…Make sure you’ve read this article first.
Please bear with me: I’m going to start with a Star Trek reference.
Let me recap the original Star Trek series episode Patterns of Force (a.k.a. “The Nazi Planet Episode”) . In this episode, the Enterprise is dispatched to search for John Gill, a prominent Federation historian who has disappeared on the planet Ekos whose society he was researching. Our heroes arrive on the planet and discover that it’s run by Nazis, and that the historian they’re searching for has installed himself as the Fuhrer.
After much adventuring, they discover that although Gill appeared to be the leader of this brutal and warlike society, he had become the drugged puppet of his deputy, a native of the planet with an ambition to become its supreme ruler. Kirk, Spock and McCoy defeat the deputy Fuhrer, and Gill confesses that his original intent was to help the planet’s society evolve from its backward anarchic state into a functioning civilization. His plan: model the Ekosians after what he thought was the “most efficient system the Earth ever knew”, the Nazis.
The premise of this episode always struck me as ridiculous. How could a respected historian (I’m assuming he’s respected, as they’ve sent the Federation’s flagship to go looking for him) ever come to the conclusion that he could fix a broken society by modelling them after the Nazis?
How could anyone think that a society that mimicked the Nazis down to the last detail — the swastikas, uniforms, SS, the “sieg heil” salute, technology, fascism, the obsession with order and a leader called “The Fuhrer” — would not end up duplicating the brutal, threatening and hateful aspects as well? Where did this guy get his history degree?
It started with a debate over at Tara Hunt’s HorsePigCow blog in the comments for her More on Higher Purpose post. Some of the commenters who took issue with the thesis of Tara’s post — really, people, what’s wrong with having a higher purpose? — were getting out of hand, and Tara exercised her right to delete those comments. “They remind me of the mean kids in high school who used to draw pictures of me with zits all over and laugh at my expense,” she wrote.
Inspired by Tara’s reference to “mean kids”, Frank Paynter created MeanKids.org, where people who had a bone to pick with the current darlings of the tech blogsphere — Tara, Kathy Sierra, Maryam and Robert Scoble — could comment freely. It was meant to be, as Frank would end up writing in his online apology, “purposeful anarchy. I thought the people at MeanKids would create art and criticism, pointed and insulting satire”.
It’s a statement that’s as accurate as “The Hell’s Angels is a social club for motorcycle enthusiasts.”
MeanKids.org — don’t bother trying to visit; it’s been taken down — was a real-life online version of the “Burn Book” from the movie Mean Girls, a book in which the Plastics (the clique of mean-but-popular girls) write nasty things about everyone in school.
On MeanKids.org’s dismantling, Frank writes:
Misogynistic postings at MeanKids.org led me to try to moderate, but indeed the group there was of the “You Own Your Own Words” tradition, so moderating or central editorial control wouldn’t work. I tore the site down.
Feeling a need to keep the online “Burn Book” going, Chris Locke wrote in an incredibly obnoxious, ungentlemanly and self-congratulatory blog post that he created Bob’s Yer Uncle. The mean kids migrated there, and that’s where the really nasty stuff about Kathy Sierra appeared.
John Gill’s mistake — fixing a problem by following a terrible example — was repeated by Frank Paynter.
In creating MeanKids.org, Frank created a little online space that mimicked a high school “Burn book”.
And like John Gill, Frank got supplanted by a cartoonishly vicious, amoral deputy who took his idea and ran even further with it.
How could anyone think that a society that mimicked high school down to the last details — the put-downs, smack-talk from a safe distance and encouragement of adolescent behaviour — would not end up duplicating the brutal, threatening and hateful aspects as well? Where did this guy get his life experience?
I no longer think that the premise behind the Star Trek “Nazi Planet” episode is as ridiculous as I once thought.
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Great post, one of the best I've read on this topic. Love the comparison.
Excellent post. I was kind of wondering where you were going with the Trek geek-out at first, but it all makes marvellous sense now.
I heart your comparisons, Joey. And you are 100% right. We need to start thinking about our actions.
I like the analogy... I also like what Hugh Macleod of Gaping Void said.
Thanks!
Bert
"Where did this guy get his history degree?"
Queen's U. Where else? He spent all his time at John Deutsch Centre with the other conservatives.
Not to start a flame war or anything, but...
I haven't seen the Star Trek episode (I probably should), however, Nazi's were in fact one of the most efficient societies in history.
Take away the hatred, take away the Holocaust, they did propel Germany from being a scapegoat to being a world super power (in what, 10 years?).
Unless Ekos was a multinational planet for Eko-nazis to base their hatred upon, Nazism as a standalone philosophy would work to efficiently bring an anarchist society into order.
But like I said, I'd better watch the episode first. :)
Great post, Joey.
Joey, I read your post twice. Mebbe it's my too tasty breakfast short-circuiting serious thought, but I don't get it. I suppose in any decent shitstorm some reference to Nazism has to be made, no matter how tortured, so why not you?
Who wants more eyeballs?! I do! I do!
The funny thing is, one of the ring leaders has written numerous scathing posts about some of the more subtler effects of Naziism and the like. I'll wager far more on the topic than any similar-minded posts from Sierra and her defenders (including you) combined.
Setting up meankids.org is like some Star Trek character trying to distill "the best of" Nazism. Reeeally now. At minimum it's a grotesque stretch. More to the irony is that the fascist efficiency-through-compliance methodology is exactly what meankids is against: don't be a friggin lemon, buyin wholesale what's being sold at the happyface stand.
I'm not speaking for any of them but I'm betting that meankids came out of a desire to take control of the ostracizing label Tara wanted to slap on their foreheads.
Hey, they're like the mean kids who drew zits on my face in high school!
I mean, who can't come to the damsel's rescue with a bleat like that? As if everything they had to say was personal, biting her for the sake of biting her, and not a critique of her ideas or work.
It's pathetic. And embarrassing (you decide for whom).
The "Hells Angels" analogy is crude as well as it supposes the participants had nothing but evil intent and just needed some kind of fake cover with which to operate.
Their (original) intent was satire and to poke fun in a free-wheeling way, some of the stuff they deemed as bullshit. More about the ideas, than an ad hominem practice pit.
The Onion does the same thing every day, in their own way. The thing about humour is that it's all funny if you happen to agree.
Now, not saying they didn't at times take things too far, but when I visited (which wasn't often) most of the stuff was fairly tame. A lot of clowning around and inside jokes.
It's too bad Frank freaked out and took down the whole site (though I can understand his anguish), because you could see for yourself.
Joey (the other one) has indeed responded in Kathy's thread and we'll see how this all plays out, but I think you've jumped the gun and Kathy (and Tara) is not as completely innocent as she makes herself out to be.
Hey, Memer, if there was some way to use the Original Series with the dumbest premise -- the one with the planet of hot women that stole Spock's brain -- I would have!
But seriously, I think the comparison is apt, even if I did run the risk of someone invoking Godwin's Law. The point was that Frank Paynter (whom I know personally) made a big miscalculation in thinking that a site that housed, fostered and encourages some of the worst aspects of high school behaviour would inspire some other bad aspects that he hadn't intended.
If anyone is to get slapped with a "Who wants more eyeballs? I do! I do!", it is he. He means well, but he saw MeanKids.org as a chance to run with the cool kids. He should be censured, but with the understanding that for every mistake he made in this sorry affair, he always tried to do the right thing in the end.
As you say, most of the stuff was fairly tame, but there was a gradual progression in the site from "bending" to "breaking" (as in "If it beands, it's comedy. If it breaks, it doesn't"), with the possible worst one being the completely sub-human posting about Maryam Scoble (Don Park writes about it here, and here's Google's cached copy. It's evil, racist misogynistic garbage, so be warned if you follow the link). I don't know which parallel universe edition of The Onion you've been reading, but they don't do stuff like that.
In short: I think I'm far more on target than you state.
No argument from me on the Maryam bit. I didn't get that. She may be annoying, but I haven't seen anything from her that deserved that level of savaging.
However.
Sierra's thing wasn't about how one particular post about a friend of hers (I assume) was way out of bounds. That wasn't the point at all.
Things were not spiralling into a new level of crass over at meankids. AFAIK, it was same as it ever was until the one heavyhanded bit and then Frank yanked the cord.
meankids certainly wasn't a play for eyeballs. You have to look at the genesis (see Rageboy's resonse). And there simply aren't enough people interested in that kind of thing -- at least not in the way they do it, the topics/people they choose, etc -- for it to ever challenge any A-lister for eyeballs. They knew that, and frankly so do you.
As for Frank, he already ran with that crowd. Has for years. He doesn't consider himself gifted with the same vision/skill as these guys, but he wanted to support them and be tangentially involved in the "project."
I think precisely because he knew the participants (or most of them) so well, it was all the more shocking that one Maryam post. Sometimes you think you know your friends...
Reread what Kathy's claiming, the associations she made and then come back to me. There's a kneejerk response she was purposefully trying to elicit and she damned well got it.
My reference to the Onion was only to say that there are plenty of sites that poke fun of people and ideas. A lot of people are out there saying well if you start a site whose intent is to ridicule/poke fun at [whatever], then it necessarily must devolve, at some point or other, into death threats! I mean...c'maaan.
This one (meankids) got special attention because of who was involved. That's all I'm sayin.