An Interview with Melonie Mac

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Kotaku is going down fighting, and they’ve set their sights on Melonie Mac. Alyssa Mercante, the author of that Sweet Baby Inc. article that led (at least partly, one assumes) to Kotaku shifting its focus from news articles to video game guides, was caught trying to get dirt on Melonie on X, but when Melonie retweeted her, her tone changed quickly. You can see the X posts below:

You know, you could always just talk to me if you want. But it looks like you’d rather find people who don’t like me to help you formulate some hate and lies to fit a narrative you’ve inevitably made up in your head for your witch hunt https://t.co/Nrt6AwYvz2

— Melonie Mac ✝️ (@MelonieMac) March 22, 2024

Judging by your tweet and lack of tagging me in it, your intentions appear to be in bad faith

But I sent an email, happy to chat!

— Melonie Mac ✝️ (@MelonieMac) March 22, 2024

Melonie was kind enough to speak to me about the situation, as well as her online career, her Christian faith, and why she sets off people like the Kotaku crew so much.

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Alex: Did you first learn about Alyssa Mercante’s article when you saw that tweet?

Melonie Mac: I was on Friday Night Tights and saw people in the chat talking about it at random, so I hopped on Twitter, and people were quote-tweeting her and tagging me so I could see it. I had no idea about any plans for said article beforehand.

A: Do you think she was going to reach out to you before you retweeted her?

MM: Absolutely not. I don’t think she even wanted me to know about it, which is why she didn’t use my name in her tweets.

A: Did her change in tone surprise you?

MM: Not at all. She got caught being shady, and she had to try to save face. Her intentions are malicious, and her methods only reflect that.

A: What made you offer to speak with her?

MM: I wanted to confront her about what she was doing and why she was maliciously scheming about it. Had she any integrity and genuine questions for an article, she would have reached out to me in the first place.

A: What do you expect the article will be like? Do you believe it was always intended to be a broader article about conservatives, or do you think that’s a pivot?

MM: I’m under the impression that she was planning a hit piece, some sort of smear campaign about me, but the reception to her tweets backfired on her, so she course-corrected, saying she is working on a larger piece about conservative content creators.

A: She says this is something she had to “pick back up.” What do you think made you a hot topic again all of a sudden?

MM: She has had it out for me for a while. A lot of my content is about stuff I don’t like going on in the gaming industry, so inevitably, there have been ridiculous Kotaku articles I have discussed. For one that brought up Gamergate, as they do, I tweeted about it with the caption, “Kotaku is gay.” Alyssa then quote-tweeted me on her personal account, challenging me to Creator Clash, which, for the uninformed, is a boxing fight. I didn’t entertain it but found it odd that a woman’s reaction was to ask to fight. This was back in November.

Now that all this is happening, and she has mentioned picking said article back up, I’m under the impression that she has had bad intentions for a while. It seems like an act of desperation now that Kotaku is seemingly coming to their end.

A: Has anything like this happened to you before? You seem to be kind of a lightning rod for internet ire.

MM: Gaming journalists especially seem to hate my guts; it has become a weird thing for the past few years. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I spent so long in the industry, mostly keeping quiet about anything controversial. My main thing was on-camera hosting; I worked for a lot of really big companies doing online and television broadcasts. For that reason, I treated social media like my work and didn’t really talk about controversial things so I could focus on work instead.

But, as we’ve seen, the gaming industry and society in general suddenly took a crazy turn. Everyone started getting so heavy into politics and personal beliefs in general, and not only was an approved narrative enforced on everyone, but you couldn’t even keep quiet because “silence is violence,” according to them. They want complete submission.

In early 2020, for the first time, I started getting backlash from journalists and other people in the gaming industry. I had only recently been open about coming back to my faith, and it was jarring because, after a decade in the industry, I wasn’t a part of any online drama at all. Then, all of a sudden, I had two back-to-back incidents that I was involved in. Of all things, one was about Lara Croft’s design, and some ex-game dev went after me for being an “internalized misogynist” for defending classic Lara Croft. In the middle of that, my brother texted me to tell me The Quartering made a video about it defending me. I didn’t know who he was at the time, but I got a ton of support from his viewers, and I was really grateful for it and followed him. It was only a matter of days or weeks after that before some journalists banded together to launch a cancel campaign against a guy, and I defended that guy, so once again, I was the target of the hate mob. The Quartering made a video about that, too, and the cancel mob was mad that I was getting support and they didn’t have as much power as they thought they did with their cancel campaigns.

At that time, I was hosting with GameStop TV, and they were getting bombarded by the cancel pigs trying to get me fired. Fortunately, GameStop didn’t take them seriously, but since I was working there and also had sponsors, I still made an effort not to get into controversial topics often so my employer and sponsors wouldn’t have to deal with the backlash. But given how everything got volatile with BLM and COVID, I slowly started speaking out against the madness more, even though I felt alone in doing that in the industry.

It’s funny when I reflect on it. The attacks all started happening after I started sharing that I came back to my faith. It looks like I’ve angered some demons. [laughs]

A: Why do you think she wanted to know about you before you became popular?

MM: I’m under the impression that she is possibly trying to paint a narrative that I started grifting with the Christian and conservative angle as a means to gain fame, as if I’ve only recently gained popularity, which is comical; I was traveling the world hosting at events, online, and on television for over a decade. I seemingly had nothing to gain and everything to lose from being counterculture, but I was at the point in my life where I was willing to lose everything and switch career paths to nutrition/personal training or something.

To my surprise, I have gotten a lot of support, and I’m able to stay in content creation, but the implication of me being a nobody who has “seen a meteoric rise in popularity after adopting more reactionary views” is a blatant lie. It’s all very easily fact-checked by my work history.

A: How did your online career start?

MM: Everything started with the Ubisoft Frag Dolls, a team of girls formed by Ubisoft to showcase their games at events, write online blogs, play in tournaments, etc. I was working as a bank teller in Arkansas, and I really wanted to try to get involved in the gaming industry; being a Frag Doll felt like the dream. So, I applied for their internship program and got a spot in the spring 2010 class. PAX East 2010 was my first gaming event ever, and it was the most exciting thing. Splinter Cell is one of my favorite franchises, and getting to teach people how to play the demo for Splinter Cell: Conviction at events felt so surreal. I was so grateful!

That’s where it all started, and I continued to pick up a ton of work from there with a bunch of different gaming companies for the next decade.

A: Have you always been into gaming?

MM: Yup, my whole life! My dad got my brothers and me into gaming, drawing comics, and watching Godzilla movies at a very young age.

A: When and how did you become a Christian?

MM: I’m very blessed to have grown up in a Christian family, so for almost my whole life, I’ve been Christian. I was very strong in my faith, too, but I briefly parted from it for a time, though, funny enough, I still mostly lived by my instilled Christian values. But I quit reading the Bible, and I started disregarding things from it, one thing after another, because I allowed myself to care more about the world and the things of the world than God. And sure enough, just like the Bible says, friendship with the world is enmity with God. You can’t both believe in the Bible and validate sin in the world, so in my case, I chose the world for that time. It wasn’t too long before I felt the Lord calling me back, and it was a slow process of growing my faith again, but I got there. Committing to reading the Bible daily changed my life, especially. The world sees me as extreme, but that’s fine with me. This time, I am making the right choice. The world can hate me, but I choose Jesus.

A: Do you consider yourself a homophobe?

MM: Homophobe is such a funny word. I am not afraid of homosexuality, but I do believe in the Bible, which says it is an abomination. That said, I don’t believe in forcing my beliefs on anyone; how people live isn’t my business. I’m happy to be friends with anyone as long as they don’t expect me to change my Christian beliefs. I don’t need anyone to validate my life, so if they don’t expect me to validate theirs, we can get along just fine.

A: Mercante accused you of “[leaning] very hard into Christianity.” Do you think that’s fair?

MM: My faith is the most important thing in my life, so I do talk about it often and incorporate it into everything I do

A: Do you think being open about your faith has helped or hurt your career, or has it had no impact?

MM: At this point, I’m not even that focused on my career; I care more about my purpose in life. And sharing the gospel is my purpose. I’m able to do both simultaneously, and I believe God lined things up in that way for me.

In terms of simply making money, I made more before I started sharing my faith and beliefs because most companies and sponsors don’t want to work with me anymore. But that doesn’t matter to me; I knew that my freedom would have a cost, and I was willing to pay it. I have no motivation to try to be rich or famous. I just want the freedom to do what I enjoy doing and share the love of Christ in the process. I’m still able to pay my bills, keep a roof over my head, buy video games I like to play, etc., so I have no complaints. God takes care of my needs and has placed the support in my life so that I don’t have to worry about things.

A: Do you have anything big coming up? Writing any gaming guides or anything?

MM: If Alyssa needs help with gaming guides, I could teach her some things about Tomb Raider! [laughs]

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Thanks so much for speaking to me, Melonie, and for being so candid. You can find Melonie Mac on Twitter/X, Twitch, and YouTube, where she has her main channel and her Bible study channel.