Tag: McRapey

Running down John Scalzi II

Nearly a year ago, I observed that this blog appeared to be the verge of catching up to McRapey’s Magnum Opus, The Most Popular Blog in Science Fiction with 50,000 DAILY READERS, in terms of its pageview traffic. This was very surprising to me, as for some time before then, various trolls and rabbits had been insistent that my views were irrelevant because no one was interested in them. They were forthright in declaring that only a few thousand extremist right-wing outliers read VP, which couldn’t possibly bear comparison with a massively popular blog like Whatever.

As recently as 26 December, 2012, I still believed the hype. I honestly thought McRapey must have meant “visits” rather than “views” when he reported 8 million views for Whatever in 2012. After all, I knew my own blogs had nearly 7.8 million views.

“Is it credible that the readership for VP+AG is actually that close to
the Whatever readership?  No, I don’t think so.  I think Scalzi is using
the term “view” improperly and should be using “visit”.” 

Ah, how innocent we were! Despite being John Scalzi’s bête noire, I didn’t have a proper grasp of what a lying, self-promoting little snake he is. These days, thanks to Anonymous Conservative, we now understand exactly what McRapey and the other rabbits were doing. They’re like demons constantly whispering “you don’t matter, nobody loves you, why don’t you just give up” into the ears of bullied teenagers.

There were some readers who were skeptical of my observations concerning traffic, pointing, not unreasonably, to Alexa. I readily admitted that VP was still considerably behind Whatever in the Alexa rankings, although I was starting to understand that this was merely an artifact of the ranking system being less reliable than Google Analytics: “For what it’s worth, Alexa has scalzi.com, which hosts Whatever, at 12,996 in the USA.  Vox Popoli is 29,426.  Alpha Game is 73,183.”

So, in light of that, perhaps you can understand that I was a little amused when, after having exposed McRapey’s false claims of popularity earlier this fall, I observed this in the Alexa rankings today.

scalzi.com
109,589 Global rank
44,648 USA rank
4,857 sites linking in

voxday.blogspot.com
108,511 Global rank
22,967 USA rank
920 sites linking in

alphagameplan.blogspot.com
179,597 Global rank
53,907 USA rank
311 sites linking in

There are one or two interesting details one can observe there beyond the fact that Vox Popoli has now passed up a declining Whatever in Alexa terms, both globally and in the USA. McRapey’s self-promotion appears to be considerable, but inefficient, as he requires thousands more site links, and tens of thousands more Twitter followers to produce fewer, less-engaged blog readers. Despite the Chief Gamma Rabbit’s occasional attempts to denigrate Game, one can’t help but notice that Alpha Game is also rapidly catching up to the warren.

John Scalzi is a big fat fraud. He’s the Bernie Madoff of science fiction, having built his Hubbardesque SF career with smoke, mirrors, and sleight of hand. The fact is that leftists are seldom as popular, as influential, or as inevitable as they claim themselves to be. They readily resort to The Big Lie whenever it serves their interests, and their interest is usually focused on exaggerating their importance and their numbers. What I have learned from this is to never, EVER take a Leftist’s claims on faith. Always verify them, and quite often you will be surprised to discover in the process how brazenly they tried to slip one past you.

Now, I have no doubt that Scalzi’s remaining rabbits will hasten to move the goalposts yet again and point out that he sells more books than I do. And that, at least, is true. For now. Of course, in light of how the other metrics to which they previously appealed have tumbled one by one, how long can they be certain the final one will last? Winter is coming… and so is Quantum Mortis.

Download the VP toolbarOn a tangential note, I also discovered Alexa has a custom toolbar that is in beta, played around with it, and was a little shocked to find out that it is rather useful. In addition to giving an easy way to search this blog from anywhere and providing access to my updated game links and book recommendations, one can navigate more rapidly between the various comment threads by using the RSS feed pull-down menu. Anyhow, if you want to check it out and help me promote VP, click on the graphic to the left. 

And if you have any ideas for improving the toolbar within the framework of what Alexa permits, please let me know. I have no idea why the text doesn’t always display the most recent post instead of a randomly selected one, but it is in beta and I suspect it might be a Feedburner thing anyway since Feedburner doesn’t always pick up the new posts right away.

McRapey’s Top 10 SF/F novels

The mundane nature of this list explains a lot about the man’s literary mediocrity. That being said, he doesn’t have particularly terrible taste, it is merely pedestrian. Well, except for the Sheri Tepper. And THAT Heinlein novel? Seriously?

1. Always Coming Home, Ursula Le Guin

Ye cats. Seriously, number one? Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness is quite good.  Everything else I’ve read of hers has been well-written, tedious tripe. It’s not that she’s a bad writer, it’s just that she has nothing particularly interesting to say that you haven’t heard since the age of six if you’re under fifty.

2. The Dark is Rising Sequence, by Susan Cooper

This truly astonished me.  Susan Cooper is fantastic, I’m just amazed that McRapey not only read them, but didn’t dislike the books due to the author’s obvious respect for pretty much everything that McRapey is seeking to destroy.  On the other hand, Cooper is presciently pre-PC on race, so perhaps that explains it.  The “Paki” insult is a just little less troubling than the rape gangs presently preying on white and Asian girls alike in England these days.

3. Dune, by Frank Herbert

Well, yeah.  It’s only the greatest science fiction novel ever written.

4. Fall of Hyperion, by Dan Simmons

I quite liked Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion myself.  The succeeding novels, not so much. There are some thoughtful, interesting spins on religion in space, among other things. But they wouldn’t make my top ten, although the Shrike is considerably awesome.

5. Grass, by Sheri S. Tepper

Ye cats squared. A feminist with religion issues. That’s new. Does McRapey not know the feminists are already as in his corner as they’re ever going to be?  He really doesn’t need to keep catering to them.

6. Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville

Very good book. Very good author. But Embassytown is better.

7. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson

Very good book. Very good author, almost certainly the best of our generation. But Anathem is better. So is Cryptonomicon. And Reamde. And, arguably, The Diamond Age.

8. Speaker For the Dead, by Orson Scott Card

It’s solid. Wouldn’t crack my top 25. Maybe not my top 50.

9. Time Enough For Love, by Robert Heinlein

And this pretty much explains all you need to know about McRapey and his twisted psychosexual issues.

10. Winter’s Tale, by Mark Helprin

No idea. Haven’t read it. But on the advice of one of the readers here, I will put it on my to-read list.

I posted my top 100 SF/F novels on my old site, but as that is long gone, I’ll see if I can dig up the HTML somewhere. And if I can’t find it, I’ll simply have to write a new one. Needless to say, my list will without question begin with the maestro of maestros himself, JRR Tolkien.

It is acceptable for an SF author to leave Tolkien and Lewis off their top ten list, although I can’t help but notice there is no Asimov and no Clarke. But for a fantasy author? Unforgivable.

Rapeshirts

Rapeshirts
A novel with three convictions
By Rose Lapin Troupe

Call me Cismale.

You see, I exemplify the enlightened form of next-generation post-masculine manliness that is superior to even that exhibited by our starship’s captain, James Tiberius Squick, whose galactic fame with women precedes him. As for me, everyone calls me Andee Doll. That’s because despite my gender handicap I can rock a dress like no trans-male’s business. And also, I have some really cute red heels that match the uniform.

I enlisted in Starfleet after crushing a military
recruitment vocational examination. The Dolls have a long tradition of
absolutely blowing the doors off vocational assessments and
psychological profiles. I’ve only ever failed one, and without going
into the details, suffice it to say that little episode was my mother’s
fault.

Up to 50,000 people per day apply for military enlistment, but only three or four thousand are admitted based on a number of rigorous
criteria, not the least of which is a willingness to enlist. That alone
puts me in the upper ten percent.

My field of training and expertise, as you can surely tell, is
statistics, which had a lot to do with how I scored on the vocational
test, and also because unfortunately, I washed out of the elite astrology
course required for officers. There’s no shame in that, of course. 95 percent of applicants fail, if
you include those who don’t apply, and the two percent who do pass it
obviously buy their way through, utilizing their straight white male privilege courtesy of intact white families free
of the burden of poverty.

Or maybe it was astronomy. It is a very technical field. Anyway, I mean the one that teaches you about stars.

Even
my best friend, Squeequeg, didn’t make it through astrology or whatever
it is called, and he’s a huge, huge, huge science fiction fan. He’s
read everything, I swear, even some of that Asimov guy. In fact, no one
knows more about science fiction books than Squeequeg, and he taught
me everything I know about the subject.

“Vance is overrated,” says Squeequeg, “his women are two-dimensional.”

See? He’s read a lot of books. I had never even heard of Jeff Vance before I met Squeequeg.

That might be because I didn’t enlist for the literary enlightenment. I didn’t enlist for the exploration, the honor, or the money.

I signed up to boldly go where no Man has consensually gone before.

The details of how I do this are not particularly important at the moment, but I will say that it can get pretty damn boring
in all those advanced landing parties, doing our level best to advance the Female Imperative, police all mixed-gender gatherings, and empower women throughout the galaxy, whether they want empowerment or not.

Unfortunately, the Female Imperative has no bearing on Captain Squick, as alien cis-females seem to have this habit of falling naked onto his thick, massive, sweat-beaded, throbbing
member, (or so I imagine when I’m in my bunk), but, because he’s so damned dudebroish about
things, he gets away with it without so much as a reprimand from the Admiral, who will flip out and kick a lesser cis-male’s ass without even thinking twice about it. She’s so crazy and full of pure awesome that she totally uppercut some lieutenant just because the kid opened a window.

(Granted, it’s dangerous to open a window in space, which I know because I asked some people who have a bachelor’s degree in astrophysics about it, but even so, it was totally sweet. I’m not afraid to admit it; I squeed just watching her.)

Me and my group of enlisted chums have an entirely different perspective than the
dudebros who think they are running the ship. They don’t know it yet, but we are totally going to upset the
order of things, in the name of equality, in the name of justice, in the
name of empowerment, and in the name of finding our rightful place in the social order which doesn’t exist at the very
tippy top, as our intelligence, and degrees and purity of mind dictate.

This is our story.

Satire and statistical misrepresentation

McRapey explains himself:

Call me old fashioned, but “satire” isn’t actually defined as “the excuse I use when I’m a racist, sexist asshole on Twitter.”

That’s true, it’s the excuse he uses when he’s a rapey, sexual assailant on Whatever. And because he’s still belatedly trying to cover the fact that I caught him out lying, yesterday he was spinning matters related to his site traffic again.

At some point yesterday the site passed the 30 million all time views, “all time” in this case defined as “visits recorded by the WordPress stats program since early October 2008,” which is when the site switched over to the WordPress VIP hosting service. Note that I would take all stat information with a grain of salt; here is my standard link to explain why. For all that, 30 million views in six years doesn’t suck.

This 30 million visit milestone happens whilst some folks out there are asserting foamily that I’m lying about my site’s visitorship; the bone of contention appears to be that I note the site gets up to 50,000 visitors a day, whilst the foamy folks complain that the daily traffic is in fact nowhere near that, so therefore, I am lying.

Let’s look at the numbers he reported. 30 million WordPress page views in six years is, indeed, impressive.  However, if we simply do the math, which apparently Mr. Family Tradition of Crushing Standardized Tests couldn’t manage, we can see that 30,000,000 / (6×365) equals 13,699 WordPress pageviews per day.  And since Mr. Scalzi’s readers read about 5 daily pageviews apiece, he has averaged a grand total of 2,740 readers per day since October 2008.

This is considerably short of his claim to get “50,000 readers per day”. Not “up to 50,000 readers”, but “50,000 readers per day”. 47,260 readers short, to be precise. It also shows that the numbers I previously provided concerning Whatever’s traffic were correct. So, it appears that he’s at least beginning to come clean.

But not entirely. Note that Mr. Scalzi attempts to deceive his readers again as he falsely claims “the bone of contention appears to be that I note the site gets up to 50,000 visitors a day”, when I have repeatedly agreed that the claim of “up to 50,000 visitors a day” is true.  I even noted that he could correctly claim up to 100k visitors per day. Notice how Scalzi carefully uses the term “appears to be” when he knows perfectly well that the bone of contention is his false claim that “my site gets 50K readers a day” and “Promote your book to my 50K daily blog readers”.

There is no question that John Scalzi repeatedly lied about his traffic. He publicly lied about it by a factor of more than 18. And moreover, by choosing to repeatedly represent his traffic by its all-time highs rather than its averages, he is engaging in statistical misrepresentation in order to significantly exaggerate the popularity and influence of his blog.  And he is being risibly dishonest when he declares “I scale it down a bit because, you know. I don’t wish to oversell the site’s reach.”  If he didn’t wish to oversell the site’s reach, he wouldn’t hide his statistics and then selectively report them in a statistically misleading manner in the first place!

For those interested in the technical side of things, it’s worth noting that WordPress is modestly generous with its pageviews, about 5 percent more than Google. I tend to prefer Google’s metrics myself because they have smarter engineers and their business revolves around statistics. But regardless, if you click on the Sitemeter icon on the left sidebar, you’ll see that VP has had 25,464,336 pageviews. Adjusted for the 2013 WordPress/Sitemeter ratio, that corresponds to 49,464,473 pageviews.  Those 49.4 million pageviews date back to October 2003, so I have averaged 13,552 WordPress pageviews here since then and another 6,710 per day on Alpha Game since March 2011.  That’s a total of 20,062 daily WordPress pageviews, 46 percent more than Whatever. So I must have more readers, right?

Wrong. For various reasons, my readers average 10 pageviews per day. So, I’ve averaged 2,006 readers per day over the complete history of my sites, fewer than Mr. Scalzi’s 2,740 daily post-2008 readers.  The numbers more or less double on both sides if we limit the time period to 2013, but a similar ratio remains. I have more pageviews but Mr. Scalzi has more actual readers. That’s why, when you see people citing statistics without providing the raw data, you always have to consider them carefully in order to determine whether they are being used to mislead you or not.

It is informative to observe that despite his bestselling novels and his various literary awards, Mr. Scalzi is so insecure and relentlessly self-promoting that he still feels the need to lie, spin, and statistically misrepresent his site traffic. There are numerous widgets that allow him to display his traffic openly on his site, as I and many other bloggers have always done. (I don’t display the Google stats widget on this site as I do on AG because it doesn’t work with the old Blogger template utilized here.) Until Mr. Scalzi adds such a widget to Whatever, it will be readily apparent to everyone that promulgating a false perception of popularity is more important to him than personal integrity.

UPDATE: Scalzi is still dissembling even when called on it.

“I believe the problem several of your critics have with the
reporting of your site numbers was that you said you had 50k readers per
day, before you began saying you have ‘up to’ 50 k readers per day.”

Then several of my critics are either ignorant or mendacious trolls,
because I’ve had “up to” here for years, since at least the first post
on the subject in 2010, where I talked about the problem of accurate
stats reporting. If these folks are relying on the occasional comment on
the character-limited medium of Twitter as examples of me dissembling
when accurate, detailed information on the subject is easily accessible
on my personal site at all times, volunteered by me,
then we’re back into the “mendacious troll” category. Which is not at
all surprising, given the one particular dipshit who is the most
exercised about it.

Isn’t John clever, leaping to capitalize on the questioner’s mistake in saying “before”.  Yes, Scalzi did previously refer to his traffic utilizing the misleading “up to” method; in fact he began doing so almost as soon as he had reached that level once.  The point, which McRapey specifically lied about in his statement concerning “the bone of contention”, is that for a nine-month period beginning in late 2012, Scalzi stopped claiming “up to 50k daily blog readers” and switched to claiming “50k daily blog readers”.  He went from statistically misrepresenting his traffic to straight-up lying about it.

With regards to “the character-limited medium of Twitter”, I note that McRapey had 21 spare characters in the one tweet, and 36 spare characters in the other.  I also note that “up_to_” requires all of 6 characters.  It appears he’ll throw any excuse out there without even stopping to think how easily it is demolished.

After I called him out, he retreated to mere statistical misrepresentation again.  And notice that despite his claim to provide “accurate, detailed information on the subject [that] is easily accessible
on my personal site at all times, volunteered by me”, there is still no traffic widget or Sitemeter link being displayed on Whatever.  The information McRapy provides is accurate and detailed, but it is also incomplete, misleading and observably susceptible to self-promotional spin by Mr. Scalzi.

I am pleased McRapey is finally indicating his willingness to provide accurate and detailed information.  I’m sure we all support him in that. All he has to do is display the Analytics widget for WordPress and that will remove any reason to doubt his integrity concerning his site traffic in the future.  Of course, after he does that, he might want to consider getting a head start on coming clean concerning the historical “bestseller” status of “Fuzzy Nation”….

And for the benefit of Phoenician: “______ mancrush ______ obsession _______ laughing at _______ Dipshit
______ your father_______ jealous ________ self-made ______ lawn
______”

Mailvox: a run-in with McRapey

Agathis’s initial experience with John Scalzi’s self-vaunted debate skills was quite similar to my own back in 2005:

Way back when, I had a blog and posted about Scalzi. He had made some
ridiculous argument about those that were all “het up” about
homosexuality–that they were, probably, homosexuals themselves. I asked
a rhetorical question–“Is Scalzi a bigot?” I answered no, then,
because I didn’t know him well. Anyway, he came by the blog and argued
with me. Now, at the time, I had quite a bit of respect for him. I liked
Old Man’s War, as a fan of Heinlein, and though it didn’t reach that
level of quality, it was entertaining.

What resulted was a long
conversation where he insulted me over and over again, never read a
single post I’d made, argued against strawmen, and showed a disturbing
ignorance of what people actually believe. And yes, I do believe he
threw around his education credentials. I didn’t bother telling him
that I have an MA in a philosophical field as well, because it wouldn’t
have mattered to him.

He tried to argue that it wasn’t insulting
to call people gay because he didn’t think there was anything wrong
with being gay. So I say, what if I went around saying that all Jews
were greedy money-grubbers. He got really offended by that and started
insulting me again. I said, hey, I don’t think there’s anything wrong
with being a greedy money-grubber. I’m a capitalist. I think that’s when
he gave up and went away.

But after that exchange, I never bought another of his books. I’ve read a few, but I’m not giving this guy money. He’s an idiot.

He’s
got an ego that’s a few times too large for his actual talent. Like
those A students who get to college and realize they aren’t actually as
good as everyone says, or those singers who go on American Idol and make
fools of themselves all the while thinking they’re great. It’s a sad,
sad, thing. But after my exchange with him, nothing that’s happened in
SFWA since he became president as been any surprise to me.

Agathis picked up on something that a surprising number of people don’t realize about McRapey.  The man is less intelligent than most people assume.  He is considerably less intelligent than most of the people with whom I habitually engage.  He’s not as smart as PZ Myers, Sam Harris, or Richard Dawkins, and you are all familiar with how easily I have dismantled their arguments.  The difficulty in dealing with McRapey is that he seldom presents any actual arguments, he usually just presents assertions sans any logical or evidential support.  Then, when pressed, he makes a credentialist appeal to his college degree.  Not even a PhD or a Masters, just a simple liberal arts BA, as if that’s supposed to impress people who have more advanced or more difficult degrees. And then he flees from public debate while openly banning dissent and criticism from his blog, all to the thunderous foot-thumping approval of his fellow rabbits.

For those who find it hard to believe that Scalzi isn’t highly intelligent, I suggest asking him for evidence of his National Merit scholarship or his qualification for Mensa.  It seems a little odd that someone who doesn’t hesitate to trumpet his credentials would fail to mention such achievements, and surely someone who asserts a “Scalzi family tradition of blowing the doors off standardized tests” would have qualified for both, right?

McRapey’s heavy reliance on his minor academic credential tells us another important thing about him: he is from an environment where going to university was not considered par for the course, so he places a ludicrous amount of importance on it. Once I finish On Sophistical Refutations, I will show that to the extent McRapey learned anything while majoring in philosophy, it was to resort to sophistry rather than genuinely refuting an argument.

His behavior is fairly typical of men who are raised by women. If such men don’t turn entirely feral, they are taught to believe that the winner of a dispute is the one who comes off as looking better to the crowd rather than the one whose arguments are more closely in line with facts, logic, and reality. 

Also, since he appears to have run out of ideas, I’ve created a template that should save Phoenician a little time in commenting on these regularly scheduled McRapey posts.


“______ mancrush ______ obsession _______ laughing at _______ Dipshit ______ your father_______ jealous ________ self-made ______ lawn ______”

Speaking of which, does anyone have a reference count?  Have we hit 200 yet?

Mailvox: The oppression of St. Scalzi

Cronolink asks: “Can you hear how much he doesn’t care about you?” It appears John Scalzi has reverted back to trying to pretend he’s enjoying all the “attention” from those of us who openly express our contempt for the creepy little man:

I enjoy the fact that every single thing I do sends my Frank Grimeses into spinny paroxysms of foaming, impotent rage. They can’t not do it! And, well. If they spend that much time thinking about me, then that’s what they both want and deserve, I suppose….

I suspect I will go on a dudebro taunting moratorium pretty soon, as my book deadline inches closer and I have fewer brain cycles to waste on frivolities. I’m pretty sure on their side they will continue their foaminess, however. In at least one case, it’s pretty much all the dude has going on in his life, and it would be sad for him to be entirely bereft of an occupation, such as it is….

There’s a reason I tend not to single out any in particular, or if I do, use their name. Nothing annoys their attention-mongering little hearts more than not getting the recognition for their efforts, from Google or anyone else.

I should note in any event that the number is relatively small; in the main, it’s the same three or four dudes with websites all enjoying the smell of each other’s farts, as it were. Occasionally a new person will pop up. These new dudes appear to be trying to currying favor with one of my regular detractors, which really is no way to get through life.

Be that as it may, at this point, these dudes don’t need encouragement from me. I could ignore them completely and they would still come after me, because they think they are in some sort of epic battle with me or something. They can’t not get worked up about me. That being the case, in a very real sense it doesn’t matter what I do. They are self – validating.

I don’t know. Maybe one day they will get bored. I won’t mind when that day comes. Until then, I don’t mind occasionally setting up a hoop and watching how excited they get to jump through it. It’s like watching squirrels in the yard: simple amusement featuring frantic animals.

Ah, so he enjoys it again?  And yet, I seem to recall how Johnny tried to pretend he was enjoying the sweet no-homo mancrush, until he couldn’t take it any longer and announced that he was done pretending to be nice?  Now he is suddenly attempting to change his message again because it’s not just me anymore, it’s me, and Heartiste, and Roosh, and John Ringo, and Mike Williamson, and Larry Correia, and those guys who keep turning out various photomemes featuring him.  And others.  There are most definitely others who don’t necessarily wish to openly express their contempt for the little creep, and some of them harbor even more of it than we do.

The most delusional statement is this: “Nothing annoys their attention-mongering little hearts more than not getting the recognition for their efforts.”

Scalzi claims to believe we are extremely annoyed by the fact that he won’t respond directly to anyone, but instead makes these passive-aggressive comments intended to allow him to simultaneously take shots while feigning to remain above it all.  This is pure psychological projection from the man who blatantly lied about his traffic and exaggerated it by no less than 46,000 per day.  I suspect he is also delusional about sending anyone into “foaming, impotent rage”. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m not even angry about him campaigning to get me kicked out of SFWA. His unmerited Hugo Award for Best Novel can’t reasonably be blamed on him, it is merely the latest consequence of a problematic trend in SF/F that I recognized more than ten years ago.

Like most gamma males being mocked, Scalzi can’t bear to be laughed at. He would rather pretend that he has made his socio-sexual superiors angry, because that puts him on what he imagines is a superior moral plane.  But the truth is that we’re all just laughing at the little weirdo.

The readily confirmable fact is that I get more pageviews than he does, while Heartiste and Roosh both get more pageviews than I do.  John Ringo and Larry Correia sell considerably more books than Scalzi does. None of us care in the least about getting any “recognition” from him, still less do we wish for the obese female shoggoths that read his blog to infest ours. We just happen to dislike rabbits, despise their incessant lies, and enjoy continuing to puncture the delusions and the self-serving propaganda of the chief gamma rabbit.

He’s right.  He could ignore us completely and people will still come after him. But not because anyone thinks they are in an epic battle with him, or because anyone wishes to curry favor with me. Some of those mocking him have no idea who I am and others could care less. The only thing they all have in common is the fact that they find Scalzi both contemptible and eminently tauntable.  And that won’t ever stop so long as John Scalzi insists upon his public posture as St. Scalzi, the Self-Appointed Conscience of Science Fiction.

For one whose motto is “taunting the tauntable”, Scalzi spends a remarkable amount of time whining about people being mean to him.  He’s got SFWA to himself now. He’s got his long-sought award cum validation.  He’s got his lawn. And yet, here he is, crying in public again because someone isn’t patting him on the head and telling him he’s a good boy.

UPDATE: Johnny keeps spinning and spinning, and confusing his readers in the process:

I guarantee you these assbags would be heartily offended at the assertion that I was punching down at them…. Again, the comparison is not about what is real but how these dudes perceive me. From their point of view, they do a lot of screaming about how the emperor has not clothes. The problem for them is that the rest of the world apparently likes their emperors nude. And it drives them nuts.

As noted earlier, the Homer Simpson analogy does not actually conform to reality, merely what they’re trying to assert.

Whatever Wabbit: “Thanks for clarifying, again, that point. I am not the skilled in the interpretation or references at play here, so it was good that you were able to explain what was really going with the analogy.“

No, not offended. Amused. Those who are higher in the socio-sexual hierarchy aren’t offended when gammas try to pretend they are higher in their own little social sub-hierarchy to which we don’t belong at all.

It is typically disingenuous for John “my 50,000 daily blog readers” Scalzi to talk  about what is real versus perception when what we perceive is the fact that he has more like 4,000 daily blog readers.  And it no more drives me nuts that many  people like mediocre science fiction ripped off from previously popular science fiction novels and television shows than it bothers me that some people like to listen to Britney Spears.  That is precisely what I expect.  The lowest common denominator appeals to the most people by definition.

Don’t worry, we will

Let the record show that we all have permission from the 2013 Best Novel Winner to, and I quote: “talk as much crap as they want about my Hugo”.

Anyone can talk as much crap as they want about my Hugo. Why? Because I had this moment, and it can’t be taken away. 

I don’t get it. What is so special about being kissed by your wife? Anyhow, as I noted, John Scalzi’s defensiveness about his Best Novel award indicates that he knows John Ringo, Larry Correia, and the other observers are correct and he simply did not merit the award. Even many of those who like the guy have been relatively quiet about it; they all know he didn’t deserve it either.

It won’t be long until the 2013 Best Novel Winner finds the award to be downright embarrassing to him.  Notice that no one ever says anything negative about his other Hugo awards, to which he had as good a claim as anyone.  But Best Novel for a derivative, mediocre light SF work such as Redshirts? It’s so laughable that it degrades the award, just as the Best Novel award for The Quantum Rose devalued the Nebula and Obama’s Peace Prize devalued the Nobel. Scalzi’s Best Novel Hugo makes Paul Krugman’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences look almost reasonable by comparison.

If the 2013 Best Novel Winner had any self-respect, or even sufficient awareness of his place in SF history, he would have refused to accept the award.  But he didn’t, and in doing so, he gave all of his many critics something with which to club him over the head for the rest of his life.

And we will. Because charity.

UPDATE:The following is from a past award nominee:

“Here’s the thing.  Scalzi entirely deserved his past fan writer Hugos.  Entirely.  His blog is his magnum opus, and he knows it.  He’s said it himself: Whatever is his biggest, most visible legacy in the world.  If he died tomorrow, he’d be known for Whatever more than his books; even OMW.  But it’s precisely *because* he knows this, that he’s insecure about the Best Novel win.  Because he knows that even his *allies* know that it’s not really a Best Novel win.  It’s a best fan writer in another form win.  Basically, a raw popularity win, which has little or nothing to do with how the book measures up against the work of KSR or anyone else.

“Scalzi is well-read.  He knows there were at least 25 other books that never even made the short list which are technically and artistically better than Red Shirts.  He has mewled apologia to this effect, while staunchly brandishing his phallic silver dildo trophy at his detractors and yelling, “My dildo is bigger than your dicks!”  

“So, as long as Scalzi (and his supporters) know in their hearts that Scalzi’s award is not, in fact, based on the merits of the book proper, there will be visible defensiveness on his part, and noticeably quiet reactions on the part of his buddies and hangers on.  Only the true mindless sycophants will declare Red Shirts a winner for its pure merit.  Having read neither Red Shirts nor any of the competitors.  Because Scalzi farts rainbows that smell like honey nut cheerios.”

John Ringo on a 2013 Hugo winner

The Baen Books author wonders how much longer conservative and libertarian readers are going to continue to buy derivative books written by a progressive male demi-feminist who openly despises them:

So about the whole Scalzi ‘thing.’

Scalzi was pissing
me off even before getting a Hugo for a novel so remarkably unremarkable
it would barely have made it to paperback in the 1970s. Nothing against
it, it’s a fun, simple, mindless, read from all I’ve gathered. But it’s
not exactly Stranger in a Strange Land or Nightfall.

Scalzi
is president of SFWA (sort of the writer’s union for SF authors) or
whatever they’re calling it this week. As president instead of, oh, I
dunno, working to get better generalized terms for new authors, ensuring
contracts are upheld with publishers, maybe, someday, getting a fucking
health care insurer for all us authors who don’t have health insurance,
he’d been concentrating on IMPORTANT matters like making sure all
characters were called s/he and women weren’t being harassed at cons
(which happens and is up to the convention people to manage) and… The
list of ‘not-core-issue’ kerfuffles he’s been involved in as president
makes you think he’s president of ACORN not an SF union. And it was not
only driving out members (or they were expelling members for
‘bad-speak’) it was making the group as irrelevant as the opinion of an
abyssal nematode.

But I wasn’t the only one that Scalzi was pissing off. And that’s sort of the important point for Scalzi….

Which is where we start to see the issues with Scalzi suddenly not so
much ‘coming out of the closet’ but making a splash on a variety of
hot-button issues that really don’t sit well with his RETAIL market. The
people who actually BUY the books over the counter as opposed to
market, sell and even buy them for distribution. The more books you can
get a bookstore to buy, the more likely you are to sell them. So being
the poster child for your commercial people is a good thing.
Pissing off the people who in the end have to actually buy the books to read…. Not so much.

And the market fraction of true ‘Modern Progressives’ who read combat SF is HYSTERICALLY low.

Many people who used to be fans of the 2013 Best Novel winner are beginning to figure out that Scalzi is a fraud, not so much because he exaggerates his daily blog readership by a mere 46,000 readers (or, if you prefer, 1,150 percent), but in terms of him being an original writer or one who is even remotely considerate of conservative or libertarian perspectives.  It’s possible, I suppose, that the all-seeing eye of Instapundit, who used to push Scalzi’s books on a regular basis, happens to be totally unaware of the Hugo awards, which he has not seen fit to mention.

Or perhaps the libertarian opinion leader has, like Mr. Ringo, gradually had his eyes opened to the real Scalzi, to the man’s increasingly vocal support for insane left-wing policies, to his hatred for free association, and to his complete flip-flop on free speech.  Remember, back in 2005, before he was established in the science fiction world, Scalzi was claiming that he wouldn’t want to see anyone expelled from SFWA for their beliefs. In 2013, he quit paying his SFWA dues and threatened to quit the organization entirely if someone wasn’t expelled from the SFWA for their beliefs.

How things change once a man feels he can afford to reveal his true character.

Unlike Mr. Ringo, I’m genuinely pleased that McRapey won the Hugo for a mediocre and derivative novel. That isn’t false magnanimity, it is merely that I am publicly on record as stating that the awards in the SF field became a hopelessly politicized joke when incoming SFWA president Catharine Asaro won the Nebula for The Quantum Rose in 2002. I drew considerable ire from many SFWA members for pointing that out on Black Gate last year, and I view three-time SFWA president John Scalzi’s Hugo for Redshirts as conclusive evidence in support of my hypothesis.

I also found it amusing that even McRapey’s little Twitter friend at the Guardian wrote about the Hugo awards with a distinct damned-by-faint-praise air to the article.

There is something else too, something darker. I once accidentally won a drawing award when I was six. I can’t draw at all and so I traced an image of a wood duck for a homework assignment. I had absolutely no idea that the teacher would send it into the Star as part of a big state-wide school competition, still less that I would win it for my 5-7 age group. That bloody duck was even featured in the Minneapolis newspaper. I don’t think my mother realized I wasn’t an artist until after I had graduated from college and she never figured out why both the newspaper clippings and the award disappeared.

So I speak from experience when I say that the only thing that rankles the soul more than merit that goes unrecognized is recognition that the receiver knows is unmerited. As writers, we know very well where our books stand in comparison with the greats as well as which of our contemporaries merit being numbered among them. That is why there are few things I could do to more cruelly scar the hypersensitive McRapey over time than the voting WorldCon membership has now done. Once the excitement from his long-sought Sally Field moment fades and the inevitable self-doubts creep in – for the narcissistic gamma male is ever prone to self-doubts as well as grandiose delusions – well, that’s when it should get interesting.

At least he’ll always have his lawn.

On the other hand, there are still those, like Professor Bainbridge, who not only don’t know mediocre science fiction when they see it, but are from the short-sighted conservative school of thought that is proud to materially support the very progressives, socialists and Trotskyites who seek to destroy it.  I can’t say I blame him, as I used to be inclined to a libertarian view of that perspective until the creation of Fox News made it very clear what a severe price had been paid over time for the privilege of feeling open-minded.

Another discussion of Ringo’s observations of John Scalzi’s achievement in left-liberal politicking, including an appearance by the Toad of Tor herself, can be found here. Note that you have to turn off NoScript to see the comments.

Congratulations, McRapey!

The Hugo Awards announces the 2013 awards:

LoneStarCon 3, the 71st World Science Fiction Convention, has
announced the 2013 Hugo Award winners. 1848 valid ballots were received
and counted in the final ballot.

BEST NOVEL
Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas, John Scalzi (Tor)

I think it is nice that McRapey is finally receiving the in-group validation he has so assiduously pursued over the years.  While I tend to view this award as additional evidence of the decline of professionally published SF/F, I’m sure Redshirts is a perfectly fine unauthorized derivative of a television series from 47 years ago.  It’s rated 3.7 stars out of 5 on Amazon, after all.

A literary sample from the Best Science Fiction Novel of 2013:


“Man, I owe you a blowjob,” Duvall said.
“What?” Dahl said.
“What?” Hester said.
“Sorry,” Duvall said. “In ground forces, when someone does you a favor you tell them you owe them a sex act. If it’s a little thing, it’s a handjob. Medium, blowjob. Big favor, you owe them a fuck. Force of habit. It’s just an expression.”


“Got it,” Dahl said.


“No actual blowjob forthcoming,” Duvall said. “To be clear”
“It’s the thought that counts,” Dahl said, and turned to Hester. “What about you? You want to owe me a blowjob, too?”
“I’m thinking about it ,” Hester said.

And they say SF is in decline. I was mildly amused to see that the Hugo Awards honored no less than five people who were involved in some way in my expulsion from SFWA.  This comment from Harsh also cracked me up:

“Scalzi now working on a new book called Cylon, the story of a misunderstood robot who’s picked on by mean old Colonial warriors.”

Mailvox: an automated response

I just received this in my inbox in response to the 15-page document I sent them this morning:

This is an automated acknowledgment.

Thank you for making your complaint to the Press Complaints Commission about the article published in the The Guardian on the 30/08/2013.

Please note that we require you to supply a copy of the article or articles under complaint; this can take the form of a link or links to the publication’s website. If you have already provided a copy, or if you are aware that the PCC has already received a large number of complaints about the article or articles, please disregard the following.

If you have not already provided a copy of the article and we do not receive a copy within seven days we will assume you do not wish to pursue the matter further.  You can email a copy  of the article or link to complaints@pcc.org.uk, or send a hard copy in the post to Press Complaints Commission, Halton House, 20/23 Holborn, London EC1N 2JD.

If you require any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact us by email at complaints@pcc.org.uk or by telephone 0845 600 2757.

However, it isn’t the only response my complaint has already triggered.  You may recall that back in February, the author of the article, Tor Books’s David Barnett, exchanged tweets with SFWA member Damien Walter.

@davidmbarnett Well done for doing that piece without linking to the bigot. *applauds*

@damiengwalter Well, I figured anyone who wanted to could trawl back through @Scalzi’s site, and if I’d named him I’d have to get a quote…

Within minutes of my retweeting his tweet and mentioning that I’d fired off a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission, I noticed that Mr. Barnett had belatedly decided to delete his tweet.  I tend to doubt his action is going to help his cause in the slightest; in fact, at this point, it may even be seen as an implicit admission of his malicious intent.  Especially since his action was far from unpredictable and I would have been remiss had I failed to capture the screen.

This is just the first stage.  How I proceed from here will depend, to a certain extent, upon what the Commission determines concerning the two Guardian articles.  The second article is potentially quite useful as the Guardian can’t even try to plead ignorance this time. This is because, in addition to the articles, the comments, the list of Mr. Scalzi’s public attacks on me dating back to 2005, and the aforementioned tweets, I also sent the Commission copies of several emails that were exchanged between me and the Guardian editor.

It’s possible that the PCC will be just as fair and balanced as the SFWA Board, but if nothing else, I don’t think they’ll be as likely to make their determination on the basis of Mr. Scalzi’s threats.  And I find it rather telling how eager people like the SFWA Board and Mr. Barnett are to try to hide their actions from public view.