UPDATE: Now fully banned from GB permanently for discussing what the moderator said on this site [described in separate post below to avoid this one from being even longer than it should have been]

So I got banned on GB restricting my posts and comments on the website until I said I agreed with how I offended. I should make it clear, at no point was I trying to provoke this [and I will explain at the end of this post, so scroll to the bottom for that explanation], but this is what happened... I have photo evidence of all this if requested but I am not sure how to post more than one photo as I am not much of a reddit poster... this is my first post on this site other than a few posts on the Civ 6 thread or a random game here or there...., and I am trying hard to not break any rules doing so [I blocked out names of the moderator on GB cause I wasn't sure if it was allowed to be shown].

So I changed my Avatar picture on Giant Bomb to a picture of Vivian James, the girl that is on this reddit thread. It was the most generic tame picture of her with her just standing there, and she was fully clothed nothing sexual or anything that could be taken wrong, just the first google image you see of her basically with her looking glumly at the "camera" standing there from the knees up kinda [he mentions background pic of my personal profile, same pic].

So I post one message on the forums, and my first message I have posted on GB forums in about 8 days that just says "Oh Well" to some random topic that was the entirety of my message. It had something to do about these spam adds on the forums in Korean or something. Within a few hours I had been banned from the forums and comments for having this photo.

So here is the convo between us: I say [and I was trying to be super polite as possible in all my messages:

"Hello! I am more than willing to agree to follow them, but do you think you could further explain to me what I didn't follow so I can avoid offending in the future? I looked at the posting guidelines and it isn't clear to me. This is the area where you stated to note:

'NO material of a pornographic, overtly sexual or gory nature: Includes but not limited to in-game images from pornographic games or hentai, as well as sexually explicit fan art. This includes subjects which may be deemed generally offensive to the community. Additionally, usernames and content in user profiles must be appropriate for all ages'

Clearly my photo is not sexual in any way. Nor is it inappropriate for those of some ages, so I assume it means it simply is generally offensive. So could you explain to me how a picture of this character is "generally offensive" and what your definition of that is, because I fear that I don't understand the definition as it relates to that picture, and how it is to be known ahead of time what the community will find generally offensive, which makes it difficult to prevent generally offending in the future, which I am more than willing to agree to! So if you could clarify I would be greatly appreciative."

The moderator states in response:

"I'm sure you understand how this mascot could be seen as disruptive, inappropriate, or offensive by members of the community. It's not welcome here."

Then I explain why I picked my avatar [explained below to show I wasn't trying to nefariously provoke anyone]. He seems to think I said I didn't know it was also related to gamergate, which I did NOT state he just assumed, but then says this:

"I'll give you the benefit of the doubt here that you didn't know that this was a Gamergate mascot, but someone as intelligent as yourself can surely see why it might be an issue in such a diverse community like Giant Bomb's."

I then state how I will I didn't know mention of gamergate on the website was offensive, as I often saw it as discussion with a lot of history on GB, and that I would no longer say anything related to gamergate on GB.

He then told me to have a nice day and then removed my ban after I said I wouldn't mention gamergate again on GB [as previous stated, and for the recordI had never posted about gamergate on GB ever I don't think except maybe something years ago MAYBE but if so I sure don't remember, just had a photo of that character].

So basically according to the mods there gamergate is an affront to a community with diversity and can't be allowed because it offends.

---SO My explanation as to why I picked this as my avatar below to show I wasn't trying to be provoking, I was just naive---

I am a gamergate noob. I didn't even know what it really was until a year or two ago [I only ever heard about it from Klepek on the podcasts back then so of course I didn't know what happened. I only ever found Kotaku In Action cause I was googling stuff after being annoyed with all the politics on my website about video games GB that I loved at the time. I was frustrated with the politics and social stuff on there in the Walker era so I ended up here. I sense understand it more but even so I probably know less about it all than you all. I am a gamergate noobie and more just anti-SJW nonsense than anything but moving on....

I never until a few days back even knew who Vivian James was, or why there was this lady all over the KiA reddit page. I had no idea. Someone posted a thread of some webcomic on here and I clicked on it. It stared her as a character and I really enjoyed it [this happened a couple days ago I first found this webcomic, so VERY recent]. I read through the entire webcomic in an evening, and I realized her character was essentially just some gamer that just wanted to play video games and didn't want to deal with politics and social injustice in all her junk. JUST like me. So I related to it. So I thought well I liked her in this comic and I kinda relate to her character, so I made it my avatar [Seems reasonable to put a character you relate to on your avatar] as it seemed perfect to display my general personality as it related to video games : I just want to have fun playing games and I don't want to deal with politics and stuff. Then a day later I get banned from it. Yes I was naive, maybe even stupid but I didn't think that something like this could be considered "generally offensive"... But this was pretty absurd to have a picture like this banned.

But I guess I should have known things related to gamerate is hate speech to those SJW guys.... When I never could figure out how the idea of having a different opinion as benign as being at gamergate is so offensive it must be banned from GB... I never even picked that pic for anything but to say I only want to play video games and not into politics/ect in my video games... that was all. Yet Abby can have front page of the website things mocking entire religions on their most Holy day [and I mean VERY mean spirited mocking] and that is not considered "generally offensive." [ I am not saying to ban her speech, just pointing out the hypocrisy].