Honestly I feel kind of sick about all of this. "It's undermining the legitimacy of real issues and the Twitter thread caused us some pretty bad PR damage." "Honestly I feel kind of sick about all of this," Wilson wrote in a follow-up email to me. The only thing we know for certain is that this was all a pointless and insensitive hoax. Poelegalthrowaway00's confession that they're really a teacher seems just as dubious as their original thread. A few minutes after that, the post was deleted entirely-though not before people grabbed screen captures of it. Minutes after that second post was made, however, it was edited and the original message was replaced by someone claiming to have hacked poelegalthrowaway00's Reddit account using their security questions. And why pick Path of Exile's community, of all places?
As if people don't already know or understand that it's pretty easy to make stuff up on the internet. It was a bizarre and unexpected twist, made even more weird by poelegalthrowaway00's attempts to justify why they'd spread lies or how redditors should have seen through the bullshit. In that second post (which was also soon deleted along with the original legal advice thread), poelegalthrowaway00 claimed to be "an educator" who was teaching their class about "how easy it to manipulate public opinion and discourse through social media." Path of Exile, like most ARPGs, requires quick reflexes and a lot of clicking on things. Then, late last night, poelegalthrowaway00 posted to the Path of Exile subreddit and admitted the whole thing was made up. But without any more leads, there was nothing Grinding Gear could do. Other gaming outlets like TheGamer and GameRant also published stories on the original Reddit thread, increasing the lie's visibility.
Disability advocates like Able Gamer's Steven Spohn were discussing the incident and asking Grinding Gear to investigate and overturn the ban. Meanwhile, the backlash on social media was growing. "We're curious about what happened here because banning for this is not in-line with our internal policies and we can't find any evidence of it occurring," Wilson said. Wilson told me that the studio was looking into the issue but couldn't find any cases of a player being banned that matched the few details given by poelegalthrowaway00. When I saw the thread, I contacted Grinding Gear Games CEO and founder Chris Wilson to see if poelegalthrowaway00's ban was being investigated. You made the world a harder place for legitimately disabled people to get the attention of devs. People are already skeptical of people claiming to be disabled.
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