Existential Flame War

[filkertom]

The LJ thing is getting really ugly.

Just go here here. (Original link courtesy of ataniell93; revised link courtesy of cacie.) The very first comment is made by burr86.

A LiveJournal employee.

Using his LiveJournal professional account.

Dude couldn't even create a sock puppet to be snarky with.

I usually don't go back and patronize places that treat their customers like this. And I usually give the manager a firm and slightly loud piece of my mind before heading out the door.

Current thoughts on the unpleasantness?

(Also, hanabishirecca has created a community, fandom_action, about legal protection for fan creations.)

ETA: eleri, the mod of that community, deleted the post (reasons below in comments). Here is a good link to it, but if you don't want to load a 1 MB+ HTML page, here's the gist of it:

Captain Sassy Pants (pirate_eggie) wrote in efw:

POST DETAILING HOW IMPORTANT THE OP'S ADDICTION TO HARRY POTTER FANART IS AND HOW LJ/SA'S LATEST EGREGIOUS INSULT TO FREEDOM OF SPEECH WILL ULTIMATELY LEAD TO THE OP'S DEPARTING LIVEJOURNAL FOR MORE CHILD PORN-FRIENDLY WATERS

SOME STUPID MACRO ABOUT STRIKETHROUGH '07 AND A HACKNEYED COPYPASTA PIRATE SONG

INVOCATION OF GODWIN'S LAW

First comment in the thread, by burr86 (LJ employee Abe Hassan):

Clarification that the subjects of the drawings were at least six years old, thank you very much.

To me, the problem is not that it's fandom wank, not that it's in efw, but that an employee of LiveJournal/SixApart, using his work account -- the one in which he replies (or doesn't reply) to users' concerns -- is snarking to a user about an issue the user has with LJ/SA. And in a way that implies that anyone who likes the art is a pedophile. (I have seen the art, which doesn't do a thing for me, but it is in fact two adult characters in a consentual relationship.)

Bluntly, it's like going into Burger King, paying for the burger, and then they follow you out to the table and change your burger while you're eating it -- grab it out of your hand and take out the tomato and put in some pickles -- and you say, "Excuse me, but what the hell are you doing? I paid for that" and the BK employee doing it says, "Oh, you're one of those people who likes that kind of burger. Well, you're not welcome here, but we'll keep your money."

Or something.

If he wanted to snark along with everybody else, he should've done it from a sock-puppet account. Or said, "Listen, guys, completely outside of the situation...". Or actually tried to address the problem, as a lot of LJers have been asking LJ/SA to do.

That's why everybody was ticked off. It has nothing to do with fandom, fanfic, or even whether something is child porn -- it's that one of the only responses LJ has made over the past few days to a growing number of questions... is insulting snark.

Comments

[dinpik.livejournal.com]

Still mad it's not All About You, I see.

[sethb.livejournal.com]

Does the phrase "ad hominem" mean anything to you?

I note that nobody was able to refute my argument, instead choosing to attack me. I take that as proof I was correct.

[dinpik.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes. Keep telling yourself that.

[sethb.livejournal.com]

You are not seeing the parallel.

The original message referred to cases where somebody made an objectionable statement, somebody else objected, and the first person downplayed the objection.

The original statement was made in an objectionable way. I objected. You're downplaying the objection.

I won't say anything about what your inability to see that point makes you.