Who would’ve thought that the inventor of a “party game for horrible people” might end up being accused of rape?
by Ed Button
An Oedipus complex: Kid tested, mother approved.
The last thing Michael Jackson thought about before he died was jerking off into a pool of children’s tears.
These are some of the hundreds of thousands of combinations of words, phrases and generally awful sentiments you can come up with in the card game “Cards Against Humanity”, whose stellar 2011 Kickstarter campaign proved that many people were willing to get behind a “party game for horrible people”. A no holds barred version of the popular “Apples To Apples” card game that was willing to push the boundaries of what is considered decent in our society.
Just another night of playing Cards Against Humanity… pic.twitter.com/lfu3YtdHRC
— Lance Armstrong (@lancearmstrong) May 18, 2014
It’s a game many people have supported and have had a blast playing, myself included. Some of the support will be disappearing though, thanks to rape accusations against game co-creator Max Temkin.
A blog post on Temkin’s Tumblr account outlines his side of the story: Max received a tweet from a friend and, after doing some digging, found that a girl he had a “really brief relationship” with was posting on social media that he raped her while they were in college.
“We spent a few nights in each others’ rooms, but we never had sex and neither of us pressured the other into doing anything we weren’t comfortable with,” Temkin said on his blog. “After a few nights, I broke things off in the cowardly way that 19-year-old guys do, and I just stopped returning her calls and texts…It is entirely possible she read something completely different from what I did into an awkward college hookup. If any part of that was traumatic for her, I am sincerely sorry, and I wish we had the chance to address it privately.”
Temkin, who champions femininst causes despite having sexist, anti-transgender, and homophobic punchlines in his popular game, says he was considering filing a libel suit against the woman, but didn’t for two reasons: he didn’t want to drag her name through the mud, and he didn’t want to give the impression that powerful people can escape punishment by threatening accusers through lawsuits. He chalks the whole incident up to being an awkward teenager who wasn’t sure of how far he should go, and left it at that.
The woman in question offered her rebuttal.
I found out about all of this through a Daily Beast post in which the author Arthur Chu says, in essence, that even if it comes out that Temkin didn’t assault the woman, he’s not going to play Cards Against Humanity ever again because Temkin’s “trust has been called into question”. A trust that was on tenuous grounds to begin with. An alleged rape was the end of a lukewarm relationship the author had with a game that’s comfortable in joking about dwarfism, Auschwitz and necrophilia.
“When I play a card combo like “What will always get you laid? Date rape,” I’m asking the women at the table to trust that I’m a good, decent guy who doesn’t actually commit date rape or find date rape funny. I’m asking them to get the joke, which is that obviously we all think rape is horrible and therefore me being flip about it is shockingly hilarious…It functions as an icebreaker the same way trust-fall exercises do. Put us in a situation where we have no choice, and peer pressure means we generally will cave in and trust relative strangers with our physical safety. Cards Against Humanity is the social version of this, getting us to trust that the other players at the table are decent people who share our values. But what if they’re not?”
In essence, Chu’s quitting the game because actual rapists may also play the game. His choice.
Since none of us were in that dorm room almost a decade ago, we’ll never truly know what happened during the incident in question. But saying that the reason you drop support for something because “trust has been called into question” makes no sense to me.
If that were the case, I would have been on the street long, long ago.
I started my broadcasting career in 2009 where I still work to this day, doing the same job I started doing: News Director of a family-owned five-station radio network. Three months after I moved here I met my future wife, and we began dating. To this day, I still love my job. Not once have I dreaded waking up and going to work.
I’ve never been what most would call an “exciting” person. My idea of a good time is sitting on my couch after a hard day at work and watching a movie, or checking Twitter. Maybe playing an online game for an hour or so. I enjoy the occasional beer, the even less occasional glass of whiskey, and I can count the number of times I’ve done illegal drugs on two fingers (and, for the record, if my employer is reading this, it was a long, long time ago).
I’m telling you all this because I’ve been called the biggest underground drug dealer in this city of 11,000 people.
There’s a website, which I will not dignify by naming, where town gossipers from across the nation get together in localized forums to discuss everything from movies to who the hottie at the bar was the night before. The site is also used for usual gossip, talking about people who went to jail, what people’s lives are like at home, and everything in between.
After a year of living here, I came up as a topic in the forum. “Who’s the new guy on the radio?” Eventually, the curious question devolved into libel from the unwashed, anonymous masses. Since I work closely with the police department (as reporters usually do), I must be “on the payroll” for something. After a 4 page “discussion” on the topic, I was accused of everything from helping cover-up crimes that were never specified, to taking evidence from police custody and selling it on the black market like a markedly less exciting Yuri Orlov, to dealing cocaine with the explicit blessing of the local police and sheriff’s department.
And this is from people I’ve never met, and at this point in my life, haven’t had time to wrong.
In writing this article, I did something that I’ve never done in my life, and hate to admit doing even now: I Googled myself. The search brings up our company website, my social media profiles, an IMDB page (note: I’m not an actor), an episode of “Ed, Edd and Eddy”, and a Brad Pitt movie (again, not an actor). Out of 198,000,000 results, perhaps 10 pertain to me. Is that page where I was accused of being southern Missouri’s Tony Montana out there still? Yes, but it seems like it has disappeared into the internet’s collective unconscious.
I, however, am not as “visible”, if you will, as Temkin. Right at the top of the second page of a Google search of his name is the Daily Beast article previously mentioned. Rape accusations are right there in the forefront. True or not, this will follow Temkin for the rest of his natural life, and will also be around long after he’s gone.
If you’re thinking I’m writing this to defend Temkin, I’m not. But I’m not going to condemn him either. I don’t know for sure what happened, and until (and if) one side decides to head to court, nobody will, however both sides have said they don’t plan on it. I understand someone’s propensity to side with the victim, especially in rape cases, but how much damage does that do in a case like this? If there was a pattern, or other women coming forward, I could understand. But in a case of “he said, she said”, with no physical evidence, from 8 years ago?
In this case, I don’t think either one of them is lying. Something obviously happened. He sees it as an awkward misunderstanding, and she sees it as a violation of a trust she had with him, not to mention her body. Is Temkin a different man than he was 8 years ago? I’m sure he is. We all are.
So what next?
People across the web are suggesting Temkin donate to rape support groups (a good idea) to “stop apologizing for something that didn’t happen” (from a group of awful people). Temkin says he’s taking an internet break (which, based on his Twitter feed, is over).
The best outcome, though, is a cautionary tale and a dialogue between men and women on what they want with relationships.
Guys, now more than ever, make sure you know what’s ok and what’s not ok for you to do with your lady before you go for it.
Ladies, now more than ever, if you don’t want him to do something, say so.
We’ll all be better off for it.
Ed Button is an award-winning broadcaster based out of West Plains, MO. You can find him on Twitter @edb87.