Steampunked – BoingBoing disemvowels my homie!
Saturday, March 15th, 2008I have seen too many of these bullshit "clocks" appear on BoingBoing over the last five years, and this is the final straw. My good friend Richard, who is one of the most moderate people I know, has been disemvowelled for posting comments to suggest that maybe Cory Doctorow gives Roger Wood a little too much exposure on the Grand Old Blog, with his cute but pointless assemblages of victorian garbage with timepieces attached.
This will not stand!
If they were actual clocks fashioned from brass bobbins and doodads maybe I would be a little more impressed, but in fact they appear to be merely pile after pile of cogs and bells and springs with prefabricated clock movements tacked onto them. The junk has no bearing on the function, which basically makes them "Repulsive encrustations of pointless ersatz nonsense" as another commenter so eloquently put it.
BoingBoing is not just a blog; it is a source of information for vast numbers of people (including myself) about what is new and interesting in the world. These clocks are neither new nor interesting. They are Cory’s indulgence, and have virtually no relevance to the community which BB serves and benefits from.
So what’s wrong with a little indulgence? Nothing of course— who wouldn’t exploit such a position to share their tastes with an audience in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. But this steampunk clock shit has gone too far. It doesn’t take a "genius" to make stuff like this, and to suggest otherwise is an insult to those craftsmen who believe in making something well rather than just making something for ironic hipsters to fawn over.
If you search BoingBoing for references to Roger Wood and his clocks, you get 185 results. This is about 180 too many in my opinion. If these clocks were so fucking great then I’m sure other people would be talking about them, but the only place I hear of them is BoingBoing, where it seems like there’s at least one "Roger Wood my greatest pal the master genius steampunk clockmaker has assembled another cluster of old junk" post per month.
These are just a few of the from google:
- Roger Wood clocks built on brass horns - My ex-neighbor Roger Wood makes spectacular assemblage-sculpture clocks out of junk. This week’s creations are built from dented brass horns and boy are…
- My friend Roger Wood is a genius clockmaker who builds clocks into assemblage sculptures made from found objects, antiques, rust, and vacuum tubes….
- My new Roger Wood clock - Visited my old building in Toronto tonight and stopped in to see my old neighbor Roger Wood, the talented assemblage sculptor whose clocks I dearly adore….
- Roger Wood’s latest clock sculpture - I’m absolutely taken with the latest clock from master clock-sculptor (and my former neighbour) Roger Wood, Toronto’s virtuoso mad steampunk genius….
- Roger Wood’s latest clock - My pal Roger Wood is an amazing assemblage scupltor in Toronto who makes the wildest goddamned whimsical clocks I’ve ever seen….
- Roger Wood, the mad clockman, profiled in the Toronto Star - My pal and former neighbor Roger Wood, the mad assemblage clock-sculptor, got a swell and well-deserved notice in the Toronto Star last week….
- Roger Wood’s latest steampunk assemblage clock - My pal Roger Wood is a mad assemblage sculptor in Toronto who makes gorgeous steampunky kinetic clocks. Every day or two, he sends out a "newsletter" to his…
- New Roger Wood clock - My friend Roger Wood’s latest assemblage sculpture clock makes me…
- Roger Wood’s latest clock - My pal and old neighbour Roger Wood is a mad sculptor/clockmaker in Toronto who builds fantastical clocks out of garbage and thrifted bits and bobs….
- Roger Wood clock with laundry - My old neighbor from Toronto, Roger Wood, is an assemblage sculptor who builds whimsical clocks out of old junk. He has a little mailing list for fans of…
- … etc…
It’s exactly this annoying repetition which causes myself and others to deeply resent Wood and his stupid clocks… not because they are bad, but because they are nowhere near good enough to justify this incredible ongoing exposure. Fine, advertise them on the site, but for Christ’s sake stop pushing this as editorial content.
I am truly sorry if this post offends Roger Wood. I don’t think he deserves ridicule for his work per se. But the overwhelming praise he consistently receives for this stuff means that eventually, people like me are going to come to despise his work, for having it continually pushed in our faces as something cool.
And before I forget, a big FUCK YOU to an increasingly conservative BoingBoing. I can’t believe you would censor someone merely for questioning this ridiculous self-indulgence. [Teresa Nielsen Hayden, I used to think you were cool]
It’s a sculpture. With a clock attached. Enough already!
PS: BoingBoing you have single-handedly diluted the word steampunk into a pejorative term. Show some editorial standards, please.
March 15th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
I was indeed very surprised to be cut off without warning.
For those who have already asked “what does it take to offend BoingBoing?”, well the first post I made [as nomoreclockz] was:
“Cory, whatever Roger Wood has on you can’t be worth this total and tireless dedication to his promotion.
If you genuinely enjoy his gaudy pastiche [insult to horology that it is] than at least have the decency to quietly place his advertisements on the sidebar.”
and later…
“Hi Jenm, it’s not so much Roger’s clocks that I dislike [I’m a bit of a “form follows function” guy so, no, they don’t appeal to me as such].
My main beef is with Cory’s promotion of them.”
So, there you have it, scary stuff I know.
Thanks Mark for having the courage and intelligence to completely blow all of this totally out of proportion.
Hooray Intertubes!
March 16th, 2008 at 12:45 am
After a little digging… we find Cory saying, “Take my friend Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who moderates the sprawling, delightful message-boards on Making Light, a group-blog where the message boards run the gamut from the war in Iraq to Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan-fiction, and where they discussion is almost always civil.
Teresa is a troll-whisperer. For some reason, she can spot irredeemable trolls and separate them from the merely unsocialized. She can keep discussions calm and moving forward. She knows when deleting a troll’s message will discourage him, and when it will only spark a game of whack-a-mole.
Teresa calls it “having an ear for text” and she is full of maddeningly unquantifiable tips for spotting the right rod to twiddle to keep the reactor firing happily without sparking a meltdown.”
I see now that I’ve been modded by a pro - no contest - she obviously knows me better than I know myself.
But wait there’s more…
“Teresa invented a technique called disemvowelling — removing the vowels from some or all of a fiery message-board post. The advantage of this is that it leaves the words intact, but requires that you read them very slowly — so slowly that it takes the sting out of them. And, as Teresa recently explained to me, disemvowelling part of a post lets the rest of the community know what kind of sentiment is and is not socially acceptable.”
She invented it?! I’m almost… honored…
Oh well, I’m evidently an “irredeemable troll” and that’s that I suppose.
March 16th, 2008 at 2:26 am
What’s super shitty about the inappropriate use of disemvowelling is that it tends to be associated with abusive ranting morons, so anyone who saw your mutilated comments might reasonably assume that you said something highly offensive, when you were at worst mildly snarky.
Reading those pathetic follow up comments (”Haven’t you got anything better to do?” asks TNH– real cute coming from someone who has just exercised their divine right to fuck over your posts) I’d like to figuratively cockpunch a few of those people myself.
March 16th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Speaking from an outside observer, this is an example of very, very poor moderation and smells of a group who feels they can do no wrong.
Thank you for reposting the comments here Richard.
March 16th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
This is an example of strong group cohesion gone misdirected. The group has become so strong that they’ve a) forgotten the initial mission statement and b) become a force unto their own. Hey Boingboing, maybe it’s time for some self-reflection - re-affirm your true values?
March 16th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Frankly I’m surprised anyone thought it was a good idea to give a moderator carte blanche to vandalise any comments she disagrees with or simply takes a disliking to, particularly when the moderator in question makes the average airport security guard look like a good-humoured and reasonable chap.
March 16th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Well, after creating a new user “dontdisemvowelmebro” and apologizing I have just been censored and blocked again - so have a few others who have voiced concerns about the aesthetics of clocks.
It’s fairly clear that Teresa Nielsen Hayden and others of BoingBoing are able to maintain order in their comments by exercising exactly the same kind of censorship and restrictions on free speech that they so often claim to detest in others.
I have been a daily reader of BoingBoing for years and as far as I’m concerned they just performed a private shark-jumping for me to enjoy.
Irrelevance stalks us all.
March 17th, 2008 at 2:10 am
Oh god those smug fucks are still going… Although I have suffered zero personal insult (having not been directly subject to the treatment) I think I now detest Boing Boing, having had this insight into their comment section (I think the last time I looked it was when I posted a “please no more clocks” comment of my own some months back, but I never checked back to see it shredded thus).
March 17th, 2008 at 2:13 am
to clarify, it’s the disemvowelling that I find most inappropriate– it’s the equivalent of playing fart noises over a radio call-in guest.
March 17th, 2008 at 2:46 am
I’ve given BoingBoing a fair bit of thought in the last few hours and something is now very obvious to me that wasn’t so before - since I embraced RSS aggregation through Google Reader I have been running around a day to a day and a half ahead of BoingBoing in the vital “hipster meme of the moment” for which I used to rely on boingboing itself. I feel that I’m quite capable of detecting the next “all your base”, “LOLCatz” “XKCD” wave without Cory’s, Xeni’s or Whoever’s assistance.
BoingBoing looks about as relevant to me now as Yahoo does [Oh wow this soooo much better than search! Humans indexing the intertubes!]
So, yes a big old fuck off to the lot of them!
March 17th, 2008 at 4:53 am
I never did like BB so much, though I never delved a great deal (probably ’cause I never liked it so much!)
Always seemed a bit smug for my taste.
Having read the thread in question I think that re censorship and general coolness they do need a good, solid, protracted cockpunching.
That “this is Cory’s livingroom, he does what he wants” argument is very flimsy.
If one doesn’t want comments in the livingroom one shouldn’t have a publicly accessible livingroom, blackjack in the umbrella stand (why not just come out and say shotgun under the counter?) notwithstanding. Last I heard gaffing the mouths of one’s guests was still frowned on by the proponents of free speech.
I must try the Google Reader embracement. I’m so not up on the memes.
March 17th, 2008 at 11:31 am
A most entertaining adventure, happily concluded with the satisfying declaration of BB’s irrelevance. Even more satisfying than a cockpunch methinks.
March 17th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
What annoys me is that over at Boing Boing, people like to laud TNH as some kind of ‘troll whisperer’ who, with some kind of Minority Report-like gift, can spot a troll in the making.
‘For some reason, she can spot irredeemable trolls and separate them from the merely unsocialized,’ ethuses Cory Doctorshittyclocklover.
Yes, just as I can stroll down the street and expose people who are in a bad mood simply by slapping them forcibly in the back of the head, so too can TNH expose troublemakers by smugly vandalising any comments she takes a disliking to. If the poster takes umbrage or merely expresses surprise, TNH hoists up her belt, places one hand on her hip, the other on her baton, and thinks “Yes sir, I’ve still got the knack!”
March 18th, 2008 at 7:01 am
I don’t believe I’ve ever heard the term “cockpunch” before, but I believe it may now become a regular part of my vocabulary. With regards to BB, this type of smug elitism in comment management is simply nauseauting.
March 19th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Oh for crying out loud! Is this person trolling me now?!
What the flying flip is going on with Teresa Nielsen Hayden?
“From time to time we’re going to be promoting especially wonderful comments (for all values of “wonderful”) to the front page.”
This is like Fox’s “fair and balanced” - we delete comments we don’t like and promote things we do to the front frakking page.
BoingBoing delivers a whole new reality distortion field.
March 29th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
More BoingBoing douche-fliddlery:
http://s4xton.com/1685/an-example-of-creative-commons-not-working/
March 30th, 2008 at 12:45 am
Heh. I notice that TNH was quick to delete the comments that several other Boing Boing posters left in support of Aaron’s concerns.
April 8th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Alternative clock making done right: http://www.flickr.com/photos/seangallagher/sets/72157604323095889/
May 8th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Yeah, I’m getting really tired of BoingBoing as well. THN is very heavy-handed, and I would delete my account - if they actually had provided a way to delete accounts. I’m so sick and tired of BB and their trigger-happy system of shooting down any comments that disagree with them.