Requires Only That You Think

[inverarity]

acrackedmoon, blogger at Requires Only That You Hate, is becoming "Internet-famous," it seems, at least in the small world of online fandom.

(Please note that ACM had a LiveJournal presence at one time, and while it's not exactly a secret who her LJ name was, I will not use it simply because she hasn't given permission to do so. If anyone does mention it in comments, I'll have to screen it, sorry.)

For those who aren't familiar with her, ACM is a Thai woman who mostly reviews anime, manga, and SF&F books. She's also a gamer. She's notorious mostly for the extremely vitriolic rhetoric she uses. Her viewpoint is that of a (very angry) Asian woman in a country most often used by Westerners as the punchline of a joke about prostitutes. She is rarely gracious or kind.

ACM has a growing number of fans. She has also, with her reviews, provoked angry, pissed-off responses from authors ranging from N.K. Jemisin to Peter Watts to R. Scott Baker.

Most recently, Liz Williams, aka mevennen, author of the Inspector Chen mysteries, pretty much called anyone who defends her a coward afraid of being called a racist, after trying to call out Catherynne Valente for not, I'm not sure exactly, denouncing her? (Valente has posted a few times on ROTYH, amicably, and ACM has said generally positive things about Valente's work.)

catvalente talks about that here.

So here's my perspective on acrackedmoon:

I've been a fan of her blog posts for quite a while. We've exchanged the occasional email and sometimes I post on her blog, but I don't know her personally. We're not "friends" except inasmuch as any casual Internet acquaintance is a friend.

And before anyone points it out, yes, I've seen people claiming she's not who she claims to be, that she's not really Thai, that she's not really a woman, etc.

With the caveat that this is the Internet so of course anyone can be the proverbial talking dog, I've been following ACM's posts long enough (going back to her LJ days) that I don't think this is likely. She's been consistent enough that if it were all a fabrication like that middle-aged American guy who was pretending to be a teenage Muslim girl blogger, she probably would have slipped up by now. I mean, if I were a journalist who wanted to do an interview or if for some reason I were going to send her money, I'd want more rigorous proof of her identity, but for Internet purposes, I think the attempts to cast doubt on her are mostly just cheap attacks, with a strong tone of "How could a Thai person, like, read science fiction and speak such goooooood English?"

So. Anyway.

Tone argument.

Classically, it's invoked when someone refuses to listen to an angry jeremiad about how they are being an asshole because it wasn't phrased nicely.

And while I understand completely why the tone argument exists (that is, why people get angry when you use a tone argument), I also do think that somewhere, there is a hazy, not always easy to define, but nonetheless demarcating line between "using the tone argument" and just wanting to interact with someone in a reasonable fashion and maybe be given the benefit of the doubt when you are trying to be fair-minded.

Or to put it more plainly, someone may understandably be angry at me, for reasons that may or may not be my fault and/or intentional on my part, and therefore I should at least try to hear them out even if they are calling me names while telling me why they are angry. But on the other hand, it is only human to be less willing to patiently hear someone out who's saying "Fuck you die in a fire you worthless piece of shit!" Even if it's entirely possible that I did something to deserve that level of anger, it's just not reasonable to expect anyone to stand there and take that kind of abuse and smile and nod and say "Thank you for that excellent point! I will certainly go home and think about whether or not I am a worthless piece of shit who should die in a fire."

That said... on the occasions when ACM has engaged with an author or someone else directly (as opposed to writing a nasty blog post about them), she does not typically begin with DIAF rhetoric. While she has been known to be a little prickly and defensive, she does not viciously lash out at people just because they disagree with her. Those who try to engage her on reasonable terms might get some sharp comments in the course of the argument, but it's only the folks who immediately adopt a patronizing and/or insulting approach who get a similar attitude in return.

I found mevennen's post profoundly disingenuous. I find many of ACM's critics to be profoundly disingenuous.

There are certainly grounds to criticize ACM. I do think she has an unfortunate tendency to veer over the line between "righteous anger" and "unreasonable flaming bromide." (Hence my discussion of the "tone argument" above.) Yes, I think sometimes she is a little too quick to go for the jugular, especially with people who really are trying to be understanding. Yes, yes, I know — not her job to teach anyone, not her responsibility to be kind to well-intentioned racists, and so on — fair enough, but still, it seems at times she can't quite decide whether the purpose of her blog is to vent her frustration and engage in performance rage, or actually provide useful analysis. She does both, but there are times when the two things work against one another.

And I think her rhetoric does at times get really overheated. Yes, she makes lots of "kill whitey" jokes and talks about throwing acid and wishing she could punch Paolo Bacigalupi in the face, etc. I do not for a minute believe she is serious. I understand perfectly well that she's exaggerating for rhetorical effect, and I think anyone who interprets her statements as literal death threats is being stupid and disingenuous.

Still. It goes beyond "not nice." It is, as they say in certain communities, "problematic."

Also, she keeps bagging on J.K. Rowling and Stephen King. WHY YOU SO MEAN, ACM?!?!?!?



So, if you find ACM intolerable, mean, or if her rhetoric really bothers you, I can understand that.

But, if you think she's nothing but a troll or all she's doing is spouting hate speech and LOL-abusing people, you're, at best, wrong, and at worst, disingenuous.

I don't follow her blog, and fail to "call her out," because I'm afraid of being called a racist. I follow her because I think she has genuinely interesting things to say.

And because I can grasp nuance and context!

Like, for example, all the people who go apeshit right off the bat about what a "hater" she is because of the title of her blog - it's a Warhammer 40K reference. Jeebus. She's not a hater, she's a nerd!



Here, have a poll! And since I hear tell that acrackedmoon is very, very scary (actually, I don't even know if she reads my blog :P) I made the voters anonymous for this one.


[Poll #1857972]

Comments

[alicetheowl.livejournal.com]

I follow her on Twitter. I don't agree with everything she says, but I do know how to avoid having her say terrible things to me: don't be a jerk. I watch all these meltdowns as people try to stop her nasty-worded ways and it backfires, and all the failures share one thing on common: they're knee-jerk reactionaries who didn't comprehend the point before spouting off on their defensive diatribes. Maybe she used to be more about the picking-on without justification, but, as long as I've followed her, she hasn't jumped in without justification.

Also, her comments on Save the Pearls are hilarious.

[dungeonwriter.livejournal.com]

I think that tone arguments can be abused, but you do also get treated the way you treat others. Making jokes about flinging acid doesn't make for a very mature environment.

ACM's work has a lot of merit for me to look at books through another eye, but reading her work is more like watching a train wreck, you aren't there to learn, you're kinda entertained by the nasty tone and the carnage. So it's when so much hyperbole is tossed around, it's hard to learn much or take her seriously, it more comes across as shock jock.

Do I think she is a troll? No, her jokes about punching people, and neckbeards are her right, they come across as nasty to me but they also come across as shtik. Her shtik is how nasty she can be, how prickly and people love a good flame war. I wonder if her work would be as popular with a 20% tone down of rhetoric. Do people come for the nastiness or the content?

I think we need to call out negative elements in fandom, we need to make fandom an inclusive, just place, but we also need to cherish what we have, a place to geek out.

On Thais and other things

[earn9.livejournal.com]

Well, this is my first post, and on such an interesting topic too.

As a Thai myself, I am surprised to see someone from my country rises to popularity on a medium often dominated by Westerners. On the other hand, the argument that Thai people could not use English well at all is utterly and completely ridiculous.

If there's anything a Thai learns in his/her English classes, it's grammar, and writing. Thais are obsessed about getting grammars and spelling right, since it's drilled into their heads years after years whenever they sit in English classes. So if you take any Thai with enough English-class experience and put him/her against an English-speaking native in a writing contest, you might see an upset. The problem? Thai teachers teach too much grammar, and forget to actually teach speaking. So unless they have studied in international schools (where English is the first language, at least officially) or are honor students, conversations between Thais and foreigners could be hilarious (if the Thais haven't run away first :D)

/End rant

As for her content, she seems to be quite reasonable in her comments, but I can certainly understand how excessive snarks could piss people off. At least on her blog (maybe I should try to read her reviews), she seems to be doing a lot of defending rather than flaming. But her defending style rather stokes up the fires, not quelling them, and she seems to enjoy doing that a lot.

There, my first ever LiveJournal post, that was not as difficult as I thought. :D

P.S. Oh, and Inverarity, Alexandra Quick is by far my favorite fanfiction, thanks and good luck writing!

[tealterror0.livejournal.com]

OK, I'll state my conclusion first: I have precisely zero issue with ACM's tone. I do occasionally disagree with her on content, but that's obviously not what this post is about (which is unfortunate, since content is far more important than tone, which is a point I will make later in this absurdly long post--you've been warned).

1. I think a lot of people misunderstand the target audience of ACM's posts. Dungeonwriter above, as well as others, often seem to treat her posts as if they're arguments made at the authors of the books she shreds, but they're really not. Her argumentative opponents are not authors but other readers who might disagree with her (the "neckbeards," if you will). So comparisons to what's appropriate in a civil debate and etc. to me are inappropriate.

2. In particular, the point people often seem to make--and I think this includes Inverarity in this blog post--is that her rhetoric is not likely to convince the authors of the books she critiques. Well, yeah, duh. But that's not the point. ACM is not trying to make Bacigalupi learn more about Thailand before writing a book set there; rather, she's trying to show other readers that Bacigalupi didn't bother learning enough about Thailand before writing a book set there.

3. So in that regard, does her rhetoric help or hurt her cause? Well, here are some salient points to consider:

(a) She almost certainly only has the readership and attention she does because of her vitriol. The people who would ordinarily read her but are turned off by her rhetoric, like Shinygobonkers, appear to be outnumbered by the people who wouldn't have heard of her if not for her rhetoric.

(b) Her rhetoric serves to emphasize the point that the stuff she calls people out for doing really is not ok. Things that seriously bother those who are oppressed are oftentimes seen as not a big deal to those who are not. If you're not Thai, it may not ordinarily seem a big deal to you that Bacigalupi screwed up the language (on the first page). Had it not been for ACM's fake death threats, I might've just gotten the impression she was mildly irritated as opposed to majorly pissed off. That makes a difference.

(c) As Inverarity says, a lot of the people who criticize her (not Dungeonwriter or Shinygobonkers above, but others) are doing it disingenuously. I highly doubt they would be more amenable to ACM's criticisms even if she phrased them in the queen's own English. If you make a concerted effort, it's always possible to find a phrase in someone's rhetoric that might be considered problematic under certain lights, and use it to dismiss the entire thing.

(d) Hey, it's far more entertaining than laying out critiques in boring prose. This I imagine is what leads to (a). Also it causes a lot of authorial meltdowns (R Scott Bakker obsessed over her for months without her doing much of anything after her critique), and what would we do without those?

4. Seriously, it's the internet for crying out loud. Flame wars have a long and venerable tradition dating back to its founding. More to the point, reviewers who make a habit of criticism are known for being vitriolic. Simon Cowell, anyone? How about the Nostalgia Critic or Zero Punctuation? Honestly, I don't think her rhetoric is all that extreme, considering this context.

5. As I said at the beginning of this (absurdly long) post, content is far more important than tone. And everyone knows this. The reason the "tone argument" gets used is that, if someone completely ignores the content of a critique and only complains about its tone, then they very likely cannot actually respond to that content and are desperately looking for a distraction. If Liz Williams and everyone else could respond to ACM substantively, they would. That doesn't necessarily mean that ACM is right--maybe it just means they're bad debaters--but it does tell you something.

6. ...OK, I will admit that I have been known to stoke the rhetorical fires myself from time to time, so my defense of ACM has a certain self-interest to it (you could call it "solidarity" if you're feeling kind).

*phew* I apologize for the insanely long post. If you read the entire thing, thanks; I hope it was worth your while. :)

She's not a hater she's a nerd

[phart (from livejournal.com)]

Hindisght is always 20/20

"Turns out Benjanun Sriduangkaew and CrackedMoon/RequiresHate are the same person. So are Winterfox, pyrofennec, and Christ knows how many other online personae.

Benjanun-This-Week has been very busy over a number of years, wearing a number of guises. She has stalked, harassed, and threatened. Some of her actions have proven actionable, to the point that authorities are now apparently involved. She drove at least one person to attempt suicide, has induced PTSD symptoms in a number of others. She has told people who disagree with her that they should be raped by dogs, dismembered, and/or have acid thrown in their faces. She habitually deleted these comments shortly after making them, then gaslighted her targets (fortunately there are archives, and screenshots).