To be fair, I seriously doubt they had any idea this would backfire as it has. I guess that's what happens when a company relies on one or two people in the industry to give them advice or input instead of opening up to the community as a whole.

Epoch, AVN, and the other sponsors have got to be horrified right about now, and I wouldn't want to be in their shoes, because they are pretty much damned if they do and damned if they don't.

If they'd jumped in on the first day, addressed and resolved the issue in a way that was satisfactory to the community, it would have sucked for them, but at least people would recognize the desire to right the wrong and eventually it would fade from people's consciousness. Not a lot of people remembered that AVN tried to schedule Internext against Phoenix Forum because it was an idea they quickly realized would bomb, and they quickly corrected themselves.

But this... not so much. Saying nothing and letting the fires continue to burn is simply allowing the word to get out to a larger and larger portion of the community... way beyond the readers of GWW... that these companies simply don't care about the community as a whole, and for Epoch in particular, who is going through money like water to try and develop more visibility in the gay community, it's got to be a PR disaster.

It still isn't too late to right the wrongs, but it's not easy, after being silent so long, to suddenly come forth and say "We fucked up, this isn't what we intended, and we want to fix it"... because people will be angry and the anger will be vented.

But it's still the right thing to do.