io9 Shoves its Head (Mostly) Up its Own Ass

I’m not going to bother to link to them, because Gawker media can go to hell.

In the Olympic spirt, io9 really went for the gold in the Write a Bullshit Headline competition.

DragonCon Releases (Mostly) Puppy-Free Nominations For First Dragon Awards
by Beth Elderkin
If by mostly Puppy Free, that headline means like 1/3 of the nominees were Sad Puppy participants or favorites, sure, but that’s like proudly proclaiming Utah is (Mostly) Mormon-Free. As in, you could write that headline, but you’d have to be A. a liar or B. an imbecile.

Sad Puppy and Dragon nominee, Brian breaks down the actual numbers here:http://www.brianniemeier.com/2016/08/io9-reports-on-dragon-awards-misses.html

The take away is that the author is either a compulsive liar or really shitty at math. Either way, Hulk Hogan should fire her.
I’m not going to bother fisking this, because the article is a bunch of garbled nonsense strung together in the vain hopes of establishing their regular dipshit CHORFed out narrative. It is really dumb, even by Gawker standards.
The highlights include the fact that they are surprised we didn’t use slates. Well, duh. Since the Dragon awards are an actual inclusive award for all of fandom, and not an insular closed circle jerk of like minded friends taking turns giving each other awards, why would we?
This chair is io9 Certified 100% PUPPY FREE
This chair is io9 Certified 100% PUPPY FREE
When I started Sad Puppies the Hugos “represented all of fandom”, I said no they don’t, they only represent one tiny, politically biased group, and people like this called me a liar (I believe it was io9 that hailed 14 white liberals and 1 Asian liberal winning Hugos as a Victory of Diversity). Until after a couple of years of us getting Wrongfun on the ballot, then they shifted gears and the Hugos became “their special precious thing which belongs only to their special group”. Which is what I said it was all along. Go figure.
So places like io9 and Entertainment Weekly called us sexist/racists and our secret goal was to keep women and minorities out of sci-fi (which considering our nominees means we were really bad at it). This culminated in a boondoggle of the Hugos handing out wooden assholes, and No Awarding all the Wrongfan favorites–regardless of whether they were worthy or not–to send a message. And that message was Keep Out You Are Not Welcome In Our Club.
Once we firmly established that they were full of shit and the Chorfs abandoned the narrative that the Hugos represented All of Fandom, they started telling Wrongfan that we should go start our own awards. Inevitably somebody said okay.
So along comes an a new big fan award, from a giant thriving convention, so there can be an actual fan award representing all of fandom again. Then the nominees, shockingly enough, featured a bunch of popular things that fans like. Most people rejoiced, while Chorfs got butt hurt, because they hate when people have fun wrong.
Only in the mind of a social justice addled io9 writer could this all new award filling the void left by the old award floundering its way into snooty oblivion, turn into “bridging the gap” and “a compromise between various factions of fandom”. No, idiots. It is a fan award. Enthusiastic fans rallied around stuff they loved.  DragonCon realizes this, and DragonCon embraced the fun.
But Beth Elderkin of io9 does not Embrace The Fun
Beth Elderkin EDIT: I was given a screen shot of Beth, the author of the io9 piece saying this, but was unaware in context she was answering another poster named CoSineBlue. 
8/13/16 2:29pm
Can’t these stupid puppy assholes be euthanized or something like unclaimed strays at the pound?
Judging by that post, Beth is angling for a position in the SMOFen SS under Reichsfurher Nielsen-Hayden. My suggestion to Beth is that if she wants to euthanize us, she’d best bring lots of friends.

The Dragon Awards are open to ALL fans. You can go here to sign up to vote: http://awards.dragoncon.org/

The American News Media Sucks
Son of the Black Sword is a Finalist for the Dragon Award

104 thoughts on “io9 Shoves its Head (Mostly) Up its Own Ass”

    1. Oh, they have guns. They just don’t want YOU to have guns. That way you’re an easier target when they decide to use their guns for righteous, totally unbiased purposes. Like, I don’t know, euthanizing anyone they don’t agree with?

      1. Who of them has the guns? The military and police? They’re not the biggest fans of Leftist and SJW’s at the moment.
        Urban dwelling minorities? Also not really huge SJW fans, and not very likely to heed their “leadership”.
        The SJW’s themselves? A few may have grandpop’s old .22 or shotgun he used for hunting. How many hard left SJW types are top tier competitive shooters or expert firearms trainers?

        1. As “Urban dwelling minoritiy” , you can rest assured I have the gunz and will be aiming to keep my reproductives powers from the care and love of the SJWs of the T-4 Program that Beth wants imposed.

        2. If the Great War Against the Puppies comes, I wonder how many special snowflakes would if they heard that dropped melon sound and the snowflake next to them suddenly had half a head?

          1. The fiction that snowflakes are rushing to 11B is right up there with Hillary fixing the economy.

          2. Dude… that’s a HORRIBLE idea. I love it, I want pictures of it, but it’s a HORRIBLE idea.

      2. But if they fire the guns they own, they will suffer PTSD from all the noise, smoke, and massive recoil they make like a bazooka does!

        1. Actually they tend to excel of that. No standards and low morals. See movie Idiocracy for future coming soon to all of us.

          1. It’s the smug SJW literati types we’re discussing. The hipsters with the useless degrees and a fortune in student loan debt.
            Those aren’t the people exactly breeding.

          2. The Idiocracy types don’t know, and could care less about proper post-binary gender representation ratios and that stuff.

          3. Fair point. They probably also view sex itself as an assault on women.
            I forgot which idiots we were discussing!

  1. I voted in the Dragon Awards for the things I had read or seen. I hadn’t played any of the games (yet) so I didn’t vote in those categories.

  2. Thanks for the commentary. I didn’t go to the io9 site, as I didn’t want to give them any traffic, or hear about what a great and successful author their cj anders is for having published one book that didn’t do all that well.
    Then again, that’s better than damon over at the guardian, who got all that money and still hasn’t published anything, so I guess by the chorf standard, that’s a pretty impressive record.

  3. “Can’t these stupid puppy assholes be euthanized or something like unclaimed strays at the pound?”

    Im confused. I thought “No Kill Shelters” were all the rage for neoliberals. I cant keep up. SJW-ing is hard.

    1. PETA is one of the biggest puppy killers around with their alleged animal shelters, so I wouldn’t rely on them for my self-preservation…

    2. Especially when they demand for “Free gun zones” and “safe zones” wile demanding abortion and death to people that disagree with them.

    3. “I thought “No Kill Shelters” were all the rage for neoliberals.”

      Neoliberals are free marketeers, not SJWs (although I suppose it’s just about possible to be both at the same time).

  4. I would love to see a video of GRRM and Larry sitting down over coffee and hashing out the Puppy Saga once and for all. You’re both well-informed, reasonable men and I think it would do a lot of good and also be very entertaining. Can we start a fan petition to make this happen? (or should I just file this under Pie In The Sky?)

    1. I would disagree that GRRM is “reasonable”. His later posts about the puppies last year were chock full of straw men.

      1. I’ll re-read. Maybe I’m misremembering (if that’s a word) but I was thinking about Larry and GRRM’s back-and-forth via blog posts as reasonable on both sides. But I’d have to take another look.

        1. GRRM’s posts, as I recall, came across as quite reasonable if you didn’t know the facts beforehand. But if you did know the facts he was conveniently omitting, they came across as… less reasonable.

          That’s just from vague memory, and I’d have to spend far more time than I have available to go back and look through what he wrote to see precisely what it was that he conveniently left out. But my memory is telling me that there was definitely something about which he lied by omission.

          1. If you didn’t know the details GRRM sounded like the voice of reason. If you did know the details he wasn’t nearly so reasonable.

          2. He was at last willing to attempt a dialogue, instead of going directly for the FU. If he had not bought into his own side’s bullshit it might even have been a constructive dialogue. If.

          3. What GRRM considered a ‘dialogue’ was mostly the condescension of the lordly class for the grievances of the peasants. Very European upper class type of thing. “The objectionable Puppies will calm down and go away if we throw them a bone,” essentially covers it, IMHO.

            I remain unimpressed with Mr. GRRM.

          4. Heavens knows I’ve dumped on him a lot in these pages, but GRRM is pretty good at writing, which is why I stopped reading GOT.
            If he was a hack, we wouldn’t care about the kill ’em all nihilism. The first book sucked me in, and by the 4th, I had enough.

          5. The first book of GOT turned me off completely and left me cold to his work. I couldn’t stand a single character in the book and just wanted them all to die. Frankly I need a character I can empathize with. It doesn’t need to look like me, be the same gender, or any of that. Just be an interesting character that doesn’t make me want to gouge my eyes out.

    2. I’ll second the GRRM as reasonable. I think he thinks he is reasonable, but he tends to just be caught up in the same echo chamber as other liberals.

  5. I said it on Facebook and I will say it here. Maybe Larry will be able to buy io9 from Hogan. Can you imagine the butthurt if the ILOH actually owned such a “prestigious” website? The howling would be like music to my ears

        1. If it’s a viable proposition, it’ll be MORE viable if you don’t pay a king’s ransom for aging servers, tainted intellectual property, and a pack of writer contracts that ain’t worth takin with you to the outhouse.

          1. *grin* See, this is why I love the folks here. They can come up with the most entertaining ideas.

            MHI Milo and Milo Y working together: explosions made FABULOUS.

  6. The SJWs really are butthurt this week. First the massive retardation of The Verge and Nora K, now this.

    Maybe some of them have secret knowledge of how the Hugos turned out, and they’re not happy. I expect they’ll be less happy with how the Dragons turn out.

          1. Whale turd is better. . .The lowest form of organic life on the planet. My old wrestling coach used to use that on us if we weren’t working hard enough.

          2. I thought that movie a few years ago said that Will Smith was lower than Whale turds?

          3. Whale turds float. Once again, a ridiculously low bar that SJW’s can’t pass.

  7. Why does Beth hate dogs? Who wants innocent, abandoned animals at the shelter to be put to death?

    CHORFs do, apparently.

    Don’t listen to the haters, friends. Go to you local shelter and find a friend who needs a forever home.

          1. The pile has become too big at my little shack on the prairie, but I can’t stop buying stuff because people like Larry keeps on writing it. Just one of the terrible burdens we bear….

          2. Yeah, I finished the HBK audiobook in record time. Can’t wait for Alliance of Shadows.

  8. Your book was really, really good if that counts for anything, and it didn’t make me feel like the universe was a bleak nihilistic hell after I got done reading it. And your character, despite not being white, had a personality that experienced genuine growth as a result of the actions taking place in the story…

    Then again, you ARE a conservative and haven’t done anything honorable like endorsed child brides, ISIS, the Taliban and you ARE a really good screen on which I can project all of my unresolved childhood issues with my father… so… I guess I’m at a loss.

  9. People like her are vile parasites. They destroy everything they touch and move on to a new victim. Right now the SFF is gravely infected and I don’t know if it can be saved. I find myself avoiding all my old message boards, reddit, etc. because it’s a constant barrage of diversity guilt marketing. One of my favorite authors posted some awesome artwork the other day from the artist doing his new cover and the parasites descended with the “objectifying women, too attractive, body shaming,” screeches. I’m having a hard time making myself even read Fantasy lately because it reminds me of all the Hugo tripe.

    1. Check out Kindle Unlimited on Amazon. There is a lot of really good stuff out there. It’s been keeping me busy during what seems to be a never ending allergy season this year.

  10. Since we’re talking about truth and precision, it’s worth noting that the last comment attributed to Beth Elderkin should actually be attributed to “CoSineBlue” speaking *to* Beth Elderkin.

    She didn’t say it.

  11. Thank you Larry – at last one of life’s little mysteries is solved. I had always wondered how the Social Justice types got their heads around their ardent support of hard-core Islam. I mean in theory at least one side murders gays and the other marries them, one side lets women lead, but only when there are landmines, etc. But now I know – they share a hatred of dogs and that trumps the rest ;-/

  12. The obnoxious comment about euthanizing dogs wasn’t written by Beth Elderkin but by some lackbrain scrofulous fool who goes by the handle CoSineBlue. I haven’t read a Hugo nominated book for years because they were so bad, preachy, contrived, lifeless, like listening to some humorless leftist. In fact I didn’t read any science fiction for about a 15 year stretch until I discovered Baen through Larry’s books.

      1. In fairness, if I may quote Cruxshadows, “there is no love untouched by hate, no unity without discord.” It is, however, mildly disturbing when one’s love for something primarily manifests itself in hatred not only of its opponents, but those who are even ambivalent about it.

    1. We are, we’re the ones talking about murder and suppression and perpetrating microaggressions. All they are doing is talking about “culling” or “putting down” or “Euthanizing” a dangerous element, for the good of society.

      I’m with Larry. They better bring a LOT of friends.

  13. The only thing this i09 article really says is that WC crowd are trying to force a BRAND NEW, completely unrelated award, at a COMPLETE different con, to end up being ALL about THEM.

    How very petty.

    How very typical.

    I hope this ends up biting them right where it hurts…in sales.

    1. Of course its all about them. They are the Cognoscenti, the Taste Makers. They decide how things will be and we, the Little People, had best get busy paying our money and lapping up whatever thin gruel we are served, with no complaints.

      Best $40 I ever spent was that WorldCon membership. Two years of unending glee, watching these purulent little creature leak outrage.

      “Euthanize these Puppies,” forsooth. Delicious!

    2. Worldcon is still a little miffed at DragonCon for taking over the Labor Day weekend. WC used to have Labor Day all to themselves, as it was an understood but not written fandom rule that that particular weekend was reserved exclusively for it. But then DC moved to that weekend and became a fixture there, and WC found they had to move or risk losing guests, artists, & vendors to the much more popular event.

      (Currently typing this from my WorldCon hotel room. Don’t judge me, I still have a lot of friends who go to WC.)

        1. I know. And looking around the KC Convention Center lobby right now, on average far younger.

          In about 15-20 years, this convention is going to be very small unless it finds a way to attract a younger base.

  14. Larry, a correction for your last paragraph. It wasn’t Ms. Elderkin who asked that question, it was a person (CoSineBlue) posing the question TO her, in the very first comment.

  15. They never seem to get tired of repeating the same debunked BS. Seems like I can’t open Wired anymore without seeing a nauseating puff pieces about NK Jemisin supposedly being oppressed because she’s a progressive black woman. There’s never any acknowledgement of the most basic fact: Sad Puppies was started because the Hugos had become a progressive circle jerk closed to everyone else.

    I’ve never heard prominent Puppies suggest progressives should stop writing or be excluded from awards, or even that progressive-themed works can’t be great stories — but I hear all the time how Puppies and their ilk should be shunned and No Awarded and maybe even arrested.

    Maoism wasn’t an aberration, the scenes in Three Body Problem where the academics are hauled into the town squares and harangued, beaten, and spat on is just the natural culmination of unrestrained leftism.

    1. Well, Hollywood communists being informed on because they were discriminating against Hollywood non-communists ‘somehow’ became a story of the poor persecuted communists.

    2. Yeah, Wired’s SF book club is full of what the Tor.com crowd has been pushing (Jemisin, Leckie, that Lightning book I forget the name of and am too lazy to google). What an amazing coincidence, no?

    3. Yep. Leckie, Jemisin, Scalzi, and Novik deserve congratulations for their Dragon noms because they’ve made enough fans to get on the final ballot of a populist award.

      If only the other side would return the favor…

    4. Primarily because they are not writing this stuff to convince anyone new, they are writing it for the purposes of their own circle-jerk (we all do this, but it’s so much better with truth on your side). And they understand that repeating it enough is all that is needed to convince people sufficiently sympathetic to them that they are 100% right and their opponents 100% evil. Most of them aren’t going to go and look at the actual recommendations for these works. It’s far easier to just get in on the sweet, sweet virtue signaling action.

    5. “Sad Puppies was started because the Hugos had become a progressive circle jerk closed to everyone else.” -TD

      This is why the “Go start a Conservo-Libertarian Award” “suggestion” was never an option. The Puppy factions believe that restricting an award to only those that agree with your politics devalues the award by reducing the talent pool. You can’t complain about that in the Hugo’s and then do it yourself.

  16. Can’t these stupid puppy assholes be euthanized or something like unclaimed strays at the pound?
    Gee whiz, sounds a whole lot like a death threat to me. Someone let the New York Times know.

  17. Larry, I’m not a puppy, and even I threw up a little in my mouth when I saw that headline. It’s not even the math that you pointed out, but for me it was the fact they immediately started politicizing the whole thing. Like, come on, it’s the first year of a fan award. Do you need to immediately start bringing Puppies up?!

    1. Dude, go back a few posts and it really is hammered home how sad the Anti-Sad Puppies are. Dragoncon folk talked to him, surprised that he wasn’t writing about the Dragon Awards on the blog. Larry’s explanation is summarized to: “coz of Sad Puppies, I didn’t want to get you negative attention.” Their response was more or less “That stuff doesn’t matter. More people, more votes, less likelihood of cliques. Write away.” So he did.

      It’s the ASPs mischaracterizing Dragon Awards as “Sad Puppies Awards”, and whining about Sad Puppies in relation to Dragon Awards because coincidentally, both Sad Puppies 4 and Dragon Awards have the same goal: get so many people voting that there can be no domination of cliques. But for the idiot SJZs, it’s always political. And ‘because’ Dragon Awards didn’t care about the politics, ‘they’re on Larry’s Puppy side.’ Somehow. Because they say so.

  18. And I’m guessing Ms. Elderkin will be among the first to scream “misogyny”, “racism” and demand more “diversity” if the Dragon Awards fail to give the appropriate works the accolades she thinks they deserve.

  19. “you could write that headline, but you’d have to be A. a liar or B. an imbecile.”
    You need to embrace the power of “and.”

  20. Well now that io9 has been bought by Univision maybe they’ll discover how worthless it is and just euthanize it (sort of like those puppies they didn’t like).

  21. So,I decided to look up the Hugo’s con to get more info on it, and the guardian wrote an article about it …. and the Sad Puppies. More specifically Damien Walter wrote about it. Side note: Mr. Corriea read your fisking of his older articles. Thoroughly entertaining you should do more =D.

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