@ggchestnut @0utofBeta @Ardua @Hidden_Wings @Liores @Talarianjs @belghast @ctmurfy @mevsmyselfandi he's not worth expending mental energy on— Rowan Blaze (@rowanblaze) May 11, 2015
Except when I can squeeze a blog post out of it. :-P
It seems that a certain blogger—whom I will not link to here; but if you're really that interested, can be found at Tweet Zero of the thread the above embed was part of—has long decried the Newbie Blogger Initiative as a call to groupthink by a certain cabal in the MMO blogging community. Dissenters need not apply. This blogger fancies himself some kind of reasoned, original thinker while parroting the reactionary opinions of others and denigrating the personal experiences of a whole subset of bloggers responding to an NBI writing prompt.
There's no such thing as a wrong opinion, but the facts some people use to substantiate their opinions can definitely be faulty. And there is such a thing as being on the wrong side of history. While "extremists" on both sides of a topic can be completely wrong in their tactics, if you're crying about the "good ol' days" when your own label enjoyed the privileges of an unbalanced system while declaring those who disagree with you to be bullies, maybe you need to walk a few steps in the shoes of those who've been ignored at best, and actively persecuted at worst.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.
Not being a Twitter-user I can't deconstruct that thread to a Tweet Zero so I still have no idea who said something to start it or what it was that they said. Can you either explain how to get to that initiating tweet (assuming it was a tweet that started it not a blog post?) or give some other clue who it was and what they said?
ReplyDeleteHard to form any kind of opinion when you have absolutely no idea what the topic is.
Oh wait...is this something to do with Gamergate thing? I bet that's it...
Sorry, thinking aloud there.
I posted the link in a comment on your latest. Feel free to follow it and/or moderate the comment into oblivion.
DeleteTweet Zero: https://twitter.com/mevsmyselfandi/status/597542141192081408
DeleteFor future, if a tweet is linked, you can scroll up the page until it hits the first one. :)
(Took me a while to figure out when I first started on Twitter. ^_^)
It actually took me a couple clicks to get to the link through Twitter itself. It only goes so far back. Tweetdeck and apps like Plume do a better job of showing an entire thread.
DeleteAh thanks! Bit of an anti-climax though - I've never even heard of him!
DeleteMakes his bragging very amusing.
DeleteWait, we have cabals in MMO blogging? Why wasn't I told?
ReplyDeleteCabals, Free Companies. Corps, you name it. :-P
DeleteI really felt even more attacked reading that post, and I may even tackle the first talkback topic now, whereas I was hesitant before.
ReplyDeleteOther than this post, I probably won't mention it. Mental Energy and all that. But then, I'm just burying my head in the sand, I guess.
DeleteWow... so... who exactly is this person? I'm probably painting a target on me by saying I've never even heard of their blog until now. Seeing the kind of toxicity and intolerance in that one post alone, I'm probably better off not knowing.
ReplyDeleteThey sound pretty bitter. Kinda like a kid that doesn't want to play nice with others at recess. So it comes off like "Well, I'm not in their nasty little group. I don't like them anyhow, so neeeh!" *sticks tongue out*
Seems like anytime you try to do something nice and positive (NBI) for other folks on the net, there's always gonna be that one. You're right. Not worth the mental energy.
Yeah, I'm not sure I'd heard of the guy before, either. He definitely has a victim complex, for all his protestations otherwise.
DeleteBecause I love my NBI compatriots, this link is for all of you. :)
ReplyDeletehttp://99u.com/articles/25151/dont-feed-the-haters-the-confessions-of-a-former-troll
Wise words. Thank you, my friend.
DeleteI didn't want to feed the troll anymore than I had to—still maybe more than I should have—and I certainly wasn't going to comment on his actual page. Unfortunately, the whole controversy has had actual micro-economic effects, mention the disruption to several people's lives. So to say they are simply trolls is a bit naive.
This blog is where I vent, among other things, so here is where I put my response. I intentionally made it difficult to find the original link in my post, but left Chestnut's more direct link in the comments, mostly because Blogger deadens comment links, requiring the reader to do at least the work of copy-pasting into an address bar.
Unfortunately like a lot of the vitriol that gets throw about these days (prob every day but hey) any interesting message that could have been looked at, discussed and even added insight into blogging that he had is lost under a wall of hate.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if you mean his hate or the backlash, but I'll as if you meant his. I know a lot of people seem to think that if someone has a valid point buried in a wall of hate, we should still listen. After all, to do other wise would be a form of "shoot the messenger." However, from my point of view, the noise of the vitriol drowns out any bits of reason may be contained in the message. It has to do with credibility. Anything you say that reduces your credibility will interfere with the message you are trying to convey.
DeleteThis is turning in to another blog post.