oh my

[napoleonherself]

Remember this? Apparently I am worthy of response! Man. My existence feels so... validated.

Here is the text of the response on Mayerson's site, reproduced for commentary-type purposes, with my comments in italics. If she happens to be one of those people who gets bitchy about these things (I really wouldn't know offhand if she is, but hey, some people are), I shall point out that reviewing PART of EXACTLY ONE ENTRY on her blog prooooobably counts as fair use.

Now.

"
Dear me, another little Live Journal Jockey fan, NapoleonHerself, no less. ...is that a commentary on my username? No, I'm being serious here, I actually can't tell. It is kinda a funky username, but hey, by this point it's pretty much stuck to me. Oh! What burden for me! Hey, lady, I ain't tryin' to be a burden, so save your sarcasm. I'm trying to talk about stuff that amuses and/or boggles me. You happen to be it. Tsk, I keep thinking I'm going to retire and then a whole new generation discovers me and so I must soldier on. Technically, no, you don't HAVE to. Hey, these LJ Comments are a comedy goldmine in and of themselves. One of them thinks calling it sequential art is pretentious. Well, in Sandra's case that might be true, especially the art part. Yes! Keep slamming the one person! It doesn't look like a personal vendetta at all. Nope nope. However, this genre is called sequential art whether that makes the children giggle or not. They giggle at the words penis and vagina, too, so there's nothing to take seriously there either. See, because if you find the term "sequential art" pretentious, then you are childish. And most assuredly not to be taken seriously.

[...]

Anyway, back to the quote above ["She is old enough to remember the days before webcomics, so she must be right.", the title of my last ljpost on this subject]: honeychild, I'm old enough to remember before MTV, when only hookers and strippers wore thongs (formerly known as G-strings), and when unprotected sex wasn't lethal, just stupid. I'm not sure why these are the criteria given to separate her age from mine. Is she saying that I watch MTV, wear thongs, and have unprotected sex? Because if so, it's kinda silly. I don't do any of those things. (Heads-up for if this game keeps going -- I've NEVER had sex AT ALL, so feel free to use that as proof that I have no life and suchlike.) However, yes, I am of the same age group as many people who do, and for that I apologize profusely. However, thank you for the link, kiddo, and I've returned the favor. Every link boosts my Google spot and brings in more people who agree with me, but don't have an LJ because they have other things to do (like interact with real life). Oh burn! Remember, having an LJ == not having a real life. Stereotypes are easier than thinking, so they must be true! *thumbs-up, wink*
"

This is fun! It's like being a troll, without the guilt of knowing that you're bringing down someone else's communication space -- because I'm talking on my very own LiveJournal that nobody reads unless they want to know what I'm saying anyway!

Incidentally, nobody better comment unless they want to be used as proof that everyone who doens't agree with Mayerson is in some way inferior to her. If, like me, you don't mind, though, then comment away!

[edit] She also refers to me as part of the "can't-remember-before-the-internet-set". Yeah, actually, you're right, I can't remember anything before 1999 (that being the point at which I finally convinced mom that computers were Good Things). The pile of standard paper comics I amassed in elementary school, ensconced in a box of stuff back in Cali, waiting to be shipped to me when I need it? Doesn't exist. All the newspaper comics I cut out and stuck in a binder? Same thing. My books and books of Garfield comics... that I... paid good money for... ...okay, so I had bad taste when I was a kid, we'll let those sort of pass without further mentioning. And don't even get me started on all the nonexistent times that I asked my mom to buy me more comic-related itemry and was shot down. TEH INTARWEB IS ALL

Comments

[aquaman-neo.livejournal.com]

She is a seriously wacky person.

[wing-zero-ew.livejournal.com]

I would not worry too much about this individual's bizarre ravings, as she clearly belongs to the lowest rung of the internet lunatic community. Her unique obsession with a single webcomic borders on psychosis, while her literary use of said comic as a straw man simply qualifies as pathetic and vindictive. I cannot imagine why Sequential Tart, or anyone else, would accept her in a position where she has access to pen, paper, typewriter, computer, or any other reproductive medium with which to immortalize her self-styled professional writing, which would get a D+ in a 100 level Professional Writing class at an accredited institution of higher learning, along with a referral to both Psychological Services and the Writing Tutorial shop.

While we're on the subject of vaguely personal attacks, and I do believe we are, thanks to the esteemed and thoroughly unhinged wackjob, I have to ask, has she ever even consulted with an editor? Briefly?

Her ludicrous ad-hominem attacks reek of ingrained hostility, terms like 'honeychild' make her resemble a caricature out of a fictional work set in the Deep South (next she'll lament how she's come to rely on the kindness of Webcomic Artists, or perhaps how, with God As Her Witness, she'll never read LJ again), and finally, she goes in leaps, bounds and sputters, with nothing resembling a narrative thread, but in its place, a veritable cartload of non-sequiturs and dubious claims.

Wow. My only guess is that, in the classic tradition of highly vitriolic, reactionary writing, the author here reveals more about herself than intended. Let's do a little informed speculation, shall we?

1: She is clearly obsessed with forming an arbitrary distinction between LiveJournal, a blogging service (and, might I add, one of the longest-running and most widely-used blogging services), and her own personal/psuedo-professional work. Why would a person, you might ask, attempt to cast an entire community of bloggers who, by the very definition of most blogging services represent a diverse group of interests, into a single mold that can then be ignored, discarded, or demonized at will? For the same reason, and I'm sorry about Godwin's Law here, that the Nazis did it to the Jews, Gypsies, etc: Deep, abiding personal fear. This sort of obsession typically stems from deep-rooted insecurities about oneself, which are masked with, and perversely manifested in, vicious hatred of others. She is likely troubled with her own 'professional standing', to the point that she feels she must lash out at others, to create an artificial differentiation between her own writing and theirs, in the hopes of establishing her own legitimacy.

Newsflash for the esteemed critic: one whose stock and trade is in personal vendetta and borerline libel in fact has no legitimacy in the world of publishing.

2: Her constant demeaning stabs at the age of her critics, and their attitudes on everything from music to sex, aside from being cliche to the point of self-parody, also illuminate a person deeply insecure about their own age. As any actual academic would know, there are brilliant people in all adult age groups; the correlation between age and polish on one's professional studies does not imply causation, and casting someone's work aside on the basis of their age alone is puerile and ignorant.

Having said that, the choice of topics, namely clothing, sex, music, cultural emblems, and the internet, does provide us with some further insight into a person haunted by these particular issues. Perhaps modern clothing (and, by the way, thongs? those haven't been either a controversy or a fad for a decade now) threatens her sense of modesty; perhaps sexually transmitted diseases terrify her with threats of mortality and illness; perhaps modern music proves too difficult to understand. The internet commentary, I'd assume, relates her as well to her fears of being revealed as the fraud that she is, and ending up cast out of whatever passes for the academic community studying webcomics.

[wing-zero-ew.livejournal.com]

Which, don't get me wrong, she most certainly will be. I've studied art history and theory on comics at the collegiate level, seen the state of affairs in this admittedly niche area of study. She doesn't come close to qualifying, even for a nascent field of inquiry. It is truly sad that self-aggrandizing parodies of critique such as this currently fill the void for online analysis. At some point, however, just as comics in their hardcopy form are becoming intensely studied by art historians, literary scholars, and so forth, so too will their online incarnations reach the interest of actual academics, and at that point, mercifully, this sort of pedantic crap will be thrown out with the rest of the trash, ignored and forgotten, save by those meta-scholars interested with abortive attempts to found a genre of commentary.

In short, save for the amusement one can glean from her lunatic behavior, I'd just ignore the woman. Sooner or later, and god willing, sooner, she'll fade from memory forever, leaving space for those of us interested in actual discourse to communicate on the public stage.

[nidoking.livejournal.com]

Oh, but it's so much FUN to bait them and watch them squirm as they try to defend a clearly incorrect position! I did that to the trolls on my livejournal for a while. They try to laud their superiority because they "have lives" and "worthwhile interests"... which must clearly include monitoring my livejournal and posting these comments. Rub their noses in it and enjoy the TRUE moral superiority.

[incoherent.livejournal.com]

Here, here! *raises a glass*

[nidoking.livejournal.com]

You've just bid $800 on a hardbound copy of the collected works of Ginger Mayerson. Better hope someone outbids you. ^_^

[incoherent.livejournal.com]

While the woman causes no end of amusement (and trouble), I just want to know... Why the heck does she keep reading webcomics if they apparently will crawl out of her computer and eat her brain? (maybe that explains some things...) O.o

[nidoking.livejournal.com]

My theory (pretty much what wing_zero_ew said) is that some people feel threatened by others who are held in higher regard but whom they perceive as having less talent. The old "I could do better than that, so why am I not getting that much recognition?" They put themselves on a pedestal and honestly believe that everyone thinks as highly of them as they think of themselves. Which makes everything they say on their subject of "expertise" pure genius and worthy of admiration by their peers. Yet there are other people getting all the glory. So they directly attack those people, believing that everyone will admire them for it and turn their formerly misplaced adulation on the critic. The problem is that if they ARE attacking someone of greater talent (usually the case), it's going to blow up in their face, but they can't see that from atop their pedestal. I got into that trap myself a few times, so I know all too well. I never out-and-out insulted anyone, but I did level my complaints about how much attention their stories were getting in places where the authors (who I do respect) would see them. Still, while many of us can admit that we're not the best at what we do but we enjoy doing it anyway, there are those who haven't learned that vital lesson yet... and they keep attacking everyone else trying to prove it. That's the way politics works, too, but let's not get into that here.