Gen. Romulus T. Eggweight

boingboing is slashdot except it's for people who want to read a bunch of shrill consumerist dot-com-bubble throwback bullshit that fancies itself cagey counterculture punk commentary instead of linux arguments and also it's several million times worse

cory doctorow is the worst because he is like STEAMPUNK SHITSTEAMPUNK SHITAWWWWWFUL FUCKING OVER-EARNEST SELF-CONSCIOUS "SOCIAL COMMENTARY" NOVELLA THAT I WROTESTEAMPUNK SHITBUILD YOUR OWN IPHONE OUT OF THINKGEEK T-SHIRTSSTEAMPUNK 2.0 CROWDSOURCING MASHUPS? COUNTERCULTURE REVOLUTIONARY SAYS "YES"PLUGGING THAT "BOOK" I WROTE AGAINSHIT WITH BLUE LEDS IN IT BUILT BY CHILD LABORERS, ONLY $800HAVE YOU READ MY BOOK YET

also he is at the forefront of crafting the blithely ignorant, self-contradicting, and intellectually dishonest set of ideals that 90% of the "geek" cult-of-personality crowd subscribes to

i hate it when cory doctorow gets interested in something i like (e.g. cryptography) because it is exactly like watching a child's earnest, comically faulty and exaggerated imitation of observed adult behavior, but he's a grown-ass man who communicates like a precocious child so it's extremely irritating. and now half of the "[x thing that cory doctorow started blithering unintelligently about] community" is full of poseurs who are earnestly imitating HIM. it is like fashion but with pseudointellectualism instead of personal appearance

the single worst guy

Edited Date: 2008-12-21 02:16 pm (UTC)

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"Doctorow's daughter with Alice Taylor, Poesy Emmeline Fibonacci Nautilus Taylor Doctorow, was born on 3 February 2008."

cory doctorow is XKCD: The Person Based on the Hit Comic

Edited Date: 2008-12-21 02:20 pm (UTC)

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djsetup.livejournal.com

damn that was a pretty edgy move by Cory e. Bubble Sort Doctorow

Actually the worst part of the name is Poesy

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i forgot to put the creative commons in my list of things that cory doctorow is like.

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dude yeah what is with his disney thing

even before he wrote that every fifth post was about disney's haunted mansion

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korgmeister.livejournal.com

This sounds worryingly similar to myself and I had to look him up in the wiki to figure out who he is.

Ick, hope I'm not picking this shit up by cultural osmosis or something.

Edited Date: 2008-12-21 11:12 pm (UTC)

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Don't worry, you have to be born Cory Doctorow

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vxo.livejournal.com

I think I'm safe.

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and really, i don't think you're anything like him, i mean being a geek and liking shiny stuff is a far cry from thinking you're at the forefront of a subversive underground revolutionary movement because you bought an iphone

also cory doctorow is liberal in exactly the wrong ways

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korgmeister.livejournal.com

Oh OK that's fine then.

Who the fuck thinks buying an iPhone is subversive, really? It's a nice gadget and pretty much my favourite PDA ever*. But seriously, it's a mass consumer item made by a control freak company.

*Although I have an iPod Touch because the phone bit is so not worth another $1800 in TCO.

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Well, think of it this way: Cory Doctorow is the exact sort of person that Apple marketing is supposed to appeal to. By buying an Apple product, you are somehow sticking it to the man/bucking the system/fighting the establishment, because Apple have done a very good job of branding themselves as The Alternative, and that appeals to a certain contrarian mindset.

Unfortunately, Cory Doctorow buys into the fantasy he's been sold so much that he just can't shut up about how edgy he is for buying basically the hottest Christmas item of the year.

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korgmeister.livejournal.com

Yeah the sychophantic userbase is why I'm rather hesistant about actually getting a computer with OSX on it (even though it appears to be a kind of UNIX with a multimedia framework that isn't made by complete idiots).

When MS pull a dick move, people get out the torches and pitchforks. When Apple pulls a dick move, people like Cory are falling over themselves to rationalise it as Steve Jobs latest stab at genius. And the press certainly aren't going to hold them accountable, as Apple are a perennial media darling.

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djsetup.livejournal.com

This reminds me a lot of the idea of Narrative Branding that George Lakoff talked about in his most recent book, The Political Mind. You should check it out if you haven't already, I think you'd like it very much, although I suspect you might've already considered most of what he talks about.

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Ok, reading this cracked me up, twice.

(Also, now you've got me curious. What ARE the ignorant self-contradicting intellectually dishonest set of ideals that the said crowd subscribes to?)

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That is a topic for a whole other angrypost

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We await. :)

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caladri.livejournal.com

also literarily

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I suppose this would be a bad context to mention that I did like Someone Comes To Town? :)

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I haven't read that but Little Brother is the worst thing masquerading as a novel that I have read in a very long while.

I should take advantage of the licensing terms of his writings to write MST3K-style critiques of them. i hear this one time someone did something like that and he immediately changed his tune and tried to force them to take it down

unfortunately there is no "unless they're being totally mean" in the text of the creative commons license

Edited Date: 2008-12-22 03:16 am (UTC)

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Haa! :) You totally should do that. And if he does change his tune, we shall all mock him soundly across internets.

Now, let me give context here. I don't read his blog (and that sounds like that's a good thing, from these comments). I only read two novels of his -- Eastern Standard Tribe, and Someone Comes Town etc.

EST was merely ok. Utterly forgettable plot-wise and writing-wise, but it had some interesting concepts, so, ok. Someone Comes To Town, however.. this one surprised me. I liked it a lot, and I keep thinking about it (it's been a month or two since I finished it), often. It affected me.

What's even stranger, is that I raved to

yuki_onna about it, and she read and even /she/ liked it (and she is incredibly demanding of her books).

So, I don't know. It might have been atypical of him, that one. I'm still going to read Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, again, for the concept.

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setzer024.livejournal.com

look a tgies post I agree with

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every time you agree with a tgies post an angel gets its wings.

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jhskulk.livejournal.com

hey did you know that the American voice actor for Meowth died :(

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i actually did

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according to cory doctorow virtually every single event that has taken place in the course of human history has been "censorship" and is something to be incensed about

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I've no idea who this guy is or even what he actually stands for (although admittedly from your description he sounds like one pretentious dildo) but

.........I like steampunk :(

IS IT BAD TO WANT TO BE A ZEPPELIN AND FLY AROUND INSIDE OF DUSTY VICTROLAS ALL DAY? IS IT?

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steampunk as an aesthetic and a fun little fantasy world to play around with is cool as fuck and there is nothing wrong with it! I like that it is built around an enthusiasm for human ingenuity and for engineering as an art form

but then you get the people who talk about it all. the. time. which is what cory doctorow does. it's not that it's steampunk, it's that he doesn't know when to clam up about it.

what's terrible, though, the people who take steampunk too far and turn it into a whole philosophy of life i.e. "hey colonialist/Victorian social mores were cool and NOT HORRIBLE AT ALL! let's bring them back. libertarianism and gilded-age labor practices for all"

steampunk isn't really special/worse in this regard, though — every subculture has a lot of people in it who take it way too seriously

it is kind of like cyberpunk, which emerged from the cold war and was originally "supposed" to be like a caricature of a terrible dystopian dehumanized future, but then people decided that this dystopian future would be a pretty rad place to live

zeppelins are awesome, and, to paraphrase something i read recently, are an important part of any respectable alternate universe

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OH! okay

"hey colonialist/Victorian social mores were cool and NOT HORRIBLE AT ALL!"

that's just fucking scary. Because, you know, I'd rather not wear a chastity belt and live in a culture where it's okay for your dad to marry you off at age eight to old Mr. Tilwinnikerson the sadistic horse breeder.

zeppelins are awesome, and, to paraphrase something i read recently, are an important part of any respectable alternate universe

TEEHEE

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exactly. brass shit that spins around: awesome; weird aristocratic paternal elitism: less awesome. these things do not have to go together

also fuck you for making me picture a steampunk chastity belt GOD DAMMIT

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don't make me draw that

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so many people will jerk off to that so hard

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HAHAHAHAHA GROSS! that's like the worst/best incentive ever

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oh and on that little note about cyberpunk: I do remember reading something to that effect about how it was kind of inspired by the Cold War era. I was once interested in it but now every time I see people who follow the cyberpunk lifestyle TO AN EXTREAM it just seems kind of sad like a 50's schoolboy cowering under a wooden desk in fear from an atom bomb. although in moderation it can be fun. sometimes one feels the need to make a cyborg foil costume and wear thrift store leather pants in the hilarity of one's own home.

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