June 11, 2021

The FNAF guy donates to Republicans, so let's talk about charity

I'm sure this will be a good idea and not get out of hand

Look, don’t ask me why it’s taken so long to turn around another one of these, especially given what we’re gonna be talking about here. Just know I’ve got an entire folder of dead drafts, it’s not for trying. Anyway, it turns out Five Nights at Freddy’s developer and known Christian Scott Cawthon is a real Christian; which of course here means he donates a ton of cash to Republican campaigns. 

On the one hand, as a lot of the FNAF fanbase has pointed out, this is pretty unsurprising. A whole lot of American Christianity is inextricably tied to the Republican Party and Cawthon hasn’t kept his faith a secret. Normally, as an “exvangelical” that substitutes therapy with processing his religious trauma via video game reviews1 Cawthon would and should have stayed higher on my shit list; but the guy did a pretty good job keeping his head down and the good news to himself. The man is welcome to his personal beliefs and the closest he ever has gotten to putting his beliefs (to my knowledge) in the FNAF games is the idea of hell existing2, which isn’t exactly a smoking gun. Someone smelled some smoke though and the extremely online FNAF fanbase has been in massive discussion and infighting since. 

I don’t see much of a point in getting into the why of Cawthon’s donations being a bad look. Unless you also donated to these campaigns, you understand the problem here. Hell, talking about fashy leanings in games needing to be dealt with was the one other proper release this newsletter had. But, since I couldn’t resist checking in on the mess of discourse (that bit about religious trauma wasn’t a joke) I picked up on something that I often see thrown around in these conversations and actually do have a take on. Seeing as it’s E3 and nobody is looking, now’s as good a time as any to choose violence: 

A relatively loud portion of the FNAF community has rationalized away having to deal with Cawthon’s beliefs by arguing that he also donates thousands of dollars to charities regularly and therefore is a good person. This is true in the most literal sense - the man has indeed done so - but these two things are not the same. Charity is a popular concept in the gaming community and generally this a good thing - I’m a big fan of Desert Bus for Hope myself - and it makes talking about how often the process feels perfunctory pretty difficult. Even so, giving to charity doesn’t make you a good person, and doing so to deflect from one’s own bigotry makes them worse. 

That isn’t to say that Cawthon’s charity donations are intended as a deflection, but his fans are currently using them as such and that’s because we’ve been here before. Many a content creator - gaming ones in particular - have allowed this type of deflection work in their favor and absolve their sins. It’s not just creators either. The only thing more common than a Super Metroid run at Games Done Quick is them completely dropping the ball at giving even a cursory glance at the people they allow to perform. Sure, the Notch donations don’t elicit the same response they used to there, but they still come in, and they read off his name without a thought. Just don’t think about why people say Miku made Minecraft. 

Charity allows us to deliver aid to those who need it. It’s inarguable that the huge St. Jude charity streams we see on Twitch have led to getting resources and care to people who need it3. Charity is also a system we’ve set up to fill gaps that our society has decided to leave wide open for people in need to fall into. Circling back to Cawthon specifically, his donation to Republican campaigns betrays how he actually feels about the people that charities uplift. It’s telling that while he has donated a relatively large amount of money to you or me, it’s actually a miniscule fraction of his net worth (a cool $60 Million) and as far as I’ve been able to find because it turns out you need to pay some cash to get the tools for an easy retrieval, they’ve all been during massive streams or events. Cawthon is participating in a system that helps his brand, protects his wealth, and ensures that all he has to do is give up 6% of his wealth over the course of years to keep the world exactly as he likes it. Some real camels and needles shit. 

I get that fans of FNAF want to still be able to enjoy the series even while knowing this, and there are ways of doing so, but pretending that his donations to MatPat’s St. Jude streams balance out donating to candidates that work to ensure healthcare remains inaccessible for thousands is not one of them. On an even larger scale though, I hope more gamers will realize that through actual progressive action we can take the concept of charity so much further and truly build ourselves a world where taking care of each other isn’t an annual mark down on our taxes but instead the norm.