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posted by LaminatorX on Monday April 13 2015, @11:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the Livejournal-still-works dept.

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."

 
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  • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday April 16 2015, @09:10AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday April 16 2015, @09:10AM (#171487) Journal

    I have literally seen one go on and on about how whites are worthless and should be wiped from the earth and blacks should be given control of the planet...and he was as white as a '64 Barbie doll.

    Sounds good to me, Hairfoot! Better than having to run Micro$oft! And I am whiter than all Barbie dolls. You do refer to Klaus Barbie, do you not? So, what militia do you belong to?

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Thursday April 16 2015, @10:46AM

    by Vanderhoth (61) on Thursday April 16 2015, @10:46AM (#171507)

    Wow, that was really uncalled for. Unfortunately over the last 8 months, I've actually seen people making the argument Hairyfeet was talking about. There are terrible people out there that say and do terrible things in the name of "Social Justice". I have no issue with giving people a leg up, I have a huge problem with cut off the legs of those who are doing better, whether it's because they're privileged or because they just worked hard or even maybe because they're women/minorities that just don't fall in line.

    https://twitter.com/MyOwnGalPal/status/588532142210093060 [twitter.com]
    https://twitter.com/MyOwnGalPal/status/588538384156614657 [twitter.com]
    https://twitter.com/MyOwnGalPal/status/588538873371758592 [twitter.com]
    https://twitter.com/ListerTheFister/status/588541605734436864 [twitter.com]
    https://twitter.com/ListerTheFister/status/588544528614879233 [twitter.com]
    https://twitter.com/ParanoidsBible/status/588550559575252992 [twitter.com]
    https://twitter.com/demasking_woo/status/588533037790588928 [twitter.com]
    https://twitter.com/MyOwnGalPal/status/588536995485356032 [twitter.com]

    There's a ton more in the #StopWebH8 tag, but I think the above kind of makes the point
    https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=%23StopWebH8&src=tyah [twitter.com]

    --
    "Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
    • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday April 16 2015, @12:29PM

      by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Thursday April 16 2015, @12:29PM (#171548) Journal

      See what I mean? He is white and calling for the murder of his own race....THAT is how programmed and browbeaten he is, he literally can have ZERO pride in anything about himself because he is a beta white male. And notice how it does not matter that I am a card carrying socialist that believes in everything from gay rights to universal health care because I won't grovel and beg for forgiveness for things nobody in my family ever did (as I said we were in Ireland during slavery and when we got here we were poor share croppers that were discriminated against ourselves) I MUST be a right winger because only a right winger could ever be against them, special snowflakes that they are.

      And there have to be a couple of admins at this site that is SJWs because myself and several others have pointed out that several users have been targeted by modbombing...not a damned thing has been done. Hell I had one post that simply said "You can't judge how old a PC is by it coming with XP as it was sold nationally until 2009" that went from +5 to -1 to +5 more than 3 times in less than 12 hours! And looking at my messages just yesterday I had multiple posts doing the same thing, +5 to 0 to +5 over and over....this is not surprising as SJWs do not believe anybody but themselves have the right to free speech but you can be sure its gonna turn off a lot of people from contributing here as nobody likes a biased site.

      But of course this sadly is the SOP of the SJW, get in a position with a little bit of clout and wreck the joint, and if they can't do that use an army or sockpuppets to bury anybody who does not think like they do, no matter the race or sex. I have ZERO doubt if you look at those under modbomb attack you'll find its only a couple of IP addresses that are doing this to the same users over and over AND OVER, this is obviously stalking, but again not a thing will be done. Its sad as I had high hopes for this site but now find myself spending more and more time at pipedot.

      --
      ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
      • (Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Thursday April 16 2015, @01:52PM

        by Vanderhoth (61) on Thursday April 16 2015, @01:52PM (#171587)

        if they can't do that use an army or sockpuppets

        An interesting tactic I've seen used in comment sections using Disqus, people will create sock accounts and go argue with people. After they've racked up hundreds of comments, they delete the account leaving a ton of comments all marked as "guest" which makes it look like there was a shit ton of people in the comments disagreeing with like 20 people. When in fact it was 1 - 2 people arguing with everyone else.

        My theory is they used named accounts because they suspect people will be on their side and/or as a signifier for others that they're an ally so they can "circle jerk" and "dog pile" certain commenters. If things go south, they delete the named account making it look like exponentially more people were on their side. This actually happened on the ABC Nightline video that linked Anita Sarkeesian's "harassment" with GamerGate

        This was a very insightful video [youtube.com] that explains the mentality and how people could use conformity to trick people into thinking they're going against popular opinion, which either keeps them from speaking out or gets them to join in so they conform to the group.

        Just reading though the SN comments on this article you notice a ton of Anonymous comments, a lot use language and grammar signifiers that you could pretty confidently say they're coming from the same person. You might even be able to pick out the named account with a pretty high degree of certainty the AC comments are actually coming from if you read really carefully. People trying to make it sound like anyone not denouncing Sad Puppies are on board because of some "conspiracy" or they talk about "secret cabals", when in fact it's been known for years there are individual authors self promoting, submitted slates and campaigned for votes. There's nothing conspiratorial or secret about it, but a good way to discredit someone is to make them look like a conspiracy nut. Even if they have actual evidence and can point to specific people and recorded past behavior supporting it.

        If you can't attack the argument, attack the person making it.

        --
        "Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
        • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday April 16 2015, @08:16PM

          by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Thursday April 16 2015, @08:16PM (#171715) Journal

          Don't forget the stalking, my son ended up getting rid of his FB account because he was constantly getting attacks from SJWs simply because he was a gay that refused to support their bullshit. I've had to spend entire weekends dealing with tech support at sites like Yahoo and Google because they would try to lock me out of my account by making repeatedly login attempts until it would throw a flag on their system.

          And like I said I had high hopes that this site would be a return to the old Slash, where we could actually talk about tech without all the political bullshit but myself and several others have been stalked and modbombed almost daily (some others are reporting their are under constant attack) and the response from the admins? they just mod the person back up, which does fuck and all about the stalking and sockpuppets. I mean its really not hard to spot, hell I could probably write a script in 5 minutes that would flag and highlight modbombers...when you have a single IP address downmodding the same user on multiple posts or multiple times? Its a modbomber. If a person gets modded to +5 and then suddenly drops to 0 the day after it leaves the front page where the majority won't see what is going on? Modbomb.

          If a site doesn't stop shit? You can be pretty sure that one or more admins support it, because any rational person knows that if you let shit like this goes on it just emboldens the stalkers and they WILL escalate. I saw this on other sites, such as OSNews where they said "Its a free speech issue"...until they ended up with a couple articles that were filled with over 200 posts by brand new accounts saying "choke on a cock you dyke bitch" targeting a lesbian poster that was being stalked. If you wanna see what this site will end up if they don't get a handle on it? Look at the forums of Jezebel or the Escapist, where its nothing but a handful of "yes I agree completely" asskissers that agree with everything the admins say or do while the userbase dies as nobody wants to contribute to an echo chamber.

          --
          ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.