My Big, Gigantic Drum Kit

mikkipedia

Let the market decide. Vote with your dollars. Poor people shouldn’t be overweight. If minorities just worked harder. You can be sexist against men too. Just go to college. Just pay for college. Work harder. Just write. Just make stuff. Minorities can be racist too. Your accusation of sexism is itself sexist. Hack the planet.

I have had it up to literally here with techno-tard libertarian free market geek assholes. The comments on this Boing Boing story about MLK Day and unpacking your privilege knapsack made me stop reading Boing Boing. Finally. I know — what took so long. It only took two comments for someone to deny the conceptual basis of privilege, which is privilege. The comments did not get any higher-minded from there. I’m sick of Coulton’s liberal cronies making faux-racist jokes all the time (looking at you Maximum Fun podcasts). I’m sick of all this enlightened techno-liberal white male bullshit. I’m sick of it all. It’s the same game, white male exceptionalism, but the players have just swapped jerseys.

(via bmichael)

I thought for one utopian moment that it was the quoted commentary by mikkipedia that had got 5K+ notes, not the original “make good stuff” sentiment.

(via tomewing)

One of my ongoing problems with Tumblr is the difficulty it presents in tracking sentiment.  As Tom points out, it’s initially hard to see to which post/reblog the 5K+ notes apply.  But on a still more fundamental level, I have no idea how many of those initial likes (before mikkipedia presented an argument against the original quote) are in favor of Coulton’s original article and how many are in favor of Gaiman’s de-contextualized quote from it.  I see an important difference here, because Gaiman really stepped in it when it came to adequately representing the article.  Removed from context, that quote is, indeed, a ham-handed, free market-espousing message that deserves all the critique that mikkipedia and bmichael give it.

But here’s the complicated part.  Coulton’s article is specifically about the MegaUpload takedown, and, in context, the quote “make good stuff and make it easy for people to buy” is specifically aimed at corporate entities’ failure to do so:  “The big content companies are TERRIBLE at doing both of these things, so it’s no wonder they’re not doing so well in the current environment.”  The overall sentiment of the article isn’t that the Internet levels the playing field for all people for all time, but that it has the potential to de-privilege corporate entities who are not particularly competent at providing access to content. 

So here’s my question about straight, white, male privilege in terms of Coulton’s entire article rather than Gaiman’s simplistic take-away (not rhetorical at all, BTW; I’d love to hear some responses):  is systemic privilege served more by a world in which MegaUpload does exist or by one in which it doesn’t? 

(Source: neil-gaiman, via tomewing)