Category: Puppies

More alt-right crowdfunding shenanigans

Nov 30, 2019

About a month ago I came across a very odd thing. It was odd enough that I thought the interesting thing to do is to just watch if anything happens. Nothing did happen and so now seems about the right to time to write about it. For context you need to go back to these posts:

Yes! It is our old pal Vox Day engaged in yet another winning gambit in a game of one-dimensional chess. The ‘odd thing’ is this neon-green thing https://www.patreon.com/castalia [no archive link, patreon pages don’t archive well]. It is a Patreon account for Vox Day’s vanity publishing house Castalia and the account is ostensibly there to promote his recent book (see my review above).

However, the public verbiage around the site is a parody of left-leaning language, as if it was attempt to hide the actual politics of Castalia, even down to the bearded guy in the logo.

Unless I missed it (which is possible) there was no big announcement of this Patreon account either at Vox Day’s blog or the Castalia House blog. It’s been sitting there since late October and after a very sudden flurry of subscribers has stayed stuck at around 16 hundred patrons.

There is an explanation from Vox Day himself but it is the form of two of his rambling videos.

I’ve seen elsewhere Vox say he wouldn’t watch his own videos and on that one point, he is absolutely right. I don’t know who has the patience to watch this stuff but people do and Vox’s fans watch even longer and less coherent stuff from Owen Benjamin. However, mid November I sat through most of those.

The gist of the explanation is this. Day has launched a ‘replatforming’ campaign, to take back the presence of the alt-right on online platforms. Of course, the extent to which the right have been pushed off online platforms is actually minimal (and largely through unforced errors by given individuals) but put that aside for a moment. Day is claiming the right has been forced off platforms and he will valiantly fight back. The bridgehead of his fightback being the Patreon account above.

I’m watching these videos with my head cocked to one side, a bleary confused expression on my face and saying ‘huh?’ to myself. Yet we must persevere to understand what today’s Xanatos gambit is:

  1. Hidden SJWs in Patreon will be outraged by the existence of the Castalia account and ban it. At this point Day launches legal action as do the 16 hundred loyal followers. The resulting legal victory defeats no-platforming. [No, I don’t get how that works but I’ll come back to it]
  2. The hidden SJWs in Patreon will still be outraged by he existence of the Castalia account but discover that they cannot do anything about the account legally and reluctantly let it continue. Having conceded victory to Day, no-platforming is defeated. [Again, No, I don’t get how that works but I’ll come back to it]

I’ll come to the gaping flaw in the reasoning in a moment but the initial issues that struck me were these:

  • If the plan is to provoke a banning, then why the weird stealth aspect of the Patreon? Pretending (even sarcastically) to be a left anti-capitalism group rather than a white nationalist group and then NOT getting banned hardly sets a new precedent for the alt-right to make use of mainstream crowd-funding. Likewise pretending to be a left group and THEN getting banned would undermine the right-wing narrative that only the right gets banned.
  • The whole ‘replatforming’ idea runs exactly counter to Vox Day’s avowed strategy that the alt-right needs to be building its own tech infrastructure.
  • Day wanted lots of subscribers with low level pledges so that many people would have standing in a potential law suit. I’m not a lawyer but I’m not sure that makes much difference. Is losing a court case of one person for $1000 any better than losing a court case of 1000 people for $1? Maybe it is?

In the following weeks here is what happened: nothing.

I guess by clause 2 of the Xanatos gambit that means Day won but a survey of the world around us shows that the status-quo from before October 28 is pretty much the same.

What Day has actually done is disproved his own narrative.

Day’s version of events (and it is one that extends beyond alt-right circles and is common among conservatives as well) is this:

  • a right-leaning person is on some online platform
  • leftists within the business running the platform hate free speech
  • the innocent right-leaning person is then cruelly censored for some minor infraction by the leftist underling…
  • and/or the right-leaning person is driven off by biased rules enacted against conservatives by the anti-free speech tech-giant
  • and/or a leftwing mob attempts to ‘cancel’ the right leaning person and eventually the tech-giant caves under the pressure of the howling mob etc

A survey of both high and low profile actual examples shows a quite different story.

  • a right-leaning person is on some online platform
  • they violate the terms of service of the platform
  • nothing happens
  • they violate the terms of service of the platform
  • nothing happens
  • they violate the terms of service of the platform
  • nothing happens
  • they violate the terms of service of the platform
  • something finally happens and they get a slap on the wrist
  • histrionics break out all over the place

The more substantial examples, were alternative platforms such as Gab or Freestartr lose access to key commercial infrastructure, are also when they themselves create significant business risks for other businesses. This may include dodgy financial processes but may also include connections to potentially criminal activity (e.g. enticement to violence that is closely connected to actual cases of violence).

What isn’t happening is a mass, concerted campaign by the technology companies to censor the right JUST for being right-wing. The myth of the SJW influence over social media and crowd funding platforms is exactly that: a myth. Yes, people on the left would like Nazis not to have a platform on Twitter or Facebook but these companies aren’t quick to remove people without repeated and overt violations of the rules users had agreed to.

Circling back. Castalia house set up a quiet Patreon that is playing strictly by the rules (I assume) so that when/if they get banned they have the best legal case they can. However, by sticking closely to the rules they are unlikely to get banned…which everybody with half-a-gram of common sense already knew.

Maybe Day knows this as well and this was just the simplest way of getting $6,000 a month from his marks/loyal followers? Maybe, I don’t know. As often with such activities, I’m not sure whether it wise to even write about it. We’ll see. At some point Day will declare checkmate and we will be none the wiser.

Dave Truesdale on Diversity

Nov 21, 2019

Dave Truesdale has a post at According to Hoyt on the issue of diversity in Science Fiction [ direct link, archive link]. I’m technically not blogging this week but I can’t really ignore this one.

I’m not going to do a deep dive into the essay. It isn’t great or well argued. The initial premise is that calls for diversity are at odds with calls against cultural appropriation. This claim is stated rather than developed or substantiated. That claim then leads into this:

“That this is patently absurd even on its surface is laughable, but if you say something often enough and loud enough and have the media on your side…. But on the other hand they do not realize that, by their own definition and that of wikipedia, they are appropriating the distinct culture of the SF field, which is an inviolable crime in their eyes.”

https://accordingtohoyt.com/2019/11/20/to-be-diverse-or-not-diverse-that-is-the-question-by-dave-truesdale/

You can’t appropriate a culture you are part of, so Dave Truesdale’s argument rest on an assumption that “they” are not part of the “distinct culture of the SF field”. This assumption is not overtly stated or explored.

There are also repeated complaints about the SFWA Bulletin.

The nature of the problem is exemplified in lengthy footnotes, including:

“The past three or four years of Hugo and Nebula fiction award winners bear this out unequivocally. If you are white (and especially those males who do not kow tow to the Woke’s party line PC ideology), you’re out. No awards for you. Belong to a minority (even an artificial one—are you a member of the diabetic minority and has the SF field oppressed or overlooked your work?—they seem to pop up all the time these days), are a person of color, or a woman, and we see that you’re Woke, then you’re one of our kind of people. You wrote someting last year? Great, we’ll see about getting you on the ballot—after all, diversity.”

He says “woke” a lot.

He makes the “diversity of thought” claim a lot and again does not expand upon on it.

In short, it is an essay in the style of Dave Truesdale at Sarah Hoyt’s blog complaining about diversity — picture what that might be like…and that’s what this is.

Reading Vox Day so you don’t have to part…I’ve lost count

Nov 15, 2019

I had wondered if extreme nationalist Vox Day had given up writing political pamphlets but yet another popped up the other day. It was sort of out of the blue, so either he’s been promoting things less or I’ve been paying less attention and probably the latter.

Entitled Corporate Cancer: How to Work Miracles and Save Millions by Curing Your Company it is primarily a rehash of his tow earlier “SJW” books. It’s the same thesis (vaguely defined social justice warriors are somehow out to get you) structured in a similar way but using mainly examples from businesses rather than church groups or publishing.

It purports to demonstrate that social justice will cost a company lots of money but you won’t be surprised to discover that the criteria for ‘social justice’ is very flexible as is the harm done to the companies. He leads with the latest Star Wars films (which he hasn’t watched and which he only has a second hand grasp of) and the fact that they didn’t make as huge a profit for the hugely profitable Disney company as Disney wanted. It is just a rehash of the tired grievance from past years and poor example for his thesis. The claim is that Disney s ‘converged’ a fatal stage of commitment to social justice that destroys a company (or perhaps turns it into a company dependent on government grants or something – the goalposts shift). Day manages to be wrong about both things: Disney is a cynical money grabbing corporation whose commitment to any kind of progressive values is superficial and also it manifestly isn’t going bankrupt any time soon.

Later “examples” are similarly dis-attached. Google is given as an example but again it manifestly isn’t collapsing financial. Apple’s lack of direction post Steve Jobs is also given but here Day neither shows in what way Apple has become more social-justicey recently nor how that connects to Day’s gripe about dongles.

The villain of Day’s previous polemic was nice ladies who help out at church groups. In this one he focuses on HR departments, which are also a recurring bête-noir for Day. Note that as far as I’m aware Day’s multiple career choices have not included a job in a moderate sized corporation with a HR department but he projects a deep grudge against a stereotypical HR team. That HR-phobia becomes easier to understand when you recall that Day’s target audience is disaffected men who feel they have low social status. The thrust is to persuade some confused, somewhat lost person that their troubles at work are due to a vast “SJW” enemy that bizarrely appears in the form of modern corporate capitalism. So if the reader is feeling picked on because of lateness or poor work performance or poor relations with colleagues or bad personal hygiene etc they can rationalise the involvement of HR as political persecution.

Cults, crank self-help groups and crypto-fascist organisations (in so far as those three things are different) have always preyed on the disaffected and the lost. The disdain Day frequently shows to “gammas” is part of that strategy: fuelling insecurity by citing issues that people can see within themselves and then violently reject. Self-hatred is both a powerful drug and a sinister recruitment sergeant.

When looking at the chapter headings I was close to deciding not to bother reviewing the book. The main motive was for completeness having trudged through the previous related volumes. Not to bother probably would have been the right decision: there is nothing new here and I would imagine even Day’s fans would find this book repetitive.

However, what tipped the balance was a something that I was curious about and the chapter headings implied that Day had some revelations to make about a story I’d been following. I’ll spoil the surprise and reveal in advance that he doesn’t but let me explain the background.

About a year ago Day had a crowd-funding campaign suspended in an unusual manner. I covered it here and and File 770 covered it here http://file770.com/after-bleeding-cool-interviews-vox-day-indiegogo-axes-latest-alt-hero-comic-campaign/ and Day cites the File 770 article as background (i.e. he accepts it as being factually correct). As a whole bunch of things were going on at the same time (a NPR podcast, a Bleeding Cool interview, a crowdfunding campaign finalising), Day claims these were all connected. However, we have little background on the circumstances of Indiegogo suspending Day’s crowdfunding campaign other than from Day himself. Day is far from being the most blatantly dishonest person in Puppydom but he is not a reliable narrator either.

We do know that Day threatened Indiegogo with legal action but I’ve seen many examples before of Day doing so but without any public conclusion – which could, of course mean anything. Day had suggested on his blog the matter had come to some sort of end but of what kind was unclear.

However, in a recent twist, Day’s publishing company had started a new crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo in the last few weeks. Did that mean everything was resolved between Day and the crowdfunding platform? Maybe or not quite. The new campaign (which I believe has just ended or is about to end) was to reprint 1910 ‘junior classics’ in what appears to be an attempt by Day to capture the money of far-right Baby Boomer grandparents.

There were some oddities about the campaign though. It was clear that Indiegogo were aware it was one of Day’s companies running the campaign but rather than “Castalia” or “Arkhaven”, the group listed was “Redacted Press” based in “San Francisco, United States”. A second oddity was that the campaign was only accessible via a direct link. A search for the campaign on Indiegogo’s platform for either ‘Junior Classics’ or ‘Redacted Press’ do not lead to the campaign. The only way to get to it was via a link provided by Day. Why? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Day has two chapters on the issue in the book and curiosity got the better of me. The first of the two (Chapter 8) gave the background and the story that I already knew up to the start of an arbitration process. The next chapter, entitled Chapter 9: Indiegogo Case Study: The Arbitration Process and Outcome offered the missing section. However the contents of the chapter read:

“[REDACTED UNTIL OCTOBER 11, 2021] The parties to the arbitrations have come to a resolution on the matter. The arbitrations have been terminated. We will not be making any further statement about it. Please do not ask questions or probe for details about the resolution of the matter.”

Well, I guess the joke is on me and I must concede that I got played.

In the end even the new bit in the book was nothing new.

So how are people reacting to impeachment?

Nov 12, 2019

Last week I looked primarily at how the least pro-Trump of the pro-Trump trio of groups were reacting to some Democrat electoral victories (short version: badly) but I didn’t talk much about the other two groups. There are weird and interesting things going on there as well. I’m not going to be posting many links for reasons that will become obvious.

Reluctant Converts

The group I call reluctant converts are conservatives/libertarians who were initially distrustful of Trump and apprehensive about him during the GOP Presidential nomination process but who pledged support for him by the time of the election or since. In terms of the milieu of right wing authors discussed here that would be people like Sarah Hoyt or John C Wright.

Their main political issue currently is the name of the whistle-blower who raised concerns about Trump’s Ukraine phone call. The case for anonymity for the whistle-blower is simple, they went through the right channels, we all should want some protection for public servants holding elected officials accountable and there is genuine reason to think they might come to some harm. In terms of the veracity of the complaint, the whistle-blower’s claims have since all been verified. There does not seem to be any key points of fact that rely on the integrity of the whistle-blower as a witness. To use an analogy with more conventional crime, they are the person who rang the cops rather than a key witness.

However, naming the whistle-blower has become a big thing among right-wing media. Fox News has been dancing around it. Former Superman actor and now right-wing personality Dean Cain, apparently named the wrong person. Supposed libertarian Rand Paul has been naming them and among the group I call the Reluctant Converts it has become a point of honour to circulate a name on social media.

Facebook and Twitter, mindful for once of the danger of internet mobs (which if you recall the Reluctant Converts are very much against if said mob is three or four people and left-wing) have adopt a no-tolerance policy to spreading names of potential whistle-blowers. With a mighty cry of “you’re not the boss of me” some of the Reluctant Converts have taken to posting multiple times one of the names. As a consequence they have ended up with Facebooks bans. Sarah Hoyt in particular has been busy disrupting her own social media presence to circulate a name, which essentially means nothing, as if it was a major revelation. Spoiler: the whistle-blower was somebody you have never heard of.

It’s both odd and predictable. The ad-hominem argument is central to the mode of debate as is a concept of contamination. If the whistle-blower can be shown to be a Democrat then, the argument goes, Trump is innocent even though the facts revealed by the whistle-blower have been confirmed by the White House.

The Ironic Cheerleaders

This is were things are a lot more strange. The Alt-Right is currently in one of its phases of shifting grifters. The good news is that there is currently lots of metaphorical back stabbing and infighting and the bad news is that whoever comes out on top will still be a racist arse spreading hate.

The current landscape can be summed up with three oddly-similar looking boyish fascists (links are to Rational Wiki). Off on the alt-lite/intellectual dark web side is the irritating Ben Shapiro who is nominally anti-Trump but mainly promotes similar ideas. More overtly supporting Trump is Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA. Currently seeking leadership of the 8-Channers and other odious internet denizens is Nick Fuentes of America First (which is as fascist as it sounds). Fuentes is actively disrupting Turning Point USA events presumably as a way of gaining status and also to give his followers something edgy to do (see https://www.diggitmagazine.com/column/charlie-kirk-culture-war-groyper-trolls ) In short Kirk hates Fuentes and Fuentes hates Kirk and everybody hates Ben Shapiro. It would be funny but Fuentes main objective is to push more overt anti-Semitism.

Confused yet? OK, remember Richard Spencer, the crypto-Nazi involved in the murderous Unite the Right Rally? Milo Yianopoulus (another name fading into obscurity) released audio of Spencer having a very emotional and very-Hitleresque rant in the wake of the disaster of the Unite the Right Rally. The release of the audio by Yianopoulus was clearly intended to discredit Spencer, presumably on the grounds of being too obviously a nazi. Why would he do that? The answer is that Spencer has been critical of Fuentes – I assume because everybody involved are an ugly mass of egos and bigotry. There’s a point where close examination just finds more gross toxic sludge.

Quite where Vox Day sits in that mess of backbiting shitholes I don’t know but I believe that Day’s friend, the flat-earth former actor Owen Benjamin is also feuding with Fuentes.

Relatively not grounded in reality

It would be hard to describe the ‘Sceptical Advocates’ reaction I discussed in an earlier post as either measured or rational (it ended with calls for mass executions of political opponents) but at least it was a comprehensible (if appalling) position. Heading into the other groups, things become even less grounded and bizarre.

Things are only going to get even stranger.

Looking back at a kerfuffle

Nov 11, 2019

Back in July the Galaxy’s Edge* magazine, Robert J Sawyer’s regular column discussed some issues around the SFWA. The column was also covered in this Pixel Scroll at File 770. I didn’t engage a great deal with Sawyer’s comments because I’m not a part of the SFWA and I’m unlikely to ever be and I’ve also really zero idea of what the make up of the organisation should be or what practical impact a writer’s organisation can have. Suffice to say, Sawyer has had a long career writing science-fiction and is a former SFWA president so ostensibly knows a lot more than I do on the topic. Having said that…well I didn’t get a clear sense of what he thought the issues were (other than that the SFWA should be more like the Writer’s Guild of America).

There was one point that bugged me though but I decided not to focus on it at the time because it was secondary to Sawyer’s broader points. The point was a throw away comment part way through the column:

“The crisis that led Lawrence to resign was precipitated by an unprecedented loosening of SFWA’s membership credentials, undertaken by fiat by the board, allowing huge numbers of self-published authors to join. Hustlers by nature, some of them immediately organized a successful block-nominating slate to get self-published authors onto the Nebula ballot, hijacking the Academy Award of the science-fiction and fantasy fields.”

Sawyer is referencing the controversy earlier in the year regarding Nebula finalists connected with the publishing self-help group 20booksto50K and the independent publisher LMBPN. I wrote about it extensively at the time but the best overall account is by Cora Buhlert here: http://corabuhlert.com/2019/03/01/the-latest-developments-regarding-the-2018-nebula-award-finalists/

So what is my issue with Sawyer’s brief description? Several things but primarily it promotes the misleading framing of the kerfuffle as self-published versus traditionally-published authors. That framing was pushed by various people at the time and while there is some superficial truth to it, the framing is deeply misleading:

  • Many of the authors nominated who were on the 20booksto50K list had been traditionally published previously.
  • At least one was a long term member of the SFWA.
  • Some of the most vocal SFWA members objecting to the list were from an indie-published background.
  • The framing obscures the role of a publisher (LMBPN) in the list.

That misleading framing was part of the issue with the original not-a-slate i.e. byt setting up not just a list but a narrative as to why random voters should feel some loyalty towards the list is part of how the whole issue became problematic.

However, those aren’t the only issues with Sawyer’s statement. He also overstates the impact of the list, the nature of self-published writers and ignores the subsequent behaviour.

  • “huge numbers of self-published authors to join” – I don’t know how many people voted for the 20booksto50K list but it didn’t need to be huge numbers to impact the Nebula short-list and it probably wasn’t. That only some works from the list were finalists implies it was a significant but not large number.
  • “Hustlers by nature” – is just pointlessly insulting. Sure, there is a Wild-West aspect to the world of Amazon self-publishing but we have a very obvious comparison group to compare with (which I’ll get to). There are certainly notorious examples of self-published authors behaving badly but they aren’t the norm.
  • “hijacking the Academy Award of the science-fiction and fantasy fields” – I’m not making excuses for the not-a-slate but the overall impact on the awards I believe was small. Multiple, excellent works that would have been finalists regardless were still finalists and the final outcome was probably indistinguishable with what would have happened regardless.

The comparison group I mentioned above is, of course, the Sad Puppies. It is true that post-hoc leaders and supporters of the Sad Puppies have used the same framing of indie/self-published versus trad-publishing as a kind of factional distinction. However, Correia, Torgersen, Hoyt and Wright were all from a traditionally published background and at the time (at least initially) there focus was on authors and works that were traditionally published. As hustles go, the Sad Puppy Hustle was bigger, more damaging and more significant to literary awards and had its roots in traditional publishing.

It is also notable how much better key figures around the 20booksto50K/LMBPN groups behaved. Again, I’m not making excuses for anybody’s actions, just making a comparison with the obvious other kerfuffle. Of the various interactions I had with authors connected with the Nebula fuss at the time, only one was reminiscent of the way Sad Puppy leader’s behaved and that one example had their own connections with the Sad Puppies.

No deep conclusions to draw other than messy things are messy.

*[Maybe too many things are called Galaxy’s Edge. It gets confusing.]

Vox Day objects to a two-year old post

Oct 28, 2019

Well this is very odd. Infamous nationalist Vox Day has a new post [http://voxday.blogspot.com/2019/10/mailvox-spotting-quality.html ] dedicated to little old me but oddly it is about this post from two years ago: https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/2017/08/25/spotting-fakery/

“One of the more inept File 770ers – which is saying something – is Camestros Fappletron. His Gamma backside is still burning from the spanking he received here in 2016 after he tried to pose as a Master of Rhetoric and only succeeded in demonstrating that he simply did not understand Aristotle’s distinction between rhetoric and dialectic.
So, it’s more than a little amusing to note that he’s been trying to retroactively rectify the situation for years, as Samuel Collingwood Smith noted.
Earlier today, a leftist left a negative comment on a review I did in 2016 of Vox Day’s “A Throne of Bones”. They ended by linking to a hatepost claiming the positive Amazon reviews were deceptive based on an analysis by a site called Fakepost.com from 2017. Because, of course, the accuracy of a self-appointed analysis site using an unpublished algorithm is beyond question..
I had no idea what he was talking about, because of course I pay absolutely no attention to Camestros or his incessant anklebiting. But apparently, back in 2017, File 770’s Master of Rhetoric decided to prove that many of the 332 reviews of A Throne of Bones, which average 4.5 stars, are fake.”

Sadly Vox’s reading comprehension is still less than stellar or maybe his grasp of logic — oh what the heck, probably both. Vox’s tome was what I was using to examine at Fakespot not vice-versa. My conclusion wasn’t that his reviews were fake but that Fakespot would struggle to spot the difference between fake and sycophantic. Here’s me:

Ouch…but to some extent, we already know that the comment section of Vox’s blog is full of willing volunteers ready to do sycophanting stuff and/or trolling/griefing at Vox’s request. Arguably those are genuine reviews, just that they are hard to distinguish between click-farm fakery. Think of it as a kind of Turing Test, which his right-wing minions repeatedly fail by acting like…well, minions.

Meanwhile back to Vox. He also complains that:

“Sadly for the ever-inept Fappletron, he didn’t bother checking Fakepost to confirm that its initial analysis still held true, as Mr. Smith informs us.”

I’m not sure what he means here. Does he think I should be regularly updating that post from 2017 with the current fake-ness rating of his reviews? That would be just weird. As for checking AT THE TIME whether the ratings changed? Yup, did that and made a point of it:

[A note of caution: the site doesn’t re-analyse automatically so the analysis you get may be out of date. The initial ratings for those two books were different but changed when I clicked the option to re-analyse]

So returning to the point. Don’t know about whoever left a comment on a blog I hadn’t heard of but no, I was not saying Vox Day’s review comments were fake just that at the time Fakespot would have a hard time spotting the difference between his minions’ reviews and fake ones.

Anyway, the good news for any regular at File 770, as I am officially now one of the most inept that makes most of your LESS inept according to Vox and you may style yourselves accordingly.

Meanwhile, the Earth keeps spinning…

A Chronicle of Outrage Marketing Part 4: The Legend Grows

Oct 22, 2019

As this is part four, a short recap. Baen published an anthology with the theme of Daves. A handful of people said ‘huh?’. Nick Mamatas made a pointed observation about affirmadave action and Baen editor Christopher Ruocchio posted many tweets as a consequence. Larry Correia joined in. Bounding into Comics joined in. Dave Freer joined in. Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

The other day I said that “I’m keen to watch this unfold because it is the sort of thing that in a years time will have transmogrified and become part of Puppy-lore i.e. that time the whole of liberal/SJW/antifa/Bernie Sanders formed a giant army to destroy the careers of every writer ever called Dave, or some such.”

A key part of this process is to grow the legend and cement the story of victory. To see this we have to wander into Facebook.

First of all over to Christopher Ruocchio who has some positive sales news for the flock of Daves.

[archive link]

“Well, the near vertical, 700,000-place jump in the Amazon ebook rankings for the title in question you see here coincides with the day he announced the book was cancelled.”

The minor criticism has now been elevated to Nick M announcing that the Dave anthology had been cancelled! There is a circular kind of negation here. If Nick M really has helped the anthology then there was no need to be cross with Nick M but then if Chris Ruocchio hadn’t been cross etc. The key takeaway, apparently the jump in sales wasn’t due to how great the stories were (at least if Chris R is to be believed).

Still, that is only a mild bit of hyperbole. What we need is the Roucchio v mildly bemused Mamatas exchange to be raised up to fantasy epic proportions and for that you need Larry Correia [archive link].

” However, SJWs, led by a particular dumb motherfucker named Nick Mamatas (a super bitter puppy kicker) got all outraged, because “diversity” and apparently having a book of all Daves wasn’t “inclusive” (well no shit, sherlock) and this was a super huge OUTRAGE! “

The ‘outrage’ remember was a Brittany Speers gif.

“Now, normally cancel culture just steam rolls publishers, because its a business filled with cry babies and wimps. However, this publisher is Baen, who don’t care, and the guy running their social media is a Chestertonian bad ass, who told Mamatas to get bent. “

Brave Baen valiantly defended from the one slightly snarky Tweet and a Brittany Speers by the noble defended of truth and justice.

“And also, where were you assholes when we did an anthology that was all female to show that women have always been part of sci-fi? (they totally ignored that one because it didn’t fit their narrative of perpetual victimhood). “

What Larry’s logic here is unclear. Was he hoping that mythical SJWs would attack that previous anthology so it would boost sales or was he saying the SJWs should have supported the anthology, which, in Larry’s logic would have reduced sales? I’m not sure but he does raise a good question: where were you?

The anthology in question was Women of Futures Past (2016) edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (https://www.baen.com/women-of-futures-past.html ). You can read all about it at this wonderful science fiction fanzine I often visit: http://file770.com/collected-classic-sf-by-women/ That post had over a hundred comments by the way.

But you know which website you CAN’T read about it? Oh, did you guess “Monster Hunter Nation”? Because you are right!

Yeah but maybe he promoted it on Facebook:

Apparently not! I can’t imagine what was so different about the Baen anthology about Women and the Baen anthology about Daves…

Meanwhile:

“But see that great big spike on the graph there? That is what happens when creators actually stand up for themselves and fight back against the SJW lynch mobs.”

Not just a mob now but a “lynch mob”, armed to the teeth with rolling eye emojis and snark.