Tag: McRapey

Very important international news

Insightful investigative reporting on the part of The Guardian reveals that John “I am a rapist” Scalzi lied when he claimed that he was enjoying the attention of what he hitherto described as an adorable “mancrush”:

John Scalzi is the author of several books, including the Old Man’s War series and Redshirts, published in the States by Tor and the UK by Gollancz. He’s also the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Fed up of being constantly targeted on his website by one particular individual and his followers, Scalzi decided to take action, pledging US$5 every time “the Racist Sexist Homophobic Dipshit in question posts an entry on his site in which he uses my name (or one of his adorable nicknames for me)”.

Scalzi put a ceiling on his “troll tip jar” of US$1,000, figuring that gave his bête noir 200 opportunities to abuse him over the coming year, and said he’d give the cash to four charities: RAINN, America’s largest anti-sexual violence organization; Emily’s List, dedicated to electing pro-choice Democratic women to office; the Human Rights Campaign, which works for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Equal Rights; and NAACP: America’s oldest and largest civil rights organization.

A novel enough way to tackle the trolls, for sure, but what happened next was somewhat astonishing: Scalzi’s friends, Twitter followers and readers asked if they could jump in with pledges too. Many of his friends are high-profile authors and industry types – Will Wheaton, the actor who played Wesley Crusher in TV’s Star Trek: The Next Generation, and a writer in his own right, was one of many who promised to match Scalzi’s US$1,000 pledge.

By the early hours of this morning, UK time, the pledges for Scalzi’s chosen charities had grown to US$50,000.

One of the triggers for the trolling of Scalzi seems to be a satirical blogpost he wrote in October last year attacking conservative politicians for their line on abortion control. It took the form of an open letter to them, in which he adopted the persona of a rapist….

However, the Guardian doesn’t seem to have gotten the story quite right.  The reporter appears to be under the impression that Mr. Scalzi did not enjoy the attention, when we were repeatedly informed, in writing, that he did.  When was it, the inquiring mind wants to know, that “the “McRapey” comments became too much”?  And why were we never informed?

The headline is certainly interesting: “Troll’s comments prompt author to pledge charity donation for every insult.”

John Scalzi’s name is an insult?  I suppose that’s true enough in light of his antics.  But just to set a few things straight.

  1. I have never trolled or sock-puppeted Whatever.  I am not sure of the exact number, but excluding the 30 or so comments on the TIA Big Idea post, I believe I have posted fewer than 10 comments there since 2005.
  2. I have never encouraged anyone to visit Whatever, to leave comments there, or to troll there.  I have linked to various posts at Whatever; a look through the blog archives shows a grand total of 58 references since 2005.
  3. I do not wish to have what passes for John Scalzi’s stature in the science fiction field.  If I had any desire to write unoriginal and derivative takes on Heinlein, Dick, Piper, and Star Trek, I would do so.  As should be obvious from my 854-page epic fantasy novel, my sights are aimed elsewhere.
  4. Since when does “constantly targeted” mean “criticized 26 times in eight years?”  Of the 11,327 posts here on Vox Popoli, precisely 58 refer to John Scalzi in any way.  Of the 58 references, 32 of them are not even critical.
  5. It was really reprehensible of The Guardian to omit to report that in addition to raising $50,000 for the noble cause of not quoting, criticizing, or even mentioning John Scalzi, Mr. Scalzi also commissioned the painting of a dancing pink rabbit.

What can we conclude from all of this?  Sheldon Cooper was right.  McRapey isn’t the problem.  We have to fight the real enemy!  Ensign Wesley must die.die.die!  Now, to be fair to the Guardian, it is entirely possible that the reporter, David Barnett, attempted to ask me for a comment before writing his story, but was unable to reach me as I was much too busy laughing.

UPDATE: A sometime critic of mine who has challenged me to a debate with John Scalzi adds his thoughts on the increasingly hilarious matter:

As Helen Smith demonstrated, John Scalzi likes easy and ideologically safe (politically correct) targets. This rule applies on those rare occasions when he responds to criticism, as well. Scalzi realizes that the best way to smear an entire group is to cherry-pick its worst members, and then present them as the representative norm. I noted earlier how he cherry-picks anecdotal cases of aberrant male behavior to build the case that women require his advocacy against sexism. In a similar manner, Scalzi strategically chooses which critics he responds to.

He would not respond to Helen Smith, as this would place him in the difficult situation of having a woman expose his chicanery and call his bluff. Nor does he respond even to Vox Day—who swings back and forth between moderate positions and more extreme ones. But Vox Day frightens John Scalzi not because he is sometimes extreme, but because he is consistently articulate and often insightful. Scalzi does not want real dissent; he wants either sycophants, or babbling cardboard opponents whom he can casually demolish. The more likely a critic is to debunk his methods, the less likely John is to engage him or her in open debate.

That is inarguably true, but on the other hand, John does commission rabbit paintings and solicit the burning of other people’s money in lieu of debate, which is considerably more amusing than mere rational discourse.  I certainly have no complaints.  I’m simply enjoying the dancing rabbits.

UPDATE II:  This should be amusing.  I’ve already done two little interviews with publications in the USA and Canada doing stories on the affair.  Is there no end to the madness?  How is he so masterfully pulling the strings of the global media?

    It’s a bold strategy

    Let’s see if it pays off for him.  I’m left to reflect that it is just as well that Bane is dead.  This would have killed him.  There is no doubt in my mind that he would have died laughing on the spot.  The artist certainly did a magnificent job of capturing the essence.

    UPDATE: A Whatever rabbit likes the Gamma Rabbit almost as much as I do:  I kind of want to get this tattooed on me just to watch the gibbering howls of Alpha rage, which I would enjoy with a nice rum and coke.

    I kind of want him to do it too.  Better yet, I want John Scalzi to do it.  In fact, I will pledge ONE DOLLAR towards funding the cost of Mr. Scalzi getting the full-color Gamma Rabbit tattooed on his body.  Let’s see if he truly cares about diversity, gender equality, and the poor little gay black girls or not.  Is his commitment even skin-deep?

    A debate challenge is issued

    My recent opponent on the issue of sexual equality, Ed Trinmell, has presented a debate challenge, which I have accepted:

    Within eight hours of the debate challenge I issued to feuding bloggers John Scalzi and Vox Day, Vox responded positively in the comment threads of the original post.

    Half of the debating lineup is on board. But what about the other man?

    Within an hour of my debate challenge post, John Scalzi mysteriously posted an ad hominem attack against his opposition. Scalzi now states that he will make a charitable contribution at the end of 2013 in lieu of further acknowledgements of Vox Day, who has agreed to debate him in a neutral venue….

    Should John Scalzi agree to this debate for the benefit of Children International, I will volunteer to function as moderator. My ground rules will be as follows:

    • This will be a civil, professional, and dignified debate. I will not allow ad hominem attacks, profanity, or excessive sarcasm from either man.
    • This debate will be fair and ideologically balanced. The questions will be equally weighted so as to favor neither Vox Day nor John Scalzi.
    • Specifically, I will challenge Vox regarding his views of women in the political process (which I am on record as opposing). I will challenge John regarding the premises behind his now-infamous “straight white male” essay—which generated a lot of controversy on the Internet last summer.

    It’s certainly an intriguing challenge.  Can I present a credible and convincing case for opposing equality in the political process?  Does McRapey have anything to offer in support of his claims of racial, sexual, and orientational equality beyond false game analogies and repetitive ad hominem attacks?

    And then there is the question that all impartial parties will surely be asking: does John Scalzi possess the courage required to take the risk of having his spinal column metaphorically ripped from him in public?  My guess is that he does not.  He’s a rabbit.  He’s a gamma male.  His blog readership is smaller than mine.  His intellectual influence is miniscule in comparison with mine. He has no original ideas; he’s little more than a parrot.  I strongly suspect that he cannot credibly defend his assertions, which is why he merely repeats them over and over again.

    Just as PZ Myers disheartened his supporters by twice backing down, I assume that Scalzi will find a way to rationalize his inability to defend his views in public.  That lack of courage, that manifest lack of confidence in the strength of his positions, is one reason my influence will continue to grow in comparison with his, as was the case with regards to the Fowl Atheist, who is increasingly regarded as a joke even within the atheist community.  Dr. Myers tried the “I’m too important to waste my time on a crackpot” approach back in June 2008, when my readership was 38.5 percent of what it is now.  It may be worth noting that Mr. Scalzi’s fans appear to be woefully ignorant concerning the facts of the situation.  Consider this tweet directed to my attention earlier today:

    “just a thought, but “superintelligence” doesn’t need to mooch off real thought leaders ( @scalzi ) to get people to notice you.”

    How, one wonders, can John Scalzi possibly be considered a “thought leader” of any kind?  He has no ideas of his own.  Even his fiction is openly derivative, whereas my original concepts have been cited in science journals, on Wikipedia, and provided scientists with hypotheses for which their subsequent experiments have found empirical evidence.  Furthermore, I have no need to mooch off anyone, least of all Mr. Scalzi, in order to get people to notice me.  Not only did he first come to my attention as a result of him and a number of other SFWA members reacting to one of my WND columns, but my blog readership first surpassed his in 2011.

    This failure to understand that there are two sides to the political spectrum is apparently a common misapprehension on the part of the left; some in the SF/F community have publicly complained about Black Gate giving me a platform despite the fact that nearly a quarter of its annual traffic in recent years has come from VP alone.

    Alert the OED

    Roissy coins a new term:

    When men are men and women are women, the sex is more frequent. And
    probably hotter, too. When men are scalzied manboobs and women are
    manjawed feminists, the bedroom is an arid wasteland of dashed passion.

    Sexual polarity — the primal force that adheres the cosmic cock to
    the celestial snatch — is the truth of truths that belies every feminist
    assertion ever made in the history of that insipid, leprotic ideology.
    May the losers of the world quake and fall to their knees before its
    divine directive.

    This isn’t a truth borne of social constructs, or of cultural
    conditionings, or of privileges of privilege. It’s a truth woven into
    the fabric of our origin atoms, the glue that binds our helical
    commandments and reaches outward to breathe life into the monolith of
    our souls.

    It is what is.

    The man is a wordsmith of uncommon skill and violence.  He takes words and makes them his own in much the same way McRapey informs us he treats women.  And speaking of McRapey, it was more than a little amusing to see Roissy utilize the term “scalzied” in a sentence.

    But precisely what does it mean for someone to be scalzied?  In the context given, I can only conclude that it means for a man to have become accustomed to assuming a servile and inferior demeanor in relation to women based on a mistaken impression that doing so would curry favor with them.  Naturally, I defer to Roissy if I have somehow failed to grasp his neologism in its entirety.

    As for the study that is the main subject of his post, I’ll address it on Alpha Game tomorrow, since a considerable number of people have been kind enough to bring it to my attention.  Translation: thank you and you can stop emailing it to me now….

    UPDATE:  Johnny is very bravely keeping a smile on his face and attempting to pretend that he thinks this is all so very much fun and adorable.  Which is great, because I certainly find it amusing too and I’m more than happy to continue to amusing him and his fellow rabbits accordingly. The thing is, he appears to be under the misapprehension that I had anything to do with whatever it was that inspired his latest inspirational message.  Unfortunately, I can’t take any credit for it.  Strangely enough, I’m responding to a post he wrote about me describing how I frequently write about him when I hadn’t, in fact, done so.  This is all beginning to get a little meta.


    “Folks, as you may know, out there on the Internets there is a Racist Sexist Homophobic Dipshit who at the moment has an adorable mancrush on me. This means that he can hardly go a day or two without saying something about me on his Web site, usually something which reflects his own deep and abiding personal insecurities. And of course, this is his prerogative; if it makes him feel better about himself and pumps up his social status with his clutch of equally insecure racist sexist homophobic dipshit admirers, then by all means he can spout as much garbage about me as he likes. It does no harm to me (as noted before, no one outside his little huddle of bigots gives much mind to anything he has to say about anything, much less anything  he has to say about me) and I suppose it keeps him from playing in traffic. So, fine.”

    Isn’t it wonderful that everyone is fine with it?  It should certainly be fascinating to see McRapey attempt to pretend The Chateau is as trivial and little-regarded as Vox Popoli.  I wonder what clever name he’ll come up with for Roissy?  I am, after all, but a humble superintelligence, while Roissy is the one of the true geniuses of our generation.

    McRapey’s next book

    It seems that in light of our friend at Whatever’s newfound interest in book covers, Vidad felt that he should contribute his own offering.  And it’s NOT an imitation, a ripoff, or a parody, it’s an homage!

    I’ll admit it.  We have now gone from “modestly amused” to “okay, that’s actually kind of funny”.  And it leads me to ponder this question: what author or series will be the subject of McRapey’s next homage?  Jerry Pournelle?  No, he’s alive.  Ursula LeGuin?  No, too risky.  Ray Bradbury?  Too difficult.  Frank Herbert?  Too long.  It’s kind of a fun game though; perhaps we should start a pool and whoever wins has to read the book and write a review that I’ll post here.  I’ve got Poul Anderson.

    Rabbit man is rabbity

    McRapey asks for more mancrushing and I am gracious enough to oblige him.  Although I must warn you, if you are reading this, we are reliably informed that risks making you one of my “merry band of racist
    sexist homophobic dipshit readers”.  Otherwise known as… THE DREAD ILK!

    On the way home from ConFusion today I received a concerned phone
    call from a good friend, who informed me that someone had just posted
    something about me online that to his eye was entirely libelous; he then
    gave me a brief rundown on the piece. It appears the racist sexist
    homophobic dipshit who has an adorable little mancrush on me has been
    spinning up his racist sexist homophobic dipshit blog readers yet again
    with a typically gibbering gout of stupidity, with my name inserted into
    it at some point.

    I told my friend not to worry about it. Aside from it being just
    another example of this particular racist sexist homophobic dipshit
    trying to work out his adorable little mancrush issues in public, it’s
    probably not libel. One of the pillars of libel is that what’s being
    written has to effect material damage on the person allegedly being
    libeled. I experience no material damage in this case, because no one
    actually gives a shit what this particular racist sexist homophobic
    dipshit has to say about anything, other than his merry band of racist
    sexist homophobic dipshit readers. And why would I care what any of
    those racist sexist homophoblic dipshits think about me? They’re racist
    sexist homophobic dipshits. The racist sexist homophobic dipshit market
    is one I’m willing to lose.

    I imagine that one day the racist sexist homophobic dipshit with the
    adorable little mancrush on me will finally figure himself out. Until
    then, I suppose his adorable little mancrush on me is cheaper than
    therapy. So mancrush on, you racist sexist homophobic dipshit. Because
    it’s adorable, and I get a giggle about just how much you can’t quit me.

    The interesting thing about gammas is that they don’t realize that what scalds their souls doesn’t bother those higher in the socio-sexual hierarchy in the slightest.  Still less those who are comfortable outside the social hierarchy.  But it’s a lovely attempt at playing “ha ha ha, see if I care cuz I don’t” through the tears.  I have to confess, it stings a little to be accused of homophobia when John keeps putting delectable, mancrushable eye candy like this on display.  Can you honestly blame me for my adorable little mancrush?  I really think he’s created a whole new category of hotness, the “doughy-sexy”!  But I’m very glad to hear that he gets “a giggle” about it, because, let’s face it, we all know that I will never quit him until his gamma antics cease to provide amusement, which should happen right around the time Heimdall blows his horn.  Mancrushes may not be legal in Ohio, but this is a committed one nevertheless.

    One should appreciate the way McRapey keeps trying to work “libel” into his responses?  Not that he would ever threaten anyone with it, because he totally believes in free speech… but he’s got to mention it, you know, just because.  This reminds me of the scrawny little seventh-grader who can’t fight his way out of a paper bag, who froths at the mouth and tells the high school bullies not to mess with him because he’s crazy.  CRAAAZY!  But I find the most interesting thing to be how he thinks that simply pointing out the attack on female-oriented urban fantasy covers is a misguided attack on female preferences amounts to “a typically gibbering gout of stupidity”.

    In that vein, this comment from a Whatever reader pretty much says it all about the Rabbit People: “I found the RSHD after Scalzi’s piece on the mind of a rapist. The RSHD decided that this post meant that Salzi himself was a rapist. The rest of his thought is on a par with this gem. I’ve been looking at his blog with a kind of horrified fascination ever since. I find him thoroughly dispiriting, rather frightening, and in the end
    just inexplicable. He presents as a well-educated, articulate,
    functioning kind of guy, and yet he traffics in vile racism, a sexism so
    absolute that women seem not to exist as real people, weird conspiracy
    theories, and general religious crackpottery. I don’t get it at all. Is
    he insane? I wonder. Are all his readers insane as well?”

    Frightening and inexplicable stupidity.  That concept summarizes the midwitted limits of this particular warren of Rabbit People.  They literally cannot imagine that their worldview is incorrect or is not in line with observable reality.  Anything that is over their heads or beyond them has to be either stupid or crazy, or perhaps both.  And, of course, scary.  They also fail to realize how their responses and accusations betray their own psychologies. John Scalzi is obviously engaging in satire, but I could not possibly be doing anything of the sort.  I must be the insecure and upset one even though it is McRapey who refuses to link to or even identify the RSHD he is nominally addressing.  He even requests that his fellow rabbits follow his lead, whereas I am content to simply shine a light on his creepy, crawly gamma antics and don’t concern myself with what anyone else does.  He deletes or “subverts” the comments of any of those favorable to me who comment on his blog while I both permit and respond to comments by those favorable to him.

     The Rabbit People think I am obsessed, and yet they rush to call his freaking phone simply because I mentioned him in a post.  And my failure to recoil in horror and flee in terror from the VERY BADDEST WORDS THEY CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE leaves them not only bewildered, but scared.

    “He didn’t react to the H word.  And I already called him stupid.  And crazy. What now?”
    “Did you try the S word?”
    “Yeah, good idea… ZOMG, that didn’t work either!”
    “Very well, he leaves us no choice.  I don’t like it, but he totally asked for it.”
    “You don’t mean….”
    “I do.  The R word.”
    “Wow.  I pity him.  I really do.  Here goes… OMFG, NOTHING HAPPENED!”
    “What?  That can’t be!  Try it again… TRY IT AGAIN!”
    “R word!  S word! H word! Stupid!  Crazy!  R WORD!  S WORD!  R WORD!  DAMMIT, IT’S NOT WORKING!”
    “AAAUUUGGH!  RUN!  SAVE YOURSELVES!  WHERE IS THE SAND?  WHERE IS THE SAND?” (thunk) (thunk)

    Later that day, sounds are heard emanating from a pair of seemingly headless bodies.

    (muffled) “Mmff.  Well, we sure showed him!”
    (muffled) “Yeah, now everyone will see he’s evil and bad, and sooner or later, the emptiness and loneliness of the social rejection that will surely follow will make him say he’s sorry and that we’re really good people who only want to help everyone.  Also, hugs.”
    (muffled) “Do you think he’ll pat us on the head too?”
    (muffled) “That would be nice.”

     I am aware there are a few who still believe I post about McRapey due to jealousy, and it is to them I direct this question: what part of Award-Winning Cruelty Artist do you not understand?  This is not an obsession.  This is a Voxiversity course.  And if you still don’t grasp that, you’re not passing it.

    McRapey exercises his male privilege

    It’s a quixotic choice, to be sure, but I suppose we all have our issues.  Apparently confessing to being a rapist isn’t enough for John Scalzi, as the male-privileged SFWA President has now taken it upon himself to publicly mock women for the sort of covers they prefer to see on the books they write and buy.

    “The pose-off, while for charity, has its genesis in Jim taking pictures of himself in the poses that science fiction and fantasy book covers often put women in to call attention to the point that these positions are absurd (whereas the positions men are put in on covers are generally substantially less so).”

    The irony, as I noted at Alpha Game, is that what Scalzi and Hines are mocking in their gamma male cluelessness about women is not male sexism, but rather, female preferences.  The book whose “sexism” and “objectification” Scalzi is protesting in the photo above happens to be THE TASTE OF NIGHT, by Vicki Pettersson.  It is described thusly:

    “Equal parts Light and Shadow, Joanna Archer must fulfill a destiny she
    never wanted. Once a photographer and heiress to a casino fortune, she
    is now dedicated to the cause of good . . . but susceptible to the
    seductions of evil.” 

    An heiress who is susceptible to seduction and bears no responsibility for her actions… does this sound more like a science fiction novel intended to appeal to men or a romance novel aimed at a female audience?  As it happens, THE TASTE OF NIGHT
    has 47 reviews, by Jenna, Rita, Angela, Courtney, Phyllis, Jessica,
    Patience, Rhona, Kelley, Kelly, Shalonda, Chica, Karissa, Michelle,
    Debra, and Susan, among others.  Since Pettersson is, we are informed, a New York Times bestselling author, it should be obvious that her work, and the cover of her book that John Scalzi is lampooning, (which you can download as wallpaper in various formats from her website should you be so inclined), are very popular with women and appeal to female tastes.

    The fact is that it is not men, but women, who are drawn to pictures of women posed in this manner.  Men, as a rule, like to look at young, pretty, naked, feminine, women posing with their breasts and buttocks on display, not thick, thirty-something man-jawed women wearing clothes, brandishing weapons, and striking aggressive and unlikely power-poses.  The urban fantasy/paranormal market that distinguishes itself from high fantasy, epic fantasy, and science fiction by utilizing such imagery is predominantly female.  It is women to whom such covers are designed to appeal, it is women to whom such books are sold, and by mocking those covers, John Scalzi and Jim Hines are exercising their male privilege to mock the women who write urban fantasy books as well as the women who buy them.

    Now, there is nothing wrong with mocking the books on the grounds of literary quality or their covers on the grounds of aesthetics.  But to mock them with the mistaken impression that one is striking a blow against male sexism is not only to insult female preferences, it is to betray a fundamental misunderstanding of human socio-sexuality so profound that it should be no surprise that it took a pair of male science fiction writers to do it.

    Perhaps the most amusing thing is that even after progressive women questioned their actions, prompting a little belated self-reflection, it is abundantly clear that they still don’t get it. I doubt I’m the only one to wonder if Jim Hines was initially inspired to launch his campaign after getting caught by his wife taking pictures of himself in her lingerie.

    “No, honey, I don’t LIKE wearing your underwear, I’m just, um, protesting the objectifying of women in science fiction!  It’s, ah, for charity!”

    And just to address the usual suspects, I will freely confess that jealousy is the only reason I am posting this.  I doubt that I could ever aspire to the transcendent gamma sex appeal that shines so gloriously from the image above.

    How you like them sour grapes?

    I’ve never quite understood those who genuinely appear to believe that I have any reason to be jealous of John Scalzi.  Yes, I am presently running for the SFWA position he is vacating, and sure, I do regularly lay the metaphorical crosshairs on him, but anyone who can fail to see the vast amusement that is regularly to be had with the author of l’affaire Rapey McRaperson falls very well short of being my ideal reader.  But be that as it may, the one thing to which various observers inevitably draw attention is something I’d always assumed was at least partially true, which is the assumption that Scalzi’s blog readership at Whatever is significantly larger than mine at VP and AG.  Longtime readers will recall that fans of PZ Myers also used to make a habit of pointing this out vis-a-vis Pharyngula, although we don’t seem to have heard much of that since the establishment of FreeThoughtBlogs and the inception of the low grade civil war presently raging between the anti-feminist New Atheists and the pro-feminist New New Atheists.

    So it was informative to read this post, in which the SFWA president is impressed with the growing size of his blog readership.

    “[H]ere are the stats for Whatever for 2012. WordPress’ stats software recorded 8.165 million views last year, which is up from 5.409 million in 2011, which is up roughly 50% over the previous year. That’s a pretty good jump for the year; as a contrast, the jump from 2010 to 2011 was 5.4 percent. I attribute the jump this year to a number of  blockbuster posts, most notably “Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is.” The month with the largest number of views was May, with 1.1 million (not coincidentally the month of the “Straight White Male” post); The lowest number of views were in February, with 436,000….  To add to the confusion, Google Analytics (which I also have tracking Whatever) consistently reports lower numbers of views than WordPress; for example, in December, WordPress has Whatever getting 749,000 views; Google has it at 718,000.”

    That looks genuinely impressive at first glance.  8.165 million views!  But the last number made me do a double-take. And then it made me laugh. You see, Google Analytics also tracks Vox Popoli and Alpha Game. Those two blogs happened to combine for 719,700 views in December.  719,700, if I recall correctly, happens to be a little bit more than 718,000.  Nor is it an anomaly, as that was actually down from 745,857 in November.  This inspired me to look further into the matter of comparative blog traffic.

    Interestingly enough, the lowest number of combined views all year was in June, with 570,971.  In February, Vox Popoli alone had 494,534 views; combined views were 596,181.  Not only were both numbers considerably higher than Whatever’s 436,000 WordPress views for the same month, but on the basis of the reported December ratio, Whatever’s more directly comparable estimated Google views were probably in the vicinity of 418,000.  So, prior to the monster post in May that temporarily more than doubled Whatever’s traffic, this marginal “pit of manstink” appears to have had a readership that was 40 percent larger than the Great Hutch of the Rabbit People.  Moreover, last year traffic grew at a rate of 30.3%, from 5,969,066 in 2011 to 7,777,620 in 2012.

    Doesn’t quite fit the rabbity narrative, does it?  In fairness to McRapey, I have to point out that he has never once attempted to play the traffic card himself, and on one or two occasions he has even attempted to explain to some of his more imaginative fans that the readership here, for all that it supposedly dwells in “the land of epistemic closure” is not quite as inconsiderable as some of them would like to pretend it is.  The reason for the mistaken perception on everyone’s part is innocent enough, though, as it appears to be based on the fact that WordPress offers the most generous view calculations while Sitemeter’s are the most stingy, combined with the fact that I make my Sitemeter numbers public while Scalzi only reports his WordPress numbers on an annual basis.  But Sitemeter is known to be at least a little unreliable; for example, there were several days earlier this year when I saw that it recorded no traffic at all.

    So, corrected for the WordPress/Google ratio, here is how the annual traffic compares on the basis of Scalzi’s reported Whatever traffic and the Google numbers for VP (2009 through Feb 11) and VP+AG (Mar 11 through 2012):

    The data indicates that Whatever needed that monster post just to keep pace with the continued growth of VP+AG.  I now await with no little interest to hear how the “sour grapes” theorists will explain that I am jealous of the traffic and exposure of a blog whose readership numbers my blog appears to have first passed up more than a year ago.  Now, it must be pointed out that Whatever did end up with 50k more total views in 2012, thanks to the aforementioned blockbuster post, but it should be readily apparent that VP+AG now have a bigger and more reliable readership base than Whatever.

    By the end of 2013, I wouldn’t be terribly surprised to see the occasional month pushing somewhere between 800k and 900k Google pageviews.  And if the Alpha Game traffic eventually surpasses Vox Popoli’s as I have always assumed it would given the higher level of interest in intersexual relations than in economics, SF/F, and my personal ideosyncracies, the two blogs may well surpass 1.1 million/month next year without requiring any well-linked monster posts.

    John Scalzi squicked me out too

    Sometimes, the world is a vastly amusing place.  It’s at times like these that I think perhaps Dr. Pangloss was right and this is the best of all possible worlds.  John appears to be having some belated regrets about google-bombing himself, but you know, that’s the risk you take when you write “satire”.  If our revered SFWA President doesn’t like to see “John Scalzi is a rapist” floating around the Internet, then perhaps Mr. Scalzi should refrain from writing articles on the Internet in which he rhapsodizes about the pleasure he takes in raping women.  It’s a difficult concept, I know, but I’m confident that our fearless leader will one day figure it out.

    I find it particularly funny that he claims I’m flailing about and providing unintentional comedy gold:

    Blogger Joé McKen catches one of my regular detractors making a spectacularly dumb move, and then watches him flail about, trying to rationalize his unintentional comedy gold. No, I’m not going to link to the detractor’s site directly, because among other things the site is full of racism, sexism and general ick; McKen’s got the links if you want them, and all the relevant details if you don’t.

    Over on McKen’s site, one of the commenters there, who is also a frequent commenter here, wonders about whether my detractor could be on the hook for libel. Certainly the detractor’s headline for the particular blog entry in question (“John Scalzi is a rapist”) is factually inaccurate; the detractor is (now, at least) aware it’s so; presuming McKen’s account of event is accurate, which I have no reason to doubt, it wasn’t published with the intent to be satire or hyperbole nor has much chance of being considered so now; and obviously, being branded a rapist, and having it believed, would be detrimental to my public and private life. So if I had a mind to sue my detractor for libel, he might have to hope I am enough of a public figure that it would obviate all those other factors and he wouldn’t be squashed like a bug.

    But why sue? I’m happy to have him leave it up as a testament to his both his credulity while he thought it was true, and his mendacity now that he knows that it’s not. It’s a cogent reminder of what both his opinion and credibility is worth.

    Credulous, mendacious, and libelous.  There’s a combination one doesn’t often see.  I’m pleased to know that he’s happy I’m leaving it up, though, because the thought of taking it down had never even occurred to me.  The fact of the matter is that John Scalzi announced to the world that he is a rapist.  He is on record at his site declaring as much.  He can claim that his admission is “satire” until he turns blue if he likes, but the fact of the matter is that you cannot come out and say the sorts of things that he does and subsequently complain that your statements have been quoted at length and taken at face value.  It would certainly be interesting to see him attempt to see me “squashed like a bug”:

    “He libeled me, your honor!”

    “How so?”

    “Well, um, he kind of quoted me….”

    “He QUOTED you?”

    “Yeah, but he KNEW what I was saying wasn’t true!”

    “And how do you know he knew that?”

    I most certainly do not know that John Scalzi is not a rapist.  I didn’t know it then and I don’t know it now.  He said he is, now he says his previous statement was factually inaccurate… for all I know, John spends his evenings raping his cats in between making calls on behalf of the Obama campaign in Ohio.

    His argument becomes even more confusing since he’s also claiming a) I didn’t understand his satire, and, b) there is no reason to doubt my own post was not published with the intent to be satire or hyperbole.  So, apparently we’re to believe that I knowingly libeled him by quoting him about something I believed to be true.  At this point, I’m left to conclude that John’s best defense against having it generally believed that he is a rapist is that anyone reading his increasingly convoluted thoughts on the matter will assume he is a teenage girl.

    Now here is the punchline.  John is amazed how deeply he got into the head of a rapist in writing the piece:

    “I wrote it from the point of view of a rapist, I think obviously in
    retrospect, because it would have a stronger impact if I did. A couple
    of people have asked me (not entirely unwarily) how I could get into the
    head of someone like that. The short answer is, folks, fiction is what I
    do. I try to put myself in the heads of a lot of different people. I will note that in this case, I was very happy to get out of that particular head as quickly as possible. I don’t often squick myself out writing a piece, but this is one time I definitely did.”

    He definitely squicked me out too!  I mean, John is such a good and talented writer that I truly believed he was an actual rapist when I read his piece.  It was a shockingly powerful piece.  It was one of the most hauntingly powerful pieces of writing on the subject I have ever seen.  It touched me in places I have never been touched before, without my consent.  He raped us all with his words and I feel hurt, violated, and confused.  I am still convinced that John Scalzi is a rapist, despite his unconvincing ex post facto denials, because obviously no fiction writer, even a best-selling, talented writer like John, could possibly have made up anything THAT convincing.