Hi, John.
First, I’ve read Old Man’s War. Maybe one other of your books, I’m not sure. You’re pretty good, though of course nowhere near Vinge or Stephenson.
Likewise, I briefly read your blog. You can be pretty funny. But I quit for the same reason I dropped you in general: your regular little tantrums. Your self-worshipping, contemptuous, holier-than-thou bitching and moaning.
Like your latest attention-whoring:
In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.
Your post did raise questions, John. Though I doubt you can answer them. Still, let’s see. First note that your rampant narcissism is what keeps you from being a great writer. When you don’t identify with people, your every comment about them drips with contempt. Neal Stephenson does not do this. Which is why you’ll never be within shouting distance of Neal or Vernor Vinge. Not until the snide arrogance is beaten out of you by someone vastly more intelligent than your mewling little self.
Well, I’m here to help.
First question: what the heck was the purpose of your screed? If it was anything but “inflate my ego by insulting others”, you failed. People who agree with you don’t need the post. Those who don’t are more distant from you than ever, due to you being such an insufferable a-hole.
You breezily tell me that as a white man I am “privileged”. If I disagree? I’m “freaking out” or oblivious or something. Your sub-text is pretty obvious, so can I go ahead and make it text? It’s your usual message. “I’m better than you!”
You’ve told me what I am, John. Now, can I tell you what I am? I know you feel that you are the Judge of All, but most self-worshippers can at least pretend other people have the right to self-determination.
So what am I, John Scalzi? I am a miserable recluse. I was a four-eyed bookworm geek who grew up in the rural South of the 1960’s and 70’s. Now, obviously I don’t know why you’re such a racist. But I do know why I’m not. It’s because “privileged” white boys…and white girls and all the black and brown kids…mocked me, marginalized me, and ostracized me. I was emotionally and socially tortured, every day, throughout my childhood. But you’ll be happy to know that, as they delighted in my suffering, my tormentors forgot their differences in race, creed, and gender.
Isn’t that special? We could make a Benetton commercial out of it.
I never recovered from the wounding and scarring, John. I’d say it’s the main reason I’ve abandoned all social life and will die alone and unloved. Plus, lately? My tinnitus is so bad that I “joke” about eating a bullet. And while I’ll never do that, this endless cranial shrieking robs me of what little peace and pleasure remained in my lonely isolation.
And now you, John Scalzi, come smirking along…telling me how easy I’ve got it.
If you were capable of empathy, sir, you would fall to your knees and beg my forgiveness. But then, if you had compassion you couldn’t have written such tripe to begin with.
And don’t forget: that contempt of yours is why you remain a second-rate writer. Get rid of it and you could be among the best. Which is why, if you ever tell how lucky I am on a day when the tinnitus is particularly bad, I’m going to beat you half to death with my bare hands. For your own good.
Seriously.
Third: you actually believe that white men have it easier than white women in the 21st Century? Bwaaahahaha! God, you’re whipped.
Fourth: you’re no better at thinking than you are at empathy, are you? That’s really sad, in a sci-fi writer. But you don’t even see the implications of your own freakin’ writing.
Remember when I said that you could choose your difficulty setting in The Real World? Well, I lied. In fact, the computer chooses the difficulty setting for you. You don’t get a choice; you just get what gets given to you at the start of the game, and then you have to deal with it.
So it turns out World of Warcraft and Real Life aren’t the same thing? Wow. That’s…quite insightful. Nope, you don’t get to choose your parents. Not their socio-economic status, not their intelligence or other genetic traits, you don’t even get to choose between Type I Diabetes and something even more debilitating. It’s why some of us judge other people by their choices and not by their conditions.
Which is why I must ask: did you choose to become a spoiled whiny bitch, John, or is it a medical problem? If the second, maybe I owe you the apology.
And I’ll give you this, John: your vacuous self-worship actually did inspire some useful thought. Yes, of course for the past few centuries white people, in general, have enjoyed much better lives than others. It’s an important point and worthy of any amount of analysis.
But what’s your idea of value added, Scalzi? An extended snarking analogy between human beings and MMORPG characters. Again…wow. You really went outside the comfort zone for that one, eh?
But I do know you’re sporadically capable of thought. So if you ever deign to do so again, John, here’s some more questions to chew on:
Why have white people had generally better lives for the last few hundred years?
How did they get such privilege in the first place?
If I wanted to improve people’s lives, those are things I’d consider. Because…for the sake of argument…what if skin color isn’t the only variable here? I see that you’re a racist, John, but did you know that that there’s more to life than nature? Something called “nurture”? Did you know that behavioral choices are important to the quality of life?
So suppose…just suppose…that white people (in general) stumbled over some tricks for becoming privileged. “Privileged” here means more and better food, clothing, shelter, transport, education, and entertainment than (mostly non-white) people who don’t possess this occult Ancient Honky Wisdom.
So John, you just keep on mocking and insulting Whitey for being lucky. I’ll go with trying to teach “unlucky” people how to get “privileged” themselves. Which of us has the better approach? Well riddle me this, John:
Why have people of every race immigrated to the United States of America?
Why, John? A “privileged” white nation has attracted millions upon millions of non-white immigrants. From your point of view it makes no sense. Why would non-white people leave their own racial group and move to lily-white America? America! The country that was dreamed up by white men. Exclusively white men!
Well, John? Why did they leave the Old Country knowing they’d have to compete with privileged albinos?
Finally: John…do you believe in the right of bequeathal? You have a daughter. Do you have the right to teach her ideas and skills to bring her advantage in life? Do you have the right to give her whatever of your goods and wealth you want her to have?
If bequeathal is a right, then “white people” deserve their privilege. It’s “deserved” in the sense that hard-working people have the right to bequeath wealth and wisdom to their descendants.
By God, it’s good that white people have (mostly) out-prospered everyone else. Because it’s white people (mostly) who created the Magna Carta and the Preamble and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and then (mostly) tried to live up to them.
So you just associate white people with “privilege” and leave it at that? John, you’re an idiot. Of course white people are (generally) privileged. But you left out the middle step. Here, let me Underpants Gnome it for you:
Step One: white people.
Step Two: ?????
Step Three: Privilege!
Ahhh, yes. “Step Two”. Our Ancient Honky Wisdom. I betray the White Code of Secrecy by sharing this, but I’ve always admired Prometheus. So…our secrets to privilege? They are human rights, property rights, free speech, the rule of law, equality under the law, presumed innocence until guilt is proven, yadda yadda yadda.
It’s funny, but “privilege” always follows those practices. And…this is gonna blow your puny mind, Scalzi…
…it even works for non-white people!
And…I’m out. But seriously, John, don’t ever call me “privileged” to my face unless you’re a damn sight better at hand-to-hand combat than you appear to be.
Or you have the cure for tinnitus.
World's Only Rational Man 
Wow, that guy is quite a condescending, stereotyping little bugger.
I’m a role player, have been for more than 20 years and I find the comparison of RPGs and real life pretty darn insulting and condescending. We role play to not have to deal with real life. We do it for fun, like other people watch movies or read books. Plus, if you go totally old school, things are always decided by the dice and no matter how massive your character’s skills and stats are, one bad roll and you’re toast.
Though, when we take up this ridiculous comparison, which clearly shows that this twerp is probably one of those “I roll natural 20s” morons (if he even knows what actual role playing is), then he clearly never got past Real World 1.0 – The Old World Edition (the starter edition.) Well, okay, maybe he got into 1.5, The Americas Expansion, but he clearly never played the African Add-on or the really massive Asian Dynasties, which really took it all to Real World 3.0.
PS: I’m currently RPing a black British guy (among others) in a game. Oh wait, he probably wouldn’t fit into this, because he’s actually good and successful at what he does.
Now, let me show what really bad rolls can do, despite super stats and what not:
Epic roll right at the beginning. Scenario: Joe tries to hit Dave’s Space Marines with his Fireprism, but the dice have a different mind. And I know, it’s not role playing, yes, but it’s similar since it’s table top 40k.
Let me add why I tend to get somewhat itchy with this subject.
The f*cking media has been hacking at role player for decades. When D&D came out we were all satanists to them. There are still some who actually believe that and who sell that warped hallucination as fact. Now, with modern rpgs as in mmorpgs like World of Warcraft, we’re all addicts with no social life to the media. Similar to shooter players the media, especially since the shootings and connected trial in Norway (since that twerp actually played it too), seems to believe that people with max level characters in such mmorpgs are all psychos.
So yeah, I get itchy. Ok no, I don’t get itchy. It pisses me off.
I know what you mean. But the “media” are just about the worst industry in the history of history. They are almost entirely the opposite of what they believe, which is that they are good, kind, smart, imaginative, creative, and compassionate. They’re so far ’round the bend that I don’t even get angry anymore.
Well, not in general. Obviously the exceptionally wicked occasionally draw ire.
Oh, and that 40k guy is amazingly jovial about the dice-rolling. Runs like that get me a lot madder than media corruption.
That is true. And it’s a general thing, not just for the US media. Over here it’s really the same. We’ve seen it in Germany after 3-11. We’ve seen it across the EU with the Breivik trial. The claims the media threw around were, in both cases, utterly insane. Yet nobody complained. Why? Because the media likes to hack at minorities. Oh, not “racial” minorities, that would be bad, or minorities when it comes to sexual orientations or similar. But when people do things in their free-time that are different from what most people do, when it’s about a country on the other side of the world, which they don’t understand (in Japan’s case literally), then they’re quick to throw around the most ridiculous crap.
A few years back a TV show in Germany claimed that people with blood type B can’t get any job in Japan. Yes, there’s the blood type horoscope, but that’s something yellow press reading women go for. Nobody bases employment on it. It was utterly ridiculous. I know people with type B and they all have jobs and are pretty busy. Same later, when Akishino and wife came to Austria. Kiko came to the visit of our (utterly useless and stupid) president looking smashingly classic in kimono. Of course Austrian media couldn’t help but making a “racist” punch towards her, stating that our asshat president had made an exception for her because usually you can’t visit his office wearing sandals.
As for the video, they’re Miniwargaming, they’re Canadians. Plus Joe vs Minwargaming Dave are among the most epic Banter BatReps. The amount of pure BS talk is absolutely amazing. Their first game ended prematurely because the power went out and they knocked over the tables. Now even more epic since it involves the loser getting a pie in the face. Their batreps are my way to play the game. I’m not playing tabletop, cause I now the moment I start building and army, I will build an actual army. I have an Imperial Guard regiment for 40k, if I would build, I would build the entire 3,000+ men unit.
They also make videos like this:
I never wargamed, yet thought wargamers were cool. Well, until that video, anyway. So where does that put me on the geek scale?
And if you want some more batreps:
http://www.miniwargaming.com/content/chaos-vs-blood-angels-banter-batrep-part-16
http://www.miniwargaming.com/content/rematch-eldar-vs-blood-angels-banter-batrep-part-110
And the original Joe vs Dave: http://www.miniwargaming.com/content/eldar-vs-blood-angels-dave-vs-joe-part-15-banter-batrep-
Expect him to leave a reply here. He left a reply over at the Fungus when I talked about his impending “reboot” of H. Beam Piper’s Little Fuzzy.
Oh god, they’re redoing Little Fuzzy?! Okay, bright side…at least one young’un will discover Piper as a result of the remake. That’s what I tell myself when cherished memories get “rebooted”.
One of those situations where, while the post is excellent, I have misgivings about hitting that “Like” button. What’s to like about someone else’s pain? All my best to you, and prayers for healing in every sense that it’s needed.
Lin
Thank you as always, Linda. I’m barking at everything these days, but don’t really want to bite. Thank you for pulling back on my chain.
This is one of several recent post that are A#1. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks, Billy, though I always feel bad about venting at someone. This world is so frustrating.
(Re: Linda’s comment: There’s a “like” button here?)
I really liked it, too. (Though I haven’t hit the “like” button–I haven’t decided whether that is an intrusive function or not.) Generally, I try to refrain from commenting on painful stuff when it’s expressed so honestly and well, as it seems like sacred ground.
For the record, the first part of my childhood was in a mostly black neighborhood, and I was called “Mama’s boy” for a while. Incredibly, I managed (somewhat by accident) to stumble upon a “bad-ass” persona for a short time to reverse that (it was all meaningless bluster). Childhood’s weird. I rarely look back at it with any affection. The only good thing I can say about it is that puberty was worse. I wasn’t raised religious, but my life seems to establish by personal example the fallen state of humankind, at every stage. The hardest thing for me to believe is redemption. I accept it doctrinally but I usually can’t see it or feel it.
Never worry about commenting on my posts. I’d never open up like that in person, but to me it seems wrong to blog and not open up entirely.
Either I’m trying to make a difference or not. If I am, nothing is off the table.
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Scalzi is a complete and utter douche. Does anyone believe the sputum that comes from his mouth? Does he? More like he enjoys playing the angry boor who doesn’t want to quit stirring the pot.