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The Skillz Of Online Debate

Tweeted by Gollancz recently:

Depressed by instance on fb [Facebook] of love for one author being predicated on being sh*tty about another author. Enough with the tribalism.

Posted on Jeff VanderMeer’s blog recently:

I also don’t want, anymore, to engage, for the most part, in the kind of heated debate that occurs when you tackle controversial topics—in part because I don’t have the time and in part because 90% of the topics “in play” tend to repeat discussions had time and again on the intertubes and in the meat world over the last 20 years. I feel a bit like saying “Why don’t you just Google it?!?” It’s exhausting.

In particular, any discussions about genre vs mainstream, subculture tribalism of any kind, any generalized discussions about types of fiction that don’t talk in specifics and start from false foundations based on received ideas rather than actual reading…none of this is worth correcting to, engaging with, or in any way acknowledging, and I’m going to try to avoid doing so from this point on.

Joe Abercrombie on internet discussions (before wading into an excellent one):

I must confess that I’ve become jaded of late, though. The internet brimmeth over with stuff, and after a while it all starts to look the same. I just don’t feel the slings and arrows like I used to.

I saw these within a 48-hour period and it seemed to be worth highlighting. Sort yourselves out, internets.

16
Feb 2011
AUTHOR Mark Newton
CATEGORY

discussions, genre stuff

COMMENTS 6 Comments
  • Alex C

    A lot of the time it all seems to just come down to bellowing your individual likes and dislikes into the echoing void.

  • http://aidanmoher.com/blog/ Aidan from A Dribble of Ink

    I used to love jumping right into the shit with everyone else. Now, not so much. I don’t know why that’s changed in the past 6-8 months. Probably because we’re coming back to the same discussions/arguments/topics that were pounded into the ground when I was a green blogger.

  • http://markcnewton.com Mark Charan Newton

    Alex – yeah, sometimes it can feel like that. Perhaps that says something about humans more than anything else.

    Aidan – I think there are a lot of new bloggers who find the debates new, but now you’re an oldie, you’ve heard it all before and don’t have the stomach to go through it again. It’s just age, dude. It’ll get a lot worse! I think it’s interesting for folk like Jeff, who were doing this whole blogging thing years before we signed up. Must be worse for him!

  • http://aidanmoher.com/blog/ Aidan from A Dribble of Ink

    Fuck, this getting old things sucks all around!

  • http://samsykes.com Sam Sykes

    Speaking of things being old, I’ve been talking about this horseshit since I got published. It’s the fucking internet. Nothing on it matters.

  • http://everythingisnice.wordpress.com/ Martin

    I’ll be interested to see how long Jeff’s resolve lasts.