The Hugos have been fucked up and a waste of time for years, tainted by their connection to WorldCon, which is the last great bastion of the old guard of geekery. When WorldCon dies, the awards will either die with it, or find a new home. If they do find a new home, it will force them to change for the better; this isn't the first time dumb voting shit has come into play.

• In 2003, Worldcon was held in Toronto, and called Torcon 3. In a stunning coincidence, Robert J Sawyer, an author who lives in Toronto, won the Hugo with Hominids, a novel about Canadians and set in Toronto and Ontario. Hominids also happened to be most deserving book to win in 2003.
  
• In 2009 the guest of honor at Worldcon was Neil Gaiman. He had a novel out that year. His fans turned up to the con, and also voted for the most deserving novel to win the Hugo. In a massive coincidence, Neil Gaiman's novel won the Hugo!
  
• 2001? Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Right. So that book just happened to be the one all the Harry Potter fans just happened to nominate... and it was obviously the most deserving science fiction novel of the year.

The Hugo Award has been broken for years. It is no more broken this year.

Also, super LOL at claims that SJW's are taking over the Hugo awards "recently" when Ursula K. Le Guin won that shit in 1970. Sad puppies are so late to the game that it's already next season.

 

Gotta be honest, those three do sound like the could be coincidences. I don't know anything about Robert J Sawyer, but the book Neil Gaiman released that won the 2003 Hugo Award was Coraline, which is an excellent book and very deserving of the award. Harry Potter was, of course, Harry Potter though it seems strange that it was entered under sci-fi.

 

Fun fact, that was also the year Terry Pratchett's Night Watch would have been eligible.

I'm sorry but this is just wrong. The Hugo Awards have always been science fiction and fantasy awards. True, straight fantasy seldom wins but that's just a away the Hugos are biased.

Here's the definition of Best Novel, right from the constitution. "3.3.1: Best Novel. A science fiction or fantasy story of forty thousand (40,000) words or more."

 

Theres a difference between broken and trashed and regards to the Hugo's. The Sad Puppies trashed it.
Its true that there was a great deal of garbage nominated and winning awards in recent years, but most of the Sad Puppy stuff isnt really better. It didnt fix the problem, it exacerbated it.

And reading from Larry's posts, that was exactly his intention.

 

Good job focusing on the unimportant part of my post.

 

I couldn't care less about your post. I care that you were posting incorrect information, which has now been corrected.

 

Twitter announced that they're adding a blocking tool, as well as tightening their terms of service.

EDIT: Twitter's general counsel specifically called out gamergate in reference to these changes.

 

Not surprising, Anything to do with GamerGate is so controversial that it makes sense. I can only hope they mean both sides of the argument. As long as they stick to that then GG will have no problem.

 

Could someone tell me what an indirect threat actually is? I'm all for limiting actual harassment and threats against people but vague rules that can easily be abused by biased mods, admins or mass reporting is one of the worst ways of doing this. I also feel it's wrong to specifically focus on the threats against women and minorities when it's been proven that men face just as much online harassment as women do, though women are more likely to get sexually harassed and stalked. That being said, Twitter should really give users to option to squelch all egg accounts, which would really cut down on harassment, particularly of people with big twitter followings.

 

Twitters business model is based around handing torches and pitchforks to local villagers and then selling their details to google. I am very skeptical any changes they apply will be greatly effective.

 

Pretty much this. Twitter has benefited from this shitstorm, start to finish. Why the fuck would they actually ever want it to end, even assuming they were competent enough social engineers to affect it?

 

So...

Deep Freeze just went up. It's purpose is to catalog and easily inform on ethical breeches in game journalism/reviewing. Take a moment to look at it if you want, I found it interesting.

 

Also Arthur Chu was outed as having a Tumblr full of hardcore shemale-on-submissive-male porn.
Coincidentally, he's announced he's leaving Twitter.

 

Arthur Chu is the Asian Neo-Nazi, right?

 

EDIT: It's been pointed out that's actually Ian Miles Cheong. My bad.

 

I mean... Outed? So..?

The neo nazi stuff seems more pertinent.

 

Lol. This is your brain on feminism, kids.

 

I'm pretty sure the Neo-Nazi thing isn't about Arthur Cho, but a different Asian person named Ian Miles Cheong? Or at least that's what google's told me.

 

Shit, you're right.
Arthur Chu was the guy who played in Jeopardy and was making a documentary about himself before his meltdown.

 

Guys, lay off. I'll be the the first to admit that the stuff he's into is fucking weird, but it's not really relevent in relation to Chu's political beliefs and just seems like a bunch of ad hominem. It's honestly pathetic that this is more talked about than that he probably incited(or did it himself) to a bomb threat against a club in D.C. that what hosted a meet up of a bunch of GG'ers.