As I’ve commented in the past, John Scalzi is an amazingly good self-marketer. I’m not being sarcastic here at all, he’s one of the best I’ve ever seen, and I spent some time in the tech-invest world which is absolutely overflowing with self-promoters and would-be self-promoters. Marc Rein of Epic is probably the best I’ve ever known, but the fact that Scalzi managed to transform his mediocre and purely imitative writing into very profitable and award-winning science fiction career borders on magic.
And in this piece, which is ostensibly about the sexual assault allegations aimed at Neil Gaiman, he shows us how he does it, which is with a relentless focus on himself and how he wants the readers to view him.
In the wake of the various recent allegations involving Neil Gaiman, people have been both very sad that someone who they looked up to as an inspiration has, allegedly, turned out to be something less than entirely admirable, and are now looking to see who is now left that they can rotate into the spot of “the good dude,” i.e., that one successful creative guy who they think or at least hope isn’t hiding a cellar full of awful actions. One name I see brought up is mine, in ways ranging from “Well, at least we still have Scalzi,” to “Oh, God, please don’t let Scalzi be a fucking creep too.” Which, uhhhh, yeah? Thanks?
I have many thoughts about this and I’m going to try to make sense of them here, as much for myself as anyone else, so this may be messy and discursive and long (seriously, 3600 words, y’all), but, well, welcome to me.
3,600 words with one single reference to Neil Gaiman. It’s impressive, in its own unique way. What’s amazing is that the dimwitted SJWs will actually give credit to Scalzi for “addressing the issue” even though he’s done absolutely nothing but evade it to what is very nearly the greatest extent possible.
And the amusing thing about the piece is that literally no one idolizes Scalzi or is in any way imagining that the Ohio Doughboy can serve as an effective substitute for the brooding, Gothically-dreamy Mr. Tubcuddle. Gaiman is the apex version of Scalzi, with similarly self-marketed and manufactured success that is an order of magnitude greater. But both charlatans – and they are not only both charlatans, but self-admitted charlatans who suffer from Imposter Syndrome – are masters of persuasion and self-promotion.
One must give credit where it is due, after all. They’re both very good, they’re just not very good at what most people erroneously believe they are good at. And while some of Gaiman’s fans are falling for it, others already see through the would-be self-appointed replacement.
I find Scalzi’s post problematic. To me it’s a big hint that Scalzi himself may have issues – not with abuse, but he may be letting his fame and the occasional adulation get to his head.
While he acknowledged ‘Neil fucked up’, his main post is ‘please don’t idolize me’.
I’m sorry, but as someone who has some experience with fame and recognition in my own scope (I can’t reveal anything else, for obvious reasons on this type of sub), I feel that this is an extremely disingenuous take. As I said to one of the mysterious new accounts that I argued with here, no one who achieves that level of fame does so by wallflowering and accidentally dropping themselves into it. Curating your image of yourself is hard work that takes requires a constant habit. Otherwise, you’ll be forgotten.
Does Scalzi think that the problem is being idolized? That fans sometimes see the person whose art they consume is a hero? Then he can publish his art anonymously. Wattpad exists. J.K. Rowling tried publishing under a pseudonym, so did Doris Lessing. A person who reached that level of fame worked to gain prominence.
And I still find what he said about Neil insufficient. It makes it sound like all Neil did was cheat on his wife like once or twice, and not manipulate his image to shield his alleged predatory behaviour over a course of decades.
And while Scalzi doesn’t actually say it, it’s almost as if he’s implying that the problem is that Neil’s fans idolized Neil. (And not: Neil constructed this image that can be idolized – as any person who desires fame would be constructing out of themselves – and then abused it). I’m sorry, but can we please remember that famous people are not your friends? Every step of fame is constructed by the person who desired it. If Scalzi has reached a point where he has fans who idolize him, he worked to achieve it. If he doesn’t want it anymore, stop working at it.
Honestly, I didn’t really care about Scalzi prior to this, but this way of weighing in on the Neil Gaiman scandals (turning it around to make it about himself) and the weird mass downvote I got on the Neil Gaiman sub just gives me a bad impression of the whole thing.
But that’s what Scalzi quite literally does best. He turns EVERYTHING around to make it about himself, without shame, hesitation, or regret. That’s the entire basis for his career and his success.
UPDATE: A Gaiman fan points out that Scalzi happens to be friends with a lot of serious creeps.
Dude’s had at least four friends be ousted as creeps in 4 years, the last couple of them within 6 months of each other, at least 3 of them male writers with some serious clout in the field and one of them a big deal in fandom/Worldcon/Hugo. Some soul searching seems in order as to why you keep finding self professed friends of yours being ousted as creeps, maybe?
