I mean, Winterfox was also able to operate because there were a whole lot of us (and by "us" I mean people in her "collateral damage/possible ammunition" zone rather than her "acceptable targets" zone) who took her early performance-raging and evisceration of frankly painful shit in the subculture to heart, and found in it an over-the-top but relatable expression of the idea that maybe we were just allowed to have feelings about this stuff, talk about how toxic it was, and not consider enduring it the price of liking particular media. And some number of folks outside that zone had the right combination of "savior complex", ego instability, and "mortification of the flesh" approach to Big Causes affecting mainly other people that I still run into them.
(I mean, I'm sure you were paying attention at the time. Just, y'know, saying.)
Of course, the whole thing was fueled by a fantastically unstable mix of pent-up anger and Internet Vitriol, and frankly she was merely one of more visible and malignant manifestations of the whole clusterfuck, but I feel like maybe if the community response to all of it (not just Winterfox and her shit but like, the entire long tail of Racefail '09, which is really what drove all that boring navel-gazing) has been "lackluster unto mediocre hand-wringing, a few new Big Names that are at best kind of okay, cheap talking points and overall a fantastic insularity"... well, the starting point was "positively dire" as far as a lot of us were concerned. "Boring irrelevant mainstream SF that isn't fun but tries to talk about Issues vs reactionary bullshit from the old guard" is time-bounded anyway.
no subject
(I mean, I'm sure you were paying attention at the time. Just, y'know, saying.)
Of course, the whole thing was fueled by a fantastically unstable mix of pent-up anger and Internet Vitriol, and frankly she was merely one of more visible and malignant manifestations of the whole clusterfuck, but I feel like maybe if the community response to all of it (not just Winterfox and her shit but like, the entire long tail of Racefail '09, which is really what drove all that boring navel-gazing) has been "lackluster unto mediocre hand-wringing, a few new Big Names that are at best kind of okay, cheap talking points and overall a fantastic insularity"... well, the starting point was "positively dire" as far as a lot of us were concerned. "Boring irrelevant mainstream SF that isn't fun but tries to talk about Issues vs reactionary bullshit from the old guard" is time-bounded anyway.