Keyboard rage

Sad Puppies 147 comments

I’m on orders for the next (more or less) year. My ability to pay attention to and track what’s going on in social media is affected accordingly. Unless someone specifically tells me what’s going on, I may not be aware. And even if I am aware, I may not have the time or energy for a proper response. So I hope people can forgive me if I am a day late and a dollar short.

Today, I am told Myke Cole is on about me. Since Myke doesn’t really know me from Adam, I have to shrug and take whatever he said with a grain of salt. But then, most people who’ve been on about me lately — because of Sad Puppies 3 — don’t know me, either. I may take it personally if a friend, a family member, or a respected senior I admire, has hard words for me. But total strangers spewing hard words?

Well, total strangers may have an opportunity to reconsider at a later point. Especially if they meet me face-to-face.

Perhaps not coincidentally, I saw today that Joss Whedon deleted his twitter account because he was being piled-upon for something. And this comes on the heels of Arthur Chu text-harassing an eating establishment over the weekend. Followed by a bomb threat (unfounded) to said eating establishment. It remains to be seen if Chu himself tweeted the threat, but I think much of this can be chalked up to keyboard rage. That, and the fact that social media lets us all run around inside each others’ heads all day long. We keep being shocked and horrified by what we find there, apparently.

Who knew that half the world is made of monsters?

Only, it isn’t.

I try not to let keyboard rage take over my perception. I’ve been on-line (more or less) since 1991, and in that time I’ve seen just about the worst that social media has to offer. Right now we seem to be rapidly plunging into a period of extreme judgmentalism and self-righteousness, and it’s fueling some pretty toxic social media mob sessions. I’m at the point with it all, now, where I am just skimming over anything that seems rage-hatey — or otherwise filled with keyboard paroxysms. It’s similar to road rage, but with words.

When I think someone else on the highway is displaying road-ragey tendencies, I let up off the gas, drop back, and keep a healthy distance. Their issues need not become my issues.

And in the end, (s)he’s probably cool face-to-face. Road rage can be like that. Being behind the wheel flips some psychological switches that we (as a society enmeshed in each others’ lives like never before) don’t know how to handle yet.

Hopefully we learn.

Until then, things are bumpy.

147 comments

  1. On orders for a year?

    Aren’t you in the Reserves?

    Yeah, that Clinton post-Cold-War military plan works great, doesn’t it?

  2. As I’ve come to know of you, Brad… Polite. Thought out. Respectful…even when it is not merited. There’s a reason I friended you on Facebook and look forward to more of your fiction.

  3. Every time I think “Brad can’t dig himself any deeper” you go and do just that. Let’s recap, shall we?

    First, over on File 770, you insist on mis-characterizing Juliette Wade’s involvement with Sad Puppies, to the point that she jumps into the comments and says “Brad, stop putting words in my mouth.” At which point, rather than stopping (let alone apologizing) you keep putting words in her mouth.

    Then, on Facebook you call Scalzi a fag. You don’t apologize to him, and your not-to-him apology is to say “that’s too mean even for him.”

    Lastly, Myke Cole (like me) a former commissioned officer, suggests that if you’re going to hide behind your uniform you might want to get with the modern military’s program on gays. (After all, you’re the one subject to the UCMJ, not him.) You’ve got time to write about it, but not apparently time to read the short letter.

    So, after all of this, your final response is “oh, well, keyboard rage, and really I’m a nice guy if you meet me in person.”

    /Jack Nicholson voice/ Just spitballing here, but maybe if you took a little personal responsibility for your actions people wouldn’t be so hostile towards you. /end voice/

  4. Draven: the post-9/11 world has been an odd one for Guard and Reserve. We now have Guard and Reserve troops with total deployment time greater than that of most World War 2 vets. This is my first time out. Most of the guys my age have been out once or twice at least already. Sometimes more. It’s all about a thing called ARFORGEN, where Reserve and Guard can expect regular call up according to a set cycle.

  6. Wow, Chris a lot of hate there. Maybe you need to take a step back from the Keyboard and go live in the real world for a while.

  9. So let’s see if I have this straight –

    Brad R. Torgersen: “I’m a Chief Warrant Officer in the U.S. Army Reserve. I’m a Warrant Officer. I’m going on orders soon – have I mentioned I’m a Warrant Officer?”

    Myke Cole: “I was an officer. Mr Torgersen, this comment you made show questionable judgement for a Warrant Officer in the U.S. Army>”

    Brad R. Torgersen: “You’re a stranger. You don’t know me. I don’t have to pay any attention!”

    Would that just about cover it?

  10. Hi Mr Torgersen – I hate to say this, but Dorothy L Sayers described road rage in one of her mystery novels set in the 1920s. That is one thing I find interesting about literature, it shows us how things were in the past, when the author was alive. And people are people no matter how far back you go. There were probably chariot road rage incidents, too!

  12. kilteDave – I saw a really half-assed one, not directed at the offended party.

    Draven – it’s not like we didn’t have a Republican administration in between Clinton and now. The bottom line is that Bush wanted to fund the war on a tax cut and didn’t want a draft, so we get much heavier use of reserves and contractors. In Bush’s / Clinton’s / Obama’s defense, a draft isn’t very popular with the voters, nor is the idea that we might attempt to match the wars we fight to the resources available. (No, I am *not* a fan of current military policy. But that’s off-topic.)

  14. So I read Myke Cole’s “open letter”… and the comments appended thereto… geez, guys, hypersensitive much? Someone gets irritated, perhaps justly provoked, and return-fires a common and not-terribly-meaningful insult, and that’s conclusive and irrefutable evidence of their whole anti-whatever mindset??!

    Brad, I’ve been truly amazed at your patience and tolerance in the face of the shit that’s been flung your way. You’ve made me proud to know you, even if we’ve only ‘met’ through this blog.

    Oh, and your socks stink too. 😉

  18. I’m curious why Gerrib, who spends so much time here telling us all how much we suck, has such a hard on for Brad’s blog. It’s pretty pathetic, actually.

  19. Bemoaning Keyboard Rage, while rallying groups of wingnut ragers. Wow.

    In other news, CWO Torgersen is SHOCKED that gambling is occurring in this establishment.

  22. Insult a man many times each day for a month, and… Kudos to you on your remarkable self-restraint, sir–I would’ve started using far worse words far sooner.

  24. Chris,
    He didn’t call Scalzi a ‘Fag’, he didn’t even call him a homosexual. You really need to stop putting words in people’s mouths, especially right after you call -them- out on ‘putting words in other peoples mouths’. I mean really, hypocrisy much?

    And just what does being in (or having been in) the military have to do with any of this? I didn’t see Brad using his position to promote his joke, he just made a glib remark in passing. Your comment about ‘having been an officer’ was old the first time you used it on me years ago to try and win an appeal to authority. I was an officer too, so were a lot of people here, your constantly harping on it isn’t winning you any points. In fact, it sounds pretty desperate.

    Now, as far as getting with the ‘military’s policy’ on homosexuals, I would like to point out that -you- used the word ‘Fag’, and you did it in a hateful manner, with no prompting. So maybe you need to get with the program, before slapping others with it?

    But really, ease up. You’ll live longer.

  25. Chris, the regular call-ups of Guard and Reserve started well before 9/11. The whole ‘end of the cold war peace dividend’ and then we suddenly discovered we’d cut too much to meet commitments we couldn’t weasel out of.

    And then we kept cutting.

  26. Brad, I mean this in this in the kindest way, but you are over thinking this. You got pwned. The reasons are not mysterious.

    1. You got defensive
    2. You got emotional
    3. You have theories…

    Now 1. is blood in the water and attracts sharks, 2. impairs your judgement, and 3. is irrelevant. You can’t win an internet argument, electrons are cheaper than bullets and the wounds are seldom fatal. The best thing to do is state your position and then walk away.

  28. I find it beyond amazing how the supposed Good Guys can insult people, relentlessly, for years, and yet Correia says “Pussy” or someone says (implies?) “fag” and suddenly it’s demands for apologies and tears of anguish.

    Why not just go have your party, Chris? You and yours have made certain that anyone who gets a Hugo this year can be guaranteed to have a crappy convention because your holy cause is so just and true and right. So have your party, why don’t you? Just go do it. You and yours, the anguished, the footsoldiers… they’re not shy about admitting that this was supposed to be a private party all along and why, no one would have cared at all so long as no one noticed the interlopers, it was that kind of private party… so long as no one noticed the gate crashers they were totally welcome. Not a shy voice in the bunch out there admitting that, stating that, saying outright that they wish the “fans” that aren’t the right fans would just go away.

    Pretend, please, that if you and yours had said “Wow, congratulations on your nomination,” that the people… each of them… who have backed out would have backed out. You KNOW it’s not true. And you know it’s the result you and yours wanted.

  29. Chris Gerrib: You are a damned liar. Brad never used that offensive word and you bloody well know it.

  30. Hey Chris, piss off. “We don’t care” if you’ve got your panties in a wad, whether you’re a “former commissioned officer” or not. Or is it “commissioned SJW”?

  31. Also… Joss Whedon did NOT turn off his twitter account because he was getting swarmed by an SJW hate mob calling him evil and other bad stuff over a movie.

    Doesn’t. Happen.

  34. SP3 has accomplished one thing. Its shown me the true face of a lot of people involved in the Hugo awards. Looks like all the critics were right. For them it was never about rewarding quality fiction but giving out awards to the people they liked based on politics. Now that the “wrong people” with the “wrong politics” have been nominated, they’d rather deny anyone a Hugo’s & turn the convention into an intellectual food fight and political free fire zone. Rule or ruin.

  35. Good luck and prayers on your deployment, Brad.

    To the people who walked in here to pick a fight over trumped-up imaginary offenses at the last second, I salute your donation to the Sad Puppy Salt Reserves. Your continuing efforts to demonize people in order to undermine their efforts in the democratic process of the Hugo Awards is notable and shall be enshrined lovingly in the voting results.

  36. I seriously doubt most of us here are current or former Air Force. The squids, the jar heads, and the rest of us take offense at being left out, we fart in your general direction, your mother is a hampster and your father smells of elderberries!

  38. What really angers me is the presumption that someone is guilty — either of sexism, racism, or homophobia — unless they take part in the rituals of public denunciation. Unless you’re willing to throw your friends under the bus at the slightest provocation, you’re a bad person.

  39. I could not resist… Posted on his blog:

    Hmmm. I am hoping that you are NOT still subject to being called up for active service.

    Why is this? Well, by your “logic,” anyone under your command would be subject to realistic doubts as to whether you would “lead them to the best of your ability” if they happen to disagree with your political views.

    Which, I would submit is a *far* higher proportion of active service personnel than the number of open homosexuals currently serving.

  40. Torgerson: So, I’m going on deployment, so things around here may be slower than usual.
    Gerrib: WHY DO YOU HIDE BEHIND THE UNIFORM, HOMOPHOBE? BOW TO THE CULTURE!!!!!!

    Mmmmmkay. Gerrib apparently lets Torgerson live, rent-free, in his head. Well, better Torgerson than Vox.

  41. It bears repeating: Brad did not use that word, but Chris Gerrib DID.

  42. I agree about Myke Cole. Good lord, I thought officers were supposed to tell the truth and not lie about their fellow servicemen and try to get them in trouble over a personal differences. And I certainly wouldn’t want serve under a hot head like Cole who rants over a joke directed someone else. You have to wonder if someone like that would blow up under pressure or could handle someone disagreeing with him.

  43. Fortunately, none of this social-justice nonsense existed in the officers’ corps of the ’90s. It was already tense having to walk a guardpost in the dead of night with no vision gear and tape over your unloaded pistol’s magazine. If some butterbar had walked up and started telling me off about how the color of my dusty boots was offensive to persons of Hispanic heritage, I’d’ve gotten court-martialed for slugging the sonovabitch.

  44. Good Luck and Prayers you Homophobic Misogynistic Mormon you. Misogynistic Mormon kinda sings, don’t you think? Best wishes…

  45. Pingback: The Paw of Oberon 5/4 | File 770

  46. BKC, please stop embarrassing the species. If you have to fling poo, the bathroom is the third door on your right down the hallway.

  47. Brad: You called Scalzi gay as an insult. You did the right thing apologizing to him, but it’s a glaring omission for you to not apologize to gays for treating their sexual orientation as an insult.

    A few years ago you wrote here on your blog, “I’ve known and been friendly with too many gays to ever believe some of the nasty rubbish that gets said about them. … some people are just haters.”

    Don’t be one of them.

  48. Rogers, I hardly think that is necessary, and I’m pretty sure most Gay people don’t really give a damn. It was a joke, and it wasn’t even a nasty one, more of just a glib comment.
    The comment could also be taken that scalzi didn’t like anybody male or female. Should he apologize to that group as well?

    This whole ‘you must apologize’ thing is getting pretty dumb. People need to stop being wimps.

  50. @T.L. Knighton.
    I’m curious why Gerrib, who spends so much time here telling us all how much we suck, has such a hard on for Brad’s blog. It’s pretty pathetic, actually.

    I suspect he’s flogging his flaming rage nozzle. 🙂 Though really, if it’s flaming, falling out for sick parade would be a good idea.

  51. Myke Cole IS cool face-to-face (if a bit Boy Scouts in the rain) and is a talented young writer (of rollicking good stories) to boot. He has also said much worse than what Torgersen said. But planks and specks and all that.

  55. Somewhere the sun is shining and there is a dictionary with Myke Cole’s and Joss Whedon’s names on it. In that dictionary each will find words like “demography” and “ideology.”

    Mr. Whedon will learn there are words like “male” and “white” and that at the end of the day that’s all he is. His own “ideology” has turned his “demography” into an “ideology.” Cole will eventually learn the same lesson.

    Bow your heads and bend the knee all you want – in the end you have been enrolled in a woman-hating homophobic KKK by feminists and you will apologize for that til the day you die. The actual words Whedon, Cole and Torgersen use are meaningless. What is meaningful is their race and sex. Cole will find his own fiction undergoing similar scrutiny as Whedon’s to the exact extent he is successful.

    The key observation is that Whedon was “piled on.” Why he was piled upon would be another, and it wasn’t for “something.” Eventually Cole will be piled on; it might be for a “microaggression” or “institutional racism” like mistaking N.K. Jemisin for Eartha Kitt or for advancing colonialist tropes like using the term “half-breed” on a dragon. At last Cole’s own fiction will be so washed clean of bad words it will read less eccentric than a ’60s sit-com.

    Watch yer six, dude.

  57. Cole: former contractor, former Coastie officer, self described (@Lunacon 2011) ‘operator’, self described “Captain America” (I can’t make this stuff up!) and most recently conscientious objector refugee from the active reserve – now hyperbolic critic and thought police for a deploying soldier.

    Given the sneering that the SJBs reserve for Baen milscifi you have to wonder how they reconcile themselves to his pseudo milspec website.

    Gerrib: former SWO whose bio pictures dating to his four years of active duty demonstrate that his closest brush with danger was when he was caught habitually licking the inside of the soft serve ice cream machine in the wardroom, trying to recover the energy expended from ordering his contingent of mess stewards back for this third helping of sirloin steak. Favorite racist quote from his blog: “I did my bit, including a deployment to the Mediterranean and Red Seas and a couple of stints of “chasin’ Haitians”.”

    You might want to cut back on the carbs if you want to make it another few years without bypass surgery and persist in stalking Brad’s blog.

  58. It seems to me that chasing Haitians falls well within a racial microagression as well as perpetuating colonialist tropes. Why would a white man bragging about his new suburban privilege-grill think chasing black people a notable event in his life unless it was ancestral race-pride? Were there de facto orders to stand down when it came to chasing white people? It seems to be that bragging to your white friends about chasing white people wouldn’t go over very well over steaks and pina coladas. Uncomfortable questions about race-treason might arise. I now understand Mr. Gerrib’s concerns about white privilege since his racial braggadocio reeks of it. He is also an imperialist paper tiger and stooge for the Western military-industrial complex which routinely depth-charges innocent marginalized Red Sea Somali fisherman who violate the 100 kilometer safe-space of whatever armed garbage scow he served on.

  59. The comments on that piece… damn. As a civilian I try to avoid giving my opinion on maters of military culture (as I have next to zero experience on which to base any such comments). But, about two thirds of the way down there is a string of four or so ex and current servicemen declaring that they would “refuse to serve” beside Brad, whom they consider an embarrassment to the defense force… Now they’re military and I’m not but I’m pretty sure that dereliction of duty would make you a waaaaay bigger embarrassment than any possible comment on another man’s predilections.

    Also there was the person who was insisting that “sexualized jokes” have no place in the navy… Oh yeah, how did I forget that ‘single men in barracks grow into plaster saints’… http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/tommy.html

  60. The feminist Oscar Wilde has just written the unpredictably titled “It’s About Ethics in Revolution,” thereby proving:

    A.) No feminist can write satire
    B.) It is possible to write stupider speculative fiction than dino-revenge
    C.) Kameron Hurley is a premiere moron

    http://motherboard.vice.com/read/its-about-ethics-in-revolution

    You knew that retardation has boarded ship without permission when the preface by the editors mentioned “science fiction has always been a tool for the marginalized to imagine new worlds…”

    Why not just say it’s a handy tool to manage and highlight mental health issues?

    Hurley’s story is the brand new most horribly written SF story I have ever encountered. The idea this woman is published is honestly frightening. Please tell us once again how diversity hires won’t wreck the genre. I honestly have no words to adequately describe how unaware and redneck this story from a stereotype factory is. If I were to write a story that was a satire of a story a man-hating lesbian anti-white KKK might’ve written, this would be it. The problem is I’m not brilliant enough to write a story so penetratingly stupid. This story has the seal of true authenticity of the utterly benighted. No normal human being could turn off enough brain cells to write this story and survive the oxygen depravation with their intellect intact. It would be a one-way journey down the river of no return.

    However, Hurley does give us some inspirational glimpses into how a visit to her world might look. I would imagine that in Kameron Hurley’s world, there would be giant statues of the greatest genius who ever lived – Otis Adelbert Kline – or at least as large as a statue made of layers of tinfoil could be without collapsing. Then there would be the Octavia Butler Megaphone Company, an invention for communicating from one rooftop to another if the day ever came Hurley’s civilization could make a building without collapsing.

    My own preface to such a story would be “science fiction is for having a yabba-dabba-do time, a dabba-do time, a gay old non-binary time where you use baby elephants for washing machines and pterodactyl beaks for playing records.” I think I’d title the story “Please God Help Our Civilization.”

    I honestly don’t know what else to say about this fantastically stupid cult. They haven’t just killed SF they have mercilessly tortured it.

  61. Mr. Torgersen,
    i’ve been following the fun and games around various breeds of puppies for a couple months now. Just thought yoiu might like to know from an ‘outsider’ that the class, honor, and smarts all seem to be on your side.

    The SJWs (which is the ONLY kind of ‘warrior’ they seem to be) have demonstrated by their words and actions that they are not honorable or trustworthy. Mr. Beale has coined the phrase ‘SJWs always lie’. To this formerly-neutal third party, It’s appears worse than that. SJWs ARE liers. One is an action, the other is a character defect.

    Your apology is a class act, and your conduct throughout has been commendable. I suspect the SJWs will come to rue the day they treated you with less than honesty or honour.

  62. Rogers, you have to admit, gay baiting is a major sport of the Left. They accuse any conservative they can of being secretly gay, as an insult, as if being gay is a bad thing. (But then the left also makes some of the most racist comments you will hear too, so the pattern is consistent.)

    Nah, the best way to ding Scalzi over that dress pic is: “Scalzi, by wearing a dress as a joke is demeaning the existential struggle of all trans-folk as they decide whether they should come out in public or not as who they really are. Shame on you John, for your crass insensitivity!”

  63. kamas716, how do you like a comment on this blog (you have liked a couple of mine in the past)? Because I thoroughly enjoyed yours.

    Ratseal, epic takedown of both of those tools.

  64. Poor Chrissy Gerrib…still lying and making shit up in his quest for relevance.

    “Then, on Facebook you call Scalzi a fag.”

    Actually, that is not what Brad said. And only an idiot confuses “disliking women” with “being a fag”. I mean, most fags like women. Anyone who actually knows a fag understands that. But a bigot who avoids fags while claiming to support them, well, that guy might not understand.

    Professor Henry Higgins, in My Fair Lady, didn’t like women. But he was not a fag.

    All clear now, Chrissy?

  65. @bassmanco: Thank you! The tools make it easy.

    As far as I know, none of the authors who have written mil scifi of note such as Drake, Haldeman, Corriea, Ringo, Bujold, McCaffrey (yep, weyrs were military installations, and dragons have ranks!), Scalzi, Kratman, Kloos etc. have websites promoting their ‘military-ness’. In comparison, Cole seems desperate to assert his bona fides, if the theme (color, nomenclature etc.) of his blog is any indicator. Also, he can’t seem to stop talking about his military and private military contractor experiences.

    I think that his over the top letter is simply pandering to what he perceives to be his core audience. It isn’t a bad short to mid term business move, actually.

    Gerrib, OTOH, seems simply to be unhealthfully fascinated with Brad. I thought that he was trying to provoke BT in an effort to raise his own profile, but the frequency and nature of his posts is peculiar.

  67. “Rogers, you have to admit, gay baiting is a major sport of the Left. They accuse any conservative they can of being secretly gay, as an insult …”

    I like how nobody can ever discuss offensive behavior without pulling a bunch of they-did-it-worse stuff into it. Ain’t politics grand?

    Yes, some of my fellow liberals call conservatives gay in ways that make it sound like being gay is an insult. They also get criticized for doing that by other liberals. It’s an offensive thing to do.

    But a lot of the time when a gay conservative is outed, it’s because that person is publicly voting against anti-gay discrimination measures and other gay rights issues.

    This is no different than the late journalist Carl Rowan getting called out for illegally owning a handgun in D.C. while publicly supporting the district’s handgun ban.

  68. Short of total surrender, nothing you could ever do will make these people happy. My advice is to do & say whatever you think is right & let them cry about it. Eventually they’ll get hungry and eat each other.

  69. But a lot of the time when a gay conservative is outed, it’s because that person is publicly voting against anti-gay discrimination measures and other gay rights issues.

    This is no different than the late journalist Carl Rowan getting called out for illegally owning a handgun in D.C. while publicly supporting the district’s handgun ban.

    I’m going to take issue with that statement right there. Because it’s pure BS.
    A lot of the ‘anti-gay discrimination measures’ are pure legal crap, that will have massive ‘unintended consequences’. And anyone, gay or straight, with sense and morals is going to vote against them. It is NOT ‘oh, I’m going to attack gay people so no one suspects I’m gay’. That’s just crock. Guess what? Not everyone chooses how to vote based on their sexuality (though a disturbing number of people do).

    It’s right up there with how straight liberal men (and women) go on and on about how they ‘know’ what ‘gay people want’ and propose all sorts of stupid nonsense.

  70. Pingback: An Open Letter to Myke Cole | T.L. Knighton

  71. Mr. Gerrib is clearly an illustration in what Brad was getting at. Anything that anyone says is immediately seized upon and cast in the worst possible light. It’s clear that SJWs have serious emotional issues and they seem to be everywhere now a days. I happen to be reading an SFF the other day and an SJWer went off on someone for using the term “butthurt” claiming it was a homophobic term. The ironic part is someone a couple posts later said “that really chaps my butt” and the SJWer couldn’t make the connection that butthurt is just a modern iterative of “chaps my butt” and has nothing to do with homosexuality. Unless, someone chooses to create the connection to sodomy which is not necessarily where the term came from.

  72. This is no different than the late journalist Carl Rowan getting called out for illegally owning a handgun in D.C. while publicly supporting the district’s handgun ban.

    It is possible to be gay and believe that so-called ‘gay rights’ measures will make things worse without being a hypocrite, just as it’s possible to be a white male and vote for measures giving legal advantages to women and minorities without being a hypocrite. On the other hand, railing about people that don’t pay their fair share of taxes while you do everything in your power to not pay your taxes is hypocrisy. The general rule is: if you’re forcing other people to follow a rule you have no intention of following because it’s good for them, you’re a hypocrite.

    I said something in an earlier post about many people not understanding the concept of sin, and it applies here. We are all sinners by nature, even if you just take the concept of sin in a secular sense. It is certainly possible for someone to, say, drink heavily and rail about the evils of drinking without being a hypocrite if they understand that what they are doing is wrong, and they are more concerned about their own flaws than about the same flaw in others. The parent that smokes a pack a day yet punishes their child for smoking is not a hypocrite if the rationale is ‘I’ve made my mistake, I don’t want you to make the same mistake’; likewise they are a hypocrite if ‘it’s okay for me but not for you’, a subtle but distinct difference.

    What I keep seeing from the Progressives is that things the other side does are wrong, but when they do them to the other side, it’s okay this time. Exaggerated and deliberately racist caricatures of Condolezza Rice get much less attention than possibly-offensive caricatures of Barack Obama. Denying anyone the right to vote for anyone is wrong, but it’s okay to throw away ballots of servicemembers from overseas on any technicality we can find. Anything Vox Day says that can be construed as racist is horrible, and we must distance ourselves from him, yet unquestionably racist and bigoted Progressives are okay because they are racist and bigoted against white males.

  74. “The parent that smokes a pack a day yet punishes their child for smoking is not a hypocrite if the rationale is ‘I’ve made my mistake, I don’t want you to make the same mistake’; likewise they are a hypocrite if ‘it’s okay for me but not for you’, a subtle but distinct difference.”

    To be fair, I can entirely understand the mindset that finds it difficult to see much of a difference from the receiving end, especially if the punishing parent appears to be making no effort to stop smoking himself.

  76. To be fair, I can entirely understand the mindset that finds it difficult to see much of a difference from the receiving end, especially if the punishing parent appears to be making no effort to stop smoking himself.

    Since it definitely depends on the mental state of the person involved, the outside observer is always going to have a hard time diagnosing it perfectly. Since we’re all human, a sufficiently motivated inquisitor can find hypocrisy in just about anyone.

    At a meta level, we can look at the act of calling out hypocrisy itself as potentially hypocritical. There’s a difference between seeking out hypocrisy to find fault and seeking hypocrisy to defend oneself against specific charges. Hypocrisy itself isn’t a horrible problem; again, we are all likely hypocrites to at least a small degree. The charge of hypocrisy is, however, a valid rhetorical defense if it can be shown that the person accusing you of a fault is unrepentantly guilty of the same fault.

  78. Openly claiming to be a spy not long after said spying took place? That’s . . . interesting. I confess, I don’t know enough about intelligence, but this sounds odd to me. I could be wrong. Perhaps someone with more knowledge could shed some light on this.

  79. It took 15 years after I left the service before I felt comfortable telling anyone why I had a top secret clearance and I still get twitchy if it’s on the Internet and it was the most boring and routine thing on the planet. Number one security threat is….. People who brag about their job.

    If we’re going to talk about “professionalism” or the lack of it.

  80. @Julie, @Chris, @Pave- it is pretty hard to take many of the things that Cole claims at complete face value. I had noted his use of ‘spy’, and should have added it to the list. Frankly, I was hung up on his Operator status, a sobriquet most closely associated with the Tier 1 and 3 folks from Bragg, Coronado and Hurlburt. Of course, he may have purchased a pair of Oakleys and hit the local shooting range. When I asked him about it F2F he did a nifty verbal dance.

    When he talks about the military ‘growing away from him’ I snorted a bit. I do have to give him mad credit for having the self righteous tone down pat.

  81. Well, I finally found out what Brad actually said about Scalzi on twitter. Have to say Scalzi does seem the Metrosexual type who could go either way. He certainly does argue like some kind of bitchy Hollywood stereotype. Brad just forgot to add the obligatory “Not that there’s anything wrong with that…” disclaimer, or perhaps it wouldn’t fit in the tweet.

    If Scalzi has a problem with this characterization, perhaps he should stop being a little beeotch about EVERYTHING, all the time. Not that there’s anything -wrong- with being a yappy pomeranian of a man, pink bow and all…

    This kind of Schlitz is why I don’t do twitter, myself. What takes two seconds to type out when you’re pissed off goes out to the universe and can never be taken back. Then idiots get a hold of it and blow it up into a National Crisis.

    However I do feel quite safe in saying that Chris Gerrib above is a damn liar. He seems quite the kind of energy thief that leeches the life out of whoever is around him with the passive/aggressive black hole of his Deep Concern. Such men are not worth the notice to brush off.

  82. As for this Cole guy, he seems the type that the firemen around here call “wallies”. Kind of guy who rubs his bunker coat on the wall when he occasionally gets called out to a fire, so that it looks and smells like it belongs to a Real Fireman.

  83. “Cecily Kane‏ @Cecily_Kane @BlkGirlManifest Sorry you’ve had to deal with an extra-obnoxious helping of #WhiteFoolishness”

    “Cecily Kane @Cecily_Kane · May 3 @RachaelKJones With humor? E.g. ‘WOW it smells like a locker room up in here’ ‘Shit, it’s honkytown up in this place’ Etc.?”

    Next time Paul Weimer wants anyone to start disavowing racism he can start by digging in his own back pocket. Exactly when is obvious obvious to these people? Maybe an English dictionary would help, and not a feminist gender studies one.

  84. Mr. Cole should be aware, just because something has been legalised does not make it morally correct and suggesting that Mr. Torgersen should hold his tongue just because it might offend someone, is a weird alternative world PC version of Free speech.

  85. If you read the comments through the WordPress.com reader it allows you to like a comment as well as replying directly beneath it. It does seem to be a system-memory hog though, so for really long threads, or when typing a long response, it drags.

  87. “But a lot of the time when a gay conservative is outed, it’s because that person is publicly voting against anti-gay discrimination measures and other gay rights issues.

    This is no different than the late journalist Carl Rowan getting called out for illegally owning a handgun in D.C. while publicly supporting the district’s handgun ban.”

    Another thing to consider (in addition to what John said) is that they are representing constituents. It’s quite possible for a politician to vote against his/her own personal interests simply because they take their job seriously and vote the way their constituents wish.

  88. “I was hung up on his Operator status,”

    I suppose we all get hung up on what we know most about. For me that’s, “What is the psychology of security failures.”

  89. I know people who have been out of the service for over 30 years who still won’t/can’t talk about stuff they saw and did. One of them is prohibited from polygraph tests except by written authorization from the DoD.

    Someone who’s willing to say ‘I saw stuff’ right after getting out? Nah, I don’t put much faith in that.

  91. I’ve long been under the impression that ‘spy’ is the term used to refer to other nations’ intelligence services. We refer to our own as ‘intelligence officers’, ‘specialits’, ‘assets’, etc, do we not? If so, why does Mr. Cole refer to himself as a former ‘spy’? Taken together with his page’s background, which looks like a screen capture from Call of Duty, I’m not inclined to put much credence in his claims.

  92. I have quietly watched this thread with mounting interest. As an impartial arbiter, I judge everything that Chris says to be accurate, and everything that Julie and James say to be totally inaccurate, vile, disgusting, and merely designed to provoke the Honorable and innocent — like Chris — to anger.

    I also note the Locus Award nominees were released today. The Sad Corruptees apparently decided to keep their thick and slimy thumb off of that particular scale. Lady Justice was thus able to deliver the most-righteous nominations. Nominations had been free (as opposed to $40), so I guess the Sad Corruptees don’t know a good deal when they see one.

  95. I’m becoming more convinced that Philbert is running a false flag to make anti-Puppies look ridiculous.

  97. “I’m becoming more convinced that Philbert is running a false flag to make anti-Puppies look ridiculous.”

    Possible. The only thing lamer than Marston is a Marston wanna-be.

  99. Admin note: I am sorry I wasn’t around today. I mean, I am normally quiet in the comments anyway, but right now, especially so. Thank you again to everyone for the good wishes on my deployment! Much appreciated, and a hearty HOOAH to all!

  100. Good luck on the deployment, Brad. I just finished “The Chaplain’s War” and am looking forward to the next one. The Sad Puppies ruckus got me back into SF. Thanks!

  101. kamas716, I recognized the Holy Grail, part of what made your comment so funny.

    Philbert HAS to be parody. Or the biggest SJW in the world who overdosed on sniffing his own farts.

  102. Mars Needs Less (White Male) Astronauts And More Women(‘s Studies Majors)…

    https://archive.is/OcsnW

    (Using Archive because: 1) This stupidity must be documented for future generations, and 2) They don’t deserve the ad clicks.)

  103. I’m beginning to think The Guardian is actually the British version of The Onion. I mean, it can’t really be meant to taken seriously, right? Right?

  105. Kameron Hurley writes about the dark future that awaits us all if GamerGate and Sad Puppies win. It’s hilarious, but I don’t think it was meant to be. It’s a catalogue of leftist boogeymen: Christians, corporations, males. Not much to do with games, mind you.

    https://archive.is/CwNUN

    Archived so you don’t give her views.

  106. There were many laughs on Reddit the other day RE: Hurley’s Hurlings – many of the ‘THAT’S a Hugo-Winning Author?!’ variety. Also some shock at how few votes (under 600, in La Hurley’s case) it took to get a Rocket.

  107. “This dipsh*t won a hugo award?

    Well f**k, no wonder the sad puppies thing happened.”

  108. The Hugos have honored some of the great progressive voices of the 20th and 21st centuries—Kurt Vonnegut, Octavia Butler, Philip K Dick, Ursula Le Guin—and science fiction has always been a tool for the marginalized to imagine new worlds beyond the limitations of the here and now.

    Looks like someone is obsessed with seeing things through a political lens.

  109. The above quote is from Reddit, sorry.

    Civilis: Couldn’t be. SF was pure and perfect before the Perfidious Puppies brought their evil Amerikkkan culture war into it.

  110. Incidentally, Vox is reporting that Reaxxion found (and Archived) some… interesting… photos/Tumbler postings by Mr. ‘Look at the Shield’ Chu. ‘Interesting’ in a ‘Masters and Johnson’ sense, and not to be reviewed by the unprepared. You have been warned.

  111. I think people like Hurley, Kate Elliott, Ann Leckie, etc. think we simply say there’s nothing to their work out of resentment, but that’s not the way art works. If there’s a new artistic vibe or movement that has really wonderful visions and perceptions and truths, it’ll win you over. That’s how counter-culture works. I’ve read plenty of great books that won me over I was predisposed to dislike, mostly because I was in a foreign land and stuck with what I could get. So I’m aware of bias. These feminists also ignore we’re predisposed to like the genre in the first place. SFF by its nature delivers new unexpected stuff so the idea we’re all conservatives who want the same ol’ same ol’ doesn’t wash. I myself don’t like retreads and boredom.

    However the truth is this new fiction from this new group is almost stunningly bad. At best some of it is average. The lack of insight, perception and story-telling ability these highly politicized, obsessive and boring women have is their most notable talent. They seem to have no understanding of the nature of literature itself. I originally ran to the fine art weirdness of SFF to escape the boring redneckery of mainstream fiction, most of which seemed and still seems dedicated to dull and plodding drudgery without scent, space, dimension or style.

    Now what amounts to a sewing circle with the sensibilities of old gossipy and resentful fishwives armed with this weird lesbian-centric disdain for men seems to really believe SFF will truly be better if only there are more Asian gender queer disabled. I don’t even know where to begin to express how stupidly awful these people are, but they’ve killed the goose that laid the golden egg.

    I hope Hurley’s story gets some awards because it makes “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love” look pretty good, and Swirky’s unaware drivel surpasses anything The Onion could’ve drummed up. If no one had told me I’d have sworn Swirsky’s story was a prank. The idea anyone looks up to Hurley, Elliott or Jemisin is itself a prank. I could learn more by simply walking outside than anything those shut-ins and their obvious mental misery could give me.

  112. I read at least one person says Hurley wrote her story bad on purpose. The title of the story tells you otherwise. I’ve read enough of Hurley’s blunt intellect in her non-fiction to know that was not Hurley faking anything.

    Remember, this is a woman with a master’s degree in history who with a straight face wrote a post that men had conspired for at least decades to erase statistical zero women from military history. That is a thing feminists have accomplished on their own and continue to accomplish by fiercely never occupying draft offices or arranging their all-seeing pie-charts around the demographic of Vet’s Hospitals.

    Gullible SJWs generated 3 Hugos from Hurley’s silly military sandtrap. Feminists are incapable of satire. They are satire. I mean, look at what they satirize and mock: normal sex, men, marriage and Mother Nature. Normal sex, men, marriage and Mother Nature mock them right back. How can a cult which routinely calls for more disabled stories (and in fact have just generated an anthology of such SF edited by an anti-white racist named Djibril Al-Ayad) satirize anything?

    You only have to read “Kotaku’s Editor-In-Chief Finally Acknowledges #GamerGate’s Fight For Ethics” to understand how stupid an what liars SJWs are with their “It’s about ethics in…” jokes. They’re still whining it was all about homophobia, racism and women-hatred.

    http://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/2015/04/kotakus-editor-in-chief-finally-acknowledges-gamergates-fight-for-ethics/

    That story was an accurate view of where Hurley sees normal America going if it’s left unchecked. It’s Hurley’s “The Marching Morons,” except Hurley’s the moron unwittingly satirizing herself and her oddball cult of female-race fetish.

  113. We have long known that Chu is a loathsome character. I don’t particularly care if he is into pr0n – he was loathsome before, and he is loathsome after – the tumbler is incidental and irrelevant with one exception – how can anyone who deliberately seeks the highest public profile possible in social media and who courts adversarial relationships expect to keep his other online activities separate, indefinitely?

    Not. Smart.

  117. “I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.”

  118. Here’s another lame attempt at satire by a “feminist”:

    http://www.alexandraerin.com/2015/05/sprb-the-little-prince/

    The funniest thing about it is it forgot to do actual satire and instead accurately summed up and characterized the stupidity of gender abolition feminism.

    The exclamation point on the stupid is that the female author may have shaved that morning.

    Here’s a signature quote:

    “If you start saying that things can be other things, there’s no limit on how many other things they can be. When anything means everything, then everything means nothing.

    “This is the liberal endgame. Don’t let them re-define words. If you let them they’ll have you believing that up is down and left is right and people can be anything they want.”

    Given the circumstances of how allegedly Erin? claims to have once allegedly witnessed an alleged woman? allegedly rape an alleged man?, how’s that quote satire rather than an allegedly accurate reflection of alleged insanity repackaged as alleged “feminism”?

  122. I’m puzzled by what Ms. Erin’s point is with Sad Puppy reviews of children’s books. Does she perhaps think that we all read at an elementary level? Me, I was reading Burroughs in elementary school and read Dune in high school. 🙂

    And it looks like she never took me up on my offer to read The Chaplain’s War and judge for herself. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

  123. I got pulled into a USA Today comment thread (at least I think it was… but it was something like that, actually it had to have been something else, whatever…) about reading minority and women authors and everyone was all so reasonably saying that people ought to stretch their horizons a little bit, read stuff by someone different from themselves, etc., and… Mad Mike shows up, right? OMG. So I pointed out that if so-and-so having a kitten over him actually wanted to read something *different* from her usual fare, to stretch her horizons a bit, that who she ought to be reading was him… because guaranteed it would challenge her and would be something outside of her comfort zone.

    The answer was…. Nope, nope, nope, I refuse to waste my time on something I don’t want to read and I don’t want to read that.

    I did actually point out the irony.

  124. Please help us stamp out rape culture, misogyny and racism in outer space, Mr. Hines.

    And don’t forget outer space is an anti-marginalization pie-chart cuz we want outer space to reflect realism like military hospitals full of groaning wounded women and people murdering other people cuz of graffiti. And don’t forget all the censorship the noble progressive future will have because of dedication to freedom of expression and diverse viewpoints.

    Actually an SJW future space sounds a lot like an unreal supremacist gender-hating black-balling sonuvabitch. It must be real tough to fight that stuff and be it at the same time. I think Ann Leckie’s imaginary restaurant would be a lot more accurate if it was just full of SJWs punching themselves in the face.

  125. Having read this entire thread, I gotta say that I’m impressed that James May continued ranting into the aether even though it appears not a single person responded to him. Amazing.

  126. Because James is entertaining and informative and it’s fun to just watch him go. You, on the other hand, Alexviddle, are neither. Not at TL Knighton’s, nor here. Keep trying, even though we really don’t care.

  127. Go back to Gyler’s House of Deletion. I’m sure your braintrust all want to ask each other if water is wet for the thousandth time or argue if you can touch a shadow.

  128. “First, we as a community need to reaffirm our commitment to inclusiveness — everybody’s welcome, regardless of political views, religion, sexual orientation, gender, skin color, ethnicity, place of national origin, body shape, disability, age, whatever.” – David Gerrold

    Pwaaaahahahahahahaah!

    Thanks for that heaping pile of bullshit and completely ignoring the real issue while pretending to address it. You remind me of a family of peccaries I ran into once deep in the Guatemalan jungle off the San Pedro River. Once they sense your presence the alpha male skunk-pig tries to distract you by baiting itself by going in one direction while the family skittles off the other way.

    How in the fuck are people welcome when they are harassed for being white, straight and male 365 days out of the fucking year by the most influential retards in core SFF while skunk-pigs provide cover for the dear marginalized who are too cute ever be racist, genderphobic or misandrist themselves, bless their l’il hearts.

    “… even a casual examination of the evidence, the history of the awards, demonstrates that there is no secret cabal of leftists.”

    What secret fucking cabal!! It’s on fucking Twitter 365 days a year!! Can you read? They won’t review white men, they won’t read white men, alas, white men, white men need trigger warnings, white men and white men.

    “Groups can and do disinvite those who spoil the party.”

    Great. I have a list of 100 people you can start with who couldn’t pass a hate speech standard 99% of Americans could pass in their fucking sleep. Get rid of them. Problem solved. Let me tell you something about parties pal: we don’t invite people who cry about wrongskin and wrongsex and reparations because of the fucking East India Company. Take your mentally ill and go. For all your bullshitting about white men doing this and that, who’s making Queer Destroy and Women Destroy anthologies? You see any White Men Bring Back SF anthologies you dumb blind fuck or is it just easier to pretend 10 whites gathered all in one place is the same thing? You ever see any Tweets that go “READ THIS!! IT’S WHITE!! No – you don’t – cuz you’re full of shit.

    Oh, look! This comic cover. Misogyny!! Oh, look! This Table of Contents. That’s a lot of white folks. Maybe too many. Racism!!

    Oh, no!! Whatever happens a gay man and a black woman will hand out the awards. That’ll show straight white men!!!!

    That’s some inclusive statement. Doubling down on the other 364 days of the years you imply we’re all homophobes and racists is real “inclusive.”

    Oh, look! Fuck off!

  129. “Reaffirm our commitment to inclusiveness.”

    Except for Puppies, of course.

  130. Well, Dave, it appears that you cared enough to tell me how much you don’t care so. I appreciate that.

  131. Viddle, taking a moment to mock your sad attempt at trolling does not imply caring. Nice try, though. C- for effort.

  132. Alexvdl, he cared enough to say you are crappy at trolling and beneath anyone’s time. We have your side declare victory without such affirmations, so there you go.

  133. Alexvdl thinks Erin should be nominated for best fan writer. I smell a largest ball of twine and personally customized bowling balls in there somewhere, and maybe corn silk and banjos.

    He thinks a guy who photoshops models should be best professional artist. Why not paintings of photorealist chewing tobacco tins on black velvet with bedazzled studs for stars?

    The lack of reading comprehension skills at Glyer’s alone could account for the downfall of the Hugos. When Erin’s your benchmark for humor then B.J. and the Bear seem like underground comix.

    I think we should vote Erin, Brianna Wu, Charlie Jane Anders, Susan Jane Bigelow and Cheryl Morgan for best fan writers for all the good work they’ve done combatting the innate misogyny of men.

  134. “…and as unpleasant a discussion as this will be, maybe it’s time to have a discussion about the mechanisms for shutting down someone who has publicly declared his intention to destroy the awards.”

    And so it begins…

    It won’t be an unpleasant discussion. There is nothing these people love more than a good blacklisting. They will do it will joy an glee secure in the knowledge they are doing the right thing.

  135. Arg. Really wish you could edit these comments. Apologies for the typos.

  136. Not sure how the SJW contingent (you know, the people who first declared intent to vote “No Award” on everything Puppies are nominated for, in order to destroy said awards) is planning to shut themselves down. But if they manage it, give ’em points for integrity.

  137. This cult is as famous for advocating diversity as it is for blocking, banning and deleting. I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Integrity comes from principles, not Orwellian comments like “If you ever want to see what pure undiluted angry male entitlement looks like, just tweet something critical of the rampant sexism in anime” from Anita Sarkeesian’s guru Jonathan McIntosh. That’s like saying if you ever want to see how angry black men are, just use a racial slur as proof. For the thousandth time, this is a boutique affirmative action division of an anti-male, anti-white KKK. The fact it has useful idiots like McIntosh and Scalzi means nothing.

    Some day I should make a list of racist anti-racist sentences by SJWs that contradict themselves in a single Orwellian sentence. Like this one:

    “Jonathan McIntosh retweeted The Slaves Singing @williamcson · May 5 White people who say ‘all lives matter’ to recenter themselves or take the conversation away from Black people are the worst of 2015.”

  138. aye yi yi. Some of that (the cultural significance stuff) is horribly stupid.

    Some of that I actually agree with. People in space are still going to be people and behave like people on earth. Some are still going to be assholes and some are going to be violent. I’m not sure if the first space rape victim has been born yet. 50 years ago we figured we’d have a moon base already, but we haven’t been back to the moon in 40 years.

    Viable colonization will likely need more women than men. Historically a 1:1 ratio has much smaller chance at success than 1:2 or 1:3 or more simply because a man can father many more children in a time period than a woman can bear. Initial sorties may consist mostly of men, but I think once we get down to the actual colonization more women will be there than men.

  139. Having read that, it’s actually mildly enjoyable as satire. I realize she meant it to be anti-puppy, but I’m not sure if she realizes that what she’s complaining about in that story is actually the same thing the puppies are complaining about: the right for good works that don’t follow the approved narrative to be recognized.

  140. What I find bewildering is how far off base everything has gotten. It’s like someone throws rocks at you, you lay a trap, catch them, and then go off bugging someone who did nothing and the rock thrower leaves the trap.

    Reading Glyer’s House of Derailment is like watching people standing 6 feet in front of a target, shooting 100 times and missing every one. It’s the gorilla in the room everyone ignores. Why? I have no idea. Why is anyone arguing about “leftist” novels? Is not reviewing and reading white men “leftism” now?

    This was served up on a silver platter. You can only wish someone is dumb enough to write an outrageously racist post about Brad like N. K. Jemisin did and have the frosting to have Mary Kowal give it a thumbs up. You can only wish someone like Chu and Shaun Duke would write outrageously racist stuff about Brad as they did, and all of it based on third wave feminist ideology. You can only hope someone would be dumb enough to call SP a bunch of racists afraid of losing their power and opposed to diversity. Instead of talking about that stuff, you let people talk about disavowing VD. On what basis? On the basis of racial supremacy and sex hatred? Hello! You got 50 dumbfucks on the other side doing that. Where’s the disavowals? It’s WorldCon opposed to diversity. Look at what they nominated last year, look at what won. It’s like a fucking politburo of open collusions, and all of it predictable based on quote indicating they would do exactly that. You couldn’t have a softer target.

    Of course that’s difficult to do when Glyer’s deleting quotes and cherry-picking bloggers who are so uninformed they might as well be living in Nepal. But there’s no excuse for letting this gift go unanswered on SP blogs. These people could’ve been hammered straight into the ground and they’ve been allowed to scoot away. Erin and Mamatas are empty-headed gifts you should be able to pluck the wings off of like dead flies.

    When you’ve been attacked by radical feminism for 4 years, fight back, and then suddenly decide it doesn’t exist, that’s a problem.

    “Ellen Oh ‏@elloecho And since I’m in a mood, I’m SO tired of whiny white male authors who can’t take criticism but have NO problem calling other people assholes”

    “Justine Larbalestier ‏@JustineLavaworm @elloecho But their skin is thinner than ours. It’s an actual dermatological condition: white man skin. We must be more compassionate.”

    That’s today; they never stop. There’s your “conspiracy.” Only it’s not a conspiracy. It’s an open signpost. Pray tell, how are those people going to vote at awards time? Is that some mystery? Do you see anything about “conservatism” there?

    Lord love a duck.

  141. Having read that, it’s actually mildly enjoyable as satire. I realize she meant it to be anti-puppy, but I’m not sure if she realizes that what she’s complaining about in that story is actually the same thing the puppies are complaining about: the right for good works that don’t follow the approved narrative to be recognized.

    I’d assume there’s a massive case cognitive dissonance involved, except that most people would have to be intentionally ignorant to a ludicrous degree to miss what’s going on: The SJWs are the approved narrative. They are the ones in charge. They’re the empire, the Man. Not some mythological patriarchy. The narrative allows them to pretend that they’re the underdogs, the outcasts, the ones punching up.

    “First, we as a community need to reaffirm our commitment to inclusiveness — everybody’s welcome, regardless of political views, religion, sexual orientation, gender, skin color, ethnicity, place of national origin, body shape, disability, age, whatever.” Bull. They’ve made it clear that alternative political views aren’t welcome, in the Hugos, in video games, in the media, in academia. All this talk of valuing diversity was just a fake to get their ideology as the only one acceptable.

  142. You can tell you’re being sold bullshit when daffy feminists start a fight and then satirize Sad Puppies like “Who? Me?” The problem is that doesn’t work. Making movie titles with Sad Puppies included like “Lord of the Puppies” doesn’t really have the sting of satire. What exactly is it satirizing: the fact people don’t like cracks about white people and men and “cisnormative” and all their other feminist bullshit? Exactly how does one satirize a negative reaction to Lightspeed Magazine not reviewing white men? When you’re reduced to defending and satirizing that, you’ve reduced yourself to being a chump, in a lunatic bin or lying. R. Crumb didn’t draw underground comix for the KKK. That doesn’t really work.

    If WorldCon just changed their name to RacistCon or WhitePrivilegeCon they probably wouldn’t get pranked. See: Truth in advertising.

    A Pronoun for Ecclesiastes
    Normality Destroys Science Fiction
    Call Him Lord/Lady
    Belle, Bookburners and Candle
    Nurse Who
    Colonial White Savior on Venus
    The Wizard of White Men
    Harry Potter and the Order of Privilege
    Dhalgrensplaining
    The Children in My Lens
    The Deheteroed Man
    Neurotypicalmancer
    Houston, We Have a Cisnormative
    Disabled World
    The Marginalized in God’s Eye
    Diversity My Destination
    The Transgender in the High Castle
    Trigger Warning at Titan
    Rape Culture Station
    The Heterosexual Matrix
    The Word for World is Incest
    Burnt Witch World
    A Dance With Diversity Hires
    Throne of Affirmative Action
    My Pronouns Are They/Them
    Five O’Clock Shadow Princess
    The Man Who Fucked Himself
    The White Privilege Dragon
    Beyond the Blue Hair Nose Rings
    Genitals in the Furnace
    The Ringworld Queers
    Zoe’s Transition Surgery
    Dungeons and Androgyny
    Ancillary Misogyny
    What Goes Where?
    The Moon is a Harsh Cishetero
    The Pronoun/Kzin Wars
    Punching Downbelow Station
    The Gender That Time Forgot
    A Cishetero of Mars
    Binary Star
    Old Cissexist’s War
    Dying Able-Bodied Earth
    G is for Gender-Blindness
    The Transphobic Lensmen
    Amorphous Stories
    Normal Tales of Horror

    That’s satire. It may not be funny, but it has the sting of truth and the stink of third wave racist lunatic gender feminism.

  143. I am challenging the SF fan community to turn this year of contention upside down. I have seen firestorms tear through the blogosphere, culminating in movements and actions that may further polarize the fanbase and permanently harm the credibility of the Hugo Awards (or further harm its credibility, depending upon your viewpoint). As much as this year has been filled with missteps, in my starry-eyed idealism of SF writing and writers, I believe this hostage crisis could be turned into an engaging turning point.

    I am challenging George R. R. Martin and Larry Correia to stand behind your claims that you want the Hugos to be about the writing, not the writer’s politics or history. However this kooky situation happened, move forward in a way that’s constructive for the whole community. I challenge you to agree on a specific mutual schedule to release your reviews of each of the Hugo nominees in turn. Announce the schedule in advance so fans can have read each one as the discussion comes up. The Hugo ballots allow each member to change their vote until July 31. Ask fans to hold their voting until and unless they have read the full slate of nominees, and suggest they read more than one reviews of each before casting their ballots.

    I challenge the rest of the SF blogging community to join in the schedule. I chose the name of Martin and Correia above because a specific challenge has more impact than some vague generic suggestion. Take the schedule agreed upon by Martin and Correia and turn it into a one-by-one celebration of the better SF released this past year. I’m looking at you Mr. Day, Ms. Hate, Mr. Torgerson, and the whole SF community – join the scheduled discussions and post your review of each work in turn. I challenge the online community to formulate a simple clearinghouse webpage where readers can find links to reviews with a simple set of ratings for reviews (perhaps: “I agree; useful,” “I disagree; useful,” “I agree; not useful,” “I disagree; not useful”) so that readers and writers can find discussion to enrich their understanding and reviews to challenge their preconceptions without having to wade through dozens of derivative re-interpretations, attacks on reviewers, attacks based on how something got nominated, and trolling reviews.

    I challenge SF fans to join in and make this a celebration of Science Fiction writing. It can be a big expenditure, but set aside the money to buy or borrow each novel and join in the discussions as each one gets considered in turn. Buy a voting or attending membership in Worldcon and cast a ballot based on your own conclusions about each work. If you think one or more nominees fall below the quality where it deserves a Hugo, cast a “No Award” vote in your ranking. Make a commitment to consider each work carefully, no matter how the ballot was formulated this year or who nominated each work, using the “No Award” vote carefully, not as a protest.

    I challenge the nominees who withdrew from the Hugo ballot to reinstate yourself and let your works get discussed in the open air. If your work falls below the “No Award” voting line, accept it, read some of the non-trolling reviews, and turn out some kick-ass fiction in the future. If your work wins, then accept that a flawed process happened to shine a light on you and be happy for it.

    If you nominated a slate of candidates, I challenge you to urge your own fans to read every nominee and vote by the same criteria. Then, trust this process and accept a “No Award” vote wherever it may fall without punitive threats ahead of time or actions afterwards. The Hugo process is flawed and ultimately operates on the same model as the fee-per-vote American Idol TV show. You’ve demonstrated that, with a few instructions to its massive fanbase, the Twilight vampire novel franchise could dominate the Hugos utterly. Instead of tearing everything down to nothing to continue proving your point, I challenge you to participate and help the Hugo nominations and awards to honor the best in the field.

    I challenge Connie Willis to reinstate herself in the event and be part of a Worldcon that could symbolize a new inclusiveness. This year’s process may be flawed, but maybe it was better for a fan group to exploit the flaw than for an entity with a commercial interest in the result.

    Worldcon, I challenge you to embrace a new tide of members and funnel the flow into a positive, dynamic process. If you don’t want the Hugo process to become hostage to voting blocks and whims, you could limit the nominating process (and even the voting) to people who have been members for three years or more, which would reduce the probability that a small group railroads the process and ensures high-quality nominees and winners. But that is also a retreat and entrenchment. Or, you could have a wider base of fans join and participate, which does risk the Hugos becoming a list of the year’s bestsellers. I challenge you to rejuvenate the process and prepare for the future of SF by taking the more risky second path, mitigating the risks by assisting engaged fans to find a spectrum of carefully-considered reviews and discussions of new SF with less immersion in mudslinging and rants.

    If you all join in, then I will challenge myself to become an engaged SF fan as I have never been in the past. I will read each of the nominated works by the designated discussion date. I’ll read a range of reviews by people with various viewpoints. I will get a Worldcon membership, and I will vote responsibly. Heck, I’ll get an attending membership and watch the awards handed out. And I will remain engaged in future years, and get involved at the nominating stage for Hugos, with my nominations based on the writing, not the writer. And I bet that many other fans will do the same. After nominations are set, I bet that fans will look forward to and prepare for an annual set of Hugo Award nominee review/discussion dates like Oprah fans prepared for and watched Oprah Book Club. Now, wouldn’t that be cool?

    I challenge the SF fan community to take the polarizing events of this past year as a wake-up call. It could be destructive or it could be an exciting opportunity to reinvigorate discussion of new SF based on its merits.

    Thank you for your consideration,

    Air_Dale

  144. Noble ideas Air_Dale. I predict they will amount to nothing. Sad but I feel quite confident in that prediction. This is now a war and calls for cooperation will fall on deaf ears. Is it sad that it has come to this? Very. Can it be changed? Not a chance in hell.

  145. I believe you’re correct about the cognitive dissonance. It takes quite the twisted mind, or a few bales of weed, to think you’re the underdog when you hold most of the deck of cards.

  146. Exactly how does one even communicate let alone cooperate with a hate movement that seriously thinks it’s all about the love? When I want a whiff of that I can just read Orwell again.

  147. “A gramme is better than a damn,” said Lenina mechanically from behind her hands. “I wish I had my soma!” “

Comments are closed.