A Sacramento video game enthusiast was arrested earlier this month after allegedly making violent threats against employees of game company Blizzard Entertainment, as well as fellow gamers and, in a lovely final touch, their children, Polygon reports.
Stephen Cebula is currently being held without bond, and could face up to five years in prison if convicted of making the threats.
As Polygon notes, Cebula’s alleged threats to fellow players of Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm included:
“I will bomb the new york twin towers [sic],” “Go back to cotton picking” and “You make me want to shoot up an elementary school;” Cebula also threatened to rape and kill the children of his opponents.
After Blizzard banned him from chatting with other players, he allegedly sent the company a message warning that if the company continued
silencing me in Heroes of the Storm … I may or may not pay you a visit with an AK47 amongst some other ‘fun’ tools.
Polygon adds,
This is not Cebula’s first run-in with the law. In March 2015, he was placed on an involuntary psychiatric hold by the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department after telling deputies of his intention to kill someone at a local park, according to the court documents. As a minor, he was also charged with threatening a school staff member.
It’s good to see the FBI and local police taking online threats as seriously as threats delivered offline. Because here’s the thing:
- A threat is a threat if you make it to someone’s face
- A threat is a threat if you send it by mail
- A threat is a threat if you make it over the phone
- A threat is a threat if you write it in icing on a cake
- A threat is a threat if you make it on the internet
- A threat is a threat even if some dude on the internet tells you it’s just a joke
The internet: Part of real life even if some people would like to pretend it isn’t.
H/T — r/GamerGhazi
@joekster
Yeah I clearly understand that in terms of context, it’s really just looks like a big corporation dealing with a nutter when viewed by onlookers. Though for a start, if this case comes through, maybe it can start setting a precedent for more common cases like Anita’s, Briannu Wu’s, Zoe Quinn’s, and countless others.
@kupo:
I’ve read through those arrest papers and the statements he made, and it just feels… bleh. The man comes across as pathetically thin-skinned and unable to tolerate even the slightest opposition, insisting on people swallowing his abuse and flying off the handle whenever he isn’t acknowledged as the unquestioned master of the cosmos.
I’m not trying to armchair-diagnose and I’m not going to say anything mental health related; but from a strictly human-empathy point of view this doesn’t feel like a man who’s sociable and thinks it’s funny. This feels like someone desperate who’s lashing out at the world. I could be wrong, of course.
No matter how unhappy he is, it doesn’t justify him being an asshole. He is causing harm to a lot of people by doing this. As you’ve correctly pointed out I feel for his victims, and also for those who are put off even trying games because of his activities. They didn’t deserve it and they certainly shouldn’t ever have to live in an environment where they run the risk of being his victims.
Among his victims, however, I believe we must include him.
Or “good game” in League of Legends.
Read the accompanying documentation.
It’s not just Blizzard.
They may literally have saved his sister and his niece from grave harm.
Addendum:
I think I phrased that badly. Our first duty of care must be to his victims, and to prevent this happening again. Nobody should ignore them in their rush to look after a white boy who’s upset because the world doesn’t belong to him any more.
However, he is still human, and (if he is as miserable as I think he is) then I feel that as my fellow human, I shall grieve also for him.
Because everybody else had already said the first bit but nobody had said the second, I felt I should add it. Does that make sense?
@Ohlmann
Point taken. We should probably broaden it to any form of communication that doesn’t involve physically facing the other person.
Hey hey, that also includes violent, abusive “journalism” ! Who knew ? Hello, Milo.
@EJ (The other one)
That’s exactly how my troll of an abusive ex was, and he was also sociable and extroverted, like kupo describes. He’s apparently breaking into local politics, and when we dated, he would go on internet tirades heavy with slurs (racial ones especially) against anyone and everyone–for fun usually, not even because anyone set him off. I remember the first time I was really scared of him, he’d set up a macro to message this girl’s phone with an endless barrage of death threats, telling her to kill herself, all sorts of nasty shit. Afterwards, we went out with his group of also highly-social friends, to whom he bragged openly about it.
Abusers tend to be thin-skinned and intolerant of opposition. It’s actually pretty much their M.O. They can also be incredibly charismatic and even capable of pretending that they care about anything other than themselves long enough to attract a group of loyal friends.
@violinlesshoax: what’s wrong with ‘good game’? I never played league of legends, but in Starcraft it was just something you said when you knew you’d lost the game.
@Joekster: I think they were referring to someone who won saying that, and possibly meaning it in a very condescending manner.
Color me cynical, but I’m betting the only reason law got involved was because it involved Activi$ion/Bli$$ard.
Here’s how I imagine it going:
“Hi, we were threatened online.”
Officer: “Unless they actually gave a date, time, location, what they would be wearing, how gruesome your death would be AND they also mentioned they were part of BLM, we won’t do anything.”
“We have unlimited lawyer money. If anything happens we will own your fucking department.”
Officer: “We’ll get right on it.”
And I don’t care if someone else posted it before me. My cynicism is clearly not unfounded if others have the same concerns.
@EJ
I just feel like it’s messed up to come into a thread about how the law is finally doing something about a huge problem that affects women and POC far more than men and express sympathy for the white, male, entitled, abusive asshole who broke the law and made people fear for their safety. Plenty of people go through much more than he has and still manage to take it out on other people.
Meh, I think the only reason he was actually arrested (is that the term here? me no englando) is Blizzard probably handled all of the legwork by tracking the harasser and just pointed the cops at him once they got tired of his shit.
On a completely different topic: I normally use good game (ggwp) at the end of every match regardless if we won or lost, just kind of a nod to the other team, as a “hey, I had fun” unless something ruined the game (leavers, ragers, etc).
Also most people in league will say gg at the end of every game, normally starting with the losing team and being answered by the winning team, kind of the moment where you acknowledge you can’t win anymore.
That said if you wanna be an asshole to your team you could type gg at 3 minutes into the game for a petty reason or if you want to be a condescending jackass to the losing team go “gg ez”
TL;DR I go on a long off topic tirade of how context affects two letters being typed without intonation or clue on their actual meaning because I use those letters.
And then there’s this…
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/07/prominent-feminist-writer-drops-off-social-media-after-rape-threats-against-her-5-year-old-daughter/#.V5k6tgclGNc.twitter
She apparently isn’t getting any help from LE. So @Joekster sadly, you are probably right.
@Hippielady – That’s awful. And besides the horribleness of directing those threats against A LITTLE KID, it reads to me like intentional silencing.
That kind of thing – threatening people until they fear for their safety and have to retreat from public places – is harmful to free speech. Racist assholes like Milo being banned from Twitter? Not so much.
Is it just me or is Barrack Obama’s “don’t boo, vote” the quote of the campaign so far? It might be the quote of my entire life!
Yeah thats the manosphere for yeah ,they use threats and intimidation to try and silence women they don;t like then claim their freedom is being suppressed
You must not threaten on a boat, you must not threaten that poor goat, you must not make threats here, or there, YOU MUST NOT THREATEN ANYWHERE!
You mustn’t threaten on the ‘net, you must not threaten your cat’s vet, you must not threaten here, or there, YOU MUST NOT THREATEN ANYWHERE!
…I’ll show myself out
@WWTH
She hits em 1st, he cleans up the next day. OTP if there ever was one
http://www.uptownmagazine.com/files/2012/01/Barack-and-Michelle.jpg
BTW, does she follow the Hillary model, ya think? Run for Illinois States Attorney or something a few years down the line. Not necessarily go for the presidency, but generally stick around. At this point, she could easily have pretty much anything she wanted
@Alpine
That was dope…
@Joekster,
The offensive GG is one of the deadly sins of gaming. Only the smuggest of assholes will drop an offensive GG, often before saying “EZ game.”
The game is only over when the loser taps out.
@kupo
http://blog.formstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/yes.gif#yes%20gif%20400×157
You seem a decent fellow, EJ, and I don’t mean to come off as harsh towards you specifically, but I’m sick to fucking death of all the sympathy for abusers EVERYWHERE else from EVERYONE else; this place is usually my respite from it. Rape and DV cases that actually end in conviction, you always hear about how the poor abuser’s life is ruined or thus-and-such happened in their lives to supposedly excuse their behavior. Someone gets fired for advertising their workplace on a social media account that they’re using to harass others and spread hate, and all you hear about is how unfair it is to the harasser that their actions cost them their job. All I hear as a survivor is people’s sympathy for my abusers. The problem with abuse is not the abusers’ pain–it is the pain they inflict on others. Could we please not be guilted–in this place, if nowhere else–into sympathizing with people who actively and knowingly harm others?
To echo the sentiment of others: as happy as I am law enforcement responded to threats made against others, the fact Activision and Blizzard were involved as well as the fact the person making the threats had psychological issues makes it feel less like…I dunno, would “victory” be the right word? People on social media, especially women, who get harassed generally don’t get support from law enforcement. Plus the fact many neurotypical people still defend harassment under the erroneous notion it is somehow “free speech” means we still have a long way to go.
Getting into conversation with GamerGaters about the nature of threats is one of the most surreal conversations I’ve had online. They’re the kind of people who will be totally dismissive about such whenever a female writer is getting a flood of death and rape threats, even claiming they “just made it up”, but will do a 180-degree turn and become concerned when it becomes clear to them the other party doesn’t buy their heinous logic. Of course, they won’t admit that it’s just shitty – they’ll play the false equivalency card and claim the “other side” does it “as much.” Nevermind they often lack the evidence of such, unlike the numerous women who are told several variations of “I’m going to rape you” and document such to prove that, yet expect others to take it as a given without question.
I remember seeing a clip where Kevin Logan was debating Carl “Sargon of Akkad” Benjamin, pointing out how hypocritical it was that he was completely credulous of Sam “Total Biscuits” Bains’ claim of being harassed while he is constantly disbelieving Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn when it comes to the threats they receive. Benjamin, lacking self-awareness as he does, accused Logan of “seeing the worst in people” and acted like he was on the verge of crying like he was John Boehner.
It really infuriates me when GGers and the like do this, when they’re such insensitive and inconsiderate jackasses towards people who are genuinely being tormented and suffering from it – yet start shedding crocodile tears and self-victimizing the moment they get called out on their shit. It’s absolutely pathetic for a bunch of people to constantly pat themselves on the back for being so “rational”, yet manage to have the most petulant hissy-fits imaginable and still have the fucking gall to accuse others of being “over-emotional.”
Thanks for calling me on that, kupo and ryeash.
The main reason I won’t touch CS Go, being that it’s one the most toxic communities in existence.
Some people get a huge kick out of ridiculing and dehumanizing other players. It still has the power to affect someone even if it’s not directed at them.
@EJ
Thanks for being cool about it 🙂
@joekster
Like others mentioned, it’s possible to use it as an insult. I’ve seen it used in mid-game when one player manages to take down another (especially if it’s an instagib), they’ll go:
>good game
>good game
>good game
Needless to say, I mostly played LoL against bots :p