Hey you. All of you. I think you would agree, we are a culture of geeks.
A culture of people who seek the edges; who fall in love with ephemera and nuance and passion. And for some reason, our culture is constantly beating up on itself.
We cut ourselves just to watch ourselves bleed, and it’s gotten old.
A few weeks ago, Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool published a story that exposed a personal battle between several of my friends. I will not name names, because I refuse to ultimately do what Rich did, in the name of blasting this behavior, thus becoming the thing I hate. But at the end of the day, someone’s very personal
battle with alcoholism and depression caused him to randomly and
unfairly lash out at someone, which led to a Facebook argument with his
old friends, all of which was screencapped and published as “news.”
What makes matters worse is that I had a personal promise from Rich that he would avoid any story that involved my friends that related directly to their troubled personal issues. That promise, whether he knew it or not at the time, was broken. I emailed him and he pulled the story down, but by that time, the damage was done. Real people with real feelings were hurt, and someone who is sick and needs help was outright used to get clicks and attention.
This is fucking bullshit, and we shouldn’t stand for it or anything like it.
A few years ago, another “journalist” decided he would attempt to make a point about the popularity of our culture and the infiltration of it from outside profiteers, charlatans and users, in the worst way possible. He decided to attack a very real, very present problem by choosing the single most vitriolic aspect of it — gender inequality and “Booth Babes” — and blasting it from the pages of none other than CNN. Maybe you’ve heard. (If you’re the type that doesn’t like clicking links… Well, first, this is the internet and you probably don’t belong here, and second, I’ll give away the ending: it’s me.)
That, too, was fucking bullshit. And I know that now.
At the time, I couldn’t understand why the backlash was so harsh. John Scalzi lamb-basted me from his blog, and everyone from Wil Wheaton to Felicia Day reacted to the piece with disdain. It didn’t make any sense to me — what I wrote was true, and I wrote it bluntly. But the problem is, the angle I chose to take WASN’T FAIR. It was vitriolic and far-flung, and I would be lying if I told you now that it wasn’t on purpose.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that, even though what I’ve observed at conventions for years and decided to point out might have a basis in reality, my volume and word choice and language was harmful and negative and, ultimately, just plain bad. Instead of saying something like “Hey geeks, you should understand, there are people out there who will take advantage of you — speculators will jack up the price on comics, art collectors will lie to artists about their kids having cancer to get a cheap or free drawing off Adam Hughes and then turn around and sell it on eBay for thousands of dollars, and there are people — both men and women — who will pretend to enjoy what you enjoy just to get you to buy what they are selling,” I decided to isolate on women who engage in this behavior specifically, and then get protective, then defensive, then outright offensive in how I decided to point it out.
I’ve spent the last year and a half of my life actively asking just about everyone I know, men and women, why and how this piece got so “skewed” and “taken out of context” and what I’ve come to discover is that, in all honestly, it wasn’t. While there were reaction pieces all over the internet that chose to isolate on one or two aspects of what I wrote without providing any of the additional context I provided in their coverage, thus turning my words into hate speech… They were still my words. I am responsible for them.
And that’s where things have changed for me. I went from trying to argue that I was taken out of context, to defending myself against it by deciding never to provide “sound bites” that could be taken out of context, to being utterly confused over just what the hell happened overall, to finally realizing… I am part of the problem.
I threw gas on a fire. I outright used gender inequality to attempt to point out a problem as I saw it, which itself is a problem. In the process, I left hundreds of thousands of men and women with the idea that I, personally, don’t want to see women in geekdom, when the truth is literally the exact opposite.
What I don’t want to see in geekdom are people who use it to bolster their own personal agendas… And without realizing it, that’s exactly what I did.
My life has changed drastically in the year and a half since I wrote that piece. If you read my blog or articles on other sites like Huffington Post and CNN, you know that I’ve gone through one hell of a drastic shift in my life, which led to one hell of a drastic shift in my perspectives on just about everything. And through that, I see now that by using fire to fight fire, all you do is burn the world down.
There is nothing at all righteous about righteous indignation. Feeling you have the right to be angry is simply pointing your finger at someone else while you vomit and piss all over the place. “I’m a journalist. It’s my duty to point out the news.” That’s true, if indeed you are a journalist and if indeed what you’re pointing out is actually news.
But when you use the blanket of “journalism” to hide your face while you shout your own personal agendas from the rooftops — no matter how well veiled as “news” — you’re part of the problem.
When you link to these stories, you are part of the problem.
When you like and share these stories, you are part of the problem.
In today’s click economy, no one is really giving half a rat’s ass about the truth, honesty, integrity or what is and is not “news” — all they care about is turning up the volume on what they have to say, what they’ve found or what they think in an attempt to validate it.
Read this story, and validate me. Click “share” and validate me to your friends, while validating yourself as a thought leader and curator of great content. Comment on this story to validate your own opinions. Click “like” to validate your alignment with this notion. When it’s a great cause, all that validation is fantastic. When it’s nothing more than airing someone else’s dirty laundry in an attempt to amp up traffic to get more advertising and awareness… Well, I think you and I both know that’s just plain fucking bullshit.
It’s time for the bullshit to stop. And I’m starting with me.
The views and opinions expressed on this column are soley those of Joe Peacock. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of Forces of Geek.
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