This wasn’t a good week for fans of Neil Gaiman or Protonmail.
First and way more importantly, Neil Gaiman, for decades my favourite writer, was outed as a serial woman abuser. Last I read, eight women in total have come forward with varying stories over years of abuse by him.
I’ve long believed the victim in these situations. Yes, there are those who make up such reports for attention, etc., but they’re statistically very uncommon. And for eight women to have come out about it, the man is almost assuredly guilty. (For his part, his defence lawyer says that all of the encounters were mutually agreed upon. It’s unclear if any of this apparent abuse led to the dissolution of his marriage with Amanda Palmer and subsequent, allegedly nasty custody battle over their son, all of which he downplays in his newsletters. Take all that as you will.)
This has of course been a terrible ordeal for the victims to go through, and could impact each of their lives indefinitely. On a far smaller scale and with magnitudes less gravitas, the news has also rocked the world of millions of fans of Gaiman’s comics, graphic novels, and fiction, which to my tastes is all done with exceeding creativity, skill and finesse.
I’ve written before about trouble I have separating art and artist, but I’ve never had it involve a particular favourite of mine. Here, it is. I of course can’t let that cloud my opinion of him — “I mean, sure, he invited a young visitor he just met to bathe on his premises and then unannounced, he showed up naked and crawled in with her and just told her to relax, but I mean, come on, have you read Sandman?” — but that’s a tough one to manage. I’ve looked up to him as a writer for the bulk of my life, and suddenly to find out he’s been doing this? That’s… an adjustment.
Having said that, I was just recently saying that John Scalzi was nipping at Gaiman’s heels to become my new favourite author, and this of course clinches it. (Note to Scalzi: Please don’t turn out to be abusive and/or a creep. Thanks!)
Wholly unrelated but a few days later that same week, there was an explosion over on Mastodon about a specific one of Protonmail CEO Andy Yen’s social media posts. In brief, Yen was praising the U.S. Republicans as ‘fighting for the little guy’, a demonstrably incorrect statement.
Protonmail is a successful company that’s based in Switzerland, specifically in order to take advantage of Swiss (and Europe’s) advanced digital user protection laws and away from more corporate-friendly (such as North American) laws. So why one CEO of one company of one country an ocean away felt like chiming in with a stance on politics over our way struck some as odd. We’re also in a highly charged political time these days, with many American tech CEOs turning people off by snuggling up to the very controversial incoming administration. Yen had to know how his comment, particularly made right here and now, would reflect on him and his company.
When his post set off a chain of replies from hugely disappointed and disillusioned Protonmail users, Yen made the issue even worse by (poorly) defending his position and then, when the harsh criticism continued, deleting his original post entirely. In social media circles, deleting a post that’s getting a lot of flak can create some bad optics for the individual, who may be seen as being embarrassed by it, or who may wish to try to eradicate evidence of it existing in the first place as a quick and dirty attempt at a cover-up. Neither is a good look for a CEO.
Nor was Yen’s subsequent public reply about the issue a couple of days later, which was a weak attempt at trying to make it sound like it was the readers, you see, who had blown the whole thing out of proportion from the one pro-party point he was trying to make (whereas it was he, in that same post that has been archived by people for reference and evidence, who had jumped to a conclusion of a political party’s overall stance based on one very specific act one person had done, all ignoring the party’s litany of acts against protecting ‘the little guy’).
Since I joined Protonmail just under five years ago, I’ve been singing their praises to anyone and anyone who will listen.
You should join, I said.
It’s great, I said.
Hell, after four years of being there and talking it up, I finally got my wife and kid to join Protonmail.
Come on, a privacy-focused email service based in the world’s best region for data protection, with a slick UI on computers and phones, and that gives you 1 gig more email storage capacity for every year you’re a paid subscriber? What’s not to like?
Well… looks like Yen decided to needlessly create one big thing not to like.
I mean, listen, support whoever you’re going to support politically. But we’re way past the point where you can really expect zero backlash for yourself or your company if you openly praise your party of choice in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Long stories short: Yay John Scalzi, boo Andy Yen.
I’ll be finishing Fuzzy Nation soon and shortly be joining the exodus of people leaving Protonmail for another email service.
Stay tuned.