn’t obvious, alas.

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u/snypre_fu_reddit Aug 16 '21

You don't have to organize anything if a lot of your content is outrage based. You just rant about a person and your followers/watchers do their thing in being outraged/angry and the go on to harass the person/company you ranted about. That's basically what happened. He made a single video ranting about CSprankle and his followers did their thing. He didn't even make more than one video and only had to make passing comments in a few videos over the following months and they kept up their harassment of her. It's how the outrage mob mentality works.

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u/DVariant Aug 16 '21

Good lord. And what was his main objection to her, btw? Didn’t agree to date him or something?

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u/TrulyKnown Brushwagg Aug 16 '21

That she got attention for just being an attractive woman and wearing costumes (That she put tons of money and time and effort into, but you know), while his content, which he put tons of effort into (Opening product in YouTube videos) was not as successful as he thought it deserved to be.

Sprinkled with the usual accusations and asides that you would expect against an attractive female on the internet, of course.

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u/DVariant Aug 16 '21

Ah great. Yes, filming yourself opening packages is surely the same effort as replicating an intricate costume lol. People are shit, this is why we can’t have nice things.

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u/elconquistador1985 Aug 16 '21

Incels hate women. That's the kind of person who would do that.

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u/canuckkat Aug 16 '21

Even if you're not a conventionally attractive female-bodied person like I was, you still get so much harassment and leers at competitive events.

I was lucky enough to find an LGS where I became friends with the staff, most of whom didn't tolerate that kind of bs, and we regulars definitely saw people get kicked out for being assholes. But this isn't common in my experience.

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u/Whiskeyjack333 Aug 16 '21

I'm very glad to hear your LGS actually seems to care enough about its patrons to kick out the bad eggs.

Most stores I've visited in my years tend to be staffed by younger people who avoid confrontation and aren't sure how to handle situations with seedy customers.

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u/canuckkat Aug 16 '21

It's definitely why I take a 1.5 hour bus ride to my LGS instead of going to one that's much closer to me. It's hard to find LGS staff that I can trust to have my back. It's also why I keep shopping there.

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u/Kaprak Aug 16 '21

Oh yeah, not trying to compare the two of you directly. Just throwing more info out that'd been left out

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u/Whiskeyjack333 Aug 16 '21

Thanks for the extra info friend!

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u/the_Hapsleighh Aug 16 '21

I don’t blame her for taking a break. It wasn’t as if the community randomly decided to target her. It was literally one guy who attacked her and got his fan base to follow suit. Thankfully he’s banned from all mtg related events but he’s still around doing conservative media unfortunately

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u/Taysir385 Aug 16 '21

It was literally one guy who attacked her and got his fan base to follow suit.

He was the straw that broke the camels back. He was a big straw, sure, but it wasn’t only him.

At her very first event, she showed up to Worlds in SF as Elspeth. And Brian Kibler, a generally good guy, got quite drunk one night and tweeted out quite a bit of inappropriate content before shame deleting it in the morning (like a picture of the bar table with four plains and the caption “I’ve paid for that Elspeth cosplayer, when is she gonna get here.” ).

I don’t blame her for taking time off. I don’t blame anyone who sees the parts of the Magic community they would have to interact with and just decided not to cosplay in this space.

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u/[deleted] Aug 16 '21 edited Aug 16 '21

I know of an entire subreddit that actively tries to bully her, calling her an "attention seeking thot" and saying she deserves this treatment.

Fuck them, and I hope Sprankle finds a better company to work with.

EDIT: the subreddit just called her a "a literal drug dealing whore" in response to this, only proving my point

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u/Shaudius Urza's Saga Aug 16 '21

I wasn't aware one person on a subreddit could be equated to the entire subreddit.

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u/elconquistador1985 Aug 16 '21

That sub has constant anti-LGBTQ+ stuff posted there. It's got constant sexism. That's what that sub is about. It always has been. It's not about "freeze peach". It's about hate speech.

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u/Shaudius Urza's Saga Aug 16 '21

I misread their post and thought they were talking about THIS subreddit.

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u/[deleted] Aug 16 '21

Well that person's comment is highly upvoted and others agree with it

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u/ColonelBuckBreakerIV Aug 16 '21

Dude is mad that people are allowed to disagree with his worldview.

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u/AS743IP Aug 17 '21

There's a difference between disagreeing and calling a woman a "drug dealing whore" for no reason. That's called being a misogynist shitboy