And the prediction continues to unfold
Mar. 4th, 2014 09:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiAs I noted in a comment on sairaali's post here, my prediction continues to unfold, although it looks folks are opting for "bullying" instead of "censorship" as their rallying cry.
Haley Campbell's normally a solid, funny writer who writes snarky bits about farting and visiting sex toy factories*, but her piece in The New Statesman is a shit sandwich wrapped in shoddy journalism.
There's one legitimate complaint, of course. Yes, Seanan McGuire's tweets about Ross potentially making fat jokes. Seanan also publicly apologized to Ross's daughter, something Campbell knew, but doesn't mention in the piece (instead giving the bullshit line, "When I emailed asking McGuire to pinpoint a moment in which Ross had ever made a fat joke, I got no reply." Not like McGuire publicly tweeted about being offline for a flight home or anything).
(Of course, that also misses the real point of what McGuire said anyway. Ross might not have ever gone after fat people, and I'm sure not inclined to sift through eight million videos to find out, but a good part of his image is as an insult comedian. People who have been bullied tend to assume that insult comedians will go after them; they're often right.)
But the rest of Campbell's piece is a diatribe about how Ross is a real SF fan, and we should all shut up (Rich Johnston's piece in Bleeding Cool is similar flawed).
I've seen multiple folks ask online, but I can't find anyone actually accusing Ross of being a Fake Geek Boy. Campbell, for all her nifty quotes from Gaiman (who's her godfather, something that doesn't get mentioned) on the topic, doesn't quote any of those alleged tweets. I'm not actually doubting they exist -- given any internet argument, hyperbole will rear its head, and it wouldn't be the first time someone on "my side" of a debate has said something stupid. But I sure as heck would like to see some of those quotes.
But the majority of quotes I did actually see focus on Ross's insulting humor. Campbell, in a great journalist move that gives her plausible deniability, quotes Sarah Pinborough claiming that it's really just a bunch of Americans reading that one Mirror article, instead of possibly, you know, a reaction to shit like this. But hey, I'm sure we're all just ignorant and overreacting, and he'd be a great person on the podium.
We get the usual pearl-clutching, noting that "what the genre has lost in losing Ross is pretty much incalculable." Gasp! We'll never read books in this town again! Yes, as noted here, Ross certainly reaches a lot of people, and a tiny percentage of them would add up to folks checking out SF.
But so fucking what? SF is not Twine gaming or the US Curling Team or some other niche; I defy you to find one average person, the sort of person who follows Ross, who has never fucking heard of SF. Go on, do it. Yeah, they might not know what the Hugo Awards are, but they know what books are, know what SF is, even know what cons are, and probably know if they're interested. Watching a two-hour ceremony, even one that's somehow entertaining to an audience that lacks the inside-baseball knowledge normally required to watch the Hugos, would do what? Tell them that new SF books are being published, and a few hot titles. If they don't like SF, they won't care; if they do, they're not going to get a lot of new info here, and if they're not SF fans to begin with? They're not going to become them anyway.
Oh, and Campbell deserves a special fucking prize for this quote: "Does calling someone a “grating fatuous bellend” not count as bullying if your subject is famous? I call bullshit. Does saying horrible things about someone because you think they might possibly say horrible things about you make you the better person? In this tirade about insults and slights, nasty bullies with little self-awareness recast themselves as the victim." No, Hayley. I call bullshit. It takes a fucking heap of a privileged and lucky** to view "grating fatuous bellend" as bullying. Yes, it's certainly possible to bully someone like Ross (fame doesn't prevent it), but this wasn't even close.
*If you think I mean this as an insult, you don't not know how much I appreciate pieces about farting and sex toy factories; the rest of this piece slams Campbell, but not this clause.
**Yes, in this case you'd need both, and they are separate, if connected, things.
sairaali's post here, my prediction continues to unfold, although it looks folks are opting for "bullying" instead of "censorship" as their rallying cry. Haley Campbell's normally a solid, funny writer who writes snarky bits about farting and visiting sex toy factories*, but her piece in The New Statesman is a shit sandwich wrapped in shoddy journalism.
There's one legitimate complaint, of course. Yes, Seanan McGuire's tweets about Ross potentially making fat jokes. Seanan also publicly apologized to Ross's daughter, something Campbell knew, but doesn't mention in the piece (instead giving the bullshit line, "When I emailed asking McGuire to pinpoint a moment in which Ross had ever made a fat joke, I got no reply." Not like McGuire publicly tweeted about being offline for a flight home or anything).
(Of course, that also misses the real point of what McGuire said anyway. Ross might not have ever gone after fat people, and I'm sure not inclined to sift through eight million videos to find out, but a good part of his image is as an insult comedian. People who have been bullied tend to assume that insult comedians will go after them; they're often right.)
But the rest of Campbell's piece is a diatribe about how Ross is a real SF fan, and we should all shut up (Rich Johnston's piece in Bleeding Cool is similar flawed).
I've seen multiple folks ask online, but I can't find anyone actually accusing Ross of being a Fake Geek Boy. Campbell, for all her nifty quotes from Gaiman (who's her godfather, something that doesn't get mentioned) on the topic, doesn't quote any of those alleged tweets. I'm not actually doubting they exist -- given any internet argument, hyperbole will rear its head, and it wouldn't be the first time someone on "my side" of a debate has said something stupid. But I sure as heck would like to see some of those quotes.
But the majority of quotes I did actually see focus on Ross's insulting humor. Campbell, in a great journalist move that gives her plausible deniability, quotes Sarah Pinborough claiming that it's really just a bunch of Americans reading that one Mirror article, instead of possibly, you know, a reaction to shit like this. But hey, I'm sure we're all just ignorant and overreacting, and he'd be a great person on the podium.
We get the usual pearl-clutching, noting that "what the genre has lost in losing Ross is pretty much incalculable." Gasp! We'll never read books in this town again! Yes, as noted here, Ross certainly reaches a lot of people, and a tiny percentage of them would add up to folks checking out SF.
But so fucking what? SF is not Twine gaming or the US Curling Team or some other niche; I defy you to find one average person, the sort of person who follows Ross, who has never fucking heard of SF. Go on, do it. Yeah, they might not know what the Hugo Awards are, but they know what books are, know what SF is, even know what cons are, and probably know if they're interested. Watching a two-hour ceremony, even one that's somehow entertaining to an audience that lacks the inside-baseball knowledge normally required to watch the Hugos, would do what? Tell them that new SF books are being published, and a few hot titles. If they don't like SF, they won't care; if they do, they're not going to get a lot of new info here, and if they're not SF fans to begin with? They're not going to become them anyway.
Oh, and Campbell deserves a special fucking prize for this quote: "Does calling someone a “grating fatuous bellend” not count as bullying if your subject is famous? I call bullshit. Does saying horrible things about someone because you think they might possibly say horrible things about you make you the better person? In this tirade about insults and slights, nasty bullies with little self-awareness recast themselves as the victim." No, Hayley. I call bullshit. It takes a fucking heap of a privileged and lucky** to view "grating fatuous bellend" as bullying. Yes, it's certainly possible to bully someone like Ross (fame doesn't prevent it), but this wasn't even close.
*If you think I mean this as an insult, you don't not know how much I appreciate pieces about farting and sex toy factories; the rest of this piece slams Campbell, but not this clause.
**Yes, in this case you'd need both, and they are separate, if connected, things.