We’re all mad here
Over at Whatever, John Scalzi posted about how Krissy, his wife, attacked a guy who was hitting on her after he tried to touch her. (This could also lead to interesting discussions of sexism which I won’t get involved in.) This apparently led to comments and posts elsewhere about How Dare She Why Did She Start With The Violence? Then there was an update saying that drunk dude’d actually touched Krissy first, and that John was in fact not posting the whole story. Fair enough, and I have no reason to disbelieve this story. I have no opinion about whether it was justified, really — I’m inclined to think so, but mostly I don’t care very much.
What I find interesting is how — and this happens all the time on blogs, just usually not so obviously — the initial post was without context (well, inasmuch as the blog itself isn’t context), and incomplete, people responded as if the story were in fact complete, and then the author got annoyed that they did it, like how could anyone ever assume that was the whole story right there? In part of course it’s always true: don’t ever assume that the blog post (or anything, but specifically blogs right now) is all and everything. On the other hand, people do assume they’ve been given the relevant information, that bloggers are reliable narrators, or reliable *enough*. Especially if there’s a history of someone not leaving out stuff.
I mean, I complain about being depressed and antisocial, but what I don’t say is that actually I’ve been fairly social lately (seeing people a few times a week, not including family).
Not that anyone is wrong. Not that everyone isn’t wrong. You can’t assume you get the whole story, or that the story you get is exactly right. You also have to assume you have the parts that matter. Except when the writer and the reader are trying to get to different points.
Sometimes I wonder if I had a better background in literary theory I’d understand blogging — and by extension, my life — better.
I am thinking about truth on the net, and elsewhere, yes. I have absolutely no conclusions, except maybe, we’re all skilled liars and we don’t know much, mostly make it up, and we might as well ignore and pretend otherwise it because otherwise we’ll all go mad.
September 11th, 2006 at 10:44 pm
i struggle with this all the time. i want to paint a complete picture so that IF i were to get feedback, it’d be useful. but that takes a lot of time so i wind up spending way to long on a post than is probably normal (or healthy). i don’t konw how i’ll break the habit though - not telling the whole story feels sort of like lying. (i do sometimes change minor details just to simplify, but never important parts of the story)
September 11th, 2006 at 11:51 pm
I had only skimmed the comments, but I thought the commenters were getting worked up not over who started it but the resorting to violence instead (along with the pride at it). But whatever, that’s not really the point.
I think for a lot of people it’s about anonymity. I find it’s actually hard to change details in my stories, so I usually just omit them. And of course this gets back to what you’ve written about before about people presenting versions of themselves, blogging to make themselves look good (or bad), and so on. I get really fascinated trying to decipher what goes into a blogger writing in a certain way.
September 11th, 2006 at 11:54 pm
Also this story is colored by the fact that Scalzi likes to tell anyone who doesn’t agree with him to “fuck off.”
September 12th, 2006 at 7:37 am
Betty, yes. I want to paint — well, maybe not a *complete* picture, but an accurate one. So I try to decide what needs to be said and what doesn’t, etc. But it’s not unreasonable to just tell part of the story, I just find it’s so weird when you play that no one should have assumed that a number of relevant details were left out.
Sheepish, I thought the workup was over who started the violence, and whether it was appropriate, and blah blah it just set off more of what I have been thinking about, really. Which is why mostly I left the specifics of the story alone, because beyond not really caring, I refused to read a few hundred comments.
Yeah, Scalzi does a lot of ‘fuck off’ to people who don’t agree with him, which on the one hand is his prerogative, but on the other hand, dude, if you write stuff on the internet with a comment box, don’t expect to get only people saying how awesome and right you are.
What I found interesting was not that he told them to fuck off but how annoyed he was that OMG people took me at my word!
September 12th, 2006 at 12:18 pm
I hadn’t read the comments to the follow-up post. It was interesting how vehement he got despite his refusal to give any details and his statement of allegedly understanding how and why people came to the conclusions they did. Amusing mostly because he likes to trumpet the whole “I have a Ph.D. in ‘arguing’” thing. The other side of the coin is the one I see all the time - the phenomenon of trying to read a blogger’s writing in the worst possible light.
The other interesting aspect to Scalzi’s blog is that he is somewhat of a public figure, or at least needs the goodwill of the public for a living, and yet has few qualms about telling so many people he thinks they’re assholes and deleting most comments he doesn’t agree with. After having read his blog and the interactions in his comments, I have no desire whatsoever to read any of his books.
September 12th, 2006 at 12:47 pm
You read more of the comments than I did. I don’t read Whatever regularly enough — and I almost never read the comments — to have a feeling for the site. I had no idea he deleted comments. (Telling people they’re assholes is fine by me.) I am unlikely to read his books because war SF is a genre that holds exactly zero interest for me.