Full Transcript for Getting Good at Geeking Out

already goes a million miles an hour and you'd think, oh, that's a perfect place for a person with ADHD. But my brain was so fast that it would try to write the stories and then not proofread them. And then my editors would be like, what the fuck are you doing? And I was like, oh no. It was such a scary moment. 'cause I had moved from New Orleans to Atlanta to to work at CNN. And I was like sitting in this newsroom going, oh my God, whatever's wrong with me. I have to fix it because my livelihood depends on this. And so I was like, I think I might have ADHD. The social conversation was starting to pick up just a little bit at that time. And so I went and I got tested and that's how I found out formally that I had it. So yeah, I was in my late thirties at that time. Tried a whole bunch of medications, tried all the classics. I'm always curious to talk about this with other neurodivergents and see what their experience is, but, every Adderall, anything like Adderall all made me feel super sick. even on teeny tiny doses, I just felt like I can't wait to get this drug outta my body. I feel horrible. and so none of those were a success for me, and I tried some non-stimulant options that also weren't a success for me. So the current point of my journey is I don't really know how to manage this without just non-drug solutions because none of the medical solutions have been, a solution for me. Wow. That's a first for , me. I'll be honest. My current ADHD treatment plan looks a lot like planners, post-it notes, alarms, making sure all the food is in the front of the fridge. 'cause if not, I'll forget that it's there and it'll all spoil. Um, and day by day learning and talking to other people and figuring out what they do, I have a really good friend who has an Alexa set up in her house and at like four o'clock every day, I think it says, eat a food or you will die. And sh she will forget to eat if she doesn't have that, that on. so I was at her house and I didn't know she had the alarm I was visiting, and when it went on, I just lost it. And I was like, that is the ultimate neurodivergent alarm right there. I don't know if this is gonna make you feel better or worse, but I've been medicated my whole life and I still need to do all that shit. Yeah, I, I, I, I wanna have more conversations with people about what their day-to-day is. 'cause like, if you go on Reddit and you go on the neurodivergent or ADHD subs, they'll say things like, I took it and I cried because I was like, is this the way I'm supposed to be? And I'm like, why the fuck doesn't that happen to me? Like, like, that's not happening to me, but then I, I talked to my other neurodivergent friends, and most of them, it's not happening to either. Like, some of them are on Adderall and they're able to say, focus and clean a room when they're on Adderall. I can do that with no drugs. So that's another weird thing, right? Like certain, certain ADHD patterns don't fit me perfectly. So I, I would love to talk to more neurodivergents about what their experiences are like. Like if you, like you said, if you are medicated, do you still need all the other tools anyway? Is it really a multi-pronged thing no matter what you're going through? I would say probably Yeah. Probably makes sense. Speaking of Hyperfocus, do you wanna tell us about your special interest in games? Sure. gosh, where to start? I'll do the TLDR version. when I was five, an uncle handed me an Atari controller. I have a photo of the moment. It was just obviously, like my theory is that I obviously was born with ADHD and that it was the first thing that allowed me to focus in that way. I loved books and I loved writing before that, but there was some sort of instant love cold with video games. so played them all of my child years, all of my teen years, as I mentioned briefly earlier, started to get a little, like, do I need to give this up now that I'm 20 and like everyone else is going out and partying and drinking and like, you know, should I care about other things? So I would kind of try to keep it down low in my twenties, but like if I met someone. You know, like someone wearing a final fantasy shirt or something, I would just geek the fuck out. Like, it was so difficult for me not to be like, oh my God, you like this thing? I like this thing, you know about this thing. And like, I, you know, there's no better hallmark of like the special interest, right? Like it lights a spark in you. And so I kind of went through my, in my twenties, I think I went from this really interesting arc of I have to hide this thing and be embarrassed of it until about 27. And so around that time, the internet was beautiful and not full of ads. Um, and, the, the video game blogging scene was absolutely awesome. There were, you know, Kaku is still around, they're still doing it, but there were blogs like Joystick, and then there was IGN, which is still around. And like there were just, people hopping on the internet, taking advantage of, I don't need a journalism degree to get on here and write about games. And people were writing the most beautiful and interesting things about games. And I just loved every minute of it. It was like, oh my God, there's my people. And as a side note, I grew up in a smallish town, um, a suburb of New Orleans. I didn't have a whole bunch of friends growing up. I played games alone. I'm an only child and I didn't have connection with games at all. And so, you know, being on the internet and finding these things was just like, you know. And then what happened was I started my own blog, which I think was a blogger.com blog. I don't even know if they're still there. And it was about games. And I wrote regularly in it for a while. And then one day, somehow, some way I got the spunk to send an email to the person who was running Kotaku at that time. And I said, Hey, I'm in la I was in LA at the time. That's a long story I won't go into, but hey, I'm in la uh, you know,

I, I write about games. Here's my. Blog. If you guys ever need any, you know, video game coverage in this area, like to events or whatever, let me know, and they replied and they were like, your writing's great. Can you go and do this like event for us and we'll pay you $250? And I was like, like, you know, up to that point, I had been like working retail, working office jobs, didn't really know what I wanted to do. And so it didn't even matter that it was just like a side gig. It was just like, oh my God, someone wants to pay me to write about my favorite topic on earth. And so I was the most excited. And what happened was it snowballed. I wrote that article. They asked for another one, then I started to think. Well, could I write articles for other places? So I started looking around the other places and thinking, well, maybe I should pitch them. And then I got approached by Disruptoid, which now has been around for 17 years, I think. but was in its founding year that year. And they were like, hey, we really want you to come work here. Like, we love what you do for Kaku. So I got poached and I was like, wow, okay. This is crazy. So I worked for them for about six months, writing there, writing news, and then, which is so crazy because it became the fundamentals for my entire career, but I just was like, I'm just writing shit about video games. Like, you know, like it never felt like I would ever use any of this. I could have never dreamt it would become a foundation for a whole career. I was just like, I'm doing a thing that's fun. Tell us more about what it was like to be a woman in this space at that time it was what, 2007? So, my first event I ever covered was the Game Developers Conference, I was very excited about it. It was in San Francisco. I went, I had been given when walking in a little spherical Pac-Man, like a little bouncy ball. So the photo I took was me like pretending to eat the Pac-Man. So I was like, right, someone took that picture and photoshopped a dick into my mouth in the comments within 30 minutes of that post going up and the guy who used to handle all of our admin and stuff banned that person and that like quickly and then was like, I'm so sorry this happened. That's what it was like to be in video games in 2007. That's horrible. I mean, I could tell you so many other stories, but I feel like that really sums it up. it was a woman less space at the time womanless. Just women weren't making games, women weren't writing about games, to this day, I really believe that while I had a passion about games and that I was a good writer about games, I think one of the biggest pieces of why my stuff got put out is because women weren't writing about games. Now they are, and that's a nice thing, like when you, when you look now about like who's out there and stuff, the spread is, I would say getting close to 50 50, but it was not like that in 2007. Here's the weird thing, and I, I think so many women will relate to this too. There was stuff like that, and then there was stuff like, oh, like, you know, you're a cute girl, like, come and like, come to our party and come and, you know, be, and being whined and dined like, because at that time, one of the big things at video game parties was there's alcohol everywhere and it's all free because you're press. So we wanna get you drunk so you'll write nice things about our game. So it was like the horrible, you know, dick in the comments situation, and then it was like, oh, but we wanna treat you like gold because you're gonna write stuff about our game and people will listen to you 'cause you're a girl. it's almost, like you are a commodity. Oh, I was, it's not like it, it is not like, I mean, look, I hate to say that, right? But like, I don't think that I can be an aware woman as well as a feminist in the world and think that I was ever hired to do any of that work for any reason other than I was like the token girl. Just like in the diversity era we had, you know, token people of color being hired. Like they weren't hired 'cause white people liked it. It was. To fulfill a quota. You know, maybe there were, I, I think back about the people I interacted with and there was a person or two who were like, you're really good at this, you really care about this. And it shows, but they were few and far between. I imagine there was a culture of kind of gatekeeping boys club type dynamics. There was, so there was an event that happened, starting in 2014 that the gaming community, uh, will know if you call it what it was called, Gamergate, and it was basically a like a harassment campaign, that was organized against gamers online who were basically against feminism diversity, uh, and like progressiveness. So kind of imagine like a mini maga basically, but against like anything progressive against women. The whole thing started, specifically centered on one female gaming journalist. Um, and I'm not gonna go into her story, but, that's how it all started. And it was kind of a point where I think I was like, I don't think I want to be in this space anymore. Like, I don't think I can be in this space, why do you think gaming culture has clung so tightly to this entitlement to misogyny and harassment? Same reason as any other thing that is male dominated, men think they own it, and they don't, and they don't own anything. But they have told themselves that story for many centuries. Look, you see this everywhere. Like, I mean, I, I feel like you see it everywhere. If you look hard enough, you see it in the sciences, you see it in art, you see it in all these spaces. If men think they have laid some sort of claim to a thing, they don't like women trying to step into the space. So, you know, I think it's really easy to look at gaming and be like, oh, there's a real misogyny problem there. But I think it's really everywhere. I just think that, you know, it's easy to turn the spotlight on gaming and like gaming now in, 2026 versus the

gaming space. When I came in, in 2007, the media space, let me say, 'cause I obviously was interested for a long time, but got really close up to it because of working in media. Huge changes, like I said, men, much more women, many more women making games, more female CEOs in big gaming companies, which I'm happy to see whether or not that's like tokenism or not, I don't know. but more of it in general. And also more queer people, thank the fuck God. More black people, more diverse people in general, making games and putting that into the world. So that has changed for the better. But if I was to get into an online game that has a big player base, like let's say Call of Duty, which is, you know, a military game and I was to get online and I was to, to this day get on a headset and speak, someone would be like, there's a fucking girl here. Or like, bitch, we don't want, we don't wanna play with you. Like, that would still happen. I have spent most of my life playing games solo, so I don't really experience it that much. But my friends that play online, and I don't have a lot of them, I have a few, but my friends that play online, it's still there. And most of my friends that do play online regularly are men. Yeah, so it seems like the way that you coped was to just not be in those spaces recreationally. Well, here's the thing. When I was growing up, I was a, an only child, as I mentioned earlier. And then B, the spaces didn't exist yet, because gaming wasn't online, and so we played games. If you were gonna play games with someone, you would play it side by side with a Nintendo, right? That whole online era of gaming really didn't get fired up until like the first Xbox, which was, I think, early two thousands. I could be wrong, but, that, so when it came, I actually wasn't, you would think I would want the connection, but I actually didn't want anything to do with it because I had been playing games alone so long, so when I heard about these horror stories, I was like, fuck that. Like, that makes me wanna go there even less. I never wanted to play with strangers. It just didn't appeal to me, Why do you think gaming has always been so man coded? Good question. I don't know. I mean, you know, there are certain things that are very man coded that I feel like sports is the biggest one I can think of, right? Where you're like so manly. But like, you know, now you see a lot of women at different types of games and sometimes they go with their husbands, sometimes they go alone, whatever. But with gaming, it's, yeah, it's weird. I think it's just, I think it's just one of those things where a lot of men were in the space first, but if you think about it, right. Like, I always think about the fact that like a few years before I was born, a woman still couldn't go and get like a checking account in her name, right? Like I'm, you know, I'm older. And so like, that was only a few years later. So I always think about the fact that women were so restricted societally on the whole from so many things that I think it was mostly that women got edged out of a lot of stuff. And this is not just games, I think this is in a lot of spaces, right? But like in the game space, there were few women, like there's always a few pioneering women in all spaces. Roberta Williams was one of the women who was pioneering in the gaming space. She was one of the only women that was actually like making games, she's 72 now. So she was making games way back in the beginning. She was one of the only ones. And if, I think if you look into it, like if you look around at a lot of spaces, if women were pioneering in those spaces, they were also like, they were kind of smothered while pioneering. You know what I mean? Like their stories didn't really get told or they kind of got shadowed or Oh, a man took credit for it or whatever. and so I think that, I think that a lot of, firstly, a lot of spaces were heavily populated by men, but secondly, women have been ostracized naturally from a lot of spaces. So I don't think it was ever a welcoming space for women. But we over decades have slowly moved into it anyway. yeah, I don't know. I don't, I don't think, because I think gaming honestly can appeal. And have, I've now seen it appeal to, to both of the sexes and, and all versions in between, in very many different types of ways. Like, I think it's a, it's a really common construct for people to be, like men, like war games and women like cutesy games like Stardy Valley. And sometimes that's true, but I have friends, female friends who like to play Halo or like the war games, and I have guy friends who like to play the farming games. So it's not really, you know, it's easy to just like type it, but I don't think it's, it's as simple Yeah, as that. So, I tend to blame everything to be honest on, on the patriarchy. When I really open the lens up enough, I'm like, that's the patriarchy. Oh, it's the patriarchy again. It's the patriarchy. I think all problems when zoomed out far enough can be led back to the patriarchy, white supremacy and capitalism. I mean, yeah. They honestly can. So yeah, that's the, that's the thing. It's like, you know, I think it's really easy for people that don't understand gaming, or no, I should say not understand, no gaming as a space. No, it's a space they've gone into. It's really easy for them to be like, well, why, why is it guys like that? Why is it such a guy thing? But I, I, I really think that, that it was just because women didn't feel welcome in the space at first. And you had the really rare pioneers like Roberta Williams who didn't give a shit if they were welcome or not. So here's something that I've noticed as a therapist for Neurodivergent Young folks, is that gaming culture seems to be kind of a primary social outlet for some of these young men. Is that something that you've noticed as well? Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And in the past couple years have started to actually identify that there is, at

first what I thought, like I said earlier in the show, was nerdy. Then I started to identify that nerdy and all those people at the con who smell like they didn't take a shower. Is actually bridging into autism. I think a lot of neurodivergent people, ADHD, autistic and anywhere in between have a really hard time relating normally in the world because of all their stuff, and often find refuge in the worlds of games, and I used to think at first, oh, we're just like the weird ones. But now I'm like, actually I think we're the autistic and ADHD ones, and that's really what a piece of it is. However, I think, I think that this is not to say that a woman couldn't do this, but I think men and women tend to kind of process that experience differently. My experience with women is that when they're really into gaming, it tends to be kind of a. It tends to be kind of a cozy space for them, and it can be a space they share, it can be a space they're in alone. Whereas I've seen men display some really weird toxic behavior when they start gaming. And so I almost feel like for women it can be like a cozy refuge and for a lot of men it can become a bubble in which they're just living in this weird bubble where, look, I don't wanna try to define it. I'm not a man and I'm not living in that bubble. But,I guess, I think that it, it's hard because like anything, I think that it can offer really great benefit and I think that it can also offer a space to unplug from the world in a negative way. I saw something recently that it's something like 25% of men between the ages of 18 and 24, and these are really round numbers. Please don't check me on those, but a large portion of young men have never approached another person in public. I think there's a lot of reasons they're not approaching people in public. Let me shorten my thought and say that it make, would make sense that if you couldn't approach people in public, that your life might be pretty lonely and that you might be looking for some way to connect, whether it's with people or whether it's with a place that makes you feel comforted. So in that setting, it makes sense to me that games are such a draw for young men. I think, I think young men also tend to be, and I once again, don't quote me on this, but, um, I think they tend to be more online oriented because of having trouble with, you know, not, not being able to feel like they can easily connect. Uh, recently someone said to me, and I think this was from a study, that when, when women visit or have time together, they spend time, what we're doing, right? We're looking at one another, talking to one another, facing men spend time like this, they don't spend time. Face to face. I saw an actual study on this in college where they would take, pairs of girls and women at different ages and pairs of boys and men at different ages and give them two chairs and say, just like, set the chairs up and interact. And for every single age, the girls and women faced each other, and the boys and men were side to side. So. I wonder what life would be like, and I'm speculating, but I wonder what life would be like for me, say if I was told I need to be strong all the time. I need to be the provider. And also you have no support system because the people, the people you're supposed to relate to, you can't be intimate with them. You have to be like this with them. So I, I'm not much of one to be like, oh, let's give men a break. Like, but I, no, no, no. Not at all. Like I think, I just think that over time I've thought a lot about, about how societal expectations have set them up for a lot of things that I believe are toxic. And I think this is an example of how the patriarchy hurts everyone, what you were just describing Mm-hmm. Like it is lonely never feel vulnerable with anyone, to never have a person that you can just go to and be like, hey dude, I am not okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I am sure there's stats on this, but like most women I know who are married, you know, they'll be like, yeah, my husband doesn't have a lot of friends. Whereas the woman is always like, I'm going to coffee with blah. I'm going to do this with blah. We're gonna have my art craft day with blah. If men are doing something, it's, I'm gonna go watch the game. I'm gonna go, you know? But it's, to me, it's very different times. So, yeah. Interesting. Interesting to think about in this capacity, for sure. And it sounds like even within these communities that men do manage to build, there are like no meaningful boundaries. There's no accountability. It seems like people can just do whatever they want. Yeah. I think unfortunately, it's a side effect of the internet, right? It's like the whole keyboard warrior thing. Now I will say I have a Discord, which I built, when I was first originally streaming, and then it eventually became the home for my podcast with Matt Silverman, who, you know. and, uh, for anyone who might be listening and not know what Discord is, it's like a series of kind of like, you can set up a server, like a space, and then you can put like subspaces in it. So for instance, our server has like a room where people post art they made, or a room where like they post food that they cooked or then there's like a video games, one for them to talk about games they're playing. And I will say that even though my community is very small, there's probably like 70 people in it. There's men in it and there's also women in it. And the mix is very respectful. And the men in that community are all active gamers, but also pretty awesome human beings. Some of them I've known since I started Disruptoid, so they're getting close to 20 year friendships now. So it's, it's taught me that there is the possibility for like good folks to come together in a space, male or female. But I think that the bigger that space gets, the more difficult that gets, you know, because you just have too many variables. So I vet my community and I make sure that

the people coming into it are good humans that I think will be with like good with the vibe of what we have And this is why women should be in charge of things agreed. You were saying before about the gender mix in gaming, and I was curious to know how many of those women are in leadership versus how many are just token diversity hires. That's a great question. I feel like I have to preface this by saying the, the gaming journalism space is like completely falling apart. like, uh, and this is actually something that's happening across a lot of media. Um, a lot of people are losing full-time jobs and, and freelance jobs or kind of replacing that, or like kind of doing one-off gigs. So anyway, to address your point in media, I, I can't think of any women In gaming itself. There are certainly some women I know in pr, in gaming, pr, there are certainly some women I know in development. but yeah, in media, no, not at all. gotcha. Could be wrong, could be forgetting somebody. But off the top of my head, I still keep up with it. And yeah, like most websites are still comprised of 80 to 90% male staffers, even the freelancers. there's a better mix on certain sites, Now that we've identified online gaming as a neurodivergent coded space, I would love to hear your experience if you have any, in any differences in masking expectations between men and women. That's a really good question. I feel like masking in women is just worse in general, like whether you're in gaming or not, because you have the unspoken, you know, let me just sum it up as like the good girl, right? Like, you know, the pleasant, I'm not gonna rock any boats. And I know that feels really dated, but I think a lot of women still fall prey to it. I mean sometimes myself included. And I think the older I get the more I'm like, fuck this shit. But you know, when you're younger, I still see a lot of very kind of obedient young women. So to answer that question, I don't think men are masking at all. And I don't think they've ever felt like they had to mask in gaming. And that's why I can hop on an online game tonight and turn on voice and hear someone call someone a faggot within five minutes. Excuse my use of the word, but there's just no other way to get it across because they aren't masked at all. Mm-hmm. And that's, that's actually that piece in general, I feel like when men feel like they own spaces, they don't, they don't mask to begin with really. Now, I mean, I might be generalizing, but No, that sounds pretty spot on, and I think you hit my point on the head with the idea that women are just expected to mask more, like society does not tolerate awkward women in the same way that they tolerate awkward men. No, it's weird. It's like they'll verbally kind of cut down awkward men, but like those awkward men are still like working in engineering and working in programming and working in tech, and it's like if an awkward woman applies for those jobs, she'll probably be rejected because she's not smooth enough. Like, You know what I'm thinking yeah. my, I'm, I'm gonna call him out here. My best friend's husband did not bring his suit pants to their destination wedding. He forgot his pants on the day of their wedding and like shenanigans ensued and it turned into this like funny story, but I promise you, if the bride was missing something that important, it would've been like a trauma. I mean, the shitty truth is that the these, and like we know this, but these standards are different between the sexes and they are, have they changed some? Maybe. I don't know. I mean, in the current climate with the politics that we're in, I don't feel like, I feel like they're trying to go backwards. So yeah, I would love to be like, things are getting better, but I, I don't know. I don't know. I think in any situation we're in, we can, we can find some ways that things are going better and some ways that things are going worse. In addition to different expectations for masking, have you noticed any different gendered standards for competency and, and legitimacy within the gaming world? That's a good question too. Yes, I think, I think one measuring stick for men in gaming is skill. there's been a rash of probably for the last 10 years or so. It, it, it's a rash of games that are known for being very difficult, um, skill wise. And for you to get good at them, you have to practice them over and over. And really that, that concept's not completely new. People have been, you know, getting good at games by practice for a very long time. But, um, I think these, this rash of games kind of brought it around again and it's, I think, very common for, for there to be like skill call outs. But I will say this, they're not just directed from men to women. They're also directed from men to men. Like, okay, so the literal phrase get good is like an insult. So like if you're on Reddit and you're in a video games forum and someone goes in and is like, I can't beat this boss and this game, and I've tried and tried. And it is very often that the first response will be That's 'cause you suck and you need to get good. Yeah. And that's not reserved for women. But I have seen this either Tumblr post or something that's been cut up and showed and it's like basically some guy like ranting about women who play Star New Valley, which is like, you know, a peaceful farming game, and it's like, you know, women don't play real games. Women play Star New Valley. Women wanna plant things and cook and, and you know, like women can't, you know, compete on the level of blah blah blah, blah. It's like a, it is a rant, but I've seen it a million times and it's interesting because it shows to me very much that like there are certain men who, I don't think it's so much that they think that women don't have skill. I think that they feel threatened by the idea that women could have skill, and so they kind of go off, you know? and I think there's a lot of real, like insecure masculinity

on display and, and things like that where you're just like, oh, okay, bro. Okay. So, so yes, the, the competency piece is there, but I think, I don't think that one is reserved just for men to women. I think it just kind of, it's a weird like kind of poisonous sentiment that floats around certain gaming communities more than others. There's a community I'm in that's been going now for a few years called Wholesome Games, and it's exactly what it sounds like. The games are all very wholesome and cute. Most of 'em don't have shooting in them. Um, and they are things like Star Valley where you plant things or you open, like, I just saw this ad for a game that's like, you're gonna open a thrift store and you're gonna furnish it with all these nineties thrift store things. And I was like, that's so cool. So I really like that community because I've noticed that in, they have little. Showcases that they put on YouTube where they'll show off people's games. And I've noticed though, that community is very, I mean, who's gonna be in there talking about skill, you know, when you're looking at games that are about farming and stuff, right? And so it's like those personalities aren't in there. It's mostly people that are like, this looks so cute, I can't wait to play it. It looks so cozy. Like, so it's very different energy. so it's spaces like that have begun to pop up and I really like them because they're so different from the typical gaming space. When you're describing the the typical gaming space and the need for skill and to get good and to be the best, I'm thinking, I'm like, this is just sports for clumsy dudes. exactly what it is and I always think it's so funny when people are like. Ew, your fandoms weird. And I'm like, you think sports is not a fandom? Sports is the fandom. It's the biggest fandom. It's where you literally like, take your shirt off and paint your body red and blue and you go like howl in the aisles at the, at the stadium. Like that's so much weirder than me, like putting on a costume of like a video character. I. literally have never met a woman who has punched a television. I always find it incredibly weird that just because sports is the like universally accepted fandom, it's more normal when it's like full of people who are doing super weird things. Next time, you're talking to a toxic sportsman, call his jersey a team costume. I love your team cosplay. That's such a cute costume. God, he would, can you imagine just. I can just see the red rising from the giant neck into the face, like, ugh. What do you think these communities are missing out on when they exclude women? Oh God, so much. I mean, I think, I hate to keep saying this 'cause I feel like a broken record, but I feel like all communities are missing out on excluding women because of diversity, period. I mean, you know, I've always, as I've watched the current situation with the administration around us, I've been like, it's so sad to just wanna just be in like a echo

chamber with yourself. Like that's the saddest thing. Women in gaming tend to just think differently than men do. And I think there's a bunch of reasons for that. I think one of the big ones is that we are allowed to have intimacy in the lives that we have. And when I say that, I don't mean sex. What I mean is the ability to be face to face with other women, the ability to have feelings and not be shamed for them. And so because of that, I think those things affect the way we experience games, you know, in all media really. But I know that one of the things that I wanted to write about the most when I started writing about games was how much emotional impact some of them were making. I wanted to tell a story of how many games I had played that had had a tremendous emotional impact on me. And I don't think the majority of men are intimate enough with themselves, much less other humans to be able to really tell those stories. Now, I will say when I worked at Disruptoid, I started to meet men who could and did, and I loved that because I was finding that I was meeting some guys that I was like, and some of them have been like friends ever since, like 20 year friendships that I was like, oh wow, you also had a super emotional and meaningful experience with a game or, or you know, whatever and it really meant the world to you and you were able to succinctly write about it, and so I think I also started to see that while a disappointing number of men were having different experiences in the gaming world that I couldn't relate to. There were some that I could relate to. and that was nice and really helpful, I think, to find out and, and gave me some hope. You mentioned there was an incident, I think in 2014 that was the tipping point for you to walk away from gaming journalism. Do you wanna tell us a little bit more about that? Sure. so yeah, 2014, and it was called Gamergate and it was, in my opinion, kind of like a backlash to women really starting to move into the gaming media space. There were certain women that were specifically picked on and then after that were harassed and abused online and doxed. And it just was like the ugliest of the ugly, you know, and it, it actually juxtaposed with where I was in my career because I had been writing about games for a pretty long time and some adjacent, like nerdy kind of things. And, it was actually 2013 that I had moved to Atlanta where I live now, to, um, to do breaking news for, for, for CNN, and so when I was, I was already turning away, even though there were certain times in when I could write a story about a game, I was already doing a lot more like mainstream things. And so I think I was thinking about the bigger picture of my career and. When all this happened, it was just so gross that I was like, I don't really know if I wanna be a part of the community anymore. I felt like I had done what I wanted to do in the space, right? Like for a couple years before I moved here, I,helped to spearhead, a

section of CNN, which sadly is no longer there, called geek out and I freelanced for them and did stories about games as well as cosplay and anime and nerd conventions and all that stuff. And, it was after that that I ended up actually getting the job and moving, getting a different job within that company and moving here. And I think it just felt like yeah this is a good time to step away from this because I don't really wanna try to be in this space anymore 'cause it's just kind of gross. So I, I didn't stop talking to the friends I had made in my video game days that I trusted, and I didn't stop playing games, but I more or less stopped interacting about them online every once in a while with jobs that I've had. Like, um, after I was at CNN for a while, um, I went to a website called The Daily Dot. I did a lot of game stuff for them there. I went to Yahoo. I did some stuff for them there. Um, really, I've done some game stuff everywhere I've gone because it's, you know what I know best, but I just, maybe the most important thing to highlight is that I didn't care about putting my voice in the space anymore. I didn't care about speaking to the community because it was obvious to me that there were. There was something, the community was really sick, there was something really ill about the community, and it made me really sad, but I didn't wanna be a voice in the community anymore. Yeah that totally makes sense, and I think women are so conditioned to believe that walking away from something is inherently a failure on our part. Where in your case, it sounds like you were just done dealing with all of this abuse. Well, I was, but also like, um, the woman that the whole Gamergate event got centered on, she had like serious harassment going on. Like she had things mailed to her house. She had people screaming at her on the street. She had like terrifying things happening to her. And quite frankly, I also was kind of like, while this whole community is riled up about this, I don't really want that to ever happen to me. Yeah. And I've had a couple of times where I've published something and people have come after me on Twitter. Like it, I mean, like, you know, and just those little explosions have been like, fuck this. Like, it's not worth it, you know? so yeah, I think there was also the, I didn't leave in fear. I left for a decision for myself, but a part of that decision was absolutely, yeah. I don't really wanna be in a space where I could be harassed to the point where I would need to call the police. Yeah, And Zoe Quinn, the girl who was doxed, she had to call the police many times. Her life became a living hell. And she talked about it publicly, but it was like, yeah, no, I don't, I don't want that. It is interesting to hear you describe the community as sick, I'm thinking about the roles that women are typically expected to take when something is unwell. It is typically our job to come in and make it well, to fix it, to create a better space. And I think that whether or not they intended to or knew that there are some women who have tried to do that since then. Wholesome games that I mentioned earlier, they started out as curators and now have become publishers. So they're helping very small developers to publish some of their games, which means giving them funding. But they're almost all women, I think there have been things like people like that, right? That are like, we want to do something that creates a space that doesn't exist or betters a space. So I don't know if, you know, I seriously doubt that they, for instance, looked at the space and went, God, it's full of toxic people. It's like, cheer this shit up. Like I don't think it was that. I think it was that they just wanted the thing that they created. But yeah, like I don't. I don't know if there's a woman on planet Earth that would have the patience to cure what's wrong with gaming. It sounds like a big job, and it sounds like these women that you were describing created a parallel space for themselves instead of forcing. They did. Yeah, I think they did. so, you know, and good on them, right? Like they created something that is positive that I look forward to, to going to inhabit. But, you know, not all spaces are gonna be like that. And that's okay. And, you know, you can choose the spaces you want to be in and the spaces you don't wanna be in. So, you know, the spaces that I choose to be in are, are pretty tiny. but I'm okay with them being tiny because I, I, I like what's in those spaces, you know? I would love to talk to a younger version of you and have you talked to young women neurodivergent and considering entering male dominated spaces. Okay. Let me start with the younger self part first. I, I can't imagine telling 27-year-old Colette right now, which is when I really got started. I can't imagine telling her. Hey, this is gonna be a shit show because first of all, she wouldn't have listened because she was so excited to do what she did, and when I think about it, I really wouldn't trade that experience for anything. I mean, not only did it build the foundation for the career I'm in now, but quite frankly it was one of the most joyful parts of my life, despite the bad parts. I felt profound connection in this thing that I had loved for the first time ever in my life. So I don't think I could ever, you know, erase that. So I think I would tell her, like I would tell her you're going to have some incredible experiences intermixed with that are gonna be some really scary experiences, and they don't define your worth. They merely are things that are happening around you. You are still a wonderful writer and everything about what you think and what you want to say matters, the stories you want to tell matter. I wouldn't tell her like, oh, it's gonna be terrible and you're gonna need to leave it, because I just don't, you know, I don't have that kind of regret about it, weirdly enough. So that's probably what I'd

say to her. Do you have any advice for younger neurodivergent women who are currently considering entering a male dominated space? I do. I think it's good to ask yourself how much do you want it as far as the space that you're going into, and to really understand what moving into it means. I think that having a support system of other neurodivergent people that can understand you, probably preferably women or you know, people who, you know, you can trust and you know, you can turn to for, to be a sounding board. Because I think entering any male dominated space is going to be infuriating, and it is going to, you're going to have days where you wonder why you did this. But that being said, I do think that there's this weird balance of kind of like, how important is it for you to affect change that could potentially resonate forward and help women coming after you. Right. how valuable is that to you versus how much adversity are you willing to kind of weather to the point to where like, you know, you don't want your, you don't want your sanity to start to fray, right? And that's very possible. So it's this weird kind of dance of like, where's the balance? I think that's gonna vary for each person. You know, I would never say like, well, it's gonna be hell if you try to, you know, go into stem. You know, I know you wanna do it, but you know, that's where men go because it's like, if you look at the last hundred years, so many women have been like, I'm gonna march into male dominated spaces anyway, and they've gotten hell, but they've done it because it mattered to them. So the biggest reason that I pivoted wasn't because I felt chased out by men, although I was very disappointed with men. It was because I saw my career kind of moving in a different direction and, and, and opening up into something I really didn't see coming. To be honest, I never expected to be a journalist. I wrote about games 'cause I loved them and had an opportunity and wanted to, but that was my main reason but I think everyone will have a different reason for wanting to move into that kind of space. I think the other thing I would say is if you're in the space and you're miserable, it's okay to leave. You're not giving up because you needed to leave. it's okay to enter the space and to do things in the space for a while and to get something good out of the space and then to decide that you've gotten what you needed out of the space, that's okay too. And you don't have to be like, oh, I'm a disappointment because I'm not furthering the revolution for feminism. Like, you know, we are rolling a thousand pound boulder uphill as far as that fight. it's okay to be tired. That's what I would say. All of those things. Yeah, It's a lot. I know for any one person to take on. And it is. Sounds like you are defining success differently now than you were earlier in your career. Definitely, and I mean, to be honest with you right now, I'm actually going through a huge, another like time of

change of what I define as success, you know, I think from starting the journalism career in earnest, like not in games in 2007, but moving here in 2014 really was very like, oh, I'm in this upward trajectory with this career, and, you know, I'm a career woman now and you know, Mom, I'm gonna be late coming home for Christmas because I have a career. Like, you know, all this like very, like I have to have this experience with all this stuff. And there was a big shift for me, earlier this year, and now I'm starting to realize that I don't want to be a successful stressed career woman at all. I actually just want to have more time to make art and read books. And that's a real weird, hard right from where I thought I was going. So, you know, I think I am in the midst of redefining success for myself right now. and if I could give more advice to young neurodivergent women, it would be, success might look like this at one point for you, and then 10 years later it might radically change and you might be like, what the fuck is happening? But it, it, it has been a very interesting year for me as far as that goes, to say the least. so yeah. Interesting. I feel like it's such good advice to younger women in general that it is okay to change your mind. It is okay to explore one path that you thought would make you happy and obtain more information and take a different turn. That is not a failure. No it's not. And I think, you know, it's, I'm so glad you said it like that because I think that, you know, our parents, a lot of our, our of the boomer generation, their success was, you're in a 40 year marriage, you're in a, you're in the same job for 40 years, and then you get your pension and you retire. So they had these kind of more single tracks, not everybody, but a lot of people did and that was kind of thought of as stability and now it's more common for people to have a career for a number of years and then pivot to a new career, or sometimes pivot multiple times in a lifetime to different things that they want to pursue. I am of the personal belief, and I really strongly believe this about relationships, especially that a relationship is not a failure because it ends and neither is your career path, whatever it is. I think it is only a failure, and I say that loosely, if you don't come away, changed, meaning that it's never a failure because you'll always come away, changed in some way. Whether it's, fuck, I never want that again, or, wow, there were some things about that that I learned that made me different or stronger or more open or more aware or whatever. So yeah, to me, the whole idea of failed relationships and failed careers is we gotta be careful how much we attach ourselves to these identities, right? I'm a wife, I'm a, you know, I'm a successful career woman, I'm a journalist, I'm a whatever. They're just hats. If listeners are looking for more of your content, where can they find you? Let's see. So probably I, I'll be honest, I'm in that phase of not on social media much anymore, but the place I'm the most active is my Instagram and so that's at Colette Bennett, all one word. And it's just my first and last name. and then I do have a video game podcast, which I co-host with my friend Matt Silverman. and it's called Colette and Matt Have Entered the Chat. and that is a weekly conversation about games that we do. We're actually about to do our Game of the Year podcast this week, so that'll be out soon, and you can find that on every place. Podcasts are, so Apple, Spotify, the whole shebang, We also have a Discord, where people can come and join us and hang out if they are so interested and have listened to the podcast. and I'm happy to, to give you those links for the show notes if you need them. I appreciate it and I appreciate you taking the time Yeah. Loved it. Thank you for having me.