Let’s Unpack This

Being a Black writer online can be a tough road to travel. It can be doubly true if you’re a Black woman writing in a space where people think you don’t belong. Enter Ash Parrish, a Black woman who covered gaming at one of the biggest gaming sites on the internet: Kotaku.

Ash wrote an article about a Black woman named Linda Guillory. Guillory recently won two Guinness Book of World Records for her uber impressive gaming collection. The report, to my mind, was an easy thing to celebrate since it shined a positive light on being a gamer while also championing an extreme minority within the culture. Only 41% of gamers identify as female, and I’d be shocked if Black women accounted for even half that number since White males have almost always dominated gaming circles.

But, the comments told another story.

When I happened upon the article, there were 375+ comments. Many were upset the title of the report specified the woman was Black. Some asked why it was so important to mention the woman’s race. Others pushed back against “woke” culture and believe Kotaku was forcing identity politics down their throat.

Ash, in a rare moment, jumped into the comments to defend her position. As someone who writes online and lives by the mantra of “don’t ever read the comment section,” I wondered what possessed her to subject herself to the idiocy of people who were committed to misunderstanding her position. So, I reached out to her and asked if she’d be willing to talk to me about it.

She was.

I spoke with Ash about the decision to write the article, how she felt about the comments, if her company supports her during times like this, and what she chose as her favorite game of the year.

*This interview has been edited for content, brevity, and clarity. Also, since conducting this interview, Ash resigned from her position*

Me: Hello, Ashley, it’s nice to meet you. I wanted to talk to you about the article you wrote about Linda Guillory and the Guinness Book of World Records. When I saw the comments, I saw you down there, throwing elbows like Ludacris and whatnot. I thought to myself, “this would be a good person to talk to kind of about her journey.”

Ash: Thank you for reaching out. You caught me on a rare day because I typically don’t argue with people in the comment section. Kotaku has this baggage with this readership that stems from the old GamerGate days. So, we still have many castoffs that don’t understand what this site has been about for the last eight or nine or 10 years.

They take umbrage when someone like me writes the piece I did. I’m aware of this audience by now, and I have to ignore it. But you know, that particular day, that specific time I’m like, I am tired of turning the other cheek for folks to hit. So, let me just let me you know, get up in there and give me my pound of flesh. So, I can say that I did, and you know, exercise whatever demon that was and keep pushing, and I did.

Me: Do you make it a conscious decision to feature Black news in your gaming coverage?

Ashley: I’m always thinking about how to bring more diverse coverage to Kotaku. Specifically, Black coverage. I’m not the only person of color on staff, but I’m the only Black person on the team. So if I see it, I want it on the page. I’m always trying to break out of the “Black person in gaming” journalism stuff. For example, “it’s Black history month. So, here’s your list…” or something like that.

Me: The piece that brought you here was your story about a Black woman who broke a couple of world records in gaming. On its face, it’s a seemingly innocuous article. And it’s not something that I would imagine you sat down to write and thought, “I’m going to be arguing with people in the comment section about this,” right?

Ashley: So, with this job, you have an idea of the audience and what will and won’t cause trouble. Good trouble, of course. So, talking about character creators, I know that that’s going to be a problem. I spoke about “Baldur’s Gate 3" and reviewed their character creator.

And I was, you know, expressing wishes that we had more like diverse options, not necessarily for Black people specifically, but like disability, like, you know, hearing aids for people or mobility aids, or people can have the option to choose a skin palette or something like that.

Someone got so upset at me that they made a 30-minute long YouTube video talking all kinds of nonsense because I had the nerve to say, “hey, Baldur’s Gate, and other people who put character creators in their games, maybe think about this.” And so, you know, that took me aback. But, usually, I have a good idea if I say Black anything; if that is the focus of the piece, it will cause trouble.

I’ve done little small things, like incorporating AAVE in my work. If you know how Black people talk online, on Twitter, the way that we speak to each other, right? I want to put some of that into this writing. So when people read it, it has a broader appeal, but when Black people read, you know what I’ve written, and they see that they know. Oh, okay, this is a conversation within that conversation. You and I are speaking, and that helps people feel seen. They can relate to this on just that much more of a level because the person writing this knows how to speak to them in their particular language.

But, when I do Black anything, I know there’s going to be trouble. I think what happened in this case with Miss Guillory, who’s the world record holder, is that a lot of people decided that because of the way we worded the headline, we said, “Black woman,” it was giving people an excuse to be racist, but hide it under something else.

However, I’m writing it, and because her Blackness meant something to me, I knew that I wanted to say, a Black woman.

Me: So, you didn’t go in there looking for a smoke.

Ashley: It’s not that I walked in there looking for smoke; I didn’t expect the kind of smoke that would happen. I just knew it was important to highlight this achievement, and it is more so, at least to me, because I’m a Black person writing this. After all, she is Black.

All my video gaming mentors are men. The number of Black women I know that play video games that are older than me is rare. I only know of one. I look at Guillory, and I’m like, “Oh my god, an elder, venerated elder,” and I’m just in awe. All of that is important. And that must be conveyed.

And it’s not even for people who are like, “why did you call her a woman? Or we wouldn’t say, ‘White woman.’” I’m not speaking to you. I’m talking to all the people like me. Right? And that’s what I was trying to explain in the comments. If you’re upset about this, if this causes you ire, outrage, or whatever, I’m not talking to you. Calm down.

Me: I understand that. It’s so funny to hear you say that because there are so many times when I’m writing something, and I publish it, and somebody will say something. And it’ll be a mischaracterization of what I said. And I figured out after all these years of writing online, to use one straightforward response. “That’s not what I said.” I don’t say anything else; I don’t explain. I don’t say why. Just “that’s not what I said.” How does Kotaku support you when things like this happen?

Ashley: The people I work with are very supportive of other writers when stuff like this happens. My editors, the person who edited the piece, who is also a woman of color, she’s Puerto Rican. She went in there, and she was like, you know, reinforcing the reasons why I was fighting like this. This does matter.

Me: So after all of the fighting, once you’ve put the flaming keyboard down to cool off, what do you feel after that?

Ashley: It is nearly never worth fighting for it. It is never worth it. And I know that it’s a lost battle. I lost the minute, I decided to get in there. But this is one of those cases where it’s an extremely rare moment because Linda Guillory, the woman, showed up in the comments. And she was commenting, answering questions. She saw the struggle I was having and reached out to me directly.

Me: Wow.

Ashley: We had the chance to talk. She’s a lovely woman. She told me little stories about how she grew up. She grew up in the Blackest parts of Detroit in the 70s. She used to fix electronics back then and came into gaming because her father was a handyman. He’s the person running around the Black neighborhoods fixing stuff. Because, you know, people didn’t have the money to buy new ones or afford to pay White repair people to come to fix them.

She was sharing her struggles because she’s an electrical engineer. And, you know, we don’t get too many Black women in those industries, especially older people who went to college in the 70s and 80s. She told me how her sister is the “real gamer” with consoles and stuff like that. And it’s like, “oh, I won.”

She took me aside and said, “I get it. You know, you are doing wonderful work. I appreciate what you do.” It made me feel so much better. I felt seen and understood by someone else, you know, so I’m not crazy.

Because usually, when stuff like this happens, especially to Black women online, people are like, “this is nothing, you’re wrong.” If you get so many people telling you, you’re wrong, even though you know you’re not wrong, you start to believe it. It’s the gaslight effect, right?

Somebody asked, in the comments, “who hired you? Like, this is garbage. Who hired you?” And I told them the former editor-in-chief did. And then that former editor showed up. I didn’t know he had read the piece or was in the comments, but he showed up. He was like, “you damn right. I did.”

So, I’m like “wow.” The one time I decided to go into the comments and fight; it ended up working in my favor.

Me: That, it did. Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with me. Since this was so heavy, let’s get you out of here on something light. What’s your favorite game you’ve been playing this year?

Ash: A game called “Chicory: A Colorful Tale.” You are a little dog person, and your job is to take this magical paintbrush and fill in the world with color that it has, like, you know, mysteriously disappeared, right? So on his face, it sounds like there’s a happy like, oh, coloring book game. It’s got like platformers and Metroidvania aspects to it.

Me: “Metroidvania” is the bullet point. That’s what you should have led with!

Ash: It’s an excellent platformer with, like, weird, fantastic puzzles, but it is also probably one of those games that will break it down to your atoms, especially if you’re a creative person. It tells a story about mental health and anxiety, depression, and how people with anxiety and depression can lash out and hurt the people around them. Like you’re not thinking of the game to like come in and like hit you in the kneecaps with a sledgehammer, but it does.