Every morning I hit a few sites. Actually, there is a cool feature of Firefox that lets me make a folder and just drop links in it. Then when I middle click on that folder it just opens all the links in tabs. So in the morning I just open a browser and middle click my folder and all my sites open.
Anyway, several of the sites are online webcomic sites. Some of them are fairly mainstream ones:
Penny-Arcade
Player versus Player
while a couple of them are less so:
Order of the Stick
Real Life
Yirmumah!
Now the last one I have be reading for only about 4 months, but I really enjoy the guy that does the drawing. He is a firebrand to a huge degree and makes pretty much no bones about it. I love it. I wish more people were like that.
So they had a week long donation drive and I dropped him $20. He personally emailed me and ask me if there was any of the artwork from his comics that I would like to have. I mentioned that I like the Seasame Street Medicated stuff, so I think I will be getting some of that.
Also, he mentioned that people could sponsor the site for a month and he would post their banner up on his site. I checked that and saw that it was only $10 a month, so I went ahead and did that to. The banner is up now and he made it for me. I think it is interesting that he picked a picture of the farm to make the banner out of. I thought that was pretty cool myself.
So now that I have decided to sponsor him, he calls down a shit storm of people bashing him, because he went into a web forum and told a “secret” about the latest Harry Potter book.
Personally I don’t think that is really that big of a deal. I think the hype and secrecy that this book has been subject to are pretty dumb. The sheer amount of people that have went stupid over these books is enough to make me not want to have anything to do with them at all, AND to make the sheep-ites mad. So, now I am actually happy that he is causing trouble over this. 🙂
Oh great now I am linked on the main page in the same post as another reference to his giving away the “Potter Secret”. 🙂 Wonder how much overspray I’ll get from that.
See, I find it interesting that ‘spoilers’ when it comes to Star Wars or movies that are pop culture icons are a big deal, but spoilers when it comes to books are not. As a rule of thumb, reading takes more imagination and more dedication. Lots of people (both adults and kids) enjoy the series, and look forward to the latest release. You could take that away from them by blurting out the ending, but that seems like a really childish and petty thing to do.
Part of the thing here is that getting kids to read is an important (and not always easy) thing to do. If it is ‘cool’ to read because of one specific series, then I can certainly make a case that says it’ll get more kids to read books. But kids also have a short attention span – so blurt out the ending, and the odds are good that they won’t be disciplined enough to plow through the 700+ pages themselves. Is that worth the fleeting entertainment from the spoiler?
At the end of the day, you’re right about the fact that there is too much hype and people on the fan side get carried away. But thats their prerogative – they aren’t hurting anyone, and are certainly well within their rights to do so (as are the people that wear Jedi costumes to the star wars movies). Giving away bits of the story (or the ending) is pretty much abusing your own freedom.
The old axiom goes “your freedom ends where mine begins” – I think it specifically germane to this situation. If he had posted the spoiler on -his- website, then I would have no issue with it. Reason being that people have a choice and can choose not to go to his website. But to go on to someone else’s forum and do so, if kind of like walking into an AA meeting and swigging a bottle of booze. It is just downright rude and inconsiderate.
Look if it was kids that he was messing with, then I would have a problem with this. I mean in a kids life shit like getting a mail order toy from Kelloggs is almost too much waiting for them.
BUT there aren’t kids reading Websnark. These are adults. These are people that are supposed to have REAL lifes. People that are supposed to be mature and realize that there are more important things in the world than the latest media hype. SADLY, they don’t.
Perhaps I just don’t buy into stupid stuff like this enough, so I have no emotional interest in it, but honestly I cannot thing of a single thing in my life that if someone came up to me now and told me the ending, I would even care about. Nothing. Not football, not basketball, not a movie, no book. Stuff just isn’t that big of a deal to me.
Apparently DJ is of a similar personality type as I. In the end it is more funny than anything else to see these people become soooo rabid over something that is so meaningless to us.
And no if I had read the other books I still wouldn’t care.
You don’t think kids read websites? Seriously… thats just ridiculous. He isn’t ‘messing’ with anyone – it is more like he rolled up and shouted “yo, here’s whats up”, and let events take their course. If kids read it, then -shrug- collateral damage.
People that read -are- mature. The content of what they read may vary widely, but reading in itself implies you’re willing to do more than use your eyeballs. That they get excited or interested or desirous of finding out more is a by-product of it. The HP series is certainly written as much for adults as it is for kids. Undoubtedly many of them are folowing the hype, but there are going to be some percentage that are not. I read the books myself because I find them to be interesting. Just like I do -all- of the varied writings I’ve had occasion to read in my life.
And ironically, people that are casually dismissive of someone elses’ enjoyment seem rather immature to me. It seems like a case of being a dick… just to be a dick.
And you said it better than I could – people become soooo rabid over something that is so meaningless to us – by that logic, maybe there is -something- you consider to be meaningful. Like working on the truck with your uncle. Maybe the neighborhood hoodlums consider that to be meaningless to them, and graffiti it. There really is no damage done (regardless of what insurance companies would have us believe), but I’m fairly certain you’d get pretty upset about it. By your logic, the work you put in is meaningless to the hoodlums, and so it should be perfectly okay for them to do whatever they want since they derive some amusement from the event.
I’m not condemning him for getting a laugh or -being himself- or however you want to look at this situation. I’m just pointing out that there are other ways of looking at it, where he doesn’t exactly come off smelling like roses.
Yes I am positive that no kids read websnark.
And no it doesn’t take a mature person at all to read a book. Being able to read can be accomplished by even most immature of people as evidenced by the people that are reading these books and then going to Harry Potter camp, where they walk around with brooms between their legs.
Providing a spoiler for a book has little in common with destroying a car. (It is a car by the way). Graffiti on it would be damaging it, since the paint job on the car would have cost me some amount of money.
And I am not being dismissive of their enjoyment, I am being dismissive of their rabid fanaticism toward something that in the total sum of life means absolutely nothing. Sendinng someone death threats and telling them how you would like to rape them and their family, is a little out of control in my view and is a great example of how fucked up most Americans are.
Graffiti on it would be damaging it, since the paint job on the car would have cost me some amount of money.
So what? It is just paint. It wouldn’t affect the mechanical operation of the vehicle any.
I am being dismissive of their rabid fanaticism toward something that in the total sum of life means absolutely nothing
Why do you get to decide what means something or nothing in the total sum of life? By my analogy above, hoodlums could easily reach the same conclusions about graffiti’ing the car.
Sending someone death threats … is a great example of how fucked up most Americans are
First off, the readership for this series extends far beyond Americans. So your statement is flawed right there.
But looking past that… yes, sending people death threats over something like this is beyond ludicrous, and an example of how fucked up -some people can be-.
And another example of how fucked up some people can be is a person that decides that ruining someone else’s enjoyment is a source of entertainment.
We’re not going to convince each other here. I’m in agreement with you that the death threats and all of that are way over the top, and that there are people who have jumped onto this bandwagon of readership because it is a pop-culture thing to do, and that in the grand scheme of things knowing the outcome ahead of reading a book is probably fairly trivial.
But for some reason, it seems that you are unwilling to admit that the guy that posted the spoiler -and therefore is responsible for everything that has followed in its aftermath- is equally irresponsible and immature. Maybe it is because you like his work as an artist, or maybe it is just because you like his opinions. Regardless, there is a clear line between right and wrong, and he’s not anywhere near the -right- side.