This time was different, however. Not only did it take place on Facebook, but it also resulted in a volley of personal and professional attacks. The fanboy Battalion has mutated since those days of simply telling a person they were wrong and sending threatening emails to professional film critics for not liking a movie they adored.
I wouldn't have even known about this if not for the fact that a Facebook friend had posted her views on James Gunn's "The Suicide Squad" by referring to it as basically a stupid failure. I concurred, posting my blog post/review to show her just how much. You can read that here. I saw a dissenting comment from a guy whose name shall remain undisclosed (I'll refer to him as "Soy" based on a comment another friend made) which I read and immediately forgot all about. However, at some point between me not being online for a while and finally going back on, my Facebook friend had unfriended and blocked this individual for comments she found obnoxious.
Like any juicy scandal-loving 'Murican, I decided to look him up. To my delight, I found that he had reposted the above review and written a disdainful commentary about it. This was so his like-minded, sycophantic followers could start making insulting comments about the review itself, the writing of it, and the various word choices they deemed pretentious. The post was public, so it was easy for me to jump in, first by thanking Soy for the repost and then responding to some of the comments about the review. I found it interesting how Soy kept trying to make it seem as if me seeing negative comments about something I wrote was some sort of turnabout is fair play situation instead of an expected part of being a writer...Almost as if he was some uber-nerd twit who didn't know what the hell he was talking about.
This suspicion was compounded by the fact that he seemed hellbent on telling me what I should have written, and how I should have written it. The review, in his opinion, lacked "nuance," a word he seemed to have just learned sometime this week and couldn't wait to use over and over until he sounded like a special needs parrot. I began to wonder: What exactly had him so upset and offended? My dislike of the material, the way I presented it, or the fact that I didn't gently take him by the hand and explain every sentence and word choice so he didn't soil his diaper? I suspect it was all three.
In the midst of Soy's kiss-ass geek patrol calling my writing terrible and saying how much it sucked, he kept telling me how I should have written my review. Oh, and he used the word "nuance."
A lot.
I've dealt with guys like this before. They represent both cheeks on the political butt. Extreme righties tend to indulge the behavior more often, but extreme lefties do it, too. The tactic is to lure the person onto their page, insult them and then let their friends attack them from all angles while appearing to be the reasonable one "just trying to make a point." It is a tactic employed by both bully and bullied alike. It hasn't ever worked on me when dealing with people who were much better at it, and it sure as shit didn't work on me this time.
The intellectual lightweights on Soy's page were barely a distraction, but they definitely brought the entertainment value. Yet despite the constant back-and-forth with such gems as "I want to kill your high school English teacher 'cause you suck" and other award-winning zingers of the highest level, Soy was still telling me what and how to write.
Deciding I'd had enough fun with the dingleberries, I focused instead on the post's originator and his repeated insistence that my post lacked...sigh...NUANCE.
At this point, I'd already had a relatively decent back-and-forth with the one person not necessarily following Soy's orders who had expressed an interest in knowing what my opinion of the movie might be now that the initial hostility had faded. And to be fair, I did give Soy one point: The review was not a *GROAN* nuanced take on the film. It wasn't intended to be; it was written as an extension of my Facebook live posting. Soy even admitted my views on the handling of Viola Davis' character were pretty accurate.
The conversation could have, and probably should have, ended there. We had found a point on which we agreed and did not agree on the rest because Soy had issues with the way it was presented. Fair enough. I've stopped reading many a novel for similar reasons. The difference is, I didn't contact the author and tell them how they should have written the novel. I moved on. It's what grownups do. Soy, on the other hand, chose this as a hill to die on, a cause he could not relinquish. He was, in essence, the fanboy cliché nobody can stand; a know-it-all expert on all things with no foundation in any of them who thinks he has the right to police content.
I owe no one who isn't paying me for my work anything. The mere fact that he was ignorant of the difference between a journal-like blog post and a professional film review shows that he proceeded from a false assumption. I certainly don't feel obligated to some random shit-starter on social networking to accommodate him with my writing, nor am I fazed by a bunch of followers of this person to feel that I need to alter my writing style. Awards, positive reviews and over thirty published stories speak for themselves. Besides, anyone who gets that angry over someone's opinions about a silly movie has more emotional issues than I am qualified to deal with.
I will thank Soy and his too-cool friends for the blog post material. It's difficult to not write about someone who accuses me of getting upset about a post when the post I am responding to is literally the result of the person getting upset about a post, throwing a tantrum, and trying to gain validation. Pointing out a person's lack of self-awareness doesn't usually go well, and I wound up blocked for my efforts.
However, in the interest of helping people get past their soft, squishy ego problems, may I submit for their use...
Oh, I almost forgot:
NUANCE
NUANCE
NUANCE
NUANCE
NUANCE
NUANCE
NUANCE
NUANCE
NUANCE
NUANCE
NUANCE
NUANCE
NUANCE
NUANCE
NUANCE
NUANCE
NUANCE
NUANCE
NUANCE
NUANCE
NUANCE
NUANCE
NUANCE
NUANCE
No comments:
Post a Comment