[BREAKING] News Thread

[Moonface]

I don't think he's even doing behind the scenes stuff, since if he were I think he wouldn't have dropped out of creative. It'll be a while before any noticeable changes happen though (if at all), since plans are probably locked in up until SummerSlam and maybe a little bit after it. I am surprised no big news story dropped yet of more allegations against McMahon since the way he stepped down made it seem like he was getting out before something really damning came out this week. Although, there is still tomorrow for something to get published if it does happen this week.

[Moonface]

Did everyone else hear about that foam pit at Twitchcon that has probably ruined one person's life and caused injuries to multiple other people?

The main victim (Adriana Chechik) was in surgery for almost six hours and had multiple crushed bones, nerve damage, and needed multiple spinal fusions. She also says that Twitch nor any other company at the convention has reached out to her in any way. The worst thing I saw was this though:

It just reads like someone who if they end up in too dark of a place as the reality sets home more and more that they'll potentially take their life. She took it in her stride well at first but it's clear to me reality is starting to hit her and although I'd never heard of her before this incident it's awful that someone had their life ruined like this because no one wanted to do even the most basic of safety measures. Fuck anyone who was involved in signing off on that death trap of a pit.

[ShiraNoMai]

Yeah, she might as well have jumped straight onto the ground butt first. What a meme. Lenovo deserves every bit of litigation they get for OKing this

[Mr EliteL]

Yeah I heard about this, so awful. Man, thought something could be done about it to aid her, but it's obvious the injury looks like it's beyond help. Hope it's not the case for her, but that tweet shows how much it's affected her.

[Moonface]

Yeah I heard about this, so awful. Man, thought something could be done about it to aid her, but it's obvious the injury looks like it's beyond help. Hope it's not the case for her, but that tweet shows how much it's affected her.

How bad it is really comes down to the number of fusions she needs I think. Plenty of wrestlers have had to have spinal fusion surgery and none I know of had any that were career ending (Edge was out until he unexpectedly got cleared to come back a decade later which is nothing short of a miracle situation) so needing that surgery can have a variety of outcomes.
That said I think even if it was the absolute minimum she needed (which it isn't but still) it would probably still have some affect on her life and physical ability going forward. I have no idea how anyone else who got hurt is doing because i don't know who they are to look anything up about them, but I assume it isn't close to as bad as Chechik given the lesser coverage of those incidents.

[Maniakkid25]

So, obviously, this is a horrible situation, as well as a slam dunk negligence lawsuit waiting to happen, but I did find that people are memeing about it in usual fashion, not mocking this girl, but mocking the gross negligence of the twitchcon staff. I just want to share one to hopefully lighten up the situation slightly.



But yeah, I remember it passing by my gaze when it first happened, but I didn't realize at the time that this basically could have killed someone. Poor girl.

[Dragon Lord]

Everyone else who was injured suffered relatively minor injuries in comparison. The most baffling part of all of this is that after she broke her back jumping into the pit, they kept it open and continued to allow people into it (I'm assuming they didn't bother to mention that someone just broke their back jumping into it).

Although the full blame of this incident goes on Twitch, I also have to wonder what people were thinking jumping into this thing. Pictures you see of it clearly show that it's just an inflatable pool filled with a very minimal amount of foam cubes. I'd take one look at that thing and go "Nope." The fact that Twitch made them sign a waiver before going into it would have been another HUGE red flag for me. That's pretty much Twitch admitting they knew it was going to be potentially dangerous and didn't want to risk any legal backlash. Although from what I've read, apparently negligence is grounds to null a waiver, so should the injured be able to do it, they should be able to sue Twitch for it. Foam pits are supposed to be several feet deep, with netting at the bottom resting on foam pads. Clearly Twitch decided that would be too much work. There's also the fact, like I mentioned, that they decided to keep the pit open after her injury, which should be even more negligence on top of everything else.

Don't get me wrong, not blaming the injured people here, but I just have to wonder what they were thinking looking at that and thinking that it would be anywhere near safe. One look at that thing and anyone should have been able to tell that it was a major injury waiting to happen. Perhaps people were just too afraid to be "party poopers" and decided to put their better judgement aside. A very painful lesson learned for them, and hopefully a very expensive lesson about to be learned by Twitch for deciding that cheap and quick was better than proper and safe.

[Moonface]

Although the full blame of this incident goes on Twitch, I also have to wonder what people were thinking jumping into this thing. Pictures you see of it clearly show that it's just an inflatable pool filled with a very minimal amount of foam cubes. I'd take one look at that thing and go "Nope."

I saw a comment on social media earlier today that also questioned how nobody knew it wasn't deep enough to jump into when they would need to have walked through this pit to reach the central area where the activity was taking place. I do know the people managing/running the pit were encouraging people to jump, so perhaps that convinced people it was safe to jump into, plus if you don't necessarily know better about how one of these pits should really be you might think it is safe by putting your trust into the organizers to have made it in a safe way even though it wouldn't seem deep enough walking through it. Especially if like Adriana, you came to this pit a while into its operation and if you didn't know anyone else had taken a minor injury so far, and that it was still being used, you would assume it must actually be safe. For all we know maybe someone did question the depth of the pit and was told it was okay by the organizers, and so took their word on it instead of avoiding it. I could see myself possibly going into it negligent or deceived of just how unsafe it actually is, especially in a heat of the moment thing where I might be more focused on the fun I'm having than analyzing the construction of the pit itself.

The fact that Twitch made them sign a waiver before going into it would have been another HUGE red flag for me. That's pretty much Twitch admitting they knew it was going to be potentially dangerous and didn't want to risk any legal backlash. Although from what I've read, apparently negligence is grounds to null a waiver, so should the injured be able to do it, they should be able to sue Twitch for it. Foam pits are supposed to be several feet deep, with netting at the bottom resting on foam pads. Clearly Twitch decided that would be too much work. There's also the fact, like I mentioned, that they decided to keep the pit open after her injury, which should be even more negligence on top of everything else.

The waiver was likely for things such as taking an injury from someone hitting you hard or if you fall but land badly, like say you land on your arm poorly where even with ample foam, the weight of your body could still cause an injury if your whole body weight landed on it. Those sort of things would be out of control of the organizers no matter what they do and it makes sense to cover themselves for that stuff.
You are right though that a waiver does not absolve one of negligence. It's meant for unforeseen things that are entirely down to chance like the example I gave where no amount of safety prepping can absolutely stop it happening.


Meanwhile, in other news about companies doing negligent shit that comes at the expense of others, I saw Rooster Teeth is yet again under scrutiny for treatment of employee's after statements from former employee's, the most notable being this first one, but I'll also list the rest I've found:

• Kdin Jenzen | "My final words on Rooster Teeth & just SOME of my experiences there."
  
• Kdin Jenzen | Response to Geoff Ramsey's statement
  
• Trevor | "My experience with Cow Chop (owned by RT)"
  
• Ellie Main | "HR told me "you don't always get paid what you're worth"."
  
• Andy Blanchard | "When RT Games and Vicious Circle failed, they needed to make cuts and I was the sole member of AH to be laid off. It felt personal."
  
• Ian Kedward | On crunch conditions and lack of pay.
  
• Andrea Caprotii | "Trauma from working on Genlock S1 drove me away from animation."
  
• Clayton de Wet | "Ditto on the heavy PTSD."
  
• Kim Newman | "I have multiple herniated discs in my back from mocap related injuries while working at Rooster Teeth."
  
• Mica Burton | "The people speaking up about their horrific treatment at RT isn’t news. Seeing n***** written on a whiteboard wasn’t even close to my worst experience there."
  
• Alanah Pearce | Q&A: Working conditions at Rooster Teeth
  
• Simrell | "RT / AH barely pays it's contractors (including me)"
  
• Rooster Teeth | "Our statement"
  

There are also multiple employee's who got laid off and treated poorly who I haven't found statements from, but basically the general picture is wage theft, abusive treatment, crunch, and dismissive attitudes by top people and HR when issues were brought up.
I thought the Ryan Haywood scandal was a big hit for the company, but honestly this stuff alongside the numerous layoffs just screams of a company that isn't lasting much longer, and frankly by the sounds of it doesn't have any right to stay around. It looks pretty cut and dry the entire thing just needs to burn to the ground and fuck off.

[Dragon Lord]

So some disturbing news coming out of South Korea. A huge stampede caused by a gigantic crowd of people partying during Halloween celebrations has led to, at the time of this posting, 120 confirmed deaths and over 100 more injured. They expect both of these numbers to continue to rise.

This is just absolutely insane. I was worried about what kind of bullshit I'd have to deal with at work tonight with Halloween partying going on, but now whatever happens isn't going to seem like anything after reading about this.

[Moonface]

Ah, so that's why I saw references to South Korea when I was looking at comments on a video about police in France rushing at a large group of protestors to try and get them to rush back and cause a stampede but the protestors just stood still and made the police look ridiculous instead. I didn't realize it was about something like that and thought it was some random old reference to a previous event over there related to protesting but turning out differently.

Was the crowd/party in a venue or did this happen just out on the streets?

[Dragon Lord]

Huge party out in the streets. Just saw that the death toll has now risen to 140 (one source saying 146 specifically).

[ShiraNoMai]

Yeah I was seeing about this, too. I was reading that there was a rumor a celebrity had been in a nearby bar, so folks absolutely bum-rushed it to the bar, causing the stampede.

That's a LOT of people. I can't imagine what that looks like, to be crushed like that. Crowds suck to begin with, and being that sardine-d in that you can be absolutely obliterated is just... unfathomable to me. How unfortunate.

[Dragon Lord]

So I just woke up and checked the news again and they are now saying 149 people were killed, a large majority of them being teenagers or young adults in their 20s.

[Moonface]

I'm surprised how little of this incident I've seen on any social media I browse on. I've seen it on Twitter once today (none yesterday) and it took me a lot of scrolling the front page of Reddit yesterday to even find a single thread about it on there, and today I've seen nothing anywhere on it.
There are apparently videos on Twitter from people in South Korea showing what the crowds were like before, during, and after this tragedy. I got a glimpse of one but accidentally closed Twitter and when I re-opened the app it did that wonderful thing where the tweet you're looking at on your timeline just suddenly disappears into the ether, but it seems the way to this bars entrance was down a rather narrow alley which is where I assume most of the stampede actually happened, or at least the worst of it due to the tight space, since I expect even in the more open streets it would've got bad because I heard the number of people at this party was over 100,000 or something crazy.

[Mr EliteL]

That's a reason why I dislike/avoid huge crowded parties and people caring way too much about seeing a celebrity with their own eyes. Such an unfortunate and tragic occurrence and it's actually Halloween today so what else is going to happen?