Some Comments

Sep 05, 2006 01:48

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veejane September 5 2006, 12:03:17 UTC
I'm curious what your perspective is on the expressions of social rules in the SF-lit world, which is so different from the rules I use on the internet. I've always been a little fringey in SF-lit -- slow, shy, disinclined to blogs -- but the recent unpleasantness has been interesting to me in indicating how powerful status and hierarchy are in the SF-lit world.

(Media-fandom, my "home base," uses community policing via shame and shunning, and has no formalized hierarchy at all -- only what you can garner through fame and persuasiveness.)

Is it inevitable that, money being involved in SF-lit, caste will be involved as well? The SFWA list (which I'm sure has other purposes too) is in this case becoming literally the accusation that fanfic people throw at each other all the time: a private gathering-place where the important show their true colors, excluding the unimportant. How can the community police itself when the accusations of eliteness are actually true? I haven't figured that out yet.

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nihilistic_kid September 5 2006, 13:26:22 UTC
SFWA is trivially simple to join actually. One sale of one short story to any one of a dozen or more magazines or any one of a few dozen anthologies published every year will get you in. Two more sales, and you get to vote.

Having a private section is a) inevitable anyway (if you're heavily involved in fanfiction, are you obligated to reveal the content of email to fellow fans) and, b) a positive good, as SFWA is a writers' organization, which means that some of the conversation is better had away from editors and publishers out to exploit writers.

Anyway, the idea that there is no such thing as a private communication, or shouldn't be, because of one's vocation, is at best very silly.

Don't believe me? Post the most recent 500 personal emails you have received? What, don't I rate a gander?

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veejane September 5 2006, 16:06:37 UTC
There is private communication in media fandom, but generally speaking it is individual email and very small lists of personal contacts, for the same reasons that SFWA private lists are being attacked. In fanfic, it is called the "Bitter Old Fanfic Queen Cabal" -- any flaunted sign of private communication, like a private list, is automatically taken to be a conspiracy.

We're refreshingly crazy that way.

I guess the situation I am used to, because it has no professional aspect and no real-world consequences (i.e. money), is a pure internet- and personality-driven situation. Although, as you can see, I'm not so deluded as to think that media-fandom is all Mental Health and Joy (see also: sockpuppets), one of the aspects I do like about it is that it's got its own built-in sense of egalitarian mockery and public process.

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nihilistic_kid September 5 2006, 14:41:03 UTC
Hmm, I think you have entirely misconstrued what I said. Pasting up people's commentary that is hidden behind password protection and in violation of an agreement, and then shrugging and saying "Well, there's no such thing as a private discussion on the Internet" is a Bad Thing.

If you doubt me, I'd be happy to post the content of any number of elements from IM convos I've had, not with you, but about you, to my ridiculously popular blog ( ... )

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snurri September 5 2006, 14:47:09 UTC
Oops, sorry. I did misconstrue, and deleted to re-post once I realized that.

I agree that privacy on the Internet should be possible, and I'll concede that David was probably unwise to do what he did. Part of me is quite glad he did, though. In any case, the amount of sputtering and self-importance that's followed is far more distasteful to me.

As far as SFWA, you'll get no argument here.

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nihilistic_kid September 5 2006, 15:05:11 UTC
Yes, and if someone snuck a look into your medicine cabinet because hey, they're not locked, and you responded by spending the next year screaming out it, that would also be likely more distasteful than the initial lookie-loo.

But it wouldn't erase the initial invasion, and a lot of rhetoric surrounding the response to the pastes has just been moo-cow moronics. "They're talking about having their privacy violated instead of the boob grope!" Yeah, and? It also occured, didn't it?

Personally, I'm more than capable of talking about two things at once. I don't know why its so difficult for one of the most intelligent (if their self-congratulations are to be believed) demographics around.

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veejane September 5 2006, 16:18:17 UTC
Oh, media-fandom is so very instructive to this particular kerfuffle! It pleases me and appalls me at the same time.

The "popular lunch table" syndrome you describe is called Snacky's Law, and has a long history among my kind.

The exposure of private conversation, that pertains to a public inquiry, that is a violation but in many ways seems vital to the community -- it happens now and then in media-fandom, less often now than previously. And every time, it is a violation, and some people do see it as necessary, and that conflict persists ( ... )

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nihilistic_kid September 5 2006, 16:28:26 UTC
Indeed, but cultures resent the hell out of lots of things, like uppity women or people of different religions, or people who bathe too often or not frequently enough, or race-mixing, etc ( ... )

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veejane September 5 2006, 16:49:39 UTC
I don't know -- I'm not used to judging an event based on its usefulness outcome. It happened; some people cheered at bald speech and others frowned at context and privacy; that's all the judgement I can get out of it. I can guarantee that on the internet, it will happen again, and maybe the furor will be bigger next time, or smaller ( ... )

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nihilistic_kid September 5 2006, 16:54:13 UTC
Well, I presume from the hints and allusions that Moles had a result in mind when it came to pasting the commentary, so it is at least useful to measure projected results against actual results.

I'll try Google right now!

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nihilistic_kid September 5 2006, 16:55:56 UTC
And Google seems to have updated the cache to the expurgated version. :(

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snurri September 5 2006, 14:41:12 UTC
Re-posted since I misunderstood something Nick wrote.

The thing is, in some respects SF-lit hasn't really learned how to act on the Internet, in part because so many in the field--it's not fair to characterize it entirely as a generational thing, but it is at least in part--haven't really engaged with it in a significant way and hence haven't really learned to handle themselves around here. While I agree with Nick that there should be private communication on the net, experience tells me that this is an iffy proposition at best.

Another thing is that SF-lit has an enormous amount of bleed between fans and professionals, and there will always be those who want to enforce a separation of the two. At this point it kind of feels, to me, like that is one of the few purposes that SFWA serves. I don't question the need for a professional organization in and of itself, but I question the usefulness of the one we have.

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