Pinkshirts at play

Now, recall that we’re supposed to be concerned that the mainstream media is against #GamerGate. John Scalzi was crowing to Sparklepunter that. But do they seriously think we don’t notice when the greater portion of the media establishment is simply pinkshirts doing exactly what Clark described at Popehat: “using these pink resources to promote, give good reviews to, and bestow awards on pink developers and pink games….” In this vein, consider the New York Times review of science fiction and fantasy today:

“Ancillary Justice,” the first novel in Ann Leckie’s far-future posthuman space opera series, recently became the first novel to win the “triple crown” of the genre (the Hugo, Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke awards), but not without controversy. The central question is whether the story’s structural gimmick — the protagonist’s tendency to refer to all people as “she” regardless of actual gender or even humanity — is sufficiently mind-blowing as to merit all the accolades. It isn’t a gimmick, though; it’s a coup. Rather than seriously entertain the endless, if stupid, debate on whether women have a place in stories of the future, Leckie’s book does the literary equivalent of rolling its eyes and walking out of the room. Her refusal to waste energy on stupidity forces her audience to do the same: A few pages into the first novel, the reader gives up trying to guess each character’s actual gender, and just accepts that this will be a story full of interesting women doing awesome things.

Notice that the reviewer dismisses the controversy around whether an eminently forgettable debut novel truly merits being the most highly-awarded SF/F novel of all time. As if there was every any doubt that a book written by a female pinkshirt was going to be full of women doing things. Prediction: the recently-released sequel to this vaunted SF novel ever is going to fall considerably short of expectations. Now, care to guess who wrote the review?

Why, none other than the educated, but ignorant half-savage herself, NK Jemisin! But we’re supposed to be duly impressed by the fact that the supposedly objective mainstream media praises “a story full of interesting women doing awesome things”, which I note could be used to describe practically any female-written novel from The Pillow Book to 50 Shades of Grey.

Like most pinkshirt victories, this one is hollow and bordering on pyrrhic, because the primary accomplishment is to cause the reader to realize that there is no point reading the NYT’s book reviews anymore. Assuming, of course, that one didn’t already figure that out about 20 years ago. Either way, it represents a once-formidable gatekeeper continuing its spiral downward into irrelevance.

20 years later

Charles Murray reflects on The Bell Curve:

American political and social life today is pretty much one great big “Q.E.D.” for the two main theses of “The Bell Curve.” Those theses were, first, that changes in the economy over the course of the 20th century had made brains much more valuable in the job market; second, that from the 1950s onward, colleges had become much more efficient in finding cognitive talent wherever it was and shipping that talent off to the best colleges. We then documented all the ways in which cognitive ability is associated with important outcomes in life — everything from employment to crime to family structure to parenting styles. Put those all together, we said, and we’re looking at some serious problems down the road. Let me give you a passage to quote directly from the close of the book:

    Predicting the course of society is chancy, but certain tendencies seem strong enough to worry about:

        An increasingly isolated cognitive elite.
        A merging of the cognitive elite with the affluent.
        A deteriorating quality of life for people at the bottom end of the cognitive distribution.

    Unchecked, these trends will lead the U.S. toward something resembling a caste society, with the underclass mired ever more firmly at the bottom and the cognitive elite ever more firmly anchored at the top, restructuring the rules of society so that it becomes harder and harder for them to lose. (p. 509)

Remind you of anything you’ve noticed about the US recently? If you look at the first three chapters of the book I published in 2012, “Coming Apart,” you’ll find that they amount to an update of “The Bell Curve,” showing how the trends that we wrote about in the early 1990s had continued and in some cases intensified since 1994. I immodestly suggest that “The Bell Curve” was about as prescient as social science gets.

The Bell Curve was an early example of the media pinkshirts attacking reality. And it is a good lesson for how retaining a firm grasp on truth will always outlast whatever the various political pressures du jour happen to be. As with The Irrational Atheist, if the ideas a book contains are in harmony with reality, they will penetrate the collective consciousness eventually even if the pinkshirts are successful in preventing people from reading a book or even hearing about it.

The truth always wins out in the end, not due to its own virtues, but because lies always eventually collapse under their own accumulating weight. One of the reasons the equalitarians are becoming increasingly vicious is that their vision has completely failed to deliver on any of the promises that the naive and the clueless found so compelling.

Choose this day

To paraphrase Joshua, choose this day with whom you will stand. Clark at PopeHat has an intelligent and analytical piece that contains an important section on the way pinkshirts invade and take over organizations and institutions, but I can’t agree with his quasi-neutral position. In any case, consider this very good description of what he calls entryism:

The entryism is of the usual type: people with blue/pink ideals join red / gray groups and try to achieve social status with in those groups, then use that social status to push for the admission of – and promotion of – more blue/pink members. Once the blue/pink members achieve a majority they then change the rules of admission to create a lock on their new conquest (in the case of academia, for example, even blue researchers in the Netherlands of all places, were shocked by how blatant the process was).

The status shaming is also of the usual type: high status blue / pinks follow Alinksy’s battle plan.

First, they pick a low-status target (rule 12). This target is usually a pale, bespectacled Aspergers-ish nerd) for a transgression against the norms they wish to universalize. The high social status pinks paint themselves as victims of a power imbalance, then they use their superior popularity to out-speak the target and push their version of the narrative. Pink allies in the media join in to keep the pressure on (rule 8). This is easy to do, because the act of social shaming is not only fun, but it’s click-bait, so everyone involved not only has lolz, they has cheeseburger (rule 6). The toxic nature of the allegations is usually sufficient to make sure that the target of the attack does not get much, if any, sympathetic press (rule 12, again: “Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions”.)

In computer gaming the attempt at entry came by first establishing a few pinks inside the community (not a problem, because the world of gamer development did not think of itself as politicized), and then using these pink resources to promote, give good reviews to, and bestow awards on pink developers and pink games, even when the games in question are not “games” by the normal definition.

Excellent observations. I would add that what I call Blues (and Clark calls red/gray) do not join Pink organizations, both because they have no desire to do so and because pink groups actively police their ranks at all times. Look at how rapidly I was purged from SFWA, in a clear violation of  by people who did not even qualify to join it for years after I became a member. The old school writers, who made a living publishing science fiction, didn’t care what anyone else thought about anything. The new school pretenders, many of whom are primarily activists of one sort or another and have not even published a single novel, care about little else.

That is why it is so difficult for organizations to recover once penetrated by entryist pinkshirts. The result is no more surprising than when one country invades another that has not bothered to field an army. Once the organization is occupied, it is easier to simply leave than to organize resistance among the stunned and demoralized membership. And those who don’t leave of their own volition will be pushed out, even for so small an “infraction” as referring to someone as “li’l girl”. Notice that the PGA President was fired in the name of the same “inclusivity” that the pinkshirts are now attempting to force on the gaming industry. “Inclusivity” must be rejected as strongly and as firmly as “equality”, “fairness”, and ever other pinkshirt slogan.

What Clark’s analysis unfortunately leaves out of the equation is that pinkshirts are intrinsically parasitical. For all that they preen about being “creative”, they do not create anything and they are incapable of building anything that is not political in nature. They are, for the most part, women and feminized men; it is not an accident that many of the “women” who are actually doing something in the game industry – for all his flaws and histrionics, Brianna Wu is a legitimate game developer – are actually men.

It’s important to remember that the pinks are not the political Left per se. They are a radical subset of it. There are certainly genuine left-wing creators, but the fact that they are genuine creators means that they have no need to interfere with other creators in any way. The more you see someone aggressively speaking out about the need to interfere with the creations of others, the more you can be certain that they have no ability to create anything themselves.

The single biggest problem that the Blue side has is the stubborn determination of many who do not sign onto the Pink program to remain on the fence until something affects them personally. I remember the cynical laughter of my father when a longtime friend, who had scoffed at my father’s concerns about the growing anti-business bureaucracy in Minnesota for more than 15 years, was suddenly galvanized into political action when the grasping tentacles finally reached into his own medical practice. It was, of course, far too late at that point.

That’s why it is important for those who don’t sign onto the pinkshirts’ program to actively oppose it. Yes, they will call you names. Yes, they will actively attempt to harm you and your career. But here is the secret: they are going to do it anyhow and buying time is only going to ensure that you will face them when they are stronger and more able to harm you.

What #GamerGate has shown is that we have the ability to strike back. We have the ability to harm them the way they are constantly seeking to harm us. Standing up to them works. Look at how their attempt to isolate me completely imploded; not only has this blog now reliably seeing nearly 3x the daily traffic as the one-time leading blog in SF/F, but Thursday marked its single most-trafficked day ever without any media coverage or even any links from a bigger site like Instapundit.

And speaking of Instapundit, look at the way more and more people have no tolerance for the pinkshirts. The mere polite mention of receiving a Scalzi book in the mail was enough to provoke anger; the most liked comment was this one from David in Virginia: “Not one penny to Scalzi from me. You can pump his stuff till hell
freezes over, Professor, and he still won’t get one red cent from me.”

I’m not addressing the Dread Ilk here. You guys have been PHENOMENAL. I can’t even thank you when you get my back from time to time because you guys always there. You’ve made Castalia House, which originally was just supposed to be a way of getting my books out there after Marcher Lord was bought, a going concern in which my books are practically a minor afterthought, so much so that successful, mainstream-published authors have been contacting us to discuss the possibility of working with us. I may not be the sort to need emotional support, (as Jonah Goldberg once said, I feed on the Dark Side of the Force) but it’s good to know that it is there nevertheless.

No, I’m addressing the Grays, the fence-sitters, the people who are hoping against hope that this will pass them by and the situation will magically improve. It won’t, so long as you and others like you are afraid. But I’m telling you, as someone who has been targeted unmercilessly by everyone from CAIR to the SFWA, there is no reason for fear. Standing up to them won’t kill you and it will make you stronger, more confident, and more capable. You’ll lose battles, sure, but you will win the war.

So get off the fence. Choose your side. Do something. Support the Blues. Stand with them instead of distancing yourself from them as if it will save you. (It won’t.) Attack the pinkshirts at their various points of weakness. Here is my pledge to you. If you do something, whether it is starting a game journo site, developing a card game, making a VASSAL module, reviewing books, or launching an email campaign against SyFy, I will support it somehow. Maybe via a personal endorsement (or a timely critique, if that would be more helpful), maybe a blog post, most often just a tweet. I simply can’t do much more than I’m already doing; as it stands, I’m already up until close to dawn working on my various game, book, and technology projects. But I can, and will, support you in yours.

Hate speech from Canada

A Canadian racist on Twitter, who is also a “Pagan liberal writer”,  apparently thinks he is the race police:

Trevor Curtis ‏@trevorcurtis23
@ChrisWarcraft @scalzi I’m sorry to put it this way, but my balls are more Native American than @voxday .

I wonder what tribe his balls belong to? Do they have a Certificate Degree of Indian Blood from the BIA? I wonder if his balls are also blacker than K. Tempest Bradford? How can we even know that he has any balls unless he posts evidence of this on the Internet?

Of course, the little coward backed down right away when I told him that he could pick the odds he’d give me and I’d choose the amount. I guess he finally figured out that he’d walked right into it.

Another guy asked me a question, which I answered. I asked him a question. He ignored it and asked two more questions. I didn’t answer them, but reminded him, twice, that he hadn’t answered my question. So, finally, he said that even though I hadn’t answered his questions (that he had asked AFTER mine), he would finally answer it. And then he evaded it.

It doesn’t surprise me that they are cowards, but it still surprises me how many people not only buy into their behavior, but consider it to be tactically admirable.

Retro robbery

The EU sticks the UK with an unexpected bill for $2.7 billion due to GDP revisions:

Addressing reporters in Brussels, Mr Cameron admitted the demand had made him ‘downright angry’ but he would not pay the £1.7billion, equivalent to £56 for every income taxpayer in Britain. The European Commission has demanded the cash by December 1, but Mr Cameron insisted he would not meet the deadline.

Downing Street later stressed that he was not simply delaying payment, and made clear there were no circumstances under which Britain would hand over £1.7billion.

Asked about the impact on UK staying in the EU, Mr Cameron said: “Well it certainly doesn’t help, let’s put it like that. I think there is a strong case for Britain involved in the European Union, if we can reform it in the way I have set out. When you are presented with a bill like this, with a month to go, is that helpful for Britain’s membership of the European Union, no it certainly is not.”

How shamelessly corrupt is this Tory quisling? What possible case can there be for Britain to be involved in the European Union, let alone a “strong case”? It significantly reduces the “good for the economy” and “good for trade” benefits a membership provides if you have to turn around and fork over $25 billion dollars for the privilege.

Any Brit who still favors EU membership needs to get his head examined. UKIP’s Farage puts it well: Ukip leader Nigel Farage said: “The EU is like a thirsty vampire feasting on UK taxpayers’ blood. We need to protect the innocent victims, who are us.”

Ebola in NYC

I suspect a lot of Americans will be feeling rather conflicted about the latest Ebola news:

A doctor in New York City who recently returned from treating Ebola patients in Guinea became the first person in the city to test positive for the virus Thursday, setting off a search for anyone who might have come into contact with him.

The doctor, Craig Spencer, was rushed to Bellevue Hospital Center and placed in isolation at the same time as investigators sought to retrace every step he had taken over the past several days.

At least three people he had contact with in recent days have been placed in isolation. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which dispatched a team to New York, is conducting its own test to confirm the positive test on Thursday, which was performed by a city lab.

The thing is, this variant of Ebola doesn’t appear to be as contagious as originally feared. Once it became clear that the family who stayed in an apartment with the sick Liberian who died did not become infected, and that none of the police and paramedics who attended him without proper precautions did not become infected either, the logical conclusion is that there will not be a massive African-style outbreak in the USA.

Of course, the logical conclusion can only hold insofar as the information we have is accurate. So, it’s certainly too soon to be confident that the danger has passed. But let’s face it, if the country wasn’t being run by the sort of idiot Axis of Lunacy people elected by NYC voters, there wouldn’t be any Ebola in the country in the first place. Actions have consequences, after all. Vote Obama, get Ebola in your neighborhood.

#Gamergate: an open letter

Joel Johnson
Editorial Director
Gawker Media

Dear Mr. Johnson,

As a professional game reviewer, game developer, and game designer with 22 years of experience in the game industry who has worked
closely with Intel in the past, I would like to request that you
immediately ask Max Read to resign from Gawker Media for the blatant
disregard he has shown for the gaming community as well as one of
its most important corporate supporters. Mr. Read wrote:

  1. “So let’s say it now: Intel is run by craven idiots. It
    employs pusillanimous morons. It lacks integrity.”
  2. He dishonestly described GamerGate as “dishonest fascists” and
    “an ill-informed mob of alienated and resentful video
    game-playing teenagers and young men
  3. “He, and later I, made the tactical mistake of
    publicly treating Gamergate with the contempt and flippancy that
    it deserves.”

Mr. Johnson, GamerGate does not consist of fascists. It is not an
ill-informed mob. It is not limited to teenagers, to men, or to
white people. It does not deserve to be treated with contempt and
flippancy. GamerGate is a broad spectrum of the gaming community,
including players and developers, and consists of men and women of
all ages who wish nothing more than to simply continue to design,
develop, and play the games that we wish to design, develop, and
play without being attacked by professional political activists,
corrupt game journalists, and publicity-seeking independent game
developers.

And speaking as one who has worked with upper level executives at
Intel, including Andy Grove, I can personally testify that Intel
is most definitely not run by idiots.

Mr. Johnson, I think you will recognize that both the game and
mainstream medias have exhibited considerable bias with regards to
the issue of GamerGate and have failed to cover it in a manner
that can be described as either fair or objective. While there has
obviously been some problematic behavior on both sides, I do not
see how it can possibly be in Gawker Media’s interest to continue
attacking both its readers and its advertisers alike. I hope you
will see fit to remove those employees and contributors who have
been inclined to do so, beginning with Mr. Read.

Thank you,
Vox Day

In other #GamerGate-related news, Castalia House has posted its statement on the matter which features insightful quotes from Popehat’s Clark as well as Castalia author William S. Lind. And Teepublic has a #GamerGate shirt out that is very retro and is all but guaranteed to set the usual suspects to frothing at the mouth on sight.

And Nero has another great article on #GamerGate, entitled: “Incredibly, GamerGate Is Winning – But You Won’t Read that Anywhere In the Terrified Liberal Media”:

Perhaps it won’t surprise you to learn that microchip manufacturers
and car companies are pretty sympathetic to the concerns of male
consumers. But some of the things said to me–all, sadly, on condition
of anonymity–have been nothing short of remarkable.

There’s the Intel vice president who told me via email that GamerGate
was “doing great work” and that he was “sick of slander and
self-loathing from the press”. He was talking about male journalists who
do misandrist feminists’ work for them.
“I am pressing that team, it’s not mine, but I am exerting influence
when I can, to stop spending money with people who hate themselves and
hate our clients,” he added by phone later.

Then consider the product manager, who was happy to be identified as
“senior management at a German car manufacturer”, who told me that, “the
violence against women is unacceptable and we cannot support it, but we
will not financially support people who insult our customers either”. The manager told me: “We would prefer not to make headlines like
Intel. But you should expect to see strategic changes in how we spend in
coming years. It is very much an open question inside the company and
we are watching closely.”

Finally, the executive at a household name video game developer who
said: “Opinion is sharply divided within the company. But that’s
remarkable in itself, given how totally the media has slammed and lied
about gamers. We’re split straight down the middle. One thing I can tell you, though, is that when claims about gamers
being woman-hating or abusive start to unravel, because journalists
didn’t check them properly before running these ‘bleeding heart’
editorials, it’s very difficult to win people back from there. So God
help Kotaku and Polygon if any of these women are shown to be making
stuff up.”

How fortunate for the anti-GamerGate crowd that women (and, presumably, men wearing dresses) never lie about rapedeath threats….

Nothing but a lie

The co-founder of the Weather Channel declares the obvious: there is no anthropogenic global climate change:

John Coleman, who co-founded the Weather Channel, shocked academics by insisting the theory of man-made climate change was no longer scientifically credible.

Instead, what ‘little evidence’ there is for rising global temperatures points to a ‘natural phenomenon’ within a developing eco-system.

In an open letter attacking the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he wrote: “The ocean is not rising significantly. The polar ice is increasing, not melting away. Polar Bears are increasing in number. Heat waves have actually diminished, not increased. There is not an uptick in the number or strength of storms (in fact storms are diminishing).

“I have studied this topic seriously for years. It has become a political and environment agenda item, but the science is not valid.” He added: “There is no significant man-made global warming at this time, there has been none in the past and there is no reason to fear any in the future.

“Efforts to prove the theory that carbon dioxide is a significant greenhouse gas and pollutant causing significant warming or weather effects have failed. There has been no warming over 18 years.”

 Always keep AGW/CC in mind whenever you see someone appealing to “scientific consensus”. Scientific consensus is democracy. It is politics. It is collective opinion and it should not be confused with the actual scientific process (scientody) any more than the contents of the sewage system at a convention of scientists are.

Someone was mean on the Internet

You almost have to admire the false bravado. You can always rely on Johnny to pretend he doesn’t care, right up to the point that he completely loses it and goes on another Twitter rampage.

   John ScalziVerified account ‏@scalzi
    Ah, I see some GamerGaters are whining to Tor that I am being mean to them. Well, good luck with that tactic, kids.

    Charlotte Moore ‏@cavaticat
    @scalzi 5 stars out of 5, would recommend Scalzi meanness to friends.

    Dave Doyle ‏@meraxes
    @scalzi That’s adorable.

    The Horrible Demonis ‏@den_down_unda
    @scalzi Really? I thought it was just the RSHD?

    Nikki Smalls ‏@nikkismalls
    @scalzi “Stop telling me I can’t be a horrible asshat!”-GamerGaters

    Christian ‏@ChryssF
    @scalzi Oh please oh please oh please let them get a glorious email from @pnh. Please.

    Lesley Mitchell ‏@dkscully
    @scalzi Aww. The poor things! (By which I mean the undeserving folk at Tor having to deal with that crap coming their way!)

    Robert Davis ‏@rdaviswrites
    @scalzi Tor: “Oh boy, Scalzi’s name recognition is going through the roof! Yay!” *deletes stupid gamergate complaint emails*

    Brian ‏@btskinn
    @scalzi Just be glad modern schools don’t teach dialectic – otherwise they might be able to name and counter your rhetorical tactics.

    Dracolich Eyrie ‏@ApeAquatic
    @scalzi cleary because this is about ethics and not at all about silencing opposing voices.

    ☠ DangerIck ☠ ‏@RangerRick
    @meraxes @scalzi I believe you mean… *pushes up glasses* That’s a-Tor-able. #sorry #notsorry

    ObSCARYcaGGC ‏@ObscuricaGGC
    @scalzi Do… uh… do they have no idea who runs Tor and what their ideological affiliations- no, of course they don’t. Never mind.

    Michael Jewell ‏@MichaelJewell78
    @scalzi hmmmm sure money maker on one hand, whining brats on the other…. Wonder which one Tor will support….

   SusPECT EVERYONE ‏@SusLikesTurtles
    @scalzi I read one of those tweets like 15 times and it still makes no sense. It seems to say Anti-GG = SFWA. Or. Something. WHAT.

    John M. Atkinson ‏@Dekarch
    @scalzi because they are likely to impact BOOK sales that much…

    Stephen Dunscombe ‏@cythraul
    @scalzi I’d say “Ain’t they adorable?” Except they’re not.

    SocialJusticeWarlock ‏@dreveillark
    @scalzi but it’s all about ethics, not routing anyone who disagrees with them!

    CALMicScream ‏@CALMicC
    @scalzi The same movement that doxxes and threatens rape, death, and dismemberment thinks you’ve been “mean”?

    Christopher Brown ‏@Cdbrow1
    @scalzi Since they obviously are not ‘readers’ I don’t see TOR caring.

    The Horrible Demonis ‏@den_down_unda
    @alexvdl0 That’s why I was surprised. The RSHD isn’t a GamerGater. He’s just a freelance asshole.

    Christopher Brown ‏@Cdbrow1
    @scalzi maybe I should buy more copies of your books to express my outrage.

    Geek Girl Diva ‏@geekgirldiva
    @cavaticat @scalzi Unlike Adobe, Tor knows how to do research. Also, OMG whiny babies.

    Rekeiji… Boo! ‏@Rekeiji
    @scalzi Sounds like them, censor the shit out of any who disagree. Why bother trying to debate?

    Sir Ghrys of Wald ‏@Ghryswald
    @scalzi That’s so cute. Are they writing actual letters? In cursive?

    Kootiepatra ‏@Kootiepatra
    @scalzi I’m sure Tor will not take aforementioned whining seriously, but I still feel like saying for the record: (1/2)

    Tim Wright ‏@timswar
    @scalzi @DreamtimeDrinne I’m just kinda surprised to see them target a guy… They must actually fear you.

    Kootiepatra ‏@Kootiepatra
    @scalzi Your consistent, positive outlook on women is what caused me to “discover” and begin purchasing your books. Gaining readers FTW.

    Scary Petertron! ‏@peterlikesbaths
    @scalzi You can’t be mean on the internet, Scalzi!

    Alex von der Linden ‏@alexvdl0
    @den_down_unda Yeah, but he’s got game cred, and he’s exploiting the fuck out of it.

    Daniel P Krouse ‏@DanielPKrouse
    @scalzi a gamergate is a type of ant. Which is… appropriate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate

    Erwin van der Koogh ‏@evanderkoogh
    @scalzi Very strange indeed. They are very very angry, but even after days of listening/talking I still don’t get why..

    Gilius Thunderhead ‏@gilius_thunder
    @scalzi how many? Two. Nobody in #GamerGate gives a shit about you. Your job is to help facilitate the irrelevance of your publisher. Shoo

Now, it’s certainly true that given their left-wing ideological affiliations (which the pinkshirts no longer deny) Tor Books is unlikely to have the good sense to tell Scalzi to shut up, but what people don’t know is that most of Tor’s bestselling books are… videogame tie-in novels. As it happens, I have personal connections with three of the executives at the two developers responsible for two of Tor’s best-selling book lines, so I’m placing a few calls this weekend. It should be interesting to get their perspective on Tor’s ideology and their probable refusal to condemn John Scalzi’s statements concerning gamers and #GamerGate.

I doubt they’ll care enough to pull the books, but you never know. Anyhow, since we obviously have Mr. Scalzi’s blessing, I also shared his words with SyFy, whom I am sure will be interested to know their new partner’s attitude towards the group that makes up a substantial percentage of their core market.

“If you’re still pro-GamerGate at this point, you’re a shitty human, or a shitty human’s useful idiot.” – John Scalzi

What would be useful, if anyone is inclined and has the time, is to put together a list of anti-GamerGate SFWA members concerning #GamerGate. As for John Scalzi’s rhetorical tactics, his favored one is ambiguity, as I noted last year:

What I found so amusing about this is that McRapey clearly hasn’t changed his debating technique since at least 2005.

  1.     Make an obviously questionable assertion.
  2.     When the assertion is questioned, appeal to bachelor’s degree.
  3.     When the appeal to the bachelor’s degree is questioned, question the questioner’s intellect and/or good will.
  4.     Avoid further questions.
  5.     Posture as if one has thoroughly proved one’s point.

 Riccola isn’t the first to discover John Scalzi’s rhetorical limitations. In addition to my first encounter with them in 2005, Agathis had much the same experience. Not only does McRapey have no observable capacity for dialectic, his rhetoric is almost entirely limited to name-calling, argumentum ad hominem, inept satire, and the sophistic technique known as “ambiguity”. The irony of Scalzi’s position should be readily apparent when one compares his observed lack of rhetorical skill with the Dunning-Kruger effect checklist.