Rumors Versus Reality

[kevin_standlee]

I've been getting e-mails now talking about unspecified "rumors" about what happened at the 2015 WSFS Business Meeting. Well, the minutes aren't finished yet (lindadee has the unenviable task of writing them, which she has been doing, but it's going to be huge), but there's no secret about what happened at the Business Meetings this year. The entire meeting was recorded, and the recording were (mostly) posted to YouTube within 30 minutes or so of the completion of each segment of the meeting. You can watch the whole thing on the 2015 WSFS Business Meeting Playlist. Thanks to the 20-minute segment limit imposed by the camera for the low-resolution MP4 files, you don't even have to slog through all eleven-plus hours. You can take it in smaller pieces or jump straight to a segment if you know approximately where in the meeting something happened.

This set of videos is not secret. There is a link to it on Sasquan's WSFS Business Meeting page. There is a link to it in the article I submitted to Locus. It's been posted on Facebook repeatedly. Links are all over the place. What sort of cover-up posts to Twitter when they've published videos in public about their Secret Meeting?

Why people think that the meeting was Top Secret and that all of the results were Not for Mere Mortals' ears, I don't know, other than to assume that Making Stuff Up is much more fun than Boring Old Reality.

Comments

[billroper]

Obviously an incompetent cover up. :)

Thanks for all the work that you and Lisa did to make sure that there's a good record.

[cobrabay.livejournal.com]

Ah, this must be a reference the Secret business meeting, the one which happened away from the public meeting, in a hidden, smoke-filled, er, outdoor area, and starts with a rousing rendition of the Stonecutters Song.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

There was the Might As Well Be Secret Business Meeting meeting, which was held before the recorded events. There we addressed such critically secret questions as "where should we put the camera?" and "are the microphones working?" While fans arrived, hung out in the room, and found seats, no record was kept of setting up to keep records! The hand of the Illuminati is obvious.

[lindadee.livejournal.com]

Or the secret meeting where we voted NOT to take over the world.

[greg machlin (from livejournal.com)]

Hey, *I* voted for us to take over the world. But I was resoundingly defeated. Ah well. There's always next year...

What are we gonna do next year at Worldcon, Machlin?
Same thing we do every year!

[joycemocha.livejournal.com]

I told everyone we needed to have some loose ends in disarray before people showed up just to throw off suspicion about our Seckrit Meetings. Should have listened to those dang devilbunnies, you know.

[michael p stein (from livejournal.com)]

Your selfless sacrifice in running the decoy phony business meeting is greatly appreciated. Those of us at the secret real business meeting definitely owe you a bheer or three.

[kjn]

But you have that 20-minute segment from Friday that wasn't posted until several days later, right? You could have hidden anything there. Anything!11!!!!

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

Lots of people don't truly believe in any kind of democracy. In the face of evidence of actual democracy in action, they won't even look at the evidence of it but retreat into fantasies of conspiracies. That's what happened with the Puppies, who despite the evidence of the Hugos emerging from the collective will of the Worldcon members believe that John Scalzi and/or Patrick Neilsen Hayden are somehow controlling it in some conspiratorial fashion.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Sad but true. They'd much rather believe in conspiracies than reality. It's comforting.