NOTE: This is my first Magic-related post on this personal blog. Magic is, of course, a large part of my life, but for those of you who are reading this and have no idea about the context, it is as follows: I play a competitive trading card game called Magic: the Gathering at a professional level, and, as with many niche communities, Magic has its own social media sphere. There has been a significant amount of vitriol and controversy on “Magic Twitter” in recent weeks, all surrounding one overarching issue: bullying, harassment, and exclusion in the competitive Magic scene. Earlier today, a number of people were banned from playing in sanctioned tournaments for conduct outside the game itself, related to the aforementioned issue. One of the suspended players is a personal friend and colleague, Travis Woo. This blog post is about the circumstances surrounding his suspension, and my thoughts on the appropriateness of said action. Appropriate for a blog ostensibly about philosophy? Unclear, but here it will stay.
–
I was raised in a fairly observant Jewish household. I went to Jewish day school from kindergarten through eighth grade, and synagogue every Saturday through my teen years. Though I retain a rudimentary knowledge of the Hebrew language, a few lingering strands of Talmudic learning, and a healthy dose of mishegas (the Yiddish word for “craziness”) from the omnipresent lessons about the Holocaust, I never thought that I would be dredging up memories of elementary Jewish ethics lessons in the context of my Magic career. However, a single teaching has been echoing through my head since the recent controversy first came up a few weeks ago.
“Speak out when you see something wrong.”
So I am speaking out.
Travis Woo first came into my life at Pro Tour: Amsterdam in 2010, when he shared his Living End decklist with a then-seventeen-year-old player well out of his comfort zone, despite the fact that he could have simply said “no, sorry kid” and brushed me off. Since then, I have hosted him at my family’s home in Baltimore, and my own house in Las Vegas. My younger brother and I have hiked up a mountain with him in Hawaii. My mother (yes, my Jewish mother, after she explained all the rules of kashrut to Travis to make sure that he didn’t spoil our kosher kitchen on his visit!) has hugged him when he and I got in the car and drove off to a tournament. I have called him when I was at low point with my post-college ennui, looking for advice on how to gain the courage to make a risky move and quit my job. I have stayed up late with him debating a number of his more controversial views. And of course, I have borne witness to his transgressions. How could I not? Travis is a man whose biggest flaw is his extremely open mind.
When other friends of mine have criticized Travis for some of the things he has said and/or done, my response to defuse the tension is simple. Travis has such an open mind, that on some occasions, his brain falls out. He has such an open mind that he will entertain ideas that are patently false, dangerous, or ridiculous, because he doesn’t want to rule anything out. Travis will move to Hawaii to live on a collective farm for three months between Pro Tour seasons, he will walk down mountainsides backwards, he will make goofy YouTube videos instead of finding gainful employment, and he will, yes, discuss Mein Kampf with an attempt to find any merits in the book on his stream. This is okay. This is not something that I, as a thinking person, fear. This is something I may call foolish, may criticize as a wrongheaded endeavor, but not something that I find hurtful or terrifying. I recognize the context in which these potentially dangerous ideas are being discussed, and despite the risk that others might take them out of context, I am willing to argue against them on their merits, rather than meta-argue about whether they deserve to be discussed.
With that mental picture of the way Travis thinks, it is time to address the more recent incident.
Jeremy Hambly, who has a YouTube channel “MTG Headquarters” where he spouts vitriol, uses clickbait-esque titles and marketing, and casts himself as somewhat akin to the Breitbart of Magic-related news, recently used his platform to harass and belittle Christine Sprankle, a prominent Magic cosplayer. This is, in a word, unacceptable. Clickbait videos about Magic coming to an end are distasteful, but ultimately meaningless pieces of content. That is one thing. Another entirely is deliberate, continued, targeted harassment and bullying of specific people. It’s truly despicable behavior to deliberately drive a person out of your community by leveraging your platform to promote harassment. Very few people would disagree. The recent decision to ban Jeremy from sanctioned Magic tournaments is a necessary step in order to demonstrate that this behavior will not be tolerated. It may not drive the YouTube channel out of business, but it is the best that Wizards can do on short notice. I respect this decision wholeheartedly.
During the social media furor over the MTGHQ incident, a prominent Magic writer and player, Emma Handy, revealed some screenshots of some upsetting and unsettling comments in a Facebook group called “Magic for Bad”. She, along with the women who were depicted in the post, were right to be appalled. Though I cannot truly empathize with what it would be like to have my picture posted in a hidden social media forum with strangers commenting on my appearance and their desire to have sex with me, I can sympathize with their fury and hurt. That is legitimate, and we should make crystal clear that despite the lewd and offensive comments in this group, we stand with those women and want them in our community, and we do not condone that sort of speech. Let the message be broadcast in every way possible: This is not how the vast majority of Magic players view these women, and we want to include them as equals in our community. That point is not up for debate.
Now, the meat of the issue comes with the fact that Travis Woo created the Facebook group in which this post was made. Travis is, of course, a prominent Magic personality. The combination of Travis’ reputation and his presence in the group led to a second incident on the heels of the MTGHQ one.
The facts of the matter are as follows: Travis was released from his content creation position with ChannelFireball following his infamous Mein Kampf stream. After a period of time, he decided that he wanted to return to the Magic community as a content creator, player, and coach, but he knew that he would have to do it on his own terms, as no website would hire him. He decided to start by creating content on his YouTube channel, as well as creating a few Facebook groups promoting Magic strategy, deckbuilding advice, general Magic questions and commentary, and a premium coaching service. This is admirable, and shining examples of the positive things Travis is capable of with his drive and his open mind.
These groups started taking off, and the most open and prominent one, Magic for Good, whose premise was “be positive, and share with others how Magic is a force for good in your life”, began to attract a lot of trolls. This is a normal aspect of doing business on the Internet, as there are plenty of people who enjoy getting a rise out of others by saying and doing ridiculous, sometimes offensive things. In a group designed to be kind of the “Sesame Street” of Magic, where no question merited disdain or mocking, there was a growing number of people who only posted in order to waste time and troll other members of the group. Travis wanted to keep his positive group positive, and rather than promoting scrupulous moderation and banning of offenders, he (with his overly open mind) decided that he could not afford to alienate anyone, including those who mostly troll innocent posts in Magic for Good. Even trolls occasionally buy ebooks or coaching lessons, and so Travis created Magic for Bad as a way to shuttle out the offenders without alienating them, while keeping them as potential clients down the road (as many of them were also still members of Magic for Good, and contained their trolling to the Magic for Bad group), and while removing some of their desire to go out and ruin everyone else’s enjoyment of his wholesome Magic groups. I am not saying that this was a wise decision, merely that it was in no way malicious in intent.
Of course, Travis, when tagged in posts in his new group, occasionally joined in the trolling and posting of memes and nonsense. For this, too, I do not condemn him. At his absolute most offensive, he used the racial slur “Japs” in response to a reference to the Rape of Nanking. Upon seeing a screenshot of this comment, I was taken aback, but the use of an admittedly horrific slur in a single, hastily written comment in a troll Facebook group is not, in my opinion, grounds for immediate and summary suspension from the DCI. Even if Travis had used the word “Kikes” to describe Jews in a post in that group, I would still not be calling for a DCI ban. Would it dampen our friendship? Slightly. Would I have a serious conversation with Travis about how inappropriate it is for him to use the word? Of course. But in and of itself, that would not be a salient factor in a decision of this magnitude.
The occasional comments aside, Travis’ group, Magic for Bad, continued with the garbage posts, the memes, and the 4chan-esque toxic environment for months. In a regrettable, but unfortunately not unexpected feature of the Internet, people continued to push the envelope of acceptable behavior, saying more and more outrageous things in order to provoke a reaction. At some point, a member posted the picture of the many women with an invitation to “draft” them, and numerous people commented in hearty approval. Travis, never taking an active role in moderating his group designed for trolling, never took note of or participated in this post. Eventually, some months after it was originally posted, Emma Handy caught wind of the existence of the group and found the aforementioned thread, and that led us to the recent uproar on social media.
Travis, understandably, initially reacted in a predictable manner. “What responsibility of mine is it if people post offensive things in an explicitly, deliberately and publicly unmoderated group that I created? The whole point was that anyone can post anything and nothing should be taken seriously in that group!” After a time, though, he decided that he did need to take action, as the group did have his name attached to it, froze the group, and took responsibility for not maintaining even a minimum level of conduct in Magic for Bad. I applauded his decision to own up to the error of allowing a group like that to grow unchecked with no oversight. I thought initially that that would be the end of it, he would issue an apology, and the trolls would disperse to plague other Magic groups on Facebook. This turned out not to be the case, as my own team, Metagame Gurus, made the decision to part ways with Travis over his negative association with the more unsavory elements of our community. This, too, I understood. Team MGG is a brand, and has a reputation to uphold, and it is perfectly normal and acceptable for them to say that a team member has not represented them in the best possible way and thus must leave the team. I spoke to Travis about this, and he said that he understood and respected their choice, and that he hoped that his actions would show that he could do better in the future.
Then he received a one year ban from playing in DCI tournaments.
This obviously upsets me, because I genuinely believe that Travis has grown and will continue to grow as a result of this incident, and might in the future be a force for extreme good in the Magic community. A one-year ban from playing Magic, however, is essentially a death sentence to Travis’ competitive career. It comes right as he achieved a high level in the Pro Players’ Club, right as he was beginning to rebuild bridges that he burned years ago with the Mein Kampf stream, and cements his status as “outcast”. This is a loss.
I do not want to lose cosplayers like Christine Sprankle due to harassment. I do not want to lose personalities and players like the women who were depicted in the Facebook thread due to their feeling unwelcome in the Magic community. I do not want to lose a potentially valuable, open-minded, and unique pro player because of some horrible thing some idiots posted in his Facebook group while no one was watching. I do not want to lose anyone. I hope Wizards of the Coast will reconsider their ban of Travis Woo, and I plan on petitioning them to allow him to return to competitive play, to allow him to show them and the world that he is a better man and can do better as an ambassador of the game.
I do not want to lose anyone either.
Well put Ben.
I too was in both his Magic groups.for.thr longest time.
Let me know when you petition I will be the first to sign
This is the key difference between those that know him and those that know his online personality. It’s a real shame that he has been banned and I’m a big advocate of his as I can see what he is often trying to achieve with his blue sky thinking. Undoubtably he will need his friends around him through this time as he processes all that’s gone on.
Totally agree !
I run a throll group on facebook .. Of over 24 000 peaple .. We started a year ago … And yes we can delete bad post ans everything.. I have 14 admins… But sometimes , one fell off and we see it to late .. Buts its life.. Its the internet… No one ever blamed me for a post that someone else does. I really hope they get back on there ban .
Great Article, agree with most of what you state here.
I understand banning Jeremy. At minimum, he certainly was guilty of publicly being a jerk to multiple people.
Travis has never harassed anyone. He was banned after someone publicly attempted to incite outrage against him on social media.
Banning Travis doesn’t discourage social media harassment; it encourages people who have grievances to try to resolve those grievances through inciting public outrage.
If WotC thinks that banning Travis will create a healthier, safer community, with less public harassment, I am concerned that they gravely misunderstand the consequences of their actions.
Well said brother! I think they need to reconsider the ban as well! #freeTWoo
Travis having the open, apparently gullible, naive, credulous mind of a 7 y/o who won’t even stand up to people being awful due to not wanting to alienate people seems nice from some angles, but not nice when he’s a minor in-game celebrity who might damage a company or a community.
Travis seems to want to have his cake and eat it too – not offend or alienate potential customers ever, even when they’re “deplorable” so to speak. Unfortunately, as he probabbbbbly should have learned after the Mein Kamf episode, that’s not the way that the world works these days.
He’s had a previous learning opportunity, and does not appear to have learned much from it. Maybe he will this time, or maybe he’ll keep going in this “both sides have a lot of good points, who can say who is right” path.
My impression, having never met him, is that Travis is basically a child in mindset. He’s fine with living somewhat impulsively, with little longterm planning or reckoning with consequences. This would be fine if the world doesn’t have strong consequences for adults who make poor decisions, but it does. This might be unfair to him. Maybe he entirely sees possible consequences, and is accepting of them.
just because your opinion is that its bad PR to have a group like this, doesnt justify this action. how about go after the person that actually created this in emma handy.
This specific point is what must be addressed with some soul searching. This very point is akin to the Charlottesville riots and Trump extolling “there were ‘bad’ people on both sides of the debacle'”. Only the smallest portion believed that nonsense -Nazism shouldn’t and won’t be tolerated. This open-minded, everyone is right is NOT an acceptable position even from an intellectual standpoint. There are societal norms and rules for a reason.
>>He’s had a previous learning opportunity, and does not appear to have learned much from it. <<
Thank you for saying this better than I could have.
Stop being so condescending. Not only you put yourself on a morally superior position to someone you say you respect, you also show blatant bias. And that’s something that Travis never did. Maybe you should learn something with him in regards to that. I expected more.
I think its important that you’ve provided the context that Magic For Bad was created as a tool to protect an innocent community from trolls, and that it was effective.
There’s more context for those who are curious. Magic For Bad was a secret group where jokes were almost never leaked to the public web. Additionally, while each person has their own sense of humor, I felt that the tenor of the group was very non-sexual, and members were far more likely to insult themselves than anyone else. However, that tenor was also something that changed over time. Looking through the comments on the p1p1 post, I can see that some people took it sexually, while others maintained the zany irreverence that can serve as an example of how to diffuse inappropriate situations.
I doubt that people will ever stop making fun of celebrities, and with Magic becoming a more video-oriented community, challenges like this are important to understand. I don’t know if reprimanding Travis will help or hurt the situation. I hope that the context I provided will help others understand ways they can (or can’t) use technology to discourage distasteful behavior.
The image of the draft was meant sexually to degrade those women. There is no other way to read it.
A well thought out post. Clearly you care about Travis very much and he is lucky to have someone like you to advocate for him.
That said, the same logic you use regarding Team MGG applies to the DCI ban as well. Professional Magic players, while not paid employees of wizards, feature prominently in their company profile. If Travis were to top8 3 months from now at the next Pro Tour, his image, his profile, and his baggage are all brought out into the open in a Wizards sanctioned event. You could say Wizards is a brand and has a reputation to uphold
I agree with most of what you said about Travis. I’ve followed his content over the years and he definitely comes across as a free-flowing guy who cares about people and lives in the moment. Unfortunately that lifestyle comes with risks and in this case, he risked his “comeback” by associating his name with some of the most toxic members of the MtG community without thinking about where that road might lead.
I hope Travis comes back again, because he seems like a very genuine, talented, and creative person. But I can’t agree that Wizards decision is unjustified. Thank you though for your open and honest portrayal of Travis. I feel like we all know him a little bit better now.
Cheers!
The DCI ban is Wizards wishing to disassociate their brand from him due to his actions, just like MGG is disassociating themselves from him due to his actions. It’s great that he’s awesome in person, and that you vouch for him. Unfortunately, if he top 8’s an event, especially with this controversy so close, people who look him up will see the controversy and that puts Wizards and Magic in a negative light. They can’t count on you always being there to let people know that Travis has an extremely open mind and it causes him to do stupid things but not out of malice.
He doesn’t want to drive away a potential client so tries to accommodate them? Guess what? If you’re the burger joint all the white supremacists go to, you’re the racist burger joint. You associate with them, you’re implying acceptance. You create a group saying “be awful here, I have created this place for you to be terrible. GO NUTS!” You don’t get to then come along when people say “well, that’s super shitty,” and say “Well, I don’t endorse this… I just provided it a platform!” That isn’t how human beings work. Travis has a history of making dumb decisions related to his extremely open mind. Maybe if he used some of that thinkin’ time to contemplate why stupid decisions keep impacting his chosen career path… He’d come up with the solution of trying to limit the stupid decisions he makes.
so what youre saying is a community slandering and slave morality is ok and this is all ethical and morally ok because its a good business move. right. this is the problem with the world today. if anything, emma handy should be banned and if its that big of a deal on the business side, wotc should make a statement absolving twoo since he didnt actually do anything except make a facebook group. your mentality is absurd and even malevolent that you would chastise this poor guy.
There is such a thing as ideas to dangerous to consider. I know that open mindedness is a good thing, but there are extremes. We know that fundamentally to a society where all human beings are to be treated with dignity and respect, that racism, bigotry are wrong. There is no devils advocate, or consider the other side. The other side is that some people are because of things like the color of their skin, worth less. There is no room for open mindedness about this concept, and some others.
I think that Travis made Magic for Good, and instead of doing the necessary things to moderate a social group, he absconded the responsibility by making Magic for Bad. He put those people together by creating a space for them to explore being harmful human beings together. We should never encourage this. Educate incorrect behavior? Sure. Punish it by exclusion for a social group if necessary? Absolutely. Tell people they can go misbehave as long as they do it “over there” ? Not acceptable.
If someone wants to make content for Magic the Gathering, they are representing that brand. Just like the gentleman on Reddit that took pictures of buttcracks at a GP and posted them, the fact that he pointed out it was at a Magic the Gathering event forces WOTC/Hasbro to respond to protect their brand, just like Team MGG did.
meme’ing and joking does not make you a bad person. i respect your opinion, but i would ask you to reconsider considering someones reputation and life is on the line.
I don’t even play magic but I have been following this all and looking at all the proof and posts since it showed up on my youtube, I will say this u are only fighting for travis because he is your friend but none of that matters because u all want the rules to be the rules and just because he is your friend doesn’t mean he can break the rules that everyone wants to be enforced. if Jeremy broke the rules by giving criticism to someone and by him doing that ppl that watch it went and did harassment which can then be tied back to Jeremy then travis by creating a group like jermey did youtube. and the ppl that travis was with did something mean like Travis’s ppl did then by the same standards which is the only way rules can be upheld then by all of your logic then yes they both should be banned travis should be banned for life like Jeremy it doesn’t matter if he thinks different so we should give him a pass or I know him differently then u do, that’s not how the rules work. I think its funny actually how you only want a exception to the rules when ur friend is involved. and before u all say I’m harassing him for disagreeing with him, then I think its time that some of u put down the cards and leave the comic book shop because in reality having a opinion on what a person does and telling them about it isn’t harassment. long story short you all hate Jeremy because he doesn’t align with the way u all act and are so u saw this as a great way to get ride of him, but now ur friend got taken down to because u set a precedent.
You are only right about one thing, Travis and Jeremy are different. However, what your personal involvement blinds you to is that Travis, like Jeremy, is a sociopath.
What you see in Travis as someone keeping an extremely open mind, is actually just someone who doesn’t have empathy. It is someone who has no understanding how his actions, words, and thoughts hurt others.
When I read you giving Travis cover for his actions I see someone who has bought into a sociopaths Pity Play hook line and sinker. Yes a pity play is real. A sociopath is unable to feel pity towards anyone, but knows those who have empathy can feel pity, so when a sociopath is in trouble they rely on using pity to make others feel bad for them and excuse their bad behavior.
Read the sociopath next door. Afterwards not only will you be safer from these manipulating people, but you will understand better who your so called friend is.
This was an interesting post, but I think your judgement is clouded because Travis is your friend. The guy is a repeat offender when it comes to creating content that seems to intentionally create a toxic environment for some players. Honestly, I think conflating open-mindedness with participating in demeaning behavior was kind of a nasty trick, and I think you’re doing your friend a disservice by trying to normalize his behavior.
“So here’s what the plan is for Ireland, is getting the Twitch chat and do whatever, hashtag #magicforbad. I don’t care if this comes back to bite me. If it does, good, because that makes good entertainment and makes good content. But ask for me in the Twitch chat and it will either, either, increase the chances they feature me or B, be fucking hilarious with people getting banned left and right for saying my name. Haha! That’s funny to me.”
– Travis
There’s a huge difference between a person as his friends know him, and as the terrible person he portrays on the internet.
The vast majority only know him for the idiocy and antics online. Should we judge him on how he is eith his couple of close friends irl, or how thousands and hundreds of thousands of people see him acting? I’m thinking the latter.
Just as many people (relatively few) seem to think jeremy is a stand up guy too. Should he be let off with a warning for nonstop harassment and b.s. online?
It is honestly not the way the world has ever worked. It is a rather new concept that this is somehow new reactions to poor behavior, but it’s not. The age of the internet gave rise to anonymity, which allowed people to get away with things they wouldn’t have in real life. This mindset has spilled over into non-anonymous groups, and now people are surprised there are consequences and repercussions for what they say, do, support, and create. They shouldn’t be, because this is nothing new.
To be blunt, what happened to Travis is not unfair. It is part and parcel with being an adult. Being absent minded does not remove responsibility, at all. That is not how the world works, and that is not part of being an adult. We honestly live in a world of perpetual teenagers, forever refusing to act responsibly and instead desiring absolute freedom with an absolute lack of consequences. That’s not what is expected from 30 years adults, and it never has been. You are held responsible for what you do. He signed his name to the group, and along with that comes responsibility for what the group does and says, to some degree.
Finally, a note. The concept that the ban will harm his career is part and parcel with the problem. Of course it will. That’s part of taking responsibility for your actions. You do not get to walk away unscathed when you do stupid things. That is not how being an adult works. If you do something stupid, there will be repercussions and the fact that these repercussions make your life uncomfortable does not absolve you from responsibility. He is a 30-ish year old adult. He doesn’t get to live in a world where long-term considerations don’t exist. It’s this sort of notion that “We shouldn’t punish him because it woud kill his career” is the exact sort of thinking that fosters the sort of behavior that the group engaged in, and is the exact reason why many women have difficulty coming forward with these problems when they exist.
The truth is, I’m sure he is actually the nice, pleasant person every person here knows in “real life”. Every person who has done something wrong will have people defending from such. That’s because people are not one-dimensional mustachio’d villains trying to kill the hero and holding the world hostage for 1 MILLION dollars. However, just because he is a nice person to his friends does not mean he is not responsible for what he does. Good people make mistakes. That doesn’t mean you get to walk away unscathed with a slap on the wrist. He has a temporary ban, and is invited to return in a year.
Adults make mistakes, all the time. Travis made a mistake. He owned up to it, which is great. That doesn’t mean there is no punishment, and it doesn’t remove responsibility. He is an adult, and part and parcel with being an adult is that your mistakes don’t just go away because you apologize. He has a 1-year ban, and it could have been a lot worse for him as the people directly engaging in the behavior received. He has 1 year to grow up, and realize that there are consequences for adults doing things. That’s not unfair, at all. He is going to have another chance, and it be his to grip it.
You know you’re being disingenuous, you just don’t care. You have an agenda to push and screw whoever gets trampled on in the process of pursuing it. You should be ashamed of yourself, but you won’t be, because you’re an amoral sociopath.
TWoo is a hero. In a world where thoughts and ideas are becoming increasingly dangerous to share, one man promotes considering all points of view. It’s not surprising that he became a martyr given the way the angry mob of social justice was cultivated, encouraged, enabled, and directed with banning all voices of dissent.
Travis Woo is an adult who made extremely poor decisions and broadcast them very publicly. I don’t know him. I don’t know you. But I do know some of the things he’s done in the past few years and those have given me a quite a negative impression of the man.
Look, I can understand that people aren’t quite the monsters that social media/news sites paint them out to be, but I’m sorry, these are the consequences of his own decisions and he has to live with that.
Anyone can tell his decisions and opinions reflect poorly on MTG players and Wizards of the Coast as well. And the community and Wizards have justifiably responded accordingly.
I’m honestly tired of seeing these articles trying to defend these “good ol’ boys,” because “that’s not who they really are.” I don’t care what a person is like in the privacy of their own home, especially if they have publicly associated themselves/advocated for misogynists, Nazis, and homophobic/transphobic individuals.
gaby spartz is a bitch. funny u dont mention the gossip queen for ruining his career. twoo did nothing wrong. go after the cunt whos cancer for this game.