{"id":9126,"date":"2016-04-28T09:54:06","date_gmt":"2016-04-28T16:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/?p=9126"},"modified":"2016-04-28T10:04:47","modified_gmt":"2016-04-28T17:04:47","slug":"a-discussion-on-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/28\/a-discussion-on-twitter\/","title":{"rendered":"a discussion on twitter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I had a brief discussion on Twitter yesterday with one of the Rabid Puppies. A lot of it went like you&#8217;d expect &#8211; Vox is brilliant, they can&#8217;t lose, they&#8217;ve proven the existence of a &#8220;hidden slate&#8221; that was already rigging the Hugo awards (despite exactly zero evidence showing this &#8211; lack of evidence is apparently confirmation of the conspiracy?) and so on.<\/p>\n<p>But a couple of tweets caught my eye. First, you have pretty much an admission that they know this is Vox&#8217;s revenge campaign:<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Marc DuQuesne \u200f#RabidPuppies argument is @voxday was accused of gaming the 2014 #HugoAwards, So he's been demonstrating what gaming actually is\n\" title=\"Marc DuQuesne \u200f#RabidPuppies argument is @voxday was accused of gaming the 2014 #HugoAwards, So he's been demonstrating what gaming actually is\n\" src=\"http:\/\/solarbird.net\/Livejournal\/2016-04\/rabids-vox-revenge.gif\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/solarbird.net\/Livejournal\/2016-04\/rabids-vox-rt.gif\">Vox retweeted that<\/a>, which I&#8217;m sure some would say isn&#8217;t <Em>necessarily<\/eM> an endorsement, but let&#8217;s be real, it is. And it&#8217;s very popular with his fans.<\/p>\n<p>But more interestingly: I&#8217;ve long held out the point that the foundation of the Sad Puppy argument can be summarised as, &#8220;we don&#8217;t like the winners, therefore nobody can, therefore FRAUD!&#8221; &#8211; that the entire Puppy crowd can&#8217;t even admit that voters not voting in slate actually <em>liked<\/em> what they were voting for, it was all political and secret-conspiracy. And I got that argument from him, more or less:<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Marc DuQuesne \u200fExactly! That's why the #SadPuppies and #RabidPuppies formed, because overt slates are the best way to fight covert slates.\" title=\"Marc DuQuesne \u200fExactly! That's why the #SadPuppies and #RabidPuppies formed, because overt slates are the best way to fight covert slates.\" src=\"http:\/\/solarbird.net\/Livejournal\/2016-04\/rabids-covert-slate.gif\"><\/center><br \/>\n<center><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Marc DuQuesne \u200fThe sad argument is that low participation was causing skewing to virtue signaling instead of good work.\" title=\"Marc DuQuesne \u200fThe sad argument is that low participation was causing skewing to virtue signaling instead of good work.\" src=\"http:\/\/solarbird.net\/Livejournal\/2016-04\/rabids-virtue-signalling.gif\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p><EM>Virtue signalling instead of good work<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>They still can&#8217;t even conceive of the idea that people actually like what they&#8217;re voting for, it had to be an invisible covert political slate, so they have to mount an organised and expensive political slate to create the results that &#8220;should&#8221; have happened. (&#8220;<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/B%E1%BA%BFn_Tre\">It became necessary to destroy the town to save it<\/a>,&#8221; I guess.)<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s <EM>really<\/em> insulting, as has been so much of the Puppy effort. But don&#8217;t miss this new buzz-phrase, <Em>virtue signalling<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Isn&#8217;t that neat? I thought maybe it was a one-off, but no, apparently, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/scalzi\/status\/725511487192604673\">it&#8217;s their replacement for <Em>political correctness<\/eM><\/a>. They&#8217;ve realised that the PC thing doesn&#8217;t fly anymore, so they&#8217;re trying out a new, substitute phrase.<\/p>\n<p>And the neat thing about <EM>that<\/em> is that you now have &#8220;virtue&#8221; being used as a negative by the alt-right\/reactionary crowd, just as they use &#8220;justice&#8221; as a negative. Political correctness had at least some degree of neutrality to it, but now, <Em>virtue signalling<\/eM> &#8211; a.k.a., not being a douchebag &#8211; and <em>social justice warrior<\/eM> &#8211; a.k.a., opposing injustice? Bad? Apparently. So now we have &#8220;virtue&#8221; and &#8220;justice&#8221; both being portrayed as <Em>negatives,<\/em> and <em>undesirable<\/eM>.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes, my band shtick feels like it just gets more and more appropriate by the <em>day<\/eM>. At least, I guess, whether they realise that or not, they&#8217;re laying their cards on the table.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>This is a part of <a href=\"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/18\/collection-the-sfwa-sexism-and-racism-posts\/\">a series of posts on the 2015\/2016 Hugo Awards capture by a rightist political group<\/a> whose focus has now shifted to destroying the awards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had a brief discussion on Twitter yesterday with one of the Rabid Puppies. A lot of it went like you&#8217;d expect &#8211; Vox is brilliant, they can&#8217;t lose, they&#8217;ve proven the existence of a &#8220;hidden slate&#8221; that was already rigging the Hugo awards (despite exactly zero evidence showing this &#8211; lack of evidence is [&#038;hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9126"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9133,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9126\/revisions\/9133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}