The conversation's kind of moved on, but to wrap one part of it up:
Michael Roberts @204 - I certainly intended to give you exactly that slack. I don't think I said anything bad about you as a person, simply that I thought you'd misread languagehat and made an unwarranted accusation based on it. As I said in my last paragraph of @183, it's pretty understandable, especially when people are on edge - I wasn't demanding that you magically gain knowledge of his posting history, I was explaining why I would cut him some slack. But I was typing quickly, and so it was probably both less clear than I intended, and snippier in tone. Sorry if you thought I was ragging on you.
I guess I've got an advantage in that I read both ML and MeFi (which explains the unwieldy handle, btw - I wanted to be clear about who I was in both places, even though I only rarely comment over here). So I do have a sense of the backgrounds and characters of probably a majority of the commenters in this thread, and as such am more inclined to make free with the slack-cutting. Same goes for BoingBoing too - I'm having fresh supplies of slack shipped in just so that I can cut them some of it.
Of course, that doesn't preclude telling people that you think they're wrong. It just means making it as clear as possible that you don't think they're an asshole because you think they're wrong.
Michael Roberts@180 - that might be an arguable point if it was an indisputably accurate summary of what langagehat did, but it's pretty far from that. In the midst of an (understandbly, forgivably) heated discussion about the relative tone and manners of conversation here an at MeFi, languaghat made the point (certainly arguable, but also undeniably reasonable, I think) that the only truly vitriolic comments at that point had been made by a small number of people on the ML side of the debate. Then he said "I'm still waiting to hear whether ML people consider that acceptable discourse."
You can read that as a challenge to "the entire venue" if you want. I read it as doing the courtesy to Patrick, Teresa and the regulars here of not assuming that it was their number one priority right now to admonish some people for intemperate language in this thread. As in, he was literally waiting, with genuine interest, to see if this was the way people are talking around here right now, because that was in fact the subject that was being discussed at the time.
And yeah, the fact that languagehat has a long webby history of not being a troll does give him a little bit of slack. Not slack to get away with whatever he wants, but the sort of slack where you don't immediately assume the worst, most malicious interpretation of what he said.
But, as cortex said above, it's all pretty understandable when two communities of people cross over, and suddenly people don't know the history and personalities of everyone involved. It's easy to project the worst onto blank slates, especially when you're riled up.
It's all very sad, and while I do think that the BB crew haven't acted anywhere near as well as they could in this, they certainly have my sympathy for what must have been a hellish few days. Even moreso for people like Patrick, who aren't even part of BB but have been swept up by the whirlwind along with them.
I hope that in a while, once things have (hopefully) calmed down a bit, the Boingers can take a look again at what went on, and realise that a large portion of the criticism was coming not from trolls, haters and various other varieties of internet asshole, but from some of BB's most enthusiastic fans. It wasn't all outrage and accusations of evil, it was genuine disappointment, and an attempt to hold a valued source to the standards we'd like to see it maintain.
It's the nature of internet pile-ons that, where one or two comments of honest criticism would have been taken on board, when that stretches to tens, hundreds, thousands - with a huge dollop of nasty mixed in with the honest responses - it starts to look that the whole world hates you, and all negative comments look like they're motivated by malice. The "don't let assholes rent space in your head" approach is certainly an essential mechanism for not going mad online - but it's also one that requires constant checking. It should be a shield, not a fortress - you can't completely wall yourself in with it, because you quickly lose your ability to tell who's an attacker and who's not.
If there's a plus side to this (I know, I'm reaching rather desperately for some silver lining) at least its got out in the open a whole host of issues about online publishing that are worth thinking about for lots of people, from amateurs to professional bloggers to traditional media outlets. (I took a stab at teasing out a couple of them on my blog, but it mostly just ended up over-long and blathery, and I won't try to rewrite it here.) Hopefully, this business won't become so tainted with prurience and blogdrama that everybody just wants to forget about it and nobody learns anything.
Another plus side is that it's pretty clear that Making Light, even when it gets caught up in the worst kind of internet shitstorm, still manages to be a place for intelligent, polite and interesting conversation. So - good work, Patrick and Teresa, and thanks for providing these threads for people to talk in.
(Having said that: Michael Roberts@162 - did you really just call langaugehat a troll, or am I misreading that? Because, you know, that would be pretty off base.)
The best bit:
Hmm, let's look up the term satire:
“witty language used to convey insults or scorn; "he used sarcasm to upset his opponent"”
I think you looked up the wrong word there, my friend.
On sort-of preview: People should see it as a challenge, not as an insult.
Any art that predicates its value on instructing people exactly how they're meant to view it strikes me as spectacularly missing the point, in a particularly doomed and worthless sort of way.
If we stop sending this message, the avant-garde will die. In Britain anyway, an enormous proportion of art (and of the best art) wouldn't exist without government funding. Most of the public are already against this funding...
But, see, here's the thing. This was exactly the sort of glorious nonsense that the tabloids are supposed to despise. I mean, this sucker met every target going, it was allowed, encouraged and supported by those exact PC behemoths that are stereotyped as giving your hard-earned tax pounds to the Llandudno Disabled Trade-Unionist Gay Men's Chorus. The deputy mayor of London, Nicky Gavron, and the Culture Minister, David Lammy, were in Trafalgar Square to welcome the elephant. They actually played a part - they were shouting "welcome, Time Travellers" at the gigantic parading puppets; our elected officials, joining in the weirdness. And it was great. It absolutely gave the lie to the idea that the strange, the outsider and the avant-garde can't also engage with a huge section of the populace.
I spend a fair amount of my time working to counteract press stories about how 'Great British Institution X has been turned down for funding while Minority Interest Y got £50,000'. I know how important it is that the subsidy of the arts not be subject to the tyranny of majority interests. But if the avant-garde can only survive through barricading itself off from those it thinks incapable of comprehending it - well, then screw the avant-garde. It shouldn't need to be built on a lie.
Because it is a lie, and it's a despicable one. The notion that art is a priviledged set of experiences, open only to those with the right knowledge or connections or background - that's the death of art, not its lifeblood.
Did people come away from the Sultan's Elephant thinking "that's what our money should be going on, not that poncey avant-garde shite"? Maybe some did, to be sure. But I'd bet pounds to pennies that most of them came away a little better disposed to thinking, the next time that they hear of Government money going on some weird artsy bizarro-fest, that perhaps it wasn't a waste; that perhaps the unexpected can genuinely reach out and touch people; and that perhaps, somewhere, there's someone just like them, staring open-mouthed, gaping in amazement at the inconceivable and giggling in pure, simple, absolute joy.
Wordsworth was banging on about exactly the same thing two hundred years ago. Replace 'popular literature' with 'mechanical elephants', and the argument's pretty much exactly the same:
"For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving for extraordianry incident... The invaluable works of our elder writers, I had almost said the works of Shakespeare and Milton, are driven into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and stupid German tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse. -When I think upon this degrading thirst after outrageous stimulation I am almost ashamed to have spoken of the feeble effort with which I have endeavored to counteract it." - Preface to Lyrical Ballads
He was wrong then, just as Billington's wrong now. Popular art will never snuff out our intellectual candle, there are no barbarians at the gates, and there's nothing degrading about a "thirst for outrageous stimulation". In fact, without that thirst, the world would be a terribly dull place.
My friends and I would occasionally go on Ale Crawls at university. Often, when we were finsihed, we would display roughly Alec Rawls' capacity for logical thought.
I find this suggestive, possibly of a Conspiracy of Some Sort.
Delurking just to say how terribly sorry I am that such a worrying cloud would be cast over your festive season. Not that it'd have been any better at any other time of year, but... The very best wishes to Teresa, Xopher, and anybody else affected by this. There's sadly nothing much I can do from this side of the pond, but I wanted to say that the incredible amount of activity from everybody here is really inspiring.
*relurks*
The British instinct for queueing is one of the strongest and most all-pervasive cultural forces anywhere in the world. If you stranded a group of us on a desert island, we would spontaneously form a giant, rootless queue, which would roam the island like a vast, moaning serpent, seeking enchanted glades and rockpools to which we may be admitted strictly two at a time. Pushing-in would become a capital offense (or at the very least would get you sent to the back of the line, with much tutting).
It's how we gained an Empire. And, in all probability, how we lost it as well.
"ACLU of Louisiana, your director's [picture of a goose] is COOKed!
Want to read another pun on the ACLU? Click the News & Links page and scroll part way down."
I, er... no. No, I don't.
Please don't make me read the puns.
Any attempt to define them as sharp sets with very simple (one sentence, eg) membership rules flies in the face of everything we know as a) readers b) linguists c) neurologists.
True. Very true. But... but... it is quite fun...
*ahem*
You are reading about an event that exists outside of our consensus reality. Are the characters:
a) reacting to or utilising it as a fully integrated part of their normal existence? You are reading Fantasy.
b) trying to work out a rational explanation of why it's happening? Possibly with computers implanted in their wrists? You are reading Science Fiction.
c) either unaware of it, or accepting of it in a slightly dreamlike fashion, as though compelled by the unspoken force of mytho-literary convention? You are reading Magical Realism.
d) so affected by its unspeakable, eldritch nature that they are driven mad and gouge their eyes out with a twig? You are reading Horror.
e) distracted from it, because their arms are on fire? You are reading Infernokrusher.
f) having sex while it happens? Your bookshop has mislabelled the 'Fantasy' section.
g) listed alphabetically, followed by their contact details? You are reading a Telephone Directory.
That sort of thing.
I remember I once toyed with the idea that the existence of magic is to magic realism what the existence of the modern world is to historical fiction.
I quite quickly dismissed the idea as being, essentially, complete balls - but there was something about it that appealed to me. I think it was the sense that the magic was implicit, but removed; the notion that the author and the reader understand more about the magical elements in the world than the protagonists do. Once you get to the point where magic in a world is so overt that the characters comprehend it, analytically, as being a part of their everyday lives (of which the reader can only see selected scenes) you're dealing in fantasy, not magical realism.
Or something.
This is, without a shadow of a doubt, my favourite vitriolic movie review of all time. It's a thing of the purest beauty. And Sphere was atrocious.
“Being a middle-aged white woman is kind of like having civil rights, but not really an adequate substitute.”
One of my best friends was on a business trip in America last week. He's recently got a new passport, which corrected an error that appeared on his previous one - his name was spelled wrong (which is a bit worrying in itself). The upshot of this is that, instead of having a name that was just a bit weird, he now has a name that's clearly identifiable as being from... you know, somewhere over there. (Turkish, as it happens.) Now, my friend's a fair mix of ethnicities, and could appear to be Palestinian, Israeli, Afghani, Italian, Latin American, or even what he actually is - a nice middle-class English boy.
In the past few years, he's travelled all over the world - Latin America, South East Asia, and right through the Middle East - without having a problem under his previous passport. But last week, flying between six different cities in America, he got chosen for a "random search" at every single airport. And at each one, the exact same thing happened: they also pulled out the next white woman in line to be searched as well. It got to the stage where he started apologising in advance to any white women standing behind him in the queue.
The only time this didn't happen to him was when he was flying to... um, Canada.
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic testicle.
There are testicles that come free from the blue-eyed grass, from the dust of a thousand country roads.
"...But this is not that testicle's story."
(Is how I want that one to continue.)
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