1) Decoding the Range: The Secret Language Of Cattle Branding.
2) If you’re going to deface a textbook, this is how to do it. (Although I’m dubious about the adverb “geniously”)
3) Funny, mean reviews of Dan Brown’s Inferno.
5) Girl makes jacket out of Ziploc bags, wears sandwich and snacks where ever she goes.
6) Why Manhattan’s Green Roofs Don’t Work–and How to Fix Them
7) Theres a Question Mark Hanging Over the Apostrophes Future. (I see what you did there.)
1) Miyazaki talks about why his films go beyond good and evil, in comics form.
2) What happens if you mix Silly Putty with a generous amount of iron oxide and put it next to a magnet? Slo-mo blob attack. Video.
3) Eleven of the world’s most unusual elevators.
5) Cartoonist does 100 self-portraits, each in the style of another cartoonist.
6) Thirteen creepy things a child has said to a parent. Number 3 would be a great start to a story.
7) Why Iron Man 3 Director Shane Black Was Once Hollywood’s Hottest Screenwriter. Word-smithing can be a little different over on the screenplay side of things.
1) The annual Shorty Awards have chosen the Best Quora Answer of the Year: “What does the first day of a 5+ year prison sentence feel like?” The answers that made the list of finalists are at that link as well.
2) If Facebook made a Facebook house.
3) “Tie” Chi: knotting a Windsor as a martial arts kata.
4) Chemical-free “natural” swimming pools that are cleaned by plants. This looks a) awesome b) a lot of work and c) inappropriate for Florida. Still, it’s green and gorgeous.
5) From College Humor, Batman vs. The Penguin (played by Patton Oswalt). Video.
6) 27 Science Fictions That Became Science Facts In 2012
7) Seattle’s King Street Train Station has finally received its finishing touches and is ready for a Grand Opening. And it’s gorgeous. I’m tempted to take a train trip just so I have an excuse to go down there.
Anyone who’s paid close attention to the way people laugh can tell you that most times people laugh, they are not laughing because something is funny. I mean, sure, we laugh because things are amusing or absurd, and sometimes we laugh to minimize things that scare us. But most of the time we laugh because we want to cement social connection to others.
So imagine my surprise when I read this interview with a troll. The guy admits that he’s sent insults to the guy writing the blog for years, that he’s claimed to have fucked the writer’s ex in incredibly degrading ways, and has even done things like claim that Native American genocide didn’t go far enough.
So what happens when the writer puts out a call for the troll to contact him for an interview, with the promise that his identity will never be outed?
The troll turns out to be a huge fan of the site, a fan of the writer himself, and a person who… actually, let me just put a little quote from the troll himself:
… but I felt like we had, you know, a sort of special communication going on.
He was just pinging the guy. He had an “immature sense of humor” and thought it was funny to say outrageous shit that made people angry. What’s more, he assumed no one else would ever be seriously bothered by what he did.
When asked why the troll agreed to the interview, he said:
I did it, I guess, in part because I feel like you and I have had this odd relationship over the last several years, so I guess I felt this would be sort of a good conclusion to that. But also, I kind of felt, I guess, that I owed you an explanation. Again, I never really thought you were offended by anything I wrote, but I would hate it if you told me that I had actually injured you in some way. And so I did feel the need to sort of explain myself to you.
PING! The guy wanted a human response, especially one he could control. He wanted to type awful things and make people angry while telling himself at the same time that he didn’t really mean to offend anyone.
In other words, he was lonely. He visited the site every day to keep up on the latest athletic uniform design news (which… really? Okay, I guess) but he had to treat it like shit for lulz, too.
And how broken is that?
Let me link to this article in the NY Times: Richard Jewell, 44, Hero of Atlanta Attack, Dies
When the name of the person arrested has been released, do not rush to Facebook to harass people with the same name. Do not start digging into the personal lives of complete strangers to see what dirt you can find or what political prejudices you can confirm. Jewel was harassed for months simply because a newspaper said the FBI was investigating him. Police asked him to sign a confession they had written up as a “training exercise.” In truth, his life was ruined.
The modern news media may be in a headlong rush to share every rumor or minor development, but we don’t have to follow. We’d be better off spending time with people we love or writing to our members of Congress about pending legislation. The last thing this country needs is to crowd-source our criminal justice system.
No links here. I just want to send out good wishes to everyone affected by the double explosions at the end of the Boston Marathon.
Also, keep in mind that early news and social media reports are likely to be wildly inaccurate. It’s probably best to disconnect from things like Twitter at the moment and give first responders a chance to do a thorough investigation.
I want to follow up on Friday’s Hugh Howey post without actually talking about Howey (much). I briefly mentioned the idea of “punching down” in that post but Tobias Buckell talked about it more extensively in his post on the subject.
It’s worth clicking through to read what he’s written, but for those that won’t: “Punching down” is attacking someone who is weaker, more vulnerable, or has less power than you. “Punching up” is attacking someone who is stronger, more powerful, and more influential than you. Mocking a rich guy who locked his keys in his Audi is punching up. Mocking a single mother who’s just been evicted because she was laid off is punching down.
Needless to say, punching down is what villains do and I’ve talked about it here on the blog more than once as a way to make sure the sympathetic characters are actually sympathetic. That’s the context of a fictional narrative, though. Most of the time, when people talk about punching up, they’re talking in terms of politics.
Leaving aside the question of whether the offending conversation Howey described actually happened (which I hadn’t considered at first, but Nick Mamatas brought it up and now the whole incident seems just too perfect), Howey is a best-selling author with a serious movie deal and six-figure print-only contracts. He’s doing well. The person he slams is, according to his story, a social climber trying to make herself seem important by offering to connect writers with agents. What’s more, he makes her sound desperate and a little delusional. Is his story, as he himself tells it, punching down?
Absolutely. And yet, I’d bet Howey himself would be surprised to see it this way. I imagine he still imagines himself as the upstart self-publisher, the guy who has to do it all himself, with no help from anyone. I’m sure he sees that scorn, whether it actually happened or not, as the “punching down” he endures every time he goes online or meets someone uninterested in his books.
I’m sure that, to him, this woman had aligned herself with the supposed gatekeepers of NY publishing, and he felt free to take a swing like any hard-pressed hero.
I can’t speak for Howey himself but in my experience putting out a book, either by yourself or through a publisher, feels nothing at all like becoming powerful. Just the opposite, really: We do a shitload of work and then, finally, this thing we made goes out into the world alone. All our hopes for success and praise are mixed with the expectation that everything could collapse, that people might be bored or dismissive or contemptuous. Worse, they might not even know we’re there.
And readers often treat writers as though we’re faceless corporations, like Bounty paper towels or something. They tweet insults directly at the author and act amazed that a real writer with a publishing deal would react angrily.
Readers need to have the freedom to say whatever they want about our books–they deserve it–and a book culture where everyone is nice all the time would be toxic. So when people are kind to my work I’m grateful. When they’re cruel to it, I shrug it off. I tell myself it’s not personal even when it’s clear from the review that it was meant to be. As Toby says in the blog post linked above, when people talk shit about your work, it stings.
So, writer as a position of power? It might be for some, I guess. Maybe if you’re Guest of Honor at a lot of conventions, or you teach writing to eager young folks, or getting a movie deal with a profile in the WSF, or something, that might feel like power.
But the publishing part of being a writer, when you send a book out into the world, whether it’s through a publisher or on your own? That feels like vulnerability.
It’s been more than a week since Hugh Howey posted his Bitch from Worldcon (now deleted) but I think it’s worth talking about anyway. Yes, it’s sexist rape culture bullshit for him to fantasize (even jokingly) about his big moment–which is apparently winning an award–standing in front of a crowd of people, and singling her out to say “Suck it, bitch” while grabbing his crotch.
Hello, small-minded fantasy of success. Hello, sexual threats to a woman he himself believes to be mentally ill. Hello, completely creepy behavior. I don’t care if he thinks it’s non-serious; it’s bullshit.
However, the real point of the post becomes clear right here:
Crazy girl asked who I was published with. “Self-published,” I said. No point in mentioning the Random House deal or the SFWA membership. Those weren’t what I was most proud of. The girl shook her head sadly and also knowingly. It was a complex bit of head shaking.
Bold added by me.
Who is Howey’s main audience? a) other self-publishers who have anointed him the next Amanda Hocking and b) readers who imagine themselves to be cutting-edge iconoclasts predicting the end of the old publishing paradigm. This is his “base,” and as much as he’d like to (and is) expanding beyond them, he’s still making the effort to hold them close.
On one hand, self-publishing is never going to have the legitimacy people want until they stop acting like they’re being assailed from all sides. I say this as a self-publisher myself. There is no revolution, only new opportunities. The people trying to get you to take one side or the other, whether that’s a “crazy girl” at a convention or a best-selling author featured in WSJ and Salon, are wasting your time and/or trying to sell you something.
What’s more, this post is a classic example of numbers #3 and #4 of my post about using social media to build a strong community of assholes. Howey isn’t sending his readers out to attack anyone–perhaps he understands that he shouldn’t punch that far down–but it’s still us-vs-them rah rah bullshit designed to instill loyalty more than inform.
It’s a shitty post. It’s not funny unless you’re looking to wave around pompoms with Howey’s name on one and Amazon’s on the other. It demonstrates that no amount of money or success will make you a better person. And it’s how a lot of authors create their brand.
Added later: Howey has apologized. Someone should explain that “I was just joking!” isn’t much of a defense.
Charlie Jane Anders over at io9.com has an update on the proposed plan for Skyhorse and Start Publishing to buy Night Shade’s author contracts. Short version: they’ve improved the terms of their offer.
It’s still not great, but it’s better. It’s much better, and the reason it became better was that writers talked to each other about the problems and they shared their concerns publicly. Just like with Hydra.
This should happen more often. What’s more, there ought to be a formalized way that, say, a writers organization could tackle it.
1) Homemade “Romance Pants”. Has to be seen to be believed.
2) Ten of the Most Beautiful Libraries Ever Built (in Minecraft).
3) The 12 Most Controversial Facts In Mathematics. I dunno how I feel about the title but the article is cool.
4) “Are you a ‘Single Interested in Michael Crichton?’ Meet the love raptors stalking OkCupid.”
5) 15 Mid-Century Modern Dream Homes that will Kill Your Children. Via James Nicoll
6) An anti-drone hoodie designed to hide your thermal signature from above.
7) Plewds, Hites, and Indotherms: Terms for the graphic language of cartooning. I’d heard of grawlixes before, but the others were names for things I didn’t even know had names. Very cool.