50,000 Monkeys at 50,000 Typewriters Can't Be Wrong
I just realized that I didn’t tell the Internet that I recently joined forces with Hank and John Green, and have some cool merch at dftba.com, like Don’t Be A Dick t-shirts and It’s What You Love posters.
So now you know, and if you’re of a certain age, you’ll insert the appropriate GI Joe line here.
Tomorrow, I’m heading out to Chicago for a weekend at the Wizard World Comicon. As I pack my clothes and pick out my nerd shirts, I’ve been thinking about how much I love going to cons, because I love being surrounded by people who love the same things I love, the way I love them, while also being surrounded by people who love things I don’t even know about. We all get to love our respective things in the same way: enthusiastically, completely, unironically, without fear of judgement.
This has always been my experience at conventions, from the first few horror cons I attended at the Ambassador Hotel when I was a kid, all the way to the shows I’ve spoken at as recently as this year.
But John Scalzi points out that not everyone has had the same inclusive experiences that I’ve had, because of a certain type of self-appointed “gatekeeper” who has taken it upon themselves to decide who is a “real” fan of a thing.
Scalzi writes about this from a creator’s point of view:
Almost no one wants you to be a gatekeeper. Geek dudes: Do you honestly think Marvel comics, owned by Disney, wants you to harass women away from enjoying the X-Men? Do you think DC Comics, owned by Time Warner, appreciates when you demand a woman present you with a list of every Green Lantern in order to be worthy of “true geekdom”? Do you think Paramount Pictures, owned by Viacom, is grateful that some dude has appointed himself Arbiter of Star Trek Fandom? Do you believe that Tor Books, owned by Macmillan, one of the world’s largest publishers, will pat you on the head for judging any potential customers of their books, including mine? Do you actually understand what it is these corporations do? They produce commercial art. To be widely enjoyed. By as many people as possible.
Moving away from corporations, do you think individual writers and creators really want you to wave away potential fans from their work? Almost all of them are in the same boat as I am, either directly or indirectly dependent on volume of sales for income. They are happy you like their stuff. They would be even happier if not only you liked their stuff. When you attack other people who like their stuff, you’re potentially cutting into their livelihood. You’re not making friends with the people whose work you’re making a centerpiece of your life. You’re hurting them.
Do you think the staff of the conventions you attend are in any way happy when you troll the other attendees? Those attendees go on Twitter and Facebook and blogs and talk about how unfriendly or even dangerous that convention is. Others pick up on that and amplify the complaints. The people who are trying to run the convention have to deal with it and have to apologize for the fact thatyou are being an asshole, because they are getting some of the blame for it. Who do you think the convention staff would prefer to have as an attendee? The cosplaying woman who is excited to be there and is enthusiastic about the convention, or the geek dude who spends his time shitting all over other people’s enjoyment of a convention, which the staff has invested so much time in to make work?
Nearly every creator wants you to enjoy what they create. Almost none of them want you to police it.
I’m a little baffled that we need to keep having this conversation, but that’s probably because I’m 41 years-old and I don’t have the reflexive need to establish my “geek cred” at all, much less at the expense of another person (I suppose it also helps that, when someone hassles me about my “geek cred” I can reply, “I drove the fucking Enterprise and worked at Global Dynamics,” before I drop the mic on their head.)
So please consider this, potential gatekeepers: being a nerd isn’t about what you love, it’s about how you love it. So when someone says they love a thing that you love, don’t challenge them; embrace them, and love that thing together.
My friend Matt Fraction is one of the greatest comic writers in the history of comics. He’s also hilarious, and married to one of my favourite people on the planet (who is the wife of Matt Fraction*)
Matt’s got a book coming out with Chip Zdarsky called SEX CRIMINALS that is just phenomenal, and he’s doing an AMA at Reddit to get the word out.
Of course, I had to continue my Warren Ellis Beard Trolling:
But the whole reason I made this post was to share this:
BOOM.
All jokes aside, it’s a great AMA. Matt invited some people who work with him to join in (most notably Hawkeye colorist Matt Hollingsworth) and the AMA is a very cool, intimate look at how comics get made.
*5 of you will get that joke.
Status August 5, 2013 1408 PDT: Some of you are having trouble signing in so you can comment. Mysterious Kevin and I are looking into the problem, and hope to have it resolved soon. If you’re getting an “IP Banned” message, please copy it and email it to me so I can look into it. In the meantime, you should be able to use one of the connected social accounts (Twitter, Facebook, G+, etc.) to sign in.
I love Shark Week, and every year since it started airing on Discovery Channel, I’ve planted myself in front of the television to watch every minute of it.
So last night, I tuned in to watch the first entry in this year’s sharkstravaganza: a documentary about one of the coolest megasharks ever, the prehistoric Megalodon. This thing was freaking huge, with teeth the size of an adult human’s hand, and it is very, very extinct. Discovery’s special started out with what appeared to be “found footage” of some people on a fishing boat that gets hit and sunk by something huge … and I immediately knew something was amiss. The “found footage” was shot the way a professional photographer shoots things, not the way a vacationer holds their video camera. There was no logical way the camera could survive the salt water for the footage to be found. The footage was alleged to have been found in April … but then it got so much worse: Discovery Channel started Shark Week with a completely fake, completely made-up, completely bullshit “documentary” and they lied to their audience about it. They presented it as real.
I turned the show off after about 15 minutes, and watched Breaking Bad on Netflix to get ready for that show’s final season. But I was having a hard time staying focused, because I was angry, and I couldn’t figure out why. Why bother getting upset about yet another stupid “found footage” fake documentary passed off as real? Isn’t that pretty much par for the course on cable these days?
And then I realized why I was (and am) so angry: I care about education. I care about science. I care about inspiring people to learn about the world and universe around us. Sharks are fascinating, and megalodon was an absolutely incredible creature! Discovery had a chance to get its audience thinking about what the oceans were like when megalodon roamed and hunted in them. It had a chance to even show what could possibly happen if there were something that large and predatory in the ocean today … but Discovery Channel did not do that. In a cynical ploy for ratings, the network deliberately lied to its audience and presented fiction as fact. Discovery Channel betrayed its audience.
An entire generation has grown up watching Discovery Channel, learning about science and biology and physics, and that generation trusts Discovery Channel. We tune into Discovery Channel programming with the reasonable expectation that whatever we’re going to watch will be informative and truthful. We can trust Discovery Channel to educate us and our children about the world around us! That’s why we watch it in the first place!
Last night, Discovery Channel betrayed that trust during its biggest viewing week of the year. Discovery Channel isn’t run by stupid people, and this was not some kind of mistake. Someone made a deliberate choice to present a work of fiction that is more suited for the SyFy channel as a truthful and factual documentary. That is disgusting, and whoever made that decision should be ashamed.
If this had happened on just about any other network, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But Discovery Channel is more than just disposable entertainment on cable television. Discovery Channel inspired an entire generation to “explore your world”, and it is trusted to be truthful. Discovery Channel says its mission is to satisfy curiosity and make a difference in people’s lives by providing the highest quality content, services and products that entertain, engage and enlighten. There is nothing high quality or enlightening about deliberately misleading your audience during what is historically an informative and awesome week of programming. At the very least, Discovery should have made it very clear at the beginning that this was a “What if?” work of complete fiction, presented in a documentary format. Throwing up a 5 second disclaimer at the end of the program just isn’t good enough.
Discovery Channel has a rare chance to apologize to its audience: this year, the network is running a live aftershow with guests from the night’s programming. Someone from the network should use this platform and opportunity to address the audience, apologize for deliberately misleading them, and recommit to providing the highest quality content this week, and every other week out of the year.