![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I suppose a lot of people feel obliged to talk about the Hugo nominations, this year.* I don't, usually. I mean--I talk about them with my friends, and I read what other people post about them, and I certainly have opinions, but I don't go make a big statement of any sort. Some years I vote. But this year I've been talking about this on a great many comment threads and forum threads and chat rooms and so forth, and I keep saying the same kinds of things, so I thought maybe I would try to boil down what I'm so darned upset about.
The basic problem I'm having is not the political nastiness of the Sad Puppies and their ilk, though that certainly makes things worse. Those people were vicious and unpleasant and opposed to my opinions, rights to vote, personal expression, existence, well before they started fucking with the Hugos, and will continue to be so regardless of Hugo fuckery. So, putting that aside. The problem is not that they are calling me and my friends nasty names, or gloating or having pissed in our Cheerios. The problem is, well. By that metaphor? The piss in the Cheerios themselves. And I would not be any happier to find it there regardless of who was doing the urination.**
The Hugos have never been about what's the most popular SFF literature of all, though it's certainly a popularity contest. As has been pointed out in many places, if one simply wanted to know what the most people read in the genre, a bestseller list would suffice. Nor is attempting to promote a particular political niche or ideology: there are more specific awards for that, some of which I love. (The Lambdas! The Tiptree!) It asks a very specific subgroup of people, what, in this field in the last year, did you like the most? What do you feel was the highest quality? What do you want to see recognized as outstanding in our field?
Those aren't all precisely overlapping, you know. Sometimes I've put things on my ballot that weren't what I enjoyed the most, but which I enjoyed and thought was of higher quality than other things I enjoyed even more. People nominate works based on all sorts of criteria. "This author writes great stuff all the time, and has never gotten an award for it. Maybe this particular story will be the one!" "God, this guy thinks I should be murdered, I don't think I want to read his book at all; it's not worth the pain." "I liked this book well enough, but friends I trust are really impressed by it. Maybe it's even better than I can tell." "This was the most fun I've had reading a short story all year!" "Ugh, another book about dinosaurs? I never read dinosaur books." It's not precise. It's individual and messy and haphazard.
Which is why it's vulnerable to people gaming the system. And which is why it's worthwhile. I often disagree about the best books of the year with my own friends, and that's as it should be. (If we all had identical taste, how boring the world would be!) Conversations that consist of "X." "Yes, of course." "But not Y." "No, of course not." "But X, yes." "Yes, certainly" aren't worth having.*** The individual messiness of the Hugo nominations mean that a great many people are talking, quite enthusiastically, all at once, and in the end there's a list of nominated works that say what the rough top percentage of consensus is in that conversation. When the nomination list comes out, it's like having a bit of conversation with a thousand strangers of similar interest.
And of course I disagree with some of the nominations, every year. (You liked that? How come this didn't make it onto the list instead?) But that's part of why the conversation's worthwhile. I get a feeling for what sorts of things, in the aggregate, that this group of people cares about. They care, or they wouldn't nominate, would they? Very few ballots are filled out top to bottom for every possible nomination slot: people leave slots empty because they aren't passionate about the things that might fill them out. And that's fine and expected.
Block voting in nominations like this is the equivalent of showing up to a cheerfully noisy con suite with a bullhorn. A very small percentage of the group can drown out conversation for everyone else, and do it without breaking a single official rule. Because why would we tell people not to nominate dishonestly, when the entire point of the process is that people get to speak their mind? There's a giant space there for people to say "I personally care about this in particular," and a whole set of people stepped up one by one to read a speech prepared by someone else.
It kills the conversation. It's spiteful. I would be appalled at block voting if it were a slate entirely filled with my own personal picks. What a waste of a conversation! How will I ever know what other people love, if the only thing I see reflected is my own opinion? How will I ever know what other people love, if the only thing I see reflected is the opinion of a group of assholes who decided they wanted to preen at a mirror instead of talking to anyone?
Calling slate voting masturbatory is an insult to masturbation. At least with masturbation an individual is getting honest personal pleasure out of what they're doing, and generally no one else is being bothered by it.
So. I don't really have a conclusion. That rant is my conclusion. A number of people hate people like me enough to ruin a conversation I love, and some number of people who claim they don't hate people like me facilitated them in the process. A pox on all of them. The kindest thing I can conclude about anyone who aided in that is that a few of them may have been sincere idiots, who didn't think this through, and thought that plugging in a bullhorn in the consuite was just being helpful.
Well. It's not. And if they haven't figured that out by this point, I can no longer think they're merely fools.
---
*If you don't know why, you are perhaps blessed, and should pass on by; the knowledge of the inside furor is unlikely to improve your life.
** I would apologize for the metaphor, but it really did feel the most appropriate at this juncture, so I suppose I won't.
*** Conversations full of agreement can certainly be worth having! But even in agreement, people tend to have different takes on the exact joys, and how they rate, and what the flaws were. They're not simple.
The basic problem I'm having is not the political nastiness of the Sad Puppies and their ilk, though that certainly makes things worse. Those people were vicious and unpleasant and opposed to my opinions, rights to vote, personal expression, existence, well before they started fucking with the Hugos, and will continue to be so regardless of Hugo fuckery. So, putting that aside. The problem is not that they are calling me and my friends nasty names, or gloating or having pissed in our Cheerios. The problem is, well. By that metaphor? The piss in the Cheerios themselves. And I would not be any happier to find it there regardless of who was doing the urination.**
The Hugos have never been about what's the most popular SFF literature of all, though it's certainly a popularity contest. As has been pointed out in many places, if one simply wanted to know what the most people read in the genre, a bestseller list would suffice. Nor is attempting to promote a particular political niche or ideology: there are more specific awards for that, some of which I love. (The Lambdas! The Tiptree!) It asks a very specific subgroup of people, what, in this field in the last year, did you like the most? What do you feel was the highest quality? What do you want to see recognized as outstanding in our field?
Those aren't all precisely overlapping, you know. Sometimes I've put things on my ballot that weren't what I enjoyed the most, but which I enjoyed and thought was of higher quality than other things I enjoyed even more. People nominate works based on all sorts of criteria. "This author writes great stuff all the time, and has never gotten an award for it. Maybe this particular story will be the one!" "God, this guy thinks I should be murdered, I don't think I want to read his book at all; it's not worth the pain." "I liked this book well enough, but friends I trust are really impressed by it. Maybe it's even better than I can tell." "This was the most fun I've had reading a short story all year!" "Ugh, another book about dinosaurs? I never read dinosaur books." It's not precise. It's individual and messy and haphazard.
Which is why it's vulnerable to people gaming the system. And which is why it's worthwhile. I often disagree about the best books of the year with my own friends, and that's as it should be. (If we all had identical taste, how boring the world would be!) Conversations that consist of "X." "Yes, of course." "But not Y." "No, of course not." "But X, yes." "Yes, certainly" aren't worth having.*** The individual messiness of the Hugo nominations mean that a great many people are talking, quite enthusiastically, all at once, and in the end there's a list of nominated works that say what the rough top percentage of consensus is in that conversation. When the nomination list comes out, it's like having a bit of conversation with a thousand strangers of similar interest.
And of course I disagree with some of the nominations, every year. (You liked that? How come this didn't make it onto the list instead?) But that's part of why the conversation's worthwhile. I get a feeling for what sorts of things, in the aggregate, that this group of people cares about. They care, or they wouldn't nominate, would they? Very few ballots are filled out top to bottom for every possible nomination slot: people leave slots empty because they aren't passionate about the things that might fill them out. And that's fine and expected.
Block voting in nominations like this is the equivalent of showing up to a cheerfully noisy con suite with a bullhorn. A very small percentage of the group can drown out conversation for everyone else, and do it without breaking a single official rule. Because why would we tell people not to nominate dishonestly, when the entire point of the process is that people get to speak their mind? There's a giant space there for people to say "I personally care about this in particular," and a whole set of people stepped up one by one to read a speech prepared by someone else.
It kills the conversation. It's spiteful. I would be appalled at block voting if it were a slate entirely filled with my own personal picks. What a waste of a conversation! How will I ever know what other people love, if the only thing I see reflected is my own opinion? How will I ever know what other people love, if the only thing I see reflected is the opinion of a group of assholes who decided they wanted to preen at a mirror instead of talking to anyone?
Calling slate voting masturbatory is an insult to masturbation. At least with masturbation an individual is getting honest personal pleasure out of what they're doing, and generally no one else is being bothered by it.
So. I don't really have a conclusion. That rant is my conclusion. A number of people hate people like me enough to ruin a conversation I love, and some number of people who claim they don't hate people like me facilitated them in the process. A pox on all of them. The kindest thing I can conclude about anyone who aided in that is that a few of them may have been sincere idiots, who didn't think this through, and thought that plugging in a bullhorn in the consuite was just being helpful.
Well. It's not. And if they haven't figured that out by this point, I can no longer think they're merely fools.
---
*If you don't know why, you are perhaps blessed, and should pass on by; the knowledge of the inside furor is unlikely to improve your life.
** I would apologize for the metaphor, but it really did feel the most appropriate at this juncture, so I suppose I won't.
*** Conversations full of agreement can certainly be worth having! But even in agreement, people tend to have different takes on the exact joys, and how they rate, and what the flaws were. They're not simple.