Tag: McRapey

Selling vaporware, expensively

This is why we are going to crush Tor Books in time. Not so much because our quality is superior, although it is, not so much because people are sick of the SJW bullshit they are selling, although they are. But due to this:


Brings the Lightning, Peter Grant
Kindle: $4.99, Hardcover $19.99, Paperback $12.99, KU free
available now

Empire Games, Charles Stross
Kindle: $19.99, Hardcover $25.99
available January 17, 2017

FoundationThe Collapsing Empire, John Scalzi
Kindle: $12.99, Hardcover $19.99
available March 21, 2017

They simply can’t compete, not on quality, not on price, not on value, and not on delivery. Although we signed Brings the Lightning long after Tor signed Foundation’s Collapse, we will likely publish its sequel before the Scalzi book is out. They are cumbersome dinosaurs. We are fast-moving mammals. Vicious, fast-moving mammals who eat dinosaur eggs for breakfast and smash those we’re too full to eat.

I’m amused at the fact that the PNH-Scalzi-Stross cabal is finally united at Tor Books. SJWs flock together. Stross could have been a great science fiction writer – on the basis of his early work, he should have been a great science fiction writer – but his gamma instincts combined with his mindless devotion to the SJW Narrative led him astray and ruined him. Tor Books will make a fitting grave for his literary career.

It’s interesting to observe that Tor is already marking down the price of Scalzi’s next book considering that it’s precisely the same page count as Stross’s. We charge less because we have no overhead, and unlike Tor Books, I don’t believe in taking advantage of readers to cover nonexistent print costs on the Kindle versions. At 336 pages and $19.99, allowing for the usual channel discounts, Tor appears to be selling hardcover at very near cost.

I wonder what that signifies? Does it, perchance, have anything to do with the fact that Tor’s owner, Pan Macmillan, suffered the biggest sales decline of all the Big Five in 2015, -7.7 percent?

We may have interpreted John Scalzi incorrectly. He may not be the Bernie Madoff of science fiction after all, but the Star Citizen of Tor Books.

McRapey is lying AGAIN

McRapey is obviously having difficulties accepting the fact that in traffic terms, I passed him by like a Porsche blowing the doors off a Yugo on the Autobahn.

 John Scalzi ‏@scalzi
(A minor footnote to my bio will be how some jackasses said I lied about my site traffic because they didn’t understand the phrase “up to.”)

John Scalzi ‏@scalzi
My Web site’s having one of those high-volume traffic days certain detractors of mine loudly say I never have, because they’re always wrong.

Being both an SJW and a Gamma male, you know John Scalzi is always going to lie. He did say “up to” in an attempt to deceive the New York Times reporter about his traffic in an interview, but he straight up lied to Lightspeed and on Twitter, when he did not.

EXHIBIT ONE

“For one thing, his blog gets an extraordinary amount of traffic for a writer’s website–Scalzi himself quotes it at over 45,000 unique visitors daily and more than two million page views monthly.”
– Lightspeed Magazine, September 2010 interview 

I note that the word “over” is not the phrase “up to”. At the time, in August 2010, he didn’t have “more than two million page views monthly”, he had 409,745.

EXHIBIT TWO

John Scalzi @scalzi 6:20 AM – 4 Dec 12
Hey, authors of non-traditionally published books! Promote your book to my 50K daily blog readers TODAY

“Up to” 50k daily blog readers? No. Do you spot the phrase? I don’t.

EXHIBIT THREE

John Scalzi ‏@scalzi 3:33 PM – 10 Aug 13
@gregpak I think if people like the content they will keep coming in regardless. I mean, my site gets 50K readers a day 

“Up to” 50K readers a day? No. Do you spot the phrase? I don’t.

So, as usual, McRapey is lying about his site traffic. Second, he is also lying about what I have said about it. I have never said that Whatever never gets the occasional spike, usually as a result of external links to it. I know exactly when, and how big, those historical spikes were, going back to 2008.

What McRapey does is talk very loudly about those spikes when they occur in order to try to deceive people into believing they are generally indicative of his overall level of traffic, which is simply not the case. Unlike me, he never mentions his average daily traffic, because it is much lower than he wants everyone to believe. He doesn’t even report his annual traffic anymore, because it is now so embarrassingly low in comparison with mine. The most traffic he has ever had was just over 8 million pageviews back in 2012; in 2016 Whatever is unlikely to reach even one-quarter the traffic here, which is on track to be in excess of 25 million pageviews.

I’m not surprised he had a short-term spike in traffic; they often occur in the aftermath of an event like the Orlando shooting. My traffic also increased, from a daily average of 76,166 pageviews in June to 91,796 yesterday. But unlike McRapey, you’ll never see me claiming “up to 119,699 daily blog readers”, as I could, because I feel absolutely no need to deceive or mislead people about my site traffic.

Up to 37,500 views!

I expect you will understand why this announcement by McRapey made me laugh:

My piece earlier this week on Clinton and Sanders blew up a bit, with roughly 75,000 views over two days.

Ah, how the most popular blog in science fiction has fallen. Sad! As one might expect, McRapey concludes that his declining site traffic must mean that blogs, while not quite dead yet, are less important than Facebook and Twitter.

What’s amusing is how McRapey considers roughly 37,500 daily views to be blowing up, whereas the traffic here averaged 67,955 daily views in May and is currently running at a rate of 76,166 views per day in June. Whatever’s traffic is now between one-fourth and one-fifth that of VP, and the ratio is steadily falling. I will not surprised if by this time next year, it is one-tenth.

While he’s correct to echo Mike Cernovich’s observations in stating that Facebook and Twitter tend to be more reliable drivers of short-term link traffic these days, what McRapey fails to understand is that blogs have become online community centers that are capable of supporting a broad range of activities.

Such as, for example, this Jobs Wanted notification, before I forget and it disappears too far down the email list.

  • Hiring: Intermediate/Senior Ruby on Rails developer in the Southeast USA. If you have experience working with clients, APIs and know your way around the rails framework and TDD, contact Vox who will forward me your emails. I’ll respond at which point we can talk specifics. Relocation necessary.

Also, if you are a New Release subscriber, you’ll want to check your email tomorrow. Castalia has two new ebooks launching this month, which does not count the new print and audio editions being released. And as both the Production Editor and I have concluded, one of them is right up there with Awake in the Night Land; it’s definitely one of the best books we have published, and possibly even the best to date.

And the Dark Lord laughed


John Scalzi ‏@scalzi Jun 6
There’s a certain point where you just let go of Amazon rankings because they have no relation to overall reality.

Never underestimate the Gamma male’s ability to maintain his delusion bubble. When Tor Books eventually opts out of his contract – and they absolutely will, for reasons that are not entirely McRapey’s fault – his rationalizations should be considerably more epic than his upcoming attempt to rip off Isaac Asimov.

Zero fucks given. Like ice. The man is simply stone-cold.

Now, that can’t be right!

First the site traffic, then the Hugo nominations, and now the Amazon rank. I wonder what there is left to envy? The television shows? The movie options? No, not those….

Smarter than Scalzi

But then, you knew that. It’s not even close. The problem isn’t so much that Scalzi tweets at a sixth-grade level; one can only do so much in 140 characters, after all. It’s that he writes, and behaves, like an unpopular kid in junior high school who confuses attention for popularity.

Anyhow, Beakscore is a just a simple application based on the SMOG index, but it’s interesting to compare various commentators. Here are the scores for some familiar names:

  • 10.3 Nassim Taleb
  • 9.5 Vox Day
  • 9.5 Castalia House
  • 9.4 Ann Coulter
  • 9.2 Roosh
  • 8.9 Steve Keen
  • 8.8 Daniel Dennett
  • 8.5 Richard Dawkins
  • 8.2 Neil Gaiman
  • 8.0 Stefan Molyneux
  • 7.7 Instapundit 
  • 7.7 Patrick Nielsen Hayden
  • 7.5 Larry Correia 
  • 7.5 Paul Krugman
  • 7.4 Tor Books
  • 7.1 Milo Yiannopoulos
  • 7.0 Mike Cernovich
  • 6.4 Wil Wheaton
  • 6.3 John Scalzi 
  • 5.3 George RR Martin

Notice the pattern there? It’s not exactly what one would call surprising if you are familiar with the work of the various parties listed. The only real outlier is Milo, who speaks and writes very differently than he tweets. It’s a little surprising that Martin is so low; I’d have expected him to be in the 7 to 8 range.

Thank you for coming

Mike Cernovich says that one ought to thank ten different people every day. So, I thought I’d get a few months out of the way all at once and thank each and every one of you for taking the time to visit here, read here, and comment here this month.

The reason is that I was rather pleased to observe that the blogs passed the two-million-monthly pageview mark today; Google reported 2,041,464 for February 2016. It’s more than a little surprising to finally crack two million on a short month, but apparently this Leap Year was propitious. I always enjoy surpassing the traffic levels McRapey used to lie to the media about having. Truth is so much more satisfying than fiction and one big advantage of simply telling the truth and not exaggerating is never having to worry about being caught out or keeping your various stories straight.

Strangely, despite having more than four times his site traffic, neither the New York Times nor the science fiction media ever describes me as “popular”, or calls this blog “influential”. I wonder why that might be?

In unrelated news, this was a pleasant surprise. I was at the gym, reading Do We Need God To Be Good, by anthropologist C.R. Hallpike, between sets, when I came across this passage.

It is surely rather naive, then, to think that religion is uniquely prone to generate mass slaughter and violent persecution, rather than being just one among a number of such factors that also include politics, race, social class, language, and nationality. It was these, not religion, which produced the wars of the last century, the most violent in history, and the belief that if we removed religion we could remove the main cause of human conflict is clearly incorrect. Indeed, many wars in history have had nothing to do with group hatreds at all, but have simply been the result of kingly ambition and the desire for territory, power, and plunder. Religion has actually been calculated to have been the primary cause of only about 7 per cent of the wars in recorded history, half of which involved Islam (Day 2008:105).

The main thing is for the ideas to circulate, of course, but it’s still nice to see that Dr. Hallpike got the citation correct. I’m about one-third of the way in and it’s a pretty good book, complete with a ruthless beatdown of evolutionary psychology from an anthropological perspective that borders on the epic. One might almost characterize it as Post-New Atheist, as the author takes a firmly secular approach while recognizing that science and religion may not always be in harmony, but are also very far from enemies, let alone opposites.

Confessions of a sociopath

Either John Scalzi gets a little forgetful when he’s virtue-signaling or he is even more openly sociopathic than his stone cold “give no fucks” mentality would indicate:

John Scalzi Verified account ‏@scalzi 4 February 2016
Related, writing something that shows you’re a horrible person and then proclaiming “it’s satire!” neither makes it satire or excuses you.

Apparently this is neither satire nor excusable:

“I’m a rapist. I’m one of those men who likes to force myself on women without their consent or desire and then batter them sexually. The details of how I do this are not particularly important at the moment — although I love when you try to make distinctions about “forcible rape” or “legitimate rape” because that gives me all sorts of wiggle room — but I will tell you one of the details about why I do it: I like to control women and, also and independently, I like to remind them how little control they have.” – John Scalzi, 25 October 2012 

So, which is it, Johnny? Are you a rapist? Or is it satire?

The cons never stop

The amusing thing about McRapey is that he lies about himself even when there is no rational reason for him to do so:

So to sum up: I’m a Gryffindor, a Taurus, a Rooster and an INTP. AND, what the hell, Team Edward.

Translation: I want people to think of me as brave, strong, outspoken, and a fiercely independent thinker. Also, I get 50,000 READERS A DAY!

Now, which sounds more like Scalzi to you?

As an INFP, your primary mode of living is focused internally, where you deal with things according to how you feel about them, or how they fit into your personal value system. INFPs do not like conflict, and go to great lengths to avoid it. If they must face it, they will always approach it from the perspective of their feelings. In conflict situations, INFPs place little importance on who is right and who is wrong. They focus on the way that the conflict makes them feel, and indeed don’t really care whether or not they’re right. They don’t want to feel badly. This trait sometimes makes them appear irrational and illogical in conflict situations.

INFPs are usually talented writers. They may be awkward and uncomfortable with expressing themselves verbally, but have a wonderful ability to define and express what they’re feeling on paper. INFPs also appear frequently in social service professions, such as counselling or teaching. They are at their best in situations where they’re working towards the public good, and in which they don’t need to use hard logic. 

Versus this:

INTPs live in the world of theoretical possibilities. They see everything in terms of how it could be improved, or what it could be turned into. They live primarily inside their own minds, having the ability to analyze difficult problems, identify patterns, and come up with logical explanations. They seek clarity in everything, and are therefore driven to build knowledge. They are the “absent-minded professors”, who highly value intelligence and the ability to apply logic to theories to find solutions. They typically are so strongly driven to turn problems into logical explanations, that they live much of their lives within their own heads, and may not place as much importance or value on the external world. Their natural drive to turn theories into concrete understanding may turn into a feeling of personal responsibility to solve theoretical problems, and help society move towards a higher understanding. 


The INTP has no understanding or value for decisions made on the basis of
personal subjectivity or feelings. The INTP is usually very independent, unconventional, and original. They
are not likely to place much value on traditional goals such as
popularity and security. 

As for me, I have no need to lie about myself. Anyone who has read here for more than a week or two and is familiar with the Meyers-Briggs personality profiles can readily identify which category I fall into. 

Mailvox: a convention, converged

The lesson, as always, is this: don’t ever take McRapey’s advice:

Arisia is a mid-sized sf and fantasy convention in Boston which has been taken over by SJW’s despite some of us attempting to resist them. This year’s GOH was John Scalzi who triggered several changes to the code of conduct.

However, the con chair wasn’t satisfied was that. She insisted that every attendee sign a printed copy of the COC, even though it required 5 point type to fit on a single page. The con cobbled together new registration software and procedures to fulfill this requirement, but there were many problems with it. The registration line reached nearly 3 hours though its peak last year had been about 20 minutes.

Furthermore, faced with this fiasco, the con chair still was unwilling to back off the requirement to expedite registration.

Prediction: attendance at the conventions that have adopted Codes of Conduct that affect the experience in any way will gradually fall off. I know that in the Django project, the amount of emails and posts have already fallen off considerably, because everyone is, quite rightly, afraid that saying anything will make them a target of SJW attack.

This is why you don’t permit their entryists in the first place, and why you certainly don’t give into their demands. Convergence always eventually kills the converged organization unless it can latch onto a host that will financially sustain it.