as someone with a lot of experience with abuse and predatory people, this apology is a scam
a 26 year old adult asking an 18 year old for sexual favors doesn’t “become” insidious. it’s insidious from the start because nick designed the situation that way. he’s a sexual predator, full stop, and he feels no remorse over what he’s done. he doesn’t even feel remorse about being caught
he’s been inconvenienced. nothing more, nothing less. it’s a setback for him that the work he’s put in ingratiating himself to polygon has unraveled. and now he’s doing what he can to build that base of power back up
do not take this to heart. tread lightly and please, for the love of god, stay as far away from this man as physically possible
Somehow we’re all always surprised when this happens, no matter how many times it happens.
actually, honestly, i’m not surprised at all
the mcelroys have prided themselves for years on embracing radical positivity, on creating content that is safe and enjoyable for everyone in their audience. they’ve made a point to listen to and even encourage criticism and take complaints seriously. it’s why we all love them so much
from the perspective of a predator, these are exactly the kind of people you’d want to align yourself with. nick put in careful, deliberate work gaining griffin and justin’s trust, earning himself a role in their content production, making himself out to be one of the Soft Boys™ so he could prey on fans and colleagues bc even if one of those victims speaks out, who’s going to believe that Soft Boy Nick Robinson could really do something like that !
it makes perfect sense that he’d target them. and it’s heartbreaking, but it makes sense as well that if they weed out 99.9% of the terrible people who’d do something like that, the 0.1% that got through would someone as horrible as nick
it’s so important to remember how much planning went into this. these are abuse tactics. these are predatory tactics. nick robinson is dangerous and it’s so, so important to bear witness to that fact
