Thomas Middleditch of Silicon Valley fame got some flak this weekend for allegedly being unfunny while hosting the Blizzcon costume contest and mispronouncing some Blizzard characters’ names.
The video of his original standup bit is not online, so it’s difficult to parse exactly what people found so offensive. It seems he had a few self-deprecating “gamer living in mom’s basement” type jokes and some that targeted Blizzard fans directly.
The rest of the contest is available online, however, and aside from mispronouncing names, his performance as host isn’t that bad and gets a few laughs.
The online reaction to Middleditch’s performance is over the top, and seems to have trouble pinning down the exact reason Middleditch sucked.
Here on the left we have someone calling him a Gamergater.
And on the right he is labelled a social justice warrior.
Most just insulted him in a general sense.
Polygon called some of his jokes “sexist and gendered” but considering the folks at Polygon believe the mere existence of a male genitalia sexist, the jokes were probably pretty banal.
Even more ridiculous was a thread in Blizzard’s forum which outright demanded a public apology from Middleditch to Blizzard fans.
“HEY Thomas! You are NOT ONE OF US!!” yelled one poster into their keyboard.
Then just 18 hours later a thread was made saying Blizzard fans owed Middleditch an apology.
“Are we the 1% of Video Gaming?” wrote another poster. “No riff-raff allowed in our exclusive club?. ‘Buh-butt he made fun of us!’ Nah. He largely made fun of stereotyping he himself has encountered as he mentioned when he used to do LAN-parties. And if you are seriously super offended because someone did a ‘Nerds in the basement’ joke, you might have some growing up to do.”
Middleditch (perhaps unwisely) decided to duke it out with his detractors on Twitter and basically got nowhere. He did get some support from last year’s host Jay Mohr who called Blizzcon attendees a collection of bullies, which also did not go over well.
In an Instagram post however, Middleditch reaffirmed his gaming cred with a pic of his impressive battle station for a flying simulator, saying that just because he can’t pronounce the names of a bunch of Blizzard characters doesn’t mean he’s not a “real gamer.”