Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

LAX

Lots of places

I'm not saying Twitter isn't terrible.

They don't really believe in literature because they don't believe that anything can transcend ideology.

― Treeship, Monday, August 7, 2017 8:28 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...nothing can transcend ideology

damn, glad that's sorted.

^ what happens when you read too much twitter ppl be aware shunning twitter saves minds

― Mordy, Monday, August 7, 2017 8:37 PM (fifty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Condescending pseud" isn't any smarter than your generalizations about twitter discourse dipshit

"The book must be good because the person criticizing it is dumb"

They don't really believe in literature because they don't believe that anything can transcend ideology.

― Treeship, Monday, August 7, 2017

You're forbidding complicated reactions to art with attitudes like this, straight boy.

Reading her piece it's obvious she seems to lack some kind of measured critical tools & misunderstands the function of characters but Its still 100% possible or even likely that it's ideologically fucked up, how is that even controversial

seems like you've got both sides of the argument sorted, everybody else you can take off for the night

treeship otm

Say what you mean and stop being a punk

treeship otm

― k3vin k., Monday, August 7, 2017 9:44 PM (seven seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The fuck he is

His intentions are fine; I have a problem with "transcend."

People confuse "reading critically" with "putting one's sexual and racial politics under the bed, locked up with a Komodo dragon guarding them."

Alfred otm

yeesh, y'all

Reading her piece it's obvious she seems to lack some kind of measured critical tools & misunderstands the function of characters but Its still 100% possible or even likely that it's ideologically fucked up, how is that even controversial

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Monday, August 7, 2017 10:41 PM (three minutes ago)

dude it doesn't matter. this isn't a 10th grader's book report. people don't read 9000 words to be told what they already know. a little insight isn't much to ask for

That's literally what I said ? That her review sucks

When you mostly write in 140 characters you start to think in 140 characters. Could be good could be bad who are we to say.

My objection was to mordy's suggestion that this entire thing was the result of an "idiot reader" problem... it's completely possible there's an underlying fucked up dynamic to the book major critics missed of which this clusterfuck is a symptom, just bc the woman can't articulate it well doesn't mean there's not some truth to it.

dude no one said the book must be good because the reviewer is dumb. no one here has read the book or plans to. we're just saying the reviewer is dumb.

When you mostly write in 140 characters you start to think in 140 characters. Could be good could be bad who are we to say.

― Mordy, Monday, August 7, 2017 9:53 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I spent most of the last five years living off written pieces for like eight difft publications dumbass

Well you certainly think and write like an intellectual.

dude no one said the book must be good because the reviewer is dumb. no one here has read the book or plans to. we're just saying the reviewer is dumb.

― k3vin k., Monday, August 7, 2017 9:55 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Again responding to the idiot reader allegation, saying that's jumping to conclusions, no problem w the idiot writer allegation

Well you certainly think and write like an intellectual.

― Mordy, Monday, August 7, 2017 9:57 PM (eight seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You definitely have a narrow grasp of the conversation. & don't read my writing so why make it personal every time I disagree w you?

the idiot reader comment i think referred to her inability to recognize a literary construct known as "characters", which you yourself pointed out

"Transcend" was a bad word to use. I typed that in a sad pizzeria after a date cancelled on me. I just meant that artworks aren't always strictly reducible to the ideas they appear to be promoting. Is Madame Bovary the origin of the sexist "bored housewife" trope or is it a proto-feminist work that deals sympathetically with the limitations society imposed on women, even on their most private aspirations? It's obviously both of these things and it's way more.

Xp Alfred

this isn't a 10th grader's book report.

― k3vin k., Monday, August 7, 2017 8:50 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

all literary/media criticism is an attempt to monetize one's English class homework

The Ballad of the Sad Pizzeria

Treesh, if you're going on a date, don't pick the sad pizzeria. This is 101. We're here to help you.

No we weren't going there. I went there after she cancelled. I burned my mouth.

The gay thread hasn't been this tumescent in months.

Pizzeria Blueno

the moral of the story is sometimes i write my ilx posts in haste and i want to transcend accountability for that fact.

I feel like it's unfair that we poke more fun at posters who choose to communicate in paragraphs, with context, than at those who can barely commit to anything more than one-line snark attacks. But that's my anecdata, I haven't done the rigor.

I also have no problem believing that this book's treatment of racism might be flawed, and looking through that review the excerpts appear...not well-written. I'd have a hard time taking any worthwhile criticism from that particular review because the utter disgust that someone might write racist/sexist/ableist/etc characters seems so bizarre. I don't know how I'd feel as a minority reader being asked to follow a blatantly racist protagonist, but there's also some value in depicting racism not solely as an attribute of the black-hatted bad guys. And I just boggle at it being the most offensive book she's ever read. Even if she never picks up a book aimed at adults, half the children's lit canon...

I feel like it's unfair that we poke more fun at posters who choose to communicate in paragraphs, with context, than at those who can barely commit to anything more than one-line snark attacks. But that's my anecdata, I haven't done the rigor.
― El Tomboto, Monday, August 7, 2017 10:15 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

whither nabisco

I doubt this reviewer would survive an encounter with Heart of Darkness.

So what do people think of the Google situation - a lot of these culture warriors seem to think this is an affront to freedom of speech.

according to NRO, it's the French Revolution again:

The Google firing confirms a working hypothesis I have been pondering recently. The French Revolution is attacking the American Revolution.

The American Revolution was sparked by the Enlightenment, Judeo/Christian moral beliefs, mixed with Greek and Roman philosophy and political theories. At its best, the American Revolution promotes universal human equality–a work still in progress–individual freedom, freedom of thought and speech, the rule of law, etc..

The French Revolution, in contrast, is Utopian, collectivist, authoritarian, intolerant, and punitive. It is anti-religion generally and anti-Christianity specifically. It accepts the belief that the ends justify the means.

At its worst, the FR unleashed some of history’s most vile and destructive tyrannies: The First Republic and The Terror, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Cultural Revolution, etc. In its more mundane iterations, French Revolution ideologies express as the social fascism we increasingly witness today, such as the stifling of free speech on college campuses and thought control pogroms that cost professionally competent people their jobs for expressing disfavored opinions.

And here’s its inherent weakness: The French Revolution is never satisfied. Wrongs are never fully remedied. It grows ever more extreme until, eventually, it eats its own. Just ask Robespierre.

Let's ask him!

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner

It's probably a coincidence that all of these free speech arguments are defending the status quo/the Right.

I'd have a hard time taking any worthwhile criticism from that particular review because the utter disgust that someone might write racist/sexist/ableist/etc characters seems so bizarre.

It's a really basic-level misreading

This has come up before, but the review doesn't feel like a 'book review'. Rather it feels a lot like something you'd write if you bought some houseware off Amazon, and it didn't live up to expectations - there's a certain unconscious entitlement going on. Obvs that entitlement would be fine if you've bought a corkscrew and it fails to open wine bottles, or an iron that can't iron, or whatever, but feels very uncomfortable in a book review.

oy

I think my main take-away from the Vulture article and the original debacle it covered isn't that the YA fiction social circles on twitter/blogs are bad reviewers or writers, but that people are willing to dogpile on authors they view as bad actors when it comes to social issues. Although a few people replying to Rosenfield (the Vulture article writer) claim they read "the reviews" it's pretty obvious from skimming Amazon, Goodreads, etc. that a large portion of the negative reviews were from people who read the blog post lambasting the writer and echoed their take.

I think that's where I find fault with the whole mob mentality. Serious claims, like claiming a writer is malicious as opposed to just ham-handed in their handling of social issues, shouldn't be accepted from reading one blog post, especially if it's a YA writer with no track record. And if it's merely ham-handedness, and it looks like they're setting the book up for a sequel, then how about some constructive criticism?

To be fair, grandiose blog reviews aren't helping, either, but that figures into determining whether your sources are reliable or should be taken with a grain of salt. Even skimming a run-on, poorly-structured summary and dissection like that makes me consider buying a giant block of salt lick.

there's also a suspiciously large contingent of aspiring YA fiction writers who think themselves more tuned in to the zeitgeist who don't have book deals making a lot of noise!

mh otm

Re: Google firing I would need to know what he actually got fired for 'on paper'. Can't seem to dig this out. Like was it just the memo or was there more to it?

I hear about it, and then I remember all the people I've worked with who sit around venting stupid offensive opinions all day and never get fired or any challenges whatsoever, and this undercuts the idea of a leftist authoritarian takeover in the modern workplace. That's placing it in broader cultural terms, mind - the specific firing could still be well out of order/wrong.

we're ranting about it over here, might be a good place to ask:
Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

I don't know how I'd feel as a minority reader being asked to follow a blatantly racist protagonist, but there's also some value in depicting racism not solely as an attribute of the black-hatted bad guys.

ftr The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of my favorite books.

One of the things that bothers me in the YA war is that seemingly several YA authors are part of and encouraging the Twitter mobs. That's a weird position for a writer to be in, helping lead attacks on other writers. (Also seems risky, because who knows when they'll turn on you.)