Entry tags:

authorwank, baleeted, censorship, metafilter, mods (not ours), publishing

Violet Blue: Not so wonderful anymore, apparently
It's already on clairvoyantwank, but with 1000+ BoingBoing comments and half the blogosphere a-titter, this wank has matured.

San Francisco sex blogger Violet Blue used to be chummy with the folks at Boing Boing, and naturally, they linked her a lot. However, she recently discovered that they "unpublished" all posts that mentioned her, effectively excising her from the internet's most popular purveyor of wonderful things. Last week, VB wondered what happened (and note that all links to her blog are NSFW). Valleywag, "Silicon Valley's tech gossip rag" (must be thrilling) picked up the story, and promptly started sensationalizing the shit out of it: Did the Internet's free speech guardian try to hush up a girl-on-girl love affair?, they wondered, and speculated on How [Boing Boing editor] Xeni and Violet's Boing Boing affair went sour." It gets Dugg, of course, and pretty soon we're hearing about censorship, Trotsky and "strangely unethical" goings on. Violet posts a tiny-violin follow-up and people start pestering the Boing Boing editors in comments to unrelated posts.

So finally, Boing Boing responds. They say they did the "unpublishing" a year ago. They say they notified Blue. And then, in (*checks bottom of page*) 1100 comments and counting, the shit hits the fan. People accuse Boing Boing of hypocrisy, 1984 allusions fly all over the place, and the Boing Boing comment moderater completely fails to hold the moral high ground as she dances around explaining what Blue did that was so "evil." It's a huge game of they-said, she-said at this point, and figuring out what the hell is going on is frankly less interesting than tracking the endless comparisons to Stalinism. Nothing is like the gulags, people. Nothing.

Now with highlights!

Metafilter commenter sends BB a note from Winston Smith
Scalzi gets his teal deer on, defending Cory Doctorow from the mean metafilterians
Boing Boing's haters are worse than Donald Rumsfeld!
Whether it is redaction, bowdlerization, expurgation, or censorship I see no place for it here."
Boing Boing hates your freedom, just like the Republicans. :(
The OED doesn't deserve this kind of abuse.
BB Moderator Teresa COULD say something mean about that evil, lying attention-whore ... but she won't.

(Read comments) - (Post a new comment)

	msmanna 2008-07-03 08:27 am UTC (link)
	With this much secrecy and OMG-we-can't-possibly-say--what-happened going on, you just know the reason behind it is all going to turn out to be something so petty that even real thirteen-year-olds wouldn't bother to stamp their feet about it. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	tree 2008-07-03 09:40 am UTC (link)
	Agreed. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	pastri_archy 2008-07-03 11:28 am UTC (link)
	And I will laugh like a loon. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	smashingstars 2008-07-03 11:59 am UTC (link)
	Hoyeah, I was thinking this exact thing while reading the wank on BB yesterday, and I was rubbing my hands together in anticipatory glee for the day we find out what the backstory is. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	risha 2008-07-03 12:37 pm UTC (link)
	Exactly. You'd think that people would catch on after awhile. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	catmoran 2008-07-03 12:37 pm UTC (link)
	I'm trying to think of something that real 13yos won't stamp their feet about, and coming up empty. Rose aphids? I'm sure there are some 13yo gardeners out there. Home mortgages? Somewhere, there's a 13yo who's losing her text message plan because the family is cutting expenses. (Sorry, I do get your point. I think I need more caffeine. Carry on.) (Reply to this)(Parent)

	lady_ganesh 2008-07-03 05:58 pm UTC (link)
	Add me in the crowd of people agreeing here. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	lottelita 2008-07-03 06:08 pm UTC (link)
	I'm really hoping it's, like, "She borrowed $20 and didn't pay me back!" or "I got the clap from her!" (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	miss_padfoot 2008-07-03 10:55 pm UTC (link)
	Oh man, I hope it's the second. Not that I want to wish an STD on anyone, I just would love to see the fallout. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	lottelita 2008-07-03 11:14 pm UTC (link)
	Eh, the clap's not so bad to wish on people with health insurance. Dose of antibiotics and all you've got are bad memories and society's lingering disapproval. (Reply to this)(Parent)

vzg
2008-07-04 04:09 am UTC (link)

Having no knowledge of anything BoingBoing other than their "We're sorry you all got so riled up and hope you'll be nice to us... but we're still not saying anything!" thing... yeah. My reaction to reading that was pretty much "Oh. ...and why not?" I'm trying to imagine a situation in which it would be reasonable for them to keep concealing their reasons, and short of legal trouble (which I think people might've been able to uncover) I can't think of anything. Maybe I'm just not trying hard enough.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

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