Geographical Illiteracy

[kevin_standlee]

I have just had a very frustrating exchange with someone who is convinced that should Helsinki win their Worldcon bid, the convention will be invaded by an army of supporters of a certain Rabid One because his publishing company is in Finland, so of course there must be hordes of his supporters all over the country.

Look, I'm on the Montreal Worldcon bid; I'm one of the members of its Board of Directors. But I very much do not want people to vote against Helsinki just because a sociopath incorporated his business in that country. It's stupid.

I've been told that I'm not paranoid enough about the Danger of the Puppies Invading Worldcon. Well, if the danger is that big, we might as well just dissolve Worldcon right now and go crawl under our beds and suck our thumbs while curled up in a ball of fear.

Comments

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Oy. So sorry you are doomed to be the Voice of Reason so very often.

The Sociopathic One is a terrible human being. But I'm not best pleased with people who are using him to gin up their own paranoia and farm their own drama. And the idea that there are hoards of supporters in Finland suggests that this person 1) knows almost nothing about Finland and 2) knows very little about fandom. Honestly, insofar as we are in danger from puppies (and mostly we aren't), it'll be US located cons that are at risk. Puppy sadness is really a US culture war phenomena, and the rest of the world rightly stares at us with wonder and horror.

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

You could try pointing out that Finland adheres strictly to the rule of law principle, The idiot VD was able to incorporate his company in Finland because he satisfied the legal requirements.

Any RP's attempting to run riot in Helsinki would very quickly find themselves chucked in the Drunk Tank with the alkies and other miscreants.

Also most of VD's followers are too cheap to cough up to get to Finland

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I read the title first, so I'm actually relieved that you weren't trying to explain that New Mexico is part of the United States...

[rogers cadenhead (from livejournal.com)]

On another Worldcon matter, someone affiliated with Sasquan needs to tell the webmaster the robots.txt file on the convention’s website is making search engines index nothing on the site:

http://sasquan.org/robots.txt

If they take the “/” out of the “Disallow: /” line, that will tell Google and other search engines to fully index the site.

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

Supporting members generally do not stage invasions.

This puppy thing is way inflated. We'd do well to ignore Vox and his ranting.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Apparently the narrative is that the surge of supporting members this year is a bunch of clones who will all vote for the Worldcon to go to Helsinki, where VD's Vast Army of Minions will stage an Invasion to Take Over Worldcon by using the Special Secret SMOF Rules for changing the constitution permanently in one go to give the Evil League of Evil the right to pick the Hugo Award winners and Worldcon sites forevermore. Or something like that. In any event, it's based in a complete misunderstanding of how the system works.

The Secret of the Secret Masters of Fandom is that they aren't secret, and that the "secrets" they're apparently guarding are in plain sight — but many of the "secrets" are dreadfully boring when you get right down to it, so most people can't be bothered to pay attention.

Also, remember that people seem to prefer a conspiracy theory over straightforward explanations any day of the week.

Remember, I'm not speaking against Helsinki, which surely will be a great place for Worldcon should they win their bid. I'm speaking against stupid conspiracy theories.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Ok, as conspiracy theories go, it's amusing in its fractal unlikeliness.

[buddykat.livejournal.com]

Apparently they can't see that they are taking the Evil League of Evil way too seriously, similar to the way that others take the term SMOF way too seriously.

[kjn]

That person must know very little about Finnish fandom.

On the contrary, I'd say that any Worldcon on US soil is in far greater danger to be overrun by people violently opposed against abortion, other women's rights, LGBT rights, or just plain racists.

[lindadee.livejournal.com]

I got a kick out of San Diego Comicon's attendees reaction to the Westboro Baptist Church lunatics. I wasn't there, but what I saw on the news was priceless.

[asyouknow-bob.livejournal.com]

Charles Stross was speculating in this direction back when the Hugo nominations were announced:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/04/the-biggest-little-sf-publishe.html

[howeird]

Yup, where someone chooses to incorporate a publishing house has little to do with the customer base. Some LJers may remember a particular fannish publisher who incorporated in Thailand, but when politics and other business-related foo raised its ugly head, moved the company to New Zealand.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Even a small country is still pretty big and most of the people in Finland aren't driven by US culture war resentments--I doubt very much the Whining Canines have a lot of Finnish members.

Helsinki seems like a cool place to have a con and I think it's a pity people would freak out about Castalia house--I'm sure Beale dreams of having that kind of influence but I wouldn't advise just handing it to him.