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From the The Guardian.
Introducing the Sad Puppies...
"The shortlists for the long-running American genre awards, won in the past by names from Kurt Vonnegut to Ursula K Le Guin and voted for by fans, were announced this weekend to uproar in the science fiction community, after it emerged that the line-up corresponded closely with the slates of titles backed by certain conservative writers. The self-styled "Sad Puppies" campaigners had set out to combat what orchestrator and writer Brad Torgersen had criticised as the Hugos' tendency to reward "literary" and "ideological" works.
Today's Hugos, Torgersen has blogged, "have lost cachet, because at the same time SF/F has exploded popularly – with larger-than-life, exciting, entertaining franchises and products – the voting body of 'fandom' have tended to go in the opposite direction: niche, academic, overtly to the Left in ideology and flavor, and ultimately lacking what might best be called visceral, gut-level, swashbuckling fun".
Twenty years ago, he writes, "if you saw a lovely spaceship on a book cover, with a gorgeous planet in the background, you could be pretty sure you were going to get a rousing space adventure featuring starships and distant, amazing worlds". Nowadays, he claims, the same jacket is likely to be a story "merely about racial prejudice and exploitation, with interplanetary or interstellar trappings".
And here we have the Rabid Puppies definitely not mentioning GamerGate:
Another group of allied rightwing campaigners, dubbing themselves the Rabid Puppies and led by Vox Day, real name Theodore Beale, have also added their voices to the block-voting campaign against what Day called "the left-wing control freaks who have subjected science fiction to ideological control for two decades and are now attempting to do the same thing in the game industry".
And finally a bit of Martin:
"Call it block voting. Call it ballot stuffing. Call it gaming the system. There's truth to all of those characterisations. You can't call it cheating, though. It was all within the rules. But many things can be legal, and still bad ... and this is one of those, from where I sit. I think the Sad Puppies have broken the Hugo awards, and I am not sure they can ever be repaired," he wrote.
"If the Sad Puppies wanted to start their own award ... for Best Conservative SF, or Best Space Opera, or Best Military SF, or Best Old-Fashioned SF the Way It Used to Be ... whatever it is they are actually looking for ... hey, I don't think anyone would have any objections to that. I certainly wouldn't. More power to them," he added. "But that's not what they are doing here, it seems to me. Instead they seem to want to take the Hugos and turn them into their own awards."
(Score: 5, Informative) by naubol on Monday April 13 2015, @05:33PM
I suppose you're also confused about how certain minorities also dominate US politics. Thanks for providing a real life demonstration of how angry internetters shave off nuance by not understanding what is actually happening, assuming you know what is going on without doing any research, and using overly simplistic characterized arguments. For god's sake, you even used bold!
I'm not sure you're willing to engage with nuance, and I'm sorry I refuse to use bold, but here are some properties...
The system starts by voting on nominees. Since only the top 5 take all, votes can be diluted by multiple people in the majority voting among a pool of hundreds. The minority was able to take control of this process by publishing a list of five so that all five were nominated, shutting out any majority selections due to insufficient agglutination.
Also, the majority, historically, has been less interested in voting for nominees than in voting in the final round, thus requiring less effort to steal the election via ballot stuffing on the minority's part.
To vote, you pay $40, which was ostensibly to be apart of the associated convention, Worldcon. Now, imagine that we asked all voters in a general election to pay to vote, you'd likely drain off a lot of people interested in voting who either didn't have the money or simply weren't riled up enough. This may be a positive idea to you, but to me it is anathema to reasonable politics.
History is also rife with examples of minorities gaming systems for a variety of reasons. Your bold ignorance of this possibility is a little alarming.
If you do reply, please consider employing facts, reason, dispassion, and normal fonts.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by Vanderhoth on Monday April 13 2015, @05:41PM
I really hate to point this out, but reading through the comments, you're only one of a few, mostly anonymous accounts, sounding really angry.
Surely you see the hypocrisy in claiming an internet minority of natters is perpetually outraged, while being one of a few outraged in an internet forum where the most outraged are in the minority of posts.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 3, Touché) by naubol on Monday April 13 2015, @06:03PM
I wish I had mod points so I could mod you "touche".
You don't hate to point this out, however. And, you haven't added substance, either.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @09:15PM
> I wish I had mod points so I could mod you "touche".
You misspelled douche.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday April 13 2015, @07:29PM
Yeah, saying that certain minorities dominate U.S. politics is racist. And we all know that racists should be ignored, censored, and banned; and that they are angry and there is no truth to anything they say.
Because racists' cocks aren't as big as the Big, Black ones.
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Wednesday April 15 2015, @05:27AM
On the plus side my trousers/pants only need two legs … wait, what? :3
*sings a little of Grace Jones' “Pull Up To The Bumper” [wikipedia.org] (long black limousine etc.) before watching Aphex Twin's “Windowlicker” [wikipedia.org]¹* (and that must be one of the most epic Wikipedia pages ever, far better than the page on “Come To Daddy” [wikipedia.org] another song which also has a hilarious video²).
¹ “Windowlicker” on YouTube here [youtube.com] (longer is better).
² “Come To Daddy” on YouTube here [youtube.com] (perhaps less accessible comedy).
Sorry for the derailment and thank you for triggering a revisit to those videos, I really needed a few good laughs today and feel much better now :)
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @08:24PM
> I really hate to point this out, but reading through the comments,
> you're only one of a few, mostly anonymous accounts, sounding really angry.
Ah, the "you mad bro?" rejoinder.
Now we know who has the superior argument.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday April 13 2015, @09:19PM
But I hear that Noah Ward is top in all the categories!