I don't think I've seen this story discussed here at all, and it's a pretty complicated one but here's a summary of events:
1. Homesick developer Chloe Sagal starts a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to raise money for a "life saving operation" to, supposedly, remove a piece of shrapnel from a car accident that was going to kill her with metal poisoning. (Yes, her lie really was this stupid.) She raised her goal ($35,000) only to have the campaign taken down by Indiegogo twice for fraud.
2. At some point Sagal begins talking to Destructoid's Allistair Pinsof online and confesses to him that she is a male who only presents as female at home and is actually trying to raise the money for sex reassignment surgery. She also attempts to commit suicide, but Pinsof and some others talk her down and she goes to the hospital. Sagal threatens suicide if Pinsof says what he knows, so he keeps it quiet.
3. Sagal later posts a suicide letter on a forum and attempts to commit suicide on Twitch TV, anyway. She survives and winds up in the hospital (again). Despite being warned not to do so by Destructoid, Pinsof tells everything he knows about the story on Twitter.
4. A massive shitstorm erupts because of the "outing" (when Sagal's transgendered status was pretty obvious to anyone with functioning eyes and ears). Pinsof is now suspended by Destructoid and will no doubt be fired.
What say you, Chartz? Is it a journalist's (even a lowly games "journalist") responsibility to tell the whole truth or to keep confidential such information when the initial Indiegogo campaign was kind of a big story on gaming websites? Should Pinsof have told what he knew about the scam but kept the exact nature of the deception to himself? Is Destructoid doing the right thing by standing up for a marginalized community, or is this a craven attempt to deflect the heat from themselves? How many questions can I cram into one post? (Five.)
