On Saturday, I published a report on World Fantasy Con for File 770. The convention was well run, the panels were good, and I found a few rare books for my collection.
The people who claim to be all about inclusion are hypocrites. The people who claim to be above hate are hypocrites. Your very existence is an affront to them. They whine and cry over at BlueSky but if you confront them, they’re the victims. Same formula, same mindless sheep. Screw them all.
The language of "platforming" is so odd to me – definitely reveals how they regard discourse as something structured by entitled power and not the respectful vying of ideas. Of course, this is woke at it's core: they are afraid to let ideas to stand on their own, so instead they can only trust in the centralized power of the algorithm to raise or demote "voices". It's essentially logomisia.
Hats off to you for being inclusive and sticking to your guns. Those who want to censor you are intolerant of tolerance, whereas the rest of us are doing the right thing of tolerating intolerance.
Some of these comments crack me up: Cadbury Screme Egg Enthusiasm: "block that asshole (and maybe his followers) before he gains a foothold here" LOL! The conscionable word is "maybe" don't cancel everyone associated with this politically incorrect pariah; just maybe. That glimmer of conscience – to spare collateral cancellations – there is hope for they/them yet?
Sorry to hear of the vitriol that you received. I like your work, and have some of it in my library. Whenever any of the woke mob says anything about me, I just reply with: "Thank you for your adorable response." Pisses them right off, and then I don't engage further, and just let them fume. More fun that way. Because, let's face it, those creatures are the clowns of the world, and who are we if we don't point and laugh at them for our own schadenfreude?
I find it somewhat amusing that people who didn't go to the convention were pissed off that you went to the convention and wrote a good review about it.
So much for Inclusion and diversity.
It's almost as if they've never heard of IDIC: Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.
It's about as incredible as you spouting hate. I've read almost 80% of what you've written, and I've never seen you spout hate. You have spoken out against the curse of Didn't Earn It, and about how dumb it is to have mentally ill men play women on TV, or vice versa.
Unless they consider just speaking about it to be hate.
It's taken years of examples like this, including a few personal ones, to radicalize me. And even at my worst, I just spout some angry things here and there.
I have never once entertained going after someone for real: attacking their livelihood, trying to ban them in person, tying to cancel them online, whining and crying to people in authority (bosses, collaborators, customers, and sometimes actual cops), and taking to social media to whinge like a cheated-on ex.
Let alone actual death threats and ill wishes (sickness, bankruptcy, and suffering).
Again, it took YEARS of seeing this played out almost entirely one-sidedly to make me even a fraction as vitriolic as what I see so casually posted by them here.
My question then: WHAT radicalized these people to this extent? It seemingly sprang up overnight and went full court press sometime around 2015, a few years earlier on the West Coast and certain circles outside that (like academia).
Where WERE all of these people before then? Their rage is so intense I have a difficult time believing it had been simply bottled up and waiting.
And they get so worked up over such trivialities, my rational brain has a difficult time even understanding the threat matrix they present because the cause/effect chain is broken. Like the example here: Jon says "that was a really nice convention, good job" and is met with screeching outrage as if he, I don't know, strangled to death three small children who trusted him completely.
Did the large hadron collider open up a portal to Hell and these demons swarmed out? Nothing about this has been organic. The way wokeness escaped ideological containment and infected everything, everywhere, all at once was gob-smacking.
The Global financial crisis birthed anti establishment movements on the Right (Tea Party) and the Left (Occupy Wall Street). The former was co-opted in the usual manner, while the latter required the corporate Left to redirect their base from class politics to identity politics. Of course, identity politics had always been there, but the Progressive stack/woke part only gained primacy around 2011. The very fact that resistance emerged makes them this vitriolic, as it is a substitute religion, and people are preventing them from immanentizing the Eschaton.
Edit: It is all funded from the top to protect the oligarchy from the plebs.
I think it would be hilarious to say you attended a convention you’d actually been banned from attending.
The usual suspects would start devouring the organizers in a matter of hours because they simply can’t help themselves while you were elsewhere engaged in other activities.
You are still operating under the Masochistic idea that coexistence is a good thing.
The left show us on a regular basis that they will use any means possible to make us destitute and subservient.
If if they cannot get that they will use violence to end us via things like swatting or just do it themselves.
And even their so called "moderates" will stand by and just let them do it.
We shouldn't be trying to coexist with them, we should be building a parallel economy and balkanizing because trying to coexist with them only condemns us and our children long run.
Great article, and it serves well as a peek behind the curtain of what it's like to work in these creative industries nowadays. I love to see smaller local shows get recognized attention for bringing fans of the genres together. Good job there. :0) I've worked in comics/gaming/scifi/fantasy for decades and generally speaking I've found that most of our collective fandom to be friendly, welcoming, good natured folks. But over the last 10 years there's definitely been a radicalization among the aggressive fringe who are so focused on hatred and silencing anyone who disagrees with them, that they feel self-righteously justified to turn that into direct public confrontation. Events like these should be where we all come together, so I appreciate that you keep that focus on your narratives. Keep up the great work, Jon. We'll all keep reading.
The people trying to exclude you are into science fiction and fantasy only because they are LGTBQIES/ Liberal/Hate Trump/whatever. They do not know they have sunk their own movement. Because some "movement" is exactly unwanted in science fiction. They actually think if they stopped posting on reddit science fiction would automatically turn into some kind of fascism. So little they know.
I think it’s time engineers wrestle science fiction away from the theater kids. First, engineers write about technology and systems and the characters finding themselves in these circumstances. Theater kids just regurgitate the leftist propaganda. Second, theater kids are cancel culture pigs. Engineers are cool, their brains is set to interact with reality, and they are able to separate facts from fictional narrative
The people who claim to be all about inclusion are hypocrites. The people who claim to be above hate are hypocrites. Your very existence is an affront to them. They whine and cry over at BlueSky but if you confront them, they’re the victims. Same formula, same mindless sheep. Screw them all.
And always with the nose rings for some reason.
it's because they're cattle and on some level they know it
Never heard of you before but will now be buying your books. Illegitimati Non Carborundum?
Welcome!
The language of "platforming" is so odd to me – definitely reveals how they regard discourse as something structured by entitled power and not the respectful vying of ideas. Of course, this is woke at it's core: they are afraid to let ideas to stand on their own, so instead they can only trust in the centralized power of the algorithm to raise or demote "voices". It's essentially logomisia.
Hats off to you for being inclusive and sticking to your guns. Those who want to censor you are intolerant of tolerance, whereas the rest of us are doing the right thing of tolerating intolerance.
Some of these comments crack me up: Cadbury Screme Egg Enthusiasm: "block that asshole (and maybe his followers) before he gains a foothold here" LOL! The conscionable word is "maybe" don't cancel everyone associated with this politically incorrect pariah; just maybe. That glimmer of conscience – to spare collateral cancellations – there is hope for they/them yet?
I'm not scared of talking to people. These people are deathly afraid of anyone with different ideas. It's really wild to me.
Can you do a video reading your best threats or will youtube ban you?
I'm careful on those I'll read some of these bluesky comments.
Oooh! Ted Chiang! I wish I could have come to give support, but one does not simply travel to the US with a baby and a toddler.
Sorry to hear of the vitriol that you received. I like your work, and have some of it in my library. Whenever any of the woke mob says anything about me, I just reply with: "Thank you for your adorable response." Pisses them right off, and then I don't engage further, and just let them fume. More fun that way. Because, let's face it, those creatures are the clowns of the world, and who are we if we don't point and laugh at them for our own schadenfreude?
I find it somewhat amusing that people who didn't go to the convention were pissed off that you went to the convention and wrote a good review about it.
So much for Inclusion and diversity.
It's almost as if they've never heard of IDIC: Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.
Really incredible isn't it?
It's about as incredible as you spouting hate. I've read almost 80% of what you've written, and I've never seen you spout hate. You have spoken out against the curse of Didn't Earn It, and about how dumb it is to have mentally ill men play women on TV, or vice versa.
Unless they consider just speaking about it to be hate.
It's taken years of examples like this, including a few personal ones, to radicalize me. And even at my worst, I just spout some angry things here and there.
I have never once entertained going after someone for real: attacking their livelihood, trying to ban them in person, tying to cancel them online, whining and crying to people in authority (bosses, collaborators, customers, and sometimes actual cops), and taking to social media to whinge like a cheated-on ex.
Let alone actual death threats and ill wishes (sickness, bankruptcy, and suffering).
Again, it took YEARS of seeing this played out almost entirely one-sidedly to make me even a fraction as vitriolic as what I see so casually posted by them here.
My question then: WHAT radicalized these people to this extent? It seemingly sprang up overnight and went full court press sometime around 2015, a few years earlier on the West Coast and certain circles outside that (like academia).
Where WERE all of these people before then? Their rage is so intense I have a difficult time believing it had been simply bottled up and waiting.
And they get so worked up over such trivialities, my rational brain has a difficult time even understanding the threat matrix they present because the cause/effect chain is broken. Like the example here: Jon says "that was a really nice convention, good job" and is met with screeching outrage as if he, I don't know, strangled to death three small children who trusted him completely.
Did the large hadron collider open up a portal to Hell and these demons swarmed out? Nothing about this has been organic. The way wokeness escaped ideological containment and infected everything, everywhere, all at once was gob-smacking.
The Global financial crisis birthed anti establishment movements on the Right (Tea Party) and the Left (Occupy Wall Street). The former was co-opted in the usual manner, while the latter required the corporate Left to redirect their base from class politics to identity politics. Of course, identity politics had always been there, but the Progressive stack/woke part only gained primacy around 2011. The very fact that resistance emerged makes them this vitriolic, as it is a substitute religion, and people are preventing them from immanentizing the Eschaton.
Edit: It is all funded from the top to protect the oligarchy from the plebs.
I think it would be hilarious to say you attended a convention you’d actually been banned from attending.
The usual suspects would start devouring the organizers in a matter of hours because they simply can’t help themselves while you were elsewhere engaged in other activities.
Oh that is deliciously diabolical!
You are still operating under the Masochistic idea that coexistence is a good thing.
The left show us on a regular basis that they will use any means possible to make us destitute and subservient.
If if they cannot get that they will use violence to end us via things like swatting or just do it themselves.
And even their so called "moderates" will stand by and just let them do it.
We shouldn't be trying to coexist with them, we should be building a parallel economy and balkanizing because trying to coexist with them only condemns us and our children long run.
remember that besides being wicked and degenerate they're also old, sterile, and increasingly irrelevant.
it is right and good for us to step into the spaces they are increasingly losing their grip on, and firmly plant our flags.
25+ self-references across all those comments tells you all you need to know.
I'm slow, explain it to me
EDIT: I really am slow, ha. I see what you were saying, the people complaining about Jon were a bunch of Opera Singers:
"Mi mi mi mi mi mi! Mimimi! MIIIIII!"
Great article, and it serves well as a peek behind the curtain of what it's like to work in these creative industries nowadays. I love to see smaller local shows get recognized attention for bringing fans of the genres together. Good job there. :0) I've worked in comics/gaming/scifi/fantasy for decades and generally speaking I've found that most of our collective fandom to be friendly, welcoming, good natured folks. But over the last 10 years there's definitely been a radicalization among the aggressive fringe who are so focused on hatred and silencing anyone who disagrees with them, that they feel self-righteously justified to turn that into direct public confrontation. Events like these should be where we all come together, so I appreciate that you keep that focus on your narratives. Keep up the great work, Jon. We'll all keep reading.
I started in fandom when the Vietnam war was still hot, and back then fans seemed a lot more tolerant of diverse political opinions. Sad!
These gatekeepers, including Paul Weimer, are full blown communists. I don’t know what else to tell you.
The people trying to exclude you are into science fiction and fantasy only because they are LGTBQIES/ Liberal/Hate Trump/whatever. They do not know they have sunk their own movement. Because some "movement" is exactly unwanted in science fiction. They actually think if they stopped posting on reddit science fiction would automatically turn into some kind of fascism. So little they know.
Thank you for all you are doing.
I think it’s time engineers wrestle science fiction away from the theater kids. First, engineers write about technology and systems and the characters finding themselves in these circumstances. Theater kids just regurgitate the leftist propaganda. Second, theater kids are cancel culture pigs. Engineers are cool, their brains is set to interact with reality, and they are able to separate facts from fictional narrative
Excellent point. You can see this distinction in writing styles in both Star Trek and Dr. Who series as they devolve exponentially over time.
It's jarring really.