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Wow, the Scottish Football Writer's Association is full of complete bastards, glad I don't have anything to do with them /wryface
One of the reasons why I haven't been doing much on dreamwidth over the past few months was that I got distracted by shinies elsewhere and didn't have the emotional energy to say much on people's stuff (largely because it would have come out as largely "YOU GUYS ARE GREAT DON'T BE SAD YOU ARE AWSUM I LOVE YOU GUYS DAAWWWWWWW{{{{{{youguys}}}}}}" and I'm apparently too english or too jewish to feel able to do that in public.
One of the shinies that comes to mind reading the Elder of Scotch Football Writer fandom is a cool place that's worth checking out if you have the spoons/forks/sporks to put up with the stuff they document; Shit Reddit Says (SRS).
Basically all Shit Reddit Says does is find comments on other high traffic reddit subforums (henceforth to be referred to as "subs" or "subreddits") that are 1) nasty as fuck in a misogynistic, classist, racist, ablist, transphobic, homophobic etc... and 2) have been given at least 10 upvotes by other redditors.
people on SRS then repost these comments, with links to them and generally how many upvotes they got, and then the rest of the people on SRS see these, and start mocking them in the thread created in the SRS sub.
They have strict rules about "touching the poop", i.e. going over to the original comment and mocking it there, and very strict rules about upvoting/downvoting these comments - the strct theory SRS runs off of is that it's a "museum of poop, do not touch the exhibits", so all the mockery takes place in the well moderated venue of SRS rather than the rest of reddit.
This sounds pretty innocuous right? Pointing and laughing at fools in a subfora that fools have to do out of their way to find?
Well the mere existence of SRS has prompted at present count 5 dedicated subreddits run by misogynistic, racist, homophobic and frequently pedophilic (not joking about that btw) trolls and try hards who are dedicated to combating the "censorship" and "attacks against the foundations of reddit itself" that SRS supposedly does.
Can't think why I should be reminded of that when reading up on the SFWA, oh right.
For the full documenting of the irony involved in this let me just point out:
Many of the people kvetching and moaning in those threads are the same people who kvetched and moaned about the damage to public discourse caused by "anonymous" critics who "don't have to risk their real identity by connecting it to what they say". These same people are of course deathly afraid of public criticism and are hiding in private fora lest they get teased for their honestly held views.
Jerry Pournelle was one of the 70% of SFWA who, after Lem criticised Philip Jose Farmer's writing and, along with Phillip K Dick, was responsible for Stanislav Lem being kicked out of the scottish football writers association. Phillip K Dick at least had the excuse of being an unmedicated paranoid schizophrenic who thought Lem was stealing monies from him by being involved in the unlicensed production of polish versions of Dick's books, and also Dick apologised for this misconception later on so it's hard to begrudge him too much for that, PJFarmer is a snotty git though and always will be.
Pournelle on the other hand went on record, after Ursula K LaGuin criticised this literally reprisal against Lem for his criticism of western science fiction, wanted Lem out of SFWA because:
Lem was Polish;
Polish people are different (and all devout communists, back in the day);
Therefore Pournelle wanted Lem out of the SFWA.
(Lem being a far better writer of hard science fiction, and fiction in general, probably didn't help)
And of course Pournelle's never apologised for that, and in fact argues to this day that it was really because of a technicality in the SFWA's bylaws that got Lem kicked out... because apologising would require humility or a sense of decency or selfwareness or a functioning brain that isn't filled with the swirling phantasms of demoniacal environmentalists maliciously hugging trees and thereby impeding the development of human spaceflight.
But remember that; Jerry Pournelle is on record as saying that you can get kicked out of the SFWA for technicalities caused by SFWA's leadership having to operate per a Rules-As-Written reading of the SFWA's bylaws, but not for violating those bylaws in the way Beale recently has because...
Of course I'm being facetious there; Anyone who knows Pournelle knows that he doesn't want Beale to be kicked out because Beale violated the SFWA's bylaws in a way that involved Beale's white supremicist views, and kicking him out would obviously have a rather chilling effect upon Pournelle and his own public stating of white supremicist views, and ultimately Pournelle looks after Pournelle, ergo; THIS IS THE CENSORSHIP-SHOAH!
That the people trying to get beale kicked out of SFWA are very carefully linking it to his flagrant abuse of the twitter retweeting service doesn't matter to them because they aren't listening to anyone... not even to themselves!
Take for instance the way that, in amongst all that whining and the beardhurt about how being politely criticised for your actual opinions is a fate worse than the shoah, you ALSO get the defense of con-groping and editor James Frankel's harassment of Elise Mattheson, because sexual harassment of female writers is fine, but CRITICISM!? My word, they're as different in severity as night and day! (which is technically true, but those fools have their polarities mixed up).
And of course there's the ur-irony in amongst all of this: Beale ran for president of SFWA on a plank that included removing the right of female members to vote in SFWA election - so we literally have a guy on one side, who wants non-white members of SFWA to shut up because he believes that they're not as evolved as white people like him are and thus have no right to speak aloud in public, and this guy furthermore campaigned on a literally policy of having taxation of female members of the SFWA while depriving them of representation and a voice in SFWA elections... and the censors are the people who are publically criticial of him? - They're not trying to take away his ability to say things out loud, and even if he was kicked out of the SFWA, he'd have his membership monies refunded for the loss of membership privileges (and membership is a literal privilege, not a right).
But the REAL censors are the people trying to get him kicked out who are being very careful to get him kicked out for the right reasons so as not to create a chilling effect from setting a dodgy precendent.
Like say if an honourary member had been kicked out for being too foreign for Jerry Pournelle's liking.
("clown car of fail" tag stolen shamelessly from Solarbird's post on this subject)
One of the reasons why I haven't been doing much on dreamwidth over the past few months was that I got distracted by shinies elsewhere and didn't have the emotional energy to say much on people's stuff (largely because it would have come out as largely "YOU GUYS ARE GREAT DON'T BE SAD YOU ARE AWSUM I LOVE YOU GUYS DAAWWWWWWW{{{{{{youguys}}}}}}" and I'm apparently too english or too jewish to feel able to do that in public.
One of the shinies that comes to mind reading the Elder of Scotch Football Writer fandom is a cool place that's worth checking out if you have the spoons/forks/sporks to put up with the stuff they document; Shit Reddit Says (SRS).
Basically all Shit Reddit Says does is find comments on other high traffic reddit subforums (henceforth to be referred to as "subs" or "subreddits") that are 1) nasty as fuck in a misogynistic, classist, racist, ablist, transphobic, homophobic etc... and 2) have been given at least 10 upvotes by other redditors.
people on SRS then repost these comments, with links to them and generally how many upvotes they got, and then the rest of the people on SRS see these, and start mocking them in the thread created in the SRS sub.
They have strict rules about "touching the poop", i.e. going over to the original comment and mocking it there, and very strict rules about upvoting/downvoting these comments - the strct theory SRS runs off of is that it's a "museum of poop, do not touch the exhibits", so all the mockery takes place in the well moderated venue of SRS rather than the rest of reddit.
This sounds pretty innocuous right? Pointing and laughing at fools in a subfora that fools have to do out of their way to find?
Well the mere existence of SRS has prompted at present count 5 dedicated subreddits run by misogynistic, racist, homophobic and frequently pedophilic (not joking about that btw) trolls and try hards who are dedicated to combating the "censorship" and "attacks against the foundations of reddit itself" that SRS supposedly does.
Can't think why I should be reminded of that when reading up on the SFWA, oh right.
For the full documenting of the irony involved in this let me just point out:
Many of the people kvetching and moaning in those threads are the same people who kvetched and moaned about the damage to public discourse caused by "anonymous" critics who "don't have to risk their real identity by connecting it to what they say". These same people are of course deathly afraid of public criticism and are hiding in private fora lest they get teased for their honestly held views.
Jerry Pournelle was one of the 70% of SFWA who, after Lem criticised Philip Jose Farmer's writing and, along with Phillip K Dick, was responsible for Stanislav Lem being kicked out of the scottish football writers association. Phillip K Dick at least had the excuse of being an unmedicated paranoid schizophrenic who thought Lem was stealing monies from him by being involved in the unlicensed production of polish versions of Dick's books, and also Dick apologised for this misconception later on so it's hard to begrudge him too much for that, PJFarmer is a snotty git though and always will be.
Pournelle on the other hand went on record, after Ursula K LaGuin criticised this literally reprisal against Lem for his criticism of western science fiction, wanted Lem out of SFWA because:
Lem was Polish;
Polish people are different (and all devout communists, back in the day);
Therefore Pournelle wanted Lem out of the SFWA.
(Lem being a far better writer of hard science fiction, and fiction in general, probably didn't help)
And of course Pournelle's never apologised for that, and in fact argues to this day that it was really because of a technicality in the SFWA's bylaws that got Lem kicked out... because apologising would require humility or a sense of decency or selfwareness or a functioning brain that isn't filled with the swirling phantasms of demoniacal environmentalists maliciously hugging trees and thereby impeding the development of human spaceflight.
But remember that; Jerry Pournelle is on record as saying that you can get kicked out of the SFWA for technicalities caused by SFWA's leadership having to operate per a Rules-As-Written reading of the SFWA's bylaws, but not for violating those bylaws in the way Beale recently has because...
Of course I'm being facetious there; Anyone who knows Pournelle knows that he doesn't want Beale to be kicked out because Beale violated the SFWA's bylaws in a way that involved Beale's white supremicist views, and kicking him out would obviously have a rather chilling effect upon Pournelle and his own public stating of white supremicist views, and ultimately Pournelle looks after Pournelle, ergo; THIS IS THE CENSORSHIP-SHOAH!
That the people trying to get beale kicked out of SFWA are very carefully linking it to his flagrant abuse of the twitter retweeting service doesn't matter to them because they aren't listening to anyone... not even to themselves!
Take for instance the way that, in amongst all that whining and the beardhurt about how being politely criticised for your actual opinions is a fate worse than the shoah, you ALSO get the defense of con-groping and editor James Frankel's harassment of Elise Mattheson, because sexual harassment of female writers is fine, but CRITICISM!? My word, they're as different in severity as night and day! (which is technically true, but those fools have their polarities mixed up).
And of course there's the ur-irony in amongst all of this: Beale ran for president of SFWA on a plank that included removing the right of female members to vote in SFWA election - so we literally have a guy on one side, who wants non-white members of SFWA to shut up because he believes that they're not as evolved as white people like him are and thus have no right to speak aloud in public, and this guy furthermore campaigned on a literally policy of having taxation of female members of the SFWA while depriving them of representation and a voice in SFWA elections... and the censors are the people who are publically criticial of him? - They're not trying to take away his ability to say things out loud, and even if he was kicked out of the SFWA, he'd have his membership monies refunded for the loss of membership privileges (and membership is a literal privilege, not a right).
But the REAL censors are the people trying to get him kicked out who are being very careful to get him kicked out for the right reasons so as not to create a chilling effect from setting a dodgy precendent.
Like say if an honourary member had been kicked out for being too foreign for Jerry Pournelle's liking.
("clown car of fail" tag stolen shamelessly from Solarbird's post on this subject)
