5
Game Publisher THQ Nordic Hosted An AMA On 8Chan, Grosses Out The Entire Internet
THQ Nordic is a major video game publisher responsible for releasing blockbuster series like Saints Row and Metro. Big enough, then, to hire a smart and competent P.R. manager. Instead, they went with a guy whose idea of community outreach is to let the internet's slimiest collection of pond scum ask his company absolutely anything.
For those innocents fortunate enough to not know, 8chan is an imageboard that was created because some online ghouls thought 4chan was too politically correct. In 2019, THQ Nordic was approached by the site, which has been blacklisted from Google for "suspected child abuse content" to participate in a friendly AMA. To everyone's amazement (and we assume that includes 8chan's) the publisher agreed, claiming they were "approached in a very friendly and polite manner" by the 8channers.
8chanInstead of their usual way of contacting members of the gaming industry by mailing them a single bullet.
The AMA was led by THQ head of PR and marketing Phillip Brock, a man who apparently has never read his job briefing, and went off the rails as quickly as you'd expect. But through it all, Brock kept responding jocularly to all the toxic questions, ignoring the anti-PC coding and straight-up homophobic slurs as if he had developed selective bigot blindness. When one of the site's closeted pedophiles posted a question asking "where the big tiddie lolis at" with an explicit image of two large-breasted children attached, master of spin Brock replied: "you got them already we'd say," probably while thinking how great he was at his job.
News of the AMA quickly received a torrent of backlash on regular, medium-toxic social media. Before the day was even over, half of THQ C-suite had to go on a public apology tour, including Brock. "I do not condone child pornography, white supremacy, or racism in any shape or form," said the man who had a nice fireside chat with the internet's most notorious harassers, pedo creeps, and white supremacists. He also added that he "agreed to this AMA without doing my proper due diligence to understand the history and the controversy of the site," not realizing that any public relations guy in gaming who openly admits that he doesn't know where the Gamergaters hang out should be fired on the spot.
4
Mark Zuckerberg Turned A Flooded Puerto Rico Into A VR Advert
Mark Zuckerberg, the first successful AI program to run a Fortune 500 business, isn't known for his empathy. But that's ignoring his great contributions to humanity, like how he donated $1.5 million to Puerto Rico after the deadly Hurricane Maria ravaged the commonwealth. And all that he wanted in return was to turn these terrible scenes of devastation into his digital playground.
Wikimedia Commons/U.S. Customs and Border ProtectionWho better to test out your million dollar project on than a bunch of people who don't have food or water?