Categories
reference post sarcasm someone is wrong on the internet

Reasons why I will not be replying to your argument

This post has been made for my own later use. Others are welcome to use it as well.

The numbers on the list are for reference rather than ordinal purposes.


To whom it may concern:

Thank you for your interest in my blog post/comment/tweet/facebook post/[insert social media of choice here]. I appreciate that you have taken time out of your day to share your opinion with me. However, I will not be addressing said opinion further or at all in any substantive way (beyond the link I have just shared with you) for one or more of the following reasons:

  1. Something you have said indicates to me that you are not interested in arguing in good faith. That is to say, I have reason to believe you are not interested in an actual discussion in which both sides listen to each other, modify their positions, and come to some form of agreement.
    1. I might have just given your social media profile a brief look and seen slurs indicating racism, misogyny, homophobia, or transphobia, or observed terms such as “libtard,” or other MAGA/MRA/Gamergater/Neo-Nazi flavored language thrown around and thus concluded this really isn’t going to be worth my time.
    2. Same if I notice you run a climate denial website or something similarly disconnected from reality.
  2. You have moved the goal posts at least once.
  3. Something you have said indicates to me that you lack the necessary factual grounding in order to have this argument, and I am completely uninterested in doing the background research for you.
    1. If you are interested in paying me to do the research for you, for example by way of writing an annotated bibliography that you can peruse at your convenience, we can discuss my hourly rates.
  4. You have thus far done such a good job at arguing with straw man conceptions of my words that I’ve come to realize my input is entirely superfluous. Please feel free to continue this argument without me.
    1. See also: the argument you are attempting to have has only the most passing resemblance to the argument in which I’ve been participating.
  5. You have said something so gob-smackingly insulting or downright evil that I don’t want to be on the same planet as you, let alone in some kind of intellectual interchange.
  6. Mommy taught me not to feed the trolls.
  7. I don’t see the point in responding to complete non-sequiturs.
  8. You said something about the First Amendment that indicates you have no actual understanding of the First Amendment; refer back to point number 3.
  9. This argument is two people shouting “Nuh UH!” “Uh HUH!” into the internet for eternity in all but the most literal sense.
  10. I’m annoyed enough that I have completely lost my ability to be either kind or only gently sarcastic.
  11. I have homework to do/I have work to do/I have cats to pet/I have a Fist of Havoc better utilized elsewhere/my pedicure could use some maintenance.
  12. Responding substantively to this argument would give it more intellectual cachet than it deserves.
  13. You immediately misgendered me and I can’t be arsed to deal with you right now.
  14. I’m too mentally or physically tired to want to mount an expedition down this rabbit hole.
  15. I just finished having this exact same argument with someone else and don’t feel like repeating myself, kindly refer to my comments/mentions.
  16. You appear to be attempting your own version of the Gish Gallop, and I have better things to do with my time.
  17. My humanity, my identity, or that of my siblings in struggle is not up for debate. You are simply wrong. The end.
  18. I have a deadline and my agent has a rubber hose.

Please do not take my lack of interest in responding as a sign that you have “won” in any sense but that of water “winning” over a piece of rock by wearing it smooth. My silence is neither agreement nor assent, but rather lack of interest in anything further you might have to say coupled with disinclination to waste energy or breath better spent elsewhere.

I wish you luck in your future endeavors. Have a nice day.

Categories
sarcasm science fiction writing

Yes, I am trying to destroy science fiction, thank you for noticing.

God, what does a woman have to do around the internet to get her heathen liberal-fascist* feminazi reverse racist anarcho homosexual agenda aimed at the complete destruction of a literary genre noticed? I was about to start setting shit on fire, I fucking swear.

But it’s okay, guys! Senpai noticed me! (Okay, and a lot of other people, but I’m still getting some dokidoki in my shriveled, blackened little kokoro.) Finally, someone gets what we’ve been trying to do all along! We no longer have to go creeping around under cover of the internet, stealing Edgar Rice Burroughs novels from babies and pushing well meaning white guys (who just want to explain to us that we should stop whining because racism and sexism aren’t actually a thing any more, or wait maybe they are a thing but we should just suck less okay) down the stairs.

I for one am relieved. I’ve hated scifi since the minute I first encountered it. As my mother read The Hobbit to my brother and me as children, I had only two thoughts:

1) I was pretty sure I could take my older brother in a knife fight. If I sacrificed him on the altar if the dark and terrible lesbofeminazi gods, would I grow up to look absolutely fabulous in trousers and have my very own mustache to twirl?

And.

2) I was going to destroy Middle Earth and the rotten literary ground from which it had sprung. And then salt the soil with the bitter tears of all god-fearing, proper fans.

I never managed number one, though I do still look fabulous in trousers. But goal number two is ticking along nicely. I have joined an (apparently not so secret) cabal composed of basically everyone who isn’t a straight white guy oh wait there are some straight white guys in or cabal too, um shit, I guess it’s actually a cabal of people who just don’t think everything has to be about straight white guys. Yeah, that. And then, of all dastardly things, we WRITE.

Because we saw, you see. We saw so clearly that the foundation of all speculative fiction is actually straight white guys, not, you know, fantastical elements and what if like those lying bastard liberals tell you in their “college courses.” (Hah! Our secret liberal indoctrination works again!) So if you replace the straight white guys in fiction with people that actually reflect the diversity of the population, IT WILL ALL COME CRASHING DOWN LIKE A JENGA TOWER SURROUNDED BY DRUNKEN UNDERGRADS.

AHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA

I mean, we SAY we would just like to read stories about people like us, that a little diversity doesn’t hurt, but smart guys like senpai know. He’s on to us. We hate art, because art is only the stuff senpai likes reading, and the rest of us totally don’t count because we don’t get the greatness of all that ART. We’re just going to burn that shit down. I for one only read scifi because I hate it. I only do things I hate. That’s how my bitter, sad, and twisted life works. That’s why you should all run out right now and bake me cakes because if there is one thing I hate more than scifi it’s cake and I’ll eat cake while I read a scifi novel so then MY HATE-FILLED, MISERABLE EXISTENCE WILL BE COMPETE.

I am so glad I don’t have to pretend any more. It’s like a great burden has lifted from my shoulders.

Now, I’m going back to writing my story about a lesbian Sikh werewolf going to the prom because I am doing my part to destroy everything that scifi stands for. Which, let us remember, is only straight white guys. Only that. Ever.

* – That’s what it’s called, right, Bill O’Reilly (or was it Glenn Beck I don’t even know any more they’re all like the same person) is no longer actually intelligible through all the froth, so I’m guessing.

Categories
rants sarcasm science fiction

Boy Fiction Versus Girl Fiction

A quote:

The true perversion, though, is the sense you get that all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise. While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to “The Hobbit” first. “Game of Thrones” is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half.

(Emphasis added by me.)

Okay, so let me first admit that I should probably get my nerd card taken away, since I don’t give much of a crap about Game of Thrones, having not read the books yet since I’ve heard so many people whining about the series being unfinished and I don’t like to be left hanging. And at this point, so many people have been going on and on and on about it that I’m just kind of tired of hearing about it and the contrary little gremlin that lives somewhere around my pituitary gland is whispering, “Well if it’s that popular you don’t want anything to do with it anyway.”

So this has really nothing to do with Game of Thrones per se, but rather the mind-boggling stupidity that it’s brought out in some people. Namely the person that penned the above quote, in a NYT review.

Seriously, can we please dispense with this absolutely stupid notion of boy fiction and girl fiction already? Can we please let go of the tired, ridiculous notion that women don’t like things unless there’s like, sex and romance or some shit, because apparently we just don’t enjoy politics or watching people getting blown up or whatever?

I’m actually not even sure if Ms. Bellafante is saying that she thinks women couldn’t possibly like Game of Thrones if it weren’t for all the sexy-sexy time, or if she’s just saying that studio execs must believe that, or what. Though after reading the paragraph over and over, through the red haze of sheer annoyance I feel pretty sure that it’s a ridiculous statement any way you read it. And by the way, if we’re being stereotypical and sexist, isn’t lots of sex a boy thing? Because chicks just want relationships and romance and shit, and then all the subsequent sex is candle-lit and arty and there’s a mushy soundtrack with piano and lots of strings.

I could go on and on about just how many women I know who utterly love the book series and are excited about the TV series. I could also go on and on about how I got hooked on fantasy in general because my mom read The Hobbit to my brother and I when we were little kids. But I’m not.

My gripe is actually a lot more general. You know, from high school on I’ve been exposed to a lot of sneering comments about how, of the available nerd genres, fantasy is girl fiction and scifi is boy fiction because our pitiful ladybrains can’t handle all the science and guns and whatever in scifi. And now apparently fantasy isn’t girl fiction any more either, not unless it includes a sufficient quantity of mushy stuff to go with the violence, because our ladybrains just can’t enjoy anything if people aren’t frantically humping each other.

FFS, could you assholes make up your minds about what women are allowed to like? At this rate, I’m going to have to give up reading all together, and then I’ll apparently only be allowed to watch Jersey Shore or something similarly vacuous. At which point I intend to put a hole through my skull with my dad’s cordless power drill.

Or maybe we could just dispense with all the stupidly sexist generalization and – I admit this is a radical notion, but hang with me here – just let people like whatever the hell it is they like without linking it to their gender?

You’ll get my copy of Old Man’s War when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.