Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2015/08/23/sad-puppies-rabid-puppies-los.html
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Predictably, the Puppies are already complaining of conspiracy, and that everyone who voted “no award” was voting the “no award” bloc.
Even though I firmly believe there was no actual connection between the Puppies and GamerGate movements beyond their members holding similar political views, I do find it interesting that first Gamergate and now Puppies have been effectively repudiated by the broader body of people they claim to represent—gamers and SF/F fans, respectively—and their claims of conspiracy and bias in response can be summed up in a 1998 filk by Jo Walton (who was herself edged out of eligibility for “Best Related Work” this year by Puppy nominations): “The Lurkers Support Me in Email”.
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Well, I know I voted for “No Award” in places because @doctorow told me to do so! 
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They did get a win for Guardians of the Galaxy, though. 
Better air quality than Spokane?
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It is exactly like what is going on in the British Labour Party election; the ones making all the noise are the ones who are losing the argument. Power structures are shifting almost all over the world, and the people who assumed that they would always be on top don’t like it.
Meanwhile archaeologists have recently discovered some stone tablets produced by intelligent tyrannosaurs. They contain demands that evolution stop.
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Beautiful day.
It pleases me greatly when any brand of MRA gets what’s coming to them.
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I think this whole thing is good in the long run. It exposed a massive flaw in the voting system that was probably exploited in a lesser extent in the past and it got a lot more people talking about the Hugos.
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I’m glad that the Puppies were defeated. But I’ll say now what I said when all this was breaking: that’s it for the Hugos. Up until the last few years, you knew that a Hugo Award winner was a quality book. Not necessarily a book you’d love, not necessarily the direction you’d want the genre heading in, but you could trust that it was something that had been nominated because of solid craft. Now, if I see “Hugo Award Winner” on a cover, I’m just going to be wondering if it’s the vanity prize someone won for running the most efficient astroturf campaign.
The funny thing is, it’s not really the Puppies’ fault. Well, I mean, they’re horrible and I hate them and the used toilet paper they’re cynically nominating. But there are so many different (legitimate) ideas of what sci-fi/speculative/fantasy/etc./etc./etc. is supposed to be that it can’t really be brought under the umbrella of one set of awards anymore. Back in the day you could have your nominees be, say, Asimov and Heinlein and Dick and Bradbury–four totally different kinds of writers, to say nothing of a wide political valence between them–and still have them talking to mostly the same audience.
Diversity has improved the genre (which, ironically, is the Puppies’ main complaint) but it also means there’s really no point in trying to pick a winner anymore. Shenanigans like ballot-stuffing and electioneering and ideologically pure slates are the inevitable consequence of the prize’s reputation for being able to identify something that all concerned would recognize as “quality.” But it can’t anymore. So let’s just forget it.
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Of course there is a connection, forceful tactics and hatred.
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The funniest part of this is that the voting pool for the Hugos is tiny and trivially swayed. I know of at least three reasonably Obscure Sci-fi book review podcasts (including the accurately named Science Fiction Book Review Podcast) who each have bigger total listenership show to show than the Hugos have voters in the awards. I don’t mean “Oh, it’s a few dozen most of the time”, I mean by hundreds, if not multiple thousands.
You could practically rig the vote by accident - in fact, there’s more than one case where the vote has been influenced by outside factors, like where Worldcon was held, or who the Guest of Honor was - and these hopeless twits couldn’t even manage to pull it in their favor with a deliberate effort. The Hugos are a joke - no offense to any nominees or winners who might be present - but the idiots couldn’t even manage to bend it in their favor.
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Progress is a continuum, not some teleological vector. We make wins, we lose ground.
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Why can’t it?
Racists and homophobes and misogynists tried to run an ideologically-pure slate, and they got shot down in flames. The fans showed up, and made it very clear that no slate-nominated work would win, because a) slates are abhorrent to the spirit of the Hugos – fans vote on what fans like because they like it, not because somebody tells them to vote for works from their own vanity press – and b) most of the Puppy slate works actually sucked.
The Hugo voters saw through the shenanigans, and resoundingly denounced them. The fans voted for what the fans liked, just like always, and it turns out they really don’t like shenanigans. If anything, I trust the Hugos more now, because who would be stupid enough to try another slate, or electioneering, or any other bullshit, after the drubbing that that kind of behaviour was just rewarded with?
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Can someone please explain the puppies/voting thing here? Are puppies a label descriptor for racists and sexists, and a change in the voting structure was done to essentially block these groups nominations?
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The googles, they are your friend.
http://www.dailydot.com/geek/hugo-award-nominees-sad-puppies/
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To all Puppies:
Wag more,
Bark less.
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There may have been no formal connection, but the overlap on Twitter was significant—on any given day, 50% to 90% of posts with the #sadpuppies hashtag also had the #gamergate hashtag. Since those posts numbered in the hundreds on some days, and there were maybe a thousand Puppy voters, GG seems to have been a significant ally.
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EDIT: I posted an idea. I got responses. Who knew? 
I personally find Lion’s response compelling, so I’m “retracting” my post without deleting it. That way the conversation thread doesn’t get broken and context is preserved.
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It seems like there really isn’t a need to “fix” anything since their ploy failed. Any attempt to change the system will only give these assholes ammo to claim conspiracy.
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Of course they lost. They are losers. Fuck Theodore Beale. And fuck Vox Day. Yes, I know they’re the same person. Double fuck that guy.
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Except people miss part two of the puppies slate/problem. If their guys can’t win, they wanted to make the awards meaningless. Imagine next year that ALL the nominations go to ALL puppies slate and no non-puppies works make their way in.
Then what happens? Beating them means "No Award"ing the entire show.
Sure, they didn’t get what they wanted out of this, they didn’t get their particular puppies Hugos, but they got the second part of their plan… an awards show that didn’t award nearly half its awards.
THAT needs fixing.
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