So it goes, dans la belle internet

[kohaku_wind]

So it appears that someone *else* from BoingBoing turns out to be a passive-aggressive douche-wazzle. In this case, a racist one. Xeni gave a sortof-apology about the Violet Blue incident; let's see if this even garners enough publicity to force Teresa Nielsen Hayden to do the same. (probably not; this is lj after all)

Comments

[miraling.livejournal.com]

I never really figured out what was up with Violet Blue

[miraling.livejournal.com]

(Still don't know what's up with this one, either, exactly, because the original stuff is all deleted...?)

[alors-indikaze.livejournal.com]

Yeah, all we have is that freezepage of tnh's original post, rather than the comments of her husband that started the whole thing.

On the other hand, Hayden doesn't exactly give a good accounting for herself or her husband other than "waaaah you mean brown people who don't even take yourselves seriously made my husband feel bad and you make soooo many good people feel like bad people why can't you make us feel good about our lack of racism like you're supposed to I have so many black friends. :("

And from what I've been able to scrounge up, this isn't the first time Hayden herself has been involved in drama on teh intarwebs.

[miraling.livejournal.com]

that reeks of extra-high levels of internet stupidity. gross!

As I see it

[arctangent.livejournal.com]

Xeni and VB had sex. It was one of those relationships where Xeni felt like she was brutally dumped and VB thought she was just moving on from a short-term fling. Xeni got really really upset and purged VB from Boingboing entirely in a rather passive-aggressive shot at her. People noticed and called shenanigans about a group blog that crusades against censorship and suppression of information *everywhere else* pulling this kind of stunt. TNH started banning people right and left and said anyone calling shenanigans was an ingrate who didn't deserve to be on Boingboing.

[arctangent.livejournal.com]

Unsurprising -- TNH herself was far, far meaner and nastier and more closedminded about the original Violet Blue drama than even Xeni herself. Xeni mainly insulted Violet Blue herself; TNH was the one who approached the ensuing drama by violently attacking anyone and everyone who dared question Xeni's actions in the matter and saying that anyone who came to Boingboing to question Boingboing's editorial policy was an ingrate and a loser and should shut the fuck up or get banned.

What really gets me is how the blogosphere in general has considered TNH some kind of ideal of how to be a firm, fair moderator with a set of subtle strategies for ensuring productive discussion. Because she isn't -- she's just another typical mod bully who uses brute force to shut people up or scare them off if they cross any of a dozen arbitrary lines, and she *appears* to be some kind of wise noble arbitrator because the only people who get to stick around are, by definition, people she likes.

Which all works fine until it suddenly collapses when the category of people she likes expands too widely to be easily contained, like "people who dislike censorship" or "feminists of color".

Hopefully if she's discredited then her nasty, bullying style of moderation will be seen for what it is and not taken as an example of how things should be run on the Internet. I'd like to see nasty little tricks like disemvowelment go away, for instance. (It's not like TNH invented or popularized anything other than taking common sense -- "If someone gets too annoying then ban them" -- and stretching *beyond* common sense so as to get a reputation of being "tough", like saying "Ban people pre-emptively if they even start being argumentative and annoying in your own opinion even if they haven't technically done anything wrong" or "If someone hasn't crossed the line to be banworthy yet then aggressively edit their posts with your own little comments or distort/disfigure the post in some way to express your disapproval, as a kind of warning shot", all of which I think is nasty, uncivil and a bad idea.)