Before I get started, a disclaimer: The closest connection I have to Irish fandom is that I've flown over bits of Ireland from time to time. And, when I was a kid, I saw a lot of commercials for Lucky Charms. So I'm probably going to be missing a few subtleties. Also, this is something that happened recently, and recently . . . recently isn't really the decade that I'm best at.
With that said, it seems that there's a guy named Pádraig Ó Méalóid. Who's active in Irish con-going fandom. Or at least, he's active in large parts of Irish con-going fandom. But not Octocon, the Irish National Convention, which is going to be held next weekend. You see Pádraig got a letter the other day, that went a little something like this:
Hello,
I'm writing on behalf of the 2009 Octocon Committee. I am the Co-Chair.
Due to your behaviour at the convention some time ago and your online behaviour earlier this year we have come to the unfortunate decision to ban you from this convention. We believe that your attitude towards us has been far to aggressive both online and in the past at the convention.
This matter is not open for discussion and we will not enter into any online discussion regarding this nor will we discuss this with any other persons. This decision is final.
We are deeply saddened by this as this is the first time a committee has had to ban someone. We will of course will refund your money; if you reply to me with your address I will forward this onto you as soon as possible.
Regards,
Nichola Hannigan
Now, if you're like me, you look at a letter like that, and think "she probably meant 'far too aggressive'." Also, you'd find that third paragraph amusingly repetitive. (I have to warn you, if that was actually your reaction, you're going to want to lay some tarp around your work area, as one of the links that comes later is going to make your head explode. And that's hard to clean up.)
And, if you're someone like Pádraig, you'll go ahead and post the letter to your
livejournal. I mean, I'd have done that as well, but with far more mockery.
But Pádraig wasn't the only place in which this news was broken.
Cheryl Morgan happened to mention it as well. To quote the seemingly innocuous paragraph:
In less good news my email is currently buzzing with the news that my good friend Pádraig Ó Méalóid has apparently been banned from the convention. I know that Pádraig has been rather critical of the Octocon committee this year, and perhaps rather more aggressive about it than he should have been, but I know my fan history well enough to remember that banning people from conventions rarely ends well. The right way to deal with one’s critics is to prove them wrong by running a great event.
Comment
3 is by one James Brophy, who was, at that point, on the Octocon committee. And he's there to link to the convention's
Code of Conduct, and defend the committee's decision.
Against all challengers.
The first one he takes on is
Pádraig. To his protestations of "I don't know what the hell they're talking about," James replies with
"You turned your ignorance of your own actions into a press release." Zing!
Then there's another challenger.
Gary Farber replies in his own, inimitable fashion. And at great length. And other people agree with him. Also,
Chris O'Shea points out that the code of conduct in question wasn't actually put up on the web last week, which is apparently after whatever happened that made them kick Pádraig out of the convention. It also is in the realm of possibility that the code went up after they sent the letter.
Chris concludes with:
Octocon’s PR has the ears of the world at the moment, it would be a good time to explain what is going on, because in the absence of such, things will only get worse.
James isn't going to take that lying down! In the
next comment, he announces his resignation from the con committee, and comprehensively flips his shit. This is where the grammar induced head-explosions are going to start, by the way, as his language skills seem to go at the same time as his temper.
I'm not a hundred percent capable of parsing the claims in the post, but as I understand them, they more or less go as follows: a) Pádraig is a mean guy. b) Also, he says mean things, both to people, and about people. c) One time, he took some prints from a photographer that he shouldn't have.
Rather than do a play-by-play for the rest of the thread, I'll summarize. Gary makes fun of James's difficulties both with the English language and with logic. James explains that one of the lurkers who supports him isn't speaking up, because he's a writer, and fears that Cheryl Morgan will ruin his career. Cheryl gets upset at that, and bans James from her blog, until she's contacted by the guy in question. Which, rather surprisingly, she is, so she un-bans him. Various other members of the committee show up, not so much to explain their actions, as to explain that they wanted this to be kept private, and they are saddened that Pádraig has put his own interests above those of a convention which he's not allowed to attend.
As one might expect, there's some discussion about there elsewhere on the internet; the one bit that jumped out at me as providing useful data was a
comment on lj which suggested that one of Pádraig's major sins was founding a convention that's been more successful than Octocon over the last decade or so.
And that's all I've got.
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