"... come in... and say this shit to my face..."
Chilton Nix
The tl;dr tale of one man's journey through Hipster Film Appreciation 101
(this will take some time)
Diane is a friend of mine. We both like movies and we talk about them all the time. One day, this happened:
I unintentionally misspelled his name, but whatever. The point is that I wouldn't be able to take anything he says seriously, because "Chilton Nix" would be written beside it. I realise this makes me shallow and possibly OCD, but I think it's important to be honest about these things. Then this happened:
and, presumably by way of explanation, this:
Everything's going fine so far. I like movies and I like talking about movies and Diane knows this, so co-opting me like this is not a big deal. What's the worst that can happen? The worst that can happen...
You don't need to read all of that; in fact I recommend, for the sake of your sanity, the most cursory of skims. The original David Lynch clip is 30 seconds long and consists entirely of him complaining that you can't see a movie properly on your iPhone. This would seem to be obvious, but it sparked a "debate" because of the inveterate pseudo-intellectual hipsterdom of everyone. I tried blowing it open, but the very act of engaging these people means that I was dragged down to their level. Whatever. I don't mind slumming it every so often. Then (!):
I have no idea where he got the idea that I was "sticking up for Diane". The only conclusion that I can come to is that he only read the bits where I was making fun of his name and skipped everything else. In movie discussions, as all over the internet, as in life, you should never hold strong opinions about things you don't understand. Also, there's a time when you should stop trying to use intimidation as a debate tactic, and that time is your tenth birthday.
Then, he sent me a private message:
I'm not sure what he thought was going to happen. Luckily, I have many years experience of smacking down assholes. Maybe he would learn his lesson and quit poking the bear. Also, I realise the beatnik/hipster thing was lame, but I didn't have time to prepare. Don't worry, it gets better:
"Come into Barnes & Noble and say that shit to my face." That's probably the high point of this entire exchange. So, unless you're a completist who finds the DVD extras of Adam Sandler movies fascinating, you can now return to your usual programming and thanks for reading.
Anticipating the possibility of his return, I had some time to prepare some better material, as you can see. I wanted to say "geography teacher" when it was pointed out to me by a concerned citizen that the phrase "geography teacher" did not carry with it the same sense of outdated gaucheness that it does in my part of the world. So I switched it, with reluctance, to "gauche history lecturer". I don't know why I bothered; he probably doesn't even know what "gauche" means. Well, maybe in the back of my mind I was planning this page. Then this:
He linked me to his blog. He claims below that "it gets sent automatically", which is odd because it wasn't "sent automatically" with every other message. So I think he's lying. I think he wanted me to see his book blog so I would be blown away by how clever he is. Well, maybe if I was prepared to deal with the sloppy grammar, spelling, syntax and catastrophic style.
So I suggested some ways to improve the thing. It's easier to read things when you don't have to machete your way through a jungle of badly-written sentences. I also offered to re-write it (without touching the content), something which I was absolutely prepared to do. Then this:
He's made the classic "They laughed at Galileo" error, which is the upshot of his fourth paragraph. Yes, they did laugh at Galileo; but Galileo wasn't a genius because people were laughing at him. In the same way, making something unreadable doesn't make it clever.
James Joyce often wrote a kind of inspired gibberish, but he had an encyclopedic vocabulary, and a fundamental understanding of how language works. Chilton is no James Joyce: he just writes regular gibberish. I offered him five specifically-tailored ways to immediately improve his blog, but they would work as well for any, including my own (I have been known to throw an ellipsis in where it was in no way required).
Also, it's kind of cute that he doesn't know what "hipster" means. That's a sign that someone's a hipster, by the way. They'll either viciously deny it, or, "What does 'hipster' mean anyway?" We need to spread these tips around the internet so we can learn to spot them in the wild.
Now this is where it went weird. He wants me to help with his film project. But he frames this request by trashing my friend Diane in a remarkably petty and bitter fashion. He proudly told her to "go fuck herself", and apparently she's "a little freak" and "too Aspergery". Ironically, there are two Aspergery people on this page, and neither of them is Diane.
Whatever comedy value he had was now lost. I don't really care what he said about me, because I can make jokes about it - but I don't have much time for trashing people who can't aren't part of the conversation. If I have something to say, I'll say it to you directly (as this thread proves). Accordingly, I sent Diane these screencaps and blocked and deleted Chilton Nix. As he probably Googles himself nightly, he'll see this as soon as it loads into the Google cache, so I'll post any outraged dumbass emails I get, should he be stupid enough to present his hindquarters for another word-whippin'.
The tl;dr tale of one man's journey through Hipster Film Appreciation 101
(this will take some time)
Diane is a friend of mine. We both like movies and we talk about them all the time. One day, this happened:
I unintentionally misspelled his name, but whatever. The point is that I wouldn't be able to take anything he says seriously, because "Chilton Nix" would be written beside it. I realise this makes me shallow and possibly OCD, but I think it's important to be honest about these things. Then this happened:
and, presumably by way of explanation, this:
Everything's going fine so far. I like movies and I like talking about movies and Diane knows this, so co-opting me like this is not a big deal. What's the worst that can happen? The worst that can happen...
You don't need to read all of that; in fact I recommend, for the sake of your sanity, the most cursory of skims. The original David Lynch clip is 30 seconds long and consists entirely of him complaining that you can't see a movie properly on your iPhone. This would seem to be obvious, but it sparked a "debate" because of the inveterate pseudo-intellectual hipsterdom of everyone. I tried blowing it open, but the very act of engaging these people means that I was dragged down to their level. Whatever. I don't mind slumming it every so often. Then (!):
I have no idea where he got the idea that I was "sticking up for Diane". The only conclusion that I can come to is that he only read the bits where I was making fun of his name and skipped everything else. In movie discussions, as all over the internet, as in life, you should never hold strong opinions about things you don't understand. Also, there's a time when you should stop trying to use intimidation as a debate tactic, and that time is your tenth birthday.
Then, he sent me a private message:
I'm not sure what he thought was going to happen. Luckily, I have many years experience of smacking down assholes. Maybe he would learn his lesson and quit poking the bear. Also, I realise the beatnik/hipster thing was lame, but I didn't have time to prepare. Don't worry, it gets better:
"Come into Barnes & Noble and say that shit to my face." That's probably the high point of this entire exchange. So, unless you're a completist who finds the DVD extras of Adam Sandler movies fascinating, you can now return to your usual programming and thanks for reading.
Anticipating the possibility of his return, I had some time to prepare some better material, as you can see. I wanted to say "geography teacher" when it was pointed out to me by a concerned citizen that the phrase "geography teacher" did not carry with it the same sense of outdated gaucheness that it does in my part of the world. So I switched it, with reluctance, to "gauche history lecturer". I don't know why I bothered; he probably doesn't even know what "gauche" means. Well, maybe in the back of my mind I was planning this page. Then this:
He linked me to his blog. He claims below that "it gets sent automatically", which is odd because it wasn't "sent automatically" with every other message. So I think he's lying. I think he wanted me to see his book blog so I would be blown away by how clever he is. Well, maybe if I was prepared to deal with the sloppy grammar, spelling, syntax and catastrophic style.
So I suggested some ways to improve the thing. It's easier to read things when you don't have to machete your way through a jungle of badly-written sentences. I also offered to re-write it (without touching the content), something which I was absolutely prepared to do. Then this:
He's made the classic "They laughed at Galileo" error, which is the upshot of his fourth paragraph. Yes, they did laugh at Galileo; but Galileo wasn't a genius because people were laughing at him. In the same way, making something unreadable doesn't make it clever.
James Joyce often wrote a kind of inspired gibberish, but he had an encyclopedic vocabulary, and a fundamental understanding of how language works. Chilton is no James Joyce: he just writes regular gibberish. I offered him five specifically-tailored ways to immediately improve his blog, but they would work as well for any, including my own (I have been known to throw an ellipsis in where it was in no way required).
Also, it's kind of cute that he doesn't know what "hipster" means. That's a sign that someone's a hipster, by the way. They'll either viciously deny it, or, "What does 'hipster' mean anyway?" We need to spread these tips around the internet so we can learn to spot them in the wild.
Now this is where it went weird. He wants me to help with his film project. But he frames this request by trashing my friend Diane in a remarkably petty and bitter fashion. He proudly told her to "go fuck herself", and apparently she's "a little freak" and "too Aspergery". Ironically, there are two Aspergery people on this page, and neither of them is Diane.
Whatever comedy value he had was now lost. I don't really care what he said about me, because I can make jokes about it - but I don't have much time for trashing people who can't aren't part of the conversation. If I have something to say, I'll say it to you directly (as this thread proves). Accordingly, I sent Diane these screencaps and blocked and deleted Chilton Nix. As he probably Googles himself nightly, he'll see this as soon as it loads into the Google cache, so I'll post any outraged dumbass emails I get, should he be stupid enough to present his hindquarters for another word-whippin'.