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Is it possible to be both filled with joy and filled with fear at the same time? I think so, and Caitlin Kiernan's post this morning had both effects on me. A quick excerpt from near the end of the post:
"It comes back to art. To nauseating irony. To people who level charges of racism against The Book Thief because we're watching the events surrounding the Holocaust through the eyes of a young German girl who isn't a Jew. To people who whine that Prometheus was (pick a complaint at random) sexist...even though, arguably, the three most powerful characters in the film are two women, plus an android that, being an android, is biologically sexless. People who won't shut up about 'haters,' but who hate everything they lay eyes on. And, I'm sorry, but for a lot of these folks – people I know are intelligent – there is the distinct impression they always intended to disapprove."
On one hand, I'm happy that someone very visible is writing about the one thing that has had a quieting effect on posting, meta discussion, and the production of fanworks. I find that Kiernan's statement that more people have turned to FB and Twitter because they are seen as "safer" spaces where it's less likely that people will say anything of real weight or substance interesting to think about.
So far, people in the comments seem to be talking and discussing and/or agreeing. The discussion comments are more interesting since, well, agreeing it's easy to do the equivalent of clicking the Like button and moving on. However, I expect that might change as the day goes on, and I experienced that tightness in the gut that this could call fire.
"It comes back to art. To nauseating irony. To people who level charges of racism against The Book Thief because we're watching the events surrounding the Holocaust through the eyes of a young German girl who isn't a Jew. To people who whine that Prometheus was (pick a complaint at random) sexist...even though, arguably, the three most powerful characters in the film are two women, plus an android that, being an android, is biologically sexless. People who won't shut up about 'haters,' but who hate everything they lay eyes on. And, I'm sorry, but for a lot of these folks – people I know are intelligent – there is the distinct impression they always intended to disapprove."
On one hand, I'm happy that someone very visible is writing about the one thing that has had a quieting effect on posting, meta discussion, and the production of fanworks. I find that Kiernan's statement that more people have turned to FB and Twitter because they are seen as "safer" spaces where it's less likely that people will say anything of real weight or substance interesting to think about.
So far, people in the comments seem to be talking and discussing and/or agreeing. The discussion comments are more interesting since, well, agreeing it's easy to do the equivalent of clicking the Like button and moving on. However, I expect that might change as the day goes on, and I experienced that tightness in the gut that this could call fire.