How To Dismiss Critics Of Political Correctness: Hugo Awards Edition: Katy Waldman...Uh...Sub-Edition...Or Something...
Here's how you do it for x:
(1) Make some false assertions about Gamergate
(2) Analogize x to Gamergate.
The real problem for the Sad Puppies is analogous to the problem for Gamergate: the three parties to the dispute are basically the good guys, the bad guys, and the really bad guys. In the case of Gamergate, the good guys are Gamergaters, the bad guys are the Anita Sarkeesian / Jonathan MacIntosh / Zoe Quinn loony lefty axis of evil, and the really bad guys are the misogynistic lunatics who harass people on the web... And who help out the bad guys by sending them (completely non-credible, we should note) threats on...Twitter...or...is there anything that maybe has even less gravitas than Twitter...? The bad guys then overreact, pretend the threats are credible, and cite them at every opportunity as evidence of pervasive misogyny.
With respect to the Hugos, the good guys are the Sad Puppies, the bad guys are, once again, the loony lefties, and the really bad guys are Vox Day and the Rabid Puppies. Those guys are complete psychos. This Day fellow (whatever his real name is) is a far-right nutcase. The SPs brought a lot of their problems on themselves by allying themselves with the RPs. Apparently they analogized it to Roosevelt allying with Stalin to beat Hitler...but I don't see that allying with somebody like VD is permissible over something as frivolous as awards...even the Hugos...
Yes, there's a lot of PC crap in sci-fi these days...but there's a lot of PC crap all over the damn place... The best organized hope for fighting it in sci-fi is the SPs. And they are not going to be successful--nor do they deserve to be--if they stay friendly with the RPs.
(1) Make some false assertions about Gamergate
(2) Analogize x to Gamergate.
The real problem for the Sad Puppies is analogous to the problem for Gamergate: the three parties to the dispute are basically the good guys, the bad guys, and the really bad guys. In the case of Gamergate, the good guys are Gamergaters, the bad guys are the Anita Sarkeesian / Jonathan MacIntosh / Zoe Quinn loony lefty axis of evil, and the really bad guys are the misogynistic lunatics who harass people on the web... And who help out the bad guys by sending them (completely non-credible, we should note) threats on...Twitter...or...is there anything that maybe has even less gravitas than Twitter...? The bad guys then overreact, pretend the threats are credible, and cite them at every opportunity as evidence of pervasive misogyny.
With respect to the Hugos, the good guys are the Sad Puppies, the bad guys are, once again, the loony lefties, and the really bad guys are Vox Day and the Rabid Puppies. Those guys are complete psychos. This Day fellow (whatever his real name is) is a far-right nutcase. The SPs brought a lot of their problems on themselves by allying themselves with the RPs. Apparently they analogized it to Roosevelt allying with Stalin to beat Hitler...but I don't see that allying with somebody like VD is permissible over something as frivolous as awards...even the Hugos...
Yes, there's a lot of PC crap in sci-fi these days...but there's a lot of PC crap all over the damn place... The best organized hope for fighting it in sci-fi is the SPs. And they are not going to be successful--nor do they deserve to be--if they stay friendly with the RPs.
posted by Winston Smith at
10:33 PM
2 Comments:
Zoe Quinn isn't a bad guy by any stretch. She was insulted beyond belief right at the beginning of gamergate, with purely libelous stuff. Sarkeesian is another story. She started with a real issue, then chased it into.utter fantasy.
As for the sad puppies vs. Looney lefties...it's a bit less black and white than that. There are rabid sad puppies. And there are less-than-looney lefties that think the sad puppies overstepped badly.
PM,
I'll take your word on the Hugo stuff--what you say certainly sounds plausible.
I'm skeptical about Quinn being a non-bad person. If half of what her bf reported about her, then she's rotten. And she certainly sounds like a lefty type I've encountered before... But, of course, it's all basically rumors of rumors... So maybe... Though her other actions, e.g. with respect to the Fine Young Capitalists, screaming *sexism* when busted, etc... I say it doesn't look good...
I don't think Sarkeesian is necessarily a bad person. She's certainly in the grip of a bad theory and a bad, free-associative, politically-motivated, dogmatic method of reasoning... But she seems no worse to me than an arbitrarily-selected film student... Of all her sophistries, though, the ones I personally find most annoying are her efforts to pin things on gaming which, to the extent that they are problems at all, are problems as least with all of our movies and literature, and perhaps with the culture as a whole, and perhaps with humans as a whole. E.g. her complaints about the fact that violence against women is a well-known plot device--it's how you show that someone is a really terrible person. Now, her arguments overall are weak--you can use that point to argue that women are treated as being more valuable than men as easily as you can use it to argue that they are seen as the opposite... But, putting that aside: it is not in any way, shape or form a special problem with video games. And he she clearly treats it as if it is.
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