In the blog world, this is the equivalent of the Beatles breaking up

March 30, 2020 7:19 AM

After almost 20 years, Cory Doctorow has left BoingBoing and started a new blog and newsletter In late January, I left Boing Boing, on my 19th anniversary with the site. It was a good run, and I wish everyone there the best, but it was time (it's complicated, and I'm still co-owner, but I'm not involved in any way -- it's basically an indefinite, unpaid sabbatical). (from Doctorow-l)

For those of you who are interested, here's the Pluralistic workflow:

* New posts start off as Twitter threads at @doctorow

* These get manually, simultaneously reposted to the fediverse as
Mastodon toot threads

* Every morning, these are anthologized into a blog post for Pluralistic.net

* That's then turned into a newsletter post for the Plura-list

* Then I create daily anthology threads for Mastodon and Twitter that
have links to all the day's threads, and pin it to the top of each account.

* These are then turned into individual Tumblr posts, which are injected
into the stream at:

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/

posted by mecran01 (60 comments total)

I feel like his workflow is an XKCD parody.
posted by MrGuilt at 7:26 AM on March 30, 2020 [120 favorites]

Thanks for the post! used to be a fairly regular reader of Boing Boing but stopped ages ago. A recent visit was not encouraging (to me; others may still love it). I haven’t read a lot of Doctorow’s stuff but I have enjoyed what I’ve read and I have generally considered him a force for good in the world. I hope his new venture works out well for him and his established fans.
posted by Bella Donna at 7:27 AM on March 30, 2020 [6 favorites]

I was originally drawn to Boing Boing, by Doctorow, but really, Rob Beschizza (Ringo Starr?) has been the heart and soul of Boing Boing for the last decade.
posted by 3j0hn at 7:41 AM on March 30, 2020 [12 favorites]

MetaFilter: an XKCD parody.
posted by Fizz at 7:43 AM on March 30, 2020 [7 favorites]

that workflow... look, good for him. He's living the dream. Some dream. And ... you know. OK, the thing I don't get is - does it have to be? I mean, in the sense of "Is it art? Or can we throw it out?" all this effort to - broadcast tweets? Or? Sigh. I think I'm maybe too much of a luddite to follow the value of this. But good for him! Whatever it is he's doing.
posted by From Bklyn at 7:47 AM on March 30, 2020 [6 favorites]

I was a fan of the zine, the Happy Mutants Book, and the first few years of the website; I think increasingly the things they did well, which was just scour the world (and the web) for really interesting stuff) was important and may be more important now. But I got burned out on the drama.
posted by maxsparber at 7:49 AM on March 30, 2020 [7 favorites]

I stopped interacting with the place when my comments criticizing Weisberger's license plate "DRUNK" were deleted. Or maybe it was when people called me all sorts of names for suggesting that we shouldn't be photoshopping Kellyanne Conway as a withered crone.
posted by turkeybrain at 8:06 AM on March 30, 2020 [4 favorites]

This could be good news. I abandoned boing boing a few years ago. Lots of clickbait and must more ... vapid.
posted by falsedmitri at 8:09 AM on March 30, 2020 [5 favorites]

Hey woah, it's a link blog! I thought I had the last one of those standing. Well not quite the last, there's a couple more. But it's a form that never was popular and has long since become completely moribund.

If you like this kind of thing I highly recommend belong.io, an aggregate linkblog by XOXO Festival producer Andy Baio (aka waxpancake). It's based on links in tweets from a large list of interesting people Andy knows and is a great daily read.
posted by Nelson at 8:09 AM on March 30, 2020 [11 favorites]

BUT, on the specific topic of Cory Doctorow, I always liked his articles and a book of his - the YA one about fascism and linux, and I think it's a loss to BB.
posted by turkeybrain at 8:11 AM on March 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

I check in with BB daily, but lately it feels like they've ramped up the ad posts? I don't know if that's like, actually numerically true, but some days it feels like the posts from Boing Boing's Shop outnumber the actual posts. Having Cory gone is just going to add to that feeling.
posted by mittens at 8:18 AM on March 30, 2020 [11 favorites]

Definitely a loss to BB - he was one of the few reasons I've stuck around as it continued to dive deeper into ad/affiliate/sponsor hell. I figured there must have been background tension going on seeing the hop back and forth between BUY THIS AMAZON/APPLE/ETC DEVICE to Cory's well-researched and thought-out posts on surveillance-capitalism and how the law is misused to steal our property from us.

As someone in information security, I'm glad we have people like him helping to disseminate why this stuff is bad and how we fight back against it in an accessible way. I'm not the biggest fan of link-blogs but will sub in the hope that we get some of the longer posts that I came to BB from him to read.
posted by mincus at 8:21 AM on March 30, 2020 [4 favorites]

@[e-mail] seems to be the Mastodon link. God it hurts my brain to see all these half-paragraphs punctuated by “5/“ in the Mastodon UI after a year and a half of running a Mastodon instance with a very generous character limit.

Why he’s using a French instance whose admin’s posts are entirely in French for this, I have no idea.
posted by egypturnash at 8:24 AM on March 30, 2020

Something changed with Boing Boing in the past few years. At this point I have to assume any post about a consumer product is a paid advertisement, which sucks because there used to be interesting posts like "cool tools" or "this is a new thing I used for the first time yesterday" or "check out this person's gadget, so nifty". Now it seems like they're hawking crap from a drop shipper and contradicting themselves with their articles and the products they sell. I feel soon they'll be hawking nutritional supplements and devolve into an MLM. They write summaries of various supermarket tabloids.

I enjoyed when Jessamyn was a guest editor for them. For a week you got to see what Jessamyn would post on a platform like BoingBoing instead of MetaFilter, which was interesting.

Lately I've been leaving the site out of frustration when I try to view it on mobile. I can't seem to get even halfway through an article before the text jumps around because some new ad is being served that pushes text up or down the page. I understand that ads are necessary. I just hate how increasingly intrusive they feel on BoingBoing. I wonder if that's now going to be better or worse with Cory's departure.
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 8:28 AM on March 30, 2020 [25 favorites]

I check in with BB daily, but lately it feels like they've ramped up the ad posts? I don't know if that's like, actually numerically true, but some days it feels like the posts from Boing Boing's Shop outnumber the actual posts.

This has always been the main reason why I avoid BB. I feel like I'm constantly being advertised to. Which is unfortunate, I do like Cory as a writer. I might actually engage more with what he has to say this way.
posted by Fizz at 8:34 AM on March 30, 2020 [3 favorites]

In 2008, BoingBoing published HOWTO make a portable sandbox out of a wheeled under-bed storage tub.

Spoiler alert: you take a wheeled under-bed storage tub, and fill it with sand. This was referred to as a "hack".

I don't think I've ever been back.
posted by mhoye at 8:57 AM on March 30, 2020 [26 favorites]

I check in with BB daily, but lately it feels like they've ramped up the ad posts? I don't know if that's like, actually numerically true, but some days it feels like the posts from Boing Boing's Shop outnumber the actual posts.

It certainly seems like the S/N ratio has dropped to near zero over the past few years, and has been remarked upon by many commenters there. They've at least been marking the product placements (well, most of them, anyway) more reliably of late. But, BB's cred has definitely been hurt by the product placements.

Personally, Doctorow leaving is non-story for me. For the most part, the vast majority of his posts over the past several years have pretty much been limited to heavy self-promotion, rabid anti-Apple screeds, or the occasional love letter to Disney. I definitely won't miss him. "Cred" is something he lost (imho, of course) ages ago.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:57 AM on March 30, 2020 [11 favorites]

BoingBoing is what happens when an energetic and creative group of people create something cool under a specific set of cultural circumstances, start making real money at it and then times change and they fall out of love with it - and maybe each other - but have to keep doing it for the money.

It's become the blog equivalent of these Pixies reunion tours.
posted by chinese_fashion at 9:00 AM on March 30, 2020 [57 favorites]

Very rarely look at BoingBoing these days. Agreed that it has become almost a parody of itself with all the ad/sponsored posts. "This stapler really makes it easy to attach one sheet of paper to another sheet of paper! LINK"

Doctorow was never a big draw for me, but I wish him well in the new endeavor. His new site is a little hard on the eyes, though!
posted by SoberHighland at 9:05 AM on March 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

And yes, the Apple = Enslavement stuff is especially galling from a hardcore Disney shill. Let it go: my dad wants to send emails, keep a photo collection and look stuff up online and doesn't need a hacked-together, open source, Power to the People mishmash of radical FREEDOM ninja technology to do so. My dad is not any more enslaved by his iPhone and MacBook Air than he is to his Volkwagen or his Kindle.
posted by SoberHighland at 9:11 AM on March 30, 2020 [24 favorites]

The equivalent of the Beatles breaking up? Nah. Maybe Oingo Boingo?
posted by oulipian at 9:30 AM on March 30, 2020 [15 favorites]

Yeah, I've never been to the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, but it feels like there's a million posts on BoingBoing about it. Can anyone who's been tell me if it lives up to the hype?
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 9:31 AM on March 30, 2020 [4 favorites]

Boing-Boing used to be a major source of Metafilter posts; I think I remember someone joking that Metafilter was the unofficial comment section for BB which didn't have comments at the time.
posted by octothorpe at 9:42 AM on March 30, 2020 [9 favorites]

Haven't been to BB in over a decade. I assume they're doing lots of COVID-19 art, like they did loads of SARS art back when SARS was a thing. Maybe they aren't. Maybe they've grown up a bit. I'll never know. I never go there. Never will.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 9:45 AM on March 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

It's possible I'm being uncharitable, but it's been a while since I've read anything from Cory Doctorow that didn’t leave me with a feeling that amounted to “Cory Doctorow is Cory Doctorow in Cory Doctorow’s new Cory Doctorow book about Cory Doctorow by Cory Doctorow”, so... I dunno. We’ll see how it goes, I guess, but that publishing contraption is Extremely Cory Doctorow.
posted by mhoye at 9:56 AM on March 30, 2020 [38 favorites]

I used to read them just like I used to read Happy Puppy, Fark, Voodoo Extreme, and Gone Gold.
posted by Beholder at 9:57 AM on March 30, 2020 [5 favorites]

I enjoy Cory's writing, think he's a force for good, and have found Boing Boing useful and interesting for years.
posted by brainwane at 10:12 AM on March 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

Hate away haters but I like Corey Doctorow and I loved his story Crap Hound. That is all.
posted by Bella Donna at 10:12 AM on March 30, 2020 [3 favorites]

Boing-Boing used to be a major source of Metafilter posts; I think I remember someone joking that Metafilter was the unofficial comment section for BB which didn't have comments at the time.

Yeah, that was definitely the case in the early days.

site:metafilter.com "via boingboing" produces 167 hits and that's just the ones being attributed.

But I agree with the sentiment that over the past few years it has felt a little like visiting an old friend but then you sit down and look around and it's an Amway party.
posted by gwint at 10:40 AM on March 30, 2020 [22 favorites]

I liked this site for about ten minutes in 2002 or something but it quickly began to seem empty and neoliberal. I don't see the appeal.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:48 AM on March 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I've never been to the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, but it feels like there's a million posts on BoingBoing about it. Can anyone who's been tell me if it lives up to the hype?

It's a fun attraction, but I never quite understood the breathless over-the-top hype/reverence it gets from the BB crowd. It's fun. That's it. The whole "Here are deep secrets Walt never wanted you to know about the Haunted Mansion" tone is pretty baffling. It's all been well-documented long before any of the BB crowd were even born.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:50 AM on March 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

I've commented before that BoingBoing lost all its appeal to me over the last decade, for many reasons already enumerated above. Hopefully this will be good for Doctorow, who at least produces the occasional decent work of fiction. I don't really see an improvement in the cards for BoingBoing, which probably should have been put out to pasture in 2007 or so.
posted by aspersioncast at 10:58 AM on March 30, 2020

Maybe BoingBoing is what happens when the Beatles don't break up. Maybe the Beatles breaking up was a good thing.
posted by mecran01 at 11:03 AM on March 30, 2020 [21 favorites]

I used to enjoy BB back in the day and submitted link ideas. I became a little frustrated when the same submissions would be posted two or three days later with a credit someone else who is 'friend of BB'. I thought... hmm.. maybe we shouldn't haven't give Cory that cape.

I'm probably being ungrateful, as he gave a lot of traction to the Billboard Liberation Front work, even if those tip-offs came from a 'friend of BB'.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 11:22 AM on March 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

Maybe BoingBoing is what happens when the Beatles don't break up. Maybe the Beatles breaking up was a good thing.

The whole "you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain" seems apropos here.

Personal opinions aside, BoingBoing was fun at its inception, and then just slowly grew into the very things they claimed to be against, becoming a parody of themselves, as others have rightly pointed out.

In respect to the Beatles, yes, this is exactly the sort of outcome that would have resulted had the Beatles stayed together.

We give current celebrities crap for singing "Imagine" and repeating the line about imagining no possessions during the COVID-19 crisis, but we don't say the same about Lennon, who was a rich out of touch twerp in his own right, and he would have grown to be a parody of himself, just the same, had his life not been cut short.

EDIT: Not saying Doctorow or Lennon are outright terrible people for becoming parodies of themselves, more just pointing out that money does shit to people. The kind of shit that makes them do the very things they used to call out, the very things that got them attention in the first place.
posted by deadaluspark at 11:28 AM on March 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

They haven't ramped up the affiliate and self-store posts lately, it's been frog-boiling for at least 5 years. It's why I don't go there anymore. Maybe this will be a come-to-Jesus moment for the remaining contributors, because I do connect with their editorial sensibilities otherwise.

Doctorow has long had the most fruitful career of all of the editors, so his leaving comes as no surprise really. He always seemed comfortable shoehorning his writing career into the culture of BB, but if he eventually felt like he was getting drowned out by the commercialsm (or the association), that would be totally reasonable.

Beschizza is indeed pretty great, but his Twitter is a good enough substitute for me.
posted by rhizome at 11:31 AM on March 30, 2020 [4 favorites]

we don't say the same about Lennon, who was a rich out of touch twerp in his own right, and he would have grown to be a parody of himself, just the same, had his life not been cut short.

Not to derail, but I was recently reflecting on the 80s Yuppie phenomenon, the beginnings of private equity, etc. and how Lennon living in the Dakota might have sent some mixed messages to his fans.
posted by rhizome at 11:34 AM on March 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

In the blog world, this is the equivalent of the Beatles breaking up

Maybe if we're talking about the present-day Beatles.

I haven't given more than a couple of thoughts to Boing Boing since taking my leave during the utterly bonkers disemvoweling drama in 2008. The place had already become a self-parody by that point, and I remember how grimly funny it was to see disemvoweled comments on the (endless) posts hawking Doctorow's new book about censorship and free speech.

Anyway, I'm sticking my head out because I've got to comment on the utter wrongness of that name, "Pluralistic." Taking a single piece of content and propagating it repeatedly and by rote is so perfectly not pluralism that it's breathtaking. It's beautifully wrong, like a Thomas Friedman metaphor. Amazing.
posted by ZaphodB at 12:04 PM on March 30, 2020 [13 favorites]

I'm sort of surprised that I've never run into Beschizza since he lives here in Pittsburgh and I think not far from me.
posted by octothorpe at 12:09 PM on March 30, 2020

Mod note: Heya, gentle course correction here. If you absolutely hate the subject of this post it's actually better not to comment than just spleen vent. Constructive comments, even negative ones, are fine. You being #stillmad about something that happened last century? Less so.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 12:48 PM on March 30, 2020 [11 favorites]

Boing-Boing used to be a major source of Metafilter posts

It went both ways; I was a BB reader who followed enough of their links to Metafilter that I wound up sticking around MF, and finally joining when I wanted to use Ask.
posted by fings at 3:37 PM on March 30, 2020 [7 favorites]

Cory seemed very kind when I emailed him about the weirdass terrible advertising situation that began like... five years ago? Didn't fix anything, of course. I'm surprised it took him so long to yeet himself.

I do mourn BB, honestly. But I'm not strongly empathetic about it. Their MO was "we provide hyperlinks." How do you fuck that business model up?
posted by Sterros at 4:54 PM on March 30, 2020

Used to be a BB poster. Got several years of comments deleted when they migrated commenting platforms, so strike one. Strike 2, I was kinda sick of all the self-congratulatory techbro wankery, and strike 3 their excommunication of Violet Blue never sat right with me so I left and never looked back. I've read a few of Doctorow's books and liked them a lot (he even sent me a review copy of Pirate Cinema when I emailed him saying I was looking forward to it) so I wish him well in his new thing. I find his optimism about the freeing possibilities of technology inspiring if slightly unrealistic
posted by signsofrain at 6:36 PM on March 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

Cory Doctorow at his early 2000s apex felt to me like the human version of the NYT story about a buttered piece of bread.

Something nice and mundane and universal (posting links for your friends, writing novels about the internet, buttering a piece of bread) feels special to a bunch of privileged people with a cultural megaphone.
posted by zymil at 7:55 PM on March 30, 2020

This is why I love Metafilter.
posted by EinAtlanta at 8:45 PM on March 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

> optimism about the freeing possibilities of technology
(emphasis added)

Hmmm... I guess some of his books do have good outcomes for the characters who are first crushed under authoritarian systems, but if everyone just ended up repressed, jailed, or dead, who would read them? The novel dangers of those systems are something he's good at forseeing and if you'd rather have them unfiltered, there's a 3 hour interview on C-SPAN's Book TV where he lays it all out. I've only been able to watch about 1/2 of it, but this post has inspired me to get back to it.
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 8:47 PM on March 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

Google maps 37Signals with Flickr iPod.
posted by RakDaddy at 10:50 PM on March 30, 2020

I only read BB via RSS, which means I can quickly zip past the insipid, increasing commercial posts. As a, ahem, metafilter for mostly the lighter side of the web it still points me toward a few interesting items a week. Cory's own editorial posts have never seemed anything more than predictable (a fate that befalls most pundits), so having them standing alone in his new location(s) sounds like it will be good for everyone.
posted by PhineasGage at 11:07 PM on March 30, 2020

I haven't given more than a couple of thoughts to Boing Boing since taking my leave during the utterly bonkers disemvoweling drama in 2008.

I have a personal interpretation of why this went down the way it did which does at least make the actions of the BB crew explicable, if anyone cares at this point (I don’t actually know whether it’s true, but it’s a hypothesis which turns everyone involved into reasonable people trying to do their best under trying circumstances.)

& yes, holding a grudge over something that happened 12 years ago does seem a little overboard :)
posted by pharm at 2:37 AM on March 31, 2020 [2 favorites]

I have a personal interpretation of why this went down the way it did...

Please, tell us. I have been baffled by it for more than a decade and any theory that makes sense of their actions, even if it is wrong, would be a help at this point.
posted by seasparrow at 7:56 AM on March 31, 2020

The only Beatles I truly enjoy is the stuff produced right as they were breaking up, so not sure the analogy works for me.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:49 AM on March 31, 2020

OK: Here’s my narrative. It’s probably wrong in important respects, but it is a narrative that explains everyone’s actions satisfactorily (to me). You’ll also see why I only alluded to it at the time, as posting it in full at the time seemed like it would be rubbing salt into the wound if it bore any relation to the truth.

So, lets say (for the sake of argument) you’re a female part owner & regular contribute to one of these shared blog things that by random happenstance - being in the right place at the right time & knowing the right people - gets to ride the wave of attention and ad revenue in the mid 2000s. You get to post about whatever grabs your attention, do stuff you like & get paid for it. Life is pretty good! In fact, your blog is so good & so well known that being mentioned on it can make a material difference to the success of people’s internet based projects. Careers have been made from single links from your blog.

As you’re getting on with your life, going to parties, having fun, etc etc, you meet a women who pushes all your buttons. You become close, you mention her projects on your blog, because hey, who doesn’t want to help their friends? Life goes from good to great. Maybe after a while you become closer, fall in love. You think you’ve found “the one”, someone to spend your life with. But then things start to go wrong: the other woman withdraws, tells you you’re too needy. She pushes you away. You retreat, lick your wounds & try to work out what went wrong. Was it you? Was it something you did? Gradually, the suspicion grows: she never cared about you at all. Eventually, you grasp that the entire relationship was founded on a lie & you were simply being used to further this woman’s career. You were nothing more than a tool to her. It was a cruel & heartless way to have behaved; you’re devastated.

Having drawn this sad conclusion, you now have a deeply personal problem. The website you part own is littered with links to this women’s website, driving revenue to her this very moment & reminding you of exactly how you were used. Frankly the very mention of her name on the site is like poking at an open wound, an upsetting reminder of something you’d rather put behind you. You talk things over with the other site owners & they (perhaps reluctantly) agree that quietly deleting all mention of her from the site is the simplest, kindest option. Let the moderators know that the name of said person shall not be mentioned so that she can’t shill herself in the comments & you can go away and quietly lick your wounds in peace.

Well, at least you would have done, until the internet noticed & decided to make a massive deal out of it. Initially, the BB moderators probably presumed that this was the other party stirring things up, so they followed the protocol and quietly deleted any comments mentioning her. Disemvowelling was deployed. Then things started to get completely out of hand & well, you know the rest of the story: The end result was to generate even more publicity for the other woman than anyone could ever have forseen. Everything backfired horribly & probably caused huge pain for everyone involved internally. Unsurprisingly they really, really don’t want to talk about it to this day.

Do I know that this story is true? No. We do know that the two parties involved were in a relationship of some sort, but the other women denies that it was a serious one. (“Well, she would say that, wouldn’t she?” is the phrase that springs to mind.)

I do believe that the BB crew were trying to excise from the site someone who they felt had crossed a line: taken advantage of them in a way that to them was inexcusable, such that letting them continue to benefit from BB’s links felt like it was giving them exactly what they had wanted all along. Precisely what that transgression entailed is unclear: the above is just one narrative that fits the facts.
posted by pharm at 8:56 AM on March 31, 2020 [10 favorites]

I don't know, I think that sounds odd at best, and if you imagine it in any other line of work (say you worked in sales and promoted your spouse's work and after you break up you do what you can to erase her history while you were together) it begins to sound downright demented.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:55 AM on March 31, 2020 [2 favorites]

If that promotion was the only thing said spouse actually wanted & I’d been cynically duped from the start? I think the temptation to pull any remaining promotion would be pretty strong. Obviously it might be a bad idea: we can see from the BB experience that the reputational damage that might result could be bad, but I don’t think the temptation to wipe out any further promotion of said ex-spouse is emotionally implausible or outside the bounds of normal behaviour.

As I said: it might not work for you but this, or something like it, seems like a plausible explanation to me.
posted by pharm at 12:51 PM on March 31, 2020

I was a daily reader of BoingBoing once upon a time. Gradually I became disenchanted with various aspects. One of the main ones was Cory's tendency to pour so much hype and spin into his posts that you never knew if they bore more than a passing resemblance to the truth, unless you did some digging. I've never been sure whether he was even aware of doing it or not. Now, of course, I can look back on that as an early lesson on what so much of the internet was ultimately going to become.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 6:27 PM on March 31, 2020 [4 favorites]

One of the other things that drove me away from BB was what I perceived to be overly aggressive comment moderation. I saw a lot of comments being deleted for, basically, disagreeing with the reigning groupthink. Or they wouldn't get deleted, but would get this cutesy treatment where the moderator would delete all the vowels. I got ticked off about this happening to one of my comments once, and being a contrary cuss, I started using a new screen name, which was the name of the lead moderator minus all the vowels. That didn't go over well.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 6:32 PM on March 31, 2020 [3 favorites]

But I agree with the person above who said that Beschizza has always been one of BB's bright spots!
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 6:32 PM on March 31, 2020

It went both ways; I was a BB reader who followed enough of their links to Metafilter that I wound up sticking around MF, and finally joining when I wanted to use Ask.

Yes, I'm now remembering that yet another reason I left BB behind was the ever-more-frequent feeling that I had read much of its content on MeFi a day or two earlier.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 6:38 PM on March 31, 2020 [2 favorites]

A few of the Boingers were really supportive of me and my work, and gave my stuff some posts at a time when I needed the nudge, and I'll always appreciate that. I had what I thought was a friendship with one of them, and then one day they just stopped responding to my emails completely. I wasn't so close that I can be sure that it was something I did, but it really hurt.
posted by chinese_fashion at 11:07 PM on March 31, 2020 [2 favorites]

Welp. Pluralistic lasted this long in my feed reader. But now it's gone.

The sad thing is, I often find myself in complete agreement with Cory. His stance on social issues, I'm with him. He's a friend of friends and former colleague to former colleagues. I'm genuinely glad he's around doing what he does, and I hope he keeps doing it. His writing can be funny, charming and sweet — like a little square of halva on your coffee cup's saucer.

But Pluralistic was like getting force-fed a kilogram of halva every day. Sure, it's good halva, but the fact it comes shaped as a Cory Doctorow action figure (a different pose every day!) is a little off-putting. And even if you like halva as much as I do, a kilogram every day is going to make you sick of it pretty quickly. You soon start empathizing more closely with people who are allergic to halva. So you end up having to quit it completely.
posted by scruss at 1:27 PM on April 4, 2020 [6 favorites]