Tag: rabbitology

The concern rabbit

There is no need for me to address Damien Walters’s latest attack on Larry Correia and me, since the big guy is going to be doing one of his monster fisks on it. I will link to it later. One Jared Garrett summed up the Guardian article succinctly: “This is one of the single stupidest pieces I’ve ever read. I
know who you’re referring to in this clownish rant and you have
absolutely zero clue. Either you’re too stupid to read and comprehend or
you’re being deliberately obtuse.”

What I found more interesting than Damien’s customary moronics was the rabbiting that took place in the comments, wherein Damien purported to be deeply concerned about the career of the very man he is publicly attacking and calling “not very intelligent”. Consider his comments of that follow the article.

  1. I think you’ll find they lumped themselves in with Vox Day. Why they
    wanted to do something quite so suicidal to their careers, we can only
    speculate.
  2.  I think Correia did two things. The first was appeal for
    votes on the basis of a perceived liberal bias in the genre. That was
    the basis of his campaign, a protest vote against liberal influence.
    That was divisive and did a lot to spark the backlash he’s still
    feeling. Secondly, and this is going to be much more damaging for him
    longterm, he allowed himself to become very closely associated to Vox
    Day in the process. Ultimately people do judge others by their
    associations, and both Larry Correia and John C Wright have made very
    public declarations of support for Day, that I fear both will deeply
    regret in the long run. I’m quite serious about my suggestion by
    the way. I think if Correia wrote publicly to support the new diversity
    in the genre, and apologised for any perception he was campaigning
    against it, that might help him a lot. Remember, we won’t know who
    missed out on shortlist places until after the awards. At that point
    Correia et al could find the response to them gets much, much worse even
    than when the story broke. 
  3. I’d suggest those 25 other writers work harder not to be associated with
    Vox Day. it seems to be doing the public perception of them a great
    deal of harm.
  4. The reactionary conservative movement in SF has many members, Corrreia,
    Wright and a number of others mentioned. Vox Day goes far beyond that.
    You’re welcome to defend his opinions if you wish, and good luck to you
    in the task. I think even the reactionaries would do well to distance
    from him if they have any sense.
  5. I have no clear idea what you mean by shunning or writing people out of
    the genre. I assume you’re bringing in baggage from other discussions.
    We have a genre growing ever more diverse, and a small clique of
    reactionaries behaving very poorly in response to that. And doing
    immense damage to their own careers in the process. Sad for everyone
    involved.

Meanwhile, the Blue SF/F market continues to grow, as do the submissions to Castalia, as does the readership of this blog. May 2014 marked the 14th straight month in which the average blog traffic was more than 100,000 Google pageviews more than Whatever’s best-ever month of May 2012. 

It’s fascinating to see how desperate the pinkshirts are to try to separate me from Larry, John, and everyone else. This is classic rabbit behavior; when they can’t exclude themselves, they try to convince others to perform the exclusion for them. Not that it would do any good anyhow. They don’t understand that Larry, John, and me are under absolutely no illusions that we agree on everything. Or even most things. We are three very different men who belong to different population sub-groups, different Christian denominations, we vote for different political parties, and we have very different interests and communication styles. Larry is the tetsubo, John is the rapier, and I am the Ka-Bar, best suited for close-in combat gutting. We simply happen to have earned each other’s respect for various reasons and to share a disdain for SF/F that elevates left-wing ideology over every other aspect of storytelling.

Nor are we alone. Damien doesn’t mention Tom and Sarah and Ringo and Amanda and Kate and the other Tom and Lou and Brad or any of the many other writers who have observed precisely the same problems with the left-wing infestation of SF/F that the Big Three have, (just a joke, John, I can see you wincing now) except to say that “the reactionary conservative movement in SF has many members”.  But that’s not the real issue, the real issue is that there are far more “reactionary conservative” readers than there are readers of the progressive Pink SF detritus that the mainstream SF/F publishers have been aggressively pushing on SF/F fans for the last two decades. And apparently two decades of a consistently shrinking market isn’t enough for them, because #weneeddiversebooks!

Damien is making the same mistake that Whatever readers did two years ago, the same mistake that CNN made in 1996, and the same mistake that Newsweek made in 1998. He is assuming, all the evidence to the contrary, that the numbers are on his side. Throughout his piece and his comments, he foolishly attempts to minimize the other side: for example, he refers to “little-known writers” even though Larry is a best-selling author, I have the best-trafficked blog in SF/F, and John C. Wright was voted the sixth-greatest SF writer alive.

Indeed, if there is not this institutional left-wing influence that we “reactionaries” all observe, and all oppose, how can anyone be “doing immense damage to their own careers” by opposing it? If it doesn’t exist, then how would being lumped in with me, in any way, be “suicidal to their careers”. Setting aside the humor inherent in an unpublished nonentity like Damien giving literary career advice to the Nebula-nominated Mr. Wright or the Hugo-nominated Mr. Correia, it should be obvious that Damien has assumed the very point that he was attempting to refute.

So, in the end, this is nothing more than a petty rabbit with a soapbox attempting to DISQUALIFY, DISQUALIFY. Again. The most offensive aspect of Damien’s latest attack is the insult to both Larry and John in the implication that they are any more susceptible to the Left’s blandishments than I am. I, for one, find it impossible to imagine either man being even remotely willing to submit to the Left’s ritual of public recantation and self-abasemen.

Why, one wonders, is it such an imperative for the Left to separate me from everyone else it is attacking?

The moving goalposts of PC morality

A basic concept of economics explains why the various evils of the equalitarians can never be conquered and serves as the logical basis for demonstrating that there is nothing moral about political correctness.

A positional good is a good that people acquire to signalise where
they stand in a social hierarchy; it is acquired in order to set oneself
apart from others. Positional goods therefore have a peculiar property:
the utility their consumers derive from them is inversely related to
the number of people who can access them.

Positionality is not a property of the good itself, it is a matter of
the consumer’s motivations. I may buy an exquisite variety of wine
because I genuinely enjoy the taste, or acquire a degree from a
reputable university because I genuinely appreciate what that university
has to offer. But my motivation could also be to set myself apart from
others, to present myself as more sophisticated or smarter. From merely
observing that I consume the product, you could not tell my motivation.
But you could tell it by observing how I respond once other people start
drinking the same wine, or attending the same university….

PC-brigadiers behave exactly like owners of a positional good who panic because wider availability of that good threatens their social status. The PC brigade has been highly successful in creating new social taboos, but their success is their very problem. Moral superiority is a prime example of a positional good, because we cannot all be morally superior to each other. Once you have successfully exorcised a word or an opinion, how do you differentiate yourself from others now? You need new things to be outraged about, new ways of asserting your imagined moral superiority.

You can do that by insisting that the no real progress has been made, that your issue is as real as ever, and just manifests itself in more subtle ways. Many people may imitate your rhetoric, but they do not really mean it, they are faking it, they are poseurs. You can also hugely inflate the definition of an existing offense. Or you can move on to discover new things to label ‘offensive’, new victim groups, new patterns of dominance and oppression.

This is why SFWA overreacted so conspicuously and dramatically to my factual statements about a token writer whose main role in the organization was totemic. Their fainting fits and outrage were conspicuous consumption, designed to elevate their status within the group.

The main reason that this crowd was so deeply offended by my nomination was because it cheapens their painstakingly acquired status. Here they are, brandishing their expensive, designer outrage purses, when suddenly the Hugo voters hand them the equivalent of a notice that they’ve bought nothing but a cheap knockoff that anyone can pick up for nothing.

And this is why my usual critics, such as Jim Hines and John Scalzi, were wise to support my right to be on the ballot despite the fact that we know they could not care less about the rules are. They have already learned, (even if they haven’t publicly admitted it yet), that they simply can’t keep up with the conspicuous consumption of the more extreme elements of the PC brigade. Eventually, they will be shaken off by their putative allies, because without shaking them off, the extremists cannot maintain their conspicuous pose of moral superiority.

Which further goes to prove that their professed moral superiority is only a pose and there is nothing moral about PC morality at all. To be meaningful and coherent, to be a moral standard, morality must be universal and objective. And obviously, a dynamic morality defined by the most conspicuous consumers for the purposes of their own distinction can never be either.

The purging of Donald Tokowitz

As I mentioned when asked yesterday, I neither follow nor care about the NBA. The extent of my knowledge of the league comes from a single Bill Simmons book, and I find it somewhat amusing to see the legions of the politically correct hot in angry pursuit of a rich Jewish lawyer who was the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the NAACP in 2009. Frankly, I’m a little surprised that we’re not seeing references to the Holocaust yet; the Times of Israel was relatively restrained in its headline: “Jewish owner of NBA team under fire over racist remarks”.

But I do find it interesting to see how the NBA and the media are very much following the program described in yesterday’s post, On Surviving a Witchhunt. Let’s compare:

  1. Recognize that it is happening. Mr. Tokowitz, who is apparently quite the fame-whore and loves to put his ugly face in the newspaper, hasn’t been talking to the media. Check.
  2. Don’t think that you can reason your way out of it. As I said, most people have the causality reversed. Doesn’t it seem a little strange that the league should react in such an over-the-top manner to an illegally-recorded conversation that clearly won’t be admissible in any court? I read Bill Simmon’s Book of Basketball and it is clear that Mr. Tokowitz has long been considered the worst owner in basketball and an embarrassment to the league. The league wanted him out long ago and it is unlikely that they would treat any other owners or players this way for a similar faux pas. For example, they have completely ignored Larry Johnson’s much more extremist call for a racially segregated league. Check.
  3. Do not apologize! I wrote that “They will press you hard for an apology and
    repeatedly imply that if you will just apologize, all will be forgiven.” The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to condemn the racist remarks
    made by Donald Sterling. The resolution also asks for an apology from
    Sterling to the city and specifically to Earvin “Magic” Johnson.     Check.
  4. Expose their excesses. This is where it will be interesting to see how Tokowitz responds. The league is overreaching legally, and being not only a longtime owner, but a lawyer as well, Tokowitz will be aware of that. He may well be in possession of dirty laundry that the new commissioner doesn’t even know exists; basketball is FAR from the cleanest sport in the world. On the plus side, we may finally learn the real reason for Michael Jordan’s first retirement, which Bill Simmons insists was related to his excessive gambling.
  5. Do not resign! I pointed out that “their real goal is not to formally purge you,
    but to encourage you to quit on your own.” The league is DESPERATELY hoping that Tokowitz will accept his public shunning and sell the team because they know they don’t have a solid legal case for anything, not even the “lifetime ban”.  (Which, as some have noted, was actually an 18-month ban in the case of Major League Baseball.) There has been some talk of appealing a clause in the NBA constitution that permits a three-quarters vote of the owners to force a sale, but it’s not triggered by “expressing unpopular views in private.” The league could make a better case for forcing the sale due to his having a mistress in the first place, but I very much doubt they want to go down that particular road.
  6. Make the rubble bounce. The NBA is in a lot of trouble if Tokowitz, who is old, rich, and apparently shameless, decides on the Samson option. He can probably single-handedly reduce the value of every franchise by 30 percent simply by monkey-wrenching the league through a series of “unfortunate” management and coaching decisions. And that’s without even getting into the ramifications of potential revelations concerning David Stern’s fixing of various drafts and playoff series.
  7. Start nothing, finish everything. I don’t care about the outcome, but I rather hope the old guy simply decides to burn down the NBA around him. It would be entertaining to see what happens when all the owners and many of the major players are repeatedly set up in bugged honey traps and recorded, since I can’t imagine it would be hard to produce a series of equally offensive recordings proving various PC offenses committed by a broad spectrum of NBA figures.

That being said, after reading about the brouhaha, it seems most likely to me that all of this is nothing more than a league-approved coup d’etat attempt by Magic Johnson and the investors behind him. In the present hypersensitive PC environment, it’s not terribly difficult to whistle up a witch hunt in pursuit of your personal objectives. Steve Sailer connects the dots.

Listening closely to the presumably illegally made tapes suggests that the mistress was setting the LA Clippers owner up — she’s the one egging on the racial angle over her photos cuddling with Magic Johnson and Matt Kemp of the Dodgers. Originally, I assumed her minor league lawyer was her mastermind, but the news that Magic and his mysterious Guggenheim Partners backers want control of Sterling’s NBA franchise suggests that there’s a reasonable chance that this whole set-up originated with somebody more high-powered than her Woodland Hills attorney. (This lawyer is so obscure that his office is on Burbank Blvd. rather than on Ventura Blvd.)

Former Los Angeles Lakers basketball star Magic Johnson was the public frontman for the secretive Guggenheim Partners in paying an outlandish $2 billion to Boston leveraged parking lot robber baron Frank McCourt for the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team. And now, what do you know, Magic and the Guggenheim Partners are willing to take the Los Angeles Clippers off Donald Sterling’s hands and add it to their nascent Los Angeles sports empire.

In contrast, the new Guggenheim Partners firm is very high-powered. In
fact, the SEC has been trying for a year to figure out if GP is so
high-powered that its Los Angeles sports franchise acquisitions are done
in illegal collaboration with … well, I won’t mention his name yet,
but it’s a smack-yourself-in-the-forehead name out of the history books
of Los Angeles and finance.

That may or may not be the case. But I suspect it would sway public opinion, to some extent, if it were discovered that Miss Stiviano was a honey trap being paid to unearth an excuse that would allow the NBA to turn a franchise in a major media market over to the Guggenheim Partners and Michael Milken.

Or, alternatively, perhaps this is just his punishment for finally managing to show up Showtime in Los Angeles.

Mailvox: on surviving a witchhunt

I was asked to have a look at this question on Roosh’s forum, as it is something that more and more people are likely to face in the near future:

Witchhunts are becoming more and more common. A full list of people purged from their jobs for their political or social views can be found here. The most recent and famous is the Modzilla CEO. Now it looks like another tech startup founder is about to go.

I’m considering putting together an article for ROK on surviving witchhunts, but before I do, I’d like to see how the collective wisdom of the forum would respond to this situation.

Imagine your RVF account is connected to your real name. A liberal staff writer publishes a viral piece on an unpopular opinion you hold. A former girlfriend spreads a false abuse rumor. An employee part of a protected minority calls you bigoted because you don’t share their politics. The mob realizes you aren’t one of their tribe.

Whatever the accusation, your off hand comment or personally held view spins into a scandal as cultural elites and twitter mobs call for your resignation. Industry peers begin to distance themselves from you anticipating a purge. What would you do?

As it happened, the tech founder did end up being convinced to fall on his sword. One might well say that I am the wrong man to ask, given that my lifetime membership obviously did not survive the SFWA purge.  (It is listed at number 126 on the list linked above.) On the other hand, having been through the process, perhaps some of my thoughts about it may prove useful.

  1. Recognize that it is happening. In the case of my own purging by SFWA, I was initially caught a little by surprise because my nominal offense was so minor, had previously been committed by literally scores of other members, (including three members of the Board), and carried a specific penalty that had already been applied. It took me nearly a day to realize that they were going to take the inch I had given them and run a marathon with it. By the second day, I knew they intended to expel me at any cost, by any means necessary.
  2. Don’t think that you can reason your way out of it. Most people have the causality backwards. They think the purge is taking place due to whatever it is that they did or said. That’s not the case. It is taking place because of who you are and what you represent to them. The truth is that the faction behind your prospective purge already wanted you out and they are simply using the nominal reason given as an excuse to get rid of you. Despite my long and detailed defense, I never imagined for one second that it would be successful. In presenting it, I had other objectives in mind.
  3. Do not apologize! They will press you hard for an apology and repeatedly imply that if you will just apologize, all will be forgiven. Don’t be fooled! They are simply looking for a public confession that will confirm their accusations, give them PR cover, and provide them with the necessary ammunition to expel you. Apologizing does nothing more than hand them the very weapon they are seeking.
  4. Expose their excesses. Most of the time, these purges are committed at least partially outside the organization’s established rules and forms. You may not be an expert, but some of the people following along will be. Make sure every step in the process, and every piece of communication you receive from them, is publicized. They will pull out all the stops to hide their actions in order to avoid criticism, and in some of the more egregious cases, ridicule. Nine months later, SFWA STILL has not publicly admitted that I was the member expelled by the SFWA Board, and they even filed a DMCA takedown notice against my ISP to hide their accusations against me from public scrutiny. So shine the light of truth on the insects and watch them scurry.
  5. Do not resign! Their real goal is not to formally purge you, but to encourage you to quit on your own. That allows them to publicly wash their hands of it and claim that your decision to leave was not their fault. They will often enlist more reasonable allies to approach you and tell you that it’s not possible for you to continue any more, they will appeal to the good of the organization, and they will go on and on about the importance of an amicable departure. Don’t fall for it. Don’t do their dirty work for them. Make them take the full responsibility for throwing you out, thereby ensuring they have to suffer the long-term consequences of their actions.
  6. Make the rubble bounce. Whether you survive the purge or whether you don’t, observe who has defined himself as ally, enemy, or neutral during the process. The choices will pleasantly surprise you about as often as they disappoint you. Target the enemy at every given opportunity. Benefit your allies at every given opportunity, even if they are the lukest of lukewarm friends. Treat neutrals fairly, assume nothing of them either way, and refrain from judging them or attempting to convince them to take a side. Never forget that it is better to be respected than loved by your allies, and it is better to be feared than respected by your enemies. Your enemies will never love you, so don’t spare a moment’s thought about trying to appease them.
  7. Start nothing, finish everything. Reward your enemies who leave you alone by leaving them in peace. Reward your enemies who insist on continuing hostilities with responses that are disproportionate to their provocations. And never forget, no matter what they do, they cannot touch your mind, they cannot touch your heart, and they cannot touch your soul. Matthew 10:28.

600 visits a day!

I’m sorry, this was simply too funny not to share. For once, I don’t mean to come across as arrogant; it is an accomplishment to have several hundred readers a day. That being said, it is abundantly clear that these rabbits not only have ZERO concept of the relative readerships involved, and they can’t even bother to take five seconds to figure out the score before hopping to strategerize:

My website averages well over 600 visits a day. Based on comments from
other fanzine people, I’m guessing that’s more readers than VD’s blog
would get even when he provokes a shit storm. Let’s deprive him of the
traffic.

Her guess is just a little off, as last Friday’s traffic was 46,456 Google pageviews. Lest you think it was the result of the Hugo Awards, that reflects a massive 12 percent increase from the 41,433 pageviews the Friday before my nomination got their knickers in a profound twist. In fact, one of the ways one can observe how small their little warrens are without them making the numbers public is the way one only sees a fairly small uptick in the blog stats whenever they are performing their usual point-and-shriek routine.

And, of course, my readership is but a brigade in comparison with the International Lord of Hate’s multitude of divisions.

THE CARL BRANDON AWARDS

But speaking of awards, TC declares “you are BY FAR my favorite PoC author” and reminds us that it is nomination time for the Carl Brandon Awards. The Carl
Brandon Parallax Award is for an outstanding work of speculative fiction
by a self-identified writer of color. The Carl Brandon Kindred Award is
for an outstanding speculative fiction work dealing with race and
ethnicity. You may nominate the same work for both awards.

My eligible works:

The Hugo-nominated “Opera Vita Aeterna”, from The Last Witchking, published by Marcher Lord Hinterlands, is eligible for both the Parallax Award and the Kindred Award as a short story.

The
Wardog’s Coin, published by Marcher Lord Hinterlands, is eligible for
the Parallax Award as a short story collection (one author).

QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted published by Marcher Lord Hinterlands, is eligible for the Parallax Award as a novel.

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravity Kills published by Marcher Lord Hinterlands, is eligible for the Parallax Award as a novel.

Other eligible works:

I would also remind you that the Hugo-nominated WARBOUND, by Larry Correia, published by Baen Books, is eligible for the Parallax Award as a novel.

Nominations can be made here. They cost nothing and can be made by anyone, but they must be made by April 30th.

A fair playing field

It is, I think, important to distinguish between the rabbits who are doing their usual rabbiting and the people at the organization that gives out the Hugo Awards. There may be some ideological overlap, but it is quite clear from everything that I have experienced and observed that the WorldCon people take their responsibilities seriously and have every intention of remaining above the fray. Kevin Standlee, who is one of the site administrators for thehugoawards.org, comments on the matter:

I have not seen any serious proposals to attempt to limit eligibility for the Awards based on the content of the works. What I have seen are “right-wing” people saying that they’re sure that “left-wing” people will show up and pass rules prohibiting “those people” (whoever they are) from being on the ballot. These are the sort of oppression fantasy that both the left and right are prone to embracing, and they won’t happen. Even if someone would be so foolish as to try to introduce such a tom-fool motion, I predict it would be shot out of the water faster than you can say “Object to Consideration!”

I mean this. The regular attendees of the WSFS Business Meeting are a fractious lot who disagree profoundly over many things (there are many people posting here who can probably substantiate this, starting with Our Gracious Hosts), but I’ve seen the meeting’s members stand together as nearly one when this class of proposal comes before the meeting. Indeed, one particular fugghead proposed four bonehead proposals naming an individual and attempting to do something similar to trying to disqualify individuals for the Hugo Awards (albeit it was about Site Selection rather than the Hugos). The four proposals were killed within four minutes. And the fool was naming someone who was not particularly well-liked and was a notorious gadfly. WSFS will stomp on such things, and the entire governance process of the society makes it so difficult to change the rules without being able to get a broad consensus in two widely differing locations (London and Spokane, in the current case) that I dismiss talk of trying to regulate the content of Hugo nominees (as opposed to their technical form) as delusions.

Every communication I have received from the Hugo Packet Administration from the moment they informed me of OVA’s nomination has been professional and polite. “Opera Vita Aeterna” will be in the packet along with the other nominated works, including all 14 volumes of The Wheel of Time, so it’s actually an astonishingly good deal for the $40 price of a supporting membership. And, if you recall, even when the nominations were announced, they were announced by the LonCon representatives in a level and impartial manner.

My impression is that the Awards people are primarily concerned that everyone follows the rules appropriately. Since Larry and I both did so, they have no inherent problem with our nominations nor do they have any desire to sabotage their own system merely because a few people on the Left don’t happen to be overly enamored of us. Indeed, they seemed to be pleased to announce the fact that a record number of nominating ballots were cast and I have heard they are anticipating a record number of votes for the awards. Supporting membership sales are also up. All three things are historical feathers in LonCon’s cap.

So, I strongly suggest leaving the Awards people out of it. Many of you have argued that it is important to separate the professional from the personal and the political, and they appear to be doing precisely that, regardless of what their personal sympathies and political inclinations may happen to be. For which, I would think they are to be congratulated, not condemned.

Now to speak of an unfair playing field. One of the site administrators of Making Light, Abi Sutherland declared:

(You know what I would love? adore? enjoy the heck out of? A genuine Larry Correia fan coming here and enthusing about the work. Taking about what it is, not what it is not; talking about why they love it rather than why they hate Librul SF and the Libruls who read it. And that is the difference between Correia and Day, in my view. I can’t picture a Day fan doing that and making it work.)

I think she’s wrong. In fact, I think my fans are every bit as capable of explaining why they love what they love in a positive manner as Larry’s fans. So, if you are inclined to enthuse about one of my works, talk about what it is rather than what it is not, and explain why you love it, I would encourage you to go there and do so. But I will caution you that you will be attacked, ridiculed, insulted, disbelieved, and most likely, disemvoweled by the Toad of Tor, so don’t even think about doing it unless you can remain calm and resist the temptation to respond in kind. Remember, you’re never going to convince the closed minds of the sort that will respond to you, but you can convince the larger numbers of more reasonable people who read in silence.

The nominees speak

Brad Torgersen, 2x 2014 Hugo nominee for Best Novella and Best Novelette, weighs in on the Hugo kerfluffle:

As has often been the case when I observe these kinds of things, I remain puzzled that the group which dubs itself “fandom” (in the parlance of the original Worldcons of yore) and which is always self-analyzing so as to determine how it can bring in more young fans, more diverse fans, and more energetic fans, could react so poorly to Larry Correia bringing Monster Hunter Nation to the Hugo nominations — as if the state of New York were aghast that the state of Texas showed up for a national party caucus during the run-up to a major election.

Isn’t bringing new people into old-school fandom part of the point of Worldcon?

But it wasn’t just Monster Hunter Nation that had certain people in fandom riled up. Wheel of Time fans managed to get the entire series (Jordan/Sanderson) on the ballot too — for Best Novel Hugo. Which is not precisely against the rules of the nomination process, but Wheel of Time is a massive series that is almost 30 years old. Seeing it in the Best Novel category alongside the other books for 2014 is highly unusual to say the least. So unusual, in fact, that some people in fandom have chosen to get upset about it; to the same degree those individuals in fandom are upset about Monster Hunter Nation getting the third installment in Larry Correia’s Hard Magic series onto the ballot, with Warbound: Book III of the Grimnoir Chronicles.

My response to the plaintiffs is: why not?

As does Larry Correia, 2014 Hugo nominee for Best Novel:

Allow me to explain why the presence of my slate on the Hugo
nominations is so controversial. This is complicated and your time is
valuable, so short explanation first, longer explanation if you care
after.

Short Version:

  1. I said a chunk of the Hugo voters are biased toward the left, and
    put the author’s politics far ahead of the quality of the work. Those
    openly on the right are sabotaged. This was denied.
  2. So I got some right wingers on the ballot.
  3. The biased voters immediately got all outraged and mobilized to do exactly what I said they’d do.
  4. Point made.

I’ve said for a long time that the awards are biased against authors
because of their personal beliefs. Authors can either cheer lead for
left wing causes, or they can keep their mouth shut. Open disagreement
is not tolerated and will result in being sabotaged and slandered.
Message or identity politics has become far more important than
entertainment or quality. I was attacked for saying this. I knew that
when an admitted right winger got in they would be maligned and
politicked against, not for the quality of their art but rather for
their unacceptable beliefs.

If one of us outspoken types got nominated, the inevitable backlash,
outrage, and plans for their sabotage would be very visible. So I
decided to prove this bias and launched a campaign I called Sad Puppies
(because boring message fiction is the leading cause of Puppy Related
Sadness).

The Hugos are supposed to be about honoring the best works,
and many of the voters still take this responsibility very seriously. I
thank them for this. But basically the Hugos are a popularity contest
decided by the attendees of WorldCon. I am a popular writer, however my
fans aren’t typical WorldCon attendees. Anyone who pays to purchase a
WorldCon membership is allowed to vote. Other writers, bloggers, and
even publishing houses have encouraged their fans to get involved in the
nomination process before. I simply did the same thing. This
controversy arises only because my fans are the wrong kind of fans.

It’s interesting to see how much more sane and reasonable both men sound than the Torlings and the shrieking pinkshirts offended that their little SF/F sanctum has been invaded by the ideologically impure. In any event, there is considerably more to both posts than the small portions I posted here, so don’t hesitate to click through.

The Torlings scheme

So much for the idea of moving on. In the squalid semi-aquatic home of the Nielsen-Haydens, the Torlings have taken their cue from Mr. Scalzi and are planning their Hugo voting strategy accordingly:

TOR editor PNH: On stories from Tor.com making up over one-third of the short-fiction finalists: LOUD CRIES OF WOO HOO. And congratulations to Andy Duncan & Ellen Klages (“Wakulla Springs,” best novella), Charles Stross (“Equoid,” best novella), Mary Robinette Kowal (“The Lady Astronaut of Mars,” best novelette), Thomas Olde Heuvelt (“The Ink Readers of Doi Saket,” best short story), and Viable Paradise alumnus John Chu (“The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere,” best short story).

#25 ::: Andrew Plotkin ::: April 20, 2014, 05:43 PM:

You made this coy statement in the open thread as well, and I confess that I still don’t know whether you’re referring to the Jordan/Sanderson or the Correia. Or something in one of the other categories.

#27 ::: Xopher Halftongue ::: April 20, 2014, 06:25 PM:

Andrew, I was referring to the Novelette category, where one of the items is by someone who calls himself “Ibk Qnl” (rot13’d so his egoscan won’t find this thread so easily) (and yes, he means what that sounds like he means by it) aka Gurnqber Ornyr, also known as “the RSHD” (for Racist, Sexist, Homophobic Dipshit – not rot13’d because if he’s searching for himself by that name, well, haha, RSHD). I see no reason to read his work and judge it on its merits. He would not do that for my work, or for any work by a woman or person of color.

#59 ::: Alan Braggins ::: April 21, 2014, 10:22 AM:

Charlie Stross has said he will be ranking “No Award” above “Anthem” in the retro-Hugos. I suspect he will not be alone in that.

#175 ::: Xopher Halftongue ::: April 24, 2014, 02:47 AM:

As for Vox Day, I propose that the gang of idiots who do the bidding of that racist, sexist, homophobic dipshit be henceforth called “snotlings” (I got this from a card/board game I played years ago). They’re not even up to the level of trolls. They’re just little runny noses with legs, and they can be annoying to clean up after, but not seriously damaging, because they’re so pathetic.

Since the Torlings have decided to so thoroughly politicize the Hugo Awards vote this year, it seems to me that one would be absolutely remiss if one failed to follow their example by voting NO AWARD above every single work published by Tor and every nominated Tor editor this year. After all, since there are so few of us and we are not seriously damaging, it can’t possibly matter what we do. Just a thing for you to keep in mind when voting time rolls around, for no particular reason at all.

A few more examples of Torling strategery in action:

tnielsenhayden ‏@tnielsenhayden
I look forward to record levels of “5. No Award. 6. Vox Day” in the Best Novelette category.

John Scalzi on Whatever
Apropos of nothing in particular, however, I will note that in every category it is possible to rank a nominated work below “No Award” if, after reading the work in question and giving it fair and serious consideration, you decide that it doesn’t deserve to be on the ballot and, say, that its presence on the ballot is basically a stunt by a bunch of nominators who were more interested in trolling the awards than anything else. Just a thing for you to keep in mind when voting time rolls around.

John Scalzi on Whatever
I’ve seen rumblings of people suggesting they’ll put everyone on the Correia/Day slate below “no award” no matter what

Charlie Stross @cstross Apr 19
I won’t comment on current nominees, but the dead are fair game: I’ll be ranking “no award” above “Anthem” in the retros.

Charlie Stross ‏@cstross Apr 19
No: it would be inappropriate for me, as a nominee, to attack other nominees. I shall reserve comment until after the award.

Charlie Stross ‏@cstross Apr 19
No, it means Vox Day’s troll posse esteem Vox Day more than you. I’d call that a badge of honor, if I were you.

Charlie Stross ‏@cstross Apr 19
I doubt VD can afford to buy the award vote. Buying nominations is a much, much cheaper kind of shit-stirring.

Charlie Stross ‏@cstross Apr 23
I
find no inaccuracies in this RationalWiki page except that it ranks the
subject with other, *real* pundits:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Theodore_Beale …

Ian Sales ‏@ian_sales
@PrinceJvstin the reasonable response to the Hugo farrago is to put “no award” above the Axis of Evil works

Djibril al-Ayad ‏@thefuturefire
I am looking forward to ranking “No Award” higher than Vox Day, Larry Correia, Brad Torgerson, Dan Wells, Steve Diamond, & Toni Weisskopf.

XoScarab Halftongue ‏@Halftongue
Well, look at this. A Hugo nom that ended up AFTER “No Award” on the final ballot. http://www.nesfa.org/data/LL/Hugos/hugos1987.html

Christophe ‏@Xof
@jacobian A quick moment to remind Hugo voters that ranking a particular work behind “No Award” is an option in the final voting.

Just F-ing Keftastic ‏@Keffy
A propos of y’know whatever, remember that the Hugo ballot has a lovely No Award option that you can place at any point in your ranking. 🙂

Andrew Hickey ‏@stealthmunchkin
Didn’t vote in Hugos last couple of years because Hugo Packet PDF rather than proper epub. May have to this year,to put “no award” above Day

James Davis Nicoll
Monday April 21, 2014 05:15pm EDT on Tor.com
Happily, the Hugos not only allow one to rate an undeserving work below all the others, it also allows one to rate said undeserving work below No Award.

Kate Nepveu
I feel under no obligation to read Vox Day’s work, under the guise of fairness or anything else, and neither should you. 

Mailvox: Mozilla’s Islamophobia

BC thinks Eich could have handled it better too:

I am a little surprised that you haven’t pursued the anti-Islam angle on the whole Eich thing — e.g.  “Mozilla Policy Denies Muslims Executive Positions.” Personally, I think Mozilla’s problems started well before they forced Eich to fall on his sword, and that they let the grounds of the debate be set for them.

While I don’t think firing those who complained (as you suggested) would have worked, they had other options that a seasoned PR staff could have found. Off the top of my head, they could have responded to the crisis early by pointing out that, while senior management absolutely is pro gay marriage (I assume that they are) that denying all who oppose gay marriage the CEO position is fundamentally incompatible with their open philosophy. Then turn it around and ask why it is OK for the boycotters (OK Cupid in particular) to be so openly anti-Muslim? Since when is extreme prejudice against Muslims not just tolerated, but encouraged? As a global company, one would think Mozilla would hold itself to a higher standard.

My concern about the firings is that they would be billed as proof that he was anti-gay and actually caused things to snowball.

Obviously, what he did failed. My main point is that if you can’t manage to present OK Cupid’s position as the close minded/thought police in this kerfuffle then your PR folks are not very good. Seriously, the CEO made a small contribution to an admittedly hot button issue where he was actually in the majority at the time, therefore we should boycott an entire company that, on the whole, is probably strongly left of center? It’s ridiculous. So, I am confident that it was poor PR even if I am not 100% on the correct solution.

My guess is that a better solution would show how open Mozilla is — something like showing muslims in turbans working closely with an extravagantly gay guy wearing ass-less chaps, two women in Subaru showing up at work with an orthodox jew, then show the caption “OK Cupid would have us fire half of these people. We don’t tolerate intolerance”. I would have laughed and OK Cupid would have looked like the fascists that they are.

The reality, I think, is that Mozilla’s board and top management didn’t want Eich there as CEO and was happy to see him forced out, even though they wanted to keep him around in a non-CEO capacity. (High function rabbits understand that they need some non-rabbits around to do the actual work out of the limelight.) So, even though they could have easily won the PR war and sent the gay fascists within and without the organization scurrying for the closet, they didn’t want to fight it, let alone win it.

Pink SF/F invades gaming

Not content with having all but destroyed SF/F, the ever-restless Pink Horde is now laying siege to the video game industry:

BioWare Montreal’s gameplay designer Manveer Heir received a standing ovation for his rousing “Misogyny, Racism and Homophobia: Where Do Video Games Stand?” talk at GDC yesterday. He challenged the industry to demolish the many stereotypes that exist in video games and accept “a social responsibility to mankind”.

“These negative stereotypes affect the identity of individuals in these groups. They affect the way people think and treat others in the real world, and perpetuate the social injustices that occur in these different groups,” he said, according to Polygon.

“We should use the ability of our medium to show players the issues first-hand, or give them a unique understanding of the issues and complexities by crafting game mechanics along with narrative components that result in dynamics of play that create meaning for the player in ways that other media isn’t capable of.”
femshep

He says it’s “very cynical” to assume the audience isn’t capable of embracing a gay hero or heroine, or “more exclusive women protagonists in games that aren’t glorified sex objects and actually have personalities beyond supporting the men in the game”, GamesIndustry International’s report added.

Realism arguments – ie that women weren’t soldiers in medieval times, for example – are “laughable” excuses, he said. Dragons didn’t exist either.

‘But the audience doesn’t respond as well to heroes who aren’t white males!’ – ie those games sell fewer copies. Hogwash, he argued. Those untypical games simply don’t have the investment the typical blockbusters do.

I’m not sure what is more astonishing, how the rabbits all follow the exact same script every time and pretend that it is somehow going to magically play out differently this time, or the fact that a fair number of idiots are going to buy into the insane argument. After all, what young male game aficionado doesn’t want to sign up to be lectured to when he sits down to commit mayhem on some innocent orcs or aliens?

This is only one of the many reasons I quit going to CGDC after it became GDC. Social responsibility? Fuck that. Games concern electronic entertainment, nothing more and nothing less.

And notice that all of Heir’s “arguments” are nothing but mere assertions, devoid of any evidence or even logic. It shows his complete divorce from sanity when he claims that basic historical reality is “laughable”. And speaking as one who has been involved in the financial analysis of more than 200 games, “investment” is not the sole determinant of a successful game; many a million-seller has been developed on a relative shoestring. Heir doesn’t understand that since dragons don’t exist, one can do what one wants with them. But taking a woman and making her a kickass ninja warrior necessarily means that she ceases to be a woman in any meaningful or recognizable manner, she becomes a man with cosmetic female attributes.

This has become clear to me after reading two David Weber novels. In his attempt to be sexually egalitarian, he has essentially removed all actual women from his books. There isn’t a single female character whose sex one could not change to male and have the change go almost completely unnoticed in terms of “her” behavior.