Gamergate is ever so concerned about internet mobs

I finally got around to reading Larry Correia’s take on the Amelia Zhao affair. For those not familiar with this kerfuffle, Zhao is an aspiring YA author whose debut fantasy book was due to be published in June (https://ameliezhao.com ). The book received a substantially less than warm welcome within YA-social media. The core of the criticism was from people who had read the book but the wider antagonism against the book was more secondhand. Feeling besieged by claims of racism within the work and debatable plagiarism (as I understand it more like cases of cliches or being very derivative), Zhao withdrew the book. [That’s my potted version, corrections welcome]

There’s an important issue here on legitimate criticism of creative work versus collective bullying or bad-faith verbal attacks on authors. It is more than possible for a given situation to include all three. Unintentional bullying tactics (eg the classic internet comment section dogpile) where any one individual is just expressing a reasonable opinion but which adds to what appears to be the infamous/nebulous internet “mob”. I don’t know what the solution is to these issues but “nobody can criticise authors or there works” isn’t it.

So I’m parking that question of practical ethics for the moment. I’ve got my own code around internet arguments (always be more civil and more charitable to the person you are arguing with than the person you are arguing with) but that doesn’t address questions of unintended collective bullying.

Anyway, quicker than you can say “SJW” in a sneering tone, our old pal Larry Correia waded in to castigate all and sundry: http://monsterhunternation.com/2019/01/31/to-the-book-community-go-fuck-yourself-an-anti-apology/#comment-93892 (link for reference – you can probably guess the tone and overall message).

Several points spring to mind:

• If you are an aspiring writer and ever doubt your capacity to put word to page, don’t forget that Larry Correia is a very successful writer commercially and makes a good living from his books. He himself has pointed out that having an entertaining story to tell is more important that your wordsmithing capability. Tell a fun story and don’t worry whether you are actually brilliant at putting sentences together: Larry isn’t and it hasn’t held him back and seriously, good for him.
• That first point might be inspiring but it contains the seeds of author obnoxiousness and self-entitlement that keeps cropping up. Sure the Sad Pups were a particular political example but it’s not confined to the right. One reaction to the self-doubt that plagues anybody in a creative industry is to adopt a toxic quasi will-to-power mentality that treats any and all criticism as an attack that needs to be met with greater force. Authors that think they have to adopt Sean Connery’s dictum from The Untouchables is the flip side of toxicity within book communities. It’s same seed of rejecting criticism that makes Scientology attractive to actors. Success in creative domains has a degree of unpredictability that enables superstition.
• Larry was and remains a vocal supporter of Gamergate. So when he talks about horrific bullying by internet mobs he knows what he’s talking about. Sure, it’s from a point at the very depths of hypocrisy given he endorsed one of the worst cases of mass internet bullying and intimidation but we can rest assured that any ignorance demonstrated in his piece is wilful rather than accidental.

Put another way, in attempting to make discussion within a genre-community less toxic, safer and less inclined towards bullying (intended or unintended) the rants of Larry is not what is needed.