I'm a Bad Boy

Hugo nominee Jeffro Johnson is extremely upset with me, as he believes I have delivered unto him "the biggest insult I have ever received in my life..."

What I said was: “Do not refer to yourself as a person to whom honor is important again.”


My response on his site is in moderation. I'll bring this post public if it does not go through.

He won't let it through. So here is the comment I wished to leave on his post:



The transactional psychology game you are playing here is called Kick Me.

This game began by you suggesting a neutral space after everyone heads on over to the website of a guy who thinks blacks are a subspecies of humanity, Jews run the banks, and that a Nazi political party in Greece is the lesser of two evils to read your work.

When people objected to this, I pointed out that though you made a mistake in signing up with Beale, plenty of other people well-integrated into the field made a very similar mistake by cooperating with the Church of Scientology. This, you see, was an obvious defense of your decision, and anyone outside of the hothouse of this website would see it as just that. It was a suggestion that other commenters not get too worked up about your work appearing CH, especially if they spent the last X years lauding and palling around with self-selected goodwill ambassadors for Co$.

You’ll also note that I had no problem visiting the CH blog, and addressed you on the topic of your Lovecraft post.

You decided that this was one of several attacks against you. I pointed out that if you thought this was an attack, you should get out more. This is true. If you read a defense and decide that it is an attack, you have miscalibrated something essential.

You see, I started from the presumption—because I am a person of honor—that you were saying what you believed to be true. Not that you were lying, or purposefully ginning up a controversy for either clicks or cyberhugs from your regular readers, or that you were literally incapable of telling truth from falsehood due to some psychological issue.

After you played your little self-described “prank”, it became clear to me that you were likely somewhat immature, which is likely why you consider basic critiques of your work to be withering and harsh. However, you didn’t necessarily have to be immature. In my time, I’ve noticed that there are two types of people who have a lot of trouble with even minor criticisms—young, immature guys, and middle-aged men who haven’t quite realized that the Internet is not their personal dining room table and that readers don’t have to just nod and say “Yes, Dad.”

So I asked how old you were, and, because I am a man of honor, made it clear that I was not going to “prank” you back.

You decided, after misrepresenting me, calling me out, faking friendly interest, and playing a (gormless) prank, that you had had enough? No son, that’s not behaving honorably.

Behaving honorably means doing things you may not feel like doing—fairness in interactions is one of the essential elements of honor. (You can trust an honorable person on a handshake; for everyone else, there are contracts.) You treated me unfairly, and when I gave you the chance to treat me fairly—answering a simple question, you decided to pout like a child instead even as you claimed that honor was important to you.

Well, if honor is less important to you than your momentary feelings, honor is not important to you. Don’t worry—it’s not important to most people.

You talk about noblesse oblige. Being a writer doesn’t make me a noble, and it is worth pointing out that nobles used their occasional exercises in goodwill and mercy primarily to justify their continued reign and exploitation of the lower orders. But if you’re curious about noblesse oblige, note that I didn’t write a big blog post on my site about what an immature fellow you are. It would have been easy, and I was tempted, but it wouldn’t have been fair and so I didn’t do it. And it still wouldn’t be fair.

So here’s what I recommend: do not type the letters M-A-M-A-T-A-S in that order onto this blog or any other blog you might have again. If you don’t want to hear from me, that’s the best way. If you would like to continue your game of “Kick Me”, well, keep at it.