Tag: McRapey

Always an excuse

John Scalzi ✔ @scalzi
Friends posting results of an online test to show they have a huge vocabulary. But it’s not how many words you know. It’s how you use them.

 John Scalzi ✔ @scalzi
Also, I suspect posting the results of an online test to show how smart/learned/nerdy you are is a test in itself, isn’t it.

 John Scalzi ✔ @scalzi
I mean, don’t get me wrong, have fun with online tests. Just maybe don’t use them to re-litigate your performance on the SAT.

Translation: he scored below the top one percent and is ashamed to admit it.

Which would be no surprise, considering that he’s not in the top two percent of IQ either. Neither, as it happens, is Wil Wheaton, which didn’t stop him from delivering a rather cringe-worthy speech to American Mensa:

I am now going to talk to you about something that I think is the geekiest thing of all, a thing that most of us have in common, regardless of which particular part of geek culture we hold closest to our hearts: anxiety.

I have this thing called Imposter Syndrome, and I guess it’s fairly common among creative people. The way it works is this part of my brain that’s supposed to be on my side but is really a dick about everything goes, “You know, you suck at everything and you don’t deserve to be here and nobody likes you because you suck. Boy do you suck. You are the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked.”

This voice is relentless, even though I’m supposed to be successful enough to ignore it and show it physical evidence of its bullshit in the form of awards and a happy marriage and two awesome kids, it never, ever, ever shuts up. But while I was preparing for tonight, it overplayed its hand. It filled me with so much anxiety, it reminded me of an article I read about a study which indicated that highly intelligent people tend to have generalized anxiety and other mental health issues at a rate that is significantly greater than a control group.

And when I read that, I knew that I wanted to talk about it. because it doesn’t matter if I’m just a writer or just an actor or just a geek or just any of the things my stupid brain tells me I “just” am. All of us here, at one time or another in our lives, have had a hard time relating to people who just don’t get us. We are constantly surrounded by people who just see a loaf of bread, or don’t care how things work, as long as they work. They don’t stay up at night, unable to sleep, because they can’t stop thinking about how thin our atmosphere is, relative to the size of our planet, and how terrifying it is that we’re basically these tiny little things on a giant hunk of rock speeding through space at like 30 kilometers per second and what the hell is space, anyway? And if we really are in a computer simulation, what’s the computer running it in? And can I somehow break out of the program to find out? Wait. If I can think that, it’s just part of my programming so does that mean that free will is oh hey the sun is coming up and I haven’t slept at all.

And it’s not that we want to do this, right? It’s that we can’t help it. It doesn’t matter if you’re an engineer, an artist, an athlete, or a blacksmith. Look around you – everyone here has their own internal monologue. It’s what separates us from animals, that constant conversation going on in all our heads. And when we feel nervous about something – that voice is what helps us rise above the fight or flight instinct of animals – it can soothe us, talk us down, talk us up – or in some cases – blather on and make things worse. When you’re smart, and faced with a problem, this voice starts to break things down, so you can solve it. “Here is the problem. Here are its individual pieces. Now, how do we solve this rationally and logically.” It is not unreasonable to expect that by breaking down a problem into pieces, we should be able to make those pieces follow rules. And rules are comfortable and comforting and make us feel safe.

But anyone who has ever tried to reason with an unreasonable person knows that more frequently than we’d like, the pieces just will NOT follow the rules, even though they should follow the rules, because that’s the simplest and most efficient and most logical way to get things done. And here comes that voice again, only this time it’s telling us that everything is terrible and nothing will ever follow the rules and we’re all going to die and the frogurt is also cursed.

That voice speaks to me almost every day, and if I could just make it stop, I would, but I have mental illness. I have anxiety and depression, and I want you to know that if you do, too, you are not alone. If you’re like me, you get frustrated that the thing that makes you special, your big beautiful brain that is so smart and capable of so much more than some muggle’s brain is, actively fucks with you every day.

And it makes you wonder: If I’m so smart, why is my brain so dumb? Why can’t my brain just get with the program, and stop worrying about everything all the time? My life is great! I love my job. I love my family. I love my home and my pets. I love everything I get to do in this amazing world, and I haven’t even scratched the surface of what there is to explore on this planet! I make art that matters and I inspire people to do cool stuff … so why do I feel so terrible about myself all the time?

Oh, right. Because my brain is broken. There’s all sorts of interesting medical and neurochemical reasons for it, and I’ve learned everything I can about them, but knowing all of that isn’t enough to make my brain magically start processing serotonin and norepinephrine and dopamine in a balanced way, so that I won’t feel like my career is over when I’m not cast in The Dark Tower or Ready Player One,and feel like nothing is worth doing for days at a time, even though I know how irrational that is.

This is where being really smart is kind of the worst. All the skills that we’ve learned over the course of our lives, the things that set us apart from average people, they really don’t help. In fact, the frustration that we feel when those skills don’t work can actually make it all worse, because it’s not only unfair, it’s irrational! It isn’t following the rules, and this isn’t Vietnam, Dude.

And it makes you feel really, really alone. Like, you are the only person who has ever felt this way, and the only person who ever will feel this way, and if you just tried a little harder, you wouldn’t feel this way. But you do feel this way, because you’re alone. Yep, you’re alone and nobody can help you. In fact, it wouldn’t be surprised if you’re the only one with this infernal internal monologue. Look around you – nobody else seems to have this problem. It’s just you.

So anxiety is what makes the geek? No wonder I’ve never fit in with their weird little culture. What Wheaton is describing has nothing to do with being smart; I’m considerably smarter than him and I don’t suffer from anxiety or Imposter Syndrome, much less depression. Moreover, I know many highly intelligent people who don’t suffer from any of those things, but are very happy and well-adjusted individuals.

While there are probably some purely physical or developmental factors involved, the main reason people like Wheaton and Scalzi are unhappy and mentally broken is spiritual in nature. They are addicted to lies, a philosophical addiction that can be every bit as debilitating as a physical addiction. This addiction is a result of pride, as can be seen in Wheaton’s references to “average people” and “muggles”, and the fact that this pride is unjustified is the reason that Wheaton feels like an imposter. He feels like an imposter because he is an imposter.

Higher-than-average intelligence doesn’t make you any better than anyone else, any more than being taller, or faster, or stronger does. What it often does, however, is allow others to convince you that you should be something different than you are, or than you want to be. Even worse, it gives you the ability to successfully rationalize away your failures, to both yourself and others. Thus are created the Secret Kings who never, ever lose to anyone at anything, and yet feel like failures and imposters all the same.

One thing I’ve noticed about all these people with broken minds is that none of them ever seem to have played sports. None of them seems to know what it is like to try your hardest, play your very best, and still fall short. None of them seems to have known the security of winning the respect and approval of an opponent. Thus, they are always attempting to fill the hole of insecurity in their souls through various means that can never do so.

They also tend to be vehemently irreligious, which again tends to go back to pride.

So, if you have a broken mind, if you feel anxious and insecure, if you feel like an imposter, I have two pieces of advice.

1. Humble yourself before God.
2. Give Man the opportunity to humble you.

I’m not self-confident because I’m smart, or because I’m athletic, or because pretty girls like me, I’m self-confident because I have allowed myself to be tested, repeatedly, and I have passed the tests. The test is not winning. The test is getting up after you are knocked down, being a good sport when you are beaten, meeting rejection with grace, meeting failure with good humor, and accepting your assigned place in the social hierarchy without demur or complaint.

You can’t change the past or the present. All you can change is how you approach the vicissitudes of the future.

Winning feels great. I like to win as anyone else. I’ve won everything from grade school competitions to NCAA Division One conference championships. But even better than winning, in terms of developing self-respect, is having the rival who has beaten you despite your best efforts treat you with respect, as an equal, and above all, as a worthy opponent.

And I’m not proud of my intelligence because I know what it is worth in comparison to the glory of the Creator and the magnificence of His Creation, which is precisely nothing. It means nothing more than the color of a spot on a dog’s coat or the pattern on a snake’s skin.

Wil Wheaton, on the other hand, has a different solution:

Here’s what I need you guys to do. I need this entire room of people to make a pact. It’s just us, so what happens here in beautiful downtown San Diego, stays in beautiful downtown San Diego. So here it goes. You are the superheroes we need. But the world doesn’t know it yet. But they will. And something cataclysmic will occur, and the world will cry out, “who will save us?” And I need you to be ready to burst out of the crowd, rip open your shirt to expose your true identity and say proudly, “I’m ready! I am the SUPERHERO YOU NEED!”

Fantastic. Now they’re not just Secret Kings, they’re Secret fucking Superheroes and only these very special snowflakes can save the world.

No wonder they feel like imposters. They never stop posturing.

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.