The Magic community has been full of controversy for the last couple months. Echoing the outcry of women all over the country, women of the Magic community have begun to speak up about harassment and sexual assault. As most of you are aware, a major player in these events has been Jeremy Hambly, better known as Unsleeved Media.
Hambly has been on quite the tear the last few weeks, entering a downward spiral after being banned permanently from the game of Magic by Wizards of the Coast. His current mission (they change every week) is to weed out pedophiles in the Magic community, specifically in the judge program. On it’s face this is a great mission, but unfortunately Hambly’s motivations are disingenuous and his crusade has only come about as an attention grab when his ‘27-step plan to take down WoTC’ failed.
This new self-serving initiative includes randomly googling Magic judges and asking his followers to randomly google Magic judges until they find one who might be a sex offender. Hambly’s latest addition to this campaign is his most vile yet as he got access to a judge-only app and compiled the information of every L2 and L3 judge into a google doc. This manifest lists each judge’s DCI number, city and state, full name, and judge level (the judge that assisted him has been identified). While names and countries of judges are available publicly online, full names of cities and states were not available without being a judge or tournament organizer, and even then they were not compiled in list form.
This form of doxing that Hambly claimed was supposed to help people root out pedophiles but in doing so he has tied to this hundreds of names and personal information of judges who are not only innocent of any wrongdoing but are actually the people who put the most back into this community. This list, full of personal information, also included minors, the people Hambly claims he is trying to protect. After the tweet sharing the document full of everyone’s information had been up for almost three hours, Hambly pared the list down so it only included full names (first and last) and judge level but the list still contained minors. After the list was removed due to content violations Hambly claimed that he did not know that the list of full names and locations was not public information.
It is quite upsetting that he is targeting Magic’s judge community. Even if you aren’t a fan of our judges—and you should be—they are a vital part of the Magic community. Without the judges, Magic will cease to exist. If Jeremy Hambly manages to scare away the judges, there will be no more professional Magic tournaments. No pro tours, no grand prix, no World Magic Cup, or whatever they change its name to next.
This new chapter in the ongoing downward spiral that followed Hambly’s banning from organized play came only two days after he uploaded a video to YouTube containing a short clip of pornography which led to his personal YouTube channel (not Unsleeved Media) being banned. He removed the clip and re-uploaded the video under another account that had not yet been banned. While Hambly has acknowledged there was porn in the original video, he claims that the video was actually removed because of “mass flagging,” a phenomenon that many claim is when a company like YouTube responds to a high volume of complaints by removing the offending content without reviewing it. YouTube has repeatedly disputed that they do not take down videos due to “mass flagging.” In response to similar critics, YouTube has released their official policy which is to review a video after it has been flagged, and they will only remove a video due to content. The edited video without the porn clip that was uploaded to his other channel has not been removed.
Hambly’s hateful rhetoric has ramped up considerably since Christine Sprankle announced a break from Magic due to targeted harassment from Hambly and his followers. The vitriol only grew after the DCI levied their lifetime suspension on Hambly. Since then, several prominent female Magic personalities have locked down their Twitter due to the harassment, and several others have been doxed—including me. Women are feeling less welcome then ever, finding themselves targeted more than ever before. Now, judges are the target and the responsibility falls upon the community more than ever to make Magic a welcoming place for everyone.
[Editor’s Note: Jeremy will use this sort of article to claim that Kate supports pedophiles. In fact, this behavior is almost comically predictable. Jeremy’s goal has never been to protect the community from sexual predators. His goal is only to make Wizards of the Coast look bad as retaliation for banning him from a game he admitted to barely ever playing anyways. Kate does not support pedophiles. Hipsters of the Coast does not support pedophiles. We do fully support the judge program and the hard-working judges who make tournament Magic possible. I believe I speak for everyone when I say that the judge program, the DCI, Wizards of the Coast, and Hipsters of the Coast take allegations of sexual assault very seriously. If you are the victim of sexual assault at a tournament by a judge or anyone else, please make sure you alert the authorities immediately. -Rich]
Kate hails from Worcester MA and also does a bit of Card Altering. Check her Stuff out on Facebook! She mainly plays legacy and modern though will occasionally find herself playing EDH.