Sebastian Ruiz also known as Frost of Rivia announced he resigned from Second Wind and made it clear that he left due to the Second Wind’s co-founder and Editor-in-Chief Nick Calandra.
Nick Calandra via Easy Achievers YouTube
In a post to X, Ruiz wrote, “I have resigned from Second Wind Group I’ll say more later, but I do want people to know where their money and support is going in the meantime.”
I have resigned from Second Wind Group
I’ll say more later, but I do want people to know where their money and support is going in the meantime pic.twitter.com/UBmiDLHIbZ
— Frost of Rivia (@TheOtherFrost) August 1, 2024
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He then shared his resignation letter. It reads, “When I joined SecondWindGroup I was under the assumption that we were forming a team of creatives with equal value and equal say. Individual creators would oversee their personal series and the group would decide how to run the business together.”
Ruiz continued, “It is plain as day that we have recreated the toxic corporate environment we abandoned, led by a petulant wanna be CEO who overspends, overpromises, underdelivers, sows division, tarnishes our image, asserts his creative vision (or rather creative blindness), and sabotages anyone’s attempts to correct him all while he fails his most basic duties, joy rides around the world, clout farms, and expects the community and Yahtzee to foot the bill because Nick Calandra tanks our YouTube revenue and makes us undesirable for sponsors. It is beyond incompetence.”
Nick Calandra via Destin YouTube
“Nick Calandra operates in bad faith to serve his ego and this group lacks the attitude and processes to appropriately deal with inaction and inability to deliver the core capabilities of our roles,” he asserted. “The board of directs lacks a knowledgeable enough majority to see through even the most basic Google searchable errors in Nick’s farcical directions and use their personal feelings as substitute for information even when presented with ‘dumbed down’ versions at their repeated request.”
“The rest of the owners have little knowledge of what’s going on and I don’t fault them because that’s the whole point of the culture of isolation: there aren’t enough leads at once thinking there’s a problem, the rest don’t know of the problems, therefore there are no problems,” Ruiz added.
Nick Calandra via Easy Achievers YouTube
“All of my personal attempts to make Nick see reason are ignored,” Ruiz declared. “All of my attempts to make the leads aware of Nick’s behavior are brushed off with minimal action. All of my attempts to raise concern for our systemic issues with leads are put off until after problems occur.”
He concluded, “I refuse to be subjected to this behavior any longer, I believe I have done everything in my power to address these issues for over 6 months and I want no part in preying on the community’s goodwill and Yahtzee’s hard work simply because we can’t run a business. At this rate, we don’t deserve to run a business.”
Nick Calandra via Last Stand Media YouTube
Ruiz was not the only Second Wind employee to resign. Cisco Araneta also revealed he resigned. He wrote on X, “Critical support for Sebastian Ruiz. Today was my last day at Second Wind as well. All I can say is we exceeded sales goals every. single. month.”
He added, “Thank you to all the dope clients I’ve had the privilege of working with. Let’s do it again soon. Email/LinkedIn is in my bio.”
Critical support for @TheOtherFrost. Today was my last day at Second Wind as well. All I can say is we exceeded sales goals every.👏single.👏month.👏
Thank you to all the dope clients I’ve had the privilege of working with. Let’s do it again soon. Email/LinkedIn is in my bio. https://t.co/lL2XFbBCt0
— Cisco Araneta (@ciscoaraneta) August 1, 2024
To Ruiz’s points, Calandra has sown significant division and tarnished Second Wind’s image. Infamously, Mark Kern aka Grummz called for Calandra to be banned from X, YouTube, Discord, and Patreon for doxxing him.
Grummz wrote on X, “I just got Doxed. My family has been doxed. Second Wind and former EIC of Escapist, Nick Calandra @jnickjcal, has weaponized his Discord server and is encouraging his thousands of patreon supporters to dox me. They did.”
He continued, “And unlike certain other journalists who don’t post receipts, I will. My addresses were posted, among other details about people they assume are me. Instead of banning the user who did so (and who later edited his post to ‘Nick’s Secret’ to obscure my address, but only after it was seen by thousands). Instead, Nick encouraged them to do more, and to avoid further TOS violations, asked that the information be sent to him in secret to avoid Discord disciplinary action. These users go unpunished by his moderation team. Instead they are praised.”
Mark Kern via Sodapoppin YouTube
Next, Grummz wrote, “Nick has been stalking me and tweeting about me for almost two months non-stop, and is so hot to ‘get me’ that he was fooled by one of my supporters into publishing a story on X from a user who’s name was a sting, an anagram for ‘Urinalist’ and he fell for it.”
“This is disgusting behavior, and a dangerous one. There have been multiple, documented threats on my life, including cash bounties, and Nick is happy to enable these violent people and arm them with the information that could lead to violence against myself, my wife, and my children,” he stated. “Anyone who joins Nick’s Patreon has access to this Discord server that is focused on doing me harm. There are 13,700+ members who have participated in this dox or been exposed to it.”
Concept art for Em-8er
From there, Grummz called for X, YouTube, Patreon, and Discord to ban Calandra, “I am calling on Discord, YouTube, Patreon, and X to permanently ban Nick Calandra and his weaponized Patreon and Discord server, as well as the users who have engaged in this violation of TOS. This has to stop.”
“There are thousands of users in his Discord who now have my personal information,” Grummz detailed. “They are also trying to dox members of my own community. Nick published Gigabears patreon email.”
Mark Kern via Sodapoppin YouTube
Grummz then called out Calandra as a hypocrite, “He calls me a grifter, but earns over $54,000 dollars a MONTH attacking me and enabling violence against me by egging on his community.”
“My thanks to one of my supporters, Gigabear, who reported this to me after going undercover in Nick’s discord server,” Kern concluded.
I just got Doxed. My family has been doxed.
Second Wind and former EIC of Escapist, Nick Calandra @jnickjcal, has weaponized his Discord server and is encouraging his thousands of patreon supporters to dox me.
They did.
And unlike certain other journalists who don’t post… pic.twitter.com/R3kBh89gkH
— Grummz (@Grummz) May 22, 2024
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Caldandra also implied he was opening to physically assaulting individuals opposed to progressive agenda. A screenshot shared from what appears to be Calandra’s Second Wind Discord to the Kotaku In Action subreddit shows Calandra posting on March 13, 2024, “I’ve argued and persuaded some people to realize how stupid they’re being. It can happen. But right now these folks are just trolling, basically trying to portray everyone that’s calling them out as the ‘actual’ racists lol’” and doubles down on maligning his detractors.
He also wrote, “I had to do my research before taking over The Escapist. The majority of this stuff is coming from the same dweebs that run that Kotakuinaction subreddit and sometimes I’m more than happy to let people from that sub know that nobody will ever love them lol.”
In another message he wrote, “Some folks in my replies being like – wow that was mean! And I’m like yea, these are the kinds of people that if they said any of this stuff to me at a bar, I would more than happily get kicked out for knocking them out.”
Alleged screenshot of Second Wind Discord posted to KotakuInAction subreddit
Calandra also organized and led a harassment campaign against YouTuber Smash JT and his website. A screenshot from X user Gigabear showed Calandra wrote on X, “As it was rightfully pointed out to me, and he is refusing to take down the page, has continued to add more names to it. It needs to be taken down. So please continue reporting to Wix as I am. I’m still waiting for their response.”
.@SmashJT He’s repaying you taking him off by trying to get the website shut down anyway. pic.twitter.com/tV3uGFYOWX
— GIGABEAR (@GigabearPanda) May 27, 2024
Other posts from Calandra are seen with him encouraging his followers to mass report the website. As shared to X by RoloCnG, Calandra wrote, “I am not spending another week tweeting about this baloney, I have ACTUAL work to do. I will be actively working to take this list down this week, and once again, I suggest you do the same. I’m done messing around with these guys.”
He added, “Here’s the link -smashjt.com/kotaku-detected – and I suggest you keep tagging Wix and WixHelp until they take action for breaking their terms of service against targeted harassment. I’m working to talk with a real person there as soon as tomorrow.”
RoloCnG on X
He also posted, “These guys will never stop doing this unless you go after their funding sources. If you follow me and see what’s happening here, I’m asking you to help me stop this before someone gets hurt. Not make jokes about, not dunk on them, it needs to be reported.”
RoloCnG on X
What do you make of Ruiz resigning and putting the blame fully on Calandra?
